Showing posts with label People. Show all posts
Showing posts with label People. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013
What Taxes Would Look Like if Normal People Called the Shots
This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
After heroic feats of arithmetic and a your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine interpretation of opaque rules and guidelines, millions of Americans will file their taxes by this Monday, April 15th.
Then there’s the bad news.
For anyone who takes a peek at where his or her income tax dollars are going, Tax Day can be maddening. Outsized chunks of our taxes fund the military, rising healthcare costs, and interest on the federal debt. Comparatively tiny amounts go to education, science, alternative energy, and the environment.
Category by category, this is contrary to what Americans want—and what we the people want is pretty clear. Despite near-constant news about how polarized our nation is, a careful look at opinion polls indicates that a strong majority of Americans actually have a coherent to-do list for Washington: we want more jobs, smaller deficits, more education funding, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, higher taxes on the wealthiest, plus—the kicker—Medicare and Social Security benefits preserved. You know, it’s the typical story of wanting to have our cake and gobble it down, too. Right?
Wrong. What’s virtually unacknowledged is that all these things could be done at once. Far from being an impossible set of demands, the collective opinion poll version of the wisdom of the American people is, in fact, a smart set of solutions—or at least it would be, if we had a government capable of following our wishes. That collective wish list would address most of this nation’s urgent challenges, while making us smarter, safer, healthier, less indebted, and better invested in our long-term future. Here’s how.
What Taxes Would Look Like if Normal People Called the Shots
Thursday, April 11, 2013
What Taxes Would Look Like if Normal People Called the Shots
This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
After heroic feats of arithmetic and a your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine interpretation of opaque rules and guidelines, millions of Americans will file their taxes by this Monday, April 15th.
Then there’s the bad news.
For anyone who takes a peek at where his or her income tax dollars are going, Tax Day can be maddening. Outsized chunks of our taxes fund the military, rising healthcare costs, and interest on the federal debt. Comparatively tiny amounts go to education, science, alternative energy, and the environment.
Category by category, this is contrary to what Americans want—and what we the people want is pretty clear. Despite near-constant news about how polarized our nation is, a careful look at opinion polls indicates that a strong majority of Americans actually have a coherent to-do list for Washington: we want more jobs, smaller deficits, more education funding, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, higher taxes on the wealthiest, plus—the kicker—Medicare and Social Security benefits preserved. You know, it’s the typical story of wanting to have our cake and gobble it down, too. Right?
Wrong. What’s virtually unacknowledged is that all these things could be done at once. Far from being an impossible set of demands, the collective opinion poll version of the wisdom of the American people is, in fact, a smart set of solutions—or at least it would be, if we had a government capable of following our wishes. That collective wish list would address most of this nation’s urgent challenges, while making us smarter, safer, healthier, less indebted, and better invested in our long-term future. Here’s how.
What Taxes Would Look Like if Normal People Called the Shots
What Taxes Would Look Like if Normal People Called the Shots
This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
After heroic feats of arithmetic and a your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine interpretation of opaque rules and guidelines, millions of Americans will file their taxes by this Monday, April 15th.
Then there’s the bad news.
For anyone who takes a peek at where his or her income tax dollars are going, Tax Day can be maddening. Outsized chunks of our taxes fund the military, rising healthcare costs, and interest on the federal debt. Comparatively tiny amounts go to education, science, alternative energy, and the environment.
Category by category, this is contrary to what Americans want—and what we the people want is pretty clear. Despite near-constant news about how polarized our nation is, a careful look at opinion polls indicates that a strong majority of Americans actually have a coherent to-do list for Washington: we want more jobs, smaller deficits, more education funding, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, higher taxes on the wealthiest, plus—the kicker—Medicare and Social Security benefits preserved. You know, it’s the typical story of wanting to have our cake and gobble it down, too. Right?
Wrong. What’s virtually unacknowledged is that all these things could be done at once. Far from being an impossible set of demands, the collective opinion poll version of the wisdom of the American people is, in fact, a smart set of solutions—or at least it would be, if we had a government capable of following our wishes. That collective wish list would address most of this nation’s urgent challenges, while making us smarter, safer, healthier, less indebted, and better invested in our long-term future. Here’s how.
What Taxes Would Look Like if Normal People Called the Shots
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Connecticut School Teaches Children That People Don’t Have Gun Rights
Just recently a Connecticut school was busted attempting to rewrite history in regards to gun rights.
Intellihub.com
April 10, 2013
Generally the historical curriculum in government school is skewed to portray the establishment in a positive light. History lessons make warmongers look like martyrs because the warmongers have control over the formation of these lessons.
Many of the harsh realities involving the civil war, the great depression and the civil rights movements were completely left out along with the real history of slave owning aristocratic presidents and robber barons. These are pivotal points in history that one must have a clear picture of in order to make sense of what is going on in the world today.
Just recently a Connecticut school was busted attempting to rewrite history in regards to gun rights.
Fox reported that “The father of a Connecticut child is furious after discovering that his son’s school is teaching students that Americans don’t have a Second Amendment right to bear arms.”
“I am appalled,” said Steven Boibeaux, of Bristol. “It sounds to me like they are trying to indoctrinate our kids.”
Boibeaux’s son is an eighth grader at Northeast Middle School. On Monday his social studies teacher gave students a worksheet titled, ‘The Second Amendment Today.’
“The courts have consistently determined that the Second Amendment does not ensure each individual the right to bear arms,” the worksheet states. “The courts have never found a law regulating the private ownership of weapons unconstitutional.
The worksheet, published by Instructional Fair, goes on to say that the Second Amendment is not incorporated against the states.
“This means that the rights of this amendment are not extended to the individual citizens of the states,” the worksheet reads. “So a person has no right to complain about a Second Amendment violation by state laws.”
According to the document, the Second Amendment “only provides the right of a state to keep an armed National Guard.”
Boibeaux said he discovered the worksheet as he was going over his son’s homework assignments.
“I’m more than a little upset about this,” he told Fox News. “It’s not up to the teacher to determine what the Constitution means.”
Mat Staver, the founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, called the lesson propaganda – that is “absolutely false.”
“In fact, the US Supreme Court has affirmed that the Second Amendment ensures the individual the right to bear arms,” Staver told Fox News. “The progressive interpretation of the Second Amendment is that it doesn’t give you the right to bear arms – that it’s a corporate right of the government – but that has been rejected by the Courts.”
Ellen Solek, the superintendent of the school district, told Fox News they have now decided to pull the assignment from the classroom.
“It is no longer an assignment in that particular school,” she said, noting that it was an “administration decision in the best interest of the district.”
As many of you who follow my regular work are already aware, I am an advocate of unschooling and homeschooling, and I feel that the kind of schooling that we have today is counterproductive and oppressive. There are a lot of great teachers out there, who care about what they do and have every good intentions, like the world famous educator John Taylor Gatto, but as he found, the top down structure of the school system and the curriculum provided is very damaging to the minds of children.
He left public schools by writing his resignation letter in the op ed pages of the wall street journal, starting the letter off by saying that he “refuses to continue hurting children”. He then went on to start an incredible career in writing, researching and speaking out about the dangers of compulsory schooling.
This element is important, because the public school system combined with other forms of child abuse has worked to create the kind of violent and angry culture that we see today. When you treat people like prisoners and second class citizens for the most vital developmental years of their lives, you are going to create confused, bitter and deranged people. There is still value in group learning settings, and there is still value in teachers, but what we have today is indoctrination, not education.
******
J.G. Vibes is the author of an 87 chapter counter-culture textbook called Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, a staff writer, reporter for Intellihub.com and Executive Producer of the Bob Tuskin Radio Show. You can keep up with his work, which includes free podcasts, free e-books & free audiobooks at his website www.aotmr.com
Intellihub.com
Connecticut School Teaches Children That People Don’t Have Gun Rights
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Monday, April 1, 2013
People of Haiti Struggle for Food Sovereignty
In Haiti, and many other parts of the world, indigenous people struggle to maintain independence and the ability to use lands that have been in their families for generations.
A Haitian sugar cane worker cuts cane in field beside a batey on March 01, 2012 in San Pedro, Dominican Republic.(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
by Derrick Broze
Intellihub.com
April 2, 2013
I have written on the ways our society is marching forward , forgetting its roots and erasing history in the name of progress. Today I want to look at the struggle for food sovereignty in Haiti and how this relates to the bigger picture. Perhaps from learning about the struggles of indigenous peoples and their respective knowledge we can find a way to make the modern world more free for all people.
On March 22nd the people of Hinchen, Haiti took to the streets to march for the ability to grow and keep enough of their own food to sell at markets and feed their families. According to Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, leader of the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), “This is the moment to reconstruct the country, to provide a country for everyone, a Republic of Haiti and not a Republic of Port-au-Prince.”
Nearly six hundred years after Columbus came to the tiny island and met the Taino Indians the region is still dealing with how to stabilize, remain sovereign and fluorish without becoming the pawn of international corporations or interests. Last week the United Nations met to discuss the fate of Haiti.
“The plan envisions a multidonor trust fund managed by the World Bank that pools money for big projects and avoids wasteful redundancy. “
Although the international architects promise to have genuine involvement from the Haitians themselves, it would not be the first time native peoples were robbed of the opportunity to rule themselves. Maybe it’s time we look to the people for answers on how best to “rule” them.
In my personal pursuit of freedom I have found my way to many traditional, native or indigenous teachings. Looking at the information as lessons that have been cast aside or forgotten by our lightning speed modern society, I find many truths in them. One of the painful truths is the many ways modern cultures have abandoned our aboriginal roots and the important pieces of knowledge held by indigenous people.
By looking into the history of treatment of “primitive” peoples conquered by colonialism we see the mode of thinking that promotes ignorance of past knowledge. The Eugenics history of America and scientists such as Charles Darwin shines even more light on how native peoples have come to be viewed. Anthropology itself was founded to study people who were deemed primitive.
Edward Taylor, one of the first anthropologists, wrote:
“Savages are exceedingly ignorant as regards both physical and moral knowledge; Judged by our ordinary modern standard of knowledge… much of what they believe must be put down as false.”
Much of modern science and medicine look at indigenous teachings with a great sense of superiority, ego and disdain.
Dr. Lewis E. Mehl wrote on the skewed view modern medicine holds:
“To date, modern biomedicine has tended to view the world’s traditional medicines with the same jaundiced eye it used in its adolescence to rebel against the Roman Catholic church. Oriental practitioners are tolerated at best, and native healers, whether they are American Indian, Laotian, Mexican or African, are dismissed as uneducated and misinformed, even dangerous”
In his book The Cosmic Serpent, anthropologist Jeremy Narby discusses the blind spot that modern science has for native knowledge. Speaking on Amazonion tribes recipe for Ayahuasca, a plant based hallucinogenic concoction, he writes:
“So here are people without electron microscopes who choose, among some 80,000 Amazonian plant species, the leaves of a bush containing a hallucinogenic brain hormone, which they combine with a vine containing substances that inactivate an enzyme of the digestive tract, which would otherwise block the hallucinogenic effect.
And they do this to modify their consciousness. It is as if they knew about the molecular properties to plants and the art of combining them, and when one asks them how they know these things, they say their knowledge comes directly from hallucinogenic plants.”
But is it only in the areas of medicine that we find traditional routes to be just as important as their modern counter parts?
In an essay entitled, “What is a shaman?”, Michael Harner, writes:
“Some of these things may be thought to be rather strange to most people in our culture, such as talking with plants, animals, and all of nature. It sounds neurotic or deranged, of course, from the perspective of western psychology. Nevertheless, our ancestors did it and managed to survived for 3 million years, whereas in the “civilized” countries of the world today, where people don’t talk with the planet and its inhabitants, we are also faced with the possibility of nuclear destruction and ecological catastrophe. From these facts we may draw our own conclusions about which cultural assumptions are the saner.”
I believe by striking a balance between what we have gained with our modern technology and scientific understanding and the teachings of past cultures we are actually moving closer to a free society. It is only with respect to all cultures and ideas that we can truly hope to make progress. Admittedly this is not a quick change, but rather a conscious, personal choice one must make.
By deciding to become aware of our world’s current obstacles we begin the path towards freedom. After educating oneself on a variety of topics it is necessary to begin to understand our place in the grand scheme of things, to decide to live a life dedicated towards advancing liberty for all people. This is not the end however. We must begin to acknowledge the cultures we have harmed in the past, begin to heal, and in doing so advance our species forward.
sources:
^http://www.uusc.org/content/papaye_peasant_movements_vision_haiti_for_everyone
^ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28sun1.html?th&emc=th&_r=0
^The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby
^Shamans Path, Essay by Lewis E. Mehl, “Modern Shamanism: Integration of biomedicine with traditional world views”
*****
Derrick Broze is a founding member of The Houston Free Thinkers.
He writes for IntelliHub.com a popular independent news website.
He can be heard on Orion Talk Radio, Local Live Houston and the upcoming Unbound Radio.
Find his workatwww.theconsciousresistance.com and www.thehoustonfreethinkers.com
Intellihub.com
People of Haiti Struggle for Food Sovereignty
April 1: The People Cube is Eight Years Old!
White House to American children: Sequester causes layoffs among hens that lay Easter eggs; union-wage Easter Bunnies to be replaced by Mexican Chupacabras
Time Mag names Hugo Chavez world’s sexiest corpse
Boy, 8, pretends banana is gun, makes daring escape from school
Oscars 2013: Michelle Obama announces long-awaited merger of Hollywood and the State
Joe Salazar defends the right of women to be raped in gun-free environment: ‘rapists and rapees should work together to prevent gun violence for the common good’
Dept. of Health and Human Services eliminates rape by reclassifying assailants as ‘undocumented sex partners’
Deeming football too violent, Obama moves to introduce Super Drone Sundays instead
Japan offers to extend nuclear umbrella to cover U.S. should America suffer devastating attack on its own defense spending
Feminists organize one billion women to protest male oppression with one billion lap dances
Urban community protests Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on extra-large pop singers owning assault weapons
Concerned with mounting death toll, Taliban offers to send peacekeeping advisers to Chicago
Karl Rove puts an end to Tea Party with new ‘Republicans For Democrats’ strategy aimed at losing elections
Answering public skepticism, President Obama authorizes unlimited drone attacks on all skeet targets throughout the country
Skeet Ulrich denies claims he had been shot by President but considers changing his name to ‘Traps’
New York Times hacked by Chinese government, Paul Krugman’s economic policies stolen
White House: when President shoots skeet, he donates the meat to food banks that feed the middle class
To prove he is serious, Obama eliminates armed guard protection for President, Vice-President, and their families; establishes Gun-Free Zones around them instead
State Dept to send 100,000 American college students to China as security for US debt obligations
Jay Carney: Al Qaeda is on the run, they’re just running forward
Fearing the worst, Obama Administration outlaws the fan to prevent it from being hit by certain objects
World ends; S&P soars
Riddle of universe solved; answer not understood
Greece abandons Euro; accountants find Greece has no Euros anyway
Wheel finally reinvented; axles to be gradually reinvented in 3rd quarter of 2013
As Santa’s workshop files for bankruptcy, Fed offers bailout in exchange for control of ‘naughty and nice’ list
Freak flying pig accident causes bacon to fly off shelves
Report: President Obama to visit the United States in the near future
Obama promises to create thousands more economically neutral jobs
Imam Rauf’s peaceful solution: ‘Move Ground Zero a few blocks away from the mosque and no one gets hurt’
Study: Obama’s threat to burn tax money in Washington ‘recruitment bonanza’ for Tea Parties
Study: no Social Security reform will be needed if gov’t raises retirement age to at least 814 years
Vice President Biden: criticizing Egypt is un-pharaoh
Israelis to Egyptian rioters: “don’t damage the pyramids, we will not rebuild”
Lake Superior renamed Lake Inferior in spirit of tolerance and inclusiveness
Michael Moore: As long as there is anyone with money to shake down, this country is not broke
Obama’s teleprompters unionize, demand collective bargaining rights
Obama calls new taxes ‘spending reductions in tax code.’ Elsewhere rapists tout ‘consent reductions in sexual intercourse’
Obama’s Regulation Reduction committee finds US Constitution to be expensive outdated framework inefficiently regulating federal gov’t
Taking a page from the Reagan years, Obama announces new era of Perestroika and Glasnost
White House to impose Chimney tax on Santa Claus
Obama decrees the economy is not soaring as much as previously decreeed
Conservative think tank introduces children to capitalism with pop-up picture book “The Road to Smurfdom”
Obama refutes charges of him being unresponsive to people’s suffering: “When you pray to God, do you always hear a response?”
Fluke to Congress: drill, baby, drill!
Planned Parenthood introduces Frequent Flucker reward card: ‘Come again soon!’
Obama to tornado victims: ‘We inherited this weather from the previous administration’
People’s Cube gives itself Hero of Socialist Labor medal in recognition of continued expert advice provided to the Obama Administration helping to shape its foreign and domestic policies
Hamas: Israeli air defense unfair to 99% of our missiles, “only 1% allowed to reach Israel”
Voters Without Borders oppose Texas new voter ID law
Enraged by accusation that they are doing Obama’s bidding, media leaders demand instructions from White House on how to respond
Official: China plans to land on Moon or at least on cheap knockoff thereof
Koran-Contra: Obama secretly arms Syrian rebels
Poll: Progressive slogan ‘We should be more like Europe’ most popular with members of American Nazi Party
May Day: Anarchists plan, schedule, synchronize, and execute a coordinated campaign against all of the above
Midwestern farmers hooked on new erotic novel “50 Shades of Hay”
Study: 99% of Liberals give the rest a bad name
Obama meets with Jewish leaders, proposes deeper circumcisions for the rich
Cancer once again fails to cure Venezuela of its “President for Life”
Tragic spelling error causes Muslim protesters to burn local boob-tube factory
White House: “Let them eat statistics”
Special Ops: if Benedict Arnold had a son, he would look like Barack Obama
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April 1: The People Cube is Eight Years Old!
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Walmart"s Death Grip on Groceries Is Making Life Worse for Millions of People (Hard Times USA)
This article was published in partnership with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
When Michelle Obama visited a Walmart in Springfield, Missouri, a few weeks ago to praise the company"s efforts to sell healthier food, she did not say why she chose a store in Springfield of all cities. But, in ways that Obama surely did not intend, it was a fitting choice. This Midwestern city provides a chilling look at where Walmart wants to take our food system.
Springfield is one of nearly 40 metro areas where Walmart now captures about half or more of consumer spending on groceries, according to Metro Market Studies. Springfield area residents spend just over $ 1 billion on groceries each year, and one of every two of those dollars flows into a Walmart cash register. The chain has 20 stores in the area and shows no signs of slowing its growth. Its latest proposal, a store just south of the city"s downtown, has provoked widespread protest. Opponents say Walmart already has an overbearing presence in the region and argue that this new store would undermine nearby grocery stores, including a 63-year-old family-owned business which still provides delivery for its elderly customers. A few days before the First Lady"s visit, the City Council voted 5-4 to approve what will be Walmart"s 21st store in the community.
As Springfield goes, so goes the rest of the country, if Walmart has its way. Nationally, the retailer"s share of the grocery market now stands at 25 percent. That"s up from 4 percent just 16 years ago. Walmart"s tightening grip on the food system is unprecedented in U.S. history. Even A&P — often referred to as the Walmart of its day — accounted for only about 12 percent of grocery sales at its height in the 1940s. Its market share was kept in check in part by the federal government, which won an antitrust case against A&P in 1946. The contrast to today"s casual acceptance of Walmart"s market power could not be more stark.
Having gained more say over our food supply than Monsanto, Kraft, or Tyson, Walmart has been working overtime to present itself as a benevolent king. It has upped its donations to food pantries, reduced sodium and sugars in some of its store-brand products, and recast its relentless expansion as a solution to “food deserts.” In 2011, it pledged to build 275-300 stores “in or near” low-income communities lacking grocery stores. The Springfield store Obama visited is one of 86 such stores Walmart has since opened. Situated half a mile from the southwestern corner of a census tract identified as underserved by the USDA, the store qualifies as “near” a food desert. Other grocery stores are likewise perched on the edge of this tract. Although Walmart has made food deserts the vanguard of its PR strategy in urban areas, most of the stores the chain has built or proposed in cities like Chicago and Washington D.C. are in fact just blocks from established supermarkets, many unionized or locally owned. As it pushes into cities, Walmart"s primary aim is not to fill gaps but to grab market share.
***
The real effect of Walmart"s takeover of our food system has been to intensify the rural and urban poverty that drives unhealthy food choices. Poverty has a strong negative effect on diet, regardless of whether there is a grocery store in the neighborhood or not, a major 15-year study published in 2011 in the Archives of Internal Medicine found. Access to fresh food cannot change the bottom-line reality that cheap, calorie-dense processed foods and fast food are financially logical choices for far too many American households. And their numbers are growing right alongside Walmart. Like Midas in reverse, Walmart extracts wealth and pushes down incomes in every community it touches, from the rural areas that produce food for its shelves to the neighborhoods that host its stores.
Walmart has made it harder for farmers and food workers to earn a living. Its rapid rise as a grocer triggered a wave of mergers among food companies, which, by combining forces, hoped to become big enough to supply Walmart without getting crushed in the process. Today, food processing is more concentrated than ever. Four meatpackers slaughter 85 percent of the nation"s beef. One dairy company handles 40 percent of our milk, including 70 percent of the milk produced in New England. With fewer buyers, farmers are struggling to get a fair price. Between 1995 and 2009, farmers saw their share of each consumer dollar spent on beef fall from 59 to 42 cents. Their cut of the consumer milk dollar likewise fell from 44 to 36 cents. For pork, it fell from 45 to 25 cents and, for apples, from 29 to 19 cents.
Onto this grim reality, Walmart has grafted a much-publicized initiative to sell more locally grown fruits and vegetables. Clambering aboard the “buy local” trend undoubtedly helps Walmart"s marketing, but, as Missouri-based National Public Radio journalist Abbie Fentress Swanson reported in February, “there"s little evidence of small farmers benefiting, at least in the Midwest.” Walmart, which defines “local” as grown in the same state, has increased its sales of local produce mainly by relying on large industrial growers. Small farmers, meanwhile, have fewer opportunities to reach consumers, as independent grocers and smaller chains shrink and disappear.
Food production workers are being squeezed too. The average slaughterhouse wage has fallen 9 percent since 1999. Forced unpaid labor at food processing plants is on the rise. Last year, a Louisiana seafood plant that supplies Walmart was convicted of forcing employees to work in unsafe conditions for less than minimum wage. Some workers reported peeling and boiling crawfish in shifts that spanned 24 hours.
The tragic irony is that many food-producing regions, with their local economies dismantled and poverty on the rise, are now themselves lacking grocery stores. The USDA has designated large swaths of the farm belt, including many agricultural areas near Springfield, as food deserts.
***
One might imagine that squeezing farmers and food workers would yield lower prices for consumers. But that hasn"t been the case. Grocery prices have been rising. There are multiple reasons for this, but corporate concentration is at least partly to blame. For most foods, the spread between what consumers pay and how much farmers receive has been widening. Food processors and big retailers are pocketing the difference. Even as Walmart touts lower prices than its competitors, the company"s reorganization of our food system has had the effect of raising grocery prices overall.
As Walmart stores multiply, fewer families can afford to eat well. The company claims it stores bring economic development and employment, but the empirical evidence indicates otherwise. A study published in 2008 in the Journal of Urban Economics examined about 3,000 Walmart store openings nationally and found that each store caused a net decline of about 150 jobs (as competing retailers downsized and closed) and lowered total wages paid to retail workers. Other research by the economic consulting firm Civic Economics has found that, when locally owned businesses are replaced by big-box stores, dollars that once circulated in the community, supporting other businesses and jobs, instead leak out. These shifts may explain the findings of another study, published in Social Science Quarterly in 2006, which cut straight to the bottom line: neighborhoods where Walmart opens end up with higher poverty rates and more food-stamp usage than places where the retailer does not expand.
This year, Walmart plans to open between 220 and 240 stores in the U.S., as it marches steadily on in its quest to further control the grocery market. Policymakers at every level, from city councilors to federal antitrust regulators, should be standing in its way. Very few are. Growing numbers of people, though, are drawing the line, from the Walmart employees who have led a string of remarkable strikes against the company, to the coalition of small business, labor, and community groups that recently forced Walmart to step back from its plans to unroll stores across New York City.
Back in Springfield, as Michelle Obama was delivering her remarks, framed by a seductive backdrop of oranges and lemons, a citizens group called Stand Up to Walmart was also at work, launching a referendum drive to overturn the City Council"s vote and block Walmart from gaining any more ground in the city.
Tue, 03/26/2013 – 12:24
Walmart"s Death Grip on Groceries Is Making Life Worse for Millions of People (Hard Times USA)
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