Real Patriots Would Not Tolerate This - The Walmart Family Are The Biggest Welfare Cheats in America

 Real Patriots Would Not Tolerate This - The Walmart Family Are The Biggest Welfare Cheats in America

Walmart wages are so low that many of its workers rely on food stamps and other government aid programs to fulfill their basic needs, a reality that could cost taxpayers as much as $900,000 at just one Walmart Supercenter in Wisconsin, according to a study released by Congressional Democrats on Thursday.

Though the study assumes that most workers who qualify for the public assistance programs do take advantage of them, it injects a potent data point into a national debate about the minimum wage at a time when many Walmart and fast food workers are mounting strikes in pursuit of higher wages.

The study uses Medicaid data released in Wisconsin to piece together the annual cost to taxpayers for providing a host of social safety net programs, including food stamps and publicly subsidized health care, to workers at one Supercenter in the state.

According to the report, Walmart had more workers enrolled in the state’s public health care program in the last quarter of last year than any other employer, with 3,216 people enrolled. When the dependents of those workers were factored in, the number of enrollees came to 9,207.

"When low wages leave Walmart workers unable to afford the necessities of life, taxpayers pick up the tab," the report says.

After accounting for the total number of Walmart stores and employees across the state and the per-person costs of BadgerCare, as the state’s health care program is known, the report's authors estimated that the cost of publicly funded health care comes to $251,706 per year for a 300-employee Supercenter.

The authors then added up the projected costs of other public-assistance programs available to families on BadgerCare, such as reduced-price school meals, Section 8 housing assistance, the earned income tax credit and energy assistance. Assuming all those workers avail themselves of those additional programs -- granted, an unlikely scenario -- the report extrapolates that the final tab would top $900,000.

In response to the report, Walmart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said the company was proud of the opportunities it provides for employees.

"Unfortunately there are some people who base their opinions on misconceptions rather than the facts," Buchanan said, noting that 75 percent of Walmart managers started as hourly employees. "Every month more than 60 percent of Americans shop at Walmart and we are proud to help them save money on what they want and need to build better lives for themselves and their families. We provide a range of jobs -- from people starting out stocking shelves to Ph.D.’s in engineering and finance. We provide education assistance and skill training and, most of all, a chance to move up in the ranks."

The report, entitled "The Low-Wage Drag on Our Economy," was produced by Democrats with the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which is chaired by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). The committee says it chose Wisconsin because the state's data "appears to be the most recent and comprehensive." The paper is an updated version of an earlier report by the same committee in 2004, which at the time estimated that a 200-employee Walmart store could account for $400,000 in public assistance for workers.

"The labor policies of Walmart, and those of companies that emulate its low-road approach, end up leaving taxpayers holding the bag," Miller said in a statement.

Critics have long denounced Walmart for paying such low wages that many workers are forced to take advantage of public-assistance programs like food stamps or Medicaid. (Notably, many Democrats who lament this scenario are strong backers of such programs.)

In fact, many workers throughout the retail industry take advantage of these programs, though a 2004 study of Walmart workers in California estimated the chain's workers availed themselves of 38 percent more non-health, public-assistance money than workers at competing stores. (That report, by the University of California, Berkeley, had findings similar to the committee's 2004 study.)

many of Walmart's employees probably don't apply for those assistance programs just because there is such a stigma attached to receiving any help. So whether they collect those benefits or not, Walmart should be ashamed that most of its employees do not make a living wage, Walmart Heirs Have As Much Wealth As Bottom 40 Percent Of Americans Combined. One family hauls in as much income as 30 million American workers. This is why the economy cannot seem to fully recover and there is low demand for products and services. The people who are working are spending their money on the basic necessities like food, shelter and utilities. While Walmart continues to import over half its products.

Republican Erick Erickson ( who works for CNN and other media outlets) Believes the same things about women as a Fundamentalist Iranian Mullah. Conservatives and Iranian religious zealots have always had a lot in common.

Latest Fox Benghazi Conspiracy Crumbles. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condelezza Rice lied over 4,000 Americans to their deaths. They got another 20,000 maimed or wounded. But shameless, immoral conservative freaks are going to get to the bottom of this non-scandal.

Nope, the IRS doesn't need to keep an eye on radical anti-American conservative groups, Cigarette Maker Funded Dark-Money Conservative Groups

Former Republican Vice President and Noted America Hater Dan Quayle, Up To His Neck in Corruption

Former Republican Vice President and Noted America Hater Dan Quayle, Up To His Neck in Corruption

How fitting that Dan Quayle, a bumbling excuse for a vice president of the United States, should end up as a top executive of a $20 billion private equity firm mired in controversy. Quayle, who signed on with Cerberus in 1999, was with that company during its takeover and subsequent bankruptcy of Chrysler, questionable military contracting deals in Afghanistan and, most recently, manufacturing the assault rifle used in the Newtown massacre.

The former Indiana senator, to whom most of us in the press corps covering George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 1988 referred to as the Ken doll, must have found life in the private sector so much more rewarding, but how much so is not known, since Cerberus is privately held.

Dan and his son Ben Quayle, a congressman from Arizona, have been ardent supporters of the NRA, but even they must have been shocked by the latest—and not only—incident involving one of Cerberus’ product lines. The company now acknowledges that its gun unit, Freedom Group Inc.—which refers to itself as “the largest manufacturer of commercial firearms and ammunition,” sold in eighty countries—is a public relations embarrassment and has put it up for sale.

In case you missed the connection, as did too many in the mainstream media, the former vice president was rewarded for his gaffe-filled performance in that job with the far more lucrative position of chairman of Cerberus Global Investments LLC. He was hired for that post by Cerberus CEO Stephen Feinberg, an alum of the disgraced and defunct junk bond emporium Drexel Burnham Lambert.

In addition to owning Bushmaster, the manufacturer of the assault weapon used in Connecticut, Cerberus’ holdings have included Chrysler Corp., bailed out by US taxpayers, and DynCorp, the military construction contractor that is the subject of a major special inspector general’s investigation of its activities in Afghanistan. All three businesses are deeply dependent on decisions of the federal government once served by Quayle and other high members of the Cerberus team.

One of those is John W. Snow, listed on the Cerberus website as another member of its “senior executive leadership.” Snow was secretary of the Treasury in the George W. Bush administration. He resigned from that position effective June 29, 2006, and four months later, on October 19, Cerberus issued a press release announcing that Snow had been named chairman of Cerberus Capital Management LP. The appointment proved helpful, given Snow’s government experience, when Cerberus took over Chrysler in 2007 and soon went shopping for Washington’s assistance to keep the company afloat.

Feinberg, who in reality runs all of Cerberus as its CEO and chief investment officer, is one of those financial backers of the GOP who derides government interference in the market any time it threatens to help ordinary folk. But when he bought Chrysler, one of those distressed companies that he specialized in dismembering, he quickly found a need for massive federal intervention to preserve a fraction of the Cerberus investment.

With the aid of Quayle, Snow and other politically connected members of the firm, Feinberg made the rounds in Washington at the end of the Bush administration begging for what right-wing free-marketeers would label as the socialization of Chrysler to the tune of $4 billion in federal aid. It was not enough to avoid eventual bankruptcy and additional government support, but by then Feinberg and Cerberus had bailed.

Cerberus’ use of the various Bush administration veterans was on full display in a call between Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and his predecessor Snow, then chair of the investment firm. “That investment company,” wrote New York Times reporter Louise Story, “is Mr. Snow’s employer, Cerberus Capital Management, which has used its wealth and deep connections in Washington to shape the debate over the foundering automakers to its advantage.”

In its attempt to save Chrysler, Cerberus had hired former Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli to turn the company around, but he failed. He reappeared in 2010 as CEO of Cerberus’s Freedom Group Inc., with its “family” of fifteen gun and ammo companies including Bushmaster, Remington and other top selling brands. Nardelli continued in that position until March of this year, when he stepped down. During his tenure, he was instrumental in advocating against stronger gun control as well as enlisting endorsements from the NRA, and he remains a senior adviser to Feinberg.

In mythology, Cerberus is the three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades. How perfect a name for a company whose leaders have sold their souls.

This story originally appeared at Truthdig by Robert Scheer.

Feinberg and the Quayles are not just cancers, they are cancers aided by corporate welfare. They're the kind of conservatives who hate the idea of someone working for slave wages getting some food stamps to feed their kid, but tale millions from tax payers.