AMERICA IS A NATION FOR THE RICH AND 'CHEAP' ILLEGAL LABOR THAT THE RICH DEMAND
25 Facts About The Explosive Growth Of Poverty In America That Will Blow Your Mind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANm7FAKuCw0
The rest of the world sees America as the wealthiest nation on the entire planet. But when we take a closer look at the hardships our population is facing, we can rapidly realize that there's a tremendous amount of financial suffering in the United States, and that's getting dramatically worse with each passing year. Today, more money goes towards the pockets of the rich than ever before. Over the past few decades, we've been witnessing the greatest event of wealth transfer in the history of our nation without even realizing it. While billionaire CEOs like Mark Zuckenberg make over a million times more than the average American worker every year, many families out there, whose parents work themselves to the bone every single day, will still struggle to find what to eat and where to sleep with their children tonight. Extreme poverty continues to grow all across the country. According to an analysis released by the University of Chicago, at least 336,000 households with children live on less than two dollars a day. That’s a group known as the ultra-poor. Amid skyrocketing housing and rent prices, at least 600,000 Americans remain in a group known as the “unhoused”. “Right now, we are still trending in the wrong direction,” explained Anthony Love, interim executive director at the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness. “When the public is told that one particular policy is going to end homelessness, what they’re expecting is that they’re going to see fewer homeless people around,” added Stephen Eide, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. What they haven’t considered yet is that housing has to come first, Eide stressed. Meanwhile, the gap between the rich and the rest of the population is worsening. On average, the top 1% of earners make 20 times more than the bottom 90% every year. The wealth disparity grows the higher up the ladder we climb. Even the mid-level one-percenters can’t reach the gigantic amounts earned by the ultra-rich. These disparities, make us question whether the US is indeed a rich nation or a nation for the rich. The answer is up to interpretation, but you can have a clearer picture about this issue at the end of this video. Today, we gathered some staggering stats that expose that poverty in the United States is wildly out of control. Here are 25 Facts About The Explosive Growth Of Poverty In America That Will Blow Your Mind. For more info, find us on: https://www.epiceconomist.com/
Democrats: $625B Tax Cut for Wealthy Elite ‘Essential’ Ahead of Midterms
Democrats say cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes for mostly wealthy income-earners in coastal states is “essential” to getting reelected in this year’s midterm elections.
Leaked IRS data expose manipulation of US tax system by the ultra-wealthy
The nonprofit news organization ProPublica published on Wednesday an analysis of the top 400 income earners in the US. The report reveals how much income tax the wealthy elite pay and illustrates how the US tax system is itself structured to benefit the personal wealth of a handful of individual billionaires and multimillionaires.
Based on a trove of leaked IRS data, the ProPublica report shows that it took an average of $110 million in income per year between 2013 and 2018 to enter the top 400 list. The data confirm what many already know—that the tax laws in America are structured to benefit the super-rich and that this set-up is a contributing factor in the overall growth of social inequality in the US.
The report shows that the highest earning Americans do not pay the highest income tax. ProPublica notes, “On average, the rate of income tax that people pay does climb as incomes ascend into the top 1 percent, but when you get to the range of $2 million to $5 million, that trend stops. The group earning in this range, composed mostly of business owners and workers with extremely high salaries, paid an average income tax rate of 29 percent from 2013 to 2018. After that, average tax rates actually drop the further up in income you go.”
The analysis begins by pointing out that many billionaires “didn’t even come close” to making the top 400 list because they use write-offs to erase taxable income. “Other billionaires, like Warren Buffett, simply avoid income even as their wealth rises,” the report says.
Buffet’s average personal wealth was $70 billion across the six years of the ProPublica report— from 2013 to 2018–but his average income during that timeframe was just $27 million and he is not on the top income earners list.
The report also explains that billionaires often use the “Buy, Borrow, Die” method in which they “borrow against their wealth to avoid taxes, then their estates are able to skirt taxes after their deaths.”
While one aspect of the data published by ProPublica shows how the super-rich “work” the system to their significant advantage, the report also says “in the American system, there’s a huge difference between how we tax wages and how we tax investments. Income from financial assets is generally taxed at a lower rate.”
As in every country of the world, the extent of inequality in the US is difficult to comprehend due its sheer magnitude. The ProPublica report explains, for example, that it would take a typical American with an income of $40,000 per year “to work for 2,750 years to make what the lowest-earning person in this group made in one,” and the typical American “would have to work for 25,000 years to make $1 billion,” which was made on average by the top 11 individuals on the list.
Tech billionaires represent 10 of the top 15 income earners and most of their income came from selling stocks. Among the names on this list are Bill Gates (Microsoft, $2.85 billion), Larry Ellison (Oracle, $1.07 billion), Steve Balmer (Microsoft, $1.05 billion), Sergey Brin (Google, $1.04 billion), Larry Paige (Google, $990 million) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon, $832 million). These billionaires paid an average of 18 percent in taxes on their income over six years.
The largest group of super-wealthy income earners come from the hedge fund industry. Representing approximately one-fifth of the entire list (80 individuals), the income of the hedge fund managers comes directly from stock trades, options and the other financial instruments of their firms. While these individuals are less known to the public, the founder of Citadel, Kenneth Griffin, raked in an average of $1.68 billion per year from 2013 and 2018 and paid an effective 29.2 percent in taxes.
Founders of private equity firms were another group that ProPublica found stood out on the top 400 list. These individuals make their money by buying companies and reselling them at a profit. The top 10 income earners in this group paid an effective average tax rate of 20 percent between 2013 and 2018.
The greatest combination of highest incomes and lowest tax rates for the super-rich stemmed from those who made stock sales taxed at the lower rate that was established in 2013 during the Obama administration. The report says that since then, the “long-term capital gains rate has been 20 percent, about half the top rate on ordinary income (37 percent in 2018).”
Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates benefited from this arrangement because his average yearly income of $2.85 billion came from sales of his former company’s stock and, as the report notes, “every penny of Gates’ taxable income was eligible for the lower rate” and this was generally true for the other tech billionaires as well.
Others who also benefited from the lower dividend tax rate enacted by the Democratic Party were the Walton (Walmart) and DeVos (Amway) family heirs. The report says that “the 11 Walton descendants in the top 400 saved $371 million a year due to this tax change.”
One individual who came in for specific mention in the ProPublica report is billionaire and former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg successfully achieved one of the lowest tax rates of anyone on the top 400 list. Bloomberg took annual income deductions of more than $1 billion, mostly through charitable contributions. The report says, “From 2013 to 2017, he also wrote off an average of $409 million each year from what he’d paid in state and local taxes.”
Although the Trump-era 2018 tax overhaul limited those deductions to $10,000, the bill introduced a new massive deduction that Bloomberg took advantage of. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was rushed through the legislative process and permitted so-called “pass through” profits to avoid taxation. For Bloomberg, this law enabled him to claim an income deduction of more the $183 million and reduce his taxes by nearly $68 million. On an average income of $2.05 billion, Bloomberg paid an effective tax rate of 4.1 percent, which is lower than the rate paid by an average American worker making $40,000 to $50,000 per year (5 percent).
While the owners and executives of tech monopolies, private equity and hedge fund businesses paid between 17 and 26 percent effective tax rates, the owners of manufacturing businesses paid on average 30 percent in taxes.
The publication of the income tax data by ProPublica comes amid a campaign for the Biden administration to push for a 20 percent minimum tax rate on all US households with net worth of $100 million or more. It is expected that this proposal will never make it to the floor of the US Senate given that Senator Joe Manchin (Democrat from West Virginia) has already said he will not support it and the entirety of congressional Republicans are opposed to it.
Certain elements within the ruling elite are concerned that the grotesque levels of social inequality—including the rigging of the tax system to nakedly benefit wealth accumulation by the ultra-rich—has primed the conditions for a social eruption in the US which threatens to overturn the entire capitalist order. A group called Patriotic Millionaires—a network of wealthy individuals who advocate raising taxes on their class—responded to the ProPublica report by saying that “it’s time to tax billionaires.”
ProPublica Reveals How Soros, Bezos, and Other Famous Billionaires Avoid Paying Taxes
Democrats: $625B Tax Cut for Wealthy Elite ‘Essential’ Ahead of Midterms
Democrats say cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes for mostly wealthy income-earners in coastal states is “essential” to getting reelected in this year’s midterm elections.
In November, House Democrats passed President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better Act” which includes billions in tax breaks to the wealthiest residents of blue states. Specifically, the plan would give a tax cut to about 67 percent of the nation’s richest Americans — those earning more than $885,000 every year — costing taxpayers about $625 billion.
Under Biden’s plan, those in the top one percent would receive an average tax cut of more than $16,000 this year. The tax cuts for the wealthy would be a result of the plan’s increasing the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap.
Ahead of the midterm elections in November, House Democrats are warning their rich donors that they must get out and vote for them to secure the massive tax cut. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) called the tax cuts for the rich “essential” in an interview with Bloomberg News.
Chart via Bloomberg News
“We need to get that done. It’s not the only thing, but it’s a big thing,” Maloney said, who represents one of New York’s wealthiest areas — Westchester County. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) called the tax cut “really important” for her constituency.
“If you want your state and local deductions back, you have to vote for Democrats. Republicans screwed you last time, and they’ll do it again,” Maloney said.
At the same time, a number of Democrats are blasting the effort, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME).
Sanders has said:
At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the last thing we should be doing is giving more tax breaks to the very rich. Democrats campaigned and won on an agenda that demands that the very wealthy finally pay their fair share, not one that gives them more tax breaks.
Meanwhile, Democrats want to squeeze an extra $200 billion out of American taxpayers by mostly targeting working and middle class earners with more Internal Revenue Services (IRS) audits.
The plan ensures nearly 600,000 more working and middle class Americans earning $75,000 or less a year would be audited by the IRS. Of those new IRS audits, more than 313,000 would target the poorest of Americans who earn $25,000 or less a year.
In 2017, former President Trump had the SALT deduction capped at $10,000. Since then, Democrats have sought to deliver their wealthy, blue state donors with a massive tax cut by eliminating the cap altogether or greatly increasing it.
Biden, for instance, had sought to include tax cuts for his billionaire donors in a Chinese coronavirus relief package earlier this year. The plan was ultimately cut from the package. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), in May 2020, also tried to include the plan in a coronavirus relief package.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
The corporate assault on US workers’ living standards during the pandemic intensified in 2021. While inflation slashed living standards for most of the population, corporate profits surged to their highest levels in decades, rising 25 percent year over year to $2.81 trillion. The rise is even greater—37 percent—when taxes are factored in. This is the highest figure since records began in 1948.
At the same time, according to a report by Compensation Advisory Partners, US CEO pay increased in 2021 by an average of 19 percent at the 50 companies surveyed, a record amount. Leading the field was Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who took in a staggering $246.6 million. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy received a pay package valued at $212.7 million, mostly from stock options.
Others cashing in included:
- Apple CEO Tim Cook, who took in $99 million last year
- Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who received $178.6 million
- Chad Richison, CEO of Paycom Software, who was paid $211,131,206
- Lawrence Culp Jr., CEO of General Electric, who pocketed $73,192,032
- Mike Sievert, T-Mobile CEO, who received $54,914,015
- Leonard Schleifer, CEO of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, who took in $135,350,121.
Surging profits on Wall Street boosted the average employee bonus in the New York securities industry to a record $257,500 last year, according to state officials.
The statistics on corporate profits and executive pay expose the blatant profiteering by large corporations during the pandemic. Companies have been able to raise prices far beyond increases in production costs, vastly inflating profit margins.
According to a report by a watchdog group, the top 25 global oil companies reaped $237 billion in profits in 2021. Last year, oil giant ExxonMobil posted its largest profit in seven years, $23 billion, as increased oil prices added $100 billion to its sales revenues. Saudi Aramco, a major oil and gas company owned and managed by the Saudi royal family, reported $110 billion in profits last year, a 124 percent increase from 2020.
Logistics giant Amazon reported $33.4 billion in after-tax profits in 2021, up from $21.3 in 2020.
Despite COVID and chip shortages, US auto companies enjoyed a profit surge. Ford recorded $17.9 billion in after-tax profits, following a loss in 2020. GM reported $14.3 billion in 2021 earnings.
The official inflation rate was 6.7 percent last year. Inflation has accelerated in 2022, with prices rising 7.9 percent year over year in February 2022, eclipsing year-over-year wage gains of 5.1 in February and 5.6 percent percent in March.
According to Bloomberg Economics, the average American household will spend $5,200 more this year to buy the same goods and services it purchased last year. With prices on basic commodities set to rise even higher due to the war in Ukraine and US and NATO sanctions on Russia, a further assault on living standards is being prepared.
Even though real wages are declining in many sectors, Wall Street is expressing concern over the tight labor market, which has allowed workers to press for higher wages. The US jobs report for March, released Friday by the Labor Department, reported the addition of 431,000 jobs, the 11th straight month of job gains surpassing 400,000. The official unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent in March, close to the 3.5 percent pre-pandemic rate, which was a 50-year record low.
In fact, the figure for new jobs was lower than predicted by economists, and far below the average of 600,000 over the past six months. More threatening to the ruling class are near-record highs of unfilled jobs and voluntary quits.
In remarks Friday morning after the release of the jobs report, President Biden hailed the increase in hiring, citing “Record job creation. Record unemployment declines. Record wage gains.” However, the reality is quite different for workers, whose paltry wage gains are being eaten up by rising prices for gasoline, electricity, food and other necessities.
The most significant job gains have been for workers in the retail sector and leisure and hospitality, such as hotels and restaurants. These sectors have historically paid poverty-level wages.
The resistance of workers to laboring for near-starvation wages in the midst of a deadly pandemic, and ongoing supply chain bottlenecks due to shortages of workers in key sectors such as trucking, potentially put workers in a strong position to fight for significant improvements in living standards.
In 2021, strikes took place in a number of key industries as workers sought to fight back against rising prices and the impact of decades of wage stagnation. These struggles for the most part took the form of rebellions against the trade union bureaucracies, which for decades have worked to impose brutal cuts in wages and the destruction of working conditions, in line with their transformation into corporatist appendages of the corporations and the capitalist state.
In a number of contract struggles last year, unions settled for pay raises well below the rate of inflation, including Volvo (average 2 percent annually over 6 years), Nabisco (2-2.5 percent annual raises), Kellogg’s (one-time 3 percent for “legacy” workers), and Dana Corporation (as low as 1 percent annually for top pay scales).
In each of these cases, the unions sabotaged the struggles of workers, keeping the strikes isolated and shutting them down at the point where they threatened to seriously impact corporate profits and inspire solidarity action by other workers both in the US and internationally. Workers were forced to vote without having time to adequately review the terms of the contract and were often denied the right to see the full contract language.
At Volvo and other workplaces, unions called strikes only after workers had voted multiple times by massive margins against sellout agreements brought back by union officials.
In one of the latest acts of treachery, the Steelworkers union blocked strike action by 30,000 US oil workers and rammed through a sellout deal with wage increases far below the rate of inflation, even as the oil giants continued to gouge the public with spiraling gas prices.
In recognition of the vital services of the unions in suppressing workers’ wage demands and squashing strikes, the Biden administration has made a central focus of its anti-working class policy the promotion of the trade unions, appointing a “Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment,” including national security cabinet officials. In a report issued in February, the task force made a series of recommendations to encourage unionization by government contractors, with the aim of “promoting stability” and “minimizing disruption”—that is, preventing strikes.
Fearing that low levels of unemployment will encourage workers to battle back against raging inflation by demanding significant wage increases, US financial authorities are taking measures to slow down the economy by increasing interest rates. Remarking on the fact that there are 1.8 job openings for every unemployed worker, US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said, “By many measures, the labor market is extremely tight, significantly tighter than the very strong job market just before the pandemic,” adding that it was tight to “an unhealthy level.”
After raising rates by 0.25 percent in March, the Federal Reserve is indicating support for a more substantial 0.5 percent rise in May. The central bank has already said it plans at least six more rate increases in 2022, the first increases in three years.
The last round of rate increases set off a precipitous fall in the stock market, inducing the Federal Reserve to rescind its rate hikes. Since then, the markets have become even more inflated as the US Treasury pumped trillions of dollars into Wall Street. The turn toward deflationary policies threatens to upset this financial house of cards in dramatic fashion.
Growing sections of workers are defying the pro-corporate unions, including oil refinery workers in Richmond, California, who have voted down two sellout contracts pushed by the United Steelworkers’ union and gone on strike to secure a substantial wage increase and an end to brutal overtime and unsafe working conditions. They are joined by 5,000 teachers on strike in Sacramento, California and tens of thousands of other workers with looming contract expirations. This is part of a growing movement of workers internationally fueled by inflation, inequality and the growing threat of world war.
Reports of the unrestrained profiteering by the financial elite will only further fuel workers’ anger over declining living standards and the criminal mismanagement by all sections of the political establishment of the pandemic. The impending war danger and the demands that workers finance another huge military buildup at the expense of wages and social services will heighten class tensions.
This social anger must be consciously directed against the capitalist system, its political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, as well as the pro-capitalist trade unions. The way forward requires the building of new, genuinely democratic organizations of struggle—rank-and-file committees in every factory, school and workplace—and a political movement of the working class, international in scope, to end the subordination of the productive forces to the profit drive of big business. The working class must assume direction of economic and social life based on a new, higher principle—production for human need, not profit—that is, socialism.
Another Biden-made catastrophe in the offing.
The flood of illegal immigrants crossing over the southern border with Mexico into the United States is about to become a tsunami of illegal immigrants and a potential COVID-19 super spreader. That is because the Biden administration, buckling to pressure from leftwing pro-illegal immigration activists, has announced plans to lift the Title 42 entry restrictions that have been in effect since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky did President Joe Biden’s dirty work by issuing a Title 42 termination notice in which she wrote that “I find there is no longer a public health justification” for continuing to keep the Title 42 authorization order in effect.
Yet curiously there seems to be “a public health justification” for the Biden administration to request $22.5 billion in additional funding from Congress for “immediate needs to avoid disruption to ongoing COVID response efforts over the next few months.”
The Biden administration will be recklessly increasing those “immediate needs” by lifting Title 42 entry restrictions and allowing many thousands of potentially infected illegal immigrants into the United States.
The COVID-19 epidemic is not over, as government officials in Washington, D.C., including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have found out the hard way when they recently tested positive for the coronavirus.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki criticized opponents, which includes some Democrats, of increased spending for COVID-19 relief without also requiring that Title 42 continue to be applied.
“If we do not have treatments, vaccines, or tests that the American people need, Americans will die from COVID,” Psaki said during her April 7th press briefing. If that is so, then why is the Biden administration willing to play Russian roulette with the lives of the American people by lifting the protections afforded by Title 42 while the COVID-19 pandemic rages on?
Title 42 was invoked to protect the health of the American people from illegal immigrant carriers of the coronavirus. It is still vitally needed.
Title 42 has allowed Border Patrol agents on public health grounds to immediately expel migrants who attempt to enter the country without giving them the opportunity first to claim asylum. More than a million migrants have been expelled under this program. The Biden administration continued invoking Title 42 authority, although it has trimmed back the number of expulsions since taking office. In less than a month and a half, Title 42 expulsions will be no more, unless a court puts the brakes on the Biden administration’s reckless termination decision.
Arizona, Louisiana and Missouri have sued the Biden administration to prevent the termination of the Title 42 authorization order. The lawsuit describes the use of Title 42 as “the only safety valve preventing this Administration’s disastrous border policies from devolving into an unmitigated chaos and catastrophe.” It expressed concern that the “unlawful termination of the Title 42 policy will induce a significant increase of illegal immigration into the United States with many migrants asserting non-meritorious asylum claims.”
Even with Title 42 in place, as many as 7000 illegal immigrants a day are now being apprehended by border officials, many of whom are processed and then released into communities across the United States. Once Title 42 authorization is terminated, the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has conceded that as many as 18,000 migrants could be apprehended daily after crossing the border illegally. And that startling number does not count the illegal immigrants who cross the border and manage to successfully elude apprehension.
“There are a significant number of individuals who were unable to access the asylum system for the past two years, and who may decide that now is the time to come,” said Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus.
No kidding! Word of the planned termination of Title 42 entry restrictions has spread widely among migrants seeking to enter the United States. There is already a huge backlog of so-called asylum seekers expelled under Title 42 who are waiting in Mexico to return to the United States when Title 42 is lifted. Many thousands more will be incentivized to make the trek to the U.S. from their home countries.
Human trafficking networks throughout Mexico, Central America, and elsewhere are no doubt gearing up for the huge anticipated uptick in business.
The Biden administration’s unconvincing answer is that the Department of Homeland Security will be ready to manage the increased surges of illegal immigrants resulting from the end of the use of Title 42 to restrict entry.
Border Patrol agents on the ground would beg to differ, given the administration's horrendous record so far. Some agents have already complained that the current numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the border every day are out of control. It defies any shred of common sense to believe that border agents will be able to cope with more than double the current number of daily arrivals when Title 42 entry restrictions go away.
“We’re already in a position where things are as bad as they have ever been,” said one Border Patrol agent. “To think they’re going to get worse, it’s hard to quantify that.”
The CDC has already declared that it plans to scale up a program to vaccinate the new arrivals against COVID-19. But what does this mean in practical terms?
Consider, as an example, the Pfizer vaccine, which must be taken in two doses about three weeks apart and reportedly costs $19.50 per dose. Assuming that 18,000 new illegal immigrants are apprehended each day after Title 42 is lifted, the cost to vaccinate that many individuals with just the initial dose will come to $351,000 daily, which translates to more than $128 million annually. In addition, there is the question of whether the illegal immigrants given their first dose upon apprehension will be detained until they receive their second dose three weeks later. Will they instead be released after they receive their first dose on a wing and a prayer that they will get their second dose on their own?
As for those migrants who refuse to take the vaccine, some of them may be temporarily detained while others who are immediately released will be strictly “monitored,” according to the Biden administration. Immediate expulsion will no longer be on the table for even the most strident illegal immigrant vaccine resisters!
How will the released illegal immigrants be monitored? They will receive free cell phones, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.
You cannot make this stuff up. Naïve does not begin to describe a policy that trusts released illegal immigrants to keep the cell phones on their persons at all times rather than dispose of the phones at their convenience to elude tracking. Meanwhile, the illegal immigrants will be getting free phones at the same time that American taxpayers who foot the bill will have to continue paying for their own phones.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has the right idea. He is getting buses ready to transport volunteer illegal immigrants released into border communities to Washington D.C. after Title 42 is lifted.
“Joe Biden has refused to come to the border to see the chaos that he has created by his open border policies,” Governor Abbott said. “So we are going to take the border to him by transporting the people that he is dropping off in these local communities in the state of Texas, and sending them to Washington by plane or by bus.”
Vice President Kamala Harris’s official 33-room residence on the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory should be one of the key Washington D.C. destinations for these illegal immigrants.
The Biden administration’s “Border Czar” has still not visited the southern border communities where the crisis precipitated by the Biden administration’s open border policies is getting worse by the day. Her short visit to El Paso, many miles away from where the crisis is taking place, was nothing more than a photo op. The photo op did nothing to educate the “Border Czar” about the “root causes” for masses of men, women, and children to take dangerous voyages from their home countries to cross into the United States illegally.
The answer should already be clear from past interviews with migrants from Central and South America. Many migrants are seeking a better life in the United States and have counted on President Biden to welcome them into the country despite their illegal entry. More migrants will be anxious to come to the United States with the Biden administration’s lifting of Title 42. The crisis at the hardest hit border communities will spin even further out of control.
If Vice President Harris still decides that it is not worth her time to visit these besieged communities, then the illegal immigrants boarding the D.C.-bound buses from those communities need to visit her and bring truth to power. Harris’s visitors can explain to her in person their real “root causes” for leaving their home countries and making the long dangerous trek to the United States.
Starbucks CEO Tells Pro-Union Employees to ‘Go Somewhere Else’
Starbucks interim CEO Howard Schultz reportedly told pro-union Starbucks workers to “go somewhere else” during Schultz’s stop at a California store on Friday.
Madison Hall, a 25-year-old barista leading efforts to unionize a Long Beach Starbucks store, claimed this happened during a meeting with Schultz and 20 other employees regarding the store’s unionization efforts.
“If you hate Starbucks so much, why don’t you go somewhere else?” Hall said Schultz told her.
A spokesperson for Starbucks told the pro-union news website More Perfect Union that the “focus of the meeting was about ways we can improve the partner experience and the various ways we can co-create the future of Starbucks together.”
Schultz, who recently rejoined Starbucks as CEO, held similar meetings in Seattle and Chicago last week.
Schultz reportedly cut off Hall after she called attention to the various federal complaints the National Labor Relations Board brought against the company.
“Then he went into a long rant about the history of Starbucks and how he used to be poor,” Hall said.
“I said, ‘You say you’re not anti-union, but on July 1, 2021, [Starbucks was] found guilty of retaliation in Philadelphia,’” Hall claimed. “That was when he got super-defensive and cut me off, saying, ‘We’re not talking about this.’”
“It was very, very bad. He was getting very aggressive with me,” Hall claimed. “And then he went on another rant, and he told everyone else that he’s sorry that this was brought up, that this isn’t what [the event] was about, and he had his hand pointed towards me like I was a problem.”
In a statement, Schultz highlighted the company’s “missteps” and said the “collaborative sessions” with Starbucks employees “have not been without efforts at disruption by union organizers.”
Schultz told the New York Post:
With significant pressures leading to the fracturing of our partner and customer experiences, I’ve been transparent about our missteps and the reason for my return – to reimagine Starbucks – built on our core values and guiding principles.
“I have complete confidence that together we will restore the trust and belief of our partners and deliver an elevated Starbucks Experience to our partners and customers,” Schultz added.
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