SPRING
2004

MW VOICE FEATURE

Corporate war 
on the people

Get Wal-Mart Off Welfare

According to a report prepared by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, taxpayers subsidize the typical, 200-employee Wal-Mart store at the rate of $420,750 a year.  There are about 3,500 Wal-Marts for a total subsidy of $1.47 billion per year.  Rep. George Miller charges Wal-Mart is the source of "downward spirals in communities." Wal-Mart replaces good jobs with poverty-wage jobs, drives out small businesses and destroys communities.

Wal-Mart can teach how to profit from poverty. On one hand the Walton family spends millions on rightwing causes to undermine what’s left of the U.S. safety net. At the same time their corporation urges employees to apply for every available government assistance.  One half of Wal-Mart workers qualify for foodstamps. 62% of Wal-Mart workers are unable to afford their heath insurance and must rely on other sources like the government.  

Wal-Mart Invests $20 Billion in Education “Reform”

The Five Waltons, Jim, John, Alice, Sam and Helen have more than $100 billion in personal assets – twice as rich as Bill Gates. The Waltons use their economic and political power to extend the low-wage economy. They harbor an abiding hatred for the public sphere: business regulation, nondiscrimination laws, wage and workplace safety, social safety net. Wal-Mart is the biggest importer of goods made in China.

Currently the Waltons  are working to destroy public education in the US. Their Walton Family Foundation, together with Milwaukee’s Bradley Foundation invented the school choice and vouchers movement. Now the Waltons have earmarked $20 billion to continue to “reform” education via privatization.

The Walton’s and their billionaire friends want to privatize the K-12 public education system which is worth $350 billion yearly  to taxpayers. In addition to making money, they want ideological (corporate) control over American youth.

But control of education is only one of their goals. Two forces stand in the way of total corporate control over the U.S. political life: black American voters and organized labor, particularly the teachers unions.  Using that successful tactic, Divide and Conquer, the Waltons are pitting African Americans and Latinos against teachers unions and labor. In fact the Right is using the voucher issue to create the impression that there is a substantial conservative political current in Black America. This myth is shored up through purchase of Black spokespersons as paid flunkies for the voucher movement.

If the Walton crowd can manage to drive a wedge between Blacks and labor, they will seriously cripple the U.S. people’s ability to resist.

Info from http://www.blackcommentator.com/  

Hit the Road Maximus—
Get Maximus off Welfare

Maximus won a contract from Connecticut to process payments to child care providers. A state audit estimated that 10% of payments made were in error and over 10,000 of 17,000 bills submitted were paid over a month late. Yet just three months after the state had threatened to fire Maximus , they renegotiated a 50% increase in their fees. Maximus had threatened to simply walk away from its $12.8 million job. (Maximus won the original contract by claiming it could operate at half the cost of the only other bidder.)

          Florida hired Lockheed Martin and Maximus to collect child support from deadbeat dads. Florida paid these companies $4.5 million, but the companies only collected $207,000. Most of the money paid to the companies came, not from collections, but from fees Florida  paid for each case the firms closed. The companies claimed they needed closure fees to cover start-up costs.

Florida paid them $55 for quick closes resulting from simple data cleanup and up to $300 for cases that required extended work. The state paid for 2,000 cases at the lower fee and for thousands of other highly questionable cases.

          Maximus has contracts for child support services in ten states and welfare-to-work contracts in nine states. In New York, Maximus is under criminal investigation for improperly influencing the contract award process to gain a $104 million welfare-to-work contract. They also denied to New York City officials that they were under criminal investigation over a contract bid in West Virginia.

In Wisconsin Maximus administers the welfare cash assistance program (W2). They admitted billing Wisconsin half a million dollars for work they did to secure welfare contracts in New York, Florida and Arizona. They are also under investigation for employment discrimination and for improperly diverting their W-2 clients to Maxstaff, their own  temporary employment agency (now defunct).

Maximus had 1999 revenues of over $320 million. In the first quarter of 2000 the company made over $217 million. Maximus  was recently awarded contracts of up to $5 million for child support enforcement services in Alaska and $2.2 million in a welfare-to-work contract in Chicago.

Send letters to the US Attorney General (Main Justice Building, 950 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington DC 20530)  to demand that Maximus be terminated from all government welfare and child support contracts.

Info from awlaine@comcast.net  

Multi-National Mergers Mess
Over Farmers and Food

 Four firms control 82% of all beef slaughter, 75% of sheep slaughter, 62% of flour milling, 50% of chickens and 74% of food retail in 94 large cities and about 42% nationwide. DFA, the largest dairy “co-op” has bought out many independent processors and has marketing agreements with Suiza who recently merged with Dean Foods.

A handful of multi-national businesses want to control production from “gene to store shelf”. They reduce market competition for farmers and ranchers and eliminate small business owners. This makes it difficult for new firms to start and people pay higher prices for food. Since 1984 real consumer food prices have increased by 2.8% while producer prices for that food have fallen by 35.7%

A few multi-national firms control information, markets, decision making and seed patents. Genetic diversity is limited. “Terminator technology” (inserting a gene to prevent the next generation of seed from germinating) threatens economic viability, sustainability, and global food security.

Info from Family Farm Defenders
PO Box 1772, Madison WI 53700, Phone: 608-260-0900
 

Corporate Tax Scams Wreak 
Havoc on the USA

Corporations are currently paying 30% less of their profits in taxes than they did 20 years ago. According to a study by the Multistate Tax Commission, corporate tax shelters robbed U.S. states of $12.4 billion in desperately needed revenues in 2001. This is over a third of the money corporations rightfully owed. (Shelters are a means of hiding profits.)

Companies sheltering their assets overseas drain another $70 million a year from the Federal Treasury. As a result programs like Headstart and AmeriCorps were slashed.

          California lost $1.34 billion in corporate tax revenue because of tax shelters. California has a $38 billion budget deficit. Just $520 million of the $1.34 billion would make it possible for the state to avoid the closure of 250-350 nursing homes. Just $380 million would prevent the loss of childcare and daycare services for 429,000 children. Just $600 million would make it unnecessary to up the entry age for kindergartners. This will keep 110,000 children from starting school. Just $18 million would fully fund the California Arts Council that brings artists, writers and performers to the state’s public schools.

          Florida lost $554 million to tax shelters in 2001. Just $7.7 million would have saved a program that provided glasses and hearing aids for low-income people.

          Oregon lost $80 million in corporate taxes. $14.5 million would have prevented the 19,000-student Hillsboro school district from closing 17 days early.

          South Carolina also lost $80 million. $1.4 million would have stopped the budget cuts that cost Traci Young Cooper, the state’s 2001 Teacher of the Year, her job.

Info from  www. Arianna Online  

Big Business Wants to 
Own Water Too  

At the World Water Forum meeting in 2001, water multinationals lobbied to change the definition of water from being a “human right” to a “human need.” According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), “human needs can be supplied by private entrepreneurs for a profit, unlike a human right which accrues equally to everyone.”

          The IMF (International Monetary Fund) argues that privatization of water will increase access to clean water at affordable rates. But in Cochambamba, Bolivia water rates rose by 35%, and in Casablanca, South Africa water rates rose three times after privatization.  In Brazil Vivendi served 7 million people contaminated water. In Guinea private companies disconnected supply to 10,000 households for payment failure. In most of Cochambamba the cost of water rose to one-fourth the total household expenses.

          Many privatization projects are funded by government money or by loans from IMF. In Tamil Nadu India, in addition to funding privatization with public money and IMF loans, the state government created a fund to pay the interest and operative expenses of the project!  Big business profits and undertakes no risks of competition.

          Even the US is handing over water to private firms. In Atlanta, city officials contracted with United Water, a French firm to buy and run Atlanta’s system. Within four years residents complained of rate hikes, brown water and poor service.

          World Bank estimates that the global trade in water will generate $800 billion a year in the next decade.  Big Business considers water the “blue gold” or petroleum of the 21^st century. The CEO of SAUR International, the world’s fourth largest water company, admitted that the private sector could not provide water for the poor: “the scale of the need far out-reaches the financial and risk taking capacities of the private sector.”

Info from The Center for Popular Economics

Bush Doesn’t “Buy American”

Bush’s election campaign defies his own embargo by selling clothing made in Burma. Bush banned sale of Burmese goods in the U.S. because of their human rights violations and narcotics and sex trafficking record. Bush’s Burmese merchandise includes a $50 pullover proudly bearing the label “made in Burma, now Myanmar.”

Info from daily.misleader .org