Huffington Post Reports "Walmart's Low Wages Could Cost Taxpayers $900,000 Per Year, House Dems Find"

This happened in the factories in England during the 1860's.  Factory wages were held so low that the local parish supplemented workers' income in order to help the workers stay alive.  This fact is documented by Marx in Capital Vol. 1.  Moreover, this is exactly the kind of thing Wal-Mart is doing.  I'd be willing to bet that the price tag reported by the House Democrats is grossly understated.  In addition, as noted above, Wal-Mart associates must also rely on Medicaid to survive.  Yet, the Wal-Mart family heirs control as much wealth as the lower 40% of Americans.  These are not handouts to the working poor:  Rather this shifting of Wal-Mart's responsibilities for providing living wages amounts to a tax-payer supplied hand-out to Wal-Mart.  Democracy is impossible without economic democracy.

The National Security State

President Obama said this today in regard to the AP intrusion by the government:

"Leaks related to national security can put people at risk, they can put men and women in uniform that I've sent into the battlefield at risk," Obama said, while declining to comment on the pending case.

This should awaken every American.  When the President refers to the "national security", he really means the "national security state."  What do we call a state whose reason for existing becomes the state itself? Take your pick.  History abounds with examples ... some fairly recent.

The national security state will always excuse its excesses in preventing accountability by invoking the safety of the people, the troops.  The troops.  Are they the national security state's central concern?  I think not.  Eighteen veterans commit suicide each day.  Sexual assault in the military is covered up.  I side with the First Amendment.  That will really help the troops to keep us free.

Physics of Capitalism: You be the Judge

There's physics.  If capitalism isn't curbed by us, physics will do the trick for us.  Physics is not amenable to political decisions.  Many geologists surmise that we are now in the beginning of the anthropocene mass extension.  Looking at local weather and saying, "it's cold", and, therefore  global warming is not real, is like looking at the 50 to 52 yard line in a football game and trying to get the whole picture.  The United States accounts for just 2% if the earth's global surface.

Capitalism: No Borders, No Accountability

Home Land Security needs to be involved here in Texas.  The West Fertilizer blast is an example of the built-in terrorism of unregulated capitalism.  When profits become the criterion of success, public service, which should be the reason for any corporation to exist, takes a back seat.  We need a corporate sunset rule.  Not in the public service? ... out of business.  The garment building collapse in Bangladesh is another symptom of profits before human rights.  This might as well have happened here in the US.  With corporations it’s just “one world.”  There are no borders.

Terrorism and Capitalism: The Institutionalized Element

The Bangladesh Tragedy is just another example, too numerous to ignore, of institutionalized terrorism.  That is to say, terrorism built into the capitalist mode of production.  For example, there was a huge, preventable explosion at a fertilizer plant near Waco, Texas.  Around the same time as fourteen people were killed in Texas and a small town decimated, the Boston Marathon bombing occurred which killed three people.  Is Homeland Security investigating the Texas explosion?  I think not.  This is plainly the result of business as usual with OSHA so deliberately understaffed that it would take 114 years in order to secure the safety of all US factories and places of business.  That would imply safety regulation; truly a threat to … the bottom line.  It’s time to draw a new line.