Walmart is Largest Recipient of Public Aid in Country

Retail giant Walmart posted profits of $15.4 billion in 2011, while paying their employees an average salary of $22,100 a year. The current poverty level for a family of four is $23,050.

So how do Walmart employees survive?

The burden falls on American taxpayers to provide food stamps and Medicaid -- at the cost of $2.66 billion annually -- to make up the difference, reports PoliticsUSA.com.

Walmart also tries to profit by encouraging employees to spend their food stamps in Walmart.

Republicans are fighting to keep corporate welfare intact but, at the same time, they want to slash food stamps and Medicaid to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff" at the end of the year.

Representative-elect Alan Grayson (D-FL) appeared on Current TV's 'The Young Turks' on Monday and claimed that Walmart is “the largest recipient of public aid in the country."

Grayson said: “The taxpayer pays for the earned income credit. The taxpayer pays for Medicaid. The taxpayer pays for unemployment insurance when they cut hours down. And the taxpayer pays for other forms of public assistance like food stamps. I think the taxpayer is getting fed up of paying these things when, in fact, Walmart could give every employee its got, even the CEO, a 30 percent raise and still be profitable.”

“In state after state after state, Walmart employees represent the largest group of Medicaid recipients, the largest group of food stamp recipients, and taxpayers shouldn’t have to bear that burden. It should be Walmart. So, we’re going to take that burden and put it where it belongs: on Walmart.”

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The True Welfare Queen.

Tintern Abbey in Wales is also part of the Crown Estate.

Does the Queen of England deserve a 16% hike, while the rest of the world faces increasing austerity measures? Well, does she?

After all, she has a tough job. She has to wave to crowds of adoring peasants and occasionally cut a ribbon or two. Not to mention, she employs people to do things like break in her new shoes, document and name her outfits, stir her tea, and wipe her...well, you get the point.

The Queen’s income will receive a boost next year after record profits from her lucrative Crown Estate property empire.

Controversial changes made last year tying Royal Family funding to Crown Estate profits means the Queen and royal household will be entitled to a 16 per cent hike in their official duties grant - to £36million from next April, up from £31million this year.

The rise follows the Government’s move last year to scrap the Civil List and link funding for the royals to profits from the Crown Estate, as part of a new sovereign grant.

The royal household is entitled to 15 per cent of profits from the Crown Estate - which belongs to the nation and includes a host of historic properties, such as Regent Street in the West End of London, Windsor Park, Royal Ascot and most of Britain’s coastline.

Figures for the Crown Estate reveal the portfolio enjoyed the best performance in its history, with profits rising to £240million in the year to March 31 from £231million the year before.

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California Targets Children for Parent's Debt.

While the wealth of the richest Californians is left untouched, for years, under governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and now Jerry Brown, the state of California has targeted children to pay the debt of their parents. Many of the debts were brought on by clerical error or fraud and therefore were especially no fault of the children.

Moreover, billions have been cut from social services like CalWORKS, with the expectation that the weakest and most vulnerable sections of the population will pay off huge debts.

California welfare regulations for years have allowed, and even required, counties to go after minors for the debts of their parents, state officials told the Associated Press.

Attorneys for a Hartley and a Fresno man who filed suit Nov. 23 to try to stop the practice say they believe thousands of young people throughout the state are being unfairly required to repay millions of dollars in welfare money that mistakenly or fraudulently was obtained by caregivers or guardians.

Officials at the California Department of Social Services, which administers the welfare program called CalWORKS, said they do not track the number of children required to make such payments. The state's 58 counties recouped $61.5 million for the fiscal year ending June 30. The counties reported $133 million in overpayments for the same time period.

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As the Corporate Bread Line Turns.

AIG, who received more than $152 billion from American taxpayers, is handing out more cash rewards, that serve to double or triple the salaries of some senior executives. Did I say cash rewards? My mistake. AIG refers to these bonuses as retention payouts. This "retention" program will pay out as much as $4 million to 38 managers.

Retention? Where are these people going? Haven't they heard? Thanks to them, the economy is in rapid free-fall. And, if they do decide to leave...who cares? What did they achieve?

The "Cockroach Theory" certainly applies to AIG. We still can't see the extent of the "infestation" for all the solid walls still standing...a fresh $10 billion in losses just found. In other words, retaining inefficient, greedy and exploitative employees at our expense should not be tolerated, but it is.

"The gibberish about needing to pay that much just to keep superstars from fleeing to private-equity firms or hedge funds is just another Wall Street myth. The truth is most of them are lucky to have a job at all and they know it." - William D. Cohan

Merrill Lynch’s chief executive requested a $10 million bonus this year for all the hard work he had to do putting "Humpty Dumpty" back together. However, it appears CEO, John Thain may not get his wish, as well as many other Merrill execs.

Morgan Stanley is getting tough. They are attaching strings by imposing claw-back provisions to the bonuses they will eventually pay out, but they will be paid out.

The collective liability clause honored by partners was replaced with a system where bankers and traders were encouraged to take short-term risks with shareholders’ money. Gone, too was the idea of being held responsible for your actions (short of outright fraud). Managers at publicly traded banks constantly exhorted their traders to do bigger and bigger deals and to take increasing amounts of risk, and then rewarded them with millions of dollars in compensation — money that belonged to shareholders. Reputations were made not by turning down imprudent business but by seeing how much business could be done. - William D. Cohan

The same lack of oversight issues remain, as the Treasury has yet to do anything about it further enabling the corporate breadline.

Executive Paywatch Database

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Why Do Our Welfare Laws Discourage Getting off Public Assistance?

After almost two decades of marriage, a friend of mine, primarily a mother and housewife for the last twenty years, found herself and her children on public assistance after her husband abruptly left one day without notice, immediately filing for divorce. At the time of his departure, she was not employed, mostly due to an undiagnosed medical condition, although she was working part-time in exchange for her children's tuition.

After departing, her husband attempted to strong-arm her, financially, in an attempt to convince her to use his attorney. Against his wishes, she did retain an attorney of her own, with the help of relatives, in order to protect the rights of her children and herself. This infuriated him and he continued to use his financial advantage to punish her as much as possible, disregarding his children's needs.

She discovered she was eligible for Medicaid, as she had no health insurance. A few months later, she found a part-time job with benefits and she gave up the Medicaid even though the cost of her health insurance pretty much consumed her paycheck. Shortly thereafter she lost her job due to medical problems of her own and her children, and she went back to Medicaid.

The obstacle to gaining independence arises when she starts to earn money. At that point, she loses Medicaid, even if the job she gets has no health insurance or does not pay her enough to purchase her own plan. Caught between a rock and a hard place, my friend, along with millions of other people must choose between public assistance and getting a job that potentially could make things even more difficult.

Lisa Hendley is another example that illustrates this dilemma. After spending time in a domestic-violence shelter, Lisa found herself and her daughter a place to live with the help of Housing Stability Plus, a program to aid shelter residents in renting private apartments. She found a job at a grocery store and thought she was on her way to getting off of public assistance.

However, she was told by her city caseworker that she needed to quit her $8-an-hour job, because she made too much income to be eligible for the program's housing aid. Faced with the choice of keeping her job or her apartment, she chose the roof over her family's head, paralyzing her efforts to reach independence.

The point of these stories and millions of others, is that our system blatantly discourages people from working. The system was designed to keep people on the dole or make it almost impossible for millions of people to reach the "American Dream".

Where's the incentive to work when every penny made will finance health care? Where's the incentive to work when every dollar earned by the welfare recipient must be reported to the authority and thus deducted from his pay?

An employed person must incur the cost of being employed...he or she must wear the right clothes, transport himself to and from work, find childcare etc., thus in many situations, it becomes more expensive to be employed in low paying jobs without health insurance or where the company deducts the majority of that person's earnings to pay for insurance than it is to be unemployed.

Why not encourage working by allowing the welfare recipient to keep his welfare check until he no longer needs help? Maybe even match the person's earnings, dollar for dollar, up to a certain level? In other words, why not make it possible for those, who may not be as fortunate, skilled or talented as others are, but truly want to get off welfare, become independent of the system? Wouldn't that be beneficial to taxpayers, our country, the world at large?

Welfare law should be designed to invigorate and restore a person's sense of purpose by emphasizing human initiative, and provide surmountable challenges that will inspire people to discover their own abilities. Instead, the system traps those experiencing financial hardship and becomes the solution rather than a springboard to opportunities for success.

People with enough power and money to influence legislation are intelligent enough to figure out that human beings, by nature, will not seek employment when the alternative, unemployment, is less costly. Therefore one can only assume welfare legislation is a deliberate attempt to keep a certain percentage of people dependent on the system.

But why would a supposedly free nation like ours keep a good portion of our population dependent on welfare, the very thing most of the politically powerful claim to despise? These same people love to evangelize on and on about personal responsibility? There is something wrong here.

I can only think of two reasons why this is so. The first one, is no matter what Jesus says, being poor in this country is a sin, and therefore must be punished. The second reason is a certain percentage of the population must be disempowered in order for the very few at the top to remain in power.

If anyone has any other reasons or disagrees with me, please let me know.

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