Thanks for your Service = Silencing the Vets

Posted by Rory Fanning at 6:56pm, October 26, 2014
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[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Today’s piece is out of the ordinary, the sort of thing that’s largely untouchable in the mainstream. A former Army Ranger writes about why the endless “thank you"s for service in America’s wars ring hollow.  And that Ranger-turned-conscientious-objector, Rory Fanning, has quite an all-American odyssey to tell, which is exactly what he’s done in his new book Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger’s Journey Out of the Military and Across America.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s a must read and, as it happens, for a $100 contribution to this site, you can be the first on your block to get a signed, personalized copy of it.

Just check out the offer at the TomDispatch donation page and while you’re at it, note that signed, personalized copies of my new book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World, are still available.  My thanks again to all of you -- it was a genuine outpouring of support -- who have already contributed! Tom]

More than a few times I’ve found myself in a crowd of Vietnam veterans, and more than a few times at least one of them was wearing a curious blue or yellow t-shirt.  Once that shirt undoubtedly fit a lean physique of the late 1970's or early 1980's, but by the time I saw it modeled, in the 2000's, it was getting mighty snug.  Still, they refused to part with it.  On it was some variation of the outline of a map of Vietnam with bit of grim humor superimposed: “Participant, Southeast Asia War Games, 1961-1975: Second Place.”

I was always struck by it.  These men of the “Me Generation” had come home to the sneers and backhanded comments of the men of the “Greatest Generation,” their fathers’ era.  They had supposedly been the first Americans to lose a war.  However, instead of the defensive apparel donned by some vets (“We were winning when I left”), they wore their loss for all to see, pride mingling with a sardonic sense of humor.

Today’s military is made up of still another generation, the Millennials, representatives of the 80 million Americans born between 1980 and 2000.  In fact, with nearly 43% of the active duty force age 25 or younger and roughly 66% of it 30 or under, it’s one of the most Millennial-centric organizations around.

As a whole, the Millennials have been regularly pilloried in the press for being the “Participation Trophy Generation.”  Coddled, self-centered, with delusions of grandeur, they’re inveterate narcissists with outlandish expectations and a runaway sense of entitlement.  They demand everything, they’re addicted to social media, fast Wi-Fi, and phablets, they cry when criticized, they want praise on tap, and refuse to wear anything but their hoodies and “fuck you flip-flops” like the face of their generation, the Ur-millennial: Mark Zuckerberg!

At least that’s the knock on them. Then again, when didn’t prior generations knock the current one?
The National Institutes of Health did determine people in their 20's have Narcissistic Personality Disorder three times more often than those 65 or older and a recent survey by Reason and pollster Rupe did find that those 18-24 are indeed in favor of participation trophies unlike older Americans who overwhelmingly favor winners-only prizes.  Still, it’s a little early to pass blanket judgment on an entire generation of whom the youngest members are only on the cusp of high school.  The Millennials may yet surprise even the most cantankerous coots. Time will tell.

The Millennial military, however, isn’t doing the generation any favors.  Despite its dismal record when it comes to winning wars and a recent magnification of its repeated failures in Iraq, today’s military seems to crave and demand that its soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen be thanked and lauded at every turn.  As a result, the Pentagon is involved in stage-managing all manner of participation-trophy spectacles to make certain they are -- from the ballpark to the NASCAR track to the Academy of Country Music's “An All-Star Salute to the Troops” concert at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas earlier this year.

And like those great enablers of the Millennial trophy kids, so-called helicopter parents, the American public regularly provides cheap praise and empty valorization for veterans, writes Rory Fanning in TomDispatch debut.  A veteran of the war in Afghanistan -- having served two tours with the 2nd Army Ranger Battalion before becoming a conscientious objector -- Fanning explores America’s thank-you-for-your-service culture, what vets are actually being thanked for, and why Rihanna’s hollow patriotism left him depressed.  His moving new book, Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger’s Journey Out of the Military and Across America, captures his 3,000-mile trek through and encounter with this country, an unforced march meant to honor Pat Tillman and question the nature of our recent wars.

I don’t get to hang out with Vietnam vets as much as I used to, but late one night a year or two ago I found myself with a few of them in an almost deserted bar.  Having ducked out of the annual meeting of a veterans’ group, we ordered some beers from a Millennial-age waiter.  He asked if my 60-something compatriots were attending the nearby conference and they mumbled that they indeed were.  The waiter seemed to momentarily straighten up.  “Thank you for your service,” he solemnly intoned before bounding off to get the beers.  One of veterans -- a Marine who had seen his fair share of combat -- commented on how much he hated that phrase.  “They do it reflexively.  That’s how they’ve been raised,” I replied.  “I hope they wise up,” said another of the vets.  Time -- as with all things Millennial -- will tell. Nick Turse

Thank You for Your Valor, Thank You for Your Service, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You…
Still on the Thank-You Tour-of-Duty Circuit, 13 Years Later
By Rory Fanning

Last week, in a quiet indie bookstore on the north side of Chicago, I saw the latest issue of Rolling Stone resting on a chrome-colored plastic table a few feet from a barista brewing a vanilla latte.  A cold October rain fell outside. A friend of mine grabbed the issue and began flipping through it. Knowing that I was a veteran, he said, "Hey, did you see this?" pointing to a news story that seemed more like an ad.  It read in part:

"This Veterans Day, Bruce Springsteen, Eminem, Rihanna, Dave Grohl, and Metallica will be among numerous artists who will head to the National Mall in Washington D.C. on November 11th for 'The Concert For Valor,' an all-star event that will pay tribute to armed services."

"Concert For Valor? That sounds like something the North Korean government would organize," I said as I typed Concertforvalor.com into my MacBook Pro looking for more information.

The sucking sound from the espresso maker was drowning out a 10 year old Shins song. As I read, my heart sank, my shoulders slumped.

Special guests at the Concert for Valor were to include: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, and Steven Spielberg.  The mission of the concert, according to a press release, was to “raise awareness” of veterans issues and “provide a national stage for ensuring that veterans and their families know that their fellow Americans’ gratitude is genuine.”

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Michael Mullen were to serve in an advisory capacity, and Starbucks, HBO, and JPMorgan Chase were to pay for it all. "We are honored to play a small role to help raise awareness and support for our service men and women,” said HBO chairman Richard Plepler.

Though I couldn’t quite say why, that Concert for Valor ad felt tired and sad, despite the images of Rihanna singing full-throated into a gold microphone and James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett of Metallica wailing away on their guitars. I had gotten my own share of “thanks” from civilians when I was still a U.S. Army Ranger.  Who hadn’t?  It had been the endless theme of the post-9/11 era, how thankful other Americans were that we would do... well, what exactly, for them?  And here it was again.  I couldn’t help wondering: Would veterans somewhere actually feel the gratitude that Starbucks and HBO hoped to convey?

I went home and cooked dinner for my wife and little girl in a semi-depressed state, thinking about that word “valor” which was to be at the heart of the event and wondering about the Hall of Fame line-up of twenty-first century liberalism that was promoting it or planning to turn out to hail it: Rolling Stone, the magazine of Hunter S. Thompson and all things rock and roll; Bruce Springsteen, the billion-dollar working-class hero; Eminem, the white rapper who has sold more records than Elvis; Metallica, the crew who sued Napster and the metal band of choice for so many longhaired, disenfranchised youth of the 1980's and 1990's.  They were all going to say “thank you” - again.

Raising (Whose?) Awareness

Later that night, I sat down and Googled “vets honored.” Dozens and dozens of stories promptly queued up on my screen.  (Try it yourself.)  One of the first items I clicked on was the 50th anniversary celebration in Bangor, Maine, of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the alleged Pearl Harbor of the Vietnam War.  Governor Paul LePage had spoken ringingly of the veterans of that war: “These men were just asked to go to a foreign land and protect our freedoms. And they weren’t treated with respect when they returned home. Now it’s time to acknowledge it.”

Vietnam, he insisted, was all about protecting freedom - such a simple and innocent explanation for such a long and horrific war. Lest you forget, the governor and those gathered in Bangor that day were celebrating a still-murky “incident” that touched off a massive American escalation of the war.  It was claimed that North Vietnamese patrol boats had twice attacked an American destroyer, though President Lyndon Johnson later suggested that the incident might even have involved shooting at "flying fish" or "whales." As for protecting freedom in Vietnam, tell the dead Vietnamese in America’s “free fire zones” about that.

No one, however, cared about such details.  The point was that eternal “thank you.”  If only, I thought, some inquisitive and valorous local reporter had asked the governor, “Treated with disrespect by whom?” And pointed out the mythology behind the idea that American civilians had mistreated GIs returning from Vietnam.  (Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the Veterans Administration, which denied returning soldiers proper healthcare, or the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion, organizations that weren’t eager to claim the country’s defeated veterans of a disastrous war as their own.)

When it came to thanks and “awareness raising,” no American war with a still living veteran seemed too distant to be ignored. Google told me, for example, that Upper Gwynedd, Pennsylvania, had recently celebrated its 12th annual “Multi-Cultural Day” by thanking its “forgotten Korean War Veterans.” According to a local newspaper report, included in the festivities were martial arts demonstrations and traditional Korean folk dancing.

The Korean War was the precursor to Vietnam, with similar results. As with the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the precipitating event of the war that North Korea ignited on June 25, 1950, remains open to question. Evidence suggests that, with U.S. approval, South Korea initiated a bombardment of North Korean villages in the days leading up to the invasion.

As in Vietnam, there, too, the U.S. supported a corrupt autocrat and used napalm on a mass scale. Millions died, including staggering numbers of civilians, and North Korea was left in rubble by war’s end.  Folk dancing was surely in short supply. As for protecting our freedoms in Korea, enough said.

These two ceremonies seemed to catch a particular mood (reflected in so many similar, if more up-to-date versions of the same). They might have benefited from a little “awareness raising” when it came to what the American military has actually been doing these last years, not to say decades, beyond our borders. They certainly summed up much of the frustration I was feeling with the Concert for Valor. Plenty of thank yous, for sure, but no history when it came to what the thanks were being offered for in, say, Iraq or Afghanistan, no statistics on taxpayer dollars spent or where they went, or on innocent lives lost and why.

Will the “Concert for Valor” mention the trillions of dollars rung up terrorizing Muslim countries for oil, the ratcheting up of the police and surveillance state in this country since 9/11, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost thanks to the wars of George W. Bush and Barack Obama? Is anyone going to dedicate a song to Chelsea Manning, or John Kiriakou, or Edward Snowden - two of them languishing in prison and one in exile - for their service to the American people? Will the Concert for Valor raise anyone’s awareness when it comes to the fact that, to this day, veterans lack proper medical attention, particularly for mental health issues, or that there is a veteran suicide every 80 minutes in this country? Let’s hope they find time in between drum solos, but myself, I’m not counting on it.

Thank Yous 

While Googling around, I noticed an allied story about President Obama christening a poetic sounding “American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial” on October 5th.  There, he wisely noted that “the U.S. should never rush into war.” As he spoke, however, the Air Force, the Navy, and Special Forces personnel (who wear boots that do touch the ground, even in Iraq), as well as the headquarters of “the Big Red One,” the Army’s 1st Infantry Division, were already involved in the latest war he had personally ordered in Iraq and Syria, while, of course, bypassing Congress.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! Damn, I voted for Obama because he said he’d end our overseas wars. At least it’s not Bush sending the planes, drones, missiles, and troops back there, because if it were, I’d be mad.

Then there were the numerous stories about “Honor Flights” sponsored by Southwest Airlines that offered all World War II veterans and the terminally ill veterans of more recent wars a free trip to Washington to “reflect at their memorials” before they died. Honor flights turn out to be a particularly popular way to honor veterans. Local papers in Richfield, Utah, Des Moines, Iowa, Elgin, Illinois, Austin, Texas, Miami, Florida, and so on place by place across significant swaths of the country have run stories about dying hometown “heroes” who have participated in these flights, a kind of nothing-but-the-best-in-corporate-sponsorship for the last of the “Greatest Generation.”

“Welcome home” ceremonies, with flags, marching bands, heartfelt embraces, much weeping, and the usual babies and small children missed during tours of duty in our war zones are also easy to find. In the first couple of screens Google offered in response to the phrase “welcome home ceremony,” I found the usual thank-you celebrations for veterans returning from Afghanistan in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, and Saint Albans, Vermont, among other places. "We don't do enough for our veterans, for what they do for us, we hear the news, but to be up there in a field, and be shot at, and sometimes coming home disabled, we don't realize how lucky we are sometimes to have the people who have served their country," one of the Saint Albans attendees was typically quoted as saying.

“Do enough...?” In America, isn’t thank you plenty?

Oddly, it’s harder to find thank-you ceremonies for living vets involved in America’s numerous smaller interventions in places like the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, Kosovo, Somalia, Libya, and various CIA-organized coups and proxy wars around the world, but I won’t be surprised if they, too, exist.  I was wondering, though: What about all those foreign soldiers we’ve trained to fight our wars for us in places like South Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan? Shouldn’t they be thanked as well? And how about members of the Afghan Mujahedeen that we armed and funded in the 1980's while they gave the Soviet Union its own “Vietnam” (and who are now fighting for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or other extreme Islamist outfits)? Or what about the Indonesian troops we armed under the presidency of Gerald Ford, who committed possibly genocidal acts in East Timor in 1975?  Or has our capacity for thanks been used up in the service of American vets?

Since 9/11, those thank yous have been aimed at veterans with the regularity of the machine gun fire that may still haunt their dreams. Veterans have also been offered special consideration when it comes to applications for mostly menial jobs so that they can “utilize the skills” they learned in the military. While they continue to march in those welcome home parades and have concerts organized in their honor, the thank yous are in no short supply. The only question that never seems to come up is: What exactly are they being thanked for?

Heroes Who Afford Us Freedom

Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz has said of the upcoming Concert for Valor:

“The post-9/11 years have brought us the longest period of sustained warfare in our nation’s history. The less than one percent of Americans who volunteered to serve during this time have afforded the rest of us remarkable freedoms - but that freedom comes with a responsibility to understand their sacrifice, to honor them, and to appreciate the skills and experience they offer when they return home.”

It was crafty of Schultz to redirect that famed 1% label from the ultra rich, represented by CEOs like him, onto our “heroes.” At the concert, I hope Schultz has a chance to get more specific about those “remarkable freedoms.” Will he mention that the U.S. has the highest per capita prison population on the planet?  Does he include among those remarkable freedoms the guarantee that dogs, Tasers, tear gas, and riot police will be sent after you if you stay out past dark protesting the killing of an unarmed Black teenager by a representative of this country’s increasingly militarized police? Will the freedom to be too big to fail and so to have the right to melt down the economy and walk away without going to prison -- as Jamie Dimon, the CEO of Chase, did -- be mentioned? Do these remarkable freedoms include having every American phone call and email recorded and stored away by the NSA?

And what about that term “hero”? Many veterans reject it, and not just out of Gary Cooperesque modesty either. Most veterans who have seen combat, watched babies get torn apart, or their comrades die in their arms, or the most powerful army on Earth spend trillions of dollars fighting some of the poorest people in the world for 13 years feel anything but heroic.  But that certainly doesn’t stop the use of the term.  So why do we use it?  As journalist Cara Hoffman points out at Salon:

“‘[H]ero’ refers to a character, a protagonist, something in fiction, not to a person, and using this word can hurt the very people it’s meant to laud. While meant to create a sense of honor, it can also buy silence, prevent discourse, and benefit those in power more than those navigating the new terrain of home after combat. If you are a hero, part of your character is stoic sacrifice, silence. This makes it difficult for others to see you as flawed, human, vulnerable, or exploited.”

We use the term hero in part because it makes us feel good and in part because it shuts soldiers up (which, believe me, makes the rest of us feel better). Labeled as a hero, it’s also hard to think twice about putting your weapons down. Thank yous to heroes discourage dissent, which is one reason military bureaucrats feed off the term.
There are American soldiers stationed around the globe who think about filing conscientious objector status (as I once did), and I sometimes hear from some of them. 

They often grasp the way in which the militarized acts of imperial America are helping to create the very enemies they are then being told to kill. They understand that the trillions of dollars being wasted on war will never be spent on education, health care, or the development of clean energy here at home.  They know that they are fighting for American control over the flow of fossil fuels on this planet, the burning of which is warming our world and threatening human existence.

Then you have Bruce Springsteen and Metallica telling them “thank you” for wearing that uniform, that they are heroes, that whatever it is they’re doing in distant lands while we go about our lives here isn’t an issue.  There is even the possibility that, one day, you, the veteran, might be ushered onto that stage during a concert or onto the field during a ballgame for a very public thank you. The conflicted soldier thinks twice.

Valor

I’m back at that indie bookstore sitting at the same chrome-colored table trying to hash all this out, including my own experiences in the Army Rangers, and end on a positive note. The latest issue of Rolling Stone appears to have sold out. Out the window, the sun is peeking through a thick web of clouds.  They sell wine here, too. The sooner I finish this, the sooner I can start drinking. 

There is no question that we should honor people who fight for justice and liberty. Many veterans enlisted in the military thinking that they were indeed serving a noble cause, and it’s no lie to say that they fought with valor for their brothers and sisters to their left and right. Unfortunately, good intentions at this stage are no substitute for good politics. The war on terror is going into its 14th year.  If you really want to talk about “awareness raising,” it’s years past the time when anyone here should be able to pretend that our 18-year-olds are going off to kill and die for good reason. How about a couple of concerts to make that point?

Until then, I’m going to drink wine and try to enjoy the music over the sound of the espresso machine.

Rory Fanning walked across the United States for the Pat Tillman Foundation in 2008-2009, following two deployments to Afghanistan with the 2nd Army Ranger Battalion. Fanning became a conscientious objector after his second tour. He is the author of the new book Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger’s Journey Out of the Military and Across America (Haymarket, 2014).

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me, and Tom Engelhardt's just published Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2014 Rory Fanning

Herman Cain Tells Stuart Varney That Half The Black Voters In Georgia Are 'Clueless'

By Heather

Way to help the GOP with that minority outreach program Herman. 



Former grifter presidential candidate turned right wing radio host Herman Cain did his best to piss off minority voters in his state of Georgia this week during an interview with Fox Business' Stuart Varney.

This isn't the first time Cain has made horribly racist statements about black voters and I'm sure it won't be the last.

Herman Cain Says Half The Black Voters In Georgia ‘Probably Are Clueless’:

On today’s Varney & Co, host Stuart Varney asked Herman Cain whether playing the “Ferguson” card would be “likely to increase the black vote in Georgia.” He was referring to a Georgia Democratic Party flyer invoking Ferguson to encourage voters to turn out. Varney was concerned, of course, that a big turnout of African American voters could be the deciding factor in electing Democrat Michelle Nunn, currently in a very tight Senate race.

Cain replied, “I don’t think so and here’s why. Many of my listeners are from Georgia, and I do have a lot of black listeners to my radio show. The good news is, a lot of black people are not that stupid, or they are not that ignorant to respond to something like that. It’s not 40 or 50% of the black population, because 40 or 50% probably are clueless other than party name and candidate.”

That’s quite an insult to African Americans. But Varney replied, “Herman Cain, always a pleasure, thanks for joining us today sir, appreciate it.”

Costco Will Close On Thanksgiving So Employees Can Be With Their Families

By karoli

See? It really isn't that hard to be decent. Support the companies who support their employees.

Geez, Walmart. What's your excuse? If Costco can absorb the hit for letting all its employees have Thanksgiving Day off to be with their families, why can't you?

And why can't the other retailers who feed the insanity we call Black Friday? For many years now I've made a point of avoiding all of those nutty sales and only patronizing stores that are decent to their employees. I won't shop Walmart on general principles anyway, but there are many other retailers whose door will not be darkened by the likes of me on the Friday after Thanksgiving or any time during the holiday season, for that matter.

ThinkProgress:

Costco is among the companies that will choose to remain closed on Thanksgiving Day, a spokesperson confirmed to ThinkProgress. None of the nearly 127,000 people who work for the company will have to come in on the holiday.

In explaining why it decided to stay closed, the spokesperson said, “Our employees work especially hard during the holiday season and we simply believe that they deserve the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving with their families. Nothing more complicated than that.”

That makes at least five chain stores that have decided to resist the new trend of beginning Black Friday sales a day early, thus ensuring that a large number of employees will have to come to work.

Dillard’s, Burlington, REI, and American Girl all told ThinkProgress they will remain closed on the holiday, and Dillard’s explained that its decision was part of its “longstanding tradition of honoring of our customers’ and associates’ time with family.”

Other stores have let the holiday shopping craze creep into workers’ Thanksgiving meal time. Macy’s announced this year that it will open at 6 p.m. on the holiday, while Walmart will be open all day, requiring nearly 1 million people to show up to work. The trend really took off last year, with at least 12 major brands deciding to open on Thanksgiving itself and thus require at least some people to be at work during mealtime.

The Republican Party’s Electoral Philosophy: Cheating Wins

By Sean McElwee

 

The explosion and enforcement of restrictive voter ID laws make this one thing very clear.

Photo Credit: Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com

October 25, 2014  |  

 

Last week, the Supreme Court upheld a law that could disenfranchise 600,000 Texans. But the effects of the law won’t fall equally: African-Americans and Latinos are 305 percent and 195 percent less likely (respectively) to have the necessary forms of identification than whites. The Republican party is increasingly unpopular, and relies almost exclusively on white voters. The charts below show the 2008 if only white men voted and if only people of color voted (source).

Since 2008, people of color become a growing share of the voting population while the GOP has, if anything, moved further to the right. It has further alienated voters of color with racist attacks and laws. But as they say: if you can’t beat ‘em, make sure they don’t vote. Over the last four years the Republicans have gone through elaborate attempts to make sure populations that don’t support them don’t get a chance to vote.
 

Since 2006, Republicans have pushed through voter ID laws in 34 states.  Such laws did not exist before 2006, when Indiana passed the first voter ID law. The laws were ostensibly aimed at preventing voter fraud, but a News21 investigation finds only 2,068 instance of alleged fraud since 2000 (that is out of over 146 million voters). They estimate that there is one accusation of voter fraud for every 15 million voters. As Mother Jones notes, instances of voter fraud are more rare than UFO sightings. There have been only 13 instances of in-person voter fraud (the sorts that a voter ID law would reduce), while 47,000 people claim to have seen a UFO.
On the other hand, research by the Brennan Center for Justice finds that, “as many as 11 percent of eligible voters do not have government-issued photo ID.” Those who do not have ID are most likely to be “ seniors, people of color, people with disabilities, low-income voters, and students” — i.e.. people who vote Democratic (chart source).

There is now a large literature studying the effects of voter ID laws. James Avery and Mark Peffley find, “states with restrictive voter registration laws are much more likely to be biased toward upper-class turnout.” The GAO finds that voter ID laws reduce turnout among those between ages 18-23 and African-Americans (two key Democratic constituencies). A 2013 study finds that the proposal and passage of voter ID laws are “highly partisan, strategic, and racialized affairs.”

They write, “Our findings confirm that Democrats are justified in their concern that restrictive voter legislation takes aim along racial lines with strategic partisan intent.” [Italics in original] The authors also find that increases in low-income voter turnout triggered voter ID laws. A more recent study finds, “where elections are competitive, the furtherance of restrictive voter ID laws is a means of maintaining Republican support while curtailing Democratic electoral gains.”

That is, not all Republican legislatures propose voter ID laws — only those that face strong competition from Democrats. If Republicans are concerned about election integrity, why do they only pass voter ID laws when they’re about to lose an election?

 Because they’re cheaters.

Voter ID laws are also racially motivated. A recent study finds that voters are significantly more likely to support a voter ID law when they are shown pictures of black people voting than when shown white people voting. One voter ID group had a picture on their website showing a black inmate voting and a man wearing a mariachi outfit — clearly playing off racial stereotypes.

But this isn’t the only time Republicans have tried to leverage state-level advantages into federal gains. After the 2010 walloping, Republicans decided they would need to tilt the odds in their favor.

Using their control of state legislatures, they gerrymandered districts to ensure their victory. In 2012, Democrats actually had a larger share of the popular vote for the House of Representatives, while Republicans gained their largest House majority in 60 years. Cook Political Report noted, “House GOP Won 49 Percent of Votes, 54 Percent of Seats.”

How? They cheated.

Karl Rove came out and said it in an Op-Ed,writing, “He who controls redistricting can control Congress.” They won in districts that were drawn specifically to allow them to win. There were certainly other factors at play, but it’s hard to image Republicans winning as many seats without their nifty swindle.

As Tim Dickinson points out, this isn’t the end:

In a project with the explicit blessing of Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, a half-dozen Republican-dominated legislatures in states that swing blue in presidential elections have advanced proposals to abandon the winner-take-all standard in the Electoral College…Thanks to the GOP’s gerrymandering, such a change would all but guarantee that a Democratic presidential candidate in a big, diverse state like Michigan would lose the split of electoral votes even if he or she won in a popular landslide.

If Republicans have their way, we’ll eventually be back to the days of the poll tax and the literacy test, where the votes of blacks, youth and the poor simply don’t count. We’re already halfway there.

The Senate, with its antiquated system of two senators per state means that the largely rural, old, white and conservative Midwest and South have far more sway than liberal metropolitan areas. This gives Republicans a strong advantage in the Senate, something to remember if they win it this election.

Republicans have also made use of felony disenfranchisement to boost their electoral success. Some 5.85 million Americans are denied the vote due to felony disenfranchisement. Because of the racial bias in our criminal justice system and the war on drugs, a disproportionate share of these voters are black. One study finds that because felons are more likely to be poor and people of color, disenfranchisement benefits Republicans. The authors estimate that, “at least one Republican presidential victory would have been reversed if former felons had been allowed to vote.”

Further, they find that such laws may have impacted control of the Senate, and even more state and local elections. It’s no surprise that in Florida, a state where 10 percent of voters can’t vote because of a felony conviction, one of Rick Scott’s first moves as governor was to tighten rules for felons trying to gain voting rights.

To a large extent, the radicalism of the Tea Party and the Republican Party at-large is due to the fact that they don’t represent the population at large; they represent a primarily white and middle- to high-income voting bloc. And that’s how Republicans want to keep it; they know they can’t win in a fair race, so like Dick Dasterdly and Muttley, they set all sorts of obstacles in their opponents’ way.

Hopefully, much like Dick Dasterdly and Muttley, their plan will blow up in their faces: Voters will be so angry about Republican attempts to suppress the vote that they’ll turn out in even higher numbers. Sadly, convicted felons, undocumented immigrants and many citizens without ID will still be denied the vote.

In the movies, cheaters never win, for Republicans it’s been a successful electoral strategy for three decades running.

Sean McElwee is a writer and researcher of public policy. He blogs at seanamcelwee.com. Follow him on Twitter @seanmcelwee. 

Looking into Rick Scott’s ‘unsavory’ past

Ghosts of Rick Scott’s past returns to haunt him, after Charlie Crist reminds the public of his shady financial past. Ed Schultz, Joy Reid, and Mike Papantonio discuss.

Christie takes a hard line on minimum wage

Hardball Roundtable—Jay Newton Small, David Corn and John Stanton—join Chris Matthews to discuss Chris Christie’s latest comments on not raising the minimum wage.

If Bush and Cheney didn't invade Iraq, there would be no ISIS

Big Media has run rampant with hearsay and false reports on who ISIS is, so Jesse Ventura gets to the truth of Islamic State's origins, money trail, and the real threat they pose to the United States.

As the battle against the terrorist group the Islamic State, or ISIS, continues, many wonder if the fight will turn into another Iraq war. With the American people weary of combat troops on the ground, the former governor of Minnesota looks at the root of the problem and who is really to blame for the rise of ISIS.

Jesse Ventura says that if Bush never invaded Iraq, there would be no ISIS

youtube.com

Over the last few months, ISIS has taken over parts of Iraq and Syria. The U.S. trained Iraqi army has failed on multiple levels, leaving behind American military weapons and supplies that have been captured by ISIS. Since then, the Obama administration has authorized airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, which have been challenged as unconstitutional, as well as Congress authorizing a White House request of $500 million to train and arm rebels in Syria. The media often questions the actions of the White House, but during Friday's episode of "Off the Grid" on Ora.TV, host Jesse Ventura went to origins of ISIS and put the blame on the doorstep of the Bush Administration.

"If Saddam Hussein had been left in charge of Iraq and the United States had never done what they did, I don't think there would be any ISIS at this level because the border between Syria and Iraq would have still been very distinct. I'm trying to figure out why this is so very important to us, except for monetary reasons. Is that the only reason that we care? You are not going to convince me that our powerful people care about their people."

Ventura also warned about how the United States will be perceived if they continue down the same path of the previous administrations. Ventura quoted former Vice President Dick Cheney, when he claimed that the United States would be greeted as "liberators" during the Iraq war.

"Dick Cheney told us we would be greeted as liberators when we went in there. Well we were hardly treated as liberates, unless IEDs are greetings of liberation. We were greeted as invaders and we've been greeted as that every since that awful war took place."

Ventura didn't stop at his criticism of Bush and Cheney, also putting blame on the mainstream media. Highlighting the lack of depth of their reporting, the former Navy frogman accused many media outlets of either covering up or simply not doing their job.

"I watch mainstream media, when I do, and they don't say one word about the origins of all of this, which goes back to us invading Iraq, and overthrowing Saddam's stable government. We turned everything into chaos over there."

Ventura has been, if nothing else, consistent on his views when it comes to war. "This is us at perennial war, we are a war based economy now, they created that." Ventura said. "They have to keep feeding the machine and the only way you keep feeding the machine is having wars in these third world places were we can supply the weapons, the machinery and a few troops here or there, that keep the war machine going." the former governor stated, shaking his head in disgust.

President Obama has repeated that there will be no American "boots on the ground" in Iraq or Syria as the United States attempts to curb the violence and help stabilize the region. The president did note that combat troops on the ground might be necessary, but that they wont come from the U.S. military. If Obama has a change of heart, Ventura has previously stated that Bush and Cheney should be put on the front lines.

Suggested Links

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Here's What No One Is Telling You About Ebola

I'm a Hazmat-Trained Hospital Worker: Here's what everyone is failing to report.

By Abby Norman

Ebola is brilliant.

It is a superior virus that has evolved and fine-tuned its mechanism of transmission to be near-perfect. That's why we're all so terrified. We know we can't destroy it. All we can do is try to divert it, outrun it.

I've worked in health care for a few years now. One of the first things I took advantage of was training to become FEMA-certified for hazmat ops in a hospital setting. My rationale for this was that, in my home state of Maine, natural disasters are almost a given. We're also, though you may not know it, a state that has many major ports that receive hazardous liquids from ships and transport them inland. In the back of my mind, of course, I was aware that any hospital in the world could potentially find itself at the epicenter of a scene from The Hot Zone. That was several years ago.

Today I'm thinking, by God, I might actually have to use this training. Mostly, though, I'm aware of just that -- that I did receive training. Lots of it. Because you can't just expect any nurse or any doctor or any health care worker or layperson to understand the deconning procedures by way of some kind of pamphlet or 10-minute training video. Not only is it mentally rigorous, but it's physically exhausting.

PPE, or, personal protective equipment, is sort of a catch-all phrase for the suits, booties, gloves, hoods and in many cases respirators worn by individuals who are entering a hot zone. These suits are incredibly difficult to move in. You are wearing several layers of gloves, which limits your dexterity to basically nil, the hoods limit the scope of your vision -- especially your peripheral vision, which all but disappears. The suits are hot -- almost unbearably so. The respirator gives you clean air, but not cool air. These suits are for protection, not comfort. Before you even suit up, your vitals need to be taken. You can't perform in the suit for more than about a half hour at a time -- if you make it that long. Heat stroke is almost a given at that point. You have to be fully hydrated and calm before you even step into the suit. By the time you come out of it, and your vitals are taken again, you're likely to be feeling the impact -- you may not have taken more than a few steps in the suit, but you'll feel like you've run a marathon on a 90-degree day.

Getting the suit on is easy enough, but it requires team work. Your gloves, all layers of them, are taped to your suit. This provides an extra layer of protection and also limits your movement. There is a very specific way to tape all the way around so that there are no gaps or "tenting" of the tape. If you don't do this properly, there ends up being more than enough open pockets for contamination to seep in.

If you're wearing a respirator, it needs to be tested prior to donning to make sure it is in good condition and that the filter has been changed recently, so that it will do its job. Ebola is not airborne. It is not like influenza, which spreads on particles that you sneeze or cough. However, Ebola lives in vomit, diarrhea and saliva  -- and these avenues for infection can travel. Projectile vomiting is called so for a reason. Particles that are in vomit may aerosolize at the moment the patient vomits. This is why if the nurses in Dallas were in the room when the first patient, Thomas Duncan, was actively vomiting, it would be fairly easy for them to become infected. Especially if they were not utilizing their PPE correctly. 

The other consideration is this: The "doffing" procedure, that is, the removal of PPE, is the most crucial part. It is also the point at which the majority of mistakes are made, and my guess is that this is what happened in Dallas.

The PPE, if worn correctly, does an excellent job of protecting you while you are wearing it. But eventually you'll need to take it off. Before you begin, you need to decon the outside of the PPE. That's the first thing. This is often done in the field with hoses or mobile showers/tents. Once this crucial step has occurred, the removal of PPE needs to be done in pairs. You cannot safely remove it by yourself. One reason you are wearing several sets of gloves is so that you have sterile gloves beneath your exterior gloves that will help you to get out of your suit. The procedure for this is taught in FEMA courses, and you run drills with a buddy over and over again until you get it right. You remove the tape and discard it. You throw it away from you. You step out of your boots  --  careful not to let your body touch the sides. Your partner helps you to slither out of the suit, again, not touching the outside of it. This is difficult, and it cannot be rushed. The respirators need to be deconned, batteries changed, filters changed. The hoods, once deconnned, need to be stored properly. If the suits are disposable, they need to be disposed of properly. If not, they need to be thoroughly deconned and stored safely. And they always need to be checked for rips, tears, holes, punctures or any other even tiny, practically invisible openings that could make the suit vulnerable.

Can anyone tell me if this happened in Dallas?

We run at least an annual drill at my hospital each year. We are a small hospital and thus are a small emergency response team. But because we make a point to review our protocols, train our staff (actually practice donning/doffing gear), I realized this week that this puts us ahead at some much larger and more notable hospitals in the United States. Every hospital should be running these types of emergency response drills yearly, at least.

To hear that the nurses in Dallas reported that there were no protocols at their hospital broke my heart. Their health care system failed them. In the United States we always talk about how the health care system is failing patients, but the truth is, it has failed its employees too. Not just doctors and nurses, but allied health professionals as well. The presence of Ebola on American soil has drawn out the true vulnerabilities in the health care system, and they are not fiscally based. We spend trillions of dollars on health care in this country -- yet the allocation of those funds are grossly disproportionate to how other countries spend their health care expenditures. We aren't focused on population health.

Now, with Ebola threatening our population, the truth is out.

The truth is, in terms of virology, Ebola should not be a threat to American citizens. We have clean water. We have information. We have the means to educate ourselves, practice proper hand-washing procedures, protect ourselves with hazmat suits. The CDC Disease Detectives were dispatched to Dallas almost immediately to work on the front lines to identify those who might be at risk, who could have been exposed. We have the technology, and we certainly have the money to keep Ebola at bay. What we don't have is communication.

What we don't have is a health care system that values preventative care. What we don't have is an equal playing field between nurses and physicians and allied health professionals and patients. What we don't have is a culture of health where we work symbiotically with one another and with the technology that was created specifically to bridge communication gaps, but has in so many ways failed. What we don't have is the social culture of transparency, what we don't have is a stopgap against mounting hysteria and hypochondria, what we don't have is nation of health literate individuals. We don't even have health-literate professionals.

Most doctors are specialists and are well versed only in their field. Ask your orthopedist a general question about your health -- see if they can comfortably answer it.

Health care operates in silos -- we can't properly isolate our patients, but we sure as hell can isolate ourselves as health care workers.

As we slide into flu season, a time of year when we are normally braced for winter diseases, colds, flus, sick days and canceled plans, the American people have been exposed to another disease entirely: the excruciating truth about our healthcare system's dysfunction -- and the prognosis doesn't look good.

Note: In response to some comments, I would like to clarify that I am FEMA-trained in level 3 hazmat in a hospital setting. I am a student, health guide and writer, but I am not a nurse.

PA Governor Tom Corbett Gets Black Support - Via PhotoShop

By kpete

It's no secret that things haven't always gone smoothly for Gov. Corbett in his effort to woo minority voters in Pennsylvania. Most famously, the one-term GOP governor - who's in the fight of his life for re-election - last year told editors of Philadelphia-based Al Dia at a roundtable that he didn't have any Latinos in his cabinet, adding: "If you can find us one, please let us know."

Now, according to a report going viral tonight on social media, Corbett's re-election campaign found an African-American woman to stand next to the governor on his website photos.

Not an actual woman. According to Buzzfeed, the black woman who gazes at Corbett was Photoshopped from a stock picture.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Report-Smiling-black-woman-next-to-Corbett-on-his-website-was-Photoshopped.html#cGjSqHU6cz52lZCW.99

Here’s a closer look:



And here’s the Shutterstock page for the the stock image “Financial Advisor Talking To Senior Couple At Home.”


Put next to each other you can clearly see it’s the same woman, with the color of her shirt slightly altered:


MORE:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/black-woman-photoshopped-into-group-photo-with-gop-governor?utm_term=1akf4m2#3xauh8n

Michael Dunn Sentenced to Life in Prison for Murder of Teen Over Loud Music

By Stephen A. Crockett Jr.

Posted: Oct. 17 2014 1:17 PM

 

Michael Dunn, the Florida man found guilty earlier this month of first-degree murder in the shooting death of unarmed teen Jordan Davis over loud music, has been sentenced to life without parole, according to NBC News.

Dunn, 47, had previously been convicted on three counts of second-degree attempted murder after he shot into a vehicle carrying four teens in November 2012. In January that jury found Dunn guilty of attempted murder and he was sentenced to 90 years in prison plus another 15 years for firing into an occupied vehicle, NBC reports. The jury however, declared a mistrial on the first-degree-murder charges he faced in the shooting death of Jordan, 17.

According to NBC News, Jordan's father read a statement during the testimony portion of the sentencing, which lasted about an hour. In total, Dunn will serve life plus 105 years in prison.

"Our justice system works," Judge Russell Healey said at the hearing, according to NBC News. "This case demonstrates that our justice system does work."

 

Voting against their own interests?

Many Republican Candidates have run their campaigns as a referendum against Harry Reid and Pres. Obama. Ed Schultz, Brad Woodhouse and Harold Cook discuss the feelings of many Americans, especially those in Iowa.

Bill Maher Destroyed Again And Again By Reza Aslan

"Religious scholar Reza Aslan took some serious issue on CNN Monday night with Bill Maher‘s commentary about Islamic violence and oppression. Maher ended his show last Friday by going after liberals for being silent about the violence and oppression that goes on in Muslim nations. Aslan said on CNN that Maher’s arguments are just very unsophisticated.

He said these “facile arguments” might sound good, but not all Muslim nations are the same. Aslan explained that female mutilation is an African problem, not a Muslim one, and there are Muslim-majority nations where women are treated better and there are even female leaders."*

The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.




*Read more here from Josh Feldman / Mediaite:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/reza-aslan...

Courting Corruption: The Auctioning of the Judicial System

Don't believe the Citizens United pollyannas. Watching money flooding into elections for judges' seat shows how dangerous unregulated campaigns can be.
By Norm Ornstein

Justice is blind, but not free. (Russell Boyce/Reuters)

Every once in a while, David Brooks writes a column in The New York Times that makes one just cringe. That was the case with his "Don't Worry, Be Happy" treatment last week of the impact of Citizens United on our politics. By defining the impact narrowly—does either party gain from the Supreme Court ruling and the new Wild West of campaign financing?—and by cherry-picking the research on campaign finance, Brooks comes up with a benign conclusion: Citizens United will actually reduce the influence of money in elections, and, I quote, "The upshot is that we should all relax about campaign spending."

Without mentioning his good friend's name, E.J. Dionne destroyed that case in his own Washington Post column. But a broader critique is necessary. First, Citizens United—and its progeny, SpeechNow and McCutcheon—are not really about whether Republicans get a leg up on election outcomes. They are about a new regime of campaign spending that dramatically enhances corruption in politics and government by forcing lawmakers to spend more and more of their precious time making fundraising calls, raising money for their own campaigns and their parties, and getting insurance against a last-minute blitz of "independent" spending that trashes them when they have no time to raise money to defend themselves. It also gives added traction to extreme groups threatening lawmakers with primary devastation unless they toe the ideological line.

I have told this story before, but it bears repeating. Many legislators have had an experience something like this: A lobbyist visits and says, "I am working with Americans for a Better America. They have more money than God. $10 million in the last two weeks of a campaign to trash somebody's reputation would be nothing to them. They really, really want this amendment. I don't know what they would do if someone opposed them, but …" The result will be more amendments, or more amendments blocked, without the money being spent and without anyone even knowing what is going on. And every time the money is spent, and someone loses, the lesson will not be lost on those still in office.

 

If judges have to raise millions for reelection campaigns, who will contribute? Of course, those who practice in front of the judges will.

At the same time, the desperation to raise money means lawmakers pandering to big donors or shaking them down—trading access for favors, or threatening retribution. And it means more vicious ads, done by anonymous groups, which only enhance the corrosive cynicism voters have toward all politicians. And it means more sham independence and blockage of disclosure, without any enforcement of existing laws by the outrageously lawless Federal Election Commission, led by Caroline Hunter and Lee Goodman. And we should relax?

But that is not the worst of the new world of campaign finance post-Citizens United. The worst comes with judicial elections—and that worst could be worsened by a pending Supreme Court case that may allow sitting judges actively to solicit campaign funds for their own elections.

Here is what we know. Loads of money—mostly conservative—went into judicial-retention elections in the last cycle in Florida, following a similar experience in 2010 in Iowa and Illinois. We saw similar efforts on a smaller scale in other states, including Wisconsin and Michigan. All had a ton of attack ads. Those efforts have exploded in the 2014 elections. In North Carolina, where repeal of the state's Judicial Campaign Reform Act by the right-wing legislature opened the door to a further explosion of campaign spending, and where the GOP sees retaining a majority on the court (ostensibly, but risibly, nonpartisan) as a key to their continued hegemony in politics, the Republican State Leadership Committee spent $900,000 on an unsuccessful primary campaign to unseat Justice Robin Hudson, and will target Court of Appeals Judge Sam Ervin IV in his second attempt to move to the Supreme Court (the first one, in 2012, cost $4.5 million or more). Much of the spending will come in the next month, and will total many millions, most of it from outside groups. The Republican State Leadership Committee is targeting judges in Ohio, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Texas.

In Tennessee, Republican Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, working hand in glove with the RSLC, led a conservative effort to unseat three justices up for retention. If they had lost, Gary Wade, Cornelia Clark, and Sharon Lee—all endorsed by a bipartisan evaluation panel—would be replaced by Republican Governor Bill Haslam. Once again, millions were spent to defeat them. Thanks to a counter-campaign, led by lawyers who practice in front of them, all three eked out bare victories in the August retention elections. Lew Conner, a Republican who served as a judge appointed by then-Governor Lamar Alexander, has said about Ramsey, "What he's doing, I think, is just terrible. It's an attack on the independence of the judicial system."

It is true that the politicization and increasing partisanship of the courts has paralleled, or followed, the tribalism in the political process. And it is true that a sharper tone in judicial elections preceded Citizens United. But the concerted efforts by activist James Bopp to go state by state and remove all restrictions on how judicial elections are run—making them just like political campaigns—combined with the effective elimination of boundaries on funding and the blockage of disclosure, have dramatically changed judicial elections. Vicious attacks on the integrity of judges themselves undermine confidence in the judiciary, but that is not the major problem.

Here is the reality: If judges fear multimillion-dollar campaigns against them, they will have to raise millions themselves, or quietly engineer campaigns by others to do so. Who will contribute, or lead those efforts? Of course, those who practice in front of the judges will, creating an unhealthy dynamic of gratitude and dependency. Worse, imagine what happens when judges are deciding cases in which the stakes are high, and well-heeled individuals or corporations will be helped or damaged by the rulings. The judges know that an adverse decision now will trigger a multimillion-dollar campaign against them the next time, both for retribution and to replace them with more friendly judges. Will that affect some rulings? Of course.

I agree with retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor that judicial elections in general are an abomination. They are no way to select impartial and high-quality jurists. But judicial elections in the age of Citizens United make it so much worse. This will ultimately undermine the whole idea of an independent judiciary, which is the single most significant bedrock of a functioning democratic political system. So, David, I do not relax about campaign spending. And neither should you.

Why Do Democrats Run From President Obama?

On Tuesday’s Podcast Ed is joined by Chair of the Democratic National Committee Con. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-FL, to discuss the get out the vote efforts for the midterm elections. We are also joined by Democratic Strategist Bob Shrum to discuss candidates running from President Obama.

Comcast Doesn't Give A Fuck

Stop the Comcast takeover.

It's almost this bad. Already.

Watch this video. If this is how you feel about Comcast right now, just remember one thing: after the Time Warner Cable takeover, it will only get worse.

Cornel West arrested at Ferguson, MO protest

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/13/us/ferguson-protests/index.html

Podcast 077 – Walker Won’t Answer the Questions

On Monday’s Podcast Ed Schultz is joined by Wisconsin State Sen. Lena Taylor to discuss Scott Walker defending voter ID laws and not having an answer when it comes to minimum wage in Wisconsin.

We are also joined by Scott Brennan, Chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, to discuss the Senatorial race between Joni Ernst and Rep. Bruce Braley.

Crack, the CIA, and the Contras

Posted by naju

In 1996, Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News exposed a shocking series of facts: that the CIA and the Reagan administration were covertly funding the Contras in Nicaragua by aiding and abetting the flow of crack cocaine to America, particularly inflicting terrible damage on inner-city black communities. 

In response, the Washington Post, New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times all began vicious campaigns to attack and discredit Webb. 

Although Webb was later vindicated by a CIA Inspector General report among other things, the damage was done, and the story still has an air of obfuscation and confusion around it. 

Along with the release of a new documentary, Freeway: Crack in the System, as well as a feature film starring Jeremy Renner as Gary Webb, Kill the Messenger, key figures in the CIA-crack cocaine scandal are beginning to come forward. 

Could this be the start of a renewed exploration of the government's complicity in the rise of crack in America?

Pastor's Wife Tried To Kill Daughters After Getting 'End of the World' Messages from Estranged Husband

Woman stabs daughters after telling them she wanted them to "meet Jesus Christ."

By Tom Boggioni


A Montgomery, Illinois, woman who attempted to kill her three daughters told police that she wanted them to “meet Jesus Christ,” after receiving messages from her estranged pastor husband telling her the world was coming to an end, according to the  Chicago Sun-Times.














Police arrived at the door of Pamela J. Christensen, 47, on Sept. 25 following two 9/11 hang-up calls to discover the woman covered in blood.

According to court documents, Christensen dropped to her knees and confessed that she had tried to kill her daughters.

Two of the girls were stabbed, suffering minor injuries. Christensen had also stabbed herself in the chest and abdomen and was treated at a local hospital.The three girls, ages 12, 16 and 19, told police that their mother had dressed them all in white and had held a knife to them, asking them if they accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.

According to police, Christensen had initially tried to poison her daughters with a concoction made up of household cleaners in the hope that they would doze off and she could stab them in their sleep.

The daughters reportedly refused to drink the poison.

According to the police report, Christensen told officers she that she was sending the girls home to “meet Jesus Christ,” following messages left on her phone from her husband, Vaughn Christensen, stating that the world was ending and that she needed to prepare the family to meet Jesus.

Vaughn Christensen is a former pastor at a Sugar Grove church.

A month prior to the stabbings, Christensen had served her husband with a restraining order, stating that the two were going through a divorce, and that her husband had become increasingly violent toward her and the children.

The order, filed on Aug. 29, stated Vaughn Christensen had become “increasingly erratic” and that he had threatened to harm himself and the children. He mentioned wanting to die on several occasions, Christensen wrote.

Police confirmed they had responded to the home several times over suicide threats.

Christensen now faces three counts each of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated battery and aggravated unlawful restraint.

Her bail was set at $1 million on Thursday and she is expected back in court on Oct. 16.

Validating Marriott's low wage exploitation

Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

 

As an old popular song asks, what do you get if you "work your fingers right down to the bone?"

Boney fingers.

As housekeepers in the sprawling Marriott chain of hotels know, that's more than a cute lyric, it's the truth. These "room attendants," as they're called, are paid barely $8 an hour to perform a very hard, physical job, suffering the highest injury rate in the so-called "hospitality" industry. Some two-thirds of them take pain medication just to get through their day of heaving 100-pound mattresses, stooping to clean floors, and twisting to readjust furniture in 15 to 20 rooms per shift.

Yet, Marriott's CEO publicly hails the very women he exploits as "the heart of the house," saying his chain likes to express its appreciation to them with "special recognition events" during International Housekeepers Week. Yes, exploited room attendants are not rewarded with a living wage, but with a congratulatory week – how great is that?

This year, housekeeper week came with "a new tipping initiative" – a scheme created by multimillionaire Maria Shriver, urging Marriott's customers "to express their gratitude by leaving tips and notes of thanks for hotel room attendants." Shriver says she hopes the voluntary tips "will make these women feel validated." Is that sweet or what?

Does she at least urge that this tip be the standard 15-20 percent we give at restaurants? No, one-to-five bucks per night's stay is recommended. Let's see, at about $250 a day for a Marriott room, even $5 is a sad two percent expression of "gratitude." As for customers leaving a little thank-you note, imagine trying to buy a baloney sandwich with that.

How about this:  

Instead of paying $9 million a year to Marriott's CEO, make him rely on customer tips – and see how validated he feels.

"House Keeping Can Be Dangerous Work," Unite Here.

"Compensation up for Marriott, Hilton CEOs," www.bizjournal.com, April 8, 2014.

"Marriott: Company Information," www.news.marriott.com, September 1, 2014.

"Marriott's New Envelope For Room Tips Stirs Debate," www.npr.org, September 16, 2014.

"Hotel Chain Will Leave Envelopes In Rooms To Encourage Guests To Tip Housekeepers," www.thinkprogress.org

Elizabeth Warren on Barack Obama: “They protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. And it happened over and over and over”

"There has not been nearly enough change," she tells Salon, taking on Obama failures, lobbyists, tuition. So 2016?

By Thomas Frank
 

Elizabeth Warren (Credit: AP/Charles Dharapak)

Senator Elizabeth Warren scarcely requires an introduction. She is the single most exciting Democrat currently on the national stage.

Her differences from the rest of the political profession is stark and obvious. It extends from her straightforward clarity on economic issues to the energetic way she talks. I met her several years ago when she was taking time out from her job teaching at Harvard to run the Congressional Oversight Panel, which was charged with supervising how the bank bailout money was spent. I discovered on that occasion not only that we agreed on many points of policy, but that she came originally from Oklahoma, the state immediately south of the one where I grew up, and also that high school debate had been as important for her as it had been for me.

In the years since then, Professor Warren helped to launch the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which will probably be remembered as one of the few lasting achievements of the Obama Administration); she wrote a memoir, A Fighting Chance; and she was elected to the United States Senate from Massachusetts.

This interview was condensed and lightly edited.

I want to start by talking about a line that you’re famous for, from your speech at the Democratic National Convention two years ago: “The system is rigged.” You said exactly what was on millions of people’s minds. I wonder, now that you’re in D.C. and you’re in the Senate, and you have a chance to see things close up, do you still feel that way? And: Is there a way to fix the system without getting the Supreme Court to overturn Citizens United or some huge structural change like that? How can we fix it?

That’s the question that lies at the heart of whether our democracy will survive. The system is rigged. And now that I’ve been in Washington and seen it up close and personal, I just see new ways in which that happens. But we have to stop and back up, and you have to kind of get the right diagnosis of the problem, to see how it is that—it goes well beyond campaign contributions. That’s a huge part of it. But it’s more than that. It’s the armies of lobbyists and lawyers who are always at the table, who are always there to make sure that in every decision that gets made, their clients’ tender fannies are well protected. And when that happens — not just once, not just twice, but thousands of times a week — the system just gradually tilts further and further. There is no one at the table…I shouldn’t say there’s no one. I don’t want to overstate. You don’t have to go into hyperbole. But there are very few people at the decision-making table to argue for minimum-wage workers. Very few people.

---

---

They need to get a lobbyist. Why haven’t they got on that yet?

Yeah. Why aren’t they out there spending? In the context when people talk about “get a lobbyist,” the big financial institutions spent more than a million dollars a day for more than a year during the financial reform debates. And my understanding is, their spending has ratcheted up again. My insight about that, about exactly that point, [is] in the book [A Fighting Chance], in the second chapter, which is when my eyes first get opened to the political system. Here I am, I’m studying what’s happening to the American family, and just year by year by year, I’m watching America’s middle class get hammered. They just keep sliding further down. The data get worse every year that I keep pulling this data. Bankruptcy is the last hope to right their lives for those who have been hit by serious medical problems, job losses, a divorce, a death in the family — that accounts for about 90 percent of the people who file for bankruptcy. Those four causes, or those three if you combine divorce and death. So, how could America, how could Congress adopt a bankruptcy bill that lets credit card companies squeeze those families harder?

What year was that?

When they finally adopted it was 2005. But the point was, it started back in — actually it started in 1995, the effort [to change the bankruptcy laws]. And that’s when I got involved with the Bankruptcy Commission. When, first, [commission chairman] Mike Synar came to me, and then Mike Synar died. It was just awful. And Brady Williamson [the replacement chairman] came to me. But what I saw during that process is, this was not an independent panel that could kind of sit and think through the [problem]: “Let’s take a look at what the numbers show about what’s happening to the families. Let’s take some testimony, get some people in here who have been through bankruptcy, and some creditors who have lost money in bankruptcy, and let’s figure out some places where we could make some sensible recommendations to Congress.” That wasn’t what it turned out to be at all.
It turned out that it was all about paid lobbyists . . .

And what they wanted.

And what they wanted. I tried as hard as I could, and there were almost no bankrupt families who were ever even heard from. And you stop and think about it — why would that be so? Well, first of all, to show up to something like that, you’ve got to know about it and you’ve got to take a day off from work. Who’s going to do that? These are families who are under enormous stress and deeply humiliated about what had happened to them. They had to make a public declaration that they were losers in the great American economic game.

I know exactly the kind of people you’re talking about. I wanted to ask you, not specifically about people declaring bankruptcy, but about the broader working people of this country. You’re from Oklahoma. I’m from Kansas. You’ve seen what’s happened in those places. There are lots and lots of working people in those places and a lot of other places…

Hardworking people. People who work hard. That’s what you want to remember. Not just people who kind of occasionally show up.

Yeah. The blue collar backbone of this country. And in places like I’m describing, it gets worse every year—well, I shouldn’t say worse, because it’s their choice, but a lot of them choose Republicans. I was looking at Oklahoma, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, I’m pretty sure you are, 16 percent of the vote went for Eugene Debs in 1912 and today it’s going in the other direction as fast as it can. How is this ever going to change?

I have at least two thoughts around that and we should explore both of them. One of them is that we need to do a better job of talking about issues. And I know that sounds boring and dull as dishwater, but it’s true. The differences between voting for two candidates should be really clear to every voter and it should be clear in terms of, who votes to raise the minimum wage and who doesn’t. Who votes to lower the interest rate on student loans and who doesn’t. Who votes to make sure women can’t get fired for asking how much a guy is making for doing the same job, and who doesn’t. There are these core differences that are about equality and opportunity. It can’t be that we don’t make a clear distinction. If we fail to make that distinction, then shame on us. That is my bottom line on this.

You know, during the Senate race that I was in — I mean, I was a first-time candidate, I’d never done this before — the thing that scared me the most was that the race wouldn’t be about the core differences between my opponent and me. I wanted people to understand where I stood on investments in the future, investments in education and research that help us build a future. Where I stood on the minimum wage and equal pay. And where he stood on the other side. The point was not to blur the differences and to run to some mythical middle where we agreed with each other. The point was to say that, here are really big differences between the two of us. Voters have a chance to make a choice.

In some ways that’s exactly the problem. When I talk to people, they often say Democrats aren’t the party of working people at all. And they talk about NAFTA and deregulating Wall Street, and they say, look at these guys, they won’t prosecute the financial industry. They say, Democrats talk a good game, but they’re always on the side of the elite at the end of the day. What do you say to these people?

We’re the only ones fighting back. Right now, on financial reform, the Republicans are trying to roll back the financial reforms of Dodd-Frank. In fact, Mitch McConnell has announced that if he gets the majority in the Senate, his first objective is to repeal healthcare and his second is to roll back the financial reforms, and in particular to target the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — the one agency that’s out there for American families, the one that has returned more than four billion dollars to families who got cheated by big financial institutions. That’s in just three years.

So, Democrats have not done all that they should, but at least we’re out there fighting for the right things. We’re fighting and I think trying to pull in the right direction. So if the question is, hold us to a higher standard, man, I’m there. You’re right. [If] you want to criticize and say, “you should do more!,” the answer is: Yes, we should! You bet! We should be stronger. We should be tougher. But understand the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party right now. It’s pulling as hard and fast as it can in the opposite direction.

No doubt about that. I should ask you about — and we’re talking about the financial crisis and the failure to prosecute anyone, and the…I’m sorry, I’m going to get the name confused, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

That’s okay. It was named by Republicans to be as confusing a name as possible. (laughs) I used to think of it as the four random initials. (laughs) I just call it my consumer agency. So that’s it, just the consumer agency.

So here’s another aspect of this: Eric Holder is stepping down as attorney general, and you in the Senate are going to have to confirm a successor. And one of the things, I don’t know if you’ve followed this or not, but one of the things the Department of Justice has been doing, if you look at the actual prosecutions they’ve been making, they essentially blame the financial crisis on little people. People who lied on their loan applications. And I wonder, are you going to demand something different out of his successor? You’re going to have a chance to confirm this guy and talk to this guy…

You bet I am. I want to be clear on this. It’s the Justice Department. But it’s also the banking regulators. And the SEC. So the most recent hearing we held that had them all in together — you know we get them in twice a year — and, boy, you want to ask me if I’m glad to be in the United States Senate? (laughs) I get to be on the Banking Committee, and twice a year we haul the banking regulators in front of us for supervision. For oversight I should say, not supervision. So we had them all in. . . . We had them all in, in July. And that was the question I asked: How many big bank executives have you referred to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution?

That’s a very good question. I was going to ask you that, too.

Exactly right. Because that’s the other half of how the game is rigged. You know, we think of it in terms of Congress, and we should, because it’s definitely rigged in Congress and this is a place where people can do something about it. But the wind always blows from the same direction through the agencies. Those agencies, the banking regulators, who do they hear from, day in and day out? Big banks. They don’t hear from people who got cheated on their mortgages, people who got tricked on their credit cards. They hear from the big financial institutions, day after day after day. That’s, in part, what this whole Fed — this latest scandal at the Fed — you know with Carmen Segarra who has the tapes. Part of what that shows, if you just back up and think about what you’re seeing there, it’s that the supervisors, or regulators as they’re called — everybody commonly calls them that — the regulators all meet with Goldman Sachs executives and employees day after day after day. They don’t see the people who get tricked, the people who get cheated, the people who get fooled by the products that Goldman turns out.

That’s right. Regulatory capture, this is an old problem. I was writing about it, obviously, in the Bush days. But President Obama had a golden opportunity when he came in to change the system and I just don’t feel like it has changed, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau aside. I mean, are the regulators now referring things to the Justice Department? Are the wheels turning again?

There has not been nearly enough change. Not nearly enough. The consumer agency — this is why I argued for it — the consumer agency is structural change. So basically, the premise behind it was that there were plenty of federal laws out there, but no agency would step up and enforce them. And the responsibilities of these laws were scattered among seven different agencies and not one of those agencies saw its principal job as looking out for American families. So the OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] was all about bank profitability, the Fed was all about monetary policy. Everybody had something that they were about, but consumer protection was everybody’s job and therefore nobody’s job. You know, it was down seventh, or tenth or hundredth on the list and they never got to it, even as the big financial institutions were selling mortgages that should have been described as grenades with the pins pulled out. Really! My whole thing about toasters—remember, that was based on fact. At the time I wrote that piece on it, that was before the crash, one in five mortgages that were being marketed by the biggest financial institutions were exploding and costing people their homes. No one would permit toasters to be sold when one in five exploded and burned down somebody’s house. But they were selling mortgages like that and every regulator knew about it.

And those people who had it blow up in their faces, those are the ones we’re prosecuting.

Oh God. So exactly right. Well, to the extent we do [prosecute] anyone. But that’s exactly right. And so the idea behind the consumer agency was to say: structural change. We need an agency that has one and only one goal, and that is to look out for American families. To level the playing field, to make sure that people are not getting tricked and trapped on these financial instruments. And so it was a big shift, and it’s a shift worth thinking about. We took away — Dodd-Frank took away — all this responsibility that had nominally been spread among the other agencies, concentrated it in one agency, and now holds that agency accountable. So you give the agency the tools and then hold them accountable. The reason I think that story is so important is because it is structural. It’s not just a question of, “Gee, get good people and somehow things will work better.” There are structural changes we have to make. . . . The idea, the question that haunted me at the agency was: How do we make sure the agency is true to its mission, not just today with the people that we hire in the first plume of excitement, but 30 years from now, 40 years from now, 50 years from now…

Yeah, that’s the problem, when President Huckabee has . . . [At this point Senator Warren conferred with an aide about her schedule.] Can I skip to another subject real quick?

You can.

Let’s get back to the mindset of a lot of people. They look at you and they say, Elizabeth Warren, she’s part of the elite too. She was a professor at Harvard. And people would also say, look at the student loan disaster which you talk a lot about these days, the root cause of it is college tuition, which has increased by a thousand percent in 30 years. You look at the advertised price at Harvard right now, I know that not everybody pays it, but the advertised price is sixty grand a year. If you have three kids and all of them have to pay that much for four years—you know what I’m talking about?

I do.

Nobody can afford that. Is it time to do something about college tuition?

Absolutely. Yes it is. But let’s get the right frame on this. Because I think this is really important, and it’s the right question to ask. But start with this: three out of four kids in college are in public universities. A generation ago, state support for public universities was strong enough that three out of four dollars to educate those kids came from taxpayers and the family had to make up the difference for the fourth dollar. Today, that has basically reversed itself. That is, that the states are putting up, just generally across the country, about one out of four dollars and the families have got to come up with the other three out of four dollars. This matters because it is the state universities that are the backbone of access to higher education for middle class families, and I think that’s the place you have to start the conversation. I’m not going to let anybody off the hook, but I think it’s the critical part of the conversation. And I say this — it’s like I talk about in the book — this is personal for me. I graduated from a commuter college that cost $50 a semester in Texas.

Those were the days.

That’s right. It opened a million doors for me. And that happened because I grew up in an America that was investing in its kids. That America is gone. We’re not doing that anymore. So I start there at the heart of it. . . . And then there’s a second piece that we’ve got to factor into the equation, and that is: one in 10 kids in college is in a for-profit university. Actually, here are three numbers. They’re not perfect, but they’re just about right: 10, 25, 50. Ten percent of our kids are in for-profit universities, colleges. Those for-profit universities are sucking down 25 percent of federal loan dollars, and they are responsible for 50 percent of all student loan defaults.

It’s an outrage.

So we are, the federal government is currently subsidizing a for-profit industry that is ripping off young people. Those young people are graduating — many of them are never graduating — and of those that are graduating, many of them have certificates that won’t get them jobs, that don’t produce the benefits of a state college education.

You know somebody to talk to sometime if you want to ever do a separate story on this is Marty Meehan [who] is the president of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. And what he talks about is, particularly, the young vets who come to UMass-Lowell already sixty or seventy thousand dollars in debt without a single college credit that will transfer to an accredited university. Now, think about that.

So who do you think gets targeted by these for-profit universities? It’s kids who are the first in their family to go to college. It’s not happening to the sons and daughters of graduates from elite schools. It’s happening to young people who are the first in their family to graduate from college. Many of them have come out of the military, they’ve gone into the military straight from high school. They’ve now completed their military service. These are strivers, boot-strappers, hard-working kids who are the very kids we most want to make sure the doors of opportunity are open for. You know who else goes [to these schools]? It’s young, single mothers who are trying to make something out of their lives, many of them are working two and even three jobs, who believe that if they can get a college education, their children will have opportunities that would otherwise be closed off, and yet that’s not what they’re getting. They’re getting preyed on by these schools. So I mention this only by way of saying, when we look at college — you’re not wrong — we have got to use the leverage of the federal government investment to bring down the cost of college across the board. But we’ve got particular problems to focus on, both in support for public universities and the resources that are being drained away by the for-profit schools.

Here’s the penultimate question: everything you’re saying are issues that have been important to me most of my adult life. In 2008, I thought I had a candidate who was going to address these things. Right? Barack Obama. Today, my friends and I are pretty disappointed with what he’s done. I wonder if you feel he has been forthright enough on these subjects. And I also wonder if you think that someone can take any of this stuff on without being president. You know, there are a lot of good politicians in America who have their heart in the right place. But they’re not the president. Well anyhow. You understand my frustration…

I understand your frustration, Tom and, actually, I talk about this in the book. When I think about the president, for me, it’s about both halves. If Barack Obama had not been president of the United States we would not have a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Period. I’m completely convinced of that. And I go through the details in the book, and I could tell them to you. But he was the one who refused to throw the agency under the bus and made sure that his team kept the agency alive and on the table. Now there was a lot of other stuff that also had to happen for it to happen. But if he hadn’t been there, we wouldn’t have gotten the agency. At the same time, he picked his economic team and when the going got tough, his economic team picked Wall Street.

You might say, “always.” Just about every time they had to compromise, they compromised in the direction of Wall Street.

That’s right. They protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. Not young people who were struggling to get an education. And it happened over and over and over. So I see both of those things and they both matter.

Is there anything someone can do about all the things we’re describing, short of being president?

But we keep fighting back. The way to think about this is not…. Yes, we want the right person for president. You bet. But it’s all of us fighting back. . . . This is, and actually, this is where we almost started this conversation — how, as a people, we reclaim our government. How we, as a people, force Washington to work for us, not just for those with money and power. So I just gave a speech this morning. It’s interesting you would catch me on this particular day. I spoke to the New England Council so we had lots of CEOs and COOs — about 300 people — and I spoke on a not very sexy topic, on infrastructure and basic research. And I made the pitch about the importance of both of those. You know, gave some of the basic stats on why both are so important to building a future for this country. Then I did the basic stats on how we’re falling short. Where we’re cutting our investments — where we’ve been cutting our investments for 30 years. The Society of Civil Engineers says we’ve got $3.4 trillion in infrastructure underfunding — work that we need to do to bring our infrastructure up to current standards. So I talked about this and about the importance of it in building a future.

But the third part of the speech was the political part. It was the democracy part. I said, “So how could this happen in a country like America? I mean, I’m sitting here with you. You’re business leaders. Nobody would run a business like this. To under-invest in the key pieces to help build a future. So how does this happen?” It happens because there are a lot of people in Washington who say the answer to everything is, cut taxes. And when you’ve cut them as much as you can, cut them some more. And a lot of people have the corollary to that, and that is — cut spending. And it’s spending in all of the basics that help build a future: cut spending in education, in resource management, in infrastructure, in research, in core pieces we need to build a future.

“It’s there,” I said. “Look, get out there and fight back against this. I’m glad to do it. But I can’t do it alone. You have to get out there. You’re business leaders! You have to say ‘enough is enough.’ We have to build a future going forward.” And I said, “We need your voices. You have to be out there on the front lines. I’m glad to be out here. I’ll take the point. I’ll be in the leadership spot. I’ll talk about it, I’ll be loud, I’ll be blunt. But we need your voices in this. That’s the way we build a future.” And I feel like it’s all this series of issues we talked about, we have got to bring more people in.

You know, the other side has its advantage, and boy have they played it out for 30 years now — concentrated money and concentrated power. And you can do a lot with concentrated money and concentrated power. But our side—we have our voices and we have our votes. If people get engaged on the issues, the votes are on our side. Seventy-five percent of America wants to raise the minimum wage. That’s where we’ll head.

There’s a lot of issues like that.

But that’s the point. Look, there are two ways you can look at that. You can look at that and say, “Well, obviously, democracy doesn’t work.” Or the other way you can look at that is to say, “We have the opportunity. The moment is upon us.” We push back hard enough, we’re pushing for America’s agenda. Not an agenda to help a small group of people, an agenda to build a future for this country. And I believe we win. I believe it.

Thomas Frank is a Salon politics and culture columnist. His many books include "What's The Matter With Kansas," "Pity the Billionaire" and "One Market Under God." He is the founding editor of The Baffler magazine.

Wells Fargo Employee Emails CEO Asking For a Raise—Copies 200,000 Other Employees

By Joanna Rothkopf


Tyrel Oates, a 30-year-old Portland, Oregon-based employee of Wells Fargo, shot to Internet fame after emailing the company’s CEO John Stumpf (and cc’ing 200,000 other employees) to ask for a $10,000 raise… for everyone at the company.

The Charlotte Observer reports:

Oates proposed that Wells Fargo give each of its roughly 263,500 employees a $10,000 raise. That, he wrote, would “show the rest of the United States, if not the world, that, yes, big corporations can have a heart other than philanthropic endeavors.”

In an interview Tuesday, Oates…said he has no regrets and that he has received many thank-yous from co-workers who told him they shared his views.

And, at least as of Tuesday afternoon, he said he’s still employed by the company, where he processes requests from Wells Fargo customers seeking to stop debt-collection calls.
“I’m not worried about losing my job over this,” Oates said.

Oates has been working at the company for almost seven years and makes slightly more than $15 per hour, working 40 hours per week excluding mandatory overtime. “Just knowing the unease of my fellow team members as far as pay goes and how horrible our pay increases have been over the seven years… I just decided to send a letter to John Stumpf,” he said.

The full letter was posted on Reddit. Here it is:

Mr. Stumpf,

With the increasing focus on income inequality in the United States. Wells Fargo has an opportunity to be at the forefront of helping to reduce this by setting the bar, leading by example, and showing the other large corporations that it is very possible to maintain a profitable company that not only looks out for its consumers and shareholders, but its employees as well.

This year Wells Fargo in its second quarter alone had a net income of $5.7 billion, and total revenue of $21.1 billion. These are very impressive numbers, and is obvious evidence that Wells Fargo is one of, if not the most profitable company in the nation right now. So, why not take some of this and distribute it to the rest of the employees.

Sure, the company provides while not great, some pretty good benefits, as well as discretionary profit sharing for those who partake in our 401k program. While the benefits are nice, the profit sharing through the 401k only goes to make the company itself and its shareholders more profitable, and not really boost the income of the thousands of us here every day making this company the prestigious power house that it is.

Last year, you had pulled in over $19 million, more than most of the employees will see in our lifetimes. It is understood that your position carries a lot of weight and responsibility; however, with a base salary of $2.8 million and bonuses equating to $4 million, is alone one of the main arguments of income inequality. Where the vast majority, the undeniable profit drivers, with the exception of upper management positions barely make enough to live comfortably on their own, the distribution of income in this company is no better than that of the other big players in the corporate world.

My estimate is that Wells Fargo has roughly around 300,000 employees. My proposal is take $3 billion dollars, just a small fraction of what Wells Fargo pulls in annually, and raise every employees annual salary by $10,000 dollars. This equates to an hourly raise about $4.71 per hour. Think, as well, of the positive publicity in a time of extreme consumer skepticism towards banks. By doing this, Wells Fargo will not only help to make its people, its family, more happy, productive, and financially stable, it will also show the rest of the United States, if not the world that, yes big corporations can have a heart other than philanthropic endeavors.

P.S. – To all of my fellow team members who receive a copy of this email. Though Wells Fargo does not allow the formation of unions, this does not mean we cannot stand united. Each and every one of us plays an integral part in the success of this company. It is time that we ask, no, it is time that we demand to be rightfully compensated for the hard work that we accomplish, and for the great part we all have played in the success of this company.

There are many of us out there who come to work every day and give it our all, yet, we struggle to make ends meet while our peers in upper management and company executives reap the majority of the rewards. One of our lowest scored TMCS questions is that our opinions matter. Well they do!

This email has been sent to hundreds of thousands Wells Fargo employees, (as many as I could cc from the outlook global address book). And while the voice of one person in a world as large as ours may seem only like a whisper, the combined voices of each and all of us can move mountains!

With the warmest of regards,

          Tyrel Oates