I agreed 100 percent with the Sept. 26 editorial titled "Getyour priorities straight."
Why not start a petition to persuade the Bush administration tostop lying? Bush lied from the first day on the job. He had WhiteHouse spokesman Ari Fleischer go on television reporting on theterrible acts of vandalism by the Clinton staff that neverhappened. Yet Fox News repeated those lies 24/7. And it took Bush14 months to finally tell America that all that disgusting stuffnever happened. The simple truth is that Bush started out lying andhe keeps getting better and better at it.
Why not do something about poverty, jobs and deficits? TheCensus Bureau recently told us that we have over 35 million peopleliving in poverty, not to mention that 9 million people are lookingfor work and that the Bush tax cuts aren't creating jobs, eventhough the last recession ended in November.
Surely we should applaud "benevolent consciousness" on campusbecause our president talks a benevolent game but governs with atight fist. For example, he talked jobs to death on Labor Day whilefailing to tell American workers how he planned to end over-timepay for over 10 million workers. It's his payback to Wal-Mart. Thatis, his new rules from the Department of Labor allows Wal-Mart andothers to reclassify millions of hourly workers as managers orprofessionals, forcing them to work extra hours for no additionalpay.
I also agreed with Lauren Phillips' Sept. 26 column. Her"Wal-Mart's priorities, policies skewed" piece about the store'scensorship was right on target. But Wal-Mart's poorly paid hourlyworkers can't get too excited about aiding censorship when they arein a daily struggle to make ends meet.
Allow me to put Wal-Mart into perspective. Complaints aboutunderstaffing and low pay are not uncommon among retail workerstoday with Mr. Bush sitting in the Oval Office, but Wal-Mart is nomere peddler from Arkansas. The company is the world's largestretailer, with $220 billion in sales, and it is America's largestprivate employer, with 3,372 stores and more than 1 million hourlyworkers. Its annual revenues account for 2 percent of the nation'sentire domestic product. Even as the economy has slowed (one mighteven say, especially since the economy has slowed), Wal-Mart hascontinued to metastasize, with plans to add 800,000 more jobsworldwide by 2007.
Now we have come to a prime fact of our own time: Wal-Martincreasingly sets the standard for wages and benefits throughoutthe U.S. economy. But Americans can't live on a Wal-Mart paycheck.Yet it's the dominant employer, and what they pay will be thefuture of working America. The average hourly worker at Wal-Martearns barely $18,000 a year at a company where its four ownerspocketed $6.6 billion in profits last year, making them four of therichest people in the world.
Forty percent of Wal-Mart's workers opt not to receive coverageunder the company's medical plan, which costs up to $2,844 a year -plus a deductible. That is, the Waltons are among the world'srichest folks, but 40 percent of their lowly paid workers cannotafford health insurance for their kids.
Mr. Bush and the Waltons are a sobering portrait of the futureof the hourly worker in America. That is, at the world's largestand most profitable retailer, low wages, unpaid overtime and unionbusting are ways of life.
Why not assist Wal-Mart workers as they fight back? This couldbe much more fun than helping one person - Tom Green.
Doing away with our overtime is one more example of Bush lying;that is, he says one thing then does another. Every Americancitizen should be outraged by Bush's duplicity. Simply because Sen.Harkin of Iowa got an amendment adopted doesn't mean the end of theovertime battle, especially the battle over a living wage. Weworkers, including most BSU graduates, need to get our prioritiesstraight.
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