Amazon hits out at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for saying it pays warehouse workers 'starvation wages' with tech giant saying they pay $15 an hour minimum

Does she ever get anything right?

Amazon fired back at New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Monday after she accused the company of paying 'starvation wages' to its warehouse workers and said low pay worker pay helped enrich billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos. She also said the firm underpaid 'every single person' in its workforce.

The Internet shipping giant responded after Ocasio-Cortez blasted the company in an interview on ABC's 'This Week' program Sunday. 

'.@AOC is just wrong,' the company wrote Monday, tagging her roughly 4 million followers on Twitter. 'Amazon is a leader on pay at $15 min wage + full benefits from day one. We also lobby to raise federal min wage,' the firm wrote.

Amazon executive and former Obama White House press secretary Jay Carney chimed in on Twitter: 'More than 42% of all working Americans earn less than the $15/hour Amazon pays entry-level fulfillment center employees. And all our employees get top-tier benefits. I’d urge @AOC to focus on raising the federal minimum wage instead of making stuff up about Amazon,' he fired back.

The firm hiked wages last year after coming under criticism by the gap in pay between warehouse employees and top execs.

This year Forbes magazine listed the Bezos family at the top of its billionaires list (Bezos is getting divorced from wife MacKenzie following revelations he was having an affair), with an estimated $131 billion worth.

A company spokesperson called the charges 'absurd,' adding that 'hourly associates at our Staten Island facility earn between $17.30 and $23 an hour, plus benefits which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance,' Fox Business reported.

'On top of these benefits, Amazon pre-pays 95% of continuing education tuition costs through its Career Choice program for associates who want to pursue in-demand careers. For anyone who wants to know what it's like to work in an Amazon fulfillment center, sign up for a tour today,' said the spokesperson.

Ocasio-Cortez lashed out at Bezos in a Sunday interview with ABC News where told host Jonathan Karl how she thinks Bezos made his trillion dollar company founded in 1994 a success.

She was asked if a true progressive program was put in place, would someone like Bezos still be a billionaire? AOC has made it clear she thinks having billionaires is immoral.

'But if his being a billionaire is predicated on paying people starvation wages and stripping them of their ability to access healthcare…'

She said the amount Amazon workers are paid is 'certainly part of the equation'.

Amazon increased the minimum wage to $15 last November in response to criticism. The federal minimum wages has been $7.25 since 2009.

The company paid no tax to the US in 2018.

'When you have a very large workforce and you underpay every single person and then you also participate in taking billions of dollars of government subsidies, that could be part of it,' the New York Democrat told ABC's This Week.

'Whether Jeff Bezos is a billionaire or not is less of my concern than if your average Amazon worker is making a living wage, if they have guaranteed health care and if they can send their kids to college tuition-free,' she said Sunday.

'And if that's the case, and Jeff Bezos is still a billionaire, that's one thing.'

Bernie Sanders and AOC recently vowed to outlaw a new Amazon credit card designed for people with poor ratings over its high interest rate.

The Vermont senator accused the tech giant of 'greed' over the 28 per cent interest rate on its new card, and said it will only 'make the poor even poorer'. 'Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and I will outlaw it,' he added, in reference to legislation the pair introduced last month which would cap credit rates at 15 per cent.

Amazon launched its new secured credit card earlier this week. Users pay a deposit - in Amazon's case between $100 and $1,000 - to 'secure' a line of credit which acts as collateral and sets their spending limit.

In Amazon's case, the cards would only be available to those on their $119-per-year Prime package. The deposit would only be repaid when customers upgrade to a regular Amazon Store Card after seven months of on-time payments. Both the secured card and store card can only be used for Amazon purchases.

Sanders and AOC's bill, which was introduced last month, came after Sanders found the average annual salary for an Amazon worker is $28,000 but half of their employees were paid under that amount.

Likening Wall Street lenders to 'loan sharks', they say it is unconscionable that banks borrow at 2.5 per cent while lending at an average rate of 17.7 per cent. Many customers pay a far higher percentage on their loans.

The proposal also would let more than 30,000 post offices provide banking services for low-income Americans who currently don’t have ready access to banks.

With Republicans in control of the Senate, the proposals have virtually no chance of becoming law, but provide Sanders with a stumping tool as he runs for President.

Amazon cancelled plans to build a second headquarters in Long Island City recently after they faced backlash from residents of New York's Queens borough, including AOC, who complained about the negative affect the company would have on the community.

SOURCE   

*********************************

Elites Have No One to Blame for Populism but Themselves

Victor Davis Hanson

What is going on with the unending Brexit drama, the aftershocks of Donald Trump’s election, and the “yellow vests” protests in France?

What drives the growing estrangement of southern and eastern Europe from the European Union establishment?

What fuels the anti-EU themes of recent European elections and the stunning recent Australian re-election of conservatives?

Put simply, the middle classes are revolting against Western managerial elites. The latter group includes professional politicians, entrenched bureaucrats, condescending academics, corporate phonies, and propagandistic journalists.

What are the popular gripes against them?

One, illegal immigration and open borders have led to chaos. Lax immigration policies have taxed social services and fueled multicultural identity politics, often to the benefit of boutique leftist political agendas.

Two, globalization enriched the cosmopolitan elites who found worldwide markets for their various services. New global markets and commerce meant Western nations outsourced, offshored, and ignored their own industries and manufacturing (or anything dependent on muscular labor that could be replaced by cheaper workers abroad).

Three, unelected bureaucrats multiplied and vastly increased their power over private citizens. The targeted middle classes lacked the resources to fight back against the royal armies of tenured regulators, planners, auditors, inspectors, and adjustors who could not be fired and were never accountable.

Four, the new global media reached billions and indoctrinated rather than reported.

Five, academia became politicized as a shrill agent of cultural transformation rather than focusing on education—while charging more for less learning.

Six, utopian social planning increased housing, energy, and transportation costs.

One common gripe framed all these diverse issues: The wealthy had the means and influence not to be bothered by higher taxes and fees or to avoid them altogether. Not so much the middle classes, who lacked the clout of the virtue-signaling rich and the romance of the distant poor.

In other words, elites never suffered the firsthand consequences of their own ideological fiats.

Green policies were aimed at raising fees on, and restricting the use of, carbon-based fuels. But proposed green belt-tightening among hoi polloi was not matched by a cutback in second and third homes, overseas vacations, luxury cars, private jets, and high-tech appurtenances.

In education, government directives and academic hectoring about admissions quotas and ideological indoctrination likewise targeted the middle classes but not the elite. The micromanagers of Western public schools and universities often preferred private academies and rigorous traditional training for own children.

Elites relied on old-boy networks to get their own kids into colleges. Diversity administrators multiplied at universities while indebted students borrowed more money to pay for them.

In matters of immigration, the story was much the same. Western elites encouraged the migration of indigent, unskilled, and often poorly educated foreign nationals who would ensure that government social programs—and the power of the elites themselves—grew.

The champions of open borders made sure that such influxes did not materially affect their own neighborhoods, schools, and privileged way of life.

Elites masked their hypocrisy by virtue-signaling their disdain for the supposedly xenophobic, racist, or nativist middle classes.

Yet the non-elite have experienced firsthand the impact on social programs, schools, and safety from sudden, massive, and often illegal immigration from Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia into their communities.

As for trade, few still believe in “free” trade when it remains so unfair. Why didn’t elites extend to China their same tough-love lectures about global warming, or about breaking the rules of trade, copyrights, and patents?

The middle classes became nauseated by the constant elite trashing of their culture, history, and traditions, including the tearing down of statues, the Trotskyizing of past heroes, the renaming of public buildings and streets, and, for some, the tired and empty whining about “white privilege.”

If Western nations were really so bad, and so flawed at their founding, why were millions of non-Westerners risking their lives to reach Western soil?

How was it that elites themselves had made so much money, had gained so much influence, and had enjoyed such material bounty and leisure from such a supposedly toxic system—benefits that they were unwilling to give up despite their tired moralizing about selfishness and privilege?

In the next few years, expect more grassroots demands for the restoration of the value of citizenship.

There will be fewer middle-class apologies for patriotism and nationalism. The non-elite will become angrier about illegal immigration, demanding a return to the idea of measured, meritocratic, diverse, and legal immigration.

Because elites have no answers to popular furor, the anger directed at them will only increase until they give up—or finally succeed in their grand agenda of a nondemocratic, all-powerful, Orwellian state.

SOURCE 

*******************************

The Left Held National #ImpeachTrump Rallies: ‘almost nobody showed up’

Activists held rallies across America on Saturday in support of impeachment against President Donald Trump. There was just one problem: hardly anyone showed up.

The Blaze Reports:

Who organized the rallies?

The rallies were organized by far-left activist group MoveOn.org, which is pressuring congressional Democrats to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump.

“Events will be visible, family-friendly, public gatherings to demonstrate to our representatives that impeachment is the will of the people. Together, we will inform our communities about Trump’s abuses and the process of impeachment, then make plans to convey our support for impeachment to our elected officials,” the group said on its website.

MoveOn partnered with nearly two dozen groups, including the far-left Women’s March, to host more than 130 protest events in cities across the country. Some politicians, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Minn.), even spoke at rallies.

Pictures across social media revealed that just dozens of activists showed up at most rallies, while just a few hundred showed up in larger, more liberal cities.

SOURCE 

*******************************

Trump Pushes a Major Win for Hunters and Anglers: Access to Huge Swaths of Previously Off-Limits Land

As part of President Donald Trump’s commitment to open public lands to the public, his administration has proposed expanding access at federally controlled wildlife refuges and fish hatcheries by more than 1.4 million acres.

The proposal is currently up for public comment and could take effect this fall.

“He’s basically said, ‘Git-R-Done,’” Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said of Trump in an interview, according to the Washington Examiner.

“The president fundamentally gets that hunters and anglers are the true conservationists in our society. He understands that history and that we need to act in efforts to expand hunting and fishing while at the same time being respectful of private land rights, respectful of state law,” Bernhardt said.

The proposal would increase the number of places managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service that are open for hunting and fishing. Sites in the National Wildlife Refuge System open for hunting will increase from 377 to 382, while sites open for fishing will increase from 312 to 316.

Within the National Fish Hatchery System, 15 sites will be open for hunting or fishing for the first time, according to a statement on the Interior Department’s website. A full list of sites is available through the Fish and Wildlife Service’s website.

“President Trump is committed to expanding public access on public lands, and this proposal is executing on that directive by opening and increasing more access to hunting and fishing by the Fish and Wildlife Service at more stations and across more acres than ever before,” Bernhardt said in a Department of the Interior news release.

“Hunting and fishing are more than just traditional pastimes as they are also vital to the conservation of our lands and waters, our outdoor recreation economy, and our American way of life.

“These refuges and hatcheries provide incredible opportunities for sportsmen and women and their families across the country to pass on a fishing and hunting heritage to future generations and connect with wildlife.”

In the Examiner interview, Bernhardt said access is the first step to appreciation of all America’s outdoors has to offer, and recalled his access to federal lands in Colorado as an example.

“Exposure matters,” he told the newspaper. “Having those opportunities to succeed and fail made me more confident and made me more willing to accept challenges. [If] I lived somewhere where my parents had to drive 300 miles for me to hunt or fish, it wouldn’t have happened at all, though that might have been a lot better for my grades,” he said.

Bernhardt related a comment from former Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who told Bernhardt early in his career with the Interior Department to buy a boat.

“He said, ‘You need to get a boat. The great thing about a boat, if you get your kids on one, even if they are with their friends, they’re stuck with you,’” Bernhardt said, noting that his children are now as fond of the outdoors as he is.

In the Examiner interview, Bernhardt said that his staff went through federal regulations and culled a slew of them to simplify life for sportsmen, and that the new rules align federal regulations with state ones to end confusion.

“You’ve got to be a lawyer to figure out if you can hunt or can’t hunt,” he said, describing the current rules-heavy climate that limits access to public land.

“The biggest reason people don’t start or don’t stay hunting or fishing is largely the access to areas. I think there’s a lot of opportunity to expand access,” he said.

The proposal has the support of many groups that support the outdoors. “This announcement will benefit America’s sportsmen and -women by providing access to prime hunting and fishing areas,” Christy Plumer, chief conservation officer for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, said according to the Washington Examiner.

SOURCE 

**********************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

**************************