On Independence Day, our country celebrates the promise of America.
It's a day to remember that the principles that bind us together vastly outweigh what keeps us apart. The freedom to dream and the opportunity to create a better life -- not just for ourselves, but for each other -- has always defined our great nation.
I am a product of that American Dream. As a kid who grew up in public housing, went on to get an education at a state university and build a business, I am grateful for what this country has made possible for me. In turn, at Starbucks, we have always tried our best to honor our responsibility to the communities we serve.
And on this Fourth of July, our communities need all of us.
Across the country, millions of Americans are out of work. Many more are working tirelessly yet still unable to adequately care for their families. Our veterans are not being welcomed home with the level of support they deserve. Meanwhile, in our nation's capital, our elected leaders are continuing to put ideology over real solutions. I love America, but we all know there is something wrong. The deficits this country must reconcile are much more than financial, and our inability to solve our own problems is sapping our national spirit. We are better than this. America's history has showed that we have accomplished extraordinary things when we act collectively, with courage, creativity, and generosity of spirit -- especially during trying times.
As we celebrate all that is great about our country, let's come together and amplify our voices.
Let's tell our government leaders to put partisanship aside and to speak truthfully about the challenges we face. Let's ask our business leaders to create more job opportunities for the American economy. And as citizens, let's all get more involved. Please, don't be a bystander. Understand that we have a shared responsibility in solving our nation's problems. We can't wait for Washington.
At Starbucks, we are trying to live up to our responsibility by increasing our local community service and helping to finance small-business job creation with Create Jobs for USA. Our company is far from perfect, and we know we can do more for America. But we need your help. We need your voice.
Join the national conversation with #INDIVISIBLE. Starting today, I invite you to share your view of America, and how we can all put citizenship over partisanship. On Instagram, post a photo of the America we all need to see. On Twitter, provide a link to an innovative idea. Blog about who's making a difference in your community; or on YouTube, share how you made your American Dream come true. No matter where you post, if you use the tag #INDIVISIBLE, Starbucks will do its part to collect and amplify your voices.
To spark the conversation in our stores, your local Starbucks will proudly serve everyone a free tall hot brewed coffee on the Fourth of July.
Together, we can set a new tone in America. We hope you agree that doing so is a powerful way to celebrate our nation's birthday.
In 2012, America needs to win the election more than either party does. It is time now to join together as Americans. It is time, whatever our differences, for us to strive and succeed as one nation -- indivisible.
With great respect,
Howard Schultz
Chief Executive Officer, Starbucks Coffee Company
Some believe there is no alternative to the two parties but there is. We must elect Independents to Congress. Independent voters can align behind independent candidates, equipped with new media tools, to break the monopoly of the derailed two-party system.
I quit my job to be an Independent candidate for Congress in Washington State. This is a huge risk but one I feel is worth it. Our country needs a more reasonable and courageous voice. Electing more Democrats and Republicans is not going to get us a different result. The issues at stake cannot be put off any longer due to the partisan stalemate.
An Independent, in contrast to a member of Congress with a party affiliation, is a permanent swing vote within Congress capable of engaging members from both parties, voters, and the media in a forthright way. This is how we are going to get work done.
This country is strong and capable of unity; our leaders are weak and divided. Declare your independence by supporting an Independent candidate. Support James Windle, Independent candidate for Washington’s 8th District. Follow me at Windleforcongress.com and on Facebook. #Indivisible
Selling coffee at the premium they do, Starbucks should be able to pay their very hard-working baristas enough to make a decent living wage for them and their family. But this is not the case as the average wage for a barista at Starbucks is only about a very low $18,000-19,000 a year. Far less than what one would expect for a company who talks about their high values and renewing the Ameican Dream all the time.
While Starbucks should be commended for offering its workers reasonably priced health-care coverage and some stock, and I'm not saying a barista needs to become rich in their work, I am saying that Starbucks wages are more along the lines of dead-end service jobs than decent family-sustaining jobs, and so Starbucks needs to take a look in the mirror before it lectures the rest of the country on politics.
This blows the theory of "all you need to do to advance in a corporation like Starbucks and to make a livable wage is work hard" out of the water. It's much more along the less inspirational lines of kiss your manager's ass and you just might eventually become one too.
I'm not saying they need to pay their baristas as much as $50,000 a year. Just more decently than a poverty-line $18,000 a year. Because some baristas might not want to play games like kiss-ass in order to become a manager just in order to make a livable wage for them or their loved ones. Nor should they have to. Your typical barista deserves just as much respect and dignity as your typical bartender, barber, office worker, or factory worker.
But there's obviously more to an employees life than what they have to pay for at the doctors office or in a surgery room. They obviously still need to be able to pay their rent or mortgage, they need to be able to buy food for them and/or their family, and need to be able to pay for any other miscellaneous bills like heat, electric, auto.
All I'm ultimately saying is that if Starbucks really wants to help create decent and respectable family-sustaining American jobs and wants to treat all people with diginity, then it needs to do better by its employees first.
Here are 5 new policy ideas in my article on the Huffington Post this week to present at the politial conventions. "So what will it take....?
1. Create a major tax credit incentive for the investors, including family and friends, who fund all types of startups.
2. Offer corporations the opportunity to bring back off-shore profits at a no tax or a low tax, with the provision that 1/3 is invested in startup businesses with less than 50 people and 1/3 is invested in tooling, plant and equipment to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.
3. Offer foregiveness of student loans in the amount of one dollar for each dollar invested in a startup business.
4. Offer loans to small business with approvals granted by the local SCORE and SBDC boards, not banks, to small businesses with less than 50 employees.
5. Offer educational programs for business startups in Spanish for the growing Latino population interested in creating their own businesses."
Let your voice be heard and send us your ideas. Read the full article, Is the Amercian Dream Dead? on the Huffington Post at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-bassill/america-job-growth-_b_1634028.html
And what a scam it is too... we have to pay interest to THEM to actually touch OUR money.
And check out Obama's and Romney's biggest donors. You see Goldman Sachs there, along with JP Morgan Chase and other huge bankers. Guess who REALLY calls the shots, folks?
Didn't we learn anything in 2009 and 2010? To appease, Obama supported a stimulus that was too little and a health care plan modeled after Mitt Romney. Result? Blame that the stimulus didn't do more, cries of socialism against the meek health care plan, and an orchestrated birth of the radical uncompromising tea party. That Obama's bipartisan approach was destined to fail became clear when it was revealed that on THE VERY NIGHT OF OBAMA's 2008 VICTORY, key Republican players were meeting to discuss how to best undermine and defeat him four years hence!
Fact is, there are some major fat cats and a sizeable segment of the electorate with no appreciation for the contribution government makes to our quality of life. They are not a majority, and cannot substantially accomplish their Social Darwinist vision EXCEPT under one scenario: if the majority of us who do not share their vision LOSE THE WILL to opppose them and keep them away from the reigns of power. That is what happened in 2010. We cannot let it happen again in 2012!!!
You are so wrong about how things like the healthcare bill worked out. From day 1 Obamacare was strictly partisan and was being championed by some of the most antagonistic Democrats (like Tom Daschle) that Republicans were always outsiders. There were stories all over the news (even on cbs and abc) about how Obama was designing his healthcare bill behind closed doors with only Democrats and lobbyists in those meetings.
Now that is not to say Republicans did not turn to partisanship themselves, after Obama gave them the finger at the start, they held a grudge and decided if Obama wanted to go it alone and without them, he would get exactly that. They stuck to their guns and let Obama hang himself with his own partisanship rope.
The real issue with Obamacare was not really the Republicans anyway to be completely honest, it was fellow Democrats who blocked most of the process because not all Democrats thought the Government should be in charge of healthcare to the extent some wanted. Many were concerned with the cost, some were concerned with certain mandates. Obama tried to make it seem all the Republicans fault but to be completely honest, 2 years of a super majority was wasted due to internal fighting inside the Democrat ranks, not because of Republicans.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamasdeal/view/
Finally, Baucus saw that it was hopeless to get support for anything from Enzi and Grassley, and he decided to go forward with what they had. In the Senate Committee vote, Snowe joined the Democrats in voting for the bill to move forward.
Obama asked many times during the process for a Republican alternative plan which would accomplish similar objectives like in terms of increased access. Nothing came forward. Even yet Republicans have nothing, because they are not fundamentally interested in increasing access to health care.
Conservatives Remain the Largest Ideological Group in U.S.
by Lydia Saad
PRINCETON, NJ -- Political ideology in the U.S. held steady in 2011, with 40% of Americans continuing to describe their views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This marks the third straight year that conservatives have outnumbered moderates, after more than a decade in which moderates mainly tied or outnumbered conservatives.
January 12, 2012
http://www.gallup.com/poll/152021/conservatives-remain-largest-ideological-group.aspx s
Today, if I try to explain the facts to a 99%er, so he/she can understand how the war was fought, and perhaps regain a bit of power, I likely will be greeted with anger and sarcasm. That’s how deep the brainwashing has gone.
Such is the irony of ignorance, and the brilliance of the 1%. " says Mitchell in
http://rodgermmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/how-does-the-1-convince-the-99-to-lose-the-war/
Divide and conquer works.
The majority of folks don't favor going to an "everybody on their own" form of Social Darwinism. They don't favor a thoroughly unconstrained form of capitalism like we had in the Gilded Age. They still think that Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are good things. They understand that the slogan "you know better than government how to spend your money" is foolishly off-point -- as they are smart enough to realize that alone you do not have the option to buy your own military, your own roads, your own court system, your own prison system, etc. etc. The ability of this majority to reason and differentiate fact from fiction is not overcome by a baseless practically pathological hatred of this president. But the key point for the country's future well-being is that this majority of rational voters needs to get out and vote, as the knee-jerk anti-government Socialist Darwinists do account for a highly-motivated third of the population.
It is a system that is often infantile in its approach to problems and tends to result in a political oscillation that is eventually effective but often wasteful.
OTOH, Canadians seem less ideologically bound and less easily-led than the current regime believes.
Unfortunately, the kind of “economic growth” which is most often being referred to includes a vast array of “enterprises” which require the continued exploitation of flaws and weaknesses in human nature, fragile ecosystems, and already significantly depleted natural resources—and which are much of the reason why cultures of violence, greed, and corruption have become so common that most people believe they are inevitable.
We—all of us, collectively—are going to be in deep trouble, if we are going to rely on “economic growth” to resolve our problems.
Collaborative, non-partisan, problem solving is urgently needed.
Collaborative problem solving can begin with surveys or questionnaires offered to all residents in a given community. Well thought out questionnaires or surveys can help people rediscover truths about their goals, how what they are doing in everyday circumstances of community life relates to achieving those goals, the challenges perceived as the highest priority challenges by the majority of residents in a community, and what residents are doing to overcome such challenges.
Following up the surveys with Community Visioning Initiatives, supported by many neighborhood “Community Teaching and Learning Centers”, are one way people at the local community level can acquire the collaborative tools and skill sets necessary for all the “little events” in the circumstance of everyday community life to have a positive and cumulative effect on the challenges they have identified as priority challenges.