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Bernie Sanders Says Amazon Treats Workers as ‘Disposable’ in ‘Uniquely Dangerous’ Warehouses

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In a letter to Amazon announcing the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) was opening an investigation on the retailer, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) called Amazon’s warehouses “uniquely dangerous” and said the company treats employees as “disposable.”

Sanders didn’t pull any punches in the letter sent Tuesday to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Sanders accuses founder Jeff Bezos and Jassy of creating “a corporate culture that treats workers as disposable.”

“At every turn—from warehouse design and workstation setup, to pace of work requirements, to medical care for injuries and subsequent pressure to return to work—Amazon makes decisions that actively harm workers in the name of its bottom line,” Sanders wrote.

READ MORE: 34% of America’s Wealthiest Corporations Paid Zero In Income Taxes, Thanks to Trump

Sanders points out other investigations into Amazon’s practices by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and by United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York over worker safety. Despite these investigations, conditions in Amazon’s warehouses haven’t improved, Sanders says. In fact, the rate of serious injuries at Amazon warehouses—6.6 per 100 workers—is more than twice the injury rate at other warehouses, Sanders says.

“Amazon’s warehouses are uniquely dangerous. In 2022 alone, Amazon warehouse workers suffered nearly 39,000 injuries, 95 percent of which were so serious that they required workers to either lose time at work or switch to modified duty,” Sanders wrote.

To illustrate, Sanders cites stories that he and his staff had heard from Amazon employees. An unnamed worker said she had to take vacation time to heal from on-the-job injuries to both wrists, because Amazon “would not let her slow down to heal.” Another worker said she injured her knee so badly she could barely walk from the parking lot to her job, but Amazon forced her to be on her feet for the entire shift.

Sanders also alleges that Amazon’s on-site medical clinics are “designed to undertreat and underreport injuries and to get workers back on warehouse floors as soon as possible.” He says in one case, a worker hit on the head by a falling box showed signs of a skull fracture, but was put back to work after visiting the clinic. Since companies are required to report injuries that need treatment “beyond first aid” to OSHA, if the clinic refuses to give anything beyond first aid, it doesn’t have to report the injury, Sanders said.

“In one story shared with my staff, Amazon steered a worker experiencing severe back pain to a doctor who told her that her back was fine and that she should return to work. When she got a second opinion from a doctor not affiliated with the company, she learned that three discs in her back were injured and that she needed immediate treatment. She had to fight Amazon for months to receive this treatment, worsening her injury and leaving her with long-term pain,” he wrote.

Sanders’ letter closes with a nine-item request for information. Amazon has until July 5 to respond.

Amazon has faced allegations of mistreating workers in its warehouses since at least 2013, when a bombshell Financial Times article described working conditions in one of the company’s UK warehouses. The article said workers walk between seven and 15 miles a day in ill-fitting safety boots provided by Amazon, and are constantly monitored. And in 2021, an article in The Intercept alleged that Amazon drivers were forced to pee in bottles, however the company denied this.

 

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Trump Campaign Furious Walz Using Trump’s Own ‘Reckless, Dangerous Rhetoric’ Against Him

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16 hours ago

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October 14, 2024

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The Trump campaign lashed out at Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on Monday after the Democratic vice presidential nominee quoted the Republican presidential candidate who repeatedly over the weekend has been saying he would like to use the U.S. military against American citizens.

As NCRM reported, the Republican presidential nominee said he thinks the U.S. Armed Forces should be used against Americans who oppose him, called his critics “the enemy from within,” and declared they are more dangerous than America’s greatest foreign adversaries, including Russia, China, and North Korea.

“I always say we have the outside enemy, so you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say, Kim Jung-Un,” Trump told supporters at an Aurora, Colorado rally on Friday. But, he added: “It’s the enemy from within, all the scum that we have to deal with that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia,” he said as the audience cheered.

READ MORE: MAGA Furious After Kamala Harris Agrees to Fox News Interview

Then, on Sunday, Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo of his desire to use armed forces against Americans on Election Day.

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within, we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military.”

Trump War Room, the official social media account of the Trump campaign, posted video of Walz on Monday speaking with supporters.

“Donald Trump over the weekend was talking about using the U.S. Army against people who disagree with him,” Walz had said. “Just so you’re clear about that, that’s you. That’s what he’s talking about. This is not some mythical thing out there. He called it the ‘enemy within.'”

The Trump War Room social media account wrote: “Tim Walz peddles a disgusting lie that President Trump will use the U.S. Army against his political opponents: ‘That’s you, that’s what he’s talking about.’ This is reckless, dangerous rhetoric,” the campaign stated. “Tim should be ASHAMED of himself.”

READ MORE: ‘Is He OK?’: Trump’s Dark of Night Rage Posting Backfires

See the videos below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

 

 

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MAGA Furious After Kamala Harris Agrees to Fox News Interview

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17 hours ago

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October 14, 2024

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The right wing freakout is in full force after Fox News announced Vice President Kamala Harris will sit down for an interview with then network’s chief political anchor Bret Baier on Wednesday in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania.

It will be the Democratic presidential nominee’s first official Fox News interview, after entering the race in July, less than three months ago.

“While Trump became the first major presidential nominee to back out of the traditional pre-election ’60 Minutes’ interview, Kamala Harris has agreed to sit down with Fox News for an interview this week,” noted Zeteo News’ Justin Baragona.

“Harris has upped her media appearances recently, having sat down with Stephen Colbert, 60 Minutes‘ Bill Whitaker and Howard Stern, among other personalities,” Deadline reports. “But she’s also been urged by some supporters to make an appearance on Fox News, populated by voices on the right, even though Baier is on the network’s news side. With an average of 2.3 million viewers, Special Report has ranked among the most watched cable news programs.”

READ MORE: ‘Is He OK?’: Trump’s Dark of Night Rage Posting Backfires

Trump recently did pull out of a previously agreed-to interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” and has refused to do any more debates with Harris after losing the first one on ABC News. Before that debate Trump had suggested a condition of him participating in the ABC debate would be Harris had to agree to two others, which she did. Next week she will appear in a CNN town hall, which originally was to be a debate until Trump pulled out.

“As of today, it has been **one month** since Trump’s been interviewed by a mainstream media outlet,” noted Harris campaign spokesperson Ian Sams, “as he has backed out of 60 Minutes and refuses to debate again.”

“Meanwhile Harris is willing to even go on Fox,” he added.

During the 2024 campaign Trump has done virtually no interviews with mainstream media outlets, avoiding The New York Times, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and MSNBC. He did sit down with NBC News’s “Meet the Press” for Kristen Welker’s first interview as the show’s new moderator last year in September.

READ MORE: ‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

The Nation’s John Nichols commented that Trump is “running scared.”

Trump supporters “swarmed all over Fox’s Bret Baier today like he was a Capitol Police Officer on J6 after he posted on Twitter that he will be interviewing Kamala Harris this Wednesday,” MeidasTouch News reports. “Baier received 2,200 comments on his tweet announcing the interview in just the first hour after he posted it.”

“Most of the MAGA comments to Baier follow a consistent theme – that they lost all faith in Baier after his tough interview embarrassed Trump last year, and that they expect him to go into this interview with guns blazing to win back their favor. They also mentioned some of the previous Harris interview conspiracies – that her earrings were airpods where she was getting the answers, that she was given the questions ahead of time, that Baier and Fox called the 2020 election too early for Biden, etc.,” MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski reported.

Journalist Mike Rothschild, who has written books on right wing conspiracy theories, observed: “This is smart from the VP. She has nothing to lose by appearing on the news arm of Fox News (as opposed to the screeching infotainment arm) and if she breaks through to a fraction of their viewership, it’s worth it. It’s almost like the Harris campaign knows what it’s doing.”

The news Harris will appear on Fox News comes on the heels of one of that outlet’s former top hosts, Geraldo Rivera, denouncing Donald Trump and endorsing the Vice President’s run for President.

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s X Engaged in a ‘Pattern of Election Interference’ to Help Trump: Reports

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‘Violently Authoritarian’: Alarm Over Trump’s Threat to Use Military Against Americans

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22 hours ago

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October 14, 2024

By

Donald Trump over the weekend repeatedly said he wants to use the U.S. military against Americans who oppose him, called his critics “the enemy from within,” and declared they are more dangerous than America’s greatest foreign adversaries, including Russia, China, and North Korea.

“I always say we have the outside enemy, so you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say, Kim Jung-Un,” Trump told supporters at an Aurora, Colorado rally on Friday (video below). But, he added: “It’s the enemy from within, all the scum that we have to deal with. that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia,” he said as the audience cheered.

On Sunday, Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo of his desire to use armed forces against Americans on Election Day.

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within, we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military.”

READ MORE: ‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

Pointing to those remarks, constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe says, “Just think what this means for the 2028 election if Trump & Vance are in control as of January 20, 2025.”

In both events Trump had been talking about undocumented immigrants before switching his target to American citizens.

AFP called his remarks against U.S. citizens a “sinister election-related threat.” Rolling Stone called it a “a fascist plan to deploy military forces against U.S. citizens who oppose him on election day.” HuffPost described his remarks as “echoing similar language used by Nazis,” and HuffPost legal/justice reporter Brandi Buchman warned the “level of danger that people face if he is ever allowed near office again cannot be understated.” The New Republic declared Trump went “Full Dictator.”

“Trump as President and Commander in Chief would seek to wage war on the American people,” warned historian and professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on fascism and authoritarianism. She adds, “our armed forces could have a new authoritarian role: domestic repression. ‘Handling’ the Leader’s enemies=violence.”

Attorney and former federal and state prosecutor Eric Lisann responded, writing: “Trump has already requested military equipment and protection for him now, as a mere candidate. He will gut the military of its finest leaders, many of whom have identified the historic threat he poses to the country, and turn it into his personal guard.”

The popular historian and professor Heather Cox Richardson called Trump’s attack on his political opponents, “the full leap to authoritarianism.”

“Trump’s full-throated embrace of Nazi ‘race science’ and fascism is deadly dangerous,” she added, noting his “campaign seems to be deliberately pushing the comparisons to historic American fascism by announcing that Trump will hold a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on October 27, an echo of a February 1939 rally held there by American Nazis in honor of President George Washington’s birthday.”

RELATED: Trump’s Upcoming Madison Square Garden MAGA Rally Sparks Comparisons to 1939 Nazi Event

And historian Steven A. Woodbridge wrote: “Pointing to the ‘enemy within’ is a classic strategy used by those with authoritarian tendencies many times in the past & it would appear nothing has changed. This man is a clear threat to democracy.”

Journalist Ahmed Baba warned, “Trump’s rhetoric is growing more violently authoritarian. His migrant fear-mongering is increasingly racist and now he’s once again saying he’ll deploy the military against people he disagrees with. Trump’s insane authoritarianism is the most important story of this election.”

Watch the videos below or at this link:

READ MORE: Trump Campaign an ‘Influence Operation’ Says Former State Dept. Official — Experts Agree

 

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