Grubstakers - Episode 39: The Walton Family (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

Here's part 2 of our Walton family episode. We discuss Wal-Mart's supply chain abuses, their secret post apocalyptic bunker, their labor abuses with truck drivers, the crime problem in Wal-Mart parking lots, and the crime problem whenever Alice Walton gets behind the wheel. Let us know if there's anything we missed and we'll cover it whenever we come back for part 3!

This week on Grubstakers, having to pay your workers is bullshit. Hey, welcome back to Grubstakers. Sean P. McCarthy here, joined by... Yogi Boyle. Steve Jeffries. Andy Palmer. And as you're hearing there, it is the theme song for Penn & Teller's Bullshit, which I remember as a child, they wrote an episode

which is basically all about why Walmart is good. And I guess, Yogi, you watched that recently. Oh, yeah, that was... Can you give us a quick summary? Essentially, you know, they talk about why Walmart is good is because they employ people. You know, technically sweatshop jobs aren't as bad as living in a third world country. And, you know, basically, Walmart's not bad because money is good. They were like, a living wage is bullshit.

Yeah, essentially. Worker safety laws in the third world, also bullshit. You know what's not bullshit? What? The Gary Johnson presidential campaign. But yeah, Penn and Tell are what libertarian musician uh magicians they wish they could play music yeah you know uh teller made the most sense in that episode i think i was agreeing with all of his points literally the only thing i remember from that episode

because i did watch it a long time ago i think it was like a high school libertarian or something but um i remember really glossing over that yeah sean talk more about that period of your life it was like yeah this was when i was attracted to 16 year olds so it makes sense for me um but yeah so uh uh the the only thing i remember from that episode is they interview some guy who doesn't like walmart and he like makes fun of the workers at walmart and then pendulet gets like up in the camera like fuck you how dare you disrespect the hard-working people at walmart yeah you know like in retrospect you're like well what do you think the management at walmart does mr gillette yeah that scene that scene is these two copy shop employees that have a website called hellmart.com

where they make bootleg Walmart t-shirts parodying why Walmart sucks. And at one point, those two people are like, yeah, the people that shop at Walmart are buck-toothed guys and women with too many kids, essentially, and Pendula gets all uppity about it. But then the sad reality is... Way to shoot your cause in the foot. Yeah, right, right. Hey, let's insult workers in front of this nasty libertarian who fucking makes a patented tub for himself to have sex in.

Does the Dirty Jobs guy have an episode on it? He interviews the Waltons like, you know, burning children in Bangladesh to death is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Somebody has to cash those checks. So, yeah. So should we start out with Walmart's basically extra-national segment? Yeah, we could get to that, but I should just mention that laws against wage theft are

bullshit. I mean, a fucked up thing. So yeah, I think as a lead-in to and so this episode, the previous episode... You know, we're making fun of them, but their ball and cup routine, one of the best I've ever seen. All of the supplies purchased at Walmart.

They do it with clear plastic cups, and it's still very impressive. Well, I mean, that's what they do. They're not bullshit. Yeah. But you know what are bullshit? I'm sure...'s what they do. They're not bullshit. Yeah. But you know what are bullshit? I'm sure. Unions.

Yeah. I'm sure Mr. Gillette and Mr. Teller would appreciate it if the manager at a venue they were at came up to them after and said, yeah, we're only going to pay you for 40 minutes of the performance. Because, but yeah, like like so just to kind of uh yeah so the previous episode we talked about um uh jim walton and how he built the walton empire sam walton excuse me sam walton and how he built the uh the walton and walmart empire and this week we'll kind of just talk about some of the horrific abuses of walmart we can't get to

all of them and then we'll talk about the seven heirs to the Walton fortune just a little bit. Who allegedly all fuck each other. We'll give you a short rundown on those people. Allegedly. But, yeah, and I guess Andy's right. We should probably start with the supply chain because that is the most horrific thing Walmart,

or at least the most horrific thing I can think of that Walmart is involved in. They're certainly not the only criminals in this respect, but it is worth talking about. And something that I want to emphasize, because this kind of goes into Walmart's labor practices, Walmart sets people up in the position where they have to break the law in order to achieve results. So it's like, what'll is like say you're a store manager at Walmart. You are given X number of labor hours to achieve results, and if you don't do that, you'll get fired. And these results are just impossible to achieve with those labor hours.

So the Walmart high cost to low prices documentary, they interviewed a manager at Walmart, and he said that because they don't give any overtime at Walmart, he constantly saw managers. He said he only saw one manager in his entire time there who didn't do this. When a worker punches 41, 42 hours for the week, they will go into the system and change it to 40 hours. This is wage theft. It's completely illegal, but of course there's no punishment for it. But it is just something where it's like, if you are the manager who actually obeys the law walmart's gonna fire your ass that sounds like something that happened when i worked for some anonymous company that was owned by the swiss post office

um but yeah so i mean i i can't go into detail about this uh swiss post uh type company that's completely understandable andy that might have done wage theft and you know union intimidation allegedly allegedly andy just admit it you worked for a gay pornography company um but yeah so it's like It's something where It was pornography equality They never paid overtime They act

They put on such a woke face For the public Look, we gave you five minutes to finish We don't care We're not gonna pay you for seven It's not my fault I'm on snris but so yeah like as i mentioned there uh if you're a manager and you can't get the job done

they'll fire you and find someone who will and the only way to get the job done with the number of labor hours you are given is essentially to engage in wage theft and other shady practices and it's something where it sets sets Walmart themselves up in a pretty solid position where they will say, we tell our managers never break the law, but they give them goals that are impossible without breaking the law. And then they fire them when they don't break the law to meet those goals. And the exact same thing happens in Walmart supply chain where,

well, the thing about labor law is uh it's bullshit having to be 16 to work at a factory is bullshit all right so basically i want to talk about two blow job that uh chris's wife from the soprano sopranos gave me bullshit adriana blew pendulet right after he was finished blowing jim walton but so i want to talk about two rather horrific incidents that concern Walmart. And we can talk about Walmart supply or reaction to both of them. But this is about Walmart supply chain. And it's pretty endemic of Walmart supply chain practices where there's been a lot of

reporting about their supply chains in China, you know, like they're all involved with the suicide net Foxconn type of thing where these people are working, you know, what, 12 hour days, 14 hour days. There's a lot of child labor in Cambodia. In Cambodia, there was an incident where like workers organizing for, I think, 20, I think it was 20 extra dollars a day. And they were shot and killed. Wow. So, and again, Walmart is not the only offender here, but I want to talk about these two incidents in Bangladesh, because they very specifically concern Walmart, and you can see Walmart's corporate practice and corporate response to this.

So the first is called the Dhaka fire at the Tazreen fashion factory. This happens in 2012. About 117 people die. It's kind of a classic, you know, triangle shirtwaist factory fire situation where exits to the outside were locked and the only way out was through the windows on the upper floor.

Over 100 workers were injured by jumping out of the windows from the third and fourth floor to avoid burning to death. And that's from cleanclothes.org. cleanclothes alleges that as of 2015 walmart has paid no compensation to those people who uh were completely burned to death well think about fire escapes is they're bullshit let the government tell you how you can escape a fire um but so this is interesting so like what will happen is uh and this happened with uh both of these incidents we're going to talk about

is that as soon as somewhere in the supply chain is found creating horrific abuses walmart says we didn't know they were supplying with us so they point the finger at their suppliers where they say the suppliers use these factories without telling us or getting our permission. But it's also that they go through a company called Plausible Deniability LLC. But so basically, the other weird thing is that even though Walmart denies knowing that these were in the supply chain, there are records of Walmart inspectors going there and certifying these places. So what happens is in this particular factory where there's this fire that killed 117 people, I'm just quoting from the New York Times here, an accredited outside auditors had periodically inspected the factory on Walmart's behalf.

A May 2011 audit, this is a year before the fire, gave the factory a quote orange rating, meaning that there were higher risk violations and that it would be re-audited within six months. If a factory gets three orange ratings over two years, it supposedly loses Walmart's approval. But what happens is there's a follow-up audit a few months later giving them a yellow rating, which means they supposedly improved standards. Of course, they didn't. Within a year, more than 100 people would burn to death because they had no fire extinguishers, no fire exits, all these things. So it's like, and if you watch the documentary,

Walmart, the high cost of low prices, they actually interview one of these factory certification guys who worked at Walmart and essentially tried to do the job honestly, where he said himself he believed in the Walmart culture and he like, even like doing the stupid cheer and stuff. And he came up and he gets promoted to this job where he inspects these factories. And what happens is like, he notices the horrific workplace violations, such as, you know, lack of fire exits and all these things and, you know, endemic child labor, and he won't certify the factories. So they fire him, you know lack of fire exits and all these things right you know endemic child labor and he won't certify the factories so they fire him you know they fire him for that and it's just the same thing with the managers and these kinds of things where you see in this case at this

particular factory i like how like their corporate ladder is like if you do a good job on the floor you can work your way up to sweatshop sweatshop paper over yeah like he told sweatshop enabler he told the camera like the night after his first day there he got on the phone with his wife and just cried because it was so horrible watching you know these people in these horrific working conditions but it was something where he tried to do the job honestly and they fired him for doing the job honestly and you see again with know these people in these horrific working conditions but it was something where he tried to do the job honestly and they fired him for doing the job honestly and you see again with this one uh this particular factory the daca fire at the tazreen factory in bangladesh um some

walmart inspector gave this an orange rating which means they need to be improved but then of course either him under threat of his job his or her job or some other person went back two months later and was like no actually it's fine after no changes have been made but uh but yeah so for this fire walmart uh as of 2015 has not produced any funds to compensate the victims. But the New York Times found something pretty interesting, which was in April. First time for everything. In April 2011, there was a meeting between Bangladeshi factory owners, government officials, NGOs, several apparel factory. Yeah.

And this was in response to several apparel factory fires that had killed dozens of workers the previous winter. This is before the big fire. And a Walmart representative was at this meeting, and this is from the New York Times, the Walmart Director of Ethical Sourcing, which is an Orwellian title if there ever was one. But so along with an official from another major apparel retailer, it might have been Gap or one of these people, they noted that the proposed improvements in electrical and fire safety would involve as many as 4,500 factories in Bangladesh and would be, quote, in most cases, a very extensive and costly modification. It is not financially feasible for the brands to

make such an investment the minutes of this meeting said so about a year before this fire that killed more than 117 people a walmart rep went out there and said we're not going to spend any money to do fire safety and this is an extremely small part of bottom line profit margin it's very cheap in the long run you know like um but of course it's all about shareholder value and maximizing squeezing everything out of every little fucking person on the chain job creating and uh it's just kind of funny because of course you know this fire breaks out in 2012 117 people die and then walmart's like we had no idea where they're like sending people

to inspect this factory and having meetings about how they don't want to spend any money to improve fire safety and stuff. I mean, if maybe those people in those factories studied a little harder, they could get a job that won't burn them alive. I mean, I think there's a lot of uh deflection from personal responsibility going on here i'm just imagining like pendulet getting angry at a 13 year old working in the factory like how dare you disrespect walmart make fun of the people in the executive offices those are hard-working americans but yeah i mean it's, and so there's a person quoted from the Workers' Rights Consortium that

says, it stretches fragility to think that Walmart, famous for its tight control over global supply chain, didn't know about this. And it's like, it gets into the other thing. Walmart doesn't disclose publicly who their sources are for, you know, garments and everything else, but they do these internal company audits, which is, you know, cover your own ass and these kinds of things. All facilities, I'm quoting from an article in The Guardian,

all facilities are disclosed to Walmart for, quote, responsible sourcing audits. Yet since the audit reports are not public, there is no way to confirm whether its suppliers are abiding by the company's standards so this is essentially the show game walmart plays where they know who their suppliers are but if there's a violation or a fire that kills 100 people they can say no we had no idea right because they don't publicly disclose their suppliers yeah not nearly as impressive as penn and teller doing the shell

game with clear cups and uh and i guess the second story here is even more depressing but then we can maybe move on to the more light-hearted topics of wage theft and uh rampant sexism and walmart's hiring practices they're truckers yeah um but so the other story is about a year after this fire that kills 117 people, there's another, there's a building collapse, the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh in 2013. This is an eight-story commercial building collapses. 1,138 people died.

This housed several garment factories that did supply Walmart. And the fucked up thing is essentially after this collapse happens, there's a split whereby H&M and some of the European companies enter into a legally binding agreement with the trade unions on the ground to say we will implement factory safety reforms. What's the chance that this collapse that killed basically the equivalent of half of a 9-11, that in those factories they were making t-shirts that say, we remember 9-11?

Yo, Doug. Yeah, jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams but building code violations do the thing about building code violations building codes are bullshit you think the government can tell you how to build your building

it must be so awkward to just finish like final cut of your like building codes are bullshit episode. And then like 2000 people die the next day. Um, but so yeah, so, uh,

what happens is, um, there's this accord, which is again, uh, a legally binding agreement between H and M and some of these other European, uh, garment companies,

which, uh, in fairness, uh, didn't really do much. Like, according to one report by the Asia Floor Wage Alliance, despite the binding nature of this accord, progress has been slow. Just seven out of the 1,600 factories have completed implementing their corrective action plans. Another 57 factories are on track but almost 1400 factories are behind schedule so even though this is a legally binding accord like as of 2016 not much has been done but walmart and the gap and some other north american suppliers uh decide not to enter into this and instead they set up a PR campaign, which is the Alliance for Bangladesh

Worker Safety, where it's just a voluntary organization, basically. It doesn't involve the trade unions at all. So they just set up their own little implementation where they spend no money. And they say, yes, we're setting up this alliance for bangladesh worker safety which of course does not incorporate any voices from the bangladesh workers they actually put a former congressperson like some blue dog democrat from california in charge of it and it's all just like a front-facing pr scam i think this is from the guardian it might be from somewhere else uh the five-year voluntary plan aims to train workers and inspect factories while requiring Bangladesh factory owners to pay for safety renovations. To help factories pay for this, the alliance will provide $100 million in low-cost loans.

But so basically, like, they can't even enter into this agreement with the trade unions after more than 1,000 people are killed because they don't want to have any legal liabilities whatsoever. So they set up this PR campaign, which is just entirely like, yeah, you guys go fix it. Well, I'm glad that they were able to extend to them years of debt servitude to improve their structural integrity. The executive director of the... The quote was from SustainableBrands.com. It's not like with a loan,

there will be pressure under the company to cut costs in any way they can manage. From the executive director of the Workers' Rights Consortium, they are essentially asking the companies and factory owners to regulate themselves. They want people to see this as an alternative plan, but it's no different than what companies have been doing without success for decades. And again, this is like working conditions in,

you know, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China have not meaningfully changed. And we've been having the same conversation about, you know, sweatshop labor since at least the 90s in the United States. And it's just something where it's like when almost 1,200 people die because of a factory collapse, Walmart will just set up a public relations campaign. And they will set up the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, which, of course, does not consult Bangladesh workers. You know, that alliance that famously doesn't include the people it is named after. The thing about self-determination. It's bullshit. But yeah, and I mean, that's basically the story of walmart in the third world uh supply chain and i

think less than two percent of i believe clothing in the united states is actually manufactured in the united states like there's been a huge shift where particularly particularly in the uh clothing sold in the united states is manufactured in the united states but uh there's been a huge shift particularly in the regard of the garment industry offshore. And Walmart has been a leader in these horrific abuses. And they really have just like a see no evil, hear no evil approach where they put the onus on their suppliers to give them goods at these cheap prices that are really not achievable without these labor and building code violations.

And then, of course, they have plausible deniability because they don't publicly disclose who their suppliers are, even though they're monitoring it internally. I want to talk about the trucker situation at Walmart. So as we all know, Tracy Morgan was hit by a truck driver that worked for Walmart on the New Jersey Turnpike. The truck driver was like, this is for my gay son. So at the time,

people don't know about this, but that truck driver was driving 20 miles over the speed limit. So he was driving 65 where a truck driver should be driving 45. Well, you know the thing about speed limit. So he's driving 65 where a truck driver should be driving 45 but also... Well, you know the thing about speed limits. What the fuck? The thing

about speed limits is they're bullshit. Alright, got it. About speed limits. Is there bullshit? Okay. All right. Got it. Got it. What was the first thing that came up? Was it an advertisement?

It was like a acapella version of the 30 Rock theme song. Oh, I see what you're doing. I didn't. Okay. All right. Anyway. The thing about acapella remixes is they're actually bullshit. All right. So Truck Driver hit Tracy Morgan. Truck Driver hit Tracy Morgan. mixes is they're actually bullshit all right so truck driver hit truck driver but he'd been driving for 28 hours at that point and um the problem with truck drivers at walmart is that when

um sam the ma'am uh was alive basically they were treating truck drivers correctly because they are the backbone of the big store industry. And if you look online now, they're having trouble finding new fleet truck drivers because Walmart's gutting their costs, basically. Originally, they would all get paid the same until 15 years later, then make a cent on each mile. But now all truck drivers hired will make five cents less per mile until after five years.

And that plus a whole bunch of new laws with cameras in trucks and stuff are making it so that it's very difficult for truck drivers to make a living at Walmart shipping goods. At one point, I was reading a thing where basically if you're driving a truck for over 10 hours and the store was closed, they'd let you just go home at night. But now they want you to wait until somebody can help you out. It's like they've just made it so much harder for a truck driver to be able to do the job correctly. And so there's a lot of initiative right now that says Walmart is putting more money into the truck driving jobs. But really, they're putting more money in paying truck drivers less, which is terrible. Also, I'm just imagining Tracy Morgan in the car on the way to the club.

Like, I can't wait to do my new bits about Walmart supply chain problems. I think I'm really going to expose the corporate culture over there right right crazily it's difficult to find drivers if you pay them less yeah yeah like there's a claim there's a truck driver shortage but it's really just like this one company just like raised their wages to like a slightly reasonable degree and suddenly that shortage went away yeah they uh they bought like i think 10 or 12 Tesla semis, and they're testing it in Canada right now. But I worry about what that will do to me.

Finally, we can start killing robots. We can start killing comedians with robots. But if you just go on YouTube and look up Truckers Walmart, there's a whole bunch of people. I watched two or three of these videos, but they're, like, if you just go on YouTube and look up Truckers Walmart, there's a whole bunch of people just like, there's like, I watched two or three of these videos, but they're like 20 plus minutes long and they're all about how Walmart is fucking everyone over.

And one of the main things is that in Illinois, a Walmart was fined $50,000 for fines because of truck parking. And it wasn't that the trucks aren't allowed to park there but it's a zoning issue but walmart could just change that by painting new parking lines for the truckers and you know in a lot of the forums truckers are saying that like well if we're on the roads waiting for a rest stop we'll drive another hour or two before we can get to a rest stop that's why we choose to park at a walmart because nobody's fucking there at two in the morning and it's a fucking open parking lot, you know?

Um, but one of the other reasons that they stopped allowing people to park overnight at Walmarts is because, uh, people are living in the parking lots cause you know, essentially you got a area of all of the jobs and you don't have enough money to pay people and they can't afford a place to live. So they live in the cars in the Walmart parking lot.

Well, I mean if everyone had a job,'d have serious inflation i mean that's that's yeah if if some people have to sleep in the walmart parking lot you know that's just what we have to do to keep that inflation down well they're not allowed to park there anymore so they got to keep they got to keep moving if you know what i mean well that's that's good because i'm sure sleeping in parking lots also causes inflation walmart's had a problem with the self-driving trucks where they keep like leaving the depot driving to tracy morgan's house target acquired yeah the um there was another comedian have like a group of people who are hired straight out of the Air Force drone program around like computers monitoring Tracy Morgan,

waiting for the, like the sign to send a truck into his house. Yeah. The, there was another comedian in the car, James McNair and his kids reportedly got $10 million and he was killed. He was killed. Yes.

That's why his kids got the money. And Tracy Morgan, they was rumored he made 90 yes um that's why his kids got the money and tracy morgan they was rumored he made 90 million but then they deny it which in my head i'm like oh they might have denied it because it was less and then i'm like they might have denied it because it could have been more yeah but essentially if you look at the lawsuits that walmart has settled with uh throughout the years they probably paid about a billion dollars worth of just uh we fucked up here's more money like there are constant worker complaints that uh lead to lawsuits including uh this tracy morgan incidents but one more didn't they also countersue tracy morgan

well so they countersued the insurance company because they own and they have the they have insurance for the truckers right and they wanted the insurance company xl insurance to pay for what they settled with tracy morgan and that insurance company was like no we're not gonna do that and so walmart's like well we'll sue you so then there was another out of court settlement between the insurers and walmart so they won't even pay like they made this fucking guy drive 28 hours. He's obviously rushing to his next delivery, trying to finish his 28 plus hour shift. I mean, that's not sleep. That, you know, driving 28 hours isn't, oh, he took a nap, you know, for like five hours.

He's just been driving for a day. I mean, he might have gotten a brief nap in at the end of that drive. Ironically, he was watching 30 Rock brief nap in at the end of that drive. Ironically, he was watching 30 Rock in the car in the truck. I don't know, man. This is an incident that occurred where it was tragic, but you know Walmart

has a whole bunch of truck drivers that are just working 10 to 15 hours every fucking day. It's horrifying because it all fits the same theme where these truck drivers are worked to death and if they fuck up, Walmart will say, it's your fault. The manager is forced to cut labor.

The first Walmart will say, what the what? Blurg. Traffic laws are bullshit all right so moving on from uh their horrific practices with the truck drivers um i guess we should just mention um i hate to bring it back to the bangladesh thing but do you have that drop about child labor? I do. Yeah, so in addition to these horrific working conditions, they just have a lot of children working. I think one of the CEOs of Walmart was actually interviewed about this in 1992,

and he's like, well, people might have different definitions of what a child is. Wow. Well, the thing about defining what constitutes a child is it's bullshit. How many times do you think that the whiteboard for Penn & Teller's bullshit had age of consent laws written on it and then erased but yeah so like bob ortega like uh the guy who we mentioned wrote the sam walton biography he goes to like one of these factories and he

finds all these underage workers and like he knew that um the walmart executives when he called them about this would be like well you know like you're like a white westerner so you can't really tell how old bengali children are you know maybe they're just like short short brown adults or whatever so he actually like prepared for this and he got like birth certificates to show that these people were like seven year olds 11 year olds these kinds of things and um do you have the drop of him talking about and then they call me back and they said well uh we've looked at it again and uh we think there may be kids in the factory and so we're gonna to cancel a contract there.

And I said, well, and then what? You're going to move to another factory where the conditions are how different? I said, don't you think maybe it would be better to stay at the factory and try to improve the conditions? Don't you think there's something else maybe that you can do? And they said, no, if you're going to do a story about this for the paper, then we're going to cancel the contract. So it's up to you now. You can write a story and 300 people will lose their jobs. Or you can not do the story.

Look what you've made us do. It's like the Eric Andre meme where it's him shooting handlebars yeah who shot him just uh the smiley face being drawn by seven-year-olds but yeah i mean that just kind of gives you an idea about walmart's corporate culture their responsibility where they're just like constantly threatening people and it's like you know when chomsky talks about corporate power, this is what we mean. Walmart is in many ways a totalitarian government. They set up a surveillance state focused on their employees to prevent them from unionizing.

They constantly, you know, scapegoat other people, throw them under the bus, and they expect them to ignore U.S. laws, all while maintaining plausible deniability about their own responsibility for that as far as yeah but those seven-year-olds like they can leave that job anytime they want like it's their personal choice and if you're saying seven-year-olds can't work in that factor you're denying those seven-year-olds their personal i mean seven-year-olds can consent to

sex and they consent to work that's obviously how seven-year-olds are treated around the world. But it's like, so just kind of like... Consent laws are bullshit. Continuing on like just the Walmart story, from the American Prospect, they talk about how Walmart had to withdraw from Japan. They failed there. And I don't know if they've come back. As of 2009, they had to withdraw from Japan. They failed there. And I don't know if they've come back.

As of 2009, they had to withdraw from Germany. So it's kind of done poorly in these nations where there is like a tradition of social democracy. And in the case of Germany, unionization. But just the one thing that I found interesting from this, Walmart's efforts in Germany were not helped by the fact that its policy of encouraging workers to call in anonymously to report on misdeeds, including union sentiments of their fellow workers, reminded Germans of the Stasi. Wow. It should also be noted that the call in anonymously thing, last episode, it didn't really come through because we have a bad cell phone signal here but

if you call their labor line uh which uh just to reiterate is 1-877-545-2267 the first thing they ask you is to enter the last four numbers of your social security number that's fucking insane walmart walmart union line howard stern is in the store trying to unionize the workers. You know, we talked about Area 71. Papa Booey. Their secret data center that is probably a nuclear bunker for the Waltons.

We actually haven't talked about that yet, but we can talk about that. We should. Well, yes. So, after 9-11, the Waltons built like 15 miles from their headquarters in Bensonville, Arkansas. They built this giant bunker. It's a 125,000 square foot building surrounded by razor wire. And heavily, much of the building is underground. And supposedly it's a data center but the only

people who have been inside it are the that don't directly work for walmart are the county assessors for that area and they've had to sign non-disclosure agreements just to see inside the things to assess it for property taxes so nobody really knows what they're doing with it but there's a lot of allegations that there's a gallery of tasteful photographs of the Walton descendants allegedly fucking and sucking. Allegedly, it's a 460 terabyte facility that also controls the music, the climate, and the clock in and outs of all of the stores around the country.

Well, the world, actually. They're the one who... So they're responsible for climate change. Yes, exactly, yeah. Whenever anyone talks about unionization, they have to play the Penn & Teller's bullshit theme. I play that, but I don't have it cued up. Yeah, it's all right.

We beat that joke to death already. One of the reasons I want to bring that up because there was this new article. I did. Did I blow your mind? There's this new article from Illinois that talked about Walmart introducing these new shopping carts that have heart monitors in the handles.

And so they would monitor the heart rate of customers walking around the Walmart and house all of this information in said Area 71. So basically they want to know what fucking makes your dick hard and your blood boil when you're walking around a fucking Walmart. And, you know, we talk about how the data that they collect

is influencing how they, you know. It all goes up when they walk by, like, the book section of Walmart, and it's like a book written by a liberal. I mean, like, it mean, it goes to show you that their stranglehold on data to increase their sales is fucking demonic. They don't need to know that my dick gets hard

when I see cereals on sale at Walmart. That's fucking insane. We need more Honey Nut. There's this article in the Joplin Globe on sale at walmart that's just that's fucking insane right so we're honey nut there's this article in the joplin globe which kind of speculates about this data center and like one of the allegations in there is that they're essentially like trying to set it up so that as soon as you check out at a walmart they'll immediately like get a camera picture of your mugshot and they'll have this personal profile on you with all of your information about what you buy, who you are, all this kind of like creepy Orwellian stuff. They're also talking

in there about like, if you're like in the store, say trying on lipstick, it supposedly allows them to communicate with the lipstick seller and tell them about you, their customer, and just all this kind of like creepy stuff. But then the other part of it is, again, it's in Bentonville, Arkansas, about 15 miles from the corporate headquarters. So the other part of it is, again, it's in Bentonville, Arkansas, about 15 miles from the corporate headquarters. So the other allegation is that, you know, there's a lot of stuff about this being a post-apocalyptic bug out for the Walton family bunker. And it doesn't help that it was set up right after 9-11. But just quoting a little bit from the article, changes have been made to increase the integrity of the structure. The data center was designed with backup generators,

fuel on site, and room and board for a skeleton and crew in the event an emergency required an extended stay. There's another Walmart data center. We have to protect the savings. There's another Walmart data center was built so that it could communicate via any means available, including copper wire, fiber optics and satellites. Right. So, you know, it's like it's probably a data center, but I could entirely see that it's like, oh, when the fucking Bernie Sanders uprising comes, the Waltons will flee to their fucking bunker.

I mean, the only thing that's odd is so this this was built, I think, around 2004. But then in 2011 they built another data center in colorado i didn't know that and yeah and what's crazy is that the colorado data center has no information about the amount of like storage it has whereas the area 71 does and it's odd because you think that like oh they built another data center they they'll probably have similar specs and stuff. No, no information. Interestingly enough, like the giant Walmart super centers, kind of a competitive disadvantage against Amazon, but they will be extremely useful as FEMA camps. Well, there's a lot of conspiracy about that on the internet as well.

When Obama was doing the Jade Helm thing and they thought there was going to be a military coup they were like talking about like walmart shutting down mysteriously to like intern political prisoners which hey maybe just another failed obama campaign first guantanamo and now this oh god you know like so when i was looking at the truckers youtube stuff i went down a couple of wormholes and one of them did lead to like, like Walmart truckers moving goods underground into Illuminati dug tunnels for the Waltons in the inevitable future when the uprising begins. What was actually underground was a mock-up of a section of highway where they had a trained driver to drive a replica of Tracy Morgan's van. And they would do practice runs with one of our drivers. They go to Sam Walton on his deathbed like, And they would do practice runs with one of our drivers. They go to Sam Walton on his deathbed like, we have a problem with this comedian Tracy Morgan.

I'll put you in touch with the team that took out President Kennedy. There's a secret Illuminati tunnel going right to Morgan's driveway. But yeah, so there's like this creepy post-apocalyptic bunker they have and i guess we can just kind of like quickly run through like the labor practice i think we've kind of beat this to death uh both on the previous episode and today but just a note walmart generally keeps from american prospect walmart keeps its labor costs down to about 10 of sales whereas most discount retail competitors are about 11% to 13%. And that, of course, is passed on to the Walton family and the shareholders and these

sorts of things. So that extra 1% to 3% makes a huge difference. But basically, there have been dozens of successful wage and hour lawsuits brought against Walmart in the next decade. And then, you know, Nelson Lichtenstein, who wrote the book, he opines that the company this suggests that company policies have successfully pressured tens of thousands of managers and their assistants into becoming law lawmakers. We mentioned, of course, you know, the wage theft, busting people from 42 hours down to 40 hours, all this stuff. And there's been a $ million dollar settlement in colorado for off the clock work settlement there were lawsuits in 31 states around wage theft so this is an

endemic problem with walmart they pay shit wages and then they steal even that right you know um and uh and we've kind of mentioned about the The thing about overtime, though, is it's bullshit. One Walmart manager was quoted as saying, corporate policy is, quote, fight each and every unemployment claim. And we've kind of mentioned about how if they want to get rid of you, they'll just put you on a shit schedule, reassign you, do whatever they have to

to make you quit so they don't have to pay out unemployment. And I guess we can just kind of mention the corporate welfare aspect. Do we want to talk about Hillary Clinton? Yeah, I guess we should talk about Mother Hillary first. You know, I love having the support of real billionaires. Future 2020 candidate. And 2024.

They gave her the experimental drug that kept sam walton alive i guess we should introduce her um uh who better than her former commander-in-chief barack obama while i was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shipped overseas you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board of walmart who's that socialist drones fired but yeah i mean so yeah hillary was on the board at walmart i mean it's pretty exemplary and actually like president bill clinton was a huge both beneficiary and assistant to walmart's process of fully outsourcing to china, where we've talked about, you know, the destruction of U.S. manufacturing jobs after China entered most favored nations

with the WTO and got WTO membership. But it's just one of those things where it's like Clinton and then George W. Bush really turned U.S. trade policy in a way that allowed china and walmart to benefit from this chinese thing she was also like on the board uh to walmart while kind of at the height of their union busting and uh i mean this this kind of was repeated at uh ad nauseum during the 2016 campaign but you know it's still worth repeating that like she didn't say anything like to in support of the workers and then you know turned in 2016 to get as much from as much union support as she could well one of the things alleged that they do have at area 71 are her emails

i mean 460 terabytes. It's somewhere in there. They just couldn't find it. There was also, I think it started in 1999. This is just kind of another Walmart thing is that some woman filed a class action lawsuit against Walmart,

essentially because of discrimination. Women were paid less and promoted less. And it made its way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court ruled that because women could not be considered a class, it was not a legitimate class action lawsuit Wow and I've heard rumors that like Clinton suggested that strategy to them but I don't know if I can't I couldn't find anything to back that up this week 2x chromosomes are bullshit all right so two things I want to talk about our first just corporate welfare

crime at walmart and then we'll briefly go through the seven walmart heirs on the forbes 400 list but just from the intercept in 2013 walmart cost taxpayers this is just walmart themselves about 6.2 billion for expenses such as food stamps medicaid and housing assistance for their employees because they don't pay their employees enough uh one study thing about welfare one study uh released earlier uh this year i believe that was 2017 estimated that taxpayers spent or public money it was about 152.8 billion dollars in 2015 as a result of low wages. So Walmart costs the public a lot of money. One study, walmartsubsidywash.org, said that there was about $1.2 billion in tax

breaks, free land, and infrastructure assistance, as well as low-cost financing and grants, you know, tax abatements, these kind of things from state and local governments to set up Walmarts in their area. So again, you have like the corporate welfare of, you know, the state subsidizes your low paid employees, you have the corporate welfare of they give you, you know, tax abatements, tax breaks at the local level to build. And then you also just have the fact that Walmart has cut security to the bone as they've cut all labor, so police forces have to subsidize them. And we kind of mentioned this on the previous episode. But basically, there was a Bloomberg article in 2016, but this has been a problem at least since the 90s. And interesting thing from the documentary that I mentioned, Walmart, the high cost of low prices.

In 1994, Walmart did an internal study which determined that 80 of all crimes in walmart happened in the parking lot and the study also found that when they uh they had uh security guards or just people part-time employees drive around the the parking lot in golf carts it dropped crime to almost zero what and they knew this in 1994 that just like having people patrolling the parking lot would destroy crime there but of course walmart doesn't give a shit because it's like once you buy your stuff and get out of the store they don't care anymore they just want to prevent shoplifting so because they cut labor costs to the bone they they knew that this crime problem wouldn't go away.

But what happens is a new CEO comes in around 2000 or so, and they fire all the greeters to like take people away from the door, and they cut labor costs even more, all these self-checkout things. And since, you know, 2000 or so, there's been a real explosion in just crime in Walmart parking lots. And I guess just the story from Bloomberg is, this was written in 2016. So in 2015, police were called to this store in Tulsa.

I believe, I guess we decided this is Tulsa, Oklahoma. Well, is it? I don't know. I thought it was Arizona. But they take the example of four stores near Tulsa. Born in Arizona, moved to oklahoma basically uh this is from bloomberg uh this store and three other tulsa walmart's police were called there just under 2 000 times in one year uh the four target stores in the city they were called about

300 times for comparison um and so and that's like walmart mostly just calls the cops on shoplifters you know again they outsource their security concerns but there's also a ton of violent crimes in these parking lots so again just from bloomberg uh more than 200 violent crimes including attempted kidnappings and multiple stabbings shootings and murders have occurred at the nation's 4 500 walmart's this year or one a day, according to an analysis of media reports. Wow. And then, you know, they just have like some various police captains and stuff complaining that like half of their squad spends most of their day just at Walmart, you know?

So it's like, it's an entirely unknown consequence. And then like the other part of the story is like, if you say get like robbed or violently attacked, or you know, women have been raped and the parking lots of Walmarts abducted, women have been killed, of course, carjackings, all this stuff. If you're the victim of a violent crime, there is a law that says that the owner of a premise has a responsibility to provide your safety when you're on it and so people will sue walmart but what's been happening is walmart lawyers would always like deny the existence of any sort of internal knowledge about crime but as we mentioned going back to 1994 they've entirely

known about the problem of crime in the parking lots and they still you know cut the greeters and didn't spend any money on uh security for the parking lots so it's just like really a horrifying thing where they've their choice is a private business they've just uh uh used public resources to subsidize every aspect of their operation and then they still talk about how they're self-made and all that but i guess the the moral of this lesson is a Walmart parking lot is a great place to lose your car. But yeah, I mean, I guess if we can move on to the seven Waltons on the Forbes 400 list.

Yeah. Okay. So Sam Walton, we talked about it extended length on the previous episode, but he had four children, three sons, a daughter. Each of them are worth about $45 billion. there's jim walton is the youngest son um rob walton i believe is yeah the eldest son jim walton's worth 45.7 billion uh rob walton this according to forbes uh rob walton 45.4 billion um lucas walton is the grandson he's aged 32 he's worth 15.9 billion

which uh again like just two years older than me worth worth more than uh fucking peter thiel well that's because you don't hustle sean yeah you're not on your grind bro uh yeah when he was a sperm he really hustled he's the sperm that made it yeah but you know conceivably he is in our demographic for this podcast so you are welcome to come on at any time give us a billion dollars to shut this down um oh but just kind of like a weird thing um so lucas is as we mentioned he's 32 years old 15.9 billion he is the grandson of sam walton um and then his mother who married into the family his father was another walton son who died in a plane crash i believe in 1995

his mother says that lucas battled cancer as a child. His mother, I believe Christy Walton, she has said that an all-organic diet eliminated his tumor. Wow, the Jenny McCarthy of billionaires, huh? I just like that. More like the Steve Jobs of alive billionaires. I was going to say, you know, like God had to pick one billionaire.

But so, yes. So you have Christy Walton as his mother and she married into the family and then her husband died. Oh, in 2005, John Walton was the other one and he died. So Christy Walton worth about seven point three billion. Then you have Anne Walton Kronenke, worth about $6.6 billion. She also married another billionaire, Stan Kroenke, who has a big real estate empire. They own the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets,

Colorado Avalanche, et cetera, et cetera. Nancy Walton-Loree is worth $5.7 billion. And then I just want to talk a little bit about Alice Walton because she's my favorite. And allegedly, they all fuck each other. Yes. Alice and Walton. So Alice Walton is worth $45.4 billion.

We mentioned she's the only daughter of Sam Walton. She doesn't really deal with the day-to-day operations. I think most all of them are on the board, but they, to various degrees, let other people run the company. But Alice Walton... They are crucial to the functioning, and that is why they are worth so much. Alice Walton, inside philanthropy, called her, quote,

America's most important arts philanthropist, which is she Keeps doing a performance art with her Car where she Keeps expressing The rage of contemporary society It's transgressive But ramming it into

Pylons and sometimes Pedestrians So she's able to let her Creativity flow with copious amounts of alcohol that have led to what was it you said earlier like four duis yes so this is just from ranker.com um alice walton has been involved in at least four duis that we know of and i'll go through them just again from ranker.com over thanks Thanksgiving weekend 1983, she crashed her Jeep in Mexico. She shattered her leg in the accident and had to be airlifted out.

The injury caused an infection, leaving her with a permanent limp. She broke her nose in another instance in 1998 and was charged with a DUI. So there's two. In Arkansas in 2011, she was caught drunk driving on her way home from the gala opening of her bentonville art museum crystal bridges which we'll talk about in a second she spent nine hours in jail but otherwise went unpunished so we're up to three now in 2013 a similar scenario occurred she was set with a court date but suddenly the highway patrolman who arrested her was suspended from his job with no reason provided since he couldn't testify in court,

the case was dropped. And again, like these are the richest family in America. They basically own Arkansas government. So we're up to four DUIs. And then actually it's five. Alice Walton's worst traffic accident occurred in 1989 on a misty morning. She crashed into a pedestrian on the road,

killing the woman instantly. No charges were brought against Walton. Well, thankfully, she was on the Walmart health plan, and so all of the bills were taken care of. Legal insurance. Right. She killed that person, and she's like, thank God it's not Tracy Morgan. But yeah, so Alice Walton is, again again like a wine mom um a philanthropist she interestingly enough she opened crystal bridges art museum we kind of mentioned on the previous i'd say

she's more of a whiskey mom uh she opened crystal bridges art museum which is a an art museum in um bentonville arkansas near the walmart headquarters but it's also got like this, you know, I think half a billion dollar collection, which is, you know, kind of in like a rural area that happens to be near where they live. So it's like, you know, they open their own little art museum. And this is like, of course,

counts as her philanthropic giving is like this kind of gaudy, gaudy display of wealth. I mean, without people like her contributing to the arts, we wouldn't be blessed with Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst. Who would put half of a cow in formaldehyde and poison the people working at the museum who have to be security guards for it? You know, I will i will say actually happened i do respect her uh at 45 billion dollars net worth uh insisting on rather than

hiring a driver just hiring enough lawyers to cover her tui bills um but yeah and so you know she has like a fucking drunk driving problem who's not completely unaccountable for this. But interestingly enough, because she is like a huge philanthropist in the art world, she has disproportionate influence. And we were talking off mic about this a bit. But essentially because like so many artists, you know, at least mainstream gallerists and these kind of people rely on philanthropy from the wealthy it's impossible for them to have any sort of uh socialist or revolutionary politics besides an aesthetic because they entirely depend on these fucking alice walton people who like literally murders people with her own car while she's not cashing the checks from murdering murdering seven-year-olds in bangladesh with a fucking fire i just like to

imagine like an abstract piece where it's like two circles that are kind of separated from each other and then the title of it is that drunk driving laws are imperialist you know what else they are bullshit Bullshit. Oh, God. But so I guess like the last bit of my research today brought me to a very fun piece of liberal identity politics. So if you would just like to hear Alice Walton, again, murdered someone with her car, is at the head of one of the most rapacious and vicious and I think evil supply

chains in the modern capitalist world. But she has a museum and she funds artists. And she says this, for museums to be truly inviting public spaces, they must better reflect the communities they serve. Achieving diversity requires a deeper commitment to hire and nurture leaders from all backgrounds. This initiative creates the opportunity for museums to build a more inclusive culture within their institutions. So you can hire

all of the diverse members of the community who have been displaced by Walmart. And I want to say right before we go, you know the thing about lounge music? It's not bullshit. Really? All right.

So this has been Grubstakers. I was just going to say her commitment to diversity within the community includes seven-year-olds. Look, when we talk about diversity, we have to focus on this inherent bias towards hiring people who are 18 or older. I'm Andy Palmer. I'm Yogi Poggle. I'm Steve Jeffries. Alright, thanks for listening to our

special on the Waltons. We'll be back next week to talk about the elections. Bye. Also, if you're a Grubstakers fan living in New York City, Sean McCarthy will be performing a free stand-up showcase at the Creek in the Cave in Long Island City

October 29th through November 2nd. It's his week at the Creek. It's going to be fantastic. The shows start at 7 p.m. And myself, yours truly, Yogi Paliwal, will be hosting a few of those shows. God bless you.

Good night. Good night.