Sylvia Matthews Burwell, the head of the Walmart Foundation, has been selected by President Obama to take charge of the Office of Management and Budget.
This is one of the most important policy jobs in the federal government. The director of OMB decides how money should be allocated, which programs should live and which should die. There are often intra-agency battles, but OMB holds the whip hand because it controls the budgetary decisions.
Burwell previously worked for the Gates Foundation.
The Walmart Foundation is not the Walton Family Foundation, but it is the same family nonetheless, known for their love of privatization, charters, and vouchers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I wanted to post this somewhere. If she is as “qualified” as Duncan we are screwed. The video version of this was laughable…he sounded like a bumbling idiot.
Education boss apologizes for ‘pink slips’ remark
Posted by
CNN Political Unit
(CNN) – Education Secretary Arne Duncan said he should have been clearer when describing the effects automatic spending cuts would have on one particular school district in West Virginia, saying Monday he was sorry for using the faulty example.
Duncan told reporters at the White House last Wednesday that the Kanawha County school system was already handing out pink slips in anticipation of the automatic cuts that, among other things, will impact the amount of federal money states get through September.
“Yes, there’s a district where it’s happened. But, again, it’s just because they have an earlier union notification than most – Kanawha County, West Virginia,” Duncan said at a briefing where Cabinet officers detailed the impact of cuts under the so-called congressional sequester to their agency programs.
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This made me sick. Could someone please hire someone in government who does not have ties to the Gates or Walton families?
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Those confounded commies really stick together …
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Not sure if it is a distinction without a difference, but she is the head of the Walmart Foundation, not the Walton Foundation.
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Fixed it. Same family.
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That sly dog, Obama —
It’s all clever plot to incite a popular rebellion against the 1‰ just in time for 2014 …
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not defending the choice, but the Walmart Foundation, which she headed, is not the same as the Walton Foundation.
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Here’s a bit more from the NY Times article describing the nominee:
” A native of West Virginia, Ms. Burwell is a graduate of Harvard and Oxford, where she was a Rhodes scholar. In the 1990s, she served in a variety of economic policy roles in the Clinton administration, including as a top aide to Robert E. Rubin, then the Treasury secretary, and as a staff member of the White House’s National Economic Council.”
During much of the Clinton administration, unemployment was lower and the nation did not have a budget deficit.
Appears that there is more to this nominee that the foundations where she worked.
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I recommend that you reach out to Ms. Burwell. She is the real deal and is, as cited above, much more an ally.
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What do you mean by the “real deal”?
And another Rhodes scholar? That doesn’t seem to help Coleman deal with ordinary human beings, including children. That man needs a class in child development. Maybe his mom can help arrange a summer course for him.
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Excuse me- Burwell is a protege of Robert Rubin? The same Robert Rubin who as chairman of Citigroup tanked its stock and defrauded investors by selling them garbage? THAT Robert Rubin?
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The Walmart Foundation describes its work as “Hunger Relief & healthy eating, Sustainability, Women’s Economic Empowerment, Career Opportunities, and Special interests such as supporting Veterans & Military Families and Disaster Relief.
http://foundation.walmart.com/our-focus
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Maybe they should start by paying their employees a decent wage:
Wal-Mart employees on average take home pay of under $250 a week. The salary for full-time employees (called “associates”) is $6 to $7.50 an hour for 28-40 hours a week, which is typical in the discount retail industry. This pay scale places employees with families below the poverty line, with the majority of employees’ children qualifying for free lunch at school. When closely examined, this amounts to a form of corporate welfare, as the taxpayer subsidizes the low salaries. One-third are part-time employees – limited to less than 28 hours of work per week – and are not eligible for benefits.
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I wonder how may of their employees rely on government “hunger relief?”
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I nearly drove my car off the road when I heard this on the radio this morning. So, we are not even pretending anymore; corporocrats are running the place.
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Wait until you hear the next appointment–Penny Prtizker (yes, CPS Board Penny Pritzker!) as Secretary of Commerce!
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Walton or Walmart? Are they the same foundations?
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Never mind. D.R. just corrected her blog…
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Two different foundations, same family.
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Next thing you know we will have Leona Helmsley Foundation funding online assessments or Common Core. Oh wait…that is already happening at Achieve. Good grief.
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Leona herseld would have declared, “Only the little people pay taxes and only the little people’s children take an excess of standardized tests . . . .”
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Can it be any clearer about President Obama’s position on education?
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We got SOLD OUT one more time! The Obama selections will definitely line his pickets for the rest of his and Mrs. Obama’s lives and as well as his offsprings’ .
Egads…
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And he wants Penny Pritzger as commerce secretary. No doubt she is a skilled business woman, but I think the country would rather she stick to destroying the Chicago public schools on the school board than orchestrating an overseas jobs fair.
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About her business acumen…
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/04/obamas_billionaire_finance_cha.html
Excerpt:
“One of the banks that went under after making a lot of subprime loans — leaving 1,400 of its customers without part of their savings — was Chicago’s Superior Bank.
At the helm of Superior Bank at least some of the time was Obama’s national finance chairwoman, Penny Pritzker, an heiress to the Pritzker fortune.
Obama’s campaign notes that Pritzker stepped down as chairwoman of the bank’s board in 1994, seven years before it failed. She then went on the board of the bank’s holding company.
But a letter obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times shows that until the end, Pritzker appeared to be taking a leadership role in trying to revive the bank with an expanded push into subprime loans.
Pritzker wrote in May 2001 that her family was recapitalizing the bank, and she pledged to “once again restore Superior’s leadership position in subprime lending.” The bank shut down in July 2001.
Pritzker’s attorney Kevin Poorman and Obama’s campaign spokesman emphasized that not all “subprime lending” is the “predatory” kind that Obama and White House rival Hillary Clinton rail against. The kind of subprime lending Superior was doing in 2001 was not predatory, Poorman said.
But at least some of the 1,400 victims who are still owed money seven years after the bank failed say Pritzker is the wrong person for Obama to put in charge of the campaign’s finances when part of his campaign is about reforming the banking industry.
“They still owe me $113,000,” said Fran Sweet, 63, of Downers Grove, who deposited her $480,000 retirement account at Superior a month before it collapsed. “To the Pritzkers, this is nothing. They probably think, ‘Why pay her back?’ That’s nothing. But we’re all upset that someone who made these decisions could be in that position.” “
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Obama is now showing his true face just as I have been telling people “He is what he is and that is a right wing corporatist and corporatist in democratic clothing.” What does it take for people to wake up to speach is nothing, action and what you do is everything.
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I’m so glad I didn’t vote Obama.
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Occupy Walmart, or boycott them.
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I stopped shopping a few years ago. I don’t need their cheap $hit!
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Who has any money to shop?!
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I have been telling all of you for the last few months that he was a corporatizer and privatizer. Now do you believe??????? All you have to do is a little research. Never trust anyone until they prove they are worthy of the trust and that is only by acts not words. As a friend of mines grandfather taught him “I hear real good, but I see a whole lot better.”
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