Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, polling second among Democratic presidential candidates, will reportedly butt in on Walmart’s annual shareholder meeting, where he will demand the company change its policies to please him. Voters take note: This is how socialists operate. They believe all businesses belong to them.
Sanders, who has long self-identified as a socialist, will “push for the retail giant’s workers to get a seat on the board of directors” at next month’s meeting, says MarketWatch. Fortune magazine is a little more descriptive in its coverage. It says he “plans to crash” the meeting.
“Sanders, a longtime critic of labor practices at the nation’s biggest private employer, will introduce a shareholder proposal at the June 5 meeting in Rogers, Ark.,” Fortune reports. “The proposal, which has no chance of passing, calls for Walmart to give its hourly workers a board seat.”
How a private company structures its board is none of Sanders’ business. Yet he believes that he has the right to dictate how Walmart conducts its affairs. The fact the proposal “has no chance of passing” is irrelevant. The point is Sanders is trespassing.
But that’s what socialists do. They have authoritarian urges they either cannot or will not contain. They crave control, want to organize society by force, and put in long hours diminishing the individual while expanding government’s reach. Socialism is incompatible with human nature (except for those humans whose nature it is to rule over others), and marginalizes and oppresses many while empowering a few thugs at the top. Raw political power is its goal.
Remember these things the next time Sanders is provided a friendly media platform, the next time Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is celebrated in the most shallow way possible by some “news” organization, the next time one of the 23 other Democratic presidential candidates besides Sanders takes another leap leftward to please the party’s socialist mob.
In an effort to obfuscate, the socialists will say they’re not communists, or Marxists, or Leninists, or Maoists. What they won’t speak of is the journey, a short one from the soft socialism they claim to support to the hard, boot-on-the neck regimes that have caused so much misery.
Why? Because, as Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek wrote in “The Road to Serfdom,” the worst always get to the top in socialist systems. He argued, and history has confirmed, that “the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful” in systems where government is at the center of society.
“They are precisely the kind of people who elevate power over persuasion, force over cooperation,” says Lawrence W. Reed, president emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education. “Government, possessing by definition a legal and political monopoly of the use of force, attracts them just as surely as dung draws flies.”
Or, put another way, good men and women don’t get to the top in these systems because good men and women don’t want to rule over others.
Intruding on a Walmart meeting uninvited would be just the beginning for Sanders if he were elected president in 2020. His time in the White House would be marked by many more unfriendly visits to private businesses. Sanders has been watching how socialists regimes across the world behave, and he’s learned from his comrades.
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Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
Has Sanders ever done an honest day’s work in his life??
Have you?? Funny that he has been on the right side of history every time he has taken the floor of the House and Senate. Fighting for his constituents. Which is more than just about anyone else there has ever done. We don’t have a representative government, we have a corporatocracy.
If he isn’t a shareholder they should have had him arrested for trespassing and fired anyone who let him in. Only shareholders have the right to attend.
Security can take care of this old fart. He’ll never get in the room.
Let him in and as he grabs the mike, the shareholders remain mute as he starts his spittle enhanced tirade until he exhausts himself to an unresponsive crowd. Picture the commercial that will provide for Trump 2020.
Sanders is channeling Sen. Warren’s ‘Accountable Capitalism Act’. The Act mandates that both Workers and the Federal goverment be allotted seats on every Corpoate Board.
Liberals are so ideologically absorbed that they think Liberalism (Neo-Socialism) is in a competition with Capitalism. If they shared a brain between all of them they would realize that every single aspect of Liberalism depends totally on Capitalism.
Without the money Capitalism generates there would be no funding for social welfare programs. Liberalism does not generate a dime, its focus is on controlling the dimes other people generate.
Without Capitalism Liberalism would starve to death.
Liberalism is not sustainable even if it worked.
You need to be a share holder to attend an annual meeting, although I am not sure Mr. Sanders knows that. You also need to be a share holder to introduce a proposal to the board, although I am not sure Mr. Sanders knows that.
While everything youve written is absolutely true, one should note that this is being leaked in advance… meaning, Walmart may already be ready to comply. This may be pre-arranged. Ponder that.
Shareholders should all bring milk shakes. Lots of milk shakes…
“Successful” socialists are sociopaths, sadists.
How about someone swarm Bernie and demand he give up one of his three homes.
Or how about all three. Ever notice they get to gut everyone’s possessions and property but their own?
Do homeowners let the guy who cuts their lawn, tell them how to run the house? Why not?
No clue if they still do it, but Wal Mart used to encourage employees to buy stock which made them shareholders. So they aren’t just “lawn boys”.
Wait until he tries this interruption tactics with the news media. See how quick they turn on him.
Friedrich Hayek was spot on ~
I don’t care for Sanders, but he will not be trespassing and he is invited. If you read the linked article, Sanders is acting as a proxy for a current employee. Employees used to be able to buy stock, so this employee is probably a shareholder if she is able to designate Sanders to speak for her. Reading is fundamental.
Surely we have learned by now that large corporations are spineless except where their boards and senior management have already defected to the left and are hell bent on stealing shareholder value to support the left?
Wal-Mart shares have been doing well for the last while. If they chicken out here sane investors will dump them.