Main Street

Interesting Things Around the Internet

• Staggering: More than 1 in 4 Walmart workers in Ohio are on Medicaid.

  That’s right, Walmart has more than 15,000 employees in Ohio on Medicaid, costing state taxpayers $68 million a year. Walmart has more employees enrolled in Medicaid and on food stamps than any other company in the state (which is the case in many states). In fact nearly 28% of Walmart’s employees in Ohio are on Medicaid, and around 23% are on food stamps.

• Are mothers opting out of the workforce? If so, which ones?
• The safety net is eroding just when we need it most.
  

  Nearly a million poor people continue to be denied representation in the nation’s courts because legal aid clinics lack sufficient financing, a federally supported legal agency reported Tuesday.

  “There still exists a substantial justice gap in this country,” said Helaine M. Barnett, president of the nonprofit agency, the Legal Services Corporation, which receives appropriations from Congress to support more than 900 legal aid offices for low-income clients in civil cases across the country.

  Many programs paid for by the Legal Services Corporation say they face rising requests for help. The nation’s financial crisis has placed new pressure in particular on legal specialties like foreclosure, where few lawyers who contribute their services free of charge have great expertise and where legal aid offices turn away two people for each one they can help.

• And now that you’re good and depressed, this is at least a way to take action against the bad stuff: Interfaith Worker Justice is organizing a day of action to stop wage theft. As we’ve seen in numerous recent reports, wage theft is a serious problem that affects the most vulnerable workers. It’s good to see organizing to call attention to the problem.
• Another call to action, while we’re at it. Y.I. Want Change is a campaign to get young people to make the point to lawmakers that they want and need health care reform.