I really haven’t paid attention to stockcar racing since the days of Junior Johnson and Fireball Roberts, but I do understand the attraction and it amazes me that anyone could imagine that Walmart won’t be all over NASCAR in a very big way.

Yet, at least one fan (NASCAR, not Walmart) thinks differently.

From Frontstretch:

Top Ten (Plus Five) Reasons Wal-Mart Will Not Be Sponsoring Jeff Gordon

15. Jeff Gordon never worked in a Chinese sweat shop.

14. Ingrid refused to put the children in anything that comes off the rack.

13. His race car is not made in China.

12. They can get the same exposure touting Sam’s Club on Sam Hornish, Jr.’s car at half the price.

11. Wal-Mart refused to guarantee Gordon a job as a Wal-Mart greeter when his career ends because he doesn’t look creepy enough.

15. Jeff Gordon never worked in a Chinese sweat shop.

14. Ingrid refused to put the children in anything that comes off the rack.

13. His race car is not made in China.

Ingrid’s refusal to clothe the kids in Wal-Mart’s best was a deal breaker for the retail giant.

12. They can get the same exposure touting Sam’s Club on Sam Hornish, Jr.’s car at half the price.

11. Wal-Mart refused to guarantee Gordon a job as a Wal-Mart greeter when his career ends because he doesn’t look creepy enough.

Stockcar racing was way cooler when the drivers learned their skills running from the feds.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

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What caused New York state senate democrats to return a check for $15,000 to Walmart. Did someone grow a pair and say no to corporate influence? Was a decision made that the check wasn’t big enough? Or, my choice, was the grief just not worth it?

From the New York Post:

State Senate Democrats have bowed to pressure from furious labor leaders and returned a controversial $15,000 campaign contribution they received from Walmart, The Post has learned.

The action came just days after last week’s disclosure in The Post that the Democrats had accepted the cash from the union-resisting Arkansas-based retail chain, which is believed to be interested in putting its first city store in Senate Democratic Leader John Sampson’s Brooklyn district.

Sampson controls the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee.

“I can confirm that the money was returned. That’s as far as I’m going to go on it,” said Democratic spokesman Eric Blankenbaker.

The July 15 contribution, to the Senate Democrats’ little-noticed “housekeeping” account, had been denounced as “blood money” by Retail and Wholesale Workers Union President Stuart Appelbaum and other union activists.

It was also seen by government reformers as further evidence of the Legislature’s “pay to play” culture that led Senate Democrats earlier this year to offer labor leaders special “advisory committee chairmanships” for $50,000 a piece.

So, why weren’t those checks returned?

The Neighborhood Alliance comments:

[T]he real issue that should be addressed, in our view, is what the impact of a Walmonster might be on the East New York community-and that’s the question that should be addressed by a senate hearing on the issue. But kudos to Stu Appelbaum and the RWDSU for their advocacy on this: “The July 15 contribution, to the Senate Democrats’ little-noticed “housekeeping” account, had been denounced as “blood money” by Retail and Wholesale Workers Union President Stuart Appelbaum and other union activists.”

It’s about time that we had it out on the Wal-mart to NYC question. We have throttled the retail giant in a number of different site fights-and we’ve found that there is no widespread clamor for the store. In fact, neighborhoods don’t want all of the disruption and devastation that the Walmonster brings in its wake-just ask Tottenville and Monsey, NY.

But the U.S. Supreme Court said such checks are OK, right?

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.HI

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…except when it hinders their ability to pave California into a bigger parking lot than it already is. The hypocrisy is staggering, and shame on every environmentalist out there who continues to suffer from Walmart Compartmentalization Syndrome.

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Walmart has a long history of promoting its acres of parking lot as free stops for RVers. The policy builds good will and guarantees sales to travellers who need to stock up on all manner of foods, beverages and cheap plastic craps from China.

I don’t think Walmart was thinking about homeless people, however.

From Homeless By Choice:

Last night, I successful practiced The Method yet again, this time in Pennsylvania. I was driving Interstate 80, couldn’t find a cheap motel and didn’t have any camping equipment with me. What to do? The trouble with Pennsylvania and other Northeastern states is the lack of cheap motels. Motel 6 is relatively rare and often high-priced when available, and other chains aren’t cheap. (Hostels, of course, exist only in a few major cities.) I was prepared to spend $35 for a night’s lodging but not $65, which was the lowest rate I could expect in these parts. The alternative? Check into the nearest Wally World.

A Supercenter is distinguished from a traditional Wal-Mart in that it has a full-size grocery section and is open 24 hours. Supercenters are located along the interstate highway system throughout America, usually adjacent to an exit with some undeveloped land beside it. In America, Wal-Marts are far more frequent than official highway rest areas, and they are a lot easier to find on mapping programs like Google Maps. When I am driving (which I do for a living), I typically check in at Wal-Marts a couple of times a day—to use the reliably clean restrooms, stock up on basic supplies and just soak in the ambiance. Every Wal-Mart is the same, and, yes, it gives me a feeling of home in being there.

So my challenge is to spend a comfortable, safe night within a short walk of my car while spending as little money as possible. If I was going to spend $35 on a motel, then I can comfortably spend $20 on camping supplies that I may throw away the next day.

The rest is entertaining, and in the down economy, is it possible that Walmart is poised to become to become the sites for the 21st century’s Hoovervilles?

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

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I just finished having dinner with a guy who works as a guard at the local jail. He described Walmart as “inmate central,” meaning he sees all the people who he once kept in lockup there. Since he’s afraid they might give him trouble, he always carries a hunting knife when he goes shopping there.

I found this story interesting for two reasons:

1) Government work now pays so little that criminals and law enforcement now shop at the same place.

2) It made me think that perhaps, just perhaps, a lot of the crime in Walmart parking lots isn’t planned. After all, if you’re a criminal, isn’t it to convenient to pick up some diapers and milk at the same place you can go to work?

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The numbers are not all that close, but retailers Walmart, Carrefour and Tesco are in a race to grab as much of the lucrative Chinese retail market. The Communists have stolen a march on the Capitalists, playing catch-up is a race for second place.

From China Beverage News:

U.S. retailing giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. signed an agreement with the Huangshi Municipal Government in Hubei province on August 21 to build an RMB 50 million [$7.3 million] supermarket in the city, according to Hong Kong-based media Wen Wei Po.

Covering an area of 15,000 square meters [162,000 square feet], the new store is expected to open to the public by 2012, Tian Wuxing, Wal-Mart’s regional manager for Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Guangxi provinces, said at a recent Huangshi investment event.

Walmart with 187 stores leads Carrefour with 156 stores (up to 25 in the pipeline) and Tesco expecting to have 87 stores by the end of September. All three chains are demonstrating that their corporate loyalty trumps national patriotism.

In an age where moving products tens of thousands of miles becomes increasingly cost prohibitive, it makes business sense to sell what you buy as close to the purchase point as possible. Walmart has successfully help China build its consumer manufacturing base and now it, and other retailers, want to be in position to sell those products back to the people who make them.

The end result is that American consumers can expect to be further kicked to the curb to benefit the Capitalist People’s Republic of China they financed with their dollars exchanged for cheap plastic Chinese crap.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

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Our co-blogger Robert Feinman passed in July 2009. Jonathan has already posted a best of series taken from Robert’s more than 600 posts to The Writing On The Wal. But Robert wrote elsewhere as well and, for some time, I’ve enjoyed a Sunday morning tradition of reading the essays he posted to his personal blog.

Beginning on 18 October I began to cross post Robert’s essays to share his thoughts. Strictly speaking, Walmart was not specifically the subject of Robert’s writings, but Walmart was certainly always a player in the universe he explored.

Economists: Intellectual Whores

Since the early days of recorded history there have always existed a class of people who will sell their intellectual prowess to those in power. The exceptions seem so rare that they are talked about for centuries afterward. The most famous being Socrates.

More typical are those who come up with reasons that the status quo is the appropriate organization of society and that those in power are the perfect persons to be running things. Starting in the “Dark Ages” and up through the 18th Century religious leaders played a prominent role. They were able to find justifications for concepts like the “divine right of kings” and the “just war.” As religion became less pervasive there were secular advisers that replaced them, Machiavelli for example.

We now live in the “Age of Enlightenment” or the “Scientific Age” and the arguments used in the past don’t have the same weight. What is needed is a “scientific” rationale for the organization of society. This role has now been taken over by economists. Using statistics and mathematical theories they have been able to produce whatever justification was desired by those employing them. Proof of their intellectual dishonesty is easily found. For every economist who can “prove” the effectiveness of, say, trickle down economics there is another who can demonstrate that such policies are a complete failure. Science is based upon the concept of testability. A set of conditions is set up and the outcome is observed. If the outcome is as predicted then the hypothesis being tested is considered more likely to be correct. If the outcome is different a new hypothesis must be found to replace the failed one.

In any given society there are so many factors operating at once that it is impossible to determine which are the significant forces. There is also no way to rerun an experiment. So what happens is that economic developments which occur sequentially are stated to have a causal relationship where no such thing can be proved. I’m in the middle of a book which claims to prove that the rise in the size of the payroll tax as a replacement for tariffs has led to a fifty year decline in the growth rate of the US economy. Others claim that tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy have led to economic growth, but they can’t demonstrate how much growth there would have been if a different tax structure had been in place.

It is time to start evaluating economic policy from a humanistic perspective. Are policies making things better for everyone? If there are losers as a result of a policy can their losses be mitigated in some other way? Do the policies increase wealth disparity, political power or ecological harm? These things don’t require economic models, just dispassionate observation. If the number of people in the US who are poor and/or lack health care is increasing then the present policy is a failure. If the oil drilling in Nigeria is ruining the local ecology and destroying the surrounding communities then the policy is a failure.

It is time to stop debating economic theories and recognize them for what they are, the modern equivalent of the divine right of kings argument. If things are getting better and the ecosystem is being treated in a sustainable way, then the policies are working, regardless of what the economist’s “theories” say. How to move from a society dominated by a wealthy elite is a difficult problem. In most cases it has required a violent disruption in the social structure. The classic examples are the French and Russian revolutions. But, recently many Eastern European and Latin American countries have been able to transform their economic systems with a minimal level of disruption.

The question is whether the Western industrialized countries are willing to face their current challenges or whether they are going to let world affairs overtake them with uncontrolled consequences. Economies where the working population is declining in wealth and where employment opportunities are shifting from productive work to speculative services and militarism have always collapsed in the past. Their rivals are not hampered by a self-serving elite and its intellectual whores and can and will make decisions which make them more productive and competitive.

Moral: Replacing self-serving intellectualism is necessary for a more humanistic society.

Copyright © 2006 Robert D Feinman
Feel free to use the ideas, but the words are mine.

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There is no one covering the Supreme Court whose words I trust more than those of Lyle Denniston. His decades-long record as a journalist is untouchable, his clarity of delivery at time enough to make me wonder I bother writing.

I was watching to see what he would have to say on Dukes. No excerpt can do Denniston’s assessment just. Just read the whole post: Wal-Mart appeals in job bias case.

Dukes v. Walmart is now a game changer.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

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Free-market enthusiasts tend to sputter when asked to explain why, in a free market, their favorite business needs to suck at the public teat. Politics is not about stopping redistribution of wealth, its about deciding where you think the money should go.

From The Houston Chronicle:

The city is negotiating a deal with the developer of Washington Heights — a proposed Wal-Mart-anchored shopping center near Interstate 10 and Yale – that would reimburse the local builder for as much as $6 million in public infrastructure improvements.

If the agreement is approved, developer Ainbinder Co. would widen and repave streets surrounding the project, refurbish bridges near the site, develop a bike and pedestrian trail along a stretch of Heights Boulevard south of I-10 and improve underground drainage, among other upgrades.

The improvements are expected to ease traffic congestion as well as prime the area for other future developments, the developer said.

The deal being negotiated is part of a program authorized by the state called a 380 agreement. It allows the city to grant or loan local tax revenue for economic development purposes.

The Houston blogger at Off The Kuff takes exception to the plot.

Besides the nature of Wal-Mart itself, the 380 agreement is probably the least popular aspect of this, from what I’ve observed. It’s bad enough that a Wal-Mart is coming in, the sentiment is, it’s even worse that tax dollars will be used to help them. The city’s position is basically that the 380 is one of the few tools they have to get the developer to do something it wouldn’t otherwise do, which is to say make infrastructure improvements.

You know what? On principle, I’m not opposed to the use of tax dollars to foster economic development, when a business with a good idea that can legitimately help a community steps up, the public financing should be considered. What angers me is how people pretend that one person’s handout is another person’s investment.

Tools are neutral. Our intent in wielding the tool makes the difference.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

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Unlike Jonathan, I still eat a bit of meat, not every day, but enough to put me squarely in the omnivore category. If the only place that I could buy meat was Walmart, however, I would be devoted to my vegetables, fruits and nuts in no time.

From The United States Department of Agriculture:

Zemco Industries, a Buffalo, N.Y., establishment, is recalling approximately 380,000 pounds of deli meat products that may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced today. These products were distributed to delicatessens where they were further processed into sandwiches.

The products subject to recall include:

25.5-pound cases of “Marketside Grab and Go Sandwiches BLACK FOREST HAM With Natural Juices Coated with Caramel Color” with the number 17800 1300;
28.49-pound cases of “Marketside Grab and Go Sandwiches HOT HAM, HARD SALAMI, PEPPERONI, SANDWICH PEPPERS” with the number 17803 1300;
32.67-pound cases of “Marketside Grab and Go Sandwiches VIRGINIA BRAND HAM With Natural Juices, MADE IN NEW YORK, FULLY COOKED BACON, SANDWICH PICKLES, SANDWICH PEPPERS” with the number 17804 1300;
25.5-pound cases of “Marketside Grab and Go Sandwiches ANGUS ROAST BEEF Coated with Caramel Color” with the number 17805 1300.

Listeria monocytogenes is a facultative intracellular bacterium that is the causative agent of Listeriosis. It is one of the most virulent foodborne pathogens with 20 to 30 percent of clinical infections resulting in death.

Yum!

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

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Jeff has already told you about Walmart’s direct appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on the Dukes case. I just want to highlight a tiny part of the NYT story on the same subject:

When the news media began covering the lawsuit and writing about her, she said, Wal-Mart grew embarrassed and raised her pay by nearly 50 percent within a year. After 16 years at Wal-Mart, Ms. Dukes said she earns about $31,000 a year. “I’m still struggling to get by,” she said.

I don’t remember the exact number, but Walmart used to jump up and down about how 76% or something percent of its managers were promoted from within. 16 years and $31,000 is what happens when you don’t win that lottery. Think of the difference between that salary and what she’d be making had she entered management then multiply that number by the total number of women in the class and you’ll understand why the damages here could be in the billions.

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To hell with appeals and district courts. Walmart need to squash the Dukes bug as quickly as it can lest it actually be held responsible for its alleged reprehensible behavior in a court of law. No, Walmart believes in going right to the Supremes.

From Reuters:

The world’s largest retailer has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt a mammoth sex-discrimination case brought by its women workers, according to a Wednesday court filing. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is appealing an April ruling that authorized the class action, which could include more than 1 million women. Wal-Mart allegedly practiced widespread discrimination in its pay and promotion practices. A divided 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals had allowed the lawsuit to proceed, saying mere size should not be a reason for dismissing the case. The litigation could involve billions of dollars in damages and has been described as the largest sex-discrimination class action

Heavy emphasis on the billions of dollars.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

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How do you really feel about Walmart? Here’s your chance to express your true feelings — pro and con — about the world’s largest retailer. Write whatever you like in the comments section and engage your fellow readers in the conversation.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

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While I, and others here, maintain a tight focus on Dukes v. Walmart, the case will almost certainly go before the Chief Justice Roberts’ version of the U.S. Supreme Court, and the players are positioning themselves for that final showdown.

From Antitrust & Competition Policy Blog:

Dukes is likely to affect certification of antitrust class actions (and thus, the incentives to settle cases of questionable merit). As one court has put it, because of the enormous stakes involved in class actions, the “basic truth about class action litigation” is that “the fight over class certification is often the whole ball game.” Because Dukes lowers the bar to class certification in the Ninth Circuit, businesses that may be targeted by antitrust class actions should be prepared to face more litigation there, and should be sure to preserve important issues for potential Supreme Court review.

Walmart, as the proxy for all corporations doing business in the United States, doesn’t need to just win Dukes, it needs to have the whole process thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court. What is at stake here is corporate dominance of the American legal and political systems, not back pay owed to a few (relatively speaking when the case is viewed in light of workers for all corporations) Walmart employees.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

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