If you’re going to hang the greater part of your very existence to selling cheap plastic crap from China to Americans then cutting out the cost of shipping by selling cheap plastic crap from China in China makes perfect sense. That has been part of Walmart’s strategy for 20 years. There have been bumps in […]

Earlier this morning I wrote: What the Koch brothers really want, what most people in the same league as the Koch brothers always want, are more game tokens. That is what life is to the sociopaths, a vast, nearly exclusive game designed to give meaning and worth to people whose lives are meaningless without the […]

This story about Elaine Glidewell and a class ring she ordered from a Walmart in Forth Smith, Arkansas, is why I don’t get all warm and fuzzy when Walmart takes a right action. Brian Nick, spokesman for Walmart, told FoxNews.com Glidewell was denied the ring because her transaction came after the retailer made a “business […]

Every Wednesday I cross post what I’ve written here to my other blog, Have Coffee Will Write, but I can’t recall the last time, if ever, that I brought something from there to here. I thought while writing this plug for Terry Jones’ documentary Boom Bust Boom, that the topic was equally appropriate for my […]

Right-To-Work advocates have wet dreams about sweat shops in Bangladesh and work gangs in the antebellum South. Without organized labor there would be no 40-hour work week, there would be no lunch hours or bathroom breaks. If union members hadn’t fought and died for what was right, there would be no over-time pay or pensions […]

Remember Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark./Walmart)? I do. She left the Senate in 2011—she was replaced by John Boozman (R-Ark./Walmart)—after a 58 percent-to-37 percent general election. A year later Elizabeth Warren won election to the Senate and she has been a polar opposite to Walmart’s pet senator. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has it out for Walmart. […]

You can follow the link in the cartoon back to the blog of Mano Singham, a friend and one of my favorite bloggers. Mano wrote late last week on The infuriating arguments against raising the minimum wage. I agree that the arguments are infuriating, but I do not think that raising the minimum wage is […]

Robert Reich writes: What does the drama in Washington over the “fiscal cliff” have to do with strikes and work stoppages among America’s lowest-paid workers at Walmart, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Domino’s Pizza? Everything. Tell your representatives in Washington to stop sucking up to very richest of Americans and start acting responsibly for the rest […]

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

To understand the fiction of a recovering U.S. economy boosted by fantasy-driven productivity numbers look to Walmart which must depend upon the least economically favored Americans as customers. They’re not recovering and neither is Walmart. From Forbes: Retail giant Wal-Mart posted earnings before the bell on Tuesday which sent the stock tumbling down as sales […]

Yes, I’m biased. I read Paul Krugman’s New York Times columns, not to be confused with those of Charles Krauthammer which I don’t read, because I consider his economic analysis to be honest. This week he took a look at Walmart on the millennium cusp. From The Wal-Mart Decade: Van Ark’s data point to a […]

As an institution, Walmart is incapable of understanding the wisdom that Tom Peters shares here. Walmart employees are not talent, they are an expense to be minimized in order to maximize share holder value, nothing more. In the end, that is a losing strategy, for Walmart, for business, for the economy. Jeff Hess: Have Coffee […]

The American Secret Service sweats bullets when the federal government gathers each January to hear the President’s State of the Union address. Our enemies could do serious damage if they could figure out how to blow up the entire capital building. A similar situation happens every year in the town of Davos, Switzerland when the […]

Walmart is sleeping with the enemy and, as I predicted last Friday, supporters who have worshiped at the Bentonville retail altar are tearing out their hair as Obama Derangement Syndrome sweeps the country as a result of the betrayal. From The Daily Caller: Michelle Obama and nutrition czar Sam Kass have taken the Food Police […]

Do not doubt for a moment that if sales decline as a result of Walmarts five-year-plan to sell healthier formulations of its Great Value label, the grand experiment will end and First Lady Michelle Obama will once again be on the outs with folks in Bentonville. I’m still in favor of the experiment. From Jane […]