And now, the real reason Wal-Mart raised wages: informal worker action –>
http://t.co/fn0QhA1MuR pic.twitter.com/ofQvPacg4z
— Billmon (@billmon1) February 19, 2015
From the article:
… McMillon said Wal-Mart is trying to position itself ahead of the market in order to retain the best talent available as the employment situation continues to improve…
The National Employment Law Project’s Tsedeye Gebreselassie called Wal-Mart’s decision to raise wages a small step in the right direction. “It’s really not enough especially considering the company is so profitable, posting $16 billion in profit last year,” she said in an interview with CNBC’s Power Lunch. On top of that, she said, because Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest private employer, it has a real obligation to do better.
Retail expert Jan Kniffen of J. Rogers Kniffen Worldwide applauded the move, and said it will cause other retailers to follow suit. “Long term this is going to be a real positive for Wal-Mart. They’re going to have better employees. They’re going to have happier people. The federal government will be off their back. The state government is off their back. The local government is off their back,” he said. “Wal-Mart will no longer be the most hated retailer in America.” ….
I agree with Tim F’s comments this morning: “Whatever moved Wal Mart to do this, I think it stands as pretty definitive evidence that class anxiety has become a defining issue of our present time.” But clearly this went beyond social stigma, or vague fears of a future uprising — WalMart’s aggressive anti-worker policies were costing the company money, and that’s a result even the most case-hardened MBA understands and fears.
(Also, since I am mildly dyslexic, I’ll admit my first response was “WalMart’s CEO is named McMillions?”)
Eric U.
i read it as McMillion too.
WereBear
@Eric U.: It is McMillion!
Davis X. Machina
@WereBear: But it’s pronounced “McDuck”.
WereBear
If I had known this principle earlier, my resume would have taken a whole new shape.
Mandalay
Good new for store workers is always bad news for the National Retail Federation, which exists solely to fuck the lower paid in the ass at every opportunity. Today their CEO shit his pants.
If today’s announcement by Walmart really was an example of “the power of the marketplace” you have to wonder why it took them years to get around to addressing the issue.
jl
You can politicize, or Marxize (no one ever expects MARX!) the reason for the pay increase if you want by calling it ‘worker action’ or evidence of ‘class anxiety’.
You can nerdize it by talking about there being a continuum of quality-quantity trade-offs for labor-suppy and wage relationship, aka ‘you get what you pay for’.
If this is Walmart’s long run profit maiximizing strategy, then consistent with a multiple equilibrium, efficiency wage labor market solution for lower skill workers, a la Stiglitz and idea behind David Card’s and associates work on minimum wage.
I read stock market dumped on Walmart today, so stock market disagrees this has to do with at least short term profit maiximization, at least the stock market disagrees today. What it will think tomorrow, who knows? But, the nerdized interpretation has some associated cognitive dissonance to deal with and truth of matter will unfold. Something for people interested in the economics of it to watch.
jl
@Mandalay: I suspect Walmart tried the approach of repeating the beatings until morale improved approach, until it was clear that would not work.
Edit: be interesting to see how internal budgets for management fiddling to control employee performance and inventory problems and cost of increasing wages compared over time.
Baud
@Mandalay:
I don’t follow. The marketplace changes. The fact that they did what they did now doesn’t by itself prove or disprove anything.
Villago Delenda Est
The Walton heirs still need to be slaughtered like pigs.
That has not changed.
greennotGreen
It’s a baby step in the right direction, but it would take a lot more than that for me to shop there. I’m not sure that short of the Walton family’s donating almost all their money to progressive charities there’s anything they could do to atone for what I consider to be their multitude of sins.
WereBear
Did Wall Street react when the stores were barely stocked and tumbleweeds were blowing down the aisles?
Just One More Canuck
@Davis X. Machina: damn you – beat me to it
? Martin
The interesting thing about these moves is that these companies now start lobbying in favor of a minimum wage, in order to push competitor wages up and the wages of their customer base up.
Hildebrand
Perhaps they realized that if they pay their people more, said people will buy more stuff, thus likely boosting their own receipts. Funny how that works.
Kylroy
@WereBear: All I know is that Wall Street fucking hated CostCo for paying their employees well. Didn’t matter how thoroughly they proved that it actually *saved* them money overall. Keeping the plebes down is more important than profitability to an MBA out in the business world, no matter what the actual MBA courses may say.
Amir Khalid
@Hildebrand:
Henry Ford figured this out a century ago.
Mike J
@Villago Delenda Est:
You think murder is a good idea?
Mandalay
@jl:
The hourly wage increases were included in their not-too-good Q4 report released before the market opened, and the stock probably would have tanked anyway. (Declining store revenue and the strong USD is probably going to cost Walmart much more than the pay increases.)
Mandalay
@Villago Delenda Est:
No they don’t. Just stop posting your infantile drivel.
NotMax
Only about half the items I’ve thus far read on this mention that the increase at the bottom of the scale is to go to $9 and to $10 only in Feb. ’16 (for workers in jurisdictions without an already equivalent or higher minimum).
Should the economic climate “weaken” or “not meet expectations,” then even that crumb could well be further postponed or even rescinded.
Davis X. Machina
@Mandalay: Shall we compromise on “Squeezed like lemons?”
Roger Moore
@Davis X. Machina:
How about settling for “expropriated”.
ThresherK
@Davis X. Machina: As far I know, nobody has put Freedom Crosshairs on the Waltons’ heirs photos on the internets and let “Live Free or Die (Estd. 2009)” sorts take its natural, non-causal, nothing can be charged, course.
When that happens, I’ll alert the forum.
jl
@Mandalay: Yes, I remember that now. Latest report I heard only talked about the wage issue, and I forgot about the crummy report. Thanks.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@WereBear:
We already know from the tech bubble that Wall Street doesn’t need companies to make money. They just need to conform to what Wall Street thinks they should do. That’s why Wall Street hates Apple — those bastards just keep making money even though they don’t follow the MoUs’ advice.
Another Holocene Human
Obama, ARRA, Yellen have accomplished something, and that is that jobs are springing up and wages are starting to push up. People are leaving shitty jobs with another job in hand. Seeing it happen. Bad news for cheapskate employers. The desperation is gone.
Smiling Mortician
@Bob In Portland: That thing that you do with Mnemosyne’s name is really fucking irritating and doesn’t help your cause.
Buddy H
Wife and I are sitting here watching PBS news hour. Gwen Ifill asks “if the supreme court knocks down obamacare, how damaging will this be to Obama??”
Person being interviewed replies, “It will be damaging to all the people who lose healthcare.”
Is Gwen all about the politics? Does she go to too many cocktail parties with villagers? I feel like it’s all a chess game to her…
Mandalay
@Davis X. Machina:
Whatever. Let’s just stop calling for pain and death.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mandalay: I invite you to find a fire to go die in, asswipe.
The Walton heirs are parasite scum. They deserve no quarter.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mandalay: No. Pain and death for the likes of the Waltons, the Kochs, the Bush Crime family…it’s karma.
They need to suffer for their crimes, which have caused suffering for countless millions.
Another Holocene Human
@NotMax: Lol, this sounds like one of Microsoft’s infamous vaporware announcements. Back in the 90s MS announcing vaporware could crush lesser companies. (Both competitors and sadly, their customers as well.)
Yes, this sounds like mindgames with their own employees plus they get a good press cycle, don’t leave, you’re getting a raise … “soon”. The timeline means that next year they can take credit for raising wages AND take credit for local wages rising by law (much higher than $10) and fool compliant press into thinking their wages went up by some impressive percent. It’s all bullshit.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Bob In Portland:
I did. Do you have a non-conspiracy website that you can link to, or are we all supposed to take it on faith that the photos are what they are claimed to be?
Bob In Portland
@Smiling Mortician: Well, it’s too fucking bad, Mortician. Mnemsy is too afraid to google “fake Oswald Mexico City” and makes up lies about what I said. At first I felt sorry for her, you know, being stupid, but self-imposed ignorance deserves nothing but scorn. Please talk to the guy who keeps bringing up Putin and nipple rings that he’s not helping his cause (which must have been drawn up in an adult bookstore).
Bob In Portland
Latest from Banderastan.
Eric U.
It has been a long time since I could have imagined walmart stock being a good investment for anyone. All you have to do is go into a Target and then visit a nearby Walmart. Target has their problems, but the contrast is pretty stark. Walmart stores look like crap and the workers are obviously unhappy.
Another Holocene Human
@Kylroy: The courses are dumb. They could get away with the stupid when it was people in industry taking night courses that just wanted to know more about business fundamentals/money and already knew about how their industry worked. But now they take young kids with no experience and feed them this drivel about the “bottom line” even though most businesses rely on stuff that doesn’t appear on the balance sheet, sometimes it’s called “goodwill” in business parlance. It can be the difference between profit and closing your doors. Also they think it’s okay to exploit customers are long as it’s legal (and you joint a “patriot” “tea party” anti-regulation group to lobby against it if it’s not) as if that’s sustainable forever. They have absolutely no concept of basic economics including opportunity cost. They churn out full of themselves little shits, pardon my french, who can look at a spreadsheet and chirp out “this number should go down” without having a fucking clue how the business works. They never catch on that the business is losing money in ways that aren’t revealed on the balance sheet … but then you’d have to get your hands dirty and understand the business from the ground up. They’ll just cut labor or supplier costs and call it a day. Then when the business folds it’s somebody else’s fault.
Personal note: a family member retired and sold their business which had been solid and successful for decades, boring business that supplied other businesses. The new owners were sleazy MBA types who quickly ran it into the ground. They turned around a sued my family member as if he needed the stress. Obviously the plaintiffs lost. Pathetic.
Buddy H
I stopped going to the “neighborhood” walmart when I moved, but I noticed the empty shelves, and of course the employees never looked happy to be there. If I skipped a month, it’d be a whole new crowd of employees. Rapid turnover.
The big selling point was that I’d SAVE MONEY at walmart, but I’d buy a bunch of bananas, bring them home, and the next day they’d be rotten, with a puddle of water underneath them. I never saw bananas behave like that, from any other store. Or we’d buy avocados, and they’d be rotten inside. Or I’d buy long-life lightbulbs (seven years!) and six months later they’d burn out.
And the store was filthy, top to bottom. They’d take the rugs at the front entrance and throw them on the shopping carts when it came time for them to wash the entrance floor.
And there was something about the place that made me feel sick… the size, the ceilings, the quality of the lighting… I’d go in there pushing my dirty cart around and think to myself how Dick Cheney thought this was the perfect business model…. such a cold place, like a morgue, and I’d remember shopping with my mother when I was very young, in our small town with the downtown full of small shops. My mom talked to the butcher, my dad knew the hardware store guy.
Did I mention I hate walmart?
Hildebrand
@Amir Khalid: Yep, amazing that certain corporate overlords seem to forget that rather salient little bit of business wisdom.
Another Holocene Human
Religious leaders in Ukraine last year begged people to stop using the term “banderite” (nb: he and his followers have been dead in the grave for two generations) but BiP keeps right on trucking. I was happier when he just called everyone Nazis. I mean, who hasn’t gotten a little self righteous online and called everyone a Nazi?
Sick, BiP. Sick.
WereBear
Excellent point. Now does this mean the MoUs’ advice kinda– you know– sucks?
Naaaah. Can’t be!
/sarcasm
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Bob In Portland:
They’re photos of a random guy in Mexico City. There is absolutely no connection shown between the photographs and the phone calls.
Your claim was that this mystery man went to Mexico City, claiming to be Oswald. The rest of the evidence shows that Oswald did, in fact, travel to Mexico City and attempt to apply for asylum. The only tiny thread that you have to hang your conspiracy on is that after Oswald is documented as having left Mexico City, a mystery man claiming to be Oswald contacted a Soviet agent and claimed to still be in Mexico. The CIA asked the FBI to lie about the calls, which is why Hoover is discussing them with JFK. Hoover was livid that he was lied to and summarily fired the FBI agents who did it.
Your photograph is completely pointless because the entire controversy is about the phone calls. No one but insane conspiracy theorists is trying to claim that Oswald never went to Mexico.
I know this is hard to believe, but even in the early 1960s, you could call Mexico without actually having to be inside that country. So I’m not sure what the point is of claiming that an Oswald impersonator went to Mexico right after Oswald left just so the imposter could make a couple of phone calls.
The Blog Dahlia
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
See, now that’s no fun. Where are the black helicopters? The men in black? The secret pact with the aliens that created the pyramids?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Here. You apparently have difficulty reading too.
November 23, around ten a.m.
Remain in darkness, liar.
Mike J
@Another Holocene Human: While we’re discussing what to call things, I’d like to repost a quote and link I posted in the wee small hours of the morning:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bin-laden-plot-to-kill-president-obama/2012/03/16/gIQAwN5RGS_story.html
All those people you hear demanding Obama use the term “Islamic terrorism”? They’re on bin Laden’s side.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@The Blog Dahlia:
Believe it or not, Ron Rosenbaum — an actual reporter — wrote an interesting article in Slate about Oswald’s Mexico City trip and its ties to Cuba:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_spectator/2013/11/philip_shenon_s_a_cruel_and_shocking_act_stunning_reporting_in_new_book.single.html
The CIA was on the verge of yet another attempt to assassinate Castro when Kennedy was murdered. It’s quite possible that the phone calls impersonating Oswald were an attempt to get information about Cuba from a Soviet operative.
Why is it completely plausible that the CIA managed to assassinate JFK on the first try and cover every one of their steps when they couldn’t manage to assassinate Castro after multiple tries?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mike J: I flipped through the Tweety show long enough to see Michael Crowley call this whole thing pretty much stupid, and it looked like Ron Fournier was winding up to disagree. Tweety started babbling about a “President’s ability to shape our language”, so I’m guessing he’s on Fournier’s side. I’m trying to remember a dumber controversy in politics
Litlebritdifrnt
It occurs to me that the geniuses that run WalMart have just recently discovered that if you don’t pay your workers a living wage they can’t afford to buy shit in your store no matter how low your prices are. They go to food banks, they go to the nicks and dents place where stuff is 50% cheaper than you. I am sure this decision was done with a serious CBA behind it, for every dollar they raise the wage a certain percentage of those dollars will come right back to the store.
WereBear
@Buddy H: Exactly! I haven’t shopped at Wal-Mart for years, but just about the time I heard about their rotten practices, I was already bailing. Shirts that were unwearable after a couple of washes, coffee makers that burned out in six months, and the DVD’s were all full screen.
That’s when I found out that even when you buy name brands at Wal-Mart, they are special, low-quality, versions to make the price point.
Giving them your money is just like running it through the shredder.
debit
Bob in Portland makes me miss MC. Bob in Portland is a cudlip.
Stan of the Sawgrass
Let’s not forget that in some rural areas– make that a LOT of rural areas– Walmart is now the only game in town, having driven out any smaller stores years ago. As the only liberal in her Alabama county, my sister HATES Walmart, but the alternative is driving around all day to various surviving shops in nearby towns, or else driving 90 miles to Montgomery. Most of the time she holds her nose and drives the 45 miles to the ‘nearby’ WM. I can’t see that changing until some kind of new business model comes along.
Davis X. Machina
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Is this before or after him flying Nairobi-Honolulu to insert the fake birth notices?
shelley
I guess Sam Walton will be buying one less solid gold back scratcher.
Buddy H
@WereBear: That’s when I found out that even when you buy name brands at Wal-Mart, they are special, low-quality, versions to make the price point.
For a while, I thought I was safe buying a brand-name cereal. Then I bought the same brand at my local grocer’s, compared the boxes, and there were differences in the printing and ingredients list.
The name brands have a crap version of their product that they reserve for walmart. Not a bargain.
Beside the fact that shopping there was such a horrible experience, I hated the thought of my money going to the Walton family.
The very last purchase… A few months ago, my wife bought some potting soil. As soon as she watered her plants, white fungus appeared on the soil. Next were a million gnats. We dumped the soil in the frozen backyard, bought some decent soil from a small family business, and haven’t had a problem since with fungus or gnats.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): No, not a random guy. As Hoover said the day after the assassination:
You are pathetic, Mnemsy.
Mike in NC
I was in a supermarket in SC last week and as I approached a cashier he was telling some elderly woman who was about to leave, “(Something) Obama, so that’s why you should vote Republican”. He was a stocky white guy, looked about 60-65 years old. Probably unable to find a better job, and no doubt earning the minimum wage.
I was tempted to ask if he liked getting paid seven freaking bucks an hour, because Republicans oppose the minimum wage and maybe he’d prefer to be getting paid three bucks, or possibly fifty cents, an hour. Asshole.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Bob In Portland:
Re-read the link in the previous thread. The lie that the CIA agents in Mexico City asked the FBI agents to tell Hoover was that Oswald had not been there, when in fact he had.
Basically, your claim is the exact claim that the CIA made at the time: nope, we never saw Oswald, it must have been someone else. The story you believe is the CIA’s own story, made up to cover up their own negligence in letting Oswald pal around with the Cubans for a week without keeping track of him.
You’re carrying the CIA’s water for them and letting them continue to lie. Why do you think the CIA was telling the truth?
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
They’re not exactly on bin Laden’s side. Both they and bin Laden are in favor of war between Islam and the West, but that doesn’t mean they’re on the same side.
Mike in NC
@Stan of the Sawgrass: In much of the rural south, there’s WalMart, and then there are the even lower end retailers: Dollar Store, Family Dollar, Dollar General, and a couple of other similar chains that are doing quite nicely in our still struggling economy.
They depend on the poor, retirees, and WalMart employees as their customer base.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Read the link. Yes, it was essentially a regurgitation of Times reporter Philip Shenon. The only real information was that while in Mexico City he went to a twist party.
So do tell, how does Oswald going to a twist party negate his imposter? It doesn’t. So, essentially, you linked to an article that didn’t really address what we were talking about. Were you intentionally trying to steer the subject away or are you just that dumb to not understand the printed word?
Buddy H
@Mike in NC: Sad thing about the 65-year-old republican cashier, he blames ALL his problems on Obama and the liberals. If McCain had won, and then Romney, he’d be a rich man. In his mind.
Elizabelle
Dr. Strangelove on TCM. Much more soothing than any thoughts about WalMart. F*ck ’em.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Bob In Portland:
Why do you believe the CIA’s story, Bob? I’d really like to know. All the rest of the evidence shows that it was a hastily-manufactured lie to try and cover the CIA’s ass in the days after the assassination. Why do you think that this one specific lie manufactured by the CIA was in fact the truth?
Litlebritdifrnt
OMG have you guys seen this?
http://www.upworthy.com/a-dog-on-the-verge-of-death-meets-a-prisoner-with-no-hope?c=utw1&utm_content=bufferde9ec&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
WereBear
@Mike in NC: But pointing that out to him would remind him he’s a helpless pawn in the Big Boy’s game.
I know some people would rather eat roasted sparrow on a curtain rod rather than admit that to themselves.
WereBear
@Litlebritdifrnt: It makes too damn much sense.
David Koch
I love the look on Derek Jeter’s face as Palin babbles (right side of photo)
Frankensteinbeck
@debit:
I was thinking the same thing. BiP is starting to sound like MC. A lot. A *lot*. Same super-topic-obsessiveness, same focus on pretending to know things we don’t, same ‘you are all on the wrong side!’ hangup, same refusing to admit when arguments have been debunked and instead harping over and over and over on an already disproven point.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Bob In Portland:
For the third time — the CIA asked FBI agents to supply false information to Hoover. Hoover is heard giving the CIA-manufactured false information on the tape. Hoover later found out he had been lied to and summarily fired the FBI agents who had done it.
Hoover is repeating a CIA-manufactured lie on that tape, and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker. As usual.
I find your faith that the CIA was telling the truth about everything while they were scrambling to cover their asses after the assassination to be quite touching. I really do. You seem to have a lot more faith in human nature than I do, especially human nature immediately after a massive fuck-up with international consequences.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I’m trying to figure out what you are trying to say. The CIA had made a fake tape and fake pictures of the impersonator of Oswald prior to the assassination, but then lied about Oswald being in Mexico City? Frame this out for me.
When were the tape recording and the pictures made, Mnemsy? Between the assassination and ten a.m. the next morning? Are you saying that the CIA made fake tapes and pictures after the assassination, then gave them to Hoover, in order to deny that Oswald was in Mexico City? That doesn’t make any sense, but much of what you say doesn’t make any sense.
Who’s the author of the fake evidence? How did it fall into the CIA’s hands? Don’t go making up stories now, Mnemsy, I know how they came about, but do you?
Ohio Mom
@Buddy H: There was a Frontline once on Rubbermaid. They wanted the Walmart account, good way to reach lots of customers. But Walmart didn’t like the prices Rubbermaid was charging. Forgot the specifics but trying to keep costs under what Walmart was demanding was the undoing of Rubbermaid, and they ended up being bought out. I’m sure the episode is googeable.
So yes, Walmart is famous for forcing manufacturers to change their products to meet Walmart’s pricing requirements. Didn’t know the evidence was as plain to see as a list of cereal ingredients though.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Why are the separatists opposed to a UN peacekeeping force, Bob?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Of course it was a CIA-manufactured lie. The CIA made the recordings and took the pictures, I believe it was in early October but it may have been in late September. They wanted to connect Oswald to the Soviets and the Cubans. Why else would they do that? And why would they do it before a nobody became a somebody? And how did they know he was going to take a job at the Book Depository and that the Presidential motorcade was going to go by him in November?
So the CIA was lying about Oswald immediately after the President was assassinated? Why? Give me the logic behind that.
You complete drooling idiot.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Ohio Mom: I remember reading a story about Mount Olive pickles. WalMart demanded a huge jar of pickles that they could sell at $4.99, at that price Mount Olive had to make them at a loss. With the pressure to be in WalMart they went ahead and did that, actually selling jars of pickles to WalMart at a loss.
WereBear
@Ohio Mom: There are fools where I live; wanted a Wal-Mart in our town because they are going to the Wal-Mart 50 miles away every week. Why? Because things were breaking and popping and splitting and collapsing.
And they kept going back and buying these things. Again. Because they were so cheap.
Now, I understand buying the cheap thing because we can’t afford the big things with the quantity discount; I’ve been there. But these are folks who are saving ten or twenty dollars and burning up the same amount in gas… and then turning around and doing it again, week after week.
They could save the gas money and buy the thing which would then last for years. But they won’t do it.
Ohio Mom
@Buddy H:
This is pure poetry:
You really captured the ambience. I’ve only been in a Walmart half a dozen times or so but I’m always struck by how utterly bleak it feels in there.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: You mean like the UN peacekeeping force that protected the Serbs in the Krina sector of Croatia? Ha!
Okay, Poroshenko’s war against the people of eastern Ukraine is over, at least until they get more weapons from the US. But they also need soldiers, and putting in a peacekeeping group will merely provide more opportunities for false flags.
Europe isn’t going to go along with a war with Russia. Perhaps Poroshenko would like a peacekeeping force surrounding the Presidential Palace.
debit
@Frankensteinbeck: Or it’s Doug trolling us again. I can’t decide.
jl
@Gin & Tonic: I am confused by you and BiP and the news stories, which is why I at least skim your links but try not to say anything.
I can find stories with titles that say Poroshenko is calling for UN peacekeepers, but all the quotes I see, he mentions EU peacekeepers. You have link?
I am sure BiP will provide many, but I don’t have time to trace this all back to Oswald and JFK. (Edit: yes, that is a snarky comment to request BiP to try to keep it real).
Mike J
@Roger Moore: They’re absolutely on bin Laden’s side about starting a holy war. It’s not up to me to list all of trivial places they might disagree with him.
Bob In Portland
Krajina
jl
been a while since we had a job thread at BJ. Maybe some here are interested. Does BJ have readers in Antarctica? Maybe Cole will put up a paypal button to provide a supplement. To increase the BJ blog’s reach (This blog will pay for itself!).
Antarctica post office seeking job applicants who can dodge ‘smelly penguins,’ live without showering
http://news.yahoo.com/antarctica-post-office-job-port-lockroy-application-190236612.html
mai naem mobile
@Mike in NC: i used to deal with an older middle aged white guy when Dubbya was president. He had one ~ minimum wage job and a second independent contractor job as a courier delivering stuff around the city. The guy drove a beat up truck with pro Bush/anti Kerry stickers all over. I wanted so badly to ask him if he enjoyed getting screwed so bad.
Bob In Portland
@jl: But I am keeping it real.
Mike in NC
@Litlebritdifrnt: Whenever we drive through Mount Olive, NC, we have to chuckle about what courses they must teach at the university there.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Bob In Portland:
Actually, I’m saying the CIA were the ones who did the fake calls pretending to be Oswald to try and get information for a different operation from a known Soviet agent — which is how they just happened to have the tapes at the most convenient time — and bundled them with a photo of someone else so they could claim that they totally had NOT been negligent in not keeping track of Oswald while he was in Mexico City because it wasn’t really him.
They were trying to cover their asses and deflect the blame from themselves, and you think that, what, the CIA was too ethical to do that?
Here’s the difference between you and me, Bob. You think the CIA is made up of a group of Machiavellian schemers whose plans always unfold like clockwork, exactly to spec. I think they’re a bunch of overconfident fuckups who, like fuckups everywhere, immediately tried to claim that they hadn’t fucked up, it was all someone else’s fault.
I have the Bay of Pigs — which had happened two years earlier — to support my view of them as fuckups. Where’s your proof to show that their schemes ever worked out any better than the Bay of Pigs did?
jl
@Mike J: Now now. Is the correct language to use when invoking God before you oppress maim and kill people really a trivial difference? Some may disagree.
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
I think they disagree with him on who should win that holy war, which is an important point. Just because crazies on both sides want to start a war doesn’t mean they’re on the same side in any meaningful sense.
Mike J
@WereBear: Read the stories on what Walmart did to Huffy and Vlasic. Sickening.
Ohio Mom
I just goggled a bit because I remembered that manufacturers establish offices in Bentonville for all the negotiating that goes on about getting their products in-line with Wal-mart’s requirements. From this Rueters http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/04/25/idUSN2427041920070425
article we learn that in 2007, there were 1,218 companies like P&G with offices in Bentonville; the article quotes someone who says “You’re not here to sell Wal-Mart, you’re here to service Wal-Mart.”
I never fail to be amazed at the chokehold those @&*(#$s have on us.
Ruviana
About the food stuff, Tracie McMillan wrote about this when she worked for a time at Wal-Mart. You could eat reasonably well if you ate what you bought quickly. There were problems with storage, turnover, management and every other thing. The only focus was low prices.
Bob In Portland
@Frankensteinbeck: You know, you don’t know. And you will continue not to know. And that’s the way your country wants it. You don’t ask obvious questions. You might as well be in the White House press corp. You might as well be Chuck Todd. You live in Chuck Todd’s world.
Tommy
@WereBear: You buy cheap shit you get what you pay for. I don’t often buy things that are not generational. Maybe people in a future life will want to use those things.
Mike J
@jl:
“Jesus Christ our lord and savior” v Allah sounds as meaningful as transubstantiation v consubstantiation. And Daesh is actually wanting a holy war on that level of nitpickyness. Nitpickitude. Nitpickiosity.
I’m going to have another drink.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Nothing will come of this, because al-Foxeera won’t lead a stampede against one of their own, but this is good for a chuckle
For those of you who aren’t following this, or don’t remember when it came up a couple of years back, O’Reilly claimed to have been caught in a dangerous combat situation when he was covering the Falklands War for Entertainment Tonight
ThresherK
@Buddy H: Name brand cereal?
I’ve heard about things like, say, tools or such where a Name Brand used to be something, and whatever was at WM was decontented (an underused term in my book, for simple Orwellian purposes). I wouldn’t touch a power tool or small-engine device there.
But actual cereal? I’m surprised, and also curious to know how one makes something from Post/GF/GMills crappier. What did they remove, the ingredient in Cap’n Crunch which lacerates the roof of your mouth?
muddy
@debit: Good times, good times… There was at least a creative use of language there, not just tl;dr. She had a spark. A crazy spark, but nonetheless. I still get a chuckle out of “cudlip”, it just tickles me for some reason.
jl
@Bob In Portland: OK, now WP is eating my comments to you and Gin and Tonic. Probably I should thank WP for once. I should stay out of the Ukraine debate here, probably.
I would like articles with quotes or some reliable analysis of what kind of peacekeepers Poroshenko is asking for, or if he is equivocating, or what he is doing.
Same request to Gin and Tonic.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Bob In Portland:
I will try this one more time: the CIA lied about Oswald being in Mexico City because they had fucked up and not taken him seriously. They thought he was just another crazy asshole who loved Fidel Castro, so they didn’t bother to keep track of him. And then that crazy asshole managed to kill the president, and suddenly there were all kinds of questions about why the CIA knew of the guy but didn’t keep an eye on him. So they tried to lie and claim it wasn’t Oswald in Mexico City, it was someone else, but they got caught pretty quickly.
All of this chaff about the CIA hatching a deep dark plot to kill JFK is what the CIA wants you to believe. Otherwise, you might recognize them as the incompetent fuckups they really are.
mai naem mobile
@Litlebritdifrnt: they did the same thing to Vlasic. The Vlasic CEO was on the PBS Walmart doc and he told Walmart there was just no way to decrease the price. There was no fat to cut and Walmart would not listen. They also talked about how Walmart sucks in Chinese manufacturers by dangling a contract,having the company prep for a massive order and then not give them the contract – then screwing the manufacturer by asking for lower prices because they know the manufacturer has sunk in costs they need to recover. Walmart is evil.
raven
@efgoldman: Rock of the Marne!
WereBear
@Mike J: Exactly. It’s like they were sent from another dimension to destroy American business.
Tommy
@Ohio Mom: Oh I have seen all those stories. Saw the one with Rubbermaid. Where I live Walmart is about all I got. Well Walmart or Target. I try to find a local store but almost impossible.
muddy
@Ohio Mom: I remember the Rubbermaid one. Wasn’t there a whole town that died because that was the main local manufacturing?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@efgoldman: I’m waiting for Hannity to tell us he took Acre from Saladin
jl
@raven: I hear that Bill O is girding his loins for the Holy War that has commenced but that Obama is afraid to declare. Luffololaffle may be involved.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): When did they make those tapes and pictures? Between the assassination and the next morning? While that doesn’t even make sense, it’ll be interesting for you to explain that in the face of the evidence. But go ahead.
muddy
@efgoldman: I don’t think so, it’s not at all the same flavor.
BruceFromOhio
Yay for Wally World workers!
Still never going to shop in your shithole store.
mai naem mobile
What makes me mad is the way states and cities compete with each other to give incentives to these companies and sports teams. WTF? How about the stupid states and cities stick together and tell them “No Incentives. None.Zero.Zilch” You want to come.here,come but thats it.
jl
I was (almost) in a combat situation when I reached draft age in between wars. I don’t remember if there actually was a draft at that time or I just had to register. I don’t remember numbers being called. So, just from those details alone, you can see how close it was!
It’s like our corporate news actors all went to an Oprah combat zone war story show. “you get a war story, Brian!’ ‘And you get a war story, Bill!’ ‘And you get an embassy attack story Lara!’
Bob In Portland
@efgoldman: A wise move. Don’t ever follow up, don’t ask questions. Pray your snark saves you, asshole.
debit
@BruceFromOhio: Yep, ditto. Luckily, I live in an urban area with plenty of choices. I don’t know that I would feel the same if I was out in the sticks and it was my only choice.
debit
Okay, if any FPers are about, isn’t about time for a time out for BiP? That’s two personal attacks in this one thread so far.
ETA: Go ahead and make it three, dear, if you must.
Bob In Portland
By the way, when did the CIA ever say that Oswald wasn’t in Mexico City?
Roger Moore
@muddy:
The biggest thing is that she was a crank rather than a troll or a shill. She had crazy ideas that she made up herself and genuinely believed. That’s a totally different category from people like Derf or Bob in Baghdad. She could be annoying and occasionally stalkerish, but also amusing and, once in a great while, insightful.
jl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: O’Reilly is always profound, deeply profound. His story raises interesting journalistic ethics questions. Like if a reporter making stuff up is unethical if the story is so absurd at face value that it immediately discredits itself?
We need a journalistic ethics panel on self-refuting BS.
If Brian Williams had said that he was on a helicopter that was hit by enemy fire shortly before it surfaced the calm Baltic sea, and he stared down the blade of hoplite’s saber glinting in the afternoon Antietam sunlight, would he be in the same trouble today?
Fox News is always breaking new journalistic ground. Have to give them that much.
Tommy
@debit: I live in a rural area. I try not to buy stuff from Walmart. Try really hard. They are the only game in town. I shop there more than I care fo admit because it is all I got.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Bob In Portland:
I’m sure you didn’t bother to read the links I provided because you don’t want to disturb your beautiful mind with facts, but I will summarize for you: the purported calls from Oswald to the Soviet agent happened after Oswald is documented as having left Mexico City.
So your claim is that the CIA had an Oswald impersonator going around Mexico City attending parties with the Cubans, had that imposter leave the city, and then the imposter made phone calls after he had left town claiming that he was still in Mexico City? Why bother having him leave the city before making the calls? Why not make the calls while he was still there?
Unless, of course, Oswald actually had been in Mexico City, and they waited for him to leave so a CIA operative could call the Soviet spy and try to get information from him about what the Cubans were up to by pretending to be Oswald, who seemed to be pretty pally with the Cubans.
But, of course, that would have to mean that Oswald was not controlled by the CIA, and that’s an article of faith you can never give up.
Roger Moore
@jl:
No, he’d be in completely different trouble, probably involving institutionalization in a mental healthy facility.
raven
@efgoldman: I thought she had Asbergers.
BruceFromOhio
@debit: I would just try to figure it out some how. Mail order , make it myself, second hand, or just go without. I’m lucky too, I can happily ignore these Wartmarts on the landscape.
By the way, in case it hasn’t become obvious, the troll is just fucking with you. Please quit feeding it?
kthxbai
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Bob In Portland:
Other than when they showed the picture of a guy who was clearly not Oswald to Hoover and claimed this mystery man was going around Mexico City saying he was Oswald?
Dude, this is your conspiracy theory, not mine. Try to keep your own claims straight.
JaneE
But will WalMart employees still qualify for welfare? Probably, unless they are single. $10/hr is $20,800/year if they get 40 hours a week. Many don’t.
danielx
@WereBear:
Some years ago there was an article about “the man who said no to wal-mart“, the man being the CEO of Snapper mowers. However….according to the wiki article on snapper inc….
Why am i not shocked…
jl
@Roger Moore:
” No, he’d be in completely different trouble, probably involving institutionalization in a mental healthy facility. ”
Thanks. I think we are making progress on what to do in Bill O’s case. Still need an ethics panel on journalistic self-refuting BS, IMHO.
debit
@Bob In Portland: There’s a difference between dissenting opinions and personal attacks. If you’ve been personally attacked, there’s a drop down box in the upper right hand corner with links to all the front pagers. Make a complaint.
I don’t know what you think you’ll accomplish here. You have made a reputation for yourself as a crank. I see your name and think “obsessed and possibly unhinged: do not engage”. You don’t seem to want a conversation, you want an audience to your particular brand of outrage as performance art. If that makes you happy, then, yay, I guess. I just wish you would do it in threads when I’m not around. Or, you know, not at all.
ETA: and with that said, I won’t engage with you again, even if you reply. Have a nice night.
raven
It gets pretty boring having all these pied comments to this fucking moron. If you engage with him, well, what the fuck do you expect?
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Personal attacks? Like you calling me a Nazi?
Bob In Portland
@raven: Yes, let’s talk about that Republican who wants to ban yoga pants.
Maybe someone will put “He stood up for the right to wear yoga pants” on your tombstone.
If you can’t keep up, don’t get angry. Read.
raven
@efgoldman: Does for me.
http://tampermonkey.net/
raven
@efgoldman: Not having to fool with this jackass makes Chrome more inviting but it still has java issues.
danielx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Ranks right up there with the wingnut I can’t remember who claimed to be a front line soldier in the war on terror because he was in NYC on 9/11…..101st Fighting Keyboarders at the ready!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Sad news for comedy fans
He also coined the term “humble brag”.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Call me what you want, asshole, just don’t whine about “personal attacks.”
And I’ve told you before, you know nothing about my heritage.
muddy
@efgoldman: Oh, surely it was the other way around, I just can’t picture it that way.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@danielx: A lot of good comments in the “boots on the ground” thread, ask not if they support boots on the ground, ask if they would, or would they send their kid, to fight in Syria. Got me thinking about all the old stories from the mists of barely ten years ago, not least the kid at some college pro-war rally who, when asked if he planned to join up, indignantly replied that he had been accepted to one of the top MBA programs in the country!
ETA: .. and Richard Cohen, who is not only still employed but still considered a liberal, admitted after the fact that he supported the Iraq War because he needed “therapeutic violence” after 9/ll I can’t even conceive that someone could type that phrase, much less send it out for publication.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: Fool, I was answering someone else. Of course, I have no idea of who you are.
But you might be interested in this article, translated from Bild, about a meeting that the US braintrust, to include Breedlove and Nuland, about their problems with getting Europe onboard with the plans for Ukraine.
http://fortruss.blogspot.ca/2015/02/german-newspaper-bild-gets-inside-us.html
And you have every right and probably some good reason to hide your heritage. And I realize that you must be a little grumpy now that Kiev lost the war. But like I tried to tell you, the people running the war think of Ukrainians just like Syrians, Iraqis et al. They’re expendable for the making of profits.
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: FTW.
Ohio Mom
@muddy: That part I don’t remember, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Their headquarters was in Wooster, Ohio, and that town has some other industries I think, and a college. Still must have been a blow. It’s the other side of the state from me so I don’t know much about the place.
Good-sized list we have here, considering we are a small group calling on random memories: two pickle companies, Huffy bike, Rubbermaid. Think there are probably many companies hurt by their dealings with Wal-Mart that are afraid to say so.
Ohio Mom
@Tommy: Don’t worry, we don’t hold it against you.
mike with a mic
Since people wanted something the CIA did that wasn’t a fuck up…. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_pipeline_sabotage
Thing is, when it works you normally don’t hear about it…. till a long time after, when it fails you hear about it rather quick. Case in point how long that enigma shit was kept quite, or certain space based capabilities.
Mike in NC
BiP would do well to stop sniffing glue.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@efgoldman: Troll-B-Gone works in FF. Requires Greasemonkey.
(Actually, anything that runs under Tampermonkey in Chrome should run under Greasemonkey in FF.)
Botsplainer
Crap, I think the water line to the dishwasher is frozen. It would run hidden, no house air to it, on an exterior wall, and the porch thermometer shows -10.
raven
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I knew someone would know. I don’t remember how or when I installed it!
Belafon
The irony is that by raising wages as one of the largest employers in the country, not only will they actually improve their own sales, but their employees might actually be more mobile.
Now we have to figure out how to get them to raise it to at least $15/hr with full time jobs for most of the employees.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Except that there was. That’s how it was presented to LBJ and Hoover. Why would you make this up? Provide a link.
Buddy H
@Belafon: I don’t know. I’m glad they’re raising wages, but that won’t bring me back into the store. As I’ve said before, the merchandise quality is poor.
But the place is packed on weekends and evenings, so I guess they won’t miss me.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): A link, please.
ThresherK
@Ohio Mom: I do remember hearing in the ’00s that six or seven of WM’s top 10 suppliers were in bankruptcy. May have been from the same TV reportage about Newell-Rubbermaid.
Not the bad kind of bankruptcy (scandal, prison, & shame, I think George Bailey put it) that people go under, but a “nice place ya got here, shame if anything were to happen to it, let’s see your books” operating bankruptcy WM drove them to. Maybe the movie I should be referencing is “Goodfellas”, not “It’s A Wonderful Life”.
JustRuss
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Let’s see:
Charge a premium for their product
Offshore manufacturing to companies that are practically using slave labor
Offshore profits to avoid paying taxes
What part of Wall Street’s agenda is Apple missing? Admittedly, their products aren’t crap, so there’s that, although Yosemite is certainly a giant step in that direction.
Gin & Tonic
@jl: Sorry, I was on a device where I couldn’t search. Most of the links accessible to me right now are in Ukrainian or Russian, but here’s one from Kyiv Post in English – but it’s just a headline, as the body is behind a paywall.
Briefly, Poroshenko want a Security Council mandate to send *some* peacekeeping force. The format he prefers is an “EU police mission” because he does not believe that Russia, as a Security Council member but as the aggressor party in the conflict, has standing to be part of any peacekeeping force. So he wants a UN-authorized EU contingent.
The Russian proxies, of course, want no independent peacekeepers.
Anne Laurie
@danielx: Hugh Hewitt, who’s the definitional 101st Chairborne member in the Lexicon!
danielx
@Anne Laurie:
That’s it! I couldn’t recall if it was him or Jim Hoft, aka The Stupidest Man On The Internet. The wingnuts with white hair and manboobs all sort of run together in my mind…
Larv
You all realize that it’s pointless to engage with Bob, right? This is a guy who thinks AIDS was created by the US government because he read a book by a dentist that said so, and because it confirmed his belief that the US is the root of all the evil in the world. He doesn’t understand at least half of the stuff he reads, and he’s utterly resistant to becoming informed if it means questioning any of his beloved conspiracy theories.
lurker dean
a righteous rudy thrashing:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/wayne-barrett-rudy-giuliani-love-article-1.2122253
Gin & Tonic
@Larv: But sometimes it’s entertaining to poke at him with a stick.
jl
@Gin & Tonic:
OK thanks. Given the reluctance of EU to back US desire for more aid (as per Bild link BiP provided), not sure how EU force would be opportunity for false flag operation to deepen crisis, unless BiP thinks US is prepared to secretly blow up EU peacekeepers and blame it on Russia.
I am extremely cynical about both US and Russian motive in this, so don’t say much about it. I posted a comment that I thought was somewhat sympathetic to BiP’s general viewpoint without supporting some if the wilder charges. I expected some mean comments from the other side, but Bob in Portland indicated in response that I was a sheeple, apparently for not going all in. Or maybe my comment was misunderstood. Or, maybe not. Too much trouble to figure out.
If Bob is hear, you seem to think the US is going to engineer WWIII, or blunder into it. But IIRC when asked what we should do, you said we should discuss and have teach-ins. Did I miss something. I expected something more decisive.
normal liberal
@Tommy: Tommy, if you’ve got a Target in the area (you mentioned it upthread), start there and only hit Walmart for things Target doesn’t have. Or stack the errands – aren’t you in the St. Claire County area? Somewhere along 159 there must be alternatives.
Walmart is evil. Shun them.
BillinGlendaleCA
@lurker dean: A work of art, what a lover that Rudy is.
jl
Well, heck. Look there. My original comment went into another dimension for many minutes and popped out again.
Edit: now the comment (that I made to replace the missing comment, which is now not missing) which I saw posted for a moment, went missing. Does that make sense? I guess for WP it does. Anyway, weird WP comment action going down.
Larv
@Gin & Tonic: Oh, sure. I have no problem with that, poke away. But Mnemosyne seems to actually be arguing with him, and a couple others are treating him like a serious commenter rather than a crank.
jl
@Larv: Some of BiP’s links are interesting. Need salt handy, for many of them, though.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: Vineyard of the Saker is often a hoot.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Bob In Portland:
Here’s the link again:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/biographies/oswald/oswald-the-cia-and-mexico-city/
The photo and the audio tape were initially presented to Hoover and then LBJ as being related, but it was a lie. By the time the Warren Commission report was being prepared, the CIA asked them not to use the photo because it had nothing to do with Oswald’s trip to Mexico City.
The link I provided has a theory about why someone would make phone calls impersonating Oswald after Oswald left Mexico City, but I know you’ll never read it because it’s on PBS.org and not a conspiracy website.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Larv:
I was mostly arguing with him because I was bored at work, and because I managed to Google a few interesting articles on the topic that I thought were worth sharing. The Rosebaum one above is really interesting.
Sometimes a troll can lead you into some interesting reading on a topic, even if they were trying to direct you to their preferred narrative instead.
BruceFromOhio
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): Sometimes a troll can lead you into some interesting reading on a topic, even if they were trying to direct you to their preferred narrative instead.
Only when its Arkon DougJ doing the trolling. Anything else is just slumming, or blind pig/acorn.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
Bringing one of Bill’s links up from the thread below, for anyone else feeling JFK-ish:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1975/jul/17/the-cias-mystery-man/
This is the link with the information about the CIA saying the mystery man photo was unrelated to the assassination.
Kay
If you don’t like Chris Christie, this is a fun read.
You just hope someone like him will be eventually revealed as horrible, and then it happens!
ruemara
@jl: At this point, I might be interested.
Dave
@Ohio Mom: It’s always felt like images you see of a Soviet Store but tweaked a little. Instead of no crap to buy there is a huge amount of crap to buy. But it’s all crap and soulkilling.