TX Progressive Bloggers discuss #JadeHelm15, Trump, Bernie, Walmart, more

The Texas Progressive Alliance does not put peas in guacamole as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff notes the first appearance of lawyers bound and determined to help a few recalcitrant County Clerks deny marriage licenses to same sex couples in Texas.

Horwitz at Texpatriate says farewell as he enters the next chapter of his life.

Lightseeker at Texas Kaos exposes Rick Perry and Greg Abbott's myth that tort reform ensures more public access to affordable healthcare.  In GOP Texas tort reform means insurance companies and corporations are the winners while real people pay the price.  Abbott and Perry: Tort Reform as a Trojan Horse.

SocraticGadfly discusses the decline and fall of Walmart, especially in small towns and rural areas.

Should Sen. Bernie Sanders ultimately be eliminated from contention for the Democratic nomination, what's the best choice for progressives moving forward, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs asks.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants everyone to know that Jeb Bush's son is following the GOP anti-environment playbook in ploy to kill songbirds. The apple didn't fall too far from the tree.

Neil at All People Have Value posted a number of interesting pictures from his trip this past week to beautiful Cincinnati, Ohio. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

2012 saw the Republican Party lose the Presidency once again, mostly because of their complete refusal to learn from their mistakes, and evolve. As we inch ever closer to 2016, Texas Leftist is left to wonder if the GOP learned anything from the last cycle. Given the dominance of Media Harlot Donald Trump, the answer is a likely "no".


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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Mike Tolson hears the echoes of Loving v. Virginia in the arguments made by same-sex marriage opponents.

Paradise in Hell counts down the last days of freedom in Bastrop until the inevitable Obama/UN takeover of Texas.

Charlotte Coyle confesses her reluctant patriotism.

Texas Clean Air Matters envisions Houston as a leader in zero-emission cargo transport technologies.

Better Texas Blog celebrates beautiful, messy democracy.

Grits for Breakfast analyzes Rick Perry's speech on race relations and criminal justice reform in the context of his time as Governor.The Texas Progressive Alliance does not put peas in guacamole as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff notes the first appearance of lawyers bound and determined to help a few recalcitrant County Clerks deny marriage licenses to same sex couples in Texas.

Horwitz at Texpatriate says farewell as he enters the next chapter of his life.

Lightseeker at Texas Kaos exposes Rick Perry and Greg Abbott's myth that tort reform ensures more public access to affordable healthcare.  In GOP Texas tort reform means insurance companies and corporations are the winners while real people pay the price.  Abbott and Perry: Tort Reform as a Trojan Horse.

SocraticGadfly discusses the decline and fall of Walmart, especially in small towns and rural areas.

Should Sen. Bernie Sanders ultimately be eliminated from contention for the Democratic nomination, what's the best choice for progressives moving forward, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs asks.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants everyone to know that Jeb Bush's son is following the GOP anti-environment playbook in ploy to kill songbirds. The apple didn't fall too far from the tree.

Neil at All People Have Value posted a number of interesting pictures from his trip this past week to beautiful Cincinnati, Ohio. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

2012 saw the Republican Party lose the Presidency once again, mostly because of their complete refusal to learn from their mistakes, and evolve. As we inch ever closer to 2016, Texas Leftist is left to wonder if the GOP learned anything from the last cycle. Given the dominance of Media Harlot Donald Trump, the answer is a likely "no".


===========================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Mike Tolson hears the echoes of Loving v. Virginia in the arguments made by same-sex marriage opponents.

Paradise in Hell counts down the last days of freedom in Bastrop until the inevitable Obama/UN takeover of Texas.

Charlotte Coyle confesses her reluctant patriotism.

Texas Clean Air Matters envisions Houston as a leader in zero-emission cargo transport technologies.

Better Texas Blog celebrates beautiful, messy democracy.

Grits for Breakfast analyzes Rick Perry's speech on race relations and criminal justice reform in the context of his time as Governor.

The decline and fall of #Walmart

Much has been written the past few years about how Walmart stores are getting every more ... slovenly is the right word ... on stocking shelves and various other things. I need provide no links.

Six-eight foot high pallets of oil, two-liter sodas and everything will remain stacked, wrapped in plastic shrink wrap, for two, three, or even four or more days after being wheeled on the floor. Sometimes, it takes a couple of days for those pallets just to get to the section of the store where they belong.

Most Walmart managers don't care, to be honest. And, I know this from my own professional background.

They make bonuses, in addition to base salary, based on percentage of net profits. Most of them figure the easy way to do that is hire fewer people.

The problem is actually worse, in some ways, or potentially so, in small towns. After all, in a bigger city, I can go to another WallyWorld. Or Target, for many things.

In a small town, my only option other than Walmart is Family Dollar or Dollar General. And, they have a more limited selection on many things.

Again, I know this from experience — professional as well as personal.

Take automotive. In many small towns, Walmart's the only place besides new car dealers to carry new tires. On things like oil changes, it vastly undercuts local repair shops and such.

If?

If?

If you can get the tires or oil change.

On the professional side, our delivery driver went to Walmart a couple of weeks ago to get new rear tires.

Out.Of.Stock. He was told they weren't likely to have that size in stock for a couple of weeks. Nothing that special on the tire size — back tires for a Dodge Caravan.

I went to Walmart Tuesday, at about 6:45 p.m., for an oil change. The one guy working the bays was closing the doors.

"It's almost 7," he said. Yes, but a routine passenger car oil change doesn't take more than 15 minutes, and besides, you're supposed to be open.

Yesterday, I went at 6 p.m.

Doors.Already.Shut.

I'll get my oil changed at a wrecker and small repairs shop a half block away from our office.

On the tires? Walmart's road hazard warranty sounds great, right? But, if you blow a tire, really blow it and not just puncture it, and the nearest Walmart doesn't have a new one in your size, it doesn't really mean much, does it?

Next time I need tires, I'll probably go elsewhere, too.

Yeah, it's bad enough in bigger cities, but, in many a small town, Walmart the corporation knows that it's run old department stores out of town. Low/no growth small towns may still be loyal to local repair shops, but they — thanks to Wally — may have higher overhead on many things.

Is #Walmart guilty of massive fraud over shoplifting?

So says a wrongful termination suit against the retail giant, alleging racial discrimination in termination, and, beyond that, Walmart playing fast and loose with its "shrinkage" numbers.

This story, written in depth in The Nation, set off an immediate alarm bell, based on my newspaper editorial background.

As I started reading, remembered a few years back, when WallyWorld said it would stop prosecuting shoplifting of under $50 value. The alarm is going off, saying, hmm, could this be related, since the allegations are about faking shrinkage levels?

Sylvester Johnson was fired by WallyWorld in 2009, after allegedly giving orders to 11 Supercenters he oversaw to manipulate inventory counts.

First, Johnson, who is black, is claiming discrimination in his firing.

Second, and even bigger (not that the first isn't big enough), he's saying it was WallyWorld doing the manipulation.
“We're talking about hiding tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in losses here—inflating the profits of a store, a district, a region, a division and ultimately the entire company,” Johnson told The Nation. In theory, such a practice could have artificially inflated the company’s profit margins and stock price, amounting to a form of federal securities fraud.
This wouldn't surprise me one bit.

Remember, this is the same WallyWorld that, as reported just last December by the New York Times, engaged in massive bribery in Mexico.

As that story noted:

The Times’s examination reveals that Wal-Mart de Mexico was not the reluctant victim of a corrupt culture that insisted on bribes as the cost of doing business. Nor did it pay bribes merely to speed up routine approvals. Rather, Wal-Mart de Mexico was an aggressive and creative corrupter, offering large payoffs to get what the law otherwise prohibited. It used bribes to subvert democratic governance — public votes, open debates, transparent procedures. It used bribes to circumvent regulatory safeguards that protect Mexican citizens from unsafe construction. It used bribes to outflank rivals. 

So, there's precedent for believing WallyWorld is criminally corrupt.

Here's the nut graf of Johnson's allegations, from The Nation's story:

In June of 2008, a company executive named David Carmon took over as Walmart’s Regional Vice President for North and South Carolina. Johnson claims that, at the time, some stores in his district were losing about a million dollars in shrinkage annually. Carmon instructed him to cut his stores’ shrinkage rates in half—a target that Johnson felt was impossible to hit without resorting to unethical and illegal accounting practices. According to Johnson, Carmon warned of repercussions if Johnson’s shrinkage rate did not fall. “He threatened everybody that if you didn’t get your shrink down, you were going to be terminated,” said Johnson in a court deposition. Speaking to The Nation, Johnson said that Carmon used “tactics of fear and intimidation, and everyone looked the other way.”

So, let's say he did start doing something unethical, Johnson, that is. But, somebody started complaining, WallyWorld worried about it leaking outside of store boundaries, and made him the fal guy. All possible.

Here's some analysis, also from the story:

After reviewing the available documents, Peter Bell, a certified public accountant in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Johnson’s expert witness, stated that “the documents that were produced to me lead me to the conclusion that Walmart may be manipulating its accounting records—the evidence of which, if true, would necessarily mean that Walmart is engaging in a form of accounting fraud."

“These overages appear to be excessive,” wrote Bell in an affidavit filed in the case. “The overages are not explained and appear not to have been investigated in any way. Indeed, left unexamined or unadjusted, these excessive overages distort the financial reporting of these stores such that net profit is artificially inflated, and accounting fraud is strongly suggested.”

And, here's why it's a larger legal issue, if it's true:

Such practices are illegal because a company’s inflated profit margin misleads investors, according to Robert Weisberg, a professor at Stanford Law. “If a publicly traded company issues any kind of official statement that is misleading to the marketplace and the assets of the company are distorted or inflated—maybe something involving inventory—that’s securities fraud.”

Now, per other financial experts in the story, theoretically, it would be hard to do this for a long time. And, since Walmart's been sued over minority promotion issues in the past, it could be an easy lawsuit target by a disgruntled, fired employee, right?

Well, yes.

On the other hand, it was about 2008 or 2009 it announced its plan to not prosecute minor shoplifters any more. And, if district managers pencil-whipped exact dollar amounts of shoplifting case estimates, that would make this easier to pull off, I think.

Walmart: Aggressive and crereative corrupter

The New York Times has a big new series of articles apparently coming out, picking up on reporting from April, about Walmart's briberies in Mexico.

Here's the nut grafs from the intro piece:

The Times’s examination reveals that Wal-Mart de Mexico was not the reluctant victim of a corrupt culture that insisted on bribes as the cost of doing business. Nor did it pay bribes merely to speed up routine approvals. Rather, Wal-Mart de Mexico was an aggressive and creative corrupter, offering large payoffs to get what the law otherwise prohibited. 

How much, how bad?

We're not talking a few thousand dollars. Nor a few tens of thousands.

Just a little ways into the story, if you're adding the bribe amounts mentioned, you already roll the money odometer past the million-dollar mark.

There's also a culture of corruption. Walmart allegedly never paid bribe money itself, directly, to elected or appointed government officials. Instead, it used a group of ... well, fixers! And ones apparently known to be good at their work. Which then leads one to wonder just how much Walmart knew about them, in terms of advance research.

Anyway, the article is long, but good.

#BlackFriday suggestion at #Walmart

You know what would be cool, and much more effective, perhaps, than Adbusters' self-righteous snark? And might be more effective in at least the shorter term, and more awareness-raising, than HERE’s attempts to unionize Walmart employees?

That’s if lots of progressive Americans went into Walmarts across the nation on "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving, and did the no-buy loitering equivalent of a sit-down strike.

Think about it. You and I could just loiter in the aisles of Wally Worlds. It wouldn’t take all day, just a bit of dedication, maybe 15 minutes per person. Just loiter, while occasionally asking questions of staff. Make sure to be kind enough to tell them “no hurry” on answering your questions.

And, of course, there’s the online and telephonic versions of this, too. Call and/or email Walmart HQ up in Bentonville, Ark., on Nov. 23 as well.  (Here’s a webpage with some corporate contact information, including several Twitter accounts. Add in the investor relations and other contacts.) Tell the routine phone-answering people, again, “no hurry.” Better yet, tell them to “take all the time you want.”

But that’s not all.

There’s better monkey-wrenching to do, whether at local stores, or on the phone/online.

Ask questions about products. And not just any old questions.

Ask leading questions. These could be about product quality or safety. Or they could be human rights issues, asking if WallyWorld knows the detailed working conditions of the Chinese factory of origin.

Or ask WallyWorld if it still locks employees inside stores. Or whatever.

And, feel free to pass these ideas around now. That said, I’m not sure if Wally should get any too-specific inkling of such ideas in advance.

#Amazon: the new #Walmart

I hadn't even heard about Amazon's new bullshit, but reading this column about it telling people to use Kindle's price-check app to go into bookstores and see if stuff cost less at Amazon, AND get discounts?

Especially since books themselves ... didn't qualify for the discount?

What the hell else is that but Walmart in electronic drag?

Well, eff you, Amazon. I'm glad I delinked my Amazon reviews from my links list. Eff you for eliminating the "classic" review rankings, which I knew you were doing, even though you refused to tell me that over a two-month period when I wondered why my classic ranking wasn't changing.

Eff you, Jeff Bezos, aka Junior Steve Jobs, and your grubbing at "information streams."

If I do buy an e-reader some day, it won't be from you.

SCOTUS: WallyWorld, dirty air win

Shock me that 1.5 million Wallmart worers do not constitute a "class action." Shock me that the Supreme Curt ruling on this split on predictable 5-4 lines.
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So, as I see it retailers are best self-served by never looking at hiring complaints at individual stores, to thereby "insulate" themselves from legal liability. It's just like Alcoholics Anonymous, a past master at this, never looking at individual AA meetings and "13th stepping" complaints. Or the Southern Baptist Convention.

However, Walmart is neither of those; and that's why this ruling is simply wrong.

Wronger yet in some was, but on a unanimous basis, was the Court's dismissal of a suit by several states against electric utilities relying heavily on coal-fired power.

By the court's logic in this case, in any new area of pollution, the EPA just need announce that it plans to adopt some standards but never do so, and private entites remain precluded from pursuing nuisance suits.

That said, it's "nice" to know that business-kowtowing idiots on the court aren't always just conservatives.

Wrongest of all? Last week, SCOUTS' 5-4 ruling that basically eliminated the possibility of suing mutual funds for fraud. The tea partiers never bitch about the Court except when it comes to abortion, though.

But, contra many semi-liberal pundits, the "fivers" don't care that their actions expand income inequality or even that "originalism" never envisioned massive amounts of capital, and wealth disparities. They don't care.

And, by and large neither major political party cares, at least at the national level. Period.

Walmart, lies, unionization

So, Walmart is OK with unions outside of the U.S. and Canada because employees want them? With the implication that they don't here?
Its employees are not unionized in the United States, where the retailer has become infamous for its staunch opposition to labor groups. Even in Canada, it closed a store after workers there organized. But in the United Kingdom, Wal-Mart touts a growing roster of union employees and has negotiated contracts with entrenched labor groups in Brazil and Argentina for decades.

“We recognize those rights,” said John Peter “J.P.” Suarez , senior vice president of international business development at Wal-Mart. “In that market, that’s what the associates want, and that’s the prevailing practice.”
The fact that WallyWorld is infamous for its staunch opposition to unionism illustrates clearly that ... its American employees want them!

Lying sacks of shit.

Shopping green and sustainable – at WallyWorld?

First, per the story, if any company can start a national retailer trend in documenting the carbon footprint of manufacture, etc. it is indeed Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart plans to begin by asking its more than 100,000 suppliers around the world to answer 15 simple questions about the sustainable practices of their companies. Questions include “Have you set publicly available greenhouse gas reduction targets? If yes, what are those targets?”

But, at the same time, even thought WallyWorld has invited other discount retailers to participate, I am sure there’s a financial angle somewhere.

Beyond that, will the sustainability focus on the carbon footprint of shipping all the made in China schlock here? If not, it is still a pretty hollow idea, regardless of any financial angle.

That said, I don’t know how all these American suppliers would deal with the double-whipsaw of WallyWorld pushing for low prices and carbon cleanliness at the same time.

Finally, if this is real — Wal-Mart, will you extend it to human rights and labor rights, too? And, with real certification inspections?

Only Wal-Mart would sell a birthday cake …

With the full name of 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell fully spelled out, after another grocery store rejected A.H.’s parents’ request for the second year in a row.

Note to daddy Heath Campbell, who looks like he’s an Aryan Nation wannabe, and who named his two other kinds with weird, quasi-German names, and mamma Deborah — If you’re going to name your kid some effing “in your face” name, expect results like that from the other grocer and bake your own birthday cake.

And, uhh... nice cocaine eyes, too, dude.

Also, per a commenter, mamma Deborah’s teeth aren’t quite WHITE enough for an Aryan goddess, are they?

Pushing Wal-Mart to get the lead out

To get the lead out on getting the lead out of children's toys, that is.

This month, testers with the Center for Environmental Health, a consumer advocacy group in Oakland, Calif., said that Wal-Mart frog-charm jewelry contained levels of lead higher than allowed by California state law. The group informed the California attorney general's office, which then sent a notice of violation last week to Wal-Mart, telling the company to remove the item from its stores, according to Christine Gasparac, a spokeswoman for the attorney general.

Yep, Wally-World respects profits more than child safety as well as decent wages and labor rights.

The testers are using hand-held X-ray guns that look somewhat like Star Trek phasers. The Consumer Product Safety Commission also uses them, although they do follow-up lab testing.

Despite the toy industry spin, I'm sure the guns don't work perfectly, even if people don't have enough training. But, at bottom line it is spin... spin that's sinking, well...

Sinking like a lead balloon.

Wally World, Mckey D’s go green

First, I disagree with some of the critics cited in this story – a green building is a green building, period, no matter who owns it, what they sell there and whether the parking lot is full or not. What, you want stores with fewer customers?

At the same time, these critics miss the boat by focusing on environmental issues only, rather than saying something like:

How do we use this as leverage to work on getting Wal-Mart to be more labor friendly?

With ‘onerous’ union, Wal-Mart closes Canadian tire center

Wal-Mart is shutting down a unionized Tire & Lube Express in Gatineau, Que.

Wal-Mart HQ in Bentonville, Ark., told a John McCain-level lie when it claimed the labor contract an arbitrator imposed would raise operating costs by 30 percent.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union called the closure an "attack" on Wal-Mart workers. Wal-Mart in 2005 closed a store in Jonquiere, Quebec, after workers there agreed to unionize. The union has a Canada Supreme Court case pending over whether those workers' rights were violated.

Craig Herkert, Wal-Mart's chief executive officer for the Americas, said Oct. 6 the contract was “onerous.”

It sucks to work at these places

Not just WallyWorld. Not just WallyWorld plus the various dollar stores. Rather, WallyWorld, dollar stores and even some supposedly higher-level retailers are pretty much shitholes not only for hourly workers at stores, but store managers, pressured by corporate higher-ups to break federal law by knocking hours off workers’ clocked-in time, among other things.

Originally from the The New York Times Review of Books:

(Drew Pooters) placed his resume on Monster.com and found a $26,000-a-year job at Family Dollar, another discount store, as a manager-in-training. He rose quickly to become manager, but he was now required to cut back the hours worked by his employees. And he found he had to put in fourteen- to sixteen-hour days to keep up with the work they would ordinarily have done. A father of four, he needed the job. But then Pooters found that his district manager also was jiggering the time records of his employees.

Problem is that Hilzoy at Washington Monthly doesn’t go far enough in the condemnation.

The slippery slope to W.’s wage policies began, though much more softly, back with Reagan, and continued through Bush I.

Then Clinton did nothing to arrest it.

Sorry, folks, but that’s the fact. Take a look at the Slickster’s record on labor issues when he was governor of Arkansas.

So, once again, the DLC/neolib wing of the Democratic Party hoists its moral compass, or what’s left of one, by its own petard.

Wally-World in Canadian dock for union busting

The Canadian Supreme Court will hear two cases of alleged union busting by former employees from a Wal-Mart store in Jonquiere, Que.

Wally-Worrld allegedly violated the Quebec Labour Code and the right to freedom of association when it closed the store in April 2005 rather than sign a union contract with employees, the cases claim.

But, the Quebec Court of Appeal sided with Wal-Mart, rejecting the case of employee Johanne Desbiens. The story adds that another case was rejected by Quebec courts similar case filed by another former Wal-Mart employee, Gaétan Plourde, was rejected by the province's courts.

Is it a “victory” getting the Canadian high court to hear the case? The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW Canada), which represented the workers, says yes.

“When the Supreme Court accepts to hear you, it’s because the case is of national interest,” said Louis Bolduc, executive assistant to the UFCW’s national president.

Well, hold on there.

Just because it’s in the national interest doesn’t mean the judges will see the national interest as magically coinciding with your union’s, Mr. Bolduc.

The story goes on to note that the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) has signed a protocol with the UFCW to support and cooperate its campaign to organize workers at Wal-Mart stores across Canada. (Image above from NUDGE.)

Better luck than what the AFL-CIO has, or has not, done here.

Chinese get Wally-World union, but still not U.S. – with a catch

So, are the Walton family et al going to have Hu Jintao tell millions of WallyWorld employees in China to vote GOP or they’ll lose their newly unionized jobs?

Well, no, because they’ll be voting for Maximum Leader Hu instead.

That’s because you have this snippet: But the government-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions…

As the story notes, in China, as in other communist countries in the past, unions are a management tool to control employees.

Reason 644 not to shop at Wally-World

Your “low prices everyday” money could help elect Republicans.

And, not just your dollars, just your physical presence, as store managers, per Bentonville, Ark. Marching orders, are supposed to lobby the shopping public to vote GOP.

Wally-World on the hook for $6.5M – for now

A Minnesota state judge found that Wal-Mart violated state labor laws more than 2 million times and so owes affected employees that amount, the AP reports.

“We believe that this award not only helps the individual clients, but it also sends a message to Wal-Mart that it has to pay for its mistakes,” said Justin Perl, an attorney representing the former Wal-Mart employees named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

But wait, that’s not all!

Wally-World could eventually be on the hook for punitive damages and civil penalties; the jury will decide those in October.

And, given just what Wally-World put some employees through, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, punitive damages are very possible:

Nancy Braun, one of four named plaintiffs on the suit, said Tuesday that she was “ecstatic” about the judge's decision. Braun, who worked in an Apple Valley store for about 14 months beginning in March 1998, said the store repeatedly didn't find people to give her breaks when she was the sole cook and waitress at the store's grill.

In several instances no one came in time for her to go to the bathroom. “I would end up soiling myself,” said Braun, now 53 and living in Rochester. “Sometimes I’d have other clothes with me in my locker, or they would say to me, ‘We have clothes in the store you can buy.’”

Can a Minnesota jury consider something besides cash dollars as part of punitive damages? After reading this and other tales, I have an idea or two …

WallyWorld moves into classifieds

Yes, the maw of the Big Blue Box continues to grow. Wal-Mart now wants to take on Craiglist; Wal-Mart has started a classified advertising service.

By volume, Wal-Mart gets about half as many website visitors as Amazon, at 26 million to 47 million.

Of course, Craigslist gets 30 million unique visitors per month, so WallyWorld has a ways to go.

Meanwhile, WallyWorld has, in the past year or two, tried to suck up to community newspapers. Obviously, that’s not going to last, though I’m sure the online service is targeted more at larger markets.

WallyWorld to the healthcare rescue?

MSN economics columnist Jim Jubak is normally spot-on in my book, but I have plenty of skeptical bones in my about his idea that Wal-Mart is good for what ails the healthcare system.

Even he admits WallyWorld is far short of what it should be doing on reforming healthcare benefits for its own employees.

Videoconferencing with doctors in China? Waiting in line as much as at a conventional doctor’s office?

Jubak says folks like Costco need to follow, and many have already begun.

Well, just as Costco runs a better warehouse store than Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club, and with a more liberal company ethos, I have no doubt it will trump WallyWorld here too.