Wal-Mart Thanksgiving 2013

"...Yesterday, it was revealed that employees at a Cleveland-area Wal-Mart are holding a holiday food drive for other Wal-Mart employees.

This situation says everything about what's wrong with the U.S. economy right now.

Wal-Mart is one of the richest companies in the world.

Wal-Mart has a market value of $260 billion and made $17 billion in profit last year.

But Wal-Mart does not pay its employees enough to buy food for the holidays..."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/walmarts-employee-food-drive-reveals-120012647.html

"...A Walmart in northeast Ohio is holding a holiday canned food drive — for its own underpaid employees. “Please Donate Food Items Here, so Associates in Need Can Enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner,” a sign reads in the employee lounge of a Canton-area Walmart.

Kory Lundberg, a Walmart spokesman, says the drive is a positive thing. “This is part of the company’s culture to rally around associates and take care of them when they face extreme hardships,” he said. Indeed, Lundberg is correct that it’s commendable to make an effort to help out those who are in need, especially during the holidays.

But the need for a food drive illustrates how difficult it is for Walmart workers to get by on its notoriously low pay. The company has long been plagued by charges that it doesn’t pay its employees a real living wage. ..."

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/11/18/2960371/walmart-food-drive/

""Please Donate Food Items Here, so Associates in Need Can Enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner," read signs affixed to the tablecloths.

The food drive tables are tucked away in an employees-only area. They are another element in the backdrop of the public debate about salaries for cashiers, stock clerks and other low-wage positions at Walmart, as workers in Cincinnati and Dayton are scheduled to go on strike Monday...."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/18/1256461/-Ohio-Walmart-asks-its-workers-to-donate-Thanksgiving-food-for-their-coworkers

Labor Day, Then and Now

from http://www.stonekettle.com/2013/09/labor-day-then-and-now.html

"...Things like Social Security, Medicare, Workman’s Compensation Insurance, The Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance, child labor laws, federal minimum wage, occupational health and safety standards, the Environmental Protection Agency, The Centers for Disease Control, The departments of Education and Health, Labor Unions and workers’ rights, and yes, even Welfare, all of these things were created for a reason. For a good reason. For a compelling reason. 

These things were created because when you leave it up to the church and charity to fed the hungry and clothe the poor and heal the sick, a hell of a lot of people go hungry and cold and ill.  It is really just that brutally simple. 

These things were created because when you leave it up to charity and family to take care of old people, a hell of a lot of old people end up stacked like cordwood in institutions. The moldering remnants of such places are all around us.

These things were created because when you leave it up to people to save for their retirement or a rainy day or for accident and infirmity, a hell of a lot of them don’t, or can’t, or won’t.

These things were put in place because when you leave it solely up to the market to weed out poor products and fake medicine and unsafe machines, they don’t, or can’t, or emphatically won’t. 

These things were put in place because when you leave it up to industrialists and share holders to treat their workers with dignity and respect and to pay them a living wage for their hard work, you end up with indentured servitude...

These things were put in place because when you leave it up to the benevolence of industrialists to decide fair pay scales and safety and working hours, you get child labor at a pauper’s wages. When you leave it solely up to bankers and the factory owners and the CEOs, well Sir, then what happens is they end up owning it all and you get to pay them for the privilege of eating out of their garbage can.

And right up until very recently that’s exactly how it was...."

The Party of No

"...You can’t reason with people who are not reasonable. You just can’t.

This nonsense, literally non-sense, is a disturbing symptom of a much larger sickness – one that expresses itself in a hundred different ways, from Holocaust denial to climate change denial to creationism to seeing commies lurking in every shadow to the belief that you can actually turn an enemy into a friendly democracy if you just drop enough ordinance on them. 

There’s a reason, a damned good reason, why these people are called The Party of No.

It’s because they have institutionalized pessimism.

More, they’ve turned it into a reflex; If Obama is for it, they’re automatically against it. Q.E.D.
And this reflexive pessimism, this reflexive denial, taints everything...."

http://www.stonekettle.com/2013/02/preemptive-pessimism-isnt-plan.html

Georgia Rep. Paul Broun has decided to run for Senate

"...his inability to craft any paragraph longer than one sentence. It's like a very angry children's book. It's like crackpot haiku. Damn it, Georgia, teach your legislators how to write—even crazy voters deserve better than this...."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/14/1186938/-Paul-Broun-wants-to-be-a-senator-because-Obama-s-a-Marxist-Leninist-who-rules-with-iron-fist