Fact-esque

WalMart Crushed

I haven't been following WalMart closely enough lately but this headline caught my eye.  CostCo (good guy relative to other big box competition) is crushing WalMart:

Costco customers are spending more and coming back more often than they do at BJ's Wholesale and Wal-Mart's Sam's Club.

On average consumers visit Costco 2.8 times per month, compared with 2.37 visits a month on average at Sam's Club and 2.1 visits a month at BJs, according to the new Main Street Spending Index compiled by Geezeo, a personal finance Web site that helps consumers track their spending.

Kar-ma.

Bad Economy Makes WalMart Grin

With consumer confidence in the tank, Target has upscaled its image right into a decrease in same store sales.   On the other hand, WalMart, always happy to see the U.S. economy hit the skids, has outperformed expectations with a 2.8% jump in same store numbers.   Typically, CostCo is doing well, with a 9% jump, but that didn't meet analysts expectations and so they lose.  Rule Number One of business analysis and reporting: CostCo never does well enough.

McGovern the...Turncoat?

Apparently, while I was on vacation last week George McGovern - who I've been on the fence about for  years - embarassed himself with an editorial in the WSJ attacking EFCA (the Employee Free Choice Act), and in the process repeating every tired right-wing argument from the Ken Mehlman Anti-Labor Handbook: the "secret ballot" nonsense, the "new economy that changes everything" myth (also known as "the 9/11 meme") wherein the crashing of 2 planes into 2 towers 7 years ago is the reason workers shouldn't be asking for raises and should be grateful to be paid the minimum wage.

TMiss was disappointed in him. According to Rick Perlstein, so were a lot of other people.

Last week the talk of our progressive blogosphere, and with good reason, was the Wall Street Journal editorial by 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern, the Pope of Principled Liberalism, arguing the right-wing line on the Employee Free Choice Act, liberals' most promising strategy in a generation to make joining a union easier and more fair.

It was creepy. It was embarrassing.

***

It argued:

To my friends supporting EFCA I say this: We cannot be a party that strips working Americans of the right to a secret-ballot election. We are the party that has always defended the rights of the working class. To fail to ensure the right to vote free of intimidation and coercion from all sides would be a betrayal of what we have always championed.

And it was all bullshit.

As Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Budget Priorities, explained to me in an email, "If anyone is really that hung up on the 'secret ballot' crap then they should be asked why they aren't upset by the fact that current law allows unions to be decertified by card check. The only change with the Employee Free Choice Act is whether card check recognition is at the discretion of the employer of the worker. In other words, it changes absolutely ZERO about whether the right of workers to organize is determined by secret ballot or not. The only thing it changes is who gets to decide the manner of certification, workers or employers."

Anyone who was disappointed in McGovern for this doesn't know him. It was, unfortunately, entirely in character.

Wal-Mart Loses Class Action Suit. Again.

As regular readers know, I've been following the progress of some of the (many) class action, discrimination, negligence, and damage suits filed against Wal-mart. (For background on the company if you don't know what WM is, or shits-and-giggles if you do, read TMiss' brilliant tirade tearing a new one for a WM apologist of the most fawning kind.) Well, one of them was just decided, and like all the others, Wal-mart lost.

A judge has ruled against Wal-Mart in a class-action lawsuit, saying the discount retailer violated state labor laws more than 2 million times, including cutting worker break time and "willfully" allowing employees to work off the clock.

(emphasis added)

I just want to stop here for a moment to give you time to absorb and process what that number means.

Is Andy Stern's Relationship with Wal-mart's Lee Scott Too Cozy?

Last week, Wal-mart Watch sent me an email in which they vehemently disagreed with the statement in the NYT that SEIU president Andy Stern's burgeoning relationship with Wal-mart CEO Lee Scott was likely to make WMW back off a little.

Look at our campaign's track record. This year, you've continued to spread our message, making WakeUpWalMart.com one of the largest grassroots movements in America. 427,000 grassroots activists have joined our campaign, a supporter base larger than the population of Miami.

Your overwhelming support for maltreated Wal-Mart workers like Debbie Shank and Olga Sanchez nearly crashed our web servers. Just this year, you've sent hundreds of thousands of emails to newspapers and politicians. Frankly, you've done more to change Wal-Mart in the past few months than we have space to mention.

The real story wasn't told in today's article....

Maybe not but the article itself (reprinted online by WMW) asks some legitimate questions about Stern's influence over WMW (the union pays for it) as well as the possible effects of Stern's increasingly cozy tete-a-tetes with Scott.

Over the last several months, a confidential report has circulated within the headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores, proposing sweeping changes to its employee health care plans.

It looks like a typical corporate planning document, but it is not. The nine-page report, written by an Emory University professor, Kenneth E. Thorpe, was commissioned, paid for and given to Wal-Mart by its longtime foes, the Service Employees International Union, and a group the union finances, called Wal-Mart Watch. They are known for attacking the chain, not cooperating with it.

But after waging an aggressive public relations campaign against Wal-Mart for three years, the company's full-time, union-backed critics, who once vowed never to let up, are putting down their cudgels.

Shrill condemnations and embarrassing leaked documents are giving way to acknowledgments of progress -- and, in the case of Wal-Mart Watch, free advice.

"It's fair to say we have been less in-your-face," said David Nassar, the executive director of Wal-Mart Watch, which had hammered the company in stinging newspaper advertisements and provocative reports with titles like "Shameless: How Wal-Mart Bullies Its Way Into Communities Across America."

The health care plan itself is on hold. The Thorpe Report is "circulating" and there are rumors to the effect that Wal-mart is actually going to build its next proposal around Thorpe's recommendations but until WM actually shows us a draft (at the very least) it's a good idea to withhold judgment on it. Scott has a long-time history of nodding yes yes yes to get critics off his back but then going right on with his standard anti-union, anti-worker, anti-safety, anti-living-wage policies. If he has finally decided to bite the bullet and offer something real in the way of employee health care, fine. We'll be the first to cheer. But - we ain't holding our breath.

What's far more troubling are the rumors circulating about the way Stern has responded to Scott's demands for a cease-fire from his critics. And it's true that WMW seems to have pulled up its skirts a bit. Looking at my emails, they have gone from sending out a bulletin every week or two to barely one a month. I received none at all in January and April when negotiations were taking place between Stern and Scott.

That doesn't prove anything and we'll have to wait to see if indeed the pace of criticism falls off markedly over the long term. But otoh, it makes some sense to assume that Stern might have had to promise fewer attacks and less scathing criticisms of Wal-mart in order to win the healthcare concession from Scott. It also makes sense that if he is the major (or perhaps only) funder of WMW, they might have to lay off for awhile, too, or go out of business altogether.

Here's where I think the rubber meets the road: if the new health care plans are significantly improved over the last version (almost anything would be, so the word "significantly" is key here), then giving Scott some breathing room is justifiable. If they are not, if the changes are cosmetic or illusory, that would mean that Scott has successfully manipulated Stern and WMW into an unwarranted truce, and tricked them into getting WM some badly-needed rest from criticism and some Good Press without the workers getting very much in return. Wouldn't be the first time he's pulled that one.

This is a bit of inside baseball, perhaps, but since everything WM does or doesn't do ends up being copied by the rest of corporate America, what they do is important to watch and evaluate.

Stay tuned for further development. We now return you to your regular programming.

Guess Where I Was Last Night.

The quality of the video is the pits but you can get an idea of what the scene was like on ground outside the National Constitution Center for last night's debate.   Every time I'm on the ground either at a candidate appearance or at a protest, I am reassured that the primary should go all the way to the Convention.  It's insane to think that this giant exercise in Democracy is  anything but great for the country. 

The True Majority Iran Mobile fit right into the Peace and Justice Circus.  We were able to march around Independence Hall, which was a terrific feeling - very much the opposite of what Thomas experienced when he greeted impeachment activist, John Nirenberg, in D.C.   

I was skeptical about the value of the circus theme because it leaves us so completely open to the usual criticisms, but the debate - with it's media circus - happened the same day that the Ringling Bros and Barnum and Baily circus came to Philly so the temptation was too great to resist.  In order to appreciate how well the theme of circus fit in with the themes of Peace and Justice, you probably have to have heard Bob Smith of the Brandywine Peace Community and the lead organizer of the event, speak.  He called us Jesters for Justice and reminded us that non-violent civil action with a sense of humor as well as a sense of purpose is never a bad thing.  As for gravitas, anyone watching the circus parade learned more about current challenges facing the country than most of the people who watched the debate last night.  We didn't mention Rev. Wright or Bosnia even once.   So, you know, who were the clowns?

As for the campaigns, Clinton won the visibility challenge with about four times as many people standing opposite the debate site.  I tried to get them to hold my signs ("Invest in [Clean Energy, Health Care, Real Security] Not War in Iraq") but they were locked down on-message.   You'll see that the Wake Up WalMart crew was standing near the Obama crowd.  One of those nice people gave me a shirt off his back, so now I have a Wake Up WalMart t-shirt to wear around town.  Success!

There's much better video of the evening at the Daily News' site.   They got shots of the Free Tibet crowd, which was about a hundred people - very impressive.  As far as I know, the Daily News was the only outlet to cover the protests.

And now, to prove my commitment to the event, here's what I looked like.   I'm the one on the right.

Wal-mart Tapes: For Sale to the Highest Bidder

There's an old saying that what goes around, comes around. There are a few others along the same lines, like, ye'll reap what ye sow and what goes up must come down. Or, as the late, great Lowell George wrote, "Be careful what you say on the way up 'cause you could meet the same people on the way down."

You're wondering why I've come over all sweet revengey on you when none of the monsters we've discovered in the past 7 yrs - Bush, Cheney, John Yoo, James Inhofe, Donald Rumsfeld, etc etc - is facing any accountability whatsoever. Not so. Wal-mart is about to be hoisted on its own petard. So to speak.

About 15,000 videotapes of Wal-Mart executives at work and at play over the past 30 years have suddenly become available to the public thanks to a series of blunders by the retail giant, which paid too little attention to the company it hired to make the tapes before abruptly terminating their relationship two years ago.

The company, Flagler Productions Inc, depended on Wal-Mart for 90 percent of its revenue at the time the plug was pulled in 2006, and had just moved into a new 20,000-square-foot building in its home base of Lenexa, Kan.

At first Flagler thought it was facing bankruptcy, but then realized the footage it was sitting on could be a goldmine. It offered the tapes to Wal-Mart, but the retail giant was willing to pay just $500,000 for the lot, and Flagler turned the offer down.

Now they are available -- for a price n to researchers, labor rights campaigners and lawyers looking for dirt of all kinds. It's turning into quite a lucrative business.

Yes, kids, videos of the dirt-makers making dirt are for sale to the highest bidder - the highest, that is, who isn't Wal-mart. And who might be bidding? Lookee lookee.

A Kansas City lawyer representing a 12-year-old boy who suffered extensive burns when a gasoline can bought at Wal-Mart blew up in her face was astounded and delighted to find footage of employees making jokes about their gasoline cans blowing up at a Christmas party.

The lawyer, Diane Breneman, is hoping to present that footage in court to challenge Wal-Mart's claim that it couldn't have known the gasoline cans it sells "presented any reasonable foreseeable risk."

Another lawyer pursuing a multibillion-dollar sex discrimination lawsuit has found clips of Sam Walton, Wal-Mart's founder, and other top company officials lamenting the lack of women executives -- sentiments that the lawyer believes bolster his argument that Wal-Mart knew of the problem but failed to act.

Oops. Starts to make the mere $half-mil WM offered look a bit on the cheap side, don't it?

But wait. WM isn't the only one to be smarting. Attachment to the Great Satan doesn't look good on a supposed liberal's resume, and this one is liable to be on YouTube minutes from now.

The archive also includes footage of Hillary Clinton, who served on Wal-Mart's board from 1986 to 1992, praising the company to the skies -- a position she has since sought to mute.

"I'm so proud of this company and everything it represents," Clinton said at a store opening in Arkansas in 1991. "It makes me feel real good about what we've been able to do."

Like what? Remember, dear old Hil used to be a corporate lawyer. Wal-mart's corporate lawyer, for one. Did she help them crush another attempt to unionize? Is that what she's "so proud of"? Or slam workers trying to get the healthcare she now says (during a campaign) she wants them to have? Is that what makes her "feel real good"? Because it couldn't be for creating the health care she didn't create or increasing the safety of workers that didn't increase or forcing WM to pay the living wage it still doesn't pay. So what, exactly, is she so proud of?

But the big payoff is going to come in the proof they can provide (and have already begun providing only days after they went on the block) that Wal-mart is everything it has spent a small fortune in PR trying to claim it isn't: a bunch of greedy, unscrupulous liars who despise their own workers and train managers to rip them off to keep costs down.

Among other crimes.

The next time a WM spokesperson denies that Wal-mart did something underhanded, shady, or just illegal, immoral and unethical, we'll be able to shift into the videos to see for ourselves.

This can't be good for them. Send your favorite WM exec a carton of Pepto-Bismal. S/he's going to need it.

Oh, and btw: you can get in on the act, too. For pretty short bread.

Flagler is now cashing in, charging $250 a time for video research, and there are plenty of takers.

I don't know about you but Flagler is going in my Bookmark file. Permanantly. I'm saving my pennies for the first one as we speak.

Wal-mart Scams Settlement from Injured Woman (Updated)

Via Bitch Ph.D. and hilzoy at Obsidian Wings comes a truly enraging story of unbridled corporate greed and the collusion between Big Business and the justice system that will curl your hair if it isn't already.

A collision with a semi-trailer truck seven years ago left 52-year-old Deborah Shank permanently brain-damaged and in a wheelchair. Her husband, Jim, and three sons found a small source of solace: a $700,000 accident settlement from the trucking company involved. After legal fees and other expenses, the remaining $417,000 was put in a special trust. It was to be used for Mrs. Shank's care.

Instead, all of it is now slated to go to Mrs. Shank's former employer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Two years ago, the retail giant's health plan sued the Shanks for the $470,000 it had spent on her medical care. A federal judge ruled last year in Wal-Mart's favor, backed by an appeals-court decision in August. Now, her family has to rely on Medicaid and Mrs. Shank's social-security payments to keep up her round-the-clock care.

***

The reason is a clause in Wal-Mart's health plan that Mrs. Shank didn't notice when she started stocking shelves at a nearby store eight years ago. Like most company health plans, Wal-Mart's reserves the right to recoup the medical expenses it paid for someone's treatment if the person also collects damages in an injury suit.

Until recently, many employers didn't vigilantly enforce the provision, and some states and federal courts didn't think the claim held water. But as the cost of covering workers continues to escalate, employers and health plans are getting more aggressive about going after the money. A Supreme Court ruling last year also has given them a clearer legal map to suing employees and winning.

(emphasis added)

Get that? The corporate/Bush SCOTUS, which usually acts as if it has never seen and never expects to see a situation in which it could or would find a corporate defendant guilty of anything, last year apparently gave companies a green light to steal back any money they might have to pay to settle a lawsuit in which they were at fault. They might have to steal it from a different person, but they get to take it back.

So, because businesses are becoming less concerned for their employees' safety and well-being, there are more being being hurt or even killed and therefore more lawsuits filed against the companies' negligence. Obligingly, the SCOTUS gives them a whole new avenue for recouping their losses - the insurance company.

But we're not done yet. District Court Judge Lewis Blanton, a Republican from Missouri and a Bush appointee, found in favor of Wal-mart despite the fact that the money Wal-mart wanted to grab was never intended to pay Shank's medical costs. From an earlier WSJ article via Wake-Up Wal-mart:

Mrs. Shank's own settlement was $700,000. After legal expenses and attorney fees, the remaining $417,477 was placed in a court-created special trust designed specifically for Mrs. Shank's future care. The Shanks' lawyer, Maurice Graham, wrote the Wal-Mart health plan informing them. Mrs. Shank had received no funds directly, he said, and therefore had nothing to pay Wal-Mart back.

Nearly three years went by, Mr. Shank says, before they heard again from Wal-Mart. Mrs. Shank struggled a year rotating in and out of the hospital and rehabilitation programs. She could no longer use her right arm or three fingers on her left hand because of neurological damage. She couldn't feed or dress herself and conversations with her family were limited to all but simple questions. Eventually, her husband moved her to a nursing home for around-the-clock care. Medicare and Medicaid pay for the nursing home. Mr. Shank used some of the trust's proceeds to continue paying a private aide to care for her there.

'A Decent Quality of Life'

"We wanted her to have a decent quality of life, and we still had the money," he says. He hoped he could also use it to pay the roughly $130,000 in bills for Mrs. Shank's rehabilitation and a return hospital visit after her coverage expired.

But in August 2005, Wal-Mart re-emerged with a lawsuit against the Shanks demanding repayment for $469,216 in medical costs out of their settlement. It charged that the Shanks had violated the terms of the health plan by not reimbursing it. The company also demanded payment of legal fees and interest for the cost of suing the Shanks for the money.

Mr. Graham, the Shanks' attorney, says he approached Wal-Mart's attorneys about negotiating a compromise, but was told the health plan wanted to proceed with the lawsuit. "We're not contending that Wal-Mart isn't entitled to a payment. We're saying they're entitled to one based on equity," he says. Since Mrs. Shank wasn't fully compensated for her damages in the first place, he argues, Wal-Mart should also expect only partial reimbursement.

(emphasis added)

They don't, of course. This is Wal-mart. THEY WANT IT ALL.

Any legitimate legal reading of the insurance clause and the trial transcript would have given a normal judge ample reason to find for Shanks. There was NO evidence of double-dipping by the Shanks or a double payment by Wal-mart, therefore WM didn't have a legal leg to stand on. But in the corporate-owned Federal courts, set up by Bush who loaded them with people who make decisions based on narrow right-wing ideology rather than settled law, a Lewis Blanton can feel perfectly free to reverse both law and common sense in order to hand Mrs. Shanks' future over to her one-time insurance company.

This is a breach of justice - not to mention fairness - so extreme as to be indefensible, yet it is the kind of decision Bush-appointed judges make every day without batting so much as an eyelash. Corporate America bought the GOP at least in part so it could use them to control Federal courts by making sure that corporate-friendly judges were appointed and unfriendly ones rejected. The result is a system where legal decisions are more often guided by corporate interests than by public law.

Something else the Democrats probably won't get around to fixing, what with them being so tied to corporate $$$ themselves.

Updated 4/02/08: Wal-Mart just announced it's backing off its lawsuit. An acre of bad publicity convinced them it wasn't worth pursuing, and now Shanks doesn't have to pay back the money she didn't owe in the first place.

I don't know who to give the credit to, the media or the blogs that made the stink (of which we were a teensy, tiny part), but who ever deserves it, it's important to know you can still win one against the Great Satan.

Closing Windows

I'm so depressed by the latest revolting developments abetted by the Republocrats that I only have energy to point you to some very good blogging.

You know about that stupid NPR capitalist cheerleader, Marketplace, right?   Hate it.  Well, there's an antidote to it and it's Mick Arran's TrenchNews.   The last update he posted came in June.  It covered, among other things, stories about Wal-Mart's latest injustice to the wage earner, which just happens to be one of the sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance; Maryland's living wage law - file that one under virtues/justice; and Circuit City firing its higher paid workers so that they could be re-hired at lower wages, see Heaven re: vengeance.  God bless America, fast!  Go visit Trenches - reward excellent behavior with some positive feedback.   Maybe we'll get a new installment.

Thomas wants a discussion of Congress' decision to cave yet again to Dear Leader because someone told them that something scary might happen and that they'll take the blame if they don't give Daddy what he wants.   All I can say is that if nothing I've written in defense of not proceeding with an official impeachment of the war criminals and traitors who run this sham of a government made my case, then the Dems' latest refusal to protect and defend the Constitution must.  That's because the impeachment charges that would be brought against Dear Leader and his cohorts would not be about the way they lied us into the disaster in Iraq and their prosecution of it - would not be about the malfeasance surrounding Katrina - would not be about anything that would be easy for Americans to get their heads around - but would involve the intricacies of FISA directly.  Let's wake up and see the character of the Democrats in Congress for what it truly is:  When faced with the possibility of being called weak - when looking down the road to guess how blocking the president and his coterie of Party-Over-Country enablers would play in the corporate media over the recess and beyond - when realizing what a  heavy lift that all would be, they didn't have the courage to block an unnecessary overhaul of FISA and fulfill their oaths of office.   Certainly they don't have the courage, fortitude or PR sense to endure an impeachment built around exactly the same issues.   

As I say, agitate for impeachment, but be glad that you'll never get one of this administration.  Halfway through it, you'd have Sen. Reid on the floor of the Senate weeping his way through an apology to the president, the country and our brave heroes on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan for ever taking such a reckless step.

Avedon Carol, in a post that marvels over the fact that we who opposed the war are now still forced to defend our reasons why, has hit on the exact combination of twenty five words to remind bobble heads why pro-war pundits should not be listened to now and why the people who were right all along should:

[The war] was a stupid idea, it would kill lots of people, it would alienate world opinion, it would be bloody expensive, and it wouldn't work.

Mick caught Obama in the friendly confines of Yearly Kos remembering what the oath he would be taking as president would actually say and so Mr. Charisma joins Chris Dodd in the ranks of candidates who don't make me want to leave the country.  Too bad I haven't heard the Charismatic One talk so tough in front of a crowd outside the YK convention and of his own initiative instead of in response to a citizen who actually values our system of government.   But if Obama gets away with this babystep, can Edwards - ever the water-tester - be far behind?   Not if Mudcat is telling him that such obvious weakness and terrist-lovin' won't play well in the all-important South.  Maybe Hillary will see Obama get a favorable poll result and suddenly venture bravely onto the side of restoring our Democracy.   Then we'd be able to see what the corporate media does with the whole idea of Democratic candidates tacitly impeaching Dear Leader.   This leadership stuff is risky business when  you'd really rather follow. 

Oh No He Didn't

Over at the Trenches, Mick dares to remember something I wrote in a comment at his place over thirty years ago and then adds insult to injury by disagreeing with it.   Look, I'm the first to admit that I am always wrong, but in this case - the case wherein I claim that a boycott of WalMart is the best way to get them to cave on their kill-the-worker business model - in this case, I'm right. 

Mick read this:

The new Wal-Mart in Landover Hills doesn’t sell alcohol or guns. It does have skylights to cut down on energy use. It does not operate 24 hours.

Such concessions were unheard of at Wal-Mart’s cookie-cutter stores several years ago. But they are just a few of the compromises the world’s largest retailer reached with Prince George’s County residents and community leaders concerned about the store’s impact on the neighborhood.

It’s a new way of doing business for the company, whose hopes for domestic growth lie in conquering urban areas such as Landover Hills, where it has faced strong opposition from labor unions and small businesses. The store symbolizes how far Wal-Mart was willing to go to gain a foothold….

and wrote:

I knew this was coming, and I knew it would work. The only question was: would the community be willing to co-ordinate its opposition with unions?  That question is still to be answered, but the Good News is that at least unions themselves are beginning to realize that they can’t beat Wal-Mart without it.

Well, of course, he's right.  Community is important.  Gotta have community.  Can't have a good boycott without community involvement for heaven's sake.  But we have seen what happened when a community tried to do the right thing and drag big box retailers along with them.  Last year Chicago's City Council passed a living wage ordinance, Lowe's and Target backed out of a big development deal, Daley used his first veto in seventeen years to squash the ordinance and then didn't get overidden. 

Skylights and gun-free stores are great and they, along with the stocking of energy efficient lightbulbs and "organic" food, show that WalMart will respond to what they identify as market trends.  But health care and a living wage are another thing altogether.  Getting concessions on WalMart's class war as business model strategy is going to require causing stockholders real pain.  Happily, I think that WalMart runs on such a razor-thin margin and has a stockprice that's so important to the market in general that a serious single-day boycott would shake them up pretty severely.  Keep it going for a week and they'll blink.  The apparently insurmountable trick is to get it going.  God bless America.