Colorado Walmart Killer Lived Alone With a Stack of Bibles and No Furniture

Minutes before he opened fire inside a Walmart on Wednesday, Scott Ostrem stormed down the stairs of his apartment building and told neighbors to “get the fuck out of his way. Then he got into his car and took off.”

Teresa Muniz says she gets a chill when she realizes her neighbor was on his way to commit America’s next horrific shooting. The “angry guy upstairs” drove to a nearby Walmart where witnesses say he walked in, calmly took out his handgun, and shot and killed three people waiting in line to pay. Neighbors described Ostrem as a bizarre, angry man who lived alone in an apartment with a stack of Bibles and virtually no furniture.

Marlena and Jason Fobb were checking out after buying a vacuum cleaner when they heard “pop, pop, pop.” A man in the line next to them fell to the ground bleeding.

Colorado Walmart Killer Lived Alone With a Stack of Bibles and No Furniture

The Walmart Case That Could Expand Gay Rights at Work - Bloomberg Business

While some may see this as a case of gold-digging, the reality of it is it is not and has important implications.  The main premise, discrimination based on sexual orientation is discrimination based on gender.  Under Title VII, the EEOC has determined the reason for treating people differently is gender; it is based on the sex of the spouse.

As the article also notes it Walmart's "public persona" at risk as well, "If the company continues defending its old policy, that could carry significant reputational risks. Walmart boasts a 90 percent rating on the Corporate Equality Index compiled by the LGBT nonprofit Human Rights Campaign and last year drew friendly media attention for joining LGBT activists in opposing a religious liberty bill in its home state of Arkansas that would have shielded businesses that discriminated against LGBT customers. Walmart didn’t move to dismiss the Cote case after it was filed in July; efforts to settle the dispute through the EEOC before Cote sued were unsuccessful."

Is anti-gay discrimination a form of sex discrimination? Walmart Stores, the biggest private employer in the U.S., is the target of a lawsuit that might soon provide an answer to that question.

Walmart didn’t extend spousal health benefits to employees in same-sex marriages until January 2014, even in states where same-sex marriage was legal. Before then, when workers such as Jackie Cote applied for coverage for their same-sex spouses, Walmart rejected their requests, as it has maintained it had the right to do. While the Supreme Court last year ruled that same-sex couples have the right to marry, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 doesn’t mention sexual orientation.

The act does provide protection on the basis of sex, and that’s a premise of the lawsuit Cote filed last summer on behalf of herself and a class of plaintiffs that lawyers now estimate to be 1,200 current and former Walmart employees. Cote, who has worked at Walmart since 1999, married Diana Smithson in Massachusetts in 2004. In 2012, Smithson, a breast cancer survivor, was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer. Within two years, without Walmart insurance to cover Smithson’s treatment, the couple racked up more than $150,000 in medical bills. “I thought that they would really have no choice because I was legally married in the state of Massachusetts,” Cote says.

Seeking compensation for the benefits that were denied and out-of-pocket medical expenses, the suit alleges that Walmart’s stance was unlawful because it’s a form of sex discrimination. “The sex of her spouse is the reason for treating people differently—isn’t that discrimination based on sex?” asks attorney Gary Buseck, legal director for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, one of the advocacy groups representing Cote.

The case, among a recent wave of lawsuits over the past several years to grapple with this question, is headed to mediation on Feb. 22; if a settlement isn’t reached, it’s scheduled for trial in federal court in Massachusetts in November. Legal experts, civil rights advocates specializing in anti-gay and gender-identity bias, and employment lawyers who defend large companies say whatever the outcome, the case against Walmart could help set a precedent by expanding the definition of sex discrimination. That might lead other employers to reconsider the risks of discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. The argument that sexual-orientation discrimination is a form of sex discrimination can apply to other types of workplace bias as well, such as employees alleging they were fired or denied promotions for being gay.

The Walmart Case That Could Expand Gay Rights at Work - Bloomberg Business

January 15, 2016::End of the day round-up

Here Are The Walmarts That Are Shutting Down, And When They Will Close For Good

Gary Johnson, 2012 Libertarian presidential candidate, will run in 2016

Gary Johnson, a two-term Republican governor of New Mexico who became the Libertarian Party's 2012 presidential nominee, will officially announce his 2016 campaign on Fox News on Wednesday.

"It was kind of a commitment from the last go-round that I made to a lot of people," said Johnson in an interview with the Washington Post. "The idea was, if I do well enough, I'll run again. I’ll be the first one to say that I don’t think I did very well at all! But everyone else has said otherwise, that it was a very successful, very significant campaign for the party."

In 2012, Johnson won 1,275,923 votes for president, the highest overall vote total in the party's 40-year history. Yet while Johnson had long been a dream candidate for Libertarians, dating back to his early embrace of decriminalized marijuana, he only made the run after a marginalized and disappointing GOP primary campaign. Johnson was kept out of most televised debates, and "liberty movement" voters largely swung behind the campaign of then-Texas Rep. Ron Paul.

David Barton, John Locke’s Two Treatises, and the Real Reason Thomas Nelson Pulled the Jefferson Lies

In a previous post, I asked Locke scholar Greg Forster to evaluate this claim. Forster declared it to be completely false. In fact, Locke did not refer to the Bible 1500 separate times nor did he invoke 1500 Bible verses, as Barton sometimes claims. Apparently, Barton’ staff had to count all 900+ verses from the books of Proverbs to get to 1500. See this prior post for what it appears Barton had to do to get to the 1500 number. It should be clear that Barton’s claim is wildly inflated.

Stop with the fucking lies already!! Both Regnerus and Sullins have been thoroughly trashed and not worth the paper they are written on.

Why Bible-Believing Christians May Want to Drop Allstate Right Now

The Allstate promotion does not share the reality that this child will grow up without the nurture that only a mother can provide. Nor does Allstate recognize the emotional trauma and questions this child will endure growing up in a home with two men.

Studies predominantly show that children raised in homosexual environments tend to struggle emotionally more than their peers, are highly more susceptible to drug and alcohol abuse and often suffer severe depression as young adults.

 There is only one problem with this statement,

The bill quotes remarks from the dissenting justices in the case, and notes that “natural marriage has been recognized and regulated by the states since the founding of America,” and that “English common law was the source of the early American common law.”

as noted by Justice Ginsburg (10-11),,,

You wouldn’t be asking for this relief if the law of marriage was what it was a millennium ago. I mean, it wasn’t possible. Same-sex unions would not have opted into the pattern of marriage, which was a relationship, a dominant and a subordinate relationship. Yes, it was marriage between a man and a woman, but the man decided where the couple would be domiciled; it was her obligation to follow him.

There was a change in the institution of marriage to make it egalitarian when it wasn’t egalitarian. And same-sex unions wouldn’t — wouldn’t fit into what marriage was once.

Until recently, the legal institution of marriage was defined in terms of gender roles. But marriage is no longer bound to those gender roles and when those gender roles are removed, the case for marriage discrimination is eliminated.  [See also: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/04/29/3652468/justice-ginsburg-eviscerates-case-marriage-equality-just-five-sentences/]

So in other words, the definition of marriage has already been changed.

South Carolina Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Interpose Against Supreme Court Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Ruling 

Rep. Bill Chumley, R-Woodruff, and Rep. Mike Burns, R-Taylors, recently filed Bill 4513 in the General Assembly, otherwise known as the South Carolina Natural Marriage Defense Act.

“[I]n Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), five justices of the United States Supreme Court issued a lawless opinion with no basis in American law or history, purporting to overturn natural marriage and find a ‘right’ to same-sex ‘marriage’ in the United States Constitution and the fourteenth amendment,” it reads in part.

The bill quotes remarks from the dissenting justices in the case, and notes that “natural marriage has been recognized and regulated by the states since the founding of America,” and that “English common law was the source of the early American common law.”

Transgender Woman Sues Walmart, Manager She Says Harassed And Then Fired Her | ThinkProgress

Walmart and one of its managers in a New Jersey store have been hit with a lawsuit alleging that a transgender employee was harassed and then fired over her gender identity.

Samantha Azzarano began working at Walmart store in Deptford, New Jersey as a service associate in September of 2012. In January of the next year, she informed a manager that she is transgender. Later that year, she began outwardly expressing her gender identity and had her name badge changed to Samantha. The lawsuit says that there were no problems with her coworkers or performance.

That is, until another manager, Sheena Wyckoff, joined Azzarano’s team in January of 2014. “That’s when the trouble began,” Azzarano’s lawyer, Kevin M. Costello, told ThinkProgress.
,,,
She’s right that she should be protected from workplace discrimination as a transgender woman. Thanks to a provision in New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination that stipulates protections based on gender identity and expression, hers is one of just 19 states and Washington D.C. where transgender people are explicitly covered by anti-discrimination laws. Federal law doesn’t enumerate protections for gender identity in the workplace, although the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that it violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bans sex-based discrimination.

Transgender Woman Sues Walmart, Manager She Says Harassed And Then Fired Her | ThinkProgress

Report Finds 100+ Walmart.com Products Labeled “Made In U.S.A.” That Were Made Elsewhere – Consumerist

This should surprise no one!! Walmart's marketing ploy back when they first arrived in the Buffalo area was the "Buy America" slogan.  Although I remember seeing signage such as "Made in American" in their stores, I couldn't remember finding anything of the sort. As noted by a story I highlighted in 2013, the "Buy America" schtick had turned out to be a sham.

The program raised questions about how effectively Wal-Mart monitors its import standards and whether the "Buy America" program to create jobs in the United States that Wal-Mart's late founder, Sam M. Walton, started in 1985 was more an advertising gimmick than a substantial plan. Acknowledges Some Mistakes

While Mitchell's piece talked numbers, "the company announced that it would purchase an additional $50 billion worth of domestic goods over the next decade,,, but measured against Walmart's galactic size, it's not.  An additional $5 billion a year amounts to only 1.5 percent of what Walmart currently spends on inventory." Morran, looks at, labeling, ie.false advertising.

While there is no official review process required for labeling a product as “Made in the U.S.A.,” a company can get into legal trouble for misusing that label, as doing so may constitute false advertising. A new report from an advertising watchdog group claims that Walmart’s website has more than 100 examples of products incorrectly marketed as made in America.

According to a letter [PDF] recently sent by the group Truth In Advertising to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, “Walmart’s website is mired in USA labeling errors.”
,,,
“False made in USA labeling on Walmart’s website has misled consumers looking to purchase American-made products,’’ said TINA.org Executive Director Bonnie Patten. “The largest retailer in the world should have made sure its American-made claims were accurate before affixing made in USA labels on the products. Until Walmart cleans up this mess, consumers cannot rely on Walmart with regard to where a product is really made when shopping on the site.”

Report Finds 100+ Walmart.com Products Labeled “Made In U.S.A.” That Were Made Elsewhere – Consumerist

ADDENDUM::Watch: Paranoid Texas Lunatics Harass an Army Colonel with “Texas Takeover” Conspiracies | Occupy Democrats

There is not much that I could add to this that would make much sense.  The mind-set of individuals attached to this incident, well,,, I'll let John Cleese explain:

Watch: Paranoid Texas Lunatics Harass an Army Colonel with “Texas Takeover” Conspiracies | Occupy Democrats

Walmart To Texas Wingnuts: We’re Not Building Secret Tunnels So China Can Come Kill You | Wonkette

This was just too funny to pass up,,,

High priest of the nutjob conspiracy theorists Alex Jones has utterly lost control of his congregation. He has tried to assure the Operation Jade Helm 15 truthers that a string of Walmart closings around the country have absolutely nothing to do with the TOTALLY REAL Jade Helm conspiracy, which is that a completely routine military exercise is actually a secret plot whereby President Obama may invade and conquer Texas, maybe as a way to give it to ISIS as a peace gift, or something, who can even know what Obama has up his sleeve? But the loons just won’t listen to Alex Jones, so Walmart has had to jump in and issue perhaps the most awesome press statement in the history of Walmart,,,

Walmart To Texas Wingnuts: We’re Not Building Secret Tunnels So China Can Come Kill You | Wonkette

Addicting Info – So Much For Hobby Lobby: Wal-Mart Wins Right To Suppress Christian Shareholders (VIDEO)

Back in 2012, the Wal-Mart corporation made CNN’s list of the top 9 “religious companies” in America. According to Lake Lambert III, who wrote the book on the subject of religious corporations, called “Spirituality Inc.,” the Walton family claims that “Christian servant leadership models” were used to build the company from the ground up.

According to the right wing Bible, a corporation’s one and only responsibility is to its shareholders. But what happens when Christian shareholders sue the supposedly “religious corporation” of Wal-Mart, in hopes of swaying the corporation away from decisions which they believe “offend family and community values”?
Wal-Mart fights them all to federal court, and wins.

In February of 2013, a group of 30 law professors joined Trinity church in a suit against the company. The church wanted shareholders to have the right to vote on whether the company should sell products that “might endanger public safety, hurt Wal-Mart’s reputation, or offend “family and community values” which they believe are “integral to Wal-Mart’s brand”.


Wal-Mart responded by claiming that shareholders have no right to participate in such decisions.

[,,,]

The court’s decision in this case contradicts the Hobby Lobby decision on every level. A corporation, in and of itself, cannot have a ‘sincerely held religious belief’ about anything. A corporation is nothing but a piece of paper. The ‘sincerely held religious beliefs’ of a corporation are defined by the human beings that own it, in other words, a majority of the shareholders.

According to the Trinity v Wal-Mart decision, however, the religious beliefs of shareholders are of no consequence.

In light of Hobby Lobby, this ruling makes no sense. If shareholders, the actual owners of corporations, don’t have the right to define the religious beliefs of a corporation, who does?

Addicting Info – So Much For Hobby Lobby: Wal-Mart Wins Right To Suppress Christian Shareholders (VIDEO)

How Walmart’s owners give thanks and give back

Workers at Walmart are using the Black Friday shopping rush to elevate their demands to receive a living wage from the nation’s largest employer and retailer. Among the protesters are 12 who gave up their Thanksgiving feasts and instead went on a 24-hour fast.

But while many Walmart workers and their supporters are making great sacrifices—and taking great risks—to stir its corporate conscience, the family that owns the retailing giant is giving back almost nothing at all.

By 2010, the wealth of Sam Walton’s six heirs was equivalent to that of 41 percent of all American households—over 48 million of them—combined. Yet those six siblings combined have contributed a minuscule $59 million—just 0.04 percent of their total wealth—to the foundation that bears their name.

That's the shocking conclusion of an analysis from Walmart 1 Percent, a project of the union-backed Making Change at Walmart:

The central finding of this report is simple: Our analysis of 23 years' worth of the Walton Family Foundation's tax returns shows that Rob, Jim, Alice and Christy Walton--the second generation Walmart heirs--have contributed almost none of their personal fortune to the foundation which bears their family name.

[,,,]
For starters, for decades the Waltons have relied on a tax dodge that now bears their name to keep billions of dollars from Uncle Sam. The Walton grantor-retained annuity trust, or Walton GRAT, has allowed billionaires like the Walmart heirs and casino mogul and GOP bag man Sheldon Adelson to shield $100 billion from the IRS since 2000. Named after the tactic lawyer Richard Covey, the dodge was developed for Sam Walton:

GRATs work by rapidly shifting large volumes of stock into a trust fund that is legally required to return that initial investment after two years. The stocks in the trust gain enough value that when it comes time to repay the initial investment there is a substantial amount of stock left over that can be transferred on to some third party without triggering the gift tax.

[,,,]
As it turns out, his daughter Alice Walton has even better way: Get rid of the estate tax altogether.

With their combined wealth now estimated at $139.9 billion dollars, on paper zeroing out the 40-percent state tax would allow the Waltons to redirect roughly $56 billion from the United States Treasury into the accounts of their heirs. (Because of tax avoidance techniques used by the very rich, the effective estate tax rate is closer to 17 percent.) All those zeroes explain why Alice Walton had been trying to kill the estate tax for years. As USA Today summed it up in 2005:

Led by Sam Walton's only daughter, Alice, the family spent $3.2 million on lobbying, conservative causes and candidates for last year's federal elections. That's more than double what it spent in the previous two elections combined, public documents show.

The Waltons have joined a coterie of wealthy families trying to save fortunes through permanent repeal of the estate tax, government watchdogs say. The election of President Bush and more conservatives to Congress gave momentum to the long-fought effort. The Waltons add more.

How Walmart’s owners give thanks and give back

Walmart Black Friday Protests Hit Major Cities With Calls For '$15 And Full Time'

Black Friday may be most famous for doorbuster shopping deals, but among progressives it's becoming a regular holiday for labor demonstrations. Friday marked the third consecutive year of scattered but highly visible protests against Walmart. Demonstrators, along with an unknown number of Walmart strikers, are calling for better pay and scheduling practices from the world's largest retailer.

On Thursday and Friday, photos on Twitter tagged with #walmartstrikers showed sizable protests in D.C., Pittsburgh, Northern New Jersey, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Calif., and St. Paul, Minn., among other areas. The protests were led by OUR Walmart, a union-backed worker group, alongside community and labor groups in different cities.
 
Dan Schlademan, campaign director of Making Change at Walmart, a project of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, said on a call with reporters Friday that he expects the number of strikers to be in the hundreds by the end of the day, though the group could not provide a specific number of workers who'd submitted strike notices to their bosses.

"All the signs that we're seeing is that this is going to be the biggest day ever," Schlademan said.

Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman for Walmart, told HuffPost that the retailer was more concerned with serving its customers than with protests it views as union stunts. According to Buchanan, more than 22 million shoppers came to Walmart stores on Thanksgiving alone this year.

"We're really focused on our customers," Buchanan said. "We've got millions of customers coming in [on Thanksgiving] and Friday, and we're making sure they have a safe and exciting shopping experience."

Walmart Black Friday Protests Hit Major Cities With Calls For '$15 And Full Time'

Fruit Recall Affects Walmart, Sam’s Club, Wegmans, Costco, Trader Joe’s Stores | WNEP.com

If you’ve picked up fruit at Walmart, Costco or Trader Joe’s stores recently, keep reading.

Wawona Packing Co. is voluntarily recalling peaches, nectarines, plums and pluots that were packed at its Cutler, California, warehouses between June 1 and July 12. Wawona believes the products may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

Costco, Trader Joe’s, and the Walmart Corp. — which operates Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, have all posted notices about the fruit recall on their websites. The recall is nationwide, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Internal testing at Wawona revealed the potential Listeria contamination, the FDA says. The facility was shut down and sanitized; subsequent tests have been negative for the food-borne illness.

“We are aware of no illnesses related to the consumption of these products,” Wawona President Brent Smittcamp said in a statement. “By taking the precautionary step of recalling product, we will minimize even the slightest risk to public health, and that is our priority.”

Trader Joe’s has urged customers not to eat any of these stone fruits — meaning fruits with large pits — and to return them to a nearby store for a full refund.

In addition, Wegmans Food Markets, Inc. has recalled several of its baked goods that contain fruit from Wawona Packing Co. This includes cakes, pies, tarts and other pastries.

Fruit Recall Affects Walmart, Sam’s Club, Wegmans, Costco, Trader Joe’s Stores | WNEP.com

Walmart: ‘Work Makes You Free.’ It’s Prettier In The Original German.

Although this story has been "resolved," I find it ironic that the "queen of corporate welfare" would offer this example of cultural anthropology. Bare in mind that the entrance of Dachau is one of the most photographed historical markers in the world. The motto associated - Arbeit Macht Frei or Work Makes You Free - to call it "inspirational" in the general sense of the word, not so much.

Walmart: ‘Work Makes You Free.’ It’s Prettier In The Original German.

Costco, Wal-Mart Linked to Human Trafficking and Slavery Through Supplier CP Foods (COST, WMT)

The Guardian's investigation discovered that Thailand-based CP Foods, the world's largest shrimp and prawn farmer, purchases fishmeal (inedible "trash fish") from fishing boats manned by slaves to feed its farm-raised shrimps. CP Foods' shrimps are then sold to Costco, Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Tesco, and many other major supermarkets across the world in frozen or pre-cooked form.

Many of the enslaved men, from Myanmar and Cambodia, were lured to the slave ships by brokers who had promised to help them find work in Thailand's factories or construction sites. Instead, they were sold for as little as £250 ($424) each to boat captains. The slaves were reportedly chained, beaten, dosed with methamphetamines to keep going, and even executed at sea, according to the investigation.

What's even more horrifying is that CP Foods potentially acknowledged that slave labor was part of its supply chain. CP Foods' managing UK director, Bob Miller, admitted that the company knew that there were "issues with regard to the [raw] material that comes in."

[,,,]
Thailand currently ranks 24th on the list of top offenders worldwide (calculated by percentage of population), with an estimated 473,000 slaves within its borders. India ranks fourth on that list, with nearly 14 million slaves -- considerably more than China, which still has nearly 3 million. But slavery is not restricted to developing and emerging markets -- there are actually 60,000 slaves in the U.S. and another 80,000 in Japan.

[,,,]
But companies and corrupt governments are only half of the problem. Consumer demand for cheap products in developed nations has driven large companies overseas in a never-ending quest for low-cost labor. That "Wal-Mart mentality" lowers marketwide price expectations for goods and forces retailers to sell their products at the lowest possible margins. Although consumers benefit from this practice, it's unsustainable without the use of extensive outsourcing to politically unstable regions.

[,,,]
Despite a long-standing policy restricting its vendors from using prison labor, one of Wal-Mart's main produce vendors, Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Martori Farms, was found to be using female prisoners at its farms in 2011. In 2012, The Huffington Post reported that Wal-Mart was using prison laborers to strip serial numbers and UPC bar codes from returned and excess goods, which were then sold to after-market retailers.

Costco, Wal-Mart Linked to Human Trafficking and Slavery Through Supplier CP Foods (COST, WMT)

See also: Demanufacturing Wal-Mart: Profiting From Prison Labor 

 Wondering if this practice is still going on?

One thing you can say about Wal-Mart chain stores: at every link in the chain, someone is being exploited, from head to tail. The public knows next to nothing about the exploitation which takes place at the tail end of the business cycle -- something called "demanufacturing."

Every year, Wal-Mart has to dispose of millions of dollars worth of customer returns, buy-backs, over-stocks, shelf-pulls, scratch-and-dent, and excess inventories. The giant retailer sells this merchandise to liquidators, who scrub the products of any Wal-Mart serial numbers, UPC bar codes -- and then resell them to after-market retailers, who re-sell them to the public.

The workers used to strip these Wal-Mart products clean are often prisoner laborers, under a program made possible by the federal government. In effect, the liquidators are partially subsidized by federal taxpayers, who provide the 'demanufacturing' facilities, and cheap, captive labor -- usually female prisoners. This form of corporate welfare allows salvage companies to offer Wal-Mart a low price for their cast-off products.

[,,,]
The federal law that makes this prison labor possible, the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP) was created by Congress in 1979 "to establish employment opportunities for inmates that approximate private-sector work... to place inmates in a realistic work environment, pay them the prevailing local wage for similar work, and enable them to acquire marketable skills..."

Federal agency charges Walmart with violating workers' rights in 14 states | Al Jazeera America

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a complaint against Walmart on Wednesday, alleging the world's largest retailer violated labor laws in 14 states through actions it took against striking workers.

A complaint issued by the NLRB's general counsel's office said Walmart representatives appeared on national news broadcasts and threatened to retaliate against workers if they went on strike. It also alleged they disciplined and fired workers for engaging in legally protected protest activity.

According to the NLRB complaint, 19 employees were discharged “allegedly as a result of their participation in activities protected by the National Labor Relations Act.”

More than 60 Walmart supervisors and one corporate officer are named in the filing.

Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman for Walmart, said, "We believe that our actions were valid. We take our obligations very seriously. We look forward to sharing our side of the facts in these cases with a judge."

Federal agency charges Walmart with violating workers' rights in 14 states | Al Jazeera America

Walmart Still Hasn't Paid Its $7,000 Fine For 2008 Black Friday Death

Five years after a worker was killed in a crush of shoppers on Black Friday, Walmart still hasn't paid the $7,000 it was fined for allegedly failing to protect employees on the biggest shopping day of the year.

Sitting on appeal with a review commission, the case of Jdimytai Damour's death highlights how corporations can choose to fend off modest penalties over workplace dangers for years on end, according to occupational health experts.

For a company with sales of $466 billion last fiscal year, the $7,000 fine from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration represents little more than a single store's rounding error. Walmart would have vastly outspent that sum simply in legal fees devoted to fighting the penalty. But the world's largest retailer is less concerned with the monetary fine than with the broader implications of the case. A negative ruling could compel Walmart and other retail companies like it to take additional safety precautions for workers or face new liabilities.

"It's not about the penalty," said Celeste Monforton, a former OSHA analyst who's now a lecturer at George Washington University. "It's this interest in seeing how far Walmart can push back against the decision."



Walmart Still Hasn't Paid Its $7,000 Fine For 2008 Black Friday Death

Walmart to Get Stuck With Most of Food Stamp Shopping Spree - ABC News

First off what these people did was wrong, no way around that. Even tho my guts understand (some of) the why of it, it is still wrong. That being said, why the hell did Wallyworld allow this to happen?? There is an emergency procedure in place, a $50 limit on sales; a situation of their own making for what purpose remains to be seen.

Stores here just refused to do EBT sales, which for the c-stores I can understand but our only grocery store no. Had a long argument with the store manager concerning their refusal to honor the emergency procedure. Tuesday I'll be talking to the CAO office :)

The Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services' spokesman Trey Williams said the retailers who chose not to use the emergency procedures that limit sales up to $50 per cardholder during an emergency would be responsible for any additional amount spent over eligible benefit balances.

Following the policy clarification by the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services, Walmart told ABCNews.com the incident was "isolated" and the company doesn't believe it had any material impact to its U.S. business.

The shopping frenzy was triggered when the Electronic Benefits Transfer system went down because a back-up generator failed at 11 a.m. EST Saturday during a regularly-scheduled test, according to Xerox, a vendor for the EBT system and based in Norwalk, Conn.

Walmart to Get Stuck With Most of Food Stamp Shopping Spree - ABC News

D.C. Council approves ‘living wage’ bill over Wal-Mart ultimatum - Washington Post

D.C. lawmakers gave final approval Wednesday to a bill requiring some large retailers to pay their employees a 50 percent premium over the city’s minimum wage, a day after Wal-Mart warned that the law would jeopardize its plans in the city.

The retail giant had linked the future of at least three planned stores in the District to the proposal. But its ultimatum did not change any legislators’ minds. The 8 to 5 roll call matched the outcome of an earlier vote on the matter, taken before Wal-Mart’s warning.

“The question here is a living wage; it’s not whether Wal-Mart comes or stays,” said council member Vincent B. Orange (D-At Large), a lead backer of the legislation, who added that the city did not need to kowtow to threats. “We’re at a point where we don’t need retailers. Retailers need us.”

D.C. Council approves ‘living wage’ bill over Wal-Mart ultimatum - Washington Post

Walmart Will Begin Offering Same-Sex Domestic Partnership Benefits In 2014 | ThinkProgress

The teaser line read "The nation's largest employer to offer benefits to same-sex domestic partners." Intrigued I just had to see who it was that was taking such a bold step forward. Imagine my surprise and disgust when I discovered it was Walmart.

Disgust? But it's a good thing isn't it?

Yes, disgust. Walmart employs approximately 1.3 million workers in the US through it 4500 stores. Thought they do not release actual figures in regard to the percentage of full-time workers, a recent report found that just that one, 300-empolyee Wisconsin Supercenter store costs taxpayers at least $904,542 per year and could cost taxpayers up to $1,744,590 per year.” Now multiply that by 50 stores per states.

Since 2009 Walmart refuses to disclose the number of associates covered by their healthcare plan. At that time is was 52% with the company paying about 66% of the cost. But recently Walmart stopped offering health insurance to part-time employees (working less than 24 hours per week). Factoring in the numbers above, I am guessing that less than 52% of their employees are now covered.

Yes, disgust when you consider, "In state after state, the largest group of Medicaid recipients is Walmart employees. I'm sure that the same thing is true of food stamp recipients. Each Walmart "associate" costs the taxpayers an average of more than $1,000 in public assistance." Or so says Alan Grayson's in his HuffPo column My Thanksgiving: A Turkey Sandwich at Walmart from 2102. For once, a politician got it right according to a list from Good Jobs First.

Yes, disgust that the Walton family refuses to pay their 1.3 million US workers a living wage. There is a common misconception that if minimum wage were to be increased the cost of said increase will be passed on to consumers. I'm not disputing that, what I am disputing is that this does not have to happen, Walmart does not need to follow the mindset of its founder Sam Walton, "I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We're going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment."

Instead of treating their employees like lowly peons and cogs in a wheel, maybe they should leave their draconian obsession with cost containment, including aggressive control of employee benefits and wages, in the past where it belongs. As Thom Hartmann opines in his recent Op for AlterNet:

A job that pays a living wage isn’t just good for the workers who get to take home a livable paycheck, it’s good for other business owners and the economy as a whole. Businesses need people with a reasonable income to buy their goods. When workers are paid so little that they can barely afford to eat, they can’t spend additional money and as a result, the entire economy suffers. This is economics 101.

[,,,]
The point here is that it is possible for companies to pay their workers a living wage, make money, and give their customers an excellent product, all at the same time. The idea that we have to choose between paying workers well and having successful businesses is just false. That choice only exists when the owners insist on squeezing billions out of their workers.

Yes disgust. When the real reason for such a bold announcement is meant to distract from their renewed "Buy American" campaign which was deemed an utter failure the first go round. Some have been so bold as to label it a sham

Yes disgust. When one considers their human rights abuses,,, but I think you see my point. Walmart and other businesses that that espouse this draconian obsession with a cost containment "business" model should be shunned. Making such a bold claim as above only exposes their true agenda.. They are not offering anything of value to their workers and the only value is to the company in the form of PR. If Walmart wants to do some good they would get their employees off the dole by paying a decent livable wage, offering the option of insurance to all their employees whether full or part-time, and truly buy American.

Walmart Will Begin Offering Same-Sex Domestic Partnership Benefits In 2014 | ThinkProgress

Walmart's Latest Scheme to Replace the Middle Class With an Underclass Forced to Buy its Shoddy Goods | Alternet

I do not shop at Wal-Mart, I haven't now for 3 years. It is a conscious decision first based on human rights issues and the shody merchandise being sold. (I spent 3 times as much on clothes and footwear that didn't last.) Eventually I began to dislike their business practices and their business model as I watched them run "local" small businesses into the ground and dictate terms of what product they would contract for (Sylvania light bulbs).

Almost 30 years ago, as the U.S. was bleeding jobs, Walmart launched a "Buy America" program and started hanging "Made in America" signs in its 750 stores. It was a marketing success, cementing the retailer's popularity in the country's struggling, blue-collar heartland. A few years later, NBC's Dateline revealed the program to be a sham . Sure, Walmart was willing to buy U.S.-made goods — so long as they were as cheap as imports, which, of course, they weren't. Dateline found that Walmart's sourcing was in fact rapidly shifting to Asia.

This year, Walmart is back with a new "Buy America" program. In January, the company announced that it would purchase an additional $50 billion worth of domestic goods over the next decade. This week, Walmart is convening several hundred suppliers, along with a handful of governors, for a summit on U.S. manufacturing .

This sounds pretty substantial, but in fact it's just a more sophisticated and media savvy version of Walmart's hollow 1980s Buy America campaign. For starters, $50 billion over a decade may sound huge at first, but measured against Walmart's galactic size, it's not. An additional $5 billion a year amounts to only 1.5 percent of what Walmart currently spends on inventory.

Worse, very little of this small increase in spending on American-made goods will actually result in new U.S. production and jobs. Most of the projected increase will simply be a byproduct of Walmart's continued takeover of the grocery industry. Most grocery products sold in the U.S. are produced here. As Walmart expands its share of U.S. grocery sales — it now captures 25 percent, up from 6 percent in 1998 — it will buy more U.S. foods. But this doesn't mean new jobs, because other grocers are losing market share and buying less. What it does mean is lower wages. As I reported earlier this year, Walmart's growing control of the grocery sector is pushing down wages throughout food production.

Walmart's Latest Scheme to Replace the Middle Class With an Underclass Forced to Buy its Shoddy Goods | Alternet

Wal-Mart on Wal-Mart - Newsroom: Bernie Sanders - U.S. Senator for Vermont

A Wal-Mart spokesman on Monday told The Huffington Post that only 5 percent of the discount chain’s workers were on Medicaid. The spokesman was attempting to rebut Sen. Bernie Sanders’ assertion on MSNBC that the Walton family, the Wal-Mart owners, got to be the richest family in America by paying workers so poorly that they need Medicaid and food stamps to survive. What the spokesman may have forgotten to mention was that an internal memo to Wal-Mart’s board of directors (obtained by The New York Times) acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million U.S. employees were uninsured or on Medicaid. The 2005 memo by M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, had more to say about how the company treats its workers:

• Wal-Mart's workers are getting sicker than the national population with preventable diseases such as obesity (p. 4). More than half of Wal-Mart's workers (p. 8) are not covered by its health insurance plans, meaning many do not have access to necessary preventative care and doctors' visits. "Our workers are getting sicker than the national population, particularly with obesity-related diseases" (p. 4).
• Wal-Mart's workers aren't using primary care because so many of them lack coverage. Instead, they opt to use taxpayer-subsidized emergency rooms. The Wal-Mart workforce "tends to over utilize emergency room and hospital services and underutilize prescriptions and doctor visits" (p. 4-5).
• In a survey, Wal-Mart workers scored the company "poorly" on the cost of healthcare coverage for employees (p. 6).

Wal-Mart on Wal-Mart - Newsroom: Bernie Sanders - U.S. Senator for Vermont