LISSA’S: Freakonomics ~ Are Wal-Mart’s Products Normal?

Are Wal-Mart's Products Normal?

By Justin Wolfers

Emek Basker is an incredibly creative (and under-appreciated) industrial organization economist. She is also surely the leading Wal-Mart-ologist, and has been studying big box stores for several years.

Her most recent piece provides a very nice teaching example highlighting the importance of the income elasticity of demand; she also managed the perfectly accurate but cheeky turn of phrase that we all dream about sneaking into an academic paper:

In this note, I estimate the income elasticity of revenue for Wal-Mart and Target over the last ten years. Because some consumers are likely to view each discounter's products as normal while others view them as inferior, the aggregate relationship could go either way and depends on the size of the two groups as well as on the magnitude of their elasticities of demand (positive and negative).

I find that demand for Wal-Mart's products exhibits a negative income elasticity and Target's demand exhibits a positive income elasticity … For the average consumer, then, it appears that shopping at Target is perfectly normal, but shopping at Wal-Mart is not.

Given these findings, perhaps Rob Jensen's Giffen good expedition team needs a Wal-Mart-ologist.

Given Basker's estimates, it is probably no surprise that the current slowdown is good news for Wal-Mart, but bad news for Target.

It turns out that Basker's findings are no surprise to Wal-Mart: In October 2007, CEO Lee Scott argued that "Our low prices and low-cost business model should give us an advantage over other retailers if things get more difficult for consumers."

Her full paper is here.

source: The New York Times

LISSA’S: Discounted Employees

Discounted employees

Wal-Mart's appalling labour practices mean it's getting rich at the expense of workers and their families

Wal-Mart, the world's largest private employer, now employs over 1.3 million Americans. Globally, more than two million people are now Wal-Martees, and several million more are dependent on these employees. Millions also make their livelihoods by selling their products, albeit at rock-bottom prices, to Wal-Mart. In America the only employer with more clout than this overgrown supermarket chain is the federal government. The company has annual revenues three times larger than California's state budget, profits bigger than the GDP of many small developing nations and the clout to set its own purchasing prices and drive competitors out of business by undercutting them with consumers.

This is all bad - very bad. I'm not going to try to make the argument that all big corporations are, by definition, problematic. For better or worse, we live in a corporate world. Unless we want to dedicate our lives to living some back-to-land dream, for the foreseeable future most of us are going to spend a significant portions of our incomes shopping at one megastore or another.

No, the reason it's bad that Wal-Mart is so extraordinarily dominant (and, arguably, the reason why Wal-Mart is so dominant in the first place) is that the company has appalling labour practices.

The monitoring group Wal-Mart Watch has reported stories of employees refused bathroom breaks, forced to work off-the-clock overtime and punished for attempting to unionise their fellow employees.

In recent weeks, I've spoken with employees who have been with the company nearly a decade and still make only about $10 per hour. Huge numbers of Wal-Mart workers earn far less, scraping by on as little as $7 an hour.

Many are technically part-time, because if they're listed as not working a full 40-hour work week they don't qualify for health insurance for the first year of employment. Afterwards, when the benefits kick in, Wal-Mart removes a startlingly high percentage of the already-low wages to help cover the costs of the insurance. In other words, while Wal-Mart claims to provide most of its employees with health insurance, in reality the employees themselves are paying much of the bill.

One 58-year-old woman I spoke with brings home, in a good month, just over $1,100 after taxes. Out of this, over $100 is removed for health insurance. If the insurance she got for this was comprehensive, that wouldn't be so bad. But it's not. She has to pay the first $1,000 of her medical bills each year before her insurance kicks in, and after that she still has to pay $20 for every doctor's visit and $20 for most prescriptions. So, she has health insurance, but she can only really afford to use it for emergencies. Other employees pay less that her per month in premiums, but their deductibles are even higher - having to pay upwards of $2,500 before the insurance kicks in.

How far does a $1,000 take-home paycheque go today? Well, figure that even in a depressed rural community, $350 is about as low as you can go for rent or a mortgage, or even for paying to use a trailer lot space. Heating is going to run you about $100 a month. Utilities, including phone charges, another $100. Since a car is pretty much a necessity in most of the small towns and outer-burbs where Wal-Mart sets up shop, add in $100 a month for basic car insurance. If you're paying off the car, your payments will be at least $100 a month. Then there's gas. At current prices, even someone not driving more than a few miles a day to and from work is likely spending close to $100 a month on gas.

That leaves about $150 for food, basic household items like toilet paper, dish soap and shampoo, clothing, medical bills, the paying off of credit card debt and entertainment.

What gives? Well, first off goes entertainment. If you're working a low-wage job in America today, even going to the movies is increasingly an impossibility.

Then you go without new clothes. Then medicines. Sure, you might need your blood pressure pills or you'll likely have a heart attack or stroke down the road, but who can plan that far ahead when you have to make a few dollars and change last the month. Many end up giving up their insurance altogether, banking on the fact that they are paid so little they can qualify for state Medicaid coverage or hoping, against hope, that they don't get sick.

Finally, you start skipping meals. Recently, I've interviewed Wal-Mart employees who never eat breakfast, who take low-grade sandwiches to work for lunch and crack open a discount can of soup for dinner. They buy fruit if it's on sale at one or another discount market. Occasionally they treat themselves to low-grade meat for dinner.

Wal-Mart has annual revenues of over $351bn, and last year made over $11bn in profit. On the assumption an average employee works close to 40 hours a week, it could pay every one of its two million employees an extra two dollars an hour (translating to roughly $4,000 more per year, per employee) and still end up with nearly $4bn in profit each year. That's close to $1.5bn more than the 2007 profit level of Target, its closest rival in the all-in-one department store business and a company known for paying its workers more than Wal-Mart does.

The extra money would raise hundreds of thousands of workers out of lives of poverty, would allow them to afford healthcare and to buy enough food to feed themselves and their families.

Don't hold your breath on this happening anytime soon. But, next time you shop at Wal-Mart, remember that many of those who serve you probably don't make enough money to properly feed and clothe their families.

source: guardian unlimited

An Interesting Article: "Wake Up, America. We’re Driving Toward Disaster."

Wake Up, America. We're Driving Toward Disaster.

By J. H. Kunstler

Everywhere I go these days, talking about the global energy predicament on the college lecture circuit or at environmental conferences, I hear an increasingly shrill cry for "solutions." This is just another symptom of the delusional thinking that now grips the nation, especially among the educated and well-intentioned.

I say this because I detect in this strident plea the desperate wish to keep our "Happy Motoring" utopia running by means other than oil and its byproducts. But the truth is that no combination of solar, wind and nuclear power, ethanol, biodiesel, tar sands and used French-fry oil will allow us to power Wal-Mart, Disney World and the interstate highway system -- or even a fraction of these things -- in the future. We have to make other arrangements.

The public, and especially the mainstream media, misunderstands the "peak oil" story. It's not about running out of oil. It's about the instabilities that will shake the complex systems of daily life as soon as the global demand for oil exceeds the global supply. These systems can be listed concisely:

The way we produce food

The way we conduct commerce and trade

The way we travel

The way we occupy the land

The way we acquire and spend capital

And there are others: governance, health care, education and more.

As the world passes the all-time oil production high and watches as the price of a barrel of oil busts another record, as it did last week, these systems will run into trouble. Instability in one sector will bleed into another. Shocks to the oil markets will hurt trucking, which will slow commerce and food distribution, manufacturing and the tourist industry in a chain of cascading effects. Problems in finance will squeeze any enterprise that requires capital, including oil exploration and production, as well as government spending. These systems are all interrelated. They all face a crisis. What's more, the stress induced by the failure of these systems will only increase the wishful thinking across our nation.

And that's the worst part of our quandary: the American public's narrow focus on keeping all our cars running at any cost. Even the environmental community is hung up on this. The Rocky Mountain Institute has been pushing for the development of a "Hypercar" for years -- inadvertently promoting the idea that we really don't need to change.

Years ago, U.S. negotiators at a U.N. environmental conference told their interlocutors that the American lifestyle is "not up for negotiation." This stance is, unfortunately, related to two pernicious beliefs that have become common in the United States in recent decades. The first is the idea that when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.

(Oprah Winfrey advanced this notion last year with her promotion of a pop book called "The Secret," which said, in effect, that if you wish hard enough for something, it will come to you.) One of the basic differences between a child and an adult is the ability to know the difference between wishing for things and actually making them happen through earnest effort.

The companion belief to "wishing upon a star" is the idea that one can get something for nothing. This derives from America's new favorite religion: not evangelical Christianity but the worship of unearned riches. (The holy shrine to this tragic belief is Las Vegas.) When you combine these two beliefs, the result is the notion that when you wish upon a star, you'll get something for nothing. This is what underlies our current fantasy, as well as our inability to respond intelligently to the energy crisis.

These beliefs also explain why the presidential campaign is devoid of meaningful discussion about our energy predicament and its implications. The idea that we can become "energy independent" and maintain our current lifestyle is absurd. So is the gas-tax holiday. (Which politician wants to tell voters on Labor Day that the holiday is over?) The pie-in-the-sky plan to turn grain into fuel came to grief, too, when we saw its disruptive effect on global grain prices and the food shortages around the world, even in the United States. In recent weeks, the rice and cooking-oil shelves in my upstate New York supermarket have been stripped clean.

So what are intelligent responses to our predicament? First, we'll have to dramatically reorganize the everyday activities of American life. We'll have to grow our food closer to home, in a manner that will require more human attention. In fact, agriculture needs to return to the center of economic life. We'll have to restore local economic networks -- the very networks that the big-box stores systematically destroyed -- made of fine-grained layers of wholesalers, middlemen and retailers.

We'll also have to occupy the landscape differently, in traditional towns, villages and small cities. Our giant metroplexes are not going to make it, and the successful places will be ones that encourage local farming.

Fixing the U.S. passenger railroad system is probably the one project we could undertake right away that would have the greatest impact on the country's oil consumption. The fact that we're not talking about it -- especially in the presidential campaign -- shows how confused we are. The airline industry is disintegrating under the enormous pressure of fuel costs. Airlines cannot fire any more employees and have already offloaded their pension obligations and outsourced their repairs. At least five small airlines have filed for bankruptcy protection in the past two months. If we don't get the passenger trains running again, Americans will be going nowhere five years from now.

We don't have time to be crybabies about this. The talk on the presidential campaign trail about "hope" has its purpose. We cannot afford to remain befuddled and demoralized. But we must understand that hope is not something applied externally. Real hope resides within us. We generate it -- by proving that we are competent, earnest individuals who can discern between wishing and doing, who don't figure on getting something for nothing and who can be honest about the way the universe really works.

source: the Washington Post

LISSA’S: There’s More Than One ’Sting’ at Wal-Mart

12-year-old W.Va. girl stung by scorpion at store

BARBOURSVILLE, W.Va. - One young shopper at a Wal-Mart in West Virginia had to watch out for more than falling prices.

A 12-year-old girl picking up a seedless watermelon from a bin was stung Sunday by a tan, inch-long scorpion that had apparently stowed away in a shipment from Mexico.

Megan Templeton, of Barboursville, was taken to the hospital as a precaution but later released. Her father, William Templeton, said the pain was a little worse than a bee sting.

He initially didn't believe his daughter when she said she had been stung by a scorpion, but then he saw the critter scurry underneath a box. It was captured by Wal-Mart employees.

Most of the nearly 2,000 kinds of scorpions are not dangerous to humans.

Richard Coyle, senior director of international affairs for Wal-Mart, said store employees believe the problem was with a single shipment of watermelons.

"We are very concerned," he said. "This is a very rare incident. When I spoke with the store manager, she said in her 17 years she had never heard of something like this."

source: Yahoo! News

LISSA’S: A review ~ New Wal-Mart blog is lame!

From msn money:

Pardon us if we're a bit cynical, but the retail behemoth that's made billions and billions by convincing people to spend in its stores now has a blog telling people how to save money?

We decided to give Wal-Mart's new personal-finance blog, Make Your Dollar Stretch, a look.

This weblog is a thinly disguised advertisement for Wal-Mart. Are you really surprised? At least it's not pretending to be something else, like Wal-Mart's notorious and now-defunct Wal-marting Across America and Working Families for Wal-Mart blogs.

But it's not kind of fun like Check Out, another company-sponsored blog where, according to The New York Times, Wal-Mart buyers can comment about products and their personal lives without corporate review. (Check Out's subtitle is "Where the lanes are all open." At least there's one Wal-Mart location where that's true.)

The content at Make Your Dollar Stretch so far includes two bland posts by author and "Savings Queen" Ellie Kay. Midway through one called "Talking Turkey," we found this gem: "Stores like Wal-Mart honor competitors' ads on the same advertised product! Their efforts to be the low price leader has helped me and my family save literally thousands of dollars over the years." (Lose the exclamation points, El.)

Another page offers a laundry list of money-saving tips from Ellie, including advice to buy generic when you're getting prescription drugs. "Wal-Mart currently charges $4 for a 30-day supply of more than 360 generics," she reminds us.

Wal-Mart executives also get to blog at this site. The first post, by Wal-Mart's president of financial services, tells us that we can cash our economic-stimulus checks at Wal-Mart for free, and how easy it is to put some or all of that money on a Wal-Mart MoneyCard. This company has ingenious ways of getting people to walk through its doors.

Another page is an advertisement for Wal-Mart's "money services" like money orders and check cashing.

The final page is a lame spending quiz. We answered the 20 questions and found out we're a "nifty, thrifty spender." Gee. We were also told that we're saving the environment by shopping responsibly and that we "probably already know that ... services like Wal-Mart's Site to Store through Walmart.com also helps the environment by reducing fuel costs and packaging." If we didn't know, we guess we do now.

source: msn Money

BILL'S: Hollywood bust as celebrities feel the credit crunch

Hollywood bust as celebrities feel the credit crunch
Even A-listers are feeling the effects of falling house prices

John Harlow

Dido may be able to play the piano and the violin, but coping with the Hollywood property market has meant a little fine-tuning for the mistress of hotel-foyer melodies. The 36-year-old British singer has become the latest celebrity to take a hit as high-end houses in America show signs of falling prey to the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Until recently, mega-rich homeowners felt themselves immune to the trouble afflicting those who Leona Helmsley, the late billionaire property investor, liked to call “the little people”. Yet a survey for The Sunday Times conducted by Zillow.com, a website that tracks house prices in America, has found that reality has begun to catch up with the cost of property even in the smartest postcodes.

Dido – who sold more than 13m copies of her debut album, No Angel, after the rapper Eminem sampled one of her tracks on his single Stan – had her three-bedroom bungalow in Los Angeles on the market with Sotheby’s International Realty for months. The 1950s property on Oriole Way, an upmarket area of the Hollywood Hills known as the “bird streets”, has views of the Pacific Ocean, along with a pool, a spa, a media room and a marble bathroom decorated in the art-deco style that Angelinos call “Hollywood Regency”. Despite all this grandeur, Dido, who bought the house in September 2005 for an undisclosed sum, has accepted an offer of $4.45m (£2.3m) – $150,000 less than the asking price.

She is not the only celebrity swallowing her pride and banking the cheque. Frankie Muniz, 23, star of the popular American sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, has slashed the price of his five-bedroom home in the Hollywood Hills by $185,000 to $3.69m: little more than what he paid in January 2006.

On the East Coast, in Manhattan, Scarlett Johansson, 23, has sold her fashionable TriBeCa loft for $52,000 less than the $1.95m she paid for it two years ago. And Kathleen Turner, 53, has reduced the price of her estate in the Hamptons, Long Island, from $7.95m to $5.88m.

Turner, who bought the six-bedroom house in the hamlet of Amagansett for $488,000 in 1990, has fared better than more recent investors. In the first three months of this year, American banks launched repossession proceedings against a record 120 homeowners in the Hamptons, traditionally the summer colony of wealthy New Yorkers. These were no dodgy sub-prime deals: figures from Long Island’s Suffolk County clerk’s office show 20% of those homes are worth more than $1m. A further 800 households in the area have been flagged by credit-monitoring companies this year because of late payments. The new delinquent borrowers are young Wall Street hedge-funders, high-earning lawyers and speculators exposed by the credit crunch, according to John Brady of the local estate agent Coldwell Banker. “This problem didn’t exist before,” he explains. “Now you expect to see new [properties on the list] every week.”

It seems that, although the top end of the market withstood the first shockwaves of the sub-prime market, the rich are now suffering too. “Higher-valued houses were outperforming cheaper properties in nearly half of the top areas,” says Stan Humphries, vice-chairman of data at Zillow.com, which produced the figures based on local market conditions. “Now this lead is starting to slip.”

Even those who aren’t selling may be losing money. According to the report, the heiress Paris Hilton’s pad in Beverly Hills, which she bought for $6m last summer, is losing $64,500 a month in value. At least Hilton is doing better than Sharon Stone – the report found that the value of the 50-year-old actress’s home in the Hills plunged by $740,000 in March alone.

What is more, the high end of the LA market is facing pressure because of the prospect of an actors’ strike next month. The recent writers’ strike is estimated to have cost $1 billion in lost revenue. How much money can drain out of the city before even the rich start to flee like rats?

The biggest loser, however, may turn out to be Michael Jackson. Before his recent financial troubles, his Neverland Ranch, north of Los Angeles, was valued at up to $120m. This month, debt-collecting auctioneers set the reserve price at about $20m. Luckily for Jackson, 49, a finance group moonwalked in at the last moment with a loan purchase deal, in the hope that the former king of pop can sell when the market recovers.

Fellow celebrities and hedge-funders alike must surely be praying that Neverland does not live up to its name.

LISSA’S: Glad to Leave Behind

There are so many things I will be glad to leave behind when I leave Texoma.

RUDENESS ~ Yes, the world is full of rude people. But I haven't found so many rude people in one place until I came to Texoma. Wow.. are people that miserable here and don't realize it? Hmm... Road rage is a common activity here too. People looking for a fight.. that should be Texoma's slogan!

OKLAHOMA ~ I live in Whitesboro, Grayson county. And if you look at a map of this place, it shows to be in Texas! But maps MUST be mistaken! Everyone here seems to think this is all just a part of Oklahoma. I can't wait to move, so that I can be back in Texas again! You have (a grand total of) 2 tv channels here. The news on both really suck. You have KTEN (nbc) out of Oklahoma and KXII (cbs) out of Texas. Both report mostly Oklahoma stories. 9 times out of 10 it's Oklahoma related. When there was a storm in Oklahoma, the news was all over it, but they happen to forget about the huge line of storms stretching over 5+ counties in Texas. My aunt asked me if I heard about a tornado 2 counties to the east of us the other night. Well this was news to me! Of course I never heard about it! It didn't happen in Oklahoma. There was a time last year that wildfires were bad. You know the news was all over the 2 small fires in Oklahoma, but the 4 large fires in Texas didn't matter. And the reporters are so unprofessional! KTEN cannot control their sound. When a news anchor starts talking, the sound gets really loud, then so quiet that you can't hardly hear it... then it's like someone is trying to fine tune it. It never stays at one level. And the KXII idiots.. omg, I've never seen such a circus! The anchors there are always messing lines up, they can never put the right video with the story being read! I've seen a kindergarten class more organized than this!! Lisanne Anderson couldn't even remember a simple tv icon (John Ritter) for the end of one of her stories. She kept flubbing the name, her lines and looking to the crew off camera for help. What an idiot..... And Charlie Haldeman needs to blow his nose before each one of his stories! The idiot sounds like his nose is stopped up everytime he talks!! *UGH* And that UGLY, missing link David Reed just all-around makes me want to puke.. from his high squeeky, irritating voice to his ugly ass face and nasty hair! *BARF!!!*

LOCAL COMMERCIALS ~ If it's one thing that really puts me into a fowl mood, it's the local commercials for Texoma!! I would rather listen to a continuous sound of nails being run down a chalkboard!!! Most of these comapnies around here try to make their jingles as if it were a real song to be played on the radio! Just some of the jingles that get under my skin are: Choctaw Casinos (I mean really.. what IDIOT made the word "Choctaw" into a verb?? "Everyone's goin' Choctaw'in"... please!!!!!!), Preston-Dalton Siding and Windows, Cable One, Advantix Home Health Care... and the IDIOT local sales people who come on giving their sales pitch, like: Rocky from Carter County Dodge, the old fossil from some pool and billiards place on hwy 377 in Whitesboro that points at the tv and says "I want your business", and the ridiculous Orkin commercial with the life sized cock roach and mouse the morning after "some party"!

COUNTRY MUSIC ONLY ~ Anytime you hear of a concert, you know that it's going to be country music. They will not let anything else play. Even the Vice President of the Denison Art Council was on the news talking about some event happening. She said that she wanted a variety of music to play here, but when she listed off the acts, it all involved country music: Country/Americana, Country Caberet and a blend of country, classic rock and blues. You know Texoma, there is more variety to (real) life than just country!!

TEXOMA EDUCATION ~ I have 2 step sons in the Texoma school system and it scares me. I do not want my boys growing up with the low morals and standards that this region is proud of. It shows everyday in this area. Bill and I were at lunch one weekday afternoon in Gainesville and there was some high school class there eating luch as some reward. We overheard one of the teachers tell a student.. and I quote: "People change when they make a lot of money. It's better not to." What the hell kind of education is this?!? Ah, Texoma education, obviously.. because it is IMPOSSIBLE to make a lot of money here. But I do not want to be in an area where making money and being successful is being used as a scare tactic and being planted inside a child's head! It's no wonder people can't see how much in poverty Texoma really is! They were brought up to believe that poverty is where you should be.

DENIAL ~ So many people are in denial here. Everytime me or my family talks about moving out of here to the suburbs of Houston, we get criticized. According to Texomites, "there are daily hurricanes, daily flooding, the tempreature is hotter and so much crime! But in Texoma the weather is beautiful everyday, it never floods, there is no crime, and why in the world would you want to live in a weather disasterous place?" Okay, let me explain it again (to the IDIOT Texomites) that believe this. I know that there is crime everywhere. Especially in Texoma!! Several times a day, there are crime stories in Texoma from drugs to murder.. and everything in between!! If purses get snatched, cars get broken into and tires ripped off of a car in broad daylight in a busy Sherman Wal-Mart parking lot, then you got a problem. Yeah, that's all JUST the Sherman Wal-Mart parking lot!!!!!!!! Face it Texoma, you're proud of your crimes here! Okay, I know there is a lot of humidity in Houston. But when the temperature reaches over 100 degrees (which is at least once a year) in Texoma, it only reaches between 90 and 95 degrees in Houston. And yes I have felt plenty of humidity here.. on top of your 100+ degree temperatures! So it's not like you are without it. Our wind mostly comes from the cool Gulf waters.. ahh, so refreshing. Where does Texoma breezes come from? Cow pastures and farms... Hmmm... not very refreshing... And as far as hurricanes go, there is plenty of warning for hurricanes. How long do you have for a tornado? Minutes? Hmmm..... And as a FACT, tornados are more common than hurricanes. Do the math (if you can). Texoma is not flood free. Anytime it clouds up, there are reports of floods. Another serious denial that Texomites have is cleanliness. Everywhere you look, it resembles the city dump. People here cannot see this. They think it's okay. I guess if you are trash, you can't see the trashy conditions you live in.

I know that these are minor things to most people, but for me it's major. I have cut myself off of these people and this place, trying to keep my sanity. Of course being that there is NOTHING to do here but watch tv, that would drive ANY normal person insane! I will be glad to leave Texoma and start a real life!

LISSA’S: A Houston News Article ~ SMART Shopping

I love HOUSTON for many reasons. Check out this story I found from chron.com (Houston's online newspaper). I don't see anywhere in Texoma doing something like this... again, why would they?? Texomites LIVE in Wal-Mart!!! ~ Melissa (a Houstonian in 2 weeks!!)

Shoppers buying peace of mind
Co-op caters to consumers who have a bone to pick with big retailers

2008 Houston Chronicle

No longer does Jennifer Stelly push a metal shopping cart down supermarket aisles. Instead, she carries a reusable bag to pick out produce — all grown organically by local farmers — in the three rows at the Central City Co-Op in Montrose.

"Generally speaking, I absolutely refuse to shop at Wal-Mart and I always try to go just as local as possible. ... I try to stay away from corporate America as much as possible," said Stelly, who quit her engineering job four years ago to open an energy-medicine business.

Stelly said she prefers family-owned businesses to chain stores. She and friends purchase wholesale natural and organic products from a buying club that provides free shipping if they purchase more than $250 worth.

She is one of a growing number of consumers who have altered their shopping habits on the basis of their politics, moral and ethical beliefs, as well as concerns about human-rights or free-trade grounds.

Known commonly as moral purchasing or ethical consumerism, the practice involves buying things that are made without harm or exploitation of animals, laborers or the environment.

Jennifer Stelly, left, lifts a carton of organically grown tomatoes for Kerry Smith at the Central City Co-Op in Houston. The co-op caters to a growing trend of people exercising ethical consumerism.

Voting with their feet

Some, like Stelly, prefer to shop at area businesses not only to support the local economy, but also to avoid the costs and effects of the fuel used to transport products to Houston.

It is not a new idea. Consumers always have voted with their feet, shopping at retailers that offered the best price or the best service.

So-called "socially responsible" mutual funds that allow people to make investments that exclude certain kinds of companies, such as cigarette manufacturers, or firms that do not follow one's religious beliefs, have been popular for years.

And national exhortations to avoid certain products, from table grapes to products tested on animals, come and go.

Over the years, people have expanded their concerns by refusing to shop at companies and their suppliers that have poor records of protecting the environment, that purchase goods from foreign countries or that do not use Fair Trade-certified products.

Even illegal immigration has been raised as a reason to avoid a particular retailer. Last month's raid and roundup of illegal immigrants at a Shipley Do-Nuts office warehouse in near-north Houston prompted several commenters on the Houston Chronicle's Web site to say they would stop visiting the popular bakery.

Similarly, negative news about products made in China — including lead-tainted toys, melamine-tainted pet food, and toothpaste laced with antifreeze — have some shoppers leery of that country's merchandise.

Liana Winkler, visiting the Taft Street location of the Central City Co-Op for the first time last week, said she does not buy food grown in China and other countries.

"When I look at all the frozen food, it says 'Made in China,' " she said. "And I don't want to eat food where I don't know what they are fertilized with. I don't know where they are grown. I don't know whether they are made with slave labor."

Green initiatives

The moral-purchasing debate is widely discussed on Internet sites such as www.walmartwatch.com, a group devoted mainly to forcing the world's largest retailer to provide better wages and benefits for its employees.

"The bigger the company you are, probably the bigger the target you have on your back," said Scott Krugman, a spokesman with the Washington-based National Retail Federation, which represents 1.6 million retailers nationwide. "You can let other people tell your story for you, or you can take the responsibility to tell that story yourself. And that's what companies should be doing."

Wal-Mart, he said, is one of the pioneers in green initiatives with its efforts to assure that stores and their suppliers are environmentally friendly and energy efficient.

Wal-Mart officials did not return several phone calls for comment.

Bad publicity is costly

Meanwhile, Starbucks has had to defend itself against accusations that it does not buy "fair-trade" coffee. The movement is an organized effort to ensure that small growers in other countries are paid enough for their products to provide a decent living.

A Starbucks spokesman denied the charge and issued a statement saying the company "has a longstanding commitment of conducting business in an ethical and responsible manner."

Krugman said it is difficult to put a dollar amount on how much companies lose from bad publicity.

Al Norman, founder of www.sprawl-busters.com, a nationwide movement to stop construction of big-box stores such as Wal-Mart, The Home Depot, Kohl's, Target and Lowe's Home Improvement, said the impact of citizens not shopping at stores is small compared to the legal fees incurred when groups tie up store construction in courts or in planning hearings.

"Building a store four or five times the size of a football field ruins the neighborhood feel for many people who aren't interested in cheap underwear," he said. "A small-town quality of life is not sold at any Wal-Mart. And once they take it away from you, they can't sell it back at any price."

Jill Sundie, an assistant professor of marketing and entrepreneurship at the University of Houston's Bauer College of Business, said consumers pay attention when there is negative news about a company, including the use of child labor or the abuse of its own employees.

"Certainly," she said, "you see consumers responding in terms of not shopping at certain outlets, not buying certain types of products or hiring people for services if they have violated some moral or ethical guidelines."

Food is locally grown

However, Sundie said, not all consumers can afford to adjust their shopping habits because the alternative could force them to pay more for products. Some will continue to shop at stores, she said, regardless of the companies' reputations.

Stelly said she spends less now. She said she volunteers at the co-op, which allows her to get some of her fruits and vegetables free. Items at the buying club — where she gets organic, sustainable or fair-trade dry foods, household products and health-care items — are sold at wholesale prices.

At the Central City Co-Op on Taft Street, some shoppers said they participate because the food is locally grown, organic and healthier.

Victoria Lugwin, who shops there every week, said she tries not to patronize stores that have what she considers ethical problems. Also, she tries to buy seafood that comes from the United States because she said this country takes better care of its waters.

"I think that not only supporting local agriculture, but also eating local agriculture is good for the farmers and good for the people eating the food," she said.

Thoughts on Melissa, by Moondog

Melissa is a bud of mine

and when she writes it makes me shine

so when she leaves, out of texohellma

hella fella beta get a letta

18 ’Awesome’ Imaginary Worlds

MIDDLE-EARTH
As Seen In: The Lord of the Rings

A land that looks suspiciously like New Zealand, J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth is home to hobbits and dragons and elves and huge fire demons and jewelry of imponderable power.

NARNIA
As Seen In: The Chronicles of Narnia

Looks very much like Middle-earth, but with a lot more talking mammals — and Christ allegories.

LIBERTY CITY
As Seen In: Grand Theft Auto IV

It's what New York City would see in the mirror, just before waking up from a heroin-fueled nightmare: the traffic is brutal, the people are vulgar, and there are hot dog stands everywhere.

OZ
As Seen In: The Wizard of Oz

A candy-colored dreamscape with some of the finest masonry anywhere. The Emerald City lies smack-dab in the middle of Oz, which is comprised of four outlying countries: Munchkin, Gillikin, Winkie, and Quadling. Beware the grabby trees and flying monkeys.

HYBORIA
As Seen In: Conan the Barbarian

''Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars.'' That's how Robert E. Howard described the vaguely Eurasian world he built for his barbarian conqueror. Who am I to argue?

NEVERLAND
As Seen In: Peter Pan

Should you follow the second star to the right, and go straight on until morning, you'll find this island Eden, where Peter Pan and his lost Boys never have to grow up and they spend all their fighting one-handed pirates.

SHANGRI-LA/SHAMBHALA
As Seen In: The Shadow

Nestled in the Himalayas is a mountain retreat that's been known to heal sullied souls, align out-of-whack shakras, and set damaged white men on the path to heroism. This is where Lamont Cranston learned to put aside his greed to become the scourge of the underworld called The Shadow, and probably where failed surgeon Dr. Stephen Strange took up the mantle of Earth's Sorcerer Supreme. In other words, the world's best (and most remote) spa.

WONDERLAND
As Seen In: Alice in Wonderland

''Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?''
''That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.''
''I don't know where…''
''Then it doesn't matter which way you go,'' said the Cat.
''In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round,
''lives a Hatter. And in that direction,'' waving the other paw, ''lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: They're both mad.''
''But I don't want to go among mad people,'' Alice remarked.
''Oh, you can't help that,'' said the Cat. ''We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.''
''How do you know I'm mad?'' said Alice.
''You must be,'' said the Cat, ''or you wouldn't have come here.''

TERABITHIA
As Seen In: The Bridge to Terabithia

Perhaps the most heartbreaking of all imagined worlds, this is a place made up by two kids, Jess and Leslie, in the woods near their houses, accessible only swinging on a vine over a river. It's a refuge that only they share — until one of them has a tragic mishap.

THE ISLAND
As Seen In: Lost

Smoke monsters, underground condos, polar bears, pirate ships, wacky healing powers, hawt castaways, and brutal natives? Book our trip, toot sweet.

SODOR
As Seen In: Thomas the Tank Engine

Talking trains. On an island. Tooling around. That's about it. If you always wished that trains could talk — or you're three — then this is the fantasy world for you.

HYRULE
As Seen In: The Legend of Zelda videogames

This is the super-green, pixilated realm in which Link had so many of his Nintendo adventures, trying to save Princess Zelda from any number of quandaries she got herself roped into.

GOTHAM CITY
As Seen In: Batman

It's what Liberty City would see in the mirror, just before waking up from a LSD-fueled nightmare: riddled with crime-ready alleys, populated by villains with severe homicidal psychoses, and cursed with a seemingly eternal lack of sunshine.

ATLANTIS
As Seen In: Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Too bad the only real on-screen representation of the sunken city of Atlantis is a poop-poor Disney flick, because such an enduring mythological place — or, if you're crazy, ''real'' place — deserves better.

AVALON
As Seen In: Excalibur

After King Arthur fell in battle, defeating his brother-son Mordred, he was taken to this mythic island to recover. Or die. Accounts vary. But Avalon was also known for its awesome apples. So, expect a Mac operating system to be named '"Avalon'' somewhere down the line.

MONGO
As Seen In: Flash Gordon

There are a lot of terrific planets out there that could've made this list — Hoth, Arrakis, Treasure — but we're choosing this one because, in the 1980 feature, it's the wackiest. The skies are made out of lava-lamp goo; there are lizard men and dudes with wings and totally hot-and-randy princesses; and Queen music is everywhere.

KRULL
As Seen In: Krull

Okay, so we're including another planet. But you'd never know it, because this world is to Middle-earth what Vancouver is to Manhattan. Sure, it's got forests and plains and giant floating fortresses, but something just seems off, you know?

FANTASIA
As Seen In: The NeverEnding Story

No, not the American Idol winner, though sometimes her hair looks like it was done in an imaginary salon. The place that the young hero Atreyu tries to save from being destroyed by the Nothing — while a real-world boy named Bastian reads along.

LISSA’S: A Contributing Factor in America’s Recession/Depression

Wal-Mart Reaches 2 Million Workers

Imagine Houston being populated only by Wal-Mart workers.

Houston proper, with its population of just over 2 million, has about the same number of people as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. now employs worldwide.

Put another way, if a city had only families of four and one member of each household worked at Wal-Mart, that would be a perfect fit with the 8 million-strong population of New York City, a market Wal-Mart happens to covet.

During a recorded call with investors Tuesday, Wal-Mart President and CEO Lee Scott mentioned offhandedly that the company now has more than 2 million "associates," as Wal-Mart terms its employees. Chief Financial Officer Tom Schoewe confirmed in an interview that Wal-Mart had reached the milestone.

The world's largest retailer is also the world's largest private employer. The company has about 1.3 million U.S. workers. As of April 30, Bentonville-based Wal-Mart had 7,343 units - 4,195 in the U.S. and 3,148 in its international division, which includes Puerto Rico.

source: Arkansas Business

LISSA’S: Free Cars at Wal-Mart!! Courtesy of YOU!

Case on standby for woman who said Wal-Mart gave her car away

For Marta Velazquez, righting a wrong hasn't been a speedy process.

In her attempt to seek damages from Wal-Mart, who she said gave her car to a man they believed to be her husband, she has been playing the waiting game with the judicial system for two years.

"It's your typical Wal-Mart," Velzquez said. "They are claiming to not be responsible."

Lonnie Knowles, Velazquez's attorney, said since Wal-Mart was first put on notice of the claim, there have been several attempts to contact the corporation, including a written demand on Jan. 2, 2007.

Knowles said when the company wouldn't respond, they filed a lawsuit seeking damage reimbursements of $50,000 in June of 2007, nearly 10 months after the incident.

On Sept. 6, 2006, Velazquez took her 1999 black Pontiac Grand Am to the Wal-Mart on FM 1960 and Cutten Road to have a tire replaced, only to find out they had given her car to a man they thought was her husband. About a month-and-a-half later, it was found, destroyed, in a park in Acres Homes.

The inconvenience caused her to miss work. The house keys, mail and a laptop left in her car enabled one man access to her phone number, which he used to harass her. Fearing for her safety, she broke her apartment lease and moved.

Now awaiting her day in the 133rd Judicial District Court, Vazquez'z case has been on trial stand by since, April 30, meaning that when the court calls them, within two hours notice, lawyers for both sides will need to appear and be ready to pick a jury.

"There are a bunch of trials set to appear in that particular court, so the judge decides what the pecking order of those trials is going to be," Knowles said.

The case likely won't be tried this time around, he said. If not, their case won't come up again for trial for four to six months at which point the standby process will recycle.

"We both indicated it would take no less than two days to try the case, and since the court hasn't called as of 3 p.m. on Thursday, my experience tells me that we likely won't be reached for this docketing period," he said.

Wal-Mart said they couldn't comment on a matter that is currently in litigation.

source: Houston Community Newspapers Online

LISSA’S: Wal-Mart - Always The Low Paycheck

Wal-Mart's same store sales were up 2.6 percent in April, but it's top executives are warning of a slower May.

The problem: Too many people are living paycheck to paycheck amid an economic slump.

"The economy continues to get tougher and the 'paycheck cycle' is more pronounced for customers than in past months," U.S. stores chief Eduardo Castro-Wright said Thursday. "As money gets tighter for them toward the end of the month, sales drop more than we have seen in the past."

The average Wal-Mart employee, meanwhile, makes less than $20,000 a year, according to the Wal-Mart gadfly group, Wal-Mart Watch.

"Wal-Mart's labor practices have contributed to the nation's weakened economy," said Wal-Mart Watch Executive Director David Nassar. "The company refuses to pay its 1.4 million U.S. workers a living wage - often forcing them to live in poverty and on public assistance."

Yes, but at least they have jobs, and they can still afford to shop at Wal-Mart.

source: The Denver Post

LISSA’S: Fact: Wal-Mart Causing Poverty

A 2006 study focused on the effect of Wal-Mart stores on poverty rates found that an estimated 20,000 families nationwide had fallen below the official poverty line as a result of the chain's expansion. According to the study, the presence of a Wal-Mart was 'unequivocally associated' with smaller reductions in family-poverty rates in counties nationwide during the 1990s relative to places that had no stores. Additionally, during the last decade in counties with Wal-Mart stores, dependence on the food stamp program increased 15.3 percent.

St. Louis Business Journal

ACTIVISTS, by Moondog

Watch out for ACTIVISTS

People who try to change things,, look out,, people who try to make their will known, watch out,, apparently,,, to be an activist is not a good thing these days,, be careful,, opinions are for rich people on talk shows,, not walmart employees who are subservient butt lickers to the conspiracy to make selfishness the face on the currency.

LISSA’S: ’Cheap and convenient come at a cost’ By H. Mallick

By: Heather Mallick

Last night I dreamt I went to Wal-Mart again. And I was happy there.

This worried me because the day before, I had gone to a Wal-Mart for the first time in my life, my real life, and I was badly frightened. I was checking out the store — sorry, industrial hangar exoskeleton — because developers want to build a Wal-Mart near my sort of cute, ramshackle, little-shops Toronto neighbourhood and I was there to see my future.

As it turned out, my future was my past. This Wal-Mart, a "Supercentre" the size of the Bermuda Triangle in a dire area called Scarborough, had flung me back in time to my youth.

Wal-Mart is a place I know in my soul. It is every Zellers in every small town I ever lived in; it is Woolworths in Kapuskasing writ large. (Note: the Woolworths in Kap is now a Wal-Mart.) I was thrilled to shop in cheap stores for tarty ratty clothes when I was young — I can still remember every polyester garment I ever purchased in Reitman's — but that's the joy of being a teenager in a small town. Everything is thrilling by definition. On weekends, we'd gulp homemade Harvey Wallbangers and vomit in a snowbank; that was our idea of a night out.

But the fact that something is pleasing to you says more about you than the thing itself. The fact that Wal-Mart is cheap ("Save money, live better!") and convenient (18,000 parking spaces! Free!) are two puny words against the torrent of invective I and any other Canadian interested in airy concepts like "quality of life" could instantly pour upon Wal-Mart.

I am not alone in this: over the years many Canadians, from Halifax to Vancouver, have been vocal about which neighbourhoods do and don't want to plant a Wal-Mart.

The price of cheapness

Wal-Mart is a giant American corporation (2006 revenue of $315 billion) run out of Arkansas that devastates every town and neighbourhood in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Britain where it plants a store. I urge you to watch Robert Greenwald's famed 2005 documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price to understand why cheap and convenient are adjectives of condemnation, not praise.

Yes, Wal-Mart is cheap. CEO Lee Scott's statement in the 2008 annual report is so obsessive about prices that he sounds like Howard Hughes on germs or Lou Dobbs on Mexicans. Here's a sampling of his phrases: "affordable, money-saving, price-leading, price-reduced, dollar-saving, budget-stretching, ends-meeting, driving down costs, reducing costs, saving money, spending less, low prices, price-leading, reduce prices, less money, save money, on par with price, lower costs." That's not cheap, that's psychotic.

I love to shop and I do shop carefully. But as I wander around Wal-Mart, it becomes apparent that their prices are low because much of their merchandise is — cheap. Whatever happened to "well-made" or "worthwhile"? Their own-brand clothing, curiously called "George," is made of thin fabric harsh on my fingertips, badly shaped and sewn, and style-free. Gap and H&M sell cheap clothes too, but they aren't this badly constructed, and those two chains make an effort at rendering the customer physically appealing to fellow human beings. George clothing actively works in the other direction.

Disposable goods

I balk at buying cut flowers, which are farmed overseas under dreadful conditions. I buy silk fakes instead. In Wal-Mart, the artificial flowers are stunning, so amateurish that they don't resemble flowers, more like polyester extrusions. Their colours are previously unknown to humanity and the petals feel like starched toilet paper. But my god, they are cheap. When was the last time you saw a store sign blaring "98 cents"? Ask your parents.

Wal-Mart's name-brand goods may well be slightly cheaper than in other chains. Their style is pressuring manufacturers and squeezing smaller companies dry — why? because they can — but pinching blood from a pebble doesn't always pay off.

These goods are still designed as disposable. I've owned more toasters than I have toes. This is why we have a garbage crisis: repair shops no longer exist and we blow far more money buying repeat goods than one well-crafted product that will last for decades.

Of course Wal-Mart is cheap. Its ethos is to sell the lowest priced, not the most durable, goods. So we can change our descriptors to "convenient but temporary."

A cynic, Oscar Wilde said, is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Coming from a genius who was worth kingdoms but died penniless in exile, it's a quote for our times.

In convenience

I don't find it convenient to have a 1,700-space parking lot near Lake Ontario, I find it repellent. It would be lovely to have picnic grounds or dog runs, restaurants, stores or something lively in an area where, magically, we can actually live well without owning cars. We have great public transit here. Why build a car magnet when gas is set to hit $2.25 a litre in four years? Wal-Mart, purely designed for car owners, will lure thousands of polluting vehicles to a new paved parking lot in an area that already has so little open ground that when it rains, the earth can't absorb the water. Local basements annually fill with raw sewage runoff in a repeated horror that I will not describe.

I'm surprised that only 300 people showed up at recent protest against the planned big box power centre containing Wal-Mart — we'll call it Lubyanka for short. Passivity has infected every citizen.

So instead of walking down to main street for a shovel, nail gun, ice cream, prescriptions, head of lettuce, shrubbery, can of paint or pair of deck shoes, everyone will drive to Wal-Mart and come back with disposable things bought for next to nothing from dingy foreign factories. We will do this at a hidden cost to clean air, precious fuel, neighbours' basements, owners and employees of smaller stores, wages (Wal-Mart pays rock-bottom and keeps people part-time for years), the view of Lake Ontario, tax revenue, Canadian-owned manufacturers, esthetics and fitness.

I believe Wal-Mart is evil. But sometimes there's payback. The last time I saw Scott, he was on video patting the buttocks of pale male Wal-Mart executives dressed as big ugly women screaming and dancing at a corporate function. That video wouldn't be public had Wal-Mart not for decades hired Flagler Productions to record its corporate events. When the retail giant dumped Flagler in 2006, putting it out of business, Wal-Mart wouldn't negotiate a price for the video archive. So Flagler offered the videos to the free market, which now has amazing footage being pored over by wrongful death lawyers, etc.

I have to leave aside the viciousness of the company laid out in Greenwald's documentary: its blockade of the promotion of female employees, the murders, rapes and kidnappings in its cheapskate unguarded parking lots, its abuse of part-timers and non-white employees, outrages that include suing an employee brain-injured in a car crash for her private insurance payout, its secret altering of employee records to avoid paying wages, its notoriously lax environmental safety … none of my sentences about Wal-Mart ends happily. They just build, like Wal-Mart itself.

LISSA’S: ’Reassigned’: A Common Practice in Wal-Mart

In 2002, 21-year old Patrick Brady, who suffers from cerebral palsy, was hired by Wal-Mart as a sales associate in the pharmacy department. After one day in the pharmacy, he was reassigned to other responsibilities, including collecting garbage and shopping carts from the parking lot. A Long Island jury found that Wal-Mart discriminated against Brady when he was transferred and asked impermissible pre-employment questions about his disability. The jury awarded Brady $7.5 million in damages and a judge ultimately awarded $2.8 million to Brady.

source: Associated Press, Newsday, New York Law Journal