A Little Good News

(Cartoon published by the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star 8/28/09.  Click on image to enlarge and then return.)

Every once in a while I come across a news article which makes me smile because it shows that there are still some possibilities for the rest of us.  This one from the Los Angeles Times is one of those articles.

Legislators, backed by unions, consumer groups and doctors, are calling for fines that could reach about $6,000 per full-time employee who ends up on Medi-Cal, the state Medicaid program for the poor and others. They say this would eliminate a loophole in the Affordable Care Act that encourages large retailers and restaurant chains to dump hourly workers onto the government dole because there's currently no penalty for doing so.

The outcome of this California battle could have national implications as other cash-strapped states search for ways to shore up safety-net programs that are bound to be stretched by a massive healthcare expansion.

"There are concerns that employers will be gaming this new system and taking less and less responsibility for their workers," said Sonya Schwartz, program director at the National Academy for State Health Policy. "This may make employers think twice." ...

Beyond Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the proposed penalties could touch nearly 1,800 companies in California that employ more than 500 workers each, ranging from farms to major restaurant chains. Those firms would face fines based on 110% of the average cost of health insurance for every employee who is enrolled in Medi-Cal and works more than eight hours a week.

The average annual premium for employee-only coverage was $5,615 in the U.S. last year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The fines would be adjusted based on how many hours an employee works.

The bill calls for the employer fines to be used by Medi-Cal to boost payments for doctors and hospitals treating the poorest patients. That helped win the backing of the California Medical Assn., which says taking on these patients is difficult because the state has one of the lowest Medicaid reimbursement rates in the nation.   [Emphasis added]

I can hear the screams now:  "You'll drive businesses out of California!"

Oh, yeah?  Well, there's at least one large employer who doesn't think so and which has been providing such benefits all along because it found it to be a good business practice:

Not all retailers put such a burden on taxpayers. Costco Wholesale Corp., which competes against Wal-Mart's Sam's Club stores, said it provides health insurance to 88% of its workers and guarantees all employees enough hours to qualify for benefits if they want them.

"We think we get better employees who want to stick around," said Richard Galanti, Costco's chief financial officer. "At the end of the day, somebody has to pay for their healthcare."   [Emphasis added]

It isn't a done deal, of course.  The Democratic legislature and governor still have to pass it, and I suspect Wal-Mart is busy shoveling money around, as is the Chamber of Commerce.  But at least it's a start.

Cheap Justice

(Cartoon published by the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star 8/28/09.  Click on image and then return.)Thi

This is one of those "good news-bad news"  posts.  Wal-Mart got nailed, but it will cost the company less than the corporation probably takes in in a couple hours.  From the Los Angeles Times:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. admitted to improperly handling and disposing of hazardous materials at its stores nationwide, pleading guilty Tuesday to several federal criminal and civil counts and agreeing to pay more than $81 million.

The accusations against the retail behemoth spanned three criminal cases from the Justice Department and a related civil case brought by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Wal-Mart said its failings -- not training workers to properly deal with and discard hazardous waste, including pesticides, detergents, paints and aerosols, some of which ended up in municipal trash bins or in local sewers -- were remedied years ago.
Prosecutors also said waste taken back to stores by customers was delivered by the company to product return centers without required safety documentation.

“The incidents on which the charges are based occurred years ago and involved the transportation and disposal of common consumer products,” the company said in a statement. “No specific environmental impact has been alleged and since then, Walmart designed and implemented comprehensive environmental programs that remain in place today.”   [Emphasis added]

Like I said, $81 million is just a drop in the bucket for a company that grinds its suppliers overseas and grinds its employees at the stores here, providing them with zero benefits.

But here's the kicker.  You will notice that the law suits were  filed years ago and Wal-Mart says it remedied the problems years ago.  In other words, the corporation has been sitting on that $81 million for all those years.

Rat bastards.

What A Surprise

[Note:  I'm having some financial problems right now.  I know my timing is atrocious, given all the fund raisers lately, but if you can spare a little more, please donate to my "cat food for me and Home Boy" fund.  Thank you.]

(Editorial cartoon by Jack Ohman / Sacramento Bee (January 30, 2013) and featured at McClatchy DC.  Click on image to enlarge.)

This headline caused me to blink:  "Wal-Mart limits ammunition sales as demand soars."  Naturally I read the article, and I was soon disabused of any misconception that Wal-Mart was showing some good citizenship.

A month after a massacre at a Connecticut elementary school, demand for ammunition is so high that Wal-Mart is limiting sales to keep supply stable.

As of last week, customers nationwide will only be able to purchase three boxes a day from the mega-retailer because “supply is limited,” said spokeswoman Ashley Hardie.

She declined to speculate on the reasons behind the surge in interest, but said the company is “monitoring supply issues daily and working with suppliers to ship ammunition to stores.”

“We’re taking care of as many customers as possible,” Hardie said.   [Emphasis added]

Gotta keep those blue-light special shoppers happy, even if it does mean multiple trips to the store.  Who knows?  Maybe shoppers will pick up a few things besides bullets with each visit.

The business of America is business.

I knew that.

Just Throw Money At It

(Editorial cartoon by Lee Judge / The Kansas City Star (April 25, 2012) and featured at McClatchy DC. Click on image to enlarge and then come on back.)

Lots of news since the New York Times article on Sunday revealing the extensive bribery of Mexican officials engaged in by Wal-Mart to get their big box toe hold. Perhaps the most important news to my mind is that once the upper echelon discovered that the federal law against such foreign bribery has some real teeth in it, they started pushing to weaken that law:

A blockbuster New York Times story published this weekend details how the Mexican subsidiary of retail giant Wal-Mart paid $24 million in bribes to Mexican officials — and subsequently top Wal-Mart officials allegedly decided to cover up these offenses.

The details of Wal-Mart’s complicity in bribery are shocking, but there is one important element that the Times did not report.

While Wal-Mart’s largest subsidiary spent millions of dollars systematically bribing Mexican officials, the company back home has been working, through big business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to weaken the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which renders it illegal for corporations to bribe officials in foreign countries. ...

To recap, this episode is an important anecdote about how corruption in America works today. First, a powerful corporation realizes that bribery is a part of its business model in some part of the world. Then, it tries to cover up aforementioned bribery. In case that doesn’t work, the corporation spends big back home to weaken laws against bribery. Finally, if all of that doesn’t work, and intrepid reporters at a place like the New York Times discover the wrongdoing, the corporation’s tactic is to deny that it had any ill intent at all.

See? Easy peasy.

Go read the whole Alternet article.

Getting 'Er Done

Well, now, here's a bit of good news: Wal-Mart and the other big box stores are starting to go solar. From the NY Times:

In recent months, chains including Wal-Mart Stores, Kohl’s, Safeway and Whole Foods Market have installed solar panels on roofs of their stores to generate electricity on a large scale. One reason they are racing is to beat a Dec. 31 deadline to gain tax advantages for these projects. ...

Analysts are not sure how much power the rooftop projects could ultimately produce, but they say it could be enough to help shave total electricity demand. In many communities, stores are among the biggest energy users. Depending on location and weather, the solar panels generate 10 to 40 percent of the power a store needs.

While the federal and state tax advantages are the clear drivers of this sudden push to renewable energy, the stores are smart enough to cash in on the sudden interest in renewables because of burgeoning oil prices and climate change worries. It's becoming hip to be green, and the stores have finally figured that out.

Now solar energy is still not cheap, and the boom in solar panels has driven the cost up, as the article makes clear, but even so, given economies of scale and the generous tax breaks involved, it still makes sense for the stores to make this kind of move and to make it now. If the stores want to brag about "leading the way to a healthier planet," I won't mind at all.

The trick, however, is to keep those tax incentives in place, and that's in jeopardy in Washington, DC, because the renewal of that incentive has somehow (!) been tied to the off-shore drilling bill.

It also would help enormously if the feds would make a clear commitment to the development of the kind of fuel cells that would store the solar energy for use at night and on cloudy days. A recent breakthrough at MIT certainly looks to make that possible at a much lower cost than at present (via The Sideshow).

At any rate, it was nice to start the week off with some good news.

Little Things: The Swirly

Wal-Mart is continuing to burnish its rather sorry public image by promoting environmentally sound practices. It made news in 2006 with its extensive pilot programs for energy saving within its own mega stores, the results of which it shared with its own competitors. Its latest project is the promotion of compact fluorescent bulbs for home use. From an editorial today's NY Times:

...it’s great news that Wal-Mart is putting its considerable heft behind one of the easiest ways to reduce energy consumption and the production of global-warming gases: the corkscrew-shaped light bulbs of the future. ...

As Michael Barbaro reported in The Times yesterday, Wal-Mart is pushing to sell 100 million compact fluorescents a year. Because they use 75 percent less electricity, that would save customers $3 billion on their electricity bills and save the world from 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gases.

Given that the little 'swirlies' last longer than the traditional light bulbs and use less electricity, one would think that the new version would leap off the shelf, but that's hardly the case. The first reason is obvious.

...probably the biggest impediment is that while the bulbs are cheaper to use, they cost more to buy. Compact fluorescents are often eight times more expensive, but each one saves consumers $30 over its lifespan because they last longer and use less electricity. It’s a quirk of our human brains that people generally have a hard time paying more for something today even if it’s a better deal in the long run.

Many people don't have the cash on hand to make the investment up front, although as the swirly gains in popularity, the price may go down. That popularity might very well depend on the second factor, one that I call 'interior design.' The bulbs often don't fit well into existing lighting systems. Table and floor lamps weren't built with the longer design in mind, which means that either the new bulb just doesn't fit in the lamp's recepticle or two inches of swirly hangs out the way they do in my ceiling Casablanca fan/lighting system.

If Wal-Mart is serious about this program, it should start pressuring its furnishings suppliers to design lighting systems which incorporate the compact fluorescent bulbs. After all, little things like the swirly can indeed make a big difference.