There is no "collateral damage" at the Boston Marathon!!

None of the high profile coverage of the Boston Marathon Bombing even think about calling it collateral damage, nor do I think they should. Kevin Cullen went on TV and asked a rhetorical question when considering how the bomber might respond to a question about what he did during the war and he might say, "I killed an eight year old kid." This is of course outrageous as it should be. But the obvious question is why shouldn't this logic apply to all examples where children were killed. During the same appearance they mentioned the belief that the bomber knew what he was doing clearly implying that he would have known he was killing innocent people to accomplish his goals what ever those goals might be.

Why is there little or no effort to consider the same thing about the victims of the drone attacks that have dramatically escalated under Obama including many children? The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has listed 175 children that have been killed by US drones; and as far as I know neither Kevin Cullen or any other commentator with access to the commercial media have expressed the same outrage.

Typically the way they address this involves declining to address it at all if they can get away with it. Occasionally they are forced to do so and when they happens they have a history of referring to them as "collateral damage," or finding some other way of downplaying it.

This shouldn't be limited to drone attacks which are much newer than many of the other attacks that are being made on children or adults for that matter. Many of these other forms of "collateral damage" continue to go on but it has become so routine that we don't pay attention to it anymore. This could and probably should also include concern for the many people including children that are dying for other reasons like the sweat shop fires that happen from time to time including the one last fall in Bangladesh, the large number of people that are dying because of environmental destruction or lack of health care and many other things. This is much worse in most parts of the world but it is happening here in the US as well. Many people in the West Virginia area are dying as a result of the damage being done by Massey Coal; others are dying because of pollution caused by Fracking done by the energy companies as well.

The list could go on much longer.

Banks are looting this country blind; oil companies are destroying the environment; corporations have consolidated and no longer provide real competition but the workers now have to compete with people half way around the world.

Politically connected people committing massive crimes are unaccountable. A Wal-Mart worker eating a few Oreo cookies is prosecuted to the full extent of the law at tax payer expense. Shoplifting incidents involving the theft of sandpaper or underwear are turning into shootings. A hostage incident happened to get the power company to turn the power back on. A sixty something year old man is tasered and bean bagged into submission for wielding a knife by at least half a dozen if not a dozen or more police on camera.

The massive corporate corruption is creating a terrorist breeding ground and there are peaceful protests by well informed people every week but the commercial media only provides sporadic coverage of them as isolated incidents.

Cenk Uygur recently asked how we can call our selves a democracy based on the Guantanamo activity if you add all these other inequities the answer is obvious. If you want to be honest we can't.

I don't know why this happened but it is just one of many problems with this country and we aren't trying to address any of them in a rational manner. The political system and the commercial media is controlled by a very narrow segment of our society and this seems to have provided them with yet another opportunity to create an enormous amount of hype about one of many issues that can be blamed on someone besides the most powerful people in this country that continue to do much more damage.

When the attack Sandy Hook took place many people around the world including some children in Pakistan expressed condolences; in our country at the grass roots level this might not be that uncommon either among those who are reasonably well informed but the commercial media and the political establishment isn't even trying to keep the public informed about many if any of the most important issues, presumably because they seem to be primarily concerned with advancing the agenda of a small percentage of the public that have a very narrow ideology that seems to focus almost entirely on short term profit and control of power.

photo source

Now there is another explosion that seems to be as bad if not worse in Texas and it is still to early to know for certain what caused it but some of the most credible information seems to imply that the most likely cause may have been safety violations and I wouldn't be surprised if this turns out to be an accident that might have been a result in inadequate precautions as a result of cuts to increase profits.

We have enough knowledge about most if not all of the most important issues that need to be addressed in this county to dramatically improve them but the entire media and political establishment is very selective about what views they will allow to be presented to the majority of the public and the result is that we wind up expressing an enormous amount of outrage over a relatively small percentage of the public and ignore the vast majority of the others that have also faced serious consequences. The truth is that if we had been addressing these problems properly for the past few decades it is much less likely that either the Boston Bombings or the Texas explosion or for that matter the Sandy Hook shootings would have happened.

This outrage didn't stop the last 8 year old innocent child from being killed nor will it stop the next; however if we allow a more even handed reporting that covers all the issues in a much more balanced manner that enables people to obtain the information they need to make decisions then the next one could be prevented.

Going through the same old rituals of mourning and glorifying a hero here and there didn't work before and it won't work now.

Should Bradley Manning get the Nobel Peace Prize?

Roots Action, War is a Crime and at least a few other peace organizations and individuals have been lobbying to get the peace prize awarded to Bradley Manning. It is hard to doubt that he should get it if the Nobel Peace Prize has much if any meaning anymore; or if it ever did. The following is an excerpt from David Swanson suggesting that people sign a petition to give him the award.

Bradley Manning's Nobel Peace Prize

Whistleblower Bradley Manning has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and he should receive it.

No individual has done more to push back against what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism" than Bradley Manning. The United States is the leading exporter of weapons and itself spends as much preparing for more wars as the rest of the world combined. Manning is the leading actor in opposition to U.S. warmaking, and therefore militarism around the world. What he has done has hurt the cause of violence in a number of other nations as well.

And right now, remaining in prison and facing relentless prosecution by the U.S. government, Manning is in need of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Alfred Nobel's will left funding for a prize to be awarded to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

The intent of the prize was to fund this work. As a result of enormous legal expenses, Bradley Manning is in need of that funding, unlike some other peace prize recipients. In addition, his secret trial -- with a potential death sentence -- could use all the attention that can be shined on it. Complete article

I'm sure that some of his critics might argue that he is a traitor or that he violated the law or some reason like that therefore he shouldn't get the prize; however if it was reviewed properly I have no doubt that it would be clear that what he did was to expose those that are the real traitors or people who either violated the law or did things that should have been a blatant violation of the law. It is no longer easy to tell whether or not the law should have any legitimacy now that people who participate in torture are protected by the law but those that expose it are prosecuted.

I'm not going to worry about that case too much since I'm sure there will be plenty of other people who will be doing it anyway.

If I were to play a devils advocate and argue against it it would be because the Nobel Peace Prize and many other Nobel prizes have turned into a bad joke along with many other politically correct awards. Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Henry A. Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, and Barack H. Obama all won the Nobel Peace Prize and most if not all of them have been involved in more activities to promote war a lot of the time than they were to prevent it. Bradley Manning shouldn't be in the same category as them nor should some of the legitimate candidates like Martin Luther King Jr.

If the leading criteria for the prize involves taking a break from war mongering long enough to gain some political backing to claim they're promoting peace they might all deserve the prize; but if that isn't the case you might wonder of many of the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize believe in Orwell's claim that "War is peace" is a rational belief.

There have of course been some candidates that appear to have been legitimate including many that actually won it like Martin Luther King Junior, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela etc. but in some cases even when the candidate who won seems legitimate there is still major controversies around it. In 1997 when the prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and Jody Williams from Vermont there was some concerns expressed by the enormous number of people involved in the grass roots effort about the possibility of the media event at the time being staged and that they thought Jody Williams should have done more to share the credit with those that worked with her. When it was reported the media flocked to Vermont where Jody Williams met them on her property alone barefoot and attracted an enormous amount of attention and hype. At the time some of the people that worked with her took offense to her grandstanding and thought she should ahve done much more to let people know that this was a result of an enormous effort at the grass roots level. Right or wrong this enabled her to become the leading spokesperson for the campaign and hardly anyone even remembers the incident any more.

The Nobel Pace Prize has almost always been awarded based more on politics than on merit. The few exceptions were probably at least partially a result of a massive grass roots effort and the willingness of the establishment to allow those efforts to have some degree of success. Lately the establishment seems much less likely to allow good candidates to win than they might have been at times in the past especially when you consider Obama's relatively recent prize. Roots Action has also called for a revocation of that award and it is accompanied by a Facebook effort with the same goal. I it is ahrd to even imagine why he received it in the first place when you consider the timing. Many people claimed that it was because after the Bush years they were willing to award it to anyone that wasn't Bush and hope that he would earn it after the fact. Absurd as it sounds it seems to fit the circumstances.

If that was the hope he clearly didn't earn it at all; he has been involved in as many other atrocities as many other presidents including the Drone attacks that are unprecedented and unjustifiable and the fact that he has been prosecuting many whistle blowers while letting the real criminals off the hook. The irony of awarding both Badley Manning and Barack Obama the Peace Prize would be hard to miss and it would clearly indicate a major problem with the process.

According to someone that refers to himself as a "Wise Geek" there is little or no chance that this award will be withdrawn because...

The committees which administer the Nobel Prizes are very cautious. They investigate nominees very carefully, often awarding prizes 20 years or more after the Nobel-worthy accomplishment. In some cases, the committee has lingered so long over a prize decision that the honoree has died before the prize can be awarded, which explains why some seemingly Nobel-worthy individuals have failed to receive Nobel Prizes. Complete article

When considering how long they investigated Obama's "Nobel-worthy accomplishment" I'm not convinced this geek is as wise as he seems to think he is; nor am I ruling out the possibility that he is just creating propaganda for the public to prop up the credibility of the Nobel Peace Prize committees. The fact that they don't seem to have conducted this investigation very well at all seems to be good grounds to revoke it and it would do more to restore part of their credibility; although more would have to be done if they wanted to be considered sincere by well informed people.

However it wouldn't be the first time something as ironic as that happened. In 1939 apparently Erik Brandt nominated Adolf Hitler for the prize not because he thought he deserved it but because he wanted to satirize the process that was surrounding the prize at the time.

Adolf Hitler was nominated once in 1939. Incredulous though it may seem today, the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1939, by a member of the Swedish parliament, an E.G.C. Brandt. Apparently though, Brandt never intended the nomination to be taken seriously. Brandt was to all intents and purposes a dedicated antifascist, and had intended this nomination more as a satiric criticism of the current political debate in Sweden. ( At the time, a number of Swedish parliamentarians had nominated then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin for the Nobel Peace Prize, a nomination which Brandt viewed with great skepticism. ) However, Brandt's satirical intentions were not well received at all and the nomination was swiftly withdrawn in a letter dated 1 February 1939. Complete article

Brandt seems to have been both shocked and surprised when he realized that most people, including the media, didn't get his irony. Many people even wrote him telegrams and letters to express their thanks and appreciation for his nominating Hitler. Even the German leadership seemed happy and content about the nomination (when he actually intended to make them feel offended by the irony), so Brandt quickly turned tail and withdrew it just a few days later. Complete article

The political activity surrounding the Peace Prize isn't limited to this award either; the vast majority of high profile awards that I can think of seem to be political awards that have little or nothing to do with merit. Sam Walton was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H.W. Bush while his corporation was already in the process of restoring an oligarchy system that has reduced freedom for many; Louis IX was named a Saint despite the fact that he led two of the Crusades and killed an enormous amount of innocent people. This isn't an isolated incident for Catholic Saints; many of them have led other wars or inquisitions that couldn't be justified to day and they continue in their efforts to make many other questionable candidates like Pius the XII Saints as well. at the same time many people that might deserve are routinely passed over. The Seeds of Peace and Gandhi were both nominated at one time or another but neither won.

In fact if you consider all these wars or inquisitions that have been led by both Catholic Saints and several winners of the Nobel Peace Prize mass murder, as they probably should be considered, then the percentage of mass murders among the Catholic Saints or Nobel Peace Prize winners would be much higher than the percentage of mass murderers among the general public.

And when someone that deserves an award doesn't get it it is difficult if not impossible to say so in a graceful way even if it is justified. I could cite one Sociologist who has done an enormous amount of good work that stands up to scrutiny who expressed thanks for getting second prize in some kind of award but couldn't understand why he didn't get first. Anyone that wasn't familiar with his work would almost certainly consider this inappropriate but he's probably right and the reason might be that his work didn't back up the beliefs of those with the most political power. At the Same time Robert Hare who has done an enormous amount of work in a related field has received an enormous amount of awards; and his work is terrible but he supports the beliefs of those with political power. Robert Hare has a long history of either being sued by others for one reason or another or threatening to sue others in some cases even to suppress academic criticism. This was explained more in "Children Psychopaths? And Mitt Romney’s Bullying History" for those of you who might be interested. If you have to threaten a lawsuit to back up your work instead of refuting the criticism it is hard to imagine how he would deserve all these awards.

It is hard to imagine that Bradley Manning has much of a chance at winning the prize although he clearly does deserve it far more than most if not all of the people with much more political backing that will almost certainly be nominated. However if enough people at the grass roots level make it clear that they think he deserves it then they could make the Nobel Peace Prize committee either choose him or lose the last of their credibility.

As it stands the people that know enough to sort through the details recognize which of these winners deserved the Prize and which nominees should have gotten them but didn't but a large segment of the public doesn't do this. Under these circumstances the more important thing might be to expose how flawed the practice of giving these awards away is. If the best way to do that also involves lobbying to give the prize to someone that deserves it then we should support that.

Customer feedback for Wal-Mart and elsewhere

As I previously indicated in my blog about, Negotiating at Wal-Mart, I haven't finished giving Wal-Mart customer feedback and won't until the last of a gift card has been used up. However this may not be good enough. Wal-Mart isn't the only corporation that takes a portion of the money they collect from consumers and uses it for political purposes without passing on the political influence to those that ultimately pay for this political speech; which is why I think that most if not all business with large corporations is political activity as well. If you start plugging the name of any national or multinational corporation at Open Secrets.org you will almost always find that they're involved in political activities which they finance with money they get from their customers and they rarely if ever look out for the best interest of the customer who indirectly provides those funds.

In the long run it would be better to shop at businesses that aren't conducting political activities that threaten democratic participation or are involved in all these scandals at all; in this case it would still be a good idea to give them positive feedback that might include suggestions about how they might be able to obtain a competitive advantage over corporate oligarchies like Wal-Mart by buying locally which in many cases is better for the environment and saves money on shipping and in the case of food it may mean fresher food that could also be healthier. Buying locally also means that they're helping the local economy without trying to make people compete for work with those that have little or no worker rights. Presumably they already know this but they might not know how much their customers care. A small number of people that express sincere concern could make a difference.

As long as I'm going to use up this card I figured I might as well give them feed back in writing each time I make a purchase and mention what it about briefly while leaving the store. This might include a statement "This is customer feed back to ask the management not to support voter suppressant laws either through American Legislation Exchange Counsel or any other ways," or "please ask them to drop charges against Penny Winters for eating an Oreo cookie; with all the scandals that Wal-Mart executives are involved in it is highly inappropriate for them to be using tax payer money to intimidate their employees." I have little doubt that Wal-Mart would almost certainly not care much about the feedback that they receive from me unless it impacts their sales as well and they will have no way of knowing exactly how much it might do so. The bigger impact on their sales won't be from me; it will be from the enormous amount of stories about their activities that are being reported from sources that are much more widely read and from the fact that many other customers have also had major problems with the quality of their merchandise as well; however I can still provide a small contribution.

For every one letter that I have given them I have attempted to give away at least a few others to other people suggesting that they consider this too either with this letter or their own; and I have recommended that in most cases at least with Wal-Mart the best thing to do is to just boycott them when ever possible. Considering the fact that Wal-Mart has responded in draconian manners to many of the protests that they have encountered and that they routinely attempt to intimidate their critics including any employee that stands up for their rights or anyone that raises issues including former customers that sued them over their defective bikes it might be a good idea to let other people know about their complaints about Wal-Mart first then bring them to Wal-Mart. The old saying that many retailers used to have, "If you like our service let your friends know; if you have any concerns let us know," is based on the assumption that the business will actually try to address these concerns; this no longer seems to apply to Wal-Mart. They seem to think they can rely more on their deceptive advertising, public relations and market share to keep their customers than actually addressing anyone's concerns. Unfortunately there are many areas of the country where people don't have any other options since Wal-Mart has wiped out the competition, often with the help of government subsidies in the form of tax breaks or road construction paid for by local tax payers. In the long run more needs to be done to give them better options, but in the short run anything that can help let them know people are going to start standing up to corporate corruption even if our politicians don't will help.

The following are a couple of the letters that I have written to Wal-Mart and given to the cashiers or the people at the service desk asking them to pass it on to the management; if anyone else thinks this is a good idea for Wal-Mart or anywhere else feel free to use this or improvise with your own comments.

This is from a paying customer

I write this to inform you that just because I am conducting business at this store doesn’t mean I want a portion of the money you collect from me to be used for political purposes that I may not agree with. Over the past thirty years many corporations have dramatically increased the amount of money they have spent on lobbying, campaign contributions, including some to encourage voter suppression laws, advertising (most if not all of which is deceptive), shipping from half way around the world, activities to promote the privatization of schools even thought they have been overwhelmingly proven to be detrimental to the education of children by organizations like the “National Education Policy Center” at Colorado University and many other credible sources that receive little or no attention from the commercial media. This has been happening at the same time that corporations have consolidated into a much smaller number of outlets for goods that no longer seem to be providing real competition against each other. These corporations or oligarchies have simultaneously been cutting the cost of many activities that have contributed to the value of their merchandise, including worker pay or safety. A recent NYT article has quoted a Wal-Mart representative as saying “It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments,” in reference to the safety conditions of workers. They claim this was taken out of context which to some degree is true; however when it is put in proper context it may not make Wal-Mart look that much better. The safety of the workers also has an impact on the quality of the merchandise they pass on to the consumers. This has been indicated by the fact that many products being manufactured in these sweatshops half way around the world that have to go through expensive shipping and distribution subcontractors and add up additional bureaucratic expenses haven’t been that much cheaper but the quality has been gradually reduced over the past thirty years. This seems to mean that worker safety and quality control doesn’t seem to be “financially feasible” but advertising lobbying and campaign contributions and many other expenses that don’t benefit the customer is “financially feasible,” judging by the fact that these expenses aren’t being cut.

We have been told that corporations compete against each other to provide quality products at a low price. This clearly doesn’t appear to be true anymore; now that they have gone through an enormous amount of mergers and acquisitions. Most if not all corporations now rely on merchandise that is produced in sweat shops half way around the world, they add on the same bureaucratic expenses and the products fall apart much faster than they used to. An enormous amount of evidence from many reliable sources, unlike the commercial media which has a financial incentive to withhold information about the people that provide advertising money, is available to back this up and indicate that there are many more problems. In some cases they have become so extreme that even the commercial media has found it needs to report on it to maintain what they seem to consider a minimal amount of credibility.

Please redirect the money now being used for political purposes, whether it is through the American Legislative Exchange Council or other sources, back to manufacturing and services that actually benefit the customer that ultimately pays for corporate speech which is, justifiably or not, protected. If customers have to pay, indirectly, as a cost of business that is passed on to consumers, for corporate speech they should be entitled to influence on that speech whether that speech is in the form of advertising or political activities. The customer should also have equal rights to their own free speech, especially when there is overwhelming evidence that many activities are being conducted that result in fraudulent activities that cost the customer money. If corporations continue behaving in this manner and politicians that collect campaign contributions continue looking the other way then greater peaceful efforts will have to be made to inform more people of these activities before this country is ruined, if necessary.

This is from a paying customer

Please ask the people in they appropriate position to drop charges against Penny Winters for taking a package of Oreo cookies. The fact that she appears to have been charged at all should be considered outrageous by any reasonable person. Wal-Mart has been using highly unethical methods to suppress wages for decades and this has led to a much greater poverty rates in the US. At the same time they have managed to find ways to donate an enormous amount of money to political campaigns and lobby to suppress the voting rights of many of their own customers with the money they collect from them. Wal-Mart executives have also cut manufacturing expenses so much that the quality of their merchandise has been suffering dramatically; and this has even led to safety violations and human rights violations. A Wal-Mart memo has stated that, “It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments.” They claim this was taken out of context which to some degree is true; however when it is put in proper context it may not make Wal-Mart look that much better. The safety of the workers also has an impact on the quality of the merchandise they pass on to the consumers. This has been indicated by the fact that many products being manufactured in these sweatshops half way around the world that have to go through expensive shipping and distribution subcontractors and add up additional bureaucratic expenses haven’t been that much cheaper but the quality has been gradually reduced over the past thirty years. This seems to mean that worker safety and quality control doesn’t seem to be “financially feasible” but advertising lobbying and campaign contributions and many other expenses that don’t benefit the customer is “financially feasible,” judging by the fact that these expenses aren’t being cut.

Wal-Mart has benefited from an enormous amount of tax subsidies and they have done little or nothing to provide a return to the tax payer for these subsidies. Instead they have used this to gain a competitive edge over business that may have actually done a better job than Wal-Mart; in many cases by taking advantage of factory direct sales to cut costs for consumers without cutting the quality. By having her charged with this crime it will cost tax payers much more money and add to the subsidies that they have already received. At the same time the Wal-Mart executives seem to be able to avoid any accountability for their abuses of workers, bribery scandals, use of undocumented aliens and many other activities that probably should be considered illegal. Some might conclude this might be because of their political connections; whether this is true or not it is highly inappropriate to ask tax payers to spend an enormous amount of money to intimidate their workers while the executives are reaping enormous profits without providing customers with nearly as good a quality product as they attempt to convince people they do. Most if not all corporations now rely on merchandise that is produced in sweat shops half way around the world, they add on the same bureaucratic expenses and the products fall apart much faster than they used to. An enormous amount of evidence from many reliable sources, unlike the commercial media which has a financial incentive to withhold information about the people that provide advertising money, is available to back this up and indicate that there are many more problems. In some cases they have become so extreme that even the commercial media has found it needs to report on it to maintain what they seem to consider a minimal amount of credibility.

Please redirect the money now being used for political purposes, whether it is through the American Legislative Exchange Council or other sources, back to manufacturing and services that actually benefit the customer that ultimately pays for corporate speech which is, justifiably or not, protected. If customers have to pay, indirectly, as a cost of business that is passed on to consumers, for corporate speech they should be entitled to influence on that speech whether that speech is in the form of advertising or political activities. The customer should also have equal rights to their own free speech, especially when there is overwhelming evidence that many activities are being conducted that result in fraudulent activities that cost the customer money. There are already many calls to boycott Wal-Mart and there will be more which I will almost certainly join soon unless Wal-Mart dramatically changes their practices and improves their ethical activities and quality of their merchandise.

The workers that I hand these to aren't the ones that have been involved in the scandals that Wal-Mart has been involved in so I try to keep it polite. On one occasion when I said it was customer feed back asking them not to press charges against Penny Winters for eating an Oreo cookie the cashier had told me that she couldn't accept it and to go to the service counter; this seemed to make her a little nervous although that wasn't my intention and I tried to state this politely. At the service counter when I said it was for the management they told me that she was right there and quickly handed me off to a supervisor, which enabled them to avoid addressing the subject, not that I asked them to, previously, I just handed them the papers with a brief statement and left. Even the supervisor is low level management and almost certainly not involved in the scandals either and they probably aren't paid much more than the regular employees; however I explained a little more to her about what it was about and informed her that I thought it was outrageous that they were using tax payer money for this purpose. This made her a little nervous and she thanked me for my suggestion and I didn't push it any further. Perhaps I should have made more of an effort to inform her that I understood that this wasn't her decision and that she shouldn't take offense. The people that make all these decisions don't make themselves available to the public which is part of the reason why there is no accountability at these oligarchies at all.

This would be bound to make them a little nervous if it happened on a regular basis; they're not accustomed to having people give them much if any feedback about anything that isn't trivial except from protesters or critics that communicate through different means. My intention isn't to make the workers nervous, and most of them aren't, but I suspect that if they continue business as usual indefinitely they will find something else to be nervous about. If on the other hand boycotts, customer feedback and other forms of non-violent protests bring about real reform and businesses like Wal-Mart rapidly lose their market share to more responsible companies then they would have less to be nervous about and they might have an easier time getting jobs at companies that treat them better, at least that is the objective.

Ideally it would be better to just boycott Wal-Mart, of course; and that is what I will be doing. But unfortunately they still have an enormous market share and even though it is becoming increasingly obvious that it will continue to shrink there are still many locations where customers have few if any choice but to do at least some of their shopping at Wal-Mart; especially the complacent that don't even try. It would be helpful to shop more at stores that are much more responsible or at least don't have such a dominant impact on the market that they can single-handedly drive down the quality of a large segment of merchandise on the market or drive down worker and consumer protection. As indicated in author tag “A small success against planned obsolescence” there is at least one national store that has responded to customer feedback much better. One thing that I didn't mention previously is that when I first bought the pair of sneakers that I made them replace because the quality was so bad, when I went to the register there was a woman with a complaint at the register and she obviously had a return. The cashier was very young and had an amused look on her face. I couldn't hear every thing they said but it appeared as if this woman was taking her time instead of going straight back to the returns department as the young cashier was trying to direct her. Instead she was politely explaining to the cashier that the quality of merchandise was much better before she was born, and that it was gradually being reduced. Clearly I wasn't the first or only one that was complaining about shoddy merchandise and the people I dealt with previously at Wal-Mart openly admitted that they were also getting an enormous amount of complaints but unlike this other national store they are slower to even partially address the problem.

There are many other smaller outlets for both department store items or groceries which Wal-Mart is now also dominating. Being as out spoken as I have on some occasions is not the way I, or many other people, would prefer to address the excessive deterioration of the quality of merchandise while they cut manufacturing expenses and services while simultaneously sending advertising expenses, lobbying, campaign contributions, and shipping expenses to send things half way around the world; but with centralized corporate control of the economic system it is difficult if not impossible to get them to pay attention otherwise.

This is why I have decided that on occasion that I would try to provide more positive feedback to them to let them know they might receive a benefit from addressing the concerns of their customers. The following is just one sample of a feedback letter I might hand to a grocery store; others could just as easily be presented to other types of outlets and if anyone think this is a good idea and would prefer their own comments that would probably be just as well; although anyone is welcome to use these if it is easier. In this case there would be no reason for the recipient to express concern since ideally it wouldn't be intended to be too critical although it does include requests to boycott Koch Bothers and Monsanto's which I have no doubt that most grocery stores won't rush to do; although a few small outlets might do so. If those get business then it could reduce the dominance of these two companies as well and it could lead those that don't completely abandon these oligarchies to at least cut abck on how much shelf space they provide for starters.

To whom it may concern

It is becoming increasingly obvious that when doing business by purchasing products, especially at larger corporations, the average consumer is also conducting political activity that they may not always intend. This has been indicated by the growing amount of money many corporations have been donating to political campaigns. These campaign contributions and lobbying expenses are also a business expense and many large oligarchies like Wal-Mart are using their market power to pass these expenses on to customers without passing on the influence and they often lobby against the best interest of their own customers. Additional corporations that do this include the oil companies, Koch Industries, and Monsanto. This has led to many responsible people to boycott these companies and companies that don't adopt these practices may benefit from this.

Many of the activities of these socially irresponsible companies are also devastating the environment and even though the commercial media isn't covering this adequately environmental destruction is mounting at a much faster pace than many people realize. Many of the people protesting against this are routinely arrested while those that destroy the environment benefit from their political connections. This type of activity can't last indefinitely but if more companies provide better alternatives then even without political reform well informed people can reduce the amount of damage being done by shopping wisely.

One of the reasons I and many other shoppers may be shopping at your store might be because we have found that, as far as we can tell, your store hasn't been involved in this type of activity. If you would like to take advantage of the growing number of people boycotting these socially irresponsibly companies, and in in many cases, perhaps save money on shipping and distribution I hope you will consider buying more of your products locally. This will reduce the amount of energy used to ship merchandise and provide a factory or farm direct advantage; and in the case of produce it may mean that you would be providing fresher products and there would be much less waste. Large oligarchies like Wal-Mart don't take advantage of local suppliers. Contrary to their propaganda it isn't more efficient to ship large amounts of goods half way around the world when they could often just as easily ship them much shorter distances.

If possible please try to minimize the amount of products that you carry from Koch Industries, and Monsanto's. They have both been involved in activities that are dangerous to the health of our democracy as well as the environment and the food supply. Koch Industries has openly lobbied to make it harder to vote and privatize schools even though it has been overwhelmingly proven by reliable sources, including "The National Education Policy Center" that the privatization of schools has had a negative impact on the quality of education and it has created biases that involve suppressing education about corporate corruption and environmental damage. Monsanto's has also conducted a lot of inappropriate political activities and there products have been shown to increase the health problems in rats according to a study done by Gilles-Eric Seralini of the University of Caen and colleague; this is just one of many studies that have raised questions about Monsanto's and although they have been quick to refute many of them, a close look at the details in most cases often indicates that their rebuttals may not be as well researched and they may be based partly on a financial motive.

If you can't completely boycott Koch Brothers and Monsanto's products please don't give them the most prominent spots in the store for marketing purposes and if these are chosen as a result of slotting fees collected from manufacturers please provide disclosure of these fees and how they might effect how you chose what products to carry and which ones to display most prominently. In a free market system the customer is supposed to have a wide variety of choices from a large selection of suppliers that compete for their business by providing the customer with the information they need to make important decisions. When practices like slotting fees are used to prevent small businesses from getting into the market it clearly prevents fair competition and this should be disclosed so the consumer has the information they need to make decisions.

Excuse me if this seems a bit intrusive but by providing business for these corporations that are supporting voter suppression laws and corrupting the food supply smaller businesses and consumers indirectly and unintentionally contribute to the corruption of our own government and wind up with inferior merchandise in return, often for higher prices while those with political connections profit from them at the expense of the rest of the public.

The current practice of ignoring the escalating amount of environmental destruction and other economic and social problems which aren't being addressed properly by either the commercial media, the most dominant corporations or the two leading political parties which both collect an enormous amount of money from the oligarchies that dominate the economy cannot be continued indefinitely without paying a high price. Fortunately there are a growing number of alternative media outlets exposing this and sorting through the good ones can indicate a better alternative. It is also beginning to appear that at least Wal-Mart is almost certainly declining much more than currently being acknowledged and smaller companies that act more reasonably can pick up the business that they are rapidly losing. There latest public relations campaign to convince the public that they're donating to the needy isn't going to fool a growing number of people that have already recognized that all their past public relation campaigns have been based on lies that can be easily exposed. The more money they spend telling people they're donating to the poor the less money they have to actually donate to the poor and any rational person can recognize this simple fact. Such a campaign would be much more credible if they used in expensive tactics like the web or small in store ads to promote it and by now it is clear that it would no longer be a credible claim if it were coming from Wal-Mart anyway.

Clearly if I am the only one that does something like this it won't make much if any difference at all but there are already many other people that are doing similar things; in fact this idea partially came from many of them although I can't give credit to all the individuals and organizations that have expressed similar ideas. It could have an even greater impact if more people did similar things. If it became common place for people to make a few statements while making a purchase that supports political causes indirectly it is bound to draw some attention and it would be highly unreasonable for those that collect this money and use some of it for political purposes to complain if the people that provide their business want their own influence in the political system that they're indirectly financing.

Consider how it would sound if they had their cashiers say "Thank you for doing business with us; a portion of the money you gave us will be used for political purposes which you might disagree with and we would appreciate it if you ignore this inconvenient fact and settle for much fewer rights to free speech than the corporate CEOs routinely have."

Of course they would never say anything like that but if they did they would be accurately describing the business practices that they routinely use.

Another way to make this more effective might be if multiple people from the same area did the same thing and after handing over a few of these customer feedback statements, or more likely a variety of them that the individuals wrote themselves, if they continued to see Koch Bothers products that were in the most prominent spots in the store, for one reason or another, they could do their shopping together, without buying Koch products of course, and before leaving the store ask to see the manager and request that they consider changing their displays and hand them a request in writing before leaving. This feedback statement might be one that they all agreed on while the ones that were written by individuals could be more extensive. An immediate response to the might be unlikely but the management would almost certainly have to at least consider this request. If they continued to display Koch products prominently while another store that faced the same situation responded by changing their displays then the entire group might abandon those that continue to support the Koch Bothers and their voter suppression and environmental denial policies.

This method of boycotting could make it more effective by drawing more attention. Then if it worked in one store and word got around more people might try it across the country. This could lead to Koch and Monsanto's free towns and attract much more attention at least from the alternative media outlets and eventually the commercial media will have to cover it to present a token amount of credibility. Then the Koch Brothers and Monsanto's could lose more sales as Wal-Mart already seems to be. Boycotting Wal-Mart is much simpler since it is clear what they sell and where but Monsanto's and the Koch Bothers will require more awareness and planning.



Koch Brothers Exposed



photo source

The claim that the customer received a benefit from these sweat shops have always been false with the possible exception of when they have the sweat shops locally and even then I doubt if there is much benefit for the customer and most customers wouldn't want to obtain that benefit that way. Any savings that are obtained from using sweat shops half way around the world are for the most part lost due to the higher cost of shipping and handling to get them here or they're kept in the form of higher profits. When the products are made under these conditions they tend to be much lower quality and have to be replaced two or three times as often or in the case of Wal-Mart merchandise perhaps four or five times as often; which enables them to take a cut more often but doesn't benefit the customer. Furthermore there are many more negative externalities like the dramatic increase in pollution that is involved in shipping low quality merchandise half way around the world that has to be replaced much more often.

When they report another fire that kills more people half way around the world this should be an reminder that the customer is also paying the price in the form of lower quality merchandise and still footing the bill for the bureaucracy getting the merchandise half way around the world or worse when they don't report it as well as they could or should. The fire in Bangladesh was reported widely for a little while but it has for the most part been forgotten by the commercial media and there is little more mention of it. Even when they were reporting it the commercial media only covered it as an isolated incident in many cases while some of the alternative outlets have reported more extensively including Common Dreams which reports that there have been over 300 deaths in Bangladesh alone since 2006. The following article which I didn't spot until more than two months after the fact also reports even more deaths, presumably not limited to Bangladesh, in garment factories. This was from ABC news but it wasn't repeated nearly as often as they repeat the material that they want people to take notice of so it is much easier for many people like me to miss it when not watching too closely.

Another Factory Fire Kills More Garment Workers

Another garment factory has burned in Bangladesh and killed seven more workers sewing clothes for Western customers, according to groups that monitor working conditions there.

It is the latest in a rash of deadly fires in the high-rise factories that have made Bangladesh the second largest exporter of clothing to the United States behind China. More than 700 workers have died in factory fires in the past five years. Two months ago, a ferocious blaze at a factory making clothes for major U.S. retailers killed an estimated 112 workers there.

This latest deadly fire occurred in the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka at a factory called Smart Export Garments Ltd., which was believed to be manufacturing clothes for the Spanish parent company of the American retailer Zara, as well as several European brands, worker rights groups told ABC News overnight.

"After more than two decades of the apparel industry knowing about the risks to these workers, nothing substantial has changed," said Judy Gearhart, executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum, one of several groups advocating for a fire safety overhaul in the country. Complete article

The following are a few more articles about related material that you might be interested in.

Wal-Mart to pay $2.1M for overcharging customers

"Wal-Mart Executives Sweat Slow February Start in E-Mails" Bloomberg News

"WalMart's Mexican Bribery Scandal Will Sink It Like an Iceberg Sank the Titanic" Forbes

"Wal-Mart Protests Pit Workers Against Shoppers" Rick Newman This may not be entirely accurate; first of all it may be the management that is trying to "Pit Workers Against Shoppers." Second of all they're scamming both the customers and the workers with deceptive business practices and if this is considered carefully it won't work and many customers may realize that they have more common ground with the workers than with the management that is involved in fraudulent business practices.

"Putting Wal-Mart's Green Moves in Context" Stacy Mitchell

"Why Walmart’s Death Grip on Our Food System Is Intensifying Poverty" Stacy Mitchell

Institute for Local Self-Reliance

"Here are many MORE things NOT to buy from Koch…" Mark Crispin Miller

"Debunking the GMO Talking Points with Ease" Nick Brannigan

"STUDY: Agriculture Giant Monsanto’s Products Cause Tumors, Organ Damage In Rats" Aviva Shen based on study by Gilles-Eric Seralini of the University of Caen and colleagues

Monsanto products to avoid and alternatives to buy at food freedom group

Monsanto products to avoid and alternatives to buy at ethical investing

More Monsanto products to avoid at natural femina

"Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America from Monsanto to Wal-Mart" Democracy Now

"Walmart Falling Flat with Not-so-Fresh Foods" The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union

Negotiating at Wal-Mart

As I said at the end of my most recent post about "Is Wal-Mart driving planned obsolescence?" I received a gift card from Wal-Mart so I could only use it there despite the fact that I don't like them and have been boycotting them so I decided to attempt to negotiate a good deal based partly on the fact that they had previously sold me seriously defective merchandise, including a pretty pathetic pair of sneakers and the cheesiest couple of pairs of jeans that I have ever seen in my life; it turns out that I may have bought them shortly before they started restocking other brands like Levis, Wranglers and Lees. At the time the closest thing they had was something that they call "Faded Glory" which was supposedly made out of "durable materials," or so it said on the stamp that was on the inside of the jeans. I didn't realize it at the time but this was the brand that they were manufacturing in Bangladesh that eventually led to the sweatshop fire last fall. There would have been no way for me to know about that particular fire but there have been many other incidents where the employees were subject to abuses that also would have had an impact on the quality of their merchandise.

It wasn't until later that I checked to see how many complaints they have on-line about this and found that there are an enormous amount of complaints about the quality deteriorating. There are also an enormous amount of reviews talking about how great they are for one reason or another and many of these seem to go into a lot of detail, perhaps to make them seem sincere. After seeing the stories about the manufacturing practices and the quality of their merchandise it seem hard for me to believe that any sincere customer would leave reviews like this. As I indicated in "Wal-Marts unethical marketing to children" and the previous blog about Wal-Mart and planned obsolescence I suspect that they are almost certainly posting positive reviews for their products to offset the enormous amount of complaints that they receive. After reading some of these reviews I don't see how there could be any other explanation for the positive ones, since their products are absolutely nothing like the reviews, and even if they were that great I can't imagine people going to so much trouble to write these reviews. It is much easier to imagine why plenty of people would write reviews if they were outraged by the rapidly deteriorating quality of their products.

This means that one of the things that they are almost certainly doing to respond to their complaints is spend more money on creating false impressions which could have gone to restoring the quality of their products instead. They just might be doing additional activities that have little or nothing to do with providing decent products for their customers as efficiently as possible.

Before I finished talking to the Wal-Mart workers a couple of them openly admitted that they were receiving an enormous amount of complaints about their products.

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"You sell an enormous amount of incredibly pathetic disposable garbage, so that people have to replace things over and over again."

"That's exactly what we do so don't shop here."

That would make an excellent commercial that would go viral if it was caught on tape; of course as soon as the card I got is done that is exactly what I and many other people will wind up doing, or according to recent news reports already are doing.

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Another employee said simply, "we get a lot of that;" I don't know if they still have their jobs. I certainly wasn't expecting them to respond like that before I was done. I thought about not mentioning this but if Wal-Mart is going to retaliate against them they would have almost certainly done so anyway; and the reverse is also a potential problem for Wal-Mart. With so many people angry about Wal-Mart for one reason or another and their long history of retaliation it is almost certainly already beginning to backfire on them along with other scandals they've been involved in. Besides if they keep firing their sincere and qualified workers then they'll only have the bad workers left and that has almost certainly already led to major problems for them.

I didn't begin saving my receipts for the sake of future complaints until after that and the fact that it was clear that they have been cutting so many corner that it was virtually guaranteed that their products wouldn't hold up nearly as well as their customers might expect. This is also justified in my opinion since instead of using the money they obtain from customers to do a good job providing good merchandise they donate it to campaigns and lobby for voter suppression against the best interests of the customers that indirectly provide the funds for these donations. They also use a portion of the money they collect from consumers to pay for their deceptive ads. Wal-Mart manages to obtain overwhelming protection for their rights to free speech which they finance with money they collect, often by corrupt or misleading methods, from their customers; while the consumers receive much less opportunity to use their free speech.

There are an enormous amount of stories about how Wal-Mart negotiates all over the world to get lower prices and that they use their marketing power to drive a good bargain so that they can give their customers good deals, which sounds good; however they don't give their customers good deals at all. Their products are so shoddy that they fall apart much faster than any reasonable customer would expect and as Indicated in my previous post about this they have been driving the process to a new extreme while some of their competitors may have at least been starting to reverse the process after an enormous amount of pressure from customers, although this could be temporary unless major reforms are put in place before the resume the same process more subtly.

Also I have seen enough information from a variety of sources to indicate that their mark ups are much higher than they would lead people to believe on many items and even if they weren't that high they include expenses that aren't nearly as efficient as they lead people to believe. Shipping low quality products that start falling apart almost immediately half way around the world isn't nearly as efficient as shipping high quality products that last a long time a short distance. It never has been and never will be; when Wal-Mart and other oligarchies did away with the advantage of factory direct they were abandoning an enormous amount of efficiency so that they could maintain authoritarian control over the economic system.

Not that I need an excuse after all turn about is fair play.

However Wal-Mart apparently disagrees and they don't feel obligated to acknowledge the fact that they've been ripping off customers for years even when they are confronted with an overwhelming amount of researched evidence of the fact.

In fact when this happens it appears as if they might have a contingency plan to keep people distracted and prevent customers from expressing their sincere complaints in front of other customers that might also have plenty of their own complaints that they might want to bring. Barbara Ehrenreich once wrote about corporate plans for how to respond when activists strike in one of her books; however even though she mentioned they had these plans she didn't go into details about what they might be. An article from a protest that took place over a year ago in San Diego, Wal-Mart invaded by Occupy protesters on Black Friday (Video), might indicate what one of these plans might be while it is in action; but this might be mild by comparison to the way they typically might happen.

Some of the ways they respond to complaints may be down right stupid; and they could backfire if they're used on a regular basis since they might be easy to recognize and they could easily be exposed and they may also rely on the cooperation of employees who have their own grievances against Wal-Mart.

I didn't think about this until after I saw how they responded to my request for a discount based on the fact that they had sold me disposable merchandise in the past when I was expecting real merchandise; however their behavior was clearly organized to distract people and end any opportunity that I might have to explain anything without actually acknowledging the problem with their products however some of the comments by their own employees almost certainly weren't what the Wal-Mart management had in mind while the comments from someone that was supposedly "not a Wal-Mart employee" just might have been what the management had in mind.

Ironically few people if any may have paid any attention to what I had to say until this person began her distracting tactics so if it was intended for that purpose it may have done the opposite.

I began by getting together a few of the things that I had bought at Wal-Mart including the jeans that had fallen apart at a record breaking speed because they were so cheap and a pair of the disposable sneakers that have been piling up at a record pace since they have been getting worse every few years until many people began giving some of these corporations an enormous amount of backlash including me as I described in the author tag “A small success against planned obsolescence.”  That didn't take place at Wal-Mart but the fact that at least a couple of their competitors is finally responding to complaints is almost certainly also a reason for Wal-Marts recent loss in sales. The sneakers I got as free replacements is finally a better quality than anything I have seen in over ten years after steady deterioration of products across the board. This wasn't because they gave me a pair that was a higher price; they replaced an enormous amount of sneakers with ones that seem to be better quality so this must have been a result of a larger backlash from many people.

I don't know if Wal-Mart has restored any of their quality but they certainly haven't done as good a job and people must know it. I also brought with me a folder full of information I had about Wal-Mart scandals including ones that involved their corrupt practices and evidence of much higher mark ups than they imply as well as articles about how it is “not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments;” and others that clearly indicated that many other things that have nothing to do with making jeans are "financially feasible" including the enormous amount of money they spend on lobbying and promoting privatization of schools and suppression of voter rights so that they can get away with all this. I didn't get the opportunity to discuss this much; which I didn't really expect but thought they might have to respond to it one way or another and that since I had bought their products previously and they really did have an enormous amount of quality control problems they would at least offer a token discount; or not, as it turns out.

I did my shopping as usual then brought it to the customer service center and pulled out the jeans and explained to them that "These jeans aren't old;" which they weren't. They were pathetic and I also informed the person that they have an enormous amount of other problems with their products. I had sneakers that fell apart in only a fraction of the time it used to last and I had a couple shirts that were well over fifteen years old that were in better shape than typical shirts that were only a few years old.

He called it in and almost immediately a woman appeared who started acting in an antagonizing and authoritarian manner and telling me that I should put away my stuff and leave. This woman ridiculed me when I commented about how manufacturing expenses were “not financially feasible," which wasn't the exact context that the NYT put it but she also raised her voice in a clear manner that was designed to prevent any further discussion.

I don't remember the exact order but approximately at this time when it seemed as if I was assuming she was the management she said "I'm not a Wal-Mart employee." This struck me as quite odd because she clearly wouldn't have any reason to behave in such a manner that I could think of unless she was a Wal-Mart employee. She didn't appear to be in line for any reason or have any business that she was conducting. Once I realized that I simply stated something like, "excuse me I thought you were; if you're not I can't imagine why you would care." This woman was acting like a teenager with an inferiority complex trying to antagonize me; although I didn't realize it at the time that might have been exactly what she had in mind. If I had acted otherwise they might have been able to attempt to charge me with something although it would have been foolish; and if they were concerned about their reputation at all they never would have responded in this manner.

Regardless of why she was behaving this way I then turned away from her and she said that I should leave before security got here or something like that and I still couldn't imagine what she wanted or why. I wasn't being belligerent; especially compared to the way she was behaving. I was simply expressing an obvious and major problem with the quality of their merchandise. Which is why I didn't worry about it when she threatened to call the cops, and ignored her.

I then proceeded to talk to what appeared to be a real Wal-Mart employee and also turned around and noticed that there were now at least half a dozen Wal-Mart employees standing right behind me. I wondered if this could be what the woman meant by "security" and immediately concluded that these employees weren't here for that reason. They appeared to be ordinary employees and at least one of them seemed to be nervous although I didn't say anything to antagonize this person. At one point I said to at least one of the employees that this wasn't anything against him but against the  management decisions in the corporate office; I think that was probably before most of these other employees arrived. We discussed their problems for about a minute or so but clearly they were trying to end this conversation and deny any problem with their merchandise and avoid discussing any of the enormous amount of bad press which was widely reported and I had an enormous amount of it in writing that they almost certainly didn't anticipate. This was about the time when one of the employees agreed that they "sell an enormous amount of incredibly pathetic disposable garbage, so that people have to replace things over and over again." They wound up saying that they would take no responsibility for past grievances or officially acknowledge any problem but that I wasn't getting any discounts for products that were incredibly crappy; nor was I getting free replacements for the products that I bought in the past that fell apart almost immediately.

They said that I either had to go through the register and pay full price; without any compensation for their fraud or shop elsewhere.

The moment I said that I wouldn't buy their products then it became clear that they were told to act in a manner that was planned. Everyone immediately grabbed one or two items from the cart and quickly disappeared. And they started nudging me toward the door in a manner that clearly couldn't have happened if they weren't prepared with a predetermined response.

The stupidity of this boggles the mind; and I'm sure that many people would conclude that I was the one that was being stupid but some of these employees clearly acknowledged that I was right about the big problems with their merchandise. Furthermore anyone else that I talk to about this acknowledges that the quality of products are clearly deterioration; it is beyond dispute; even the cop that showed up as a result of the complaint called in by the person who "was not a Wal-Mart employee" agreed.

At this point I left the store without further incident just as the cops arrived. They be began to ask what this was all about and I explained it to them the same way I tried to explain it to the employees only they were actually more willing to listen despite the fact that when I went to show them the merchandise that they had they said that I didn't need to do that. I also showed them the papers that I had and began to explain it to them; but then of course they asked for ID which was standard operating procedure when investigating anything. What they thought they might be investigating I don't know and they never charged me with anything related to this incident; however after I spent a minute explaining my complaint to them they received information from when called in my identity in and said they had a warrant for my arrest which totally surprised me but it gave them an opportunity to arrest me without figuring out what was going on and I suspect that Wal-Mart had no desire to charge me with anything since I didn't actually do anything that should be considered illegal and that would have resulted in an investigation and it might include checking the tapes from their cameras.

The warrant turned out to be something from ten years ago, although I didn't know it at the time; nor did the police. I asked what the warrant was about and they inquired if I knew which of course I didn't. One of the cops then responded that it might have been issued as a result of court expenses that were unpaid or something like that which is exactly what it turned out to be; these court expenses were added on years after the fact and they never should have been. Apparently this is becoming much more common with a major fiscal crisis and extreme reluctance to make any attempt to collect money from wealthy people with political connections. They obviously didn't try to issue this warrant very hard since it was two years old and they had plenty of time to try to find me if they thought it was important; I was in the same town it was issued and they knew it.

When we got to the station the older cop who did all the talking addressed the incident at Wal-Mart and he seemed to agree with most of what I my grievances although he also made it clear that he would do his job as he was ordered to, which seemed kind of ironic. The first thing he seemed to be concerned about was whether or not these workers were able to handle the complaints I had. I responded by saying that is why I told them I had nothing against them it and that I understood it was the executives that were making these decisions and they weren't the problem. As I said one of the workers that was standing by to take products away as fast as possible so they could make this situation disappear ASAP had a concerned look on his face but that wouldn't have been because of the way I was responding to him since I didn't even talk to him. The ones I did talk to didn't seem concerned at all; they found it amusing but they had to do their job as they were told.

I don't remember exactly how the conversation went but he made numerous statements about how he seemed to agree with me. When he started reading all the papers I had about Wal-Mart he stated that it looked like I had done my homework; this included a lot of the information that I posted under the author tag “A small success against planned obsolescence.” and the author tag “Wal-Mart Watch.” Anyone that looked up enough information about Wal-Mart would have a hard time doubting there is something seriously wrong with their business practices and that it might be appropriate to agree it was corrupt to the core. At one point he seemed to mumble something about how perhaps I should join the people at some other activity in another town. His voice trailed off but it seemed like he seemed to be referring to one of the many protests that have been going on one place or another. I know there were protests planned for that week in several locations in tow different directions from where I was which he could have been talking about as well as another one in Washington DC.

This was not what I expected and if he was asked about it he would almost certainly deny it. He made as many of these comments as I did and if he hadn't I probably wouldn't have even tried to discuss these things with him. He said something about this all being because they had all the lobbyists in Washington and he agreed that it was much more efficient to make high quality merchandise closer and ship it a short distance often with the option of factory direct than to move all the factories half way around the world rely on sweat shop labor then use an enormous amount of subcontractors in between.

Not the type of conversation I expected to have with a cop; however perhaps this should not be too surprising; over the years I have known at least three or four cops off duty and they haven't been unreasonable at all. Some rural or urban police departments are almost certainly much more authoritarian but there are almost certainly many police that are also concerned citizens and they may not like the epidemic of corporate corruption that has been going on any more than anyone else; although it isn't their jurisdiction to hold corporations accountable they may not like suppressing legitimate complaints either and they may have mixed feelings about doing so.

But then he said that what I did in there was "disorderly conduct" and that he would arrest me if I did it "in my town." He seemed to be implying at one point or another that he wouldn't mind if I did it in another town. He said that I was "interrupting business as usual."

I said something like, "Business as usual is crooked as hell."

"Business as usual is crooked as hell."

He agreed! But then he back tracked one way or another and said if I had objections I should "go to corporate."

He didn't suggest I should write my congressmen or go to a government run consumer protection agency to ask them to look into it, not that it would have done anymore good since politicians will just ask for more campaign contributions and eliminate more funds for any consumer protection. This seems to imply that the authority that I should go to was the corporation itself not the government which would be a reasonable assessment under the circumstances but of course they wouldn't have done anything unless they had no choice. Which essentially implies that the corporations are the ones in control of the economy which is true.

The basic impression he gave was that he didn't like Wal-Mart anymore than I did and that he sympathized with the employees who had their legitimate complaints but that he was going to do his job as he was supposed to according to orders from higher up although he might have been one of the top cops in this town. I don't know how common this attitude is among cops; I suspect in some towns it might be more common than others and if the protest movements continue as they have been the politicians may eventually have to allow at least some reforms especially if there's a chance that some of the people enforcing the laws might not defend a system that is increasingly corrupt.

I didn't try to debate whether or not the woman who "was not a Wal-Mart employee" might have been the one that was guilty of "disorderly conduct" or not. I know this would never get to a jury where the truth managed to be told but if it did and that jury was reasonable I have no doubt that they would have considered her behavior more disorderly than mine.

Her behavior didn't make any sense unless she had some kind of motive to behave that way. It is hard to imagine that Wal-Mart would have someone on hand to behave like that in the event that they felt they had a need to do so; and if their intention was to make their complaints go away it was guaranteed to fail because it was so incompetent. But it appears as if that might have been just what they have done although I can't be certain. According to a recent Bloomberg article, Wal-Mart Struggles to Restock Store Shelves as U.S. Sales Slump, "Once a paragon of logistics, the world’s largest retailer has been trying to improve its restocking efforts since at least 2011, hiring consultants to walk the aisles and track whether hundreds of items are available." This was first reported in 2011 on October 7, Wal-Mart Brings in Consultants to Help Keep Its Shelves Stocked. If you accept this at face value then they're having a serious problem with their efficiency which I don't doubt especially since they're cutting so many corners; but I can't imagine why they would hire outside consultants to check for how well stocked their shelves were while simultaneously cutting funds for employees that actually stock the shelves or check to see what is running short.

Hiring consultants for this purpose makes no sense. Wal-Mart employees that do this could communicate directly with those that stock the shelves and solve the problem much more efficiently; I'm quite certain this is the simple way it has always been done.

What does make sense is hiring consultants for things that they want to keep confidential and apparently Wal-Mart may have a history of doing just that for a variety of reasons. According to one article, Wal-Mart consultant posed as reporter at opposition's L.A. events, there might be at least one example where a consultant was caught doing undisclosed infiltration attempts to investigate opposition to opening a new Wal-Mart; and another article involves Walmart Consultant Caught On Camera Bad-Mouthing Town Council. They have also used consultants to handle their bribes in the scandals in Mexico that may have also included additional bribery scandals in India as well which haven't been reported as widely.

The timing of the first reports of these consultants being used might also be a factor; they were first reported on October 7 2011 in the Bloomberg News, which was about three weeks after the Occupy Wall Street protests began. If Wal-Mart thought they might have been a target for the Occupy Wall Street movement they would have actually had more time to think about it than that since they first announced their plans in July which is still available on their Archives. Even though they might not have been the first target of the Occupy movement it wouldn't be hard for them to figure out that they would be later if it turned out to be successful which it did although it isn't over yet. Wal-Mart is also famous for its union busting tactics as many articles including Security cameras and HQ squads: Wal-Mart's union-busting tactics indicate. If they did have consultants sympathetic to Wal-Mart in the stores during the Occupy Wall Street protest in San Diego that I mentioned previously that might mean that the individual that was shouting at the protesters could conceivably been one of them; although I have no way of knowing for sure.

What might make more sense is the possibility that they might be using these consultants primarily to watch for union activity and potentially to help respond if another unexpected protest comes up or a customer that has a legitimate complaint that they don't want to respond to. They might have plans on how to act if they are confronted with certain problems but when they face new ones they might have to improvise and it may not be as likely to work out as planned. This would be extremely foolish if you ask me and it is hard to believe that they would even consider such a thing. However they have a long history of doing extremely foolish things and they often come up with lame denials after the fact and attempt to blame the lowest level person they can when they get caught. That seems to be what they did with Stephanie Harnett when she was caught posing as a reporter in the article previously cited and several of the examples that Adam Hartung cited in the Forbes article, WalMart's Mexican Bribery Scandal Will Sink It Like an Iceberg Sank the Titanic. They have a long history of using authoritarian tactics to intimidate people and they may be spending more money trying to dominate people than they are trying to produce the products that they provide for their customers.

Whether I encountered one of these tactics or not they clearly are using them much too often and it is a matter of time before a much larger portion of the public learns about how often they occur and the fact that the commercial media doesn't report on them properly; if they report them at all they report them as isolated incidents not as a major pattern of behavior. Furthermore if, as I indicated previously at least one of their competitors responds by replacing their merchandise when they get complaints and partially restoring the quality of their sneakers at least then it is a matter of time before their customers figure it out and abandon them in droves, which may already be happening.

If on the other hand this is the way they respond to well informed customer complaints or protests then it would be incredibly easy to catch them in the act by simply replicating the situation with caution not to do anything that could be considered illegal before a jury. They could find some excuse to arrest people like trespassing, disorderly conduct or, as Clarence Clarence Darrow indicated Conspiracy; but if there are witnesses it won't stick and they might wind up with another public relations disaster and it could be used to draw more attention to all the scandals that Wal-Mart is involved in that are only given a token amount of coverage by the commercial media.

If Wal-Mart has their way then when they take money from their customers and use it to donate to campaigns or pay for deceptive ads that would be protected free speech but if their critics, employees or customers have legitimate complaints they have much more limited rights to speech and if they try to use it too much their speech can be regulated even though the money they use for their speech is from the work of their employees and the money from their customers.

By spending so much money on union busting tactics, consultants that carry out all kinds of odd activities to gain control, lobbying, campaign contributions and shipping incredibly low quality products half way around the world while cutting costs on their activities that actually benefit the customer they're guaranteeing that their customer complaints will get even worse and they will wind up angering many more people than they already have.

By spending so much money on activities that don't benefit the customer while cutting costs on their activities that actually benefit the customer they're guaranteeing that their customer complaints will get even worse and they will wind up angering many more people than they already have. These non-productive expenses can include union busting tactics, consultants that carry out all kinds of odd activities to gain control, lobbying, campaign contributions and shipping incredibly low quality products half way around the world; they may save some money by taking advantage of low cost labor but the added additional expenses prevents them fr4om passing on that savings to the customer while the quality is much worse.

They're not getting business because they compete for it by providing a good product for a reasonable price; they get their business because of their political connections and the use of marketing propaganda and trade secrecy laws to keep the public in the dark about the real economic policies that are available.

They are almost certainly going to lose a much larger share of the market in the future especially with news outlets like Bloomberg News and Forbes Magazine, which are usually friendly to business, exposing some of their tactics; however the worst news that will do the most damage is the news that is reported on the alternative media and when more people recognize that is where they have to look for information the commercial media will be less relevant.

Just in case your wondering I still had the gift card after this which means that Wal-Mart wasn't finished getting customer feedback from me.

Additional feedback wound up going to the Wal-Mart at a different location and the funny thing is that some of the same items were cheaper. That story won't be as dramatic but if more people use these gift cards like I do they will almost certainly have to stop offering them.

Wal-Mart is almost certainly in more trouble than most people realize. There involved in more scandals than anyone can possibly keep track of and in addition to all the scandals they're involved in there is also a surprisingly big movement to Boycott Wal-Mart which isn't under centralized control; these boycott movements are coming from an enormous number of small groups and individuals. There are even an enormous amount of books written to expose Wal-Mart including "In Sam We Trust," "Big-Box Swindle" and many others which of course also include some puff pieces that are almost certainly written by authors with a financial incentive to prop up Wal-Marts reputation. In addition to spending a lot of money to create studies to portray them as beneficial for communities they also seem to have a few books mixed in with all these critical books but many of them are incredibly easy to recognize.

With all this information available while the commercial media and the political establishment continue to ignore all these enormous problems it is no wonder that one of their greatest fears is if people use their first amendment rights at the grass roots level to expose their scams to those that are still complacent.

Photo source

In addition to running an enormous amount of scams they're also threatening the democratic process with their efforts to suppress voter rights and corrupt the political system; and when people shop at Wal-Mart they're financing the destruction of our society and in return they get products that are incredibly flimsy and start falling apart almost immediately.

You don't save money and live better if their products start falling apart so fast and you only have to keep replacing them over and over again ande they destroy the economy while keeping all the money for themselves or spending it on bureaucratic efforts to control the public.

For additional articles on Wal-Mart including some that have been cited in this blog see the following.

Walmart Presses Felony Charge In Oreo Theft

Customers Flee Wal-Mart Empty Shelves for Target, Costco

Wal-Mart Brings in Consultants to Help Keep Its Shelves Stocked

Unexpected Ally Helps Wal-Mart Cut Waste
But some environmental and shop-local groups contend that the company's business model remains inherently anti-environment.
''Wal-Mart's price pressure on manufacturers is undermining the durability and quality of products, which has contributed to a sharp increase in how much Americans buy and how much we discard,'' said Stacy Mitchell, senior researcher for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. ''The majority of what the company does is designed to accelerate consumption.''

Voter Suppression 101: How Conservatives Are Conspiring to Disenfranchise Millions of Americans

"Up Against Wal-Mart" at Mother Jones

Walmart PR Consultant Stephanie Harnett Caught Revealing True Identity After Posing As Fake Reporter

"What Else You Should Know About Walmart" at Chicago Reader

"Wal-Mart's Top US Exec: 'I Funded Union-Busting'" at Truth Out