St. Louis CofCC Blog

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Wal-Mart starts strictly tracking gun sales

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) will soon be employing a new method to track gun sales in its stores. As part of a new measure in concert with the “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” group, Wal-Mart’s chief compliance officer J.P. Suarez went to D.C. with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to explain details on a new “10-point code” that will apparently thwart weapons from Wal-Mart from falling into criminal hands.

Wal-Mart will soon be video recording gun sales in its stores and then archiving the footage as part of being included in the “Responsible Firearms Retailer Partnership.” In addition, the world’s largest retailer will create a computer system to notify the company of a gun purchased in one of its stores is indeed used in a crime. If workers think they can get at guns from the inside, Wal-Mart will now perform screening and background checks on employees that will be handling and selling firearms in its stores.

In other words, if you’re a legal buyer that buys a legal gun legally at WM, and someone else winds up using it in a crime, it will somehow be your fault. I suppose the rationale is that WM is going to ferret out straw purchasers, and the assumption will be that if you bought it legally and someone else uses it in a crime, then you simply purchased it to give it to the ineligible person. What if your gun is stolen as part of a residential burglary, then used in a crime? (The more pressing problem, BTW.)  I can see it now — someone who buys a gun from WM has it stolen from him, and it’s used to murder someone.  He goes back to WM to replace it, and WM won’t sell him one.

Also, what is this big obsession with Wal-Mart? There are probably a hundred “mom-and-pop” firearm dealers for every Monopoly Mart out there. I think this country deserves at least one industry that isn’t controlled by the Fortune 1, and if I were you, I would make my purchasing decisions with this opinion in mind. Monopoly Mart won’t miss your business, the small merchant around the corner needs it, and wouldn’t insult you and drive you away by spying on you.

One reason why I think Monopoly Mart is willing to do this, and pander to “Mayors Against Illegal Guns,” is to penetrate urban areas. At the moment, Monopoly Mart often faces stiff (and succesful) opposition when it wants to open a store inside a major city, because of its preference for non-union associates, and because it does sell firearms.

Reuters, about the claim by the CEO of AT&T that it’s hard to find skilled American workers to fill positions that will no longer be outsourced:

Gone are the days when AT&T and other U.S. companies had to hire locally, he said.

“We’re able to do new product engineering in Bangalore as easily as we’re able to do it in Austin, Texas,” he said, referring to the Indian city where many international companies have “outsourced” technical and customer support workers.

“I know you don’t like hearing that, but that’s the way it is,” he said.

I think the angle here is that, even though these jobs will return to America, UNT&T wants to import H-1-B visa holders to fill those jobs, because they can’t find skilled Americans that will work cheaply enough.

Communications Workers of America presser from last Friday, dateline St. Louis:

The Communications Workers of America is condemning Western Union Financial Services Inc., for its plans to close three union-represented facilities in Missouri and Texas and shift that work to non-union and overseas operations.

Some 640 workers in Dallas, Texas, and Bridgeton and St. Charles, Missouri, were told they will lose their jobs over the next five months.

Its apparent to me that Western Union has determined that it would prefer to operate as a union-free enterprise, said Andy Milburn, CWA Vice President for District 6, which covers Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma.

CWA will do everything legally possible to stop these centers from closing and stop Western Union from moving our work to non-union operations, both in the United States and overseas, said CWA Staff Representative Mike Neumann, who heads the Western Union bargaining team.

Western Union said it will transfer the work of employees in the three customer service centers and financial operations to locations including Denver, Costa Rica, Manila, Mexico City and Mexicali, Mexico.

Last month, CWA Local 6377 filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board against Western Union, charging that company managers have tried to coerce union members and subvert the bargaining process. The local also charged that earlier layoffs announced by Western Union - of 150 workers in Bridgeton and Dallas — were an act of retaliation against the workers and the union.

Western Union is an American icon. Today, it has turned its back on the very employees who built the company into a multinational enterprise, said Earline Jones, president of CWA Local 6377.

Olivia Espinosa, president of CWA Local 6178 in Dallas, said Western Union is a greedy, profitable company that doesnt seem to care about the excellent customer service our CWA members now provide. And thats bad news for customers.

Yet, the CWA will endorse a free-trade globalist for President.  Make no mistake about it — Both Hillary and Obama are, the only difference between them is that the former was married to a free-trade globalist, and wants us to think that she was opposed to his leanings while she was First Lady, and the other pretends to be an economic nationalist while crossing his fingers behind his back with his back turned toward foreign capitals.

They’re completely closing up shop in St. Louis (both Bridgeton and St. Charles), and closing their Dallas Spanish-speaking call center.  Most of the work will be outsourced to Mexico, the Phillippines, and Costa Rica — all three countries have Spanish as an official language, and many Filipinos can speak English.

From the Post-Dispatch:

In a statement, the company said, “Decisions like this are never easy, but compelling business reasons have driven Western Union to make this decision. As Western Union’s business shifts and the company becomes increasingly global, it must continually assess its operations to stay competitive.”

Translated from B-Schoolese to English, this means they want cheap, non-union labor.  The decision might not have been “easy,” but it certainly was made relatively recently, as most of the managers of the Western Union facilities in the St. Louis area got passports within the last few months.

Some employees can apply for open positions at other Western Union facilities, the company said.

What other facilities?  They’re closing down everything in America but top management.  In other words, they’re taking your bread away from you, and telling you that they might let you have a little cake.

Related:  Today’s Typewriter Repairmen

Maybe H1-B visas are not the same as illicit drugs, but Business Week lists the top 200 companies in order of the number of H1-B visas that ICE approved for them.  Most of the time, the “skilled” workers they’re importing aren’t so uniquely skilled that no American can fulfill the responsibility — note that many companies on this list are accounting, consulting, and finance firms; there are plenty of Americans that are skilled enough in those fields to meet the demand of those firms.  In the case of accounting and consulting, those firms based in America need American accountants, because every country has different standards and rules for financial accounting.  The dirty little secret is that many natives of east, southeast and southern Asia are being trained in American accounting standards.

The answer to this riddle is that the personnel imported through H1-B visas are cheaper and more slavish.

Western Union might close its Bridgeton call center. If not, they’ll definitely make heavy cutbacks there.

If WU’s business is suffering because there are better USA-to-Mexico remittance options, this news doesn’t necessarily prove that, because WU’s Spanish-speaking call center, which facilitates those remittances, is in Dallas. Bridgeton closing probably proves that there is hardly any need anymore for Western Union transactions among those who speak English.

UPDATE 2/27: Another theory is that WU is going to outsource its English-speaking call center work. After all, those dastardly human resources in Bridgeton have the audacity to think that they can belong to a union, and negotiate for good wages for good work. Don’t they know that they need to learn how to compete with virtual slave labor in the global economy?

As it is, the Bridgeton facility only has about half the people working there that they did five years ago.

This is unbelievable on its own face, but not unbelievable if you remember that a McDonald County Sheriff’s Deputy said a few weeks ago that Hispanic arrivals were upgrading the county’s gene pool.

Southeast Missourian:

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A lot of lazy Missourians, including many in Southeast Missouri, could benefit from adopting the work ethic of Mexican immigrants, House Speaker Rod Jetton said Thursday.

Jetton, speaking to publishers, editors and reporters at the Missouri Governor’s Mansion, made an example of Wayne County residents in his 156th Missouri House District. In 2004, an employer who considered moving to Wayne County, which had one of the highest unemployment rates in the state at the time, was able to attract only three applicants, Jetton said. The jobs weren’t great — the pay was about $8 an hour — but the chance to get off government assistance should have been attractive, he said.

“We have a shortage of people who want to go out and bust their tails and do the jobs,” Jetton said.

Jetton made his remarks when asked about his statement made to Republicans in Springfield, Mo., that he would like to “trade some of our people for some of the Mexicans who work so hard.”

He didn’t back away from that remark. “If we can find a way to trade them, I would trade them in a heartbeat,” Jetton said.

Maybe there was a reason that only three Wayne Countians applied for $8 an hour (not much higher than minimum age) jobs from this “employer” that wanted to locate in the county. The reason is that they’re for $8 an hour, and that this “employer” only offered $8 an hour because they knew this would happen, and would then would cry “oops darn schucks,” and claim in earnest that they need illegal alien labor. If not for the illegal aliens and the downward wage pressure as a consequence, that “employer” would have offered more than $8 an hour, and would have received many more than three applicants from Wayne County.

As for the “work ethic of Mexicans,” the truth of the matter is that those who have just recently “arrived” do work very hard, but stop working hard once they figure out how to work the system of “government assistance” Jetton claims the whites of Wayne County are addicted to. At that time, those that exploit illegal alien labor have to “import” more people.

But let’s assume Jetton is totally correct, and that we’re the lazy bums, and the hard-working Mexicans do constitute, as that McDonald County Deupty Sheriff said, “an upgrade to the gene pool.” Mass immigration and the racial replacement and dispossession it portends would be just as wrong, because they’re not us, and this is ours. Mr. Jetton evidently does not possess that innate sense of self-preservation.

UPDATE 6:40 PM: Missouri Bushwhacker has the scoop. Jetton himself was a public assistance client in his younger days. And now that he’s “working,” he stole earned six grand a week from the Romney campaign for the oh-so-astute political advice that catapulted Romney to a third place finish in Missouri.

UPDATE 2/25:  Glory be.  The MSM in this state are holding Jetton’s feet to the fire over these comments.  Notice that the press conference took place at the Governor’s Mansion, which probably tells us where Gov. Blunt’s heart (or lack thereof) was on the issue.  It also tells us why he’ll be looking for a new job next January.

It is said in this article that the reporters laughed at Jetton’s statement when he reiterated it.  I hope those were laughs of ridicule.

World Net Daily:

Credit card company: No more buying guns

A major credit card company has issued a letter to a gun dealer canceling his payment processing services because of corporate concerns firearms were being sold to consumers in other states, in “a non face-to-face environment.” Now the move has raised the ire of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

“Your anti-gun corporate policy is based on ignorance of the law applicable to the sale of firearms,” the NSSF wrote in response to the action taken by First Data Corp., which operates Citi Merchant Services.

The rest of the article details why the transaction is legal.

First Data Corporation is a major lobbying force for amnesty for illegal aliens, open borders, and the Latinization of America that those things portend.  The reason is that Western Union, FDC’s “flagship subsidiary,” has been until recently the most common transfer method used for USA-to-Latin America remittances, though the rise of telephone banking, online banking and debit cards is making Western Union superfluous for that purpose.

So the motto of FDC is:  Illegal aliens?  Yes.  American gunowners?  No.

Washington Post:

Most Diversity Training Ineffective, Study Finds

Most diversity training efforts at American companies are ineffective and even counterproductive in increasing the number of women and minorities in managerial positions, according to an analysis that turns decades of conventional wisdom, government policy and court rulings on their head.

That’s what affirmative action is for.

So what is diversity training for?

The analysis did not find that all diversity training is useless. Rather, it showed that mandatory programs — often undertaken mainly with an eye to avoiding liability in discrimination lawsuits — were the problem. When diversity training is voluntary and undertaken to advance a company’s business goals, it was associated with increased diversity in management.

(snip)

Several experts offered two reasons for this: The first is that businesses are responding rationally to the legal environment, since several Supreme Court rulings have held that companies with mandatory diversity training are in a stronger position if they face a discrimination lawsuit. Second, many companies — with the implicit cooperation of diversity trainers — find it easier to offer exercises that serve public relations goals, rather than to embrace real change.

Virtually all of the civil rights lawsuits brought against private businesses and corporations by non-whites in recent years are frivolous.  If Corporate America can spend so much money on the diversity-industrial complex, then they could have just as well defended themselves in court to win the lawsuits.  The reason they’re so willing to fold to the pressure of the diversity-industrial complex was best said by the Late Great Dr. Samuel T. Francis, when he essentially said that global capitalism and multiculturalism were the yin and yang to each other.

Remember the pizza delivering hero from last week?  If he had followed Domino’s policy, he probably would be dead today.

It’s not as if I was ever going to order pizza from Domino’s anyway — the last time I did, which was almost a decade ago, the pizza was cold and full of bugs.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Employees sign an agreement in which they agree not to carry a weapon, Domino’s corporate spokesman Tim McIntyre said, a policy designed to protect both the public and employees …. (snip) …. Domino’s trains employees to minimize their risk, both before and during a robbery, McIntyre said.

Doesn’t sound like it protects the employees very well.  If they’re trained to “minimize their risk before a robbery” in that way, they won’t be here after the robbery.  Otherwise, redlining is the only solution.

Gone, but not forgotten — his golden parachute, even after his boneheaded executive decisions plunged ML’s stock prices, is still worth almost $160 million.

Perhaps ML’s Board of Directors thought it would make them the darling of the Civil Rights Industry when they made Stanley O’Neal CEO in 2002, but the dream turned into a nightmare when, as if he were that Greek tyrant that leveled the tops of corn stalks, he fired a bevy of senior executives to sweep away his potential rivals and replacements, then put all of ML’s eggs in the subprime mortgage basket.  And when that market went to the low place in a handbasket, he concealed the depravity of the financial situation to the Board.

So much for the bromide that we need more H-1-B visas because there aren’t enough Americans with science and engineering skills.  Turns out that American universities are graduating far many more graduates in those fields than there are jobs in those fields, and all that is notwithstanding the existing H-1-B visa immigrants.

So that guy who will be delivering the pizza you order tonight is probably has a degree in computer science, a massive student loan debt load which he will never be able to repay, and a life full of shattered dreams.  Tip him well.

Two minutes are better than 200 pages.

Mayor Slay:

Inclusion

Following the positive examples set by the St. Louis Cardinals in the construction of their downtown ballpark and the developers of Lumiere Place, the private company retained to build Centene’s headquarters building downtown has agreed to abide by Executive Order #28 on the inclusion of Minority and Women-Owned Businesses — and the City’s DESA workforce policy, which has minority goals for the construction workforce.

Clayco’s Bob Clark already has a good local reputation for being an inclusive employer. This decision will only enhance it.

If constructing this theoretical building at the theoretical Ballpark Village will be all about such “inclusion,” then one day soon, we’ll be reading a news story about this building with the title of this post somewhere in the body.

What a great idea — let’s replace a largely unpatronized urban shopping mall with another urban shopping mall, along with more office space (which will largely go unleased), condos (which will largely go unsold), and a hotel (which will largely go unprostituted).

And, since this article brings up the matter, how will this project affect the theoretical Ballpark Village, which already has its first theoretical tenant? And if stuff is actually built there, and Centene does move away from Clayton, how will this make Charlie Dooley feel? How long would it be before he starts whining about the city stealing the glory from Clayton? How ironic that would be, considering how city mayors Jim Conway and Vince Schoemehl always complained about county executive Gene McNary and his county’s “stealing” business and population from the city? It would be, assuming that these downtown developments ever happen, and actually become prosperous, which I doubt.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Dierbergs’ Clocktower Place store, which the company said has never showed a profit in its 20-year history, will close Nov. 30 when the lease on the north St. County grocery expires.

The store, at the intersection of Interstate 270 and West Florissant Avenue, employs more than 150 workers. Chesterfield-based Dierbergs Markets Inc. said there would be no layoffs, and all employees will be offered positions at other stores.

“We’re going to take care of them,” said Greg Dierberg, president and chief executive said about employees. “We want everyone who works for us now to stay with us.”

The closure marks the first time that supermarket chain has shuttered a store due to lack of business. Other closures were the result of new stores being built nearby, Dierberg said.

This particular store, at 11298 West Florissant Avenue, had been hurt by the departure of other businesses, including Best Buy, from Clocktower Place, according to Dierberg. The vacancies reduced customer visits to the entire shopping center.

But competition was also part of the problem, he said.

“Wal-Mart has to play some aspect in our minds,” said Dierberg. “Wal-Mart is right down the street.”

There is a Wal-Mart at 10741 West Florissant. In addition, there are six Schnucks and four Shop ‘n Save groceries within five miles of the Clocktower place location.

Before you believe the bromide about “competition” causing that store never to be profitable in its twenty years of business, here’s an e-mail from a member who is a north county resident, who alerted this blogmeister to this story:

This is in my area. In reality it fell victim to the creeping ghetto. The Ferguson WalMart they mention is probably one of the worst in the STL area. A wretched Shop ‘N Save location is a mile away but I wouldn’t go there at night. There was a BestBuy at Clocktower when it opened but it suddenly closed without warning at least 10 years ago. Office Depot moved across W. Florissant from next to a K-Mart to take over its store space. A mile east of Clocktower there is a dead Target, Wehrenberg 14 theatre, Casa Gallardo, Olive Garden and other places that WERE open 30+ years ago.

Why didn’t they mention shoplifting, purse-snatching, personal robberies and pan-handlers on the parking lot as reasons for being unprofitable?

What’s more of a mystery to me is that, Dierberg’s, which won’t touch St. Louis City with a ten-foot pole, for obvious reasons, somehow thought in 1987 that 270 at West Florissant would be dandy place to open a store — even in 1987, the ghetto was creeping toward that area, and now, the area is just plain creepy, and for those of you non-St. Louisans, Dierberg’s is the local premium-priced relatively upscale big-box supermarket chain.

Federal anti-trust lawyers are suing just about the entire cable industry, in order to force their land on a la carte pricing.

It appears that the lawyers at the Anti-Trust Division of the U.S. Justice Department didn’t consult the lawyers at the Civil Rights Division of the same, because the NAACP opposes a la carte pricing for cable and satellite systems.

One would think that the purpose of a labor union is to provide a counterbalance to the political and economic power of business itself. It looks like, in this case, the union is a shill of the company.

Washington Times:

DENVER — The union, representing employees of six Swift & Co. meatpacking plants where a massive illegal alien raid was conducted last year, is seeking an injunction to stop federal immigration agencies from carrying out what it described as “mass detentions” and unlawful workplace raids.

In a class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday, eight plaintiffs, all working legally in the United States, claim their rights were violated when they were forced to remain on the company premises without access to legal counsel.

“It is unconscionable that our government would round up hundreds, sometimes thousands, of innocent workers in an effort to target a few select individuals,” said Joseph T. Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International.

The lawsuit names Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary Julie L. Myers and their agencies.

If Swift is pulling the strings from behind the scenes, then they needn’t worry. For if it’s Julie Myers behind the trigger, no Swift executives will ever be punished.

Smith and Wesson is raking in record profits.

I think I know why — other than the reasons stated in this article, S&W was shunned by the domestic American gun market for a long time, because their British-based conglomerate owner, Tompkins PLC, was all too ready and eager to sell out to the anti-gun political crowd and the Clinton Administration’s “Justice” Department. S&W got so bad off, that Tompkins sold it to an Arizona-based firm that makes gun locks and safes for $15 million just a few months after Clinton left the White House, after it had bought out S&W for $112 million in 1987. This makes their $74.4 million profit for their May-June-July accounting quarter emblematic of an impressive comeback.

Since we have a relatively pro-gun White House, very few credible domestic threats to the 2nd Amendment, and S&W is safely in friendly hands, it was going to turn around, notwithstanding anything else.

The Post-Dispatch has Part 2 of its Immigration-Landscaping series today.  There isn’t much profound in it, but I will juxtapose two separate parts of the article, which will help you reach a conclusion again that I know you have already reached:

Dowell and his wife run Dowco Enterprises, a midsize landscaper in Chesterfield. They started mowing almost three decades ago, around sales jobs at Sears, and when they launched their company in 1986, they scrounged to pay employees from their own salaries. Today they employ 38 people, and they drive BMWs.

(snip)

Things have changed in San Luis since he first arrived, Alonzo said. Used to be, there were just a couple of Mexican stores. Now they’re all over. So are immigrants. Alonzo alone has eight brothers here; one is a naturalized citizen. They come for the jobs, in landscaping, painting, hotels.

The conclusion is that American elites are materially invested in the Latinization (and the accompanying dispossesion of whites, and the withering of the working middle class) of the country.

Also:

Like other landscapers, Dowell says he has tried to hire Americans. Right now, he has five on his work crews. But when he advertises his openings — as he must to qualify for H-2B — he gets little interest. The last two years, he got none.

(snip)

Bergman has tried hiring from felony release programs, talking with temp agencies, paying all kinds of salaries.

“People literally show up one day, take a look, and say ‘I’m not doing this,’ ” he said.

So he turns to Mexico.

So, he “tries” to “hire Americans” by checking out the ex-con scene.  If that’s the only way you’re going to “try to hire Americans,” to fulfill the minimal requirements of the H-2B program, then of course you’re destined for failure, and will need to bring in H-2B visa holders in here to do the jobs that “Americans” won’t do.

Related:  Part 1 of this Post-Dispatch series

St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

La Esperanza, MEXICO — Surrounded by strawberry fields and rows of corn, the small town of La Esperanza is a postcard from rural Mexico. There is the plaza, the church. There are the tile-roofed homes, the bougainvillea flowers spilling over walls, the teenage boys on horseback.

And there is the landscaping recruiter from St. Louis.

He comes in February. For years now, an American with a buzz cut — an employee of Fenton-based Top Care Lawn Service Inc. — has stopped in La Esperanza to fill out his employee roster and help men here get visas to work legally for Top Care.

If the black man in the above photo is the said “American with a buzz cut,” then there is something starkly ironic about this picture.

The landscaping industry in St. Louis is rapidly being staffed by foreign laborers who enter the United States on a temporary visa for nonagricultural workers, known as the “H-2B” visa. Many of those six- to nine-month jobs start at $8 an hour — slightly above minimum wage in Missouri, but a ticket out of poverty in Mexico, at least for the season.

Before this point, the article refers to them as “guest workers.” Remember, when President Bush was pressing to pass “Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” he told us that we needed a “guest worker program” in order to blah blah blah. The point here is that we already have a guest worker program in the H-2B visa system.

Over the past nine years, as U.S. employers’ appetite for H-2B workers has grown, La Esperanza has become a town of guest workers. It’s difficult to find a woman here whose husband, son or father isn’t working “on contract” somewhere in the United States. And each year, it seems, there’s another company importing workers from La Esperanza.

About 80 men from La Esperanza, a town of 1,129 people, work as St. Louis landscapers; others are guest workers in Nevada and Indiana, and on a separate program in Canada. But the primary destination is “San Luis,” a fact made clear by the Missouri-plated pickups rolling slowly over La Esperanza’s stone roads.

La Esperanza: St. Louis’s (or is that San Luis’s?) newest suburb. Or maybe it’s the opposite: St. Louis, Mexico’s Newest Colony.

In La Esperanza, it’s hard to say which is growing faster — workers’ interest in obtaining the visas or companies’ appetite for workers. Each year, St. Louis-area lawn care companies have petitioned for more workers. In addition to Top Care and Loyet, Brake Landscaping and Lawncare hired guest workers from La Esperanza this year.

Loyet’s work force is composed primarily of guest workers, according to Delgado. The only employees who live permanently in the U.S. are “the people who enter things into the computers — the superintendents and the secretaries,” he says.

To qualify to bring in guest workers, employers must demonstrate annually that they cannot find qualified workers residing in the U.S.

And “demonstrate” is a malleable concept here. Of course, Top Care and similar firms wouldn’t be able to find “qualified workers residing in the U.S.,” if they can establish a lower wage for said workers because of the known and pending supply of cheaper labor from Mexico — they can “demonstrate” that they need H-2B jobbers. And considering the xenophile cheap labor lobby that has run at least the last two Presidential administrations, the public immigration authorities wouldn’t exactly knit-pick with firms that “demonstrate” such a need so slyly. That said, I highly doubt that there are no native-born Americans that can cut grass, rake leaves and plant tulips — it’s just that Americans still hold on to this disturbing concept that they should get living, sustainable pay for full-time work, enough to live in a single-family mortgage payer-occupied domicile, own a car or two, and somewhat more.

If they had any forewarning at all, “the workers would just stay in the U.S.,” guesses Fernando.

And when that eventually happens, the U.S. economy will be just like the Mexico they’re fleeing.

Business Week:

The outside of Susan Sabin’s house in Lenexa, Kan., is covered with lemons: lemon-shaped foam cutouts, twinkling lemon Christmas lights, and a lemon-adorned wreath on the front door. If you go to her Web site, you can see for yourself. You’ll also see photographs of splintered beams, bowed floors, and a graphic that declares: “Pulte Homes sold me a lemon!”

(snip)

As home values decrease and home sales slow in many parts of the country, construction problems seem to have become an even bigger concern for homeowners. “I notice the traffic has definitely picked up,” says Andy Martin, a longtime consumer advocate who runs three sites: www.FightPulte.com, www.FightDiVosta.com and www.FightDelWebb.com. The three sites serve as national clearinghouses for those who think they may be victims of shoddy construction. During the housing boom, builders were working fast to keep up with all the people gobbling up new properties, and Martin believes the quality of building suffered as a result. “The pendulum swung too far in (the builders’) favor,” he says. “The Internet now is rising to level the playing field.”

The white elephant in the crumbling and moldy living room: Illegal alien labor from Latin America.

She used her three children as an extension of her own butterfingers, and now she’s banned from the Wal-Mart from which she tried to steal. Trouble is, how can and does Wal-Mart enforce these bans of individuals? Do the entrance greeters have photographic memories?

Then again, as Wal-Mart is for amnesty and open borders, they should succumb to their own egalitarianism, and realize that Miss Cherry didn’t steal as such, or engage in any criminal activity in the proper sense of the phrase. What she was doing was making a proper and understandable reaction for having been enslaved and segregated for 400 years.

AP profiles the increasing use of RFID implants in human beings. It looks like if “Big Brother” comes, it won’t necessarily be a governmental “Big Brother,” it will be a corporate one, under the pretense of “business security.”

Since most corporations are private firms, it will be hard to combat it with the ethos of “privacy rights,” becuase (in theory) they’re private firms, and employees are willing participants. In reality, most Americans make a living by being somebody’s employee, and most of the time, that “somebody” is the agent of a big corporation, and therefore, to the average person, the power of the immediate supervisor exceeds that of the “big bad” Federal government. And policies that become standard fare for big corporations might as well have been enacted by a government.

Even though Walgreens is doing well right now, and when traveling through St. Louis City, it seems as if there is a city ordinance that requires there to be at least one Walgreens at every perpendicular junction of major boulevards, when Walgreens declares bankruptcy in a decade or two, it will look back and discover that July 12, 2007 was the beginning of the end.

For on that day, it hoisted the “Kick Me” sign on its corporate back, and pointed its back toward the black civil rights community. In other words, it has communicated the message that it is weak, and can be bowled over, and that every black patron or employee that gets winked at the wrong way inside a Walgreens can go for the big payday.

AP/MyWay:

Wal-Mart is recommending its stores prosecute shoplifters at a younger age, tightening guidelines for store managers as it seeks to put a cap on rising theft that has eroded its profit.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Wednesday it issued new guidelines to its U.S. stores this week lowering the age at which it recommends they prosecute first-time shoplifters to 16 from 18.

(snip)

A year ago, Wal-Mart relaxed its policy by recommending stores only prosecute first-time offenders when the items stolen are worth $25 or more, a guideline that remains in force.

(snip)

Simley said prosecuting at the age of 16 was in line with most other retailers.

(snip)

Wal-Mart’s policy change applies to first-time shoplifters. The guidelines are a suggestion and store managers have leeway to prosecute anyone accused of theft, Simley said.

(snip)

Wal-Mart also will prosecute repeat offenders regardless of age, Simley said.

Okay, we must have played hooky during this particular chapter of high school civics class, so let’s repeat for all needing: In the United States of America, the power to file criminal charges rests in the hands of a public prosecutor, and in nearly all geographical areas of the USA, the District Attorney, or Circuit Attorney in Missouri, or the State’s Attorney in Illinois, the chief of a county’s prosecutor’s office, is elected by the county’s voting citizens. Also, the state’s attorney general, who is also an elected official in most states, may file criminal charges.

Neither Wal-Mart, nor any other retailer, nor any private citizen, and not even a law enforcement agency, has the authority to file charges or prosecute anybody. Yes, the stores and their managers may give suggestions, and cops may pass their own recommendations, and the recommendations they solicit from crime victims, on to the D.A, but the D.A. is under no legal obligation to heed them.

Joseph LaRocca, vice president of loss prevention at the National Retail Federation, said most retailers hold teenagers accountable for shoplifting, whether by calling parents or police. Specific rules vary among stores, LaRocca said, but most retailers consider 16-year-olds mature enough to face consequences for their actions.

Really? Not according to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has ruled that people under the age of 18 are not mature enough to develop the mens rea to premeditate murder, such that they cannot be executed.

AP:

ATLANTA - The Home Depot Inc., the world’s largest home improvement store chain, warned Tuesday that its earnings will decline this year more than previously expected because of weak conditions in the housing market and the sale of its wholesale distribution business.

The Atlanta-based company said it now expects its earnings per share to decline by 15 percent to 18 percent for fiscal 2007. In May, the company had projected an earnings per share decline of 9 percent for the year.

The earlier guidance included an estimated 18 cents of earnings per share contribution from the company’s HD Supply unit for the last six months of the fiscal year.

Another reason is that Home Depot prohibits its employees (other than their “loss prevention agents,” i.e. security guards), from calling the police when they see someone shoplifting from the store. A manager of a Home Depot location in St. Louis told this writer, when I asked him about it, that the reason for the policy was to give a “diverse body of shoppers a shopping experience free of intimidation.” In other words, they would rather have blacks and Hispanics steal from their stores than anger civil rights agitators, and have them call a boycott of Home Depot. They must think that it’s part of the cost of doing business in an increasingly diverse country, but by the same token, if it contributes to their declining earnings, they have no moral authority to complain.

AP:

Democratic presidential hopeful Chris Dodd is issuing a call for community service that aims to create the first generation in which everyone serves their country.

“Endowed as we are with so many gifts, is it too much to ask that we each give something back to this remarkable place?” the Connecticut senator said Saturday.

He proposes making community service mandatory for all high school students, doubling the size of the Peace Corps by 2011 and expanding the AmeriCorps national service program to 1 million participants by the end of his presidency.

Requiring community service will give high school students a chance to acquire new skills while meeting the needs of their communities, Dodd said.

Much of the time, mandatory community service accrues to the benefit of the domestic political left-wing. What also is a possibility is that the obsession of the political class over “volunteerism” is a way to condition young Americans to accept pittance wages and compensation for work as a fact of life, so they do not consider cheap-labor competition from recent immigrant arrivals as a problem.

San Francisco Chronicle:

A video clip that teaches employers how not to hire Americans has prompted two lawmakers to ask Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to investigate whether U.S. companies may be abusing the H-1B visa program.

The H-1B program lets U.S. employers import a certain number of foreign college graduates to work here for up to six years before they’re supposed to go home. As part of the immigration debate, high-tech employers want to hire more of these skilled guest workers while labor groups say these newcomers push Americans out of white-collar jobs.

Siding with the displaced Americans, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, wrote Chao Thursday after seeing a five-minute video in which the marketing director of a Pittsburgh law firm is shown telling employers how they can advertise a job so as to appear that the only qualified applicant is a foreign national.

“Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker,” says Lawrence Lebowitz of the Cohen & Grigsby law firm during a seminar taped in May. “In a sense it sounds funny, but that’s what we’re trying to do here.”

(snip)

Oracle lobbyist Robert Hoffman, who also speaks for an employer coalition called Compete America, said his group agrees that “this video should be investigated.” But Hoffman said the mini-scandal does not undercut the main argument of tech employers — that they can’t hire enough skilled workers without more H-1B visas.

Hoffman sought to turn the video — created by an H-1B opponent — to his advantage. He said it proved the need to pass the Senate immigration reform legislation that, among many other things, gives Silicon Valley more H-1B workers while beefing up rules to make sure that U.S. workers are not displaced.

In other words, the way to solve cheating and discrimination against Americans is to eliminate the rules against cheating and discrimination against Americans. Oracle is a well-known lobbying force for increased H-1B visa allotments.

Here is Matthew Phillips, Attorney At Law, a Partner with the Cohen & Grigsby firm, on CNBC about the H-1B issue, stating his desire to increase allotments: