Posted at December 16, 2005 3:36 PM in response to PATRIOT UPDATE

Well done, sir. You should be congratulated for your efforts on behave of freedom-loving Americans and the nation both of us love.

You are a true patriot who understands the oath he took to the US Constitution.

I want you as my president.

Posted at December 16, 2005 3:18 PM in response to PATRIOT UPDATE

Posted at December 16, 2005 7:57 AM in response to Don't Worry. I See Plenty of Humor Here

You are missing the point by a country mile. Your focus on "competition" can not simply stop at a discussion of consumer buyer power and choice. It has to be in tandem with understanding and exposition that "choice" also includes the competition of labor and wages for the manufacture of the articles sold.

It is all well and good the worker can buy $15 blue jeans at Wal Mart. but there is a serious disconnection in the argument that such an exchange is the sum and total factor of the impact on the economy and community.
 
You are dissing workers for thinking they are so stupid not to see the implications to their own livelihoods from the bargins they find at Wal Mart that are brought about by cheap foreign labor.

Your illustration of the breaking of the stranglehold of a "company" town and "company" store as an example of driving down prices due to increased competition for those sales dollars  is a case in point. Its corollary is that when other employers come into a town, current wages usually go up to compete for labor, and its inverse is also true, when employers leave, wages go down..... but Wal Mart breaks that mold, because they pay so little for their labor.

My original post was to question whether it is true that shoppers at Wal Mart do not understand the implications of their choice to shop there and how it impacts their community in a negative way. My personal experience is that both business competitors and the actual shoppers at Wal Mart do understand the negative impact, but the latter group, mostly with limited income do not have any other choice but to shop there to maximize their buying power. They do not hold Wal Mart as a sacred cow so much as they do the place for the best deal for their limited amount of purchasing power. Attacking Wal Mart for its policies is not going to result in disaffection from shoppers there because they know what Wal Mart has done to produce those bargins.

The more relevant issue for those on the Left who want to get wal mart-type shoppers to vote Democratic is that many of the "college-educated" folk who decry Wal Mart and its policies also bundle up their classism by calling Wal Mart shoppers "trailer trash" who don't know any better.

But this is an entirely different discussion than the economic impact on communities and domestic industries negatively impacted by Wal Mart business practices.

Posted at December 2, 2005 4:52 PM in response to One More Wal-Mart Post

Offering you a quarter to buy a clue is hardly ad hominem. But I can see how you would be sensitive to the Buckhead comment, so I do apologize.

Nice to see you can offer up your litany of where you have lived, close by me it seems, but the proof is in what you learned along the way that stuck. If you haven’t heard people in small rural towns talk poorly about Wal Mart I suggest you talk to more people or listen better when they speak. In case you care to do the former, here are some phone numbers for you to call to enlighten you on the what local people, small business owners think about Wal Mart: the local feed store in Jefferson, Maddox Feed and Seed 706-367-9207, Mitchell Hardware 706-367-5720, , Jefferson Drug Co, 706-367-5221, call them, and ask them about Wal Mart and what it is doing to their business and community or venture to the local supermarkets, Food Lion or Bell’s and talk to the older fulltime workers many who will tell you their own horror stories about their experiences working at Wal Marts.
 
Further, when you do and begin to delve below their surface comments you will find that these people will tell you that “Wal Mart” is just a symptom for something larger, but as a catch-all it works quite well for the way large corporations run everything and the working person gets further left behind. They will mention “globalization” but not in such sophisticated lingo, and these people don’t see a dime’s worth of difference between Democrats and Republicans because both parties are in bed with the moneyed interests who do not care about them or their communities at large.

So you can take negative aspects of “Wal-Mart” and by inductive logic build the case for more economic democracy in a general sense when talking to these people without fear of a sacrosanct “Wal Mart ” being blasphemed. These people know what the “Wal Mart” price means; they can buy 15 dollar blue jeans, but that drive to the bottom wrecks their own business and causes them to close down.
 
But, you have stated that it would be wrong to attack such a “sacrosanct” sacred cow as Wal Mart as indicative of the problems we have in the pursuit of greater economic democracy, and I tell you that you are wrong, and you are not talking to those in small towns who are saying it to me.

Finally, you seem not to understand what you are talking about when you call Wal-Mart sacrosanct with lower middle class and working class folk. I stated clearly they shop there because they have limited funds.  Wal-Mart has the lowest prices (at least initially to drive out the competition) thus they have nowhere else to shop. If they had more money they would seek out stores that provided better quality items. That is not a working definition of a sacrosanct relationship. It is merely one between a buyer and seller. Its pure economic utility and there is no sacredness about it. The only thing sacrosanct to them is saving their money, and they would go elsewhere if Wal Mart's prices were not the lowest around.

Ed, if you want, pop by the Jefferson area sometime. We can drink a couple of beers and I'll take you around to see those folks I have been listening to who lead me to believe you are wrong.

Posted at December 1, 2005 11:31 PM in response to One More Wal-Mart Post

You live in the South, Ed? Really live in "the South?" Not downtown Buckhead Atlanta, but oh say out here in rural farm country Jefferson County with a Super Wal-Mart out in Commerce, GA?

If you did, you would not have written what you did, simply because you underestimate the mentality of Southerners who do shop at Wal Mart. You seem to think these folk are stupid bumpkins who do not know what Wal Mart does to their communities or how they operate towards their employees and competitors, and that having Democrats mention it would cause the simple folk to be disaffected from the message that Wal-Mart is helping destroy their communities by driving out of local business, family owned businesses that have existed for generations and have been the bedrocks of the commuities.

These are the stores that donate the money for Little League uniforms with their businesses names on the backs. The businesses that donate money for the christmas decorations strung up on the light poles downtown. The places where neighbors meet each other to say hello. The places where credit is given without plastic because you are known in the community and the church you attend; the very life's blood of this rural culture. People know damned right well what they lose when Wal Mart bigfoot's into town.

Hear's a quarter Ed, go buy a clue. These people know what Wal Mart is doing to the towns they live in. But ecomomic forces demand that they shop at Wal Mart (and not a more up-scale Target Store) because they have low paying jobs and Wal Mart has the lowest prices and one can one-stop shop for everything from food to underwear to auto tires in one place. But don't think for one minute that these people do not know that they have made a deal with the Devil. They surely do. You can figure just about every family who shops exclusively at a rural Wal Mart has kin folk or friends who have undegone ecomomic hardship or dislocation due to the closing of the textile and associated industries that dotted the rural South. They know that when a large mill closes in say, Thomaston, GA  local unemployment jumps to 18% and the only jobs available are cooking meth, flipping burgers, or working at the Wal Mart. 

You seem to think they like that choice? That they are beholden to Wal Mart like an NRA fanatic is to his rifles?

People down here shop at Wal Mart because they don't have the money to shop anywhere else. It is not a lifestyle choice for them,....its survival. You think that they would not just love to have a better paying job so they could shop at a Target, a Kohl's or Belk's and get better quality stuff?

I can give you the names of several small business owners locally whose families have lived out here for 4-5 generations and they can see an entire lifestyle and culture dying out and they cannot do anything about it because of the economic might that Wal Mart has....and damned if Wal Mart doesn't get government handouts too that these small folks never see.

Its supposed to be up to you fancy-pants college educated boys to conjure up the proper rhetoric to help connect for these folks how democrats can bring about an ecomomic  renaissance  that will give them more choices than meth, burgers, or Wal Mart.

It is a mark of profound ignorance of rural Southern life or brainwashing by corporate propaganda for you to talk about Wal Mart as a cultural and economic icon. 

Posted at December 1, 2005 9:08 PM in response to One More Wal-Mart Post

Posted at November 26, 2005 5:48 PM in response to Bush Has Shattered Mystique of American Power

John Murtha fired off the first live round in the upcoming class war in this country. His questions and comments on the Bushevik handling of Iraq strike right at the heart of the GOP swindle of the national treasury and their anti-social, anti-communitarian philosophy that distilled to its essence is; "Its every man for himself, and let the Devil take the hindquarters." The GOP will have to turn their skins inside out to tack to a philosophy of shared sacrifice considering their present philosophy. Don't count on that happening. Instead, count on hearing the rhetoric of class warfare every time someone calls for shared sacrifice and "Put country first." Instead, count on hearing the truth about who is sacrificing, that the highest level of military recruits come from the poorest congressional districts, that our returning soldiers and Marines are facing economic hardship and crowded VA hospitals facing service cutbacks, and all this as the Busheviks attempt to justify cut taxes for the rich.

Republican politicians and their mouthpieces are nothing but lying two-legged snakes. you know how we deal with snakes in this part of the country? we cut off their fu*king heads.

a major the problem with the Democratic party is that it has no longer got a stiff backbone made from the Labor movement, and Civil Rights movements where there, Labor's and Civil Rights' opponents have been willing to use violence against them. that sort of experience toughens one up for politics and lends one not to take personal insults, threats, and defamation lightly, and to strike back swift and hard.

The Democratic Party has more than enough well-heeled, blow-dried, pretty-boy bourgeoisie gents who never got bloodied for their principles and thus do not know what it takes to defend them against the snakes on the Right.

Time after time the GOP lobs incendiary remarks at Democrats and all the Democratic leadership does is grin and shug it off like its a great big game. Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't, but for us folks looking in from the outside it appears that the Democratic party does not seem to be willing to kick their opponents in the balls after those same opponents just tried to gouge out their eyeballs.

Posted at November 19, 2005 10:37 PM in response to Topic for Discussion

excuse me fella' but just what the hell is this "we're there?" you ain't, I ain't, and mr ivo sure as hell ain't, but a hundred and fifty thousand of our sons and daughters are. and as i said above, my little brother is.

if you want to play war games enlist or play Risk. but dont you dare try and play Bobby Fischer with his life like he is some god damned toy soldier on a board game.

Who wants to be the last man to die for a mistake? I sure as hell bet you don't, and i doubt you are the one who is willing to look the parents, spouse or children of the one who does and tell them that gee whizz, the nation needed their loved one for just one more day of that goddamned aweful mistake...and $hit just happened, so sorry,  here's your kid back, in a pine box.

 you need to stroll over to the viet nam memorial and run your fingers over some of those names carved into the marble and understand that they died for no good reason at all.

My uncle's name is on that damned wall, I carried his casket in ''68 as a 14 year old. he died for nothing, and i will be damned if i am willing to let that $hit happen again with my brother without a fight.

you can take your Real Politik and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Posted at November 17, 2005 6:58 PM in response to Murtha's Bombshell

Posted at November 17, 2005 3:24 PM in response to Murtha's Bombshell