Word is spreading that Wal-Mart is looking for sites in New York City. The usual suspects—unions, social activists, politicians, all looking to score points with their constituencies and small business owners—are lining up to block the world’s largest retailer from planting a toehold in any of the five boroughs.
It’s a classic fight that has transpired across the country, most notably in Chicago where Wal-Mart has one store and is angling to place another within the city limits. It has scores of them ringing the Windy City.
It’s also a classic tale of elitism. Of out and out snobbery. I’ve said it publicly so I might as well put it in print—there is no difference between the operating practices of Wal-Mart and Target, or most other large scale retailers, with the notable exception of Costco. Only size differentiates them, Wal-Mart being several multiples larger than any other retailer. They pay low wages. They limit medical benefits. They employ far greater women and minorities in their stores compared to the percentage of women and minorities in positions of management, both at store and headquarters levels. Their sizes virtually assure that some managers are bigots or poor adherents to corporate policy, so the inevitable discrimination occurs in hiring and promotion. Because it is the largest company, Wal-Mart is the target (pun intended) of legal challenges. Back in the 1970s, when Sears was top dog, it bore the brunt of most discrimination lawsuits. Such is the burden of being number one. (Full disclosure: my wife has a modest holding of Wal-Mart stock.)
Target is among the largest U.S. corporations, with revenues exceeding $65 billion. Yet Target enjoys a warm and fuzzy reputation with shoppers, particularly the power elite. They lovingly, disarmingly call it “Tar-Zhay” and feel comfortable inside its stores. Their snobbery makes their skin crawl when inside a Wal-Mart.
The impact a Target or Wal-Mart has on a market can be equally devastating. Or exhilarating, depending on your point of view. There’s no doubt any small business that offers the same merchandise but at higher prices runs the risk of being closed down. It’s equally true that many retailers thrive in the shadow of one of the big box stores.
In downtown White Plains, NY, Target and Wal-Mart compete across the street from each other. On any given day, Wal-Mart has considerably more traffic, strong evidence that even in upscale Westchester County there is a solid customer base for a store that promises, and often delivers, savings on life’s necessities.
The current brouhaha over Wal-Mart was first reported in Crain’s New York Business earlier this week. Wal-Mart was said to be a possible tenant in the Gateway II project in the Jamaica Bay area of Brooklyn, a mostly working class neighborhood. Here’s Crain’s original reporting, though I can tell you with certainty that it parallels events and comments throughout the country over the last 20 or more years:
“’We don't like how they treat workers as it relates to salaries and benefits, and we're not going to have them in our community,” says City Councilman Charles Barron, D-Brooklyn. “They will have the fight of their lives.”
“United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1500 is planning a protest in the next week and is already arguing that Related's (the developer) earlier traffic study presented to gain land-use approval did not take into account a Walmart being situated in Gateway II. The union is planning to send canvassers out to the neighborhood to drum up opposition to a potential Walmart.
“’Walmart was never, ever mentioned once through the entire land-use process,” says Pat Purcell, assistant to the president of UFCW Local 1500. “The area cannot sustain a Walmart, a Target and a BJs. In this area, it's a job killer; it's just the wrong use.”’
Twice before Wal-Mart abandoned projects in Queens and Staten Island. I can’t forecast what will happen at Gateway II. But I can predict that unless more large-scale food retailers open more stores in the inner city featuring wide assortments at competitive prices, Wal-Mart will eventually take a big bite out of the Big Apple.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
They're Coming
As a Jew, an American Jew, a Jewish American, I’m always apprehensive. I have that underlying fear, that tension hard-wired into my DNA by centuries of oppression, scapegoating and progroms, that no matter how good life is in the United States, under the surface the stability and safety of my co-religionists are forever at stake.
Though the parallels to Jewish life in pre-Nazi Germany are many—including media power, economic power, intellectual power, political power and the accompanying resentment by many in the population at large because of those power concentrations—we are told that state-sponsored anti-Semitism cannot happen here, that our system of laws with their checks and balances would deny the hate-mongers. But read Linda Greenhouse’s column in today’s NY Times to discover how close we were, and are, to the Supreme Court capitulating to prejudice: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/breathing-while-undocumented/?hp.
Arizona. So soon after the Texas Board of Education voted to re-write history, Arizona’s legislative and executive actions on illegal immigration frighten me. Politicians abandon long-held beliefs. If a man such as John McCain, revered for his service to his country and for his principled stands, a man who could have become our president, can be buffaloed into selling out basic constitutional rights, it provides a current history lesson on how the Weimar Republic’s president, Paul von Hindenburg, accepted evil incarnate into the German government in 1933.
I am not condoning the influx of illegal aliens, nor any of the abuses any of them perpetrate. But we cannot permit our distaste for this situation to transform us into a police state. As Debra J. White wrote in one of the Letters to the Editor in today’s NY Times, “Immigrants, undocumented and legal, are blamed for crime, unemployment, crowded emergency rooms, pet overpopulation and every other social ill that comes to mind (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/opinion/l27arizona.html?scp=1&sq=debra%20j.%20white&st=cse).” Are we to believe these problems would vanish with the banishment or incarceration of illegals? Do these troubling conditions not exist where there are no illegals?
Sadly, our nation’s history is studded with examples of radicalism and bigotry gone amok, from the Ku Klux Klan to Father Charles Coughlin to Joe McCarthy to David Duke to Glen Beck to, yes, even Sarah Palin. Cults of personality cloud too many perceptions, leaving us vulnerable to a step by step loss of our freedoms.
Arizona—and Texas—cannot be considered aberrations anymore. We must all keep in mind the sentiments of this poem by the German pastor Martin Niemöller, and act responsibly:
First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
Though the parallels to Jewish life in pre-Nazi Germany are many—including media power, economic power, intellectual power, political power and the accompanying resentment by many in the population at large because of those power concentrations—we are told that state-sponsored anti-Semitism cannot happen here, that our system of laws with their checks and balances would deny the hate-mongers. But read Linda Greenhouse’s column in today’s NY Times to discover how close we were, and are, to the Supreme Court capitulating to prejudice: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/breathing-while-undocumented/?hp.
Arizona. So soon after the Texas Board of Education voted to re-write history, Arizona’s legislative and executive actions on illegal immigration frighten me. Politicians abandon long-held beliefs. If a man such as John McCain, revered for his service to his country and for his principled stands, a man who could have become our president, can be buffaloed into selling out basic constitutional rights, it provides a current history lesson on how the Weimar Republic’s president, Paul von Hindenburg, accepted evil incarnate into the German government in 1933.
I am not condoning the influx of illegal aliens, nor any of the abuses any of them perpetrate. But we cannot permit our distaste for this situation to transform us into a police state. As Debra J. White wrote in one of the Letters to the Editor in today’s NY Times, “Immigrants, undocumented and legal, are blamed for crime, unemployment, crowded emergency rooms, pet overpopulation and every other social ill that comes to mind (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/opinion/l27arizona.html?scp=1&sq=debra%20j.%20white&st=cse).” Are we to believe these problems would vanish with the banishment or incarceration of illegals? Do these troubling conditions not exist where there are no illegals?
Sadly, our nation’s history is studded with examples of radicalism and bigotry gone amok, from the Ku Klux Klan to Father Charles Coughlin to Joe McCarthy to David Duke to Glen Beck to, yes, even Sarah Palin. Cults of personality cloud too many perceptions, leaving us vulnerable to a step by step loss of our freedoms.
Arizona—and Texas—cannot be considered aberrations anymore. We must all keep in mind the sentiments of this poem by the German pastor Martin Niemöller, and act responsibly:
First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
Monday, April 26, 2010
French Service
Growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1960s, we lived an upper middle class life. My brother, sister and I attended private school. We enjoyed eight weeks of summer sleepaway camp. Our father bought a new Buick every five or six years. We accompanied our parents to the theater, opera and the occasional weekend in the Catskills.
But of all the affectations of upper crust living, the one I most remember for its qualitative impression of upward mobility was what our mother called her “French Service,” the practice of placing a decorative cabinet plate at each place setting which was removed before any food was served. She reserved this noble gesture for just a handful of celebratory meals each year, for which she’d bring out from storage 10-inch scalloped plates with idyllic scenes of courtship by the 18th century French painter Fragonard. Here’s a picture of what the plates looked like (the sample is pink, but the plates came in a rainbow of colors): http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=380224731353&rvr_id=&crlp=1_263602_263622&UA=M*F%3F&GUID=b2c9d68b1250a0b5833359e3ff833377&itemid=380224731353&ff4=263602_263622
In case you didn’t scroll down, the ebay seller accurately described the plates thusly:
“This beautiful Kuba Porzellan Bavaria Germany cabinet plate measures 10 inches in diameter. The plate features a courting couple in the center with smaller scenes of the courting couple around the border. Each scene around the border is different. The scenes are framed with a gold band that has raised tiny beading. The center scene is bordered with an ornate design in gold with a band of tiny beading below. The center is pink with a gold floral design around the border. The detail on this piece is wonderful. The rim is also trimmed in gold. . . The bottom is marked as shown in the photo and the front is signed Fragonard. A nice piece.”
We have 36 Kuba Porzellan cabinet plates. They haven’t been used since a few years before our mother died in 1996 when she no longer had the stamina or wherewithal to host family get-togethers. Each of her children were to take a dozen plates, but tastes having changed over the years, no one really wanted them. They were a little, okay, more than a little, ostentatious for the type of entertaining any of us did. So they sat in my brother’s basement, waiting for the day one of us would bring a plate to an appraiser and we’d discover untapped inheritance. PBS’ Antiques Roadshow fueled the imagination.
A few weeks ago I took a plate from my brother’s home, determined to discover the truth behind our bequest. A quick Internet search revealed their worth. About $1,000 for all 36 plates. Not an overwhelming find. Especially when one considers the sentimental value behind the plates.
We’ll probably try to sell the plates. No use keeping them boxed in storage. Perhaps they will provide memories for another family.
But of all the affectations of upper crust living, the one I most remember for its qualitative impression of upward mobility was what our mother called her “French Service,” the practice of placing a decorative cabinet plate at each place setting which was removed before any food was served. She reserved this noble gesture for just a handful of celebratory meals each year, for which she’d bring out from storage 10-inch scalloped plates with idyllic scenes of courtship by the 18th century French painter Fragonard. Here’s a picture of what the plates looked like (the sample is pink, but the plates came in a rainbow of colors): http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=380224731353&rvr_id=&crlp=1_263602_263622&UA=M*F%3F&GUID=b2c9d68b1250a0b5833359e3ff833377&itemid=380224731353&ff4=263602_263622
In case you didn’t scroll down, the ebay seller accurately described the plates thusly:
“This beautiful Kuba Porzellan Bavaria Germany cabinet plate measures 10 inches in diameter. The plate features a courting couple in the center with smaller scenes of the courting couple around the border. Each scene around the border is different. The scenes are framed with a gold band that has raised tiny beading. The center scene is bordered with an ornate design in gold with a band of tiny beading below. The center is pink with a gold floral design around the border. The detail on this piece is wonderful. The rim is also trimmed in gold. . . The bottom is marked as shown in the photo and the front is signed Fragonard. A nice piece.”
We have 36 Kuba Porzellan cabinet plates. They haven’t been used since a few years before our mother died in 1996 when she no longer had the stamina or wherewithal to host family get-togethers. Each of her children were to take a dozen plates, but tastes having changed over the years, no one really wanted them. They were a little, okay, more than a little, ostentatious for the type of entertaining any of us did. So they sat in my brother’s basement, waiting for the day one of us would bring a plate to an appraiser and we’d discover untapped inheritance. PBS’ Antiques Roadshow fueled the imagination.
A few weeks ago I took a plate from my brother’s home, determined to discover the truth behind our bequest. A quick Internet search revealed their worth. About $1,000 for all 36 plates. Not an overwhelming find. Especially when one considers the sentimental value behind the plates.
We’ll probably try to sell the plates. No use keeping them boxed in storage. Perhaps they will provide memories for another family.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Off She Goes
The story has moved off the front page, a casualty of the all-consuming news cycle. But the heartbreaking account of an adopted, difficult child shipped back to Russia brought to mind a more comical incident involving one of my friends and his travails in trying to harness the independent spirit of his elder daughter.
After numerous notes home from her teacher reporting bad behavior, the daughter (let’s call her Carol, and her father, Bob, to protect the not so innocent) had achieved the near impossible. She had managed to vex Bob to the point of absurd frustration. He warned her the next note home would bring swift, irreversible judgment—banishment from home. She’d be carted off to the orphanage.
All went well for a few weeks, but seven-year-old girls have a hard time towing the line for too long, so the inevitable letter came home one wintry day. Bob went ballistic. He ordered Carol to put on her winter coat as he was taking her to the orphanage. She refused. She didn’t cry. She just refused to cooperate. Her younger sister did the crying, imploring her father not to take her sister away. No amount of entreaties from Bob’s wife could dampen his anger and resolve.
A war of wills had been joined, with Bob trying to stuff Carol into her coat and Carol resisting. Being bigger, Bob prevailed. He carried Carol to the car as her sister and mother tried to get Bob to be reasonable.
As they were driving away, it dawned on Bob that he had driven himself into a proverbial corner. What was he to do now? A few blocks away, he drove into a church parking lot. Carrying the threat further, Bob got out of the car and came around to Carol’s side. She locked the door. She locked all the doors. His keys still dangling from the ignition switch, Bob demanded she open the door. She shook her head, no. He screamed at her to open the door. No. He told her he was just kidding, that he wasn’t really going to give her way. She stood her ground. He pleaded with her to let him in, that he’d take her home. She won.
I’d like to be able to report that Carol, or Bob, learned their lesson that day. Truth is, they have pushed each other’s buttons for the next three decades. But they have a wonderful, loving relationship. And a great story to pass down through the family.
After numerous notes home from her teacher reporting bad behavior, the daughter (let’s call her Carol, and her father, Bob, to protect the not so innocent) had achieved the near impossible. She had managed to vex Bob to the point of absurd frustration. He warned her the next note home would bring swift, irreversible judgment—banishment from home. She’d be carted off to the orphanage.
All went well for a few weeks, but seven-year-old girls have a hard time towing the line for too long, so the inevitable letter came home one wintry day. Bob went ballistic. He ordered Carol to put on her winter coat as he was taking her to the orphanage. She refused. She didn’t cry. She just refused to cooperate. Her younger sister did the crying, imploring her father not to take her sister away. No amount of entreaties from Bob’s wife could dampen his anger and resolve.
A war of wills had been joined, with Bob trying to stuff Carol into her coat and Carol resisting. Being bigger, Bob prevailed. He carried Carol to the car as her sister and mother tried to get Bob to be reasonable.
As they were driving away, it dawned on Bob that he had driven himself into a proverbial corner. What was he to do now? A few blocks away, he drove into a church parking lot. Carrying the threat further, Bob got out of the car and came around to Carol’s side. She locked the door. She locked all the doors. His keys still dangling from the ignition switch, Bob demanded she open the door. She shook her head, no. He screamed at her to open the door. No. He told her he was just kidding, that he wasn’t really going to give her way. She stood her ground. He pleaded with her to let him in, that he’d take her home. She won.
I’d like to be able to report that Carol, or Bob, learned their lesson that day. Truth is, they have pushed each other’s buttons for the next three decades. But they have a wonderful, loving relationship. And a great story to pass down through the family.
Monday, April 19, 2010
A Little Education
Here’s how you know your decision to get out of the publishing business when you did was fortuitous if not prescient: an article in Monday’s NY Times on People StyleWatch’s success contained these two paragraphs:
“Still, readers spend an average of 93 minutes with the magazine, something of a feat, since it has few long sentences in it.
“The few times we’ve done longer pieces, something on trying a trend that went on for two pages, it just didn’t resonate,” Ms. (Susan) Kaufman, (editor,) said.” (For the full article, here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/business/media/19stylewatch.html?scp=1&sq=stylewatch&st=cse.
Now, I never equated business to business journalism with fashion or teen magazine publishing. Clearly the two audiences share very little in reader demographics, especially the part about education. And for the record, the marching orders at trade magazines, including the ones I led, included advocacy of shorter articles. Tight copy was expected to meet the busy, time-constrained schedules of our readers. Articles longer than two pages were to be resisted.
But People StyleWatch seems to be taking taciturnity to the extreme, even beyond the standard enunciated by Jeff Goldblum in The Big Chill, who famously said that as a People reporter his articles were to be written short enough to be read in one sitting, if you get my cleaned up drift.
People StyleWatch’s readers are tomorrow’s leaders, and that includes their being mothers. How can we expect to forge the next intelligent generation when the raw material is so lacking?
Who Needs a Degree? On the other hand, if there was ever a reason to question the value of an education, here it is—37% of those who support the Tea Party movement hold a college or postgraduate degree, according to a NY Times/CBS News poll released last week (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html?scp=1&sq=tea%20party%20survey&st=cse). Unless those 37% majored in cafeteria, it does not reflect well on our halls of learning.
Wait. I majored in cafeteria. You can get a good education sitting around, schmoozing for eight hours a day. Those 37% probably ate too much while they were in the cafeteria. From the looks and sounds of too many of them, their brains must have morphed into the food they ate.
Please excuse my obvious distaste for people who just want to take without any desire to give back. They want their social security and Medicare, but demand less government. In other words, cut out programs that don’t line their pockets. They cry about wanting to preserve the Constitution, but were silent when Bush acted to deny basic rights not just to enemy combatants but also to U.S. citizens.
My father used to say he welcomed the idea of paying $100,000 in taxes. That would imply that he was making a helluva lot of money and he’d be ever so thankful for the opportunity this country provided him. The same NY Times/CBS News survey revealed that Tea Party supporters are better off than a majority of their fellow Americans, with 56% earning more than $50,000 a year. Only 6% are unemployed. Half are middle class.
It bares repeating—the measure of a country and nation is how it cares for the less fortunate. A society of Tea Partiers would be a sad, self-centered congregation.
Where It Began: Have you been to the Tenement Museum on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, at 97 Orchard Street?
About six years ago I attended a planning meeting there as part of my magazine’s co-sponsorship of a conference on the retail industry’s global labor responsibility. The Tenement Museum presents a fascinating perspective on the life of immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. Until recently, my interest in the museum was purely academic, as my parents arrived here in 1921 and 1939 and never lived in the squalid, cramped quarters of the walk-up apartments of the Lower East Side.
But twice in the last two weeks I was informed that my father’s first independent business transpired in the shadows of what is now the Tenement Museum. At 99 Orchard Street he ran a street level store, selling shirts and other clothing. I always wondered why he was so intimately familiar with all the shopkeepers on Orchard Street, one of the first discount meccas in the city. Now I know.
Speaking of Discounts: How would you like to travel back in time? It wouldn’t be too long a trip, just 30-40 years, back to a time when retail stores could not easily and extensively provide discounted brand name merchandise without the manufacturer’s explicit approval.
That in essence is the tip of the iceberg for what is at stake in a battle between Costco and Omega, the Swiss watchmaker. I’m not a lawyer, so I won’t burden you with an interpretation of copyright law which is at the heart of the legal wrangling (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2011649088_costco20.html).
But I can tell you, based on three decades of retail reporting, that retailers and manufacturers have been battling for more than half a century over the availability of brand name merchandise at discounted prices. E.J. Korvettes (no, the name does not stand for eight Korean War veterans) was among the first companies to circumvent restricted manufacturer distribution policies permitted under Fair Trade Laws. The rise of the discount store industry, from Kmart, Target and Wal-Mart, all of which began in 1962, to specialty stores like Toys “R” Us and Best Buy, depended on access to product and the ability to price it according to a retailer’s, not a supplier’s, needs. Most Fair Trade Laws were repealed by 1975.
We live today in a consumer society. Two-thirds of our economy is supported by the goods and services we buy. If Omega is successful, and other manufacturers seek similar restrictions on the distribution and pricing of their products, we may well undermine the foundation of a key part of our nation’s financial stability.
“Still, readers spend an average of 93 minutes with the magazine, something of a feat, since it has few long sentences in it.
“The few times we’ve done longer pieces, something on trying a trend that went on for two pages, it just didn’t resonate,” Ms. (Susan) Kaufman, (editor,) said.” (For the full article, here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/business/media/19stylewatch.html?scp=1&sq=stylewatch&st=cse.
Now, I never equated business to business journalism with fashion or teen magazine publishing. Clearly the two audiences share very little in reader demographics, especially the part about education. And for the record, the marching orders at trade magazines, including the ones I led, included advocacy of shorter articles. Tight copy was expected to meet the busy, time-constrained schedules of our readers. Articles longer than two pages were to be resisted.
But People StyleWatch seems to be taking taciturnity to the extreme, even beyond the standard enunciated by Jeff Goldblum in The Big Chill, who famously said that as a People reporter his articles were to be written short enough to be read in one sitting, if you get my cleaned up drift.
People StyleWatch’s readers are tomorrow’s leaders, and that includes their being mothers. How can we expect to forge the next intelligent generation when the raw material is so lacking?
Who Needs a Degree? On the other hand, if there was ever a reason to question the value of an education, here it is—37% of those who support the Tea Party movement hold a college or postgraduate degree, according to a NY Times/CBS News poll released last week (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html?scp=1&sq=tea%20party%20survey&st=cse). Unless those 37% majored in cafeteria, it does not reflect well on our halls of learning.
Wait. I majored in cafeteria. You can get a good education sitting around, schmoozing for eight hours a day. Those 37% probably ate too much while they were in the cafeteria. From the looks and sounds of too many of them, their brains must have morphed into the food they ate.
Please excuse my obvious distaste for people who just want to take without any desire to give back. They want their social security and Medicare, but demand less government. In other words, cut out programs that don’t line their pockets. They cry about wanting to preserve the Constitution, but were silent when Bush acted to deny basic rights not just to enemy combatants but also to U.S. citizens.
My father used to say he welcomed the idea of paying $100,000 in taxes. That would imply that he was making a helluva lot of money and he’d be ever so thankful for the opportunity this country provided him. The same NY Times/CBS News survey revealed that Tea Party supporters are better off than a majority of their fellow Americans, with 56% earning more than $50,000 a year. Only 6% are unemployed. Half are middle class.
It bares repeating—the measure of a country and nation is how it cares for the less fortunate. A society of Tea Partiers would be a sad, self-centered congregation.
Where It Began: Have you been to the Tenement Museum on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, at 97 Orchard Street?
About six years ago I attended a planning meeting there as part of my magazine’s co-sponsorship of a conference on the retail industry’s global labor responsibility. The Tenement Museum presents a fascinating perspective on the life of immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. Until recently, my interest in the museum was purely academic, as my parents arrived here in 1921 and 1939 and never lived in the squalid, cramped quarters of the walk-up apartments of the Lower East Side.
But twice in the last two weeks I was informed that my father’s first independent business transpired in the shadows of what is now the Tenement Museum. At 99 Orchard Street he ran a street level store, selling shirts and other clothing. I always wondered why he was so intimately familiar with all the shopkeepers on Orchard Street, one of the first discount meccas in the city. Now I know.
Speaking of Discounts: How would you like to travel back in time? It wouldn’t be too long a trip, just 30-40 years, back to a time when retail stores could not easily and extensively provide discounted brand name merchandise without the manufacturer’s explicit approval.
That in essence is the tip of the iceberg for what is at stake in a battle between Costco and Omega, the Swiss watchmaker. I’m not a lawyer, so I won’t burden you with an interpretation of copyright law which is at the heart of the legal wrangling (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2011649088_costco20.html).
But I can tell you, based on three decades of retail reporting, that retailers and manufacturers have been battling for more than half a century over the availability of brand name merchandise at discounted prices. E.J. Korvettes (no, the name does not stand for eight Korean War veterans) was among the first companies to circumvent restricted manufacturer distribution policies permitted under Fair Trade Laws. The rise of the discount store industry, from Kmart, Target and Wal-Mart, all of which began in 1962, to specialty stores like Toys “R” Us and Best Buy, depended on access to product and the ability to price it according to a retailer’s, not a supplier’s, needs. Most Fair Trade Laws were repealed by 1975.
We live today in a consumer society. Two-thirds of our economy is supported by the goods and services we buy. If Omega is successful, and other manufacturers seek similar restrictions on the distribution and pricing of their products, we may well undermine the foundation of a key part of our nation’s financial stability.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Addressing Gettysburg
Sometimes current events have a way of dovetailing with personal experiences.
Case in point: After a weekend in the nation’s capital visiting my brother and his family, and also spending time with our in-laws celebrating Jim’s retirement from ExxonMobil and the birth of his two grandsons (one of which—Finley—we share), Gilda arranged a two-hour guided car tour of Gettysburg. Over the last half dozen years or more, we’ve often driven by the turning point battlefield of the Civil War, but never took the initiative to stop and contemplate how different our country would be had the South emerged victorious in this decisive engagement.
King Richard III of England was said to have lost the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 “for want of a nail,” the full text of unknown authorship being:
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
As described by our able guide, Ray, the Army of Northern Virginia might well have carried the day on the climactic third day of battle (July 3, 1863) if not for some inopportune occurrences during the fog of war. I won’t tip you off as to what they were. I’ll let you read about it elsewhere, or better yet, you can visit Gettysburg on your own. But I do want to point out the coincidence that our time in Gettysburg earlier this week overlapped the dust-up over Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s proclamation of April as Confederate History Month. His original pronouncement excluded any mention of slavery as a cause of the Civil War.
I’m not going to pile on my distaste for McDonnell’s reasoning and the evident bigotry of his thinking and the apologists who have rushed to turn the Civil War into a states rights issue and not a human rights issue. Instead, I commend to you an essay by Grace Elizabeth Hale (and reader reaction) from the cnn.com web site: http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/14/confederate-history-is-about-race/?iref=allsearch.
Case in point: After a weekend in the nation’s capital visiting my brother and his family, and also spending time with our in-laws celebrating Jim’s retirement from ExxonMobil and the birth of his two grandsons (one of which—Finley—we share), Gilda arranged a two-hour guided car tour of Gettysburg. Over the last half dozen years or more, we’ve often driven by the turning point battlefield of the Civil War, but never took the initiative to stop and contemplate how different our country would be had the South emerged victorious in this decisive engagement.
King Richard III of England was said to have lost the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 “for want of a nail,” the full text of unknown authorship being:
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
As described by our able guide, Ray, the Army of Northern Virginia might well have carried the day on the climactic third day of battle (July 3, 1863) if not for some inopportune occurrences during the fog of war. I won’t tip you off as to what they were. I’ll let you read about it elsewhere, or better yet, you can visit Gettysburg on your own. But I do want to point out the coincidence that our time in Gettysburg earlier this week overlapped the dust-up over Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s proclamation of April as Confederate History Month. His original pronouncement excluded any mention of slavery as a cause of the Civil War.
I’m not going to pile on my distaste for McDonnell’s reasoning and the evident bigotry of his thinking and the apologists who have rushed to turn the Civil War into a states rights issue and not a human rights issue. Instead, I commend to you an essay by Grace Elizabeth Hale (and reader reaction) from the cnn.com web site: http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/14/confederate-history-is-about-race/?iref=allsearch.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Between You and Me
Between you and me, I’ve had it with the Obamas.
It’s not their politics that gets me excited and excitable. Rather, it’s their lack of savoir-faire, their poor role modeling. They may appear elegant, sophisticated, urbane on the surface, but they disappoint upon deeper presentation.
You may recall back on September 21, 2009, I chastised the president for showing off his shins while sitting for an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2009/09/presidential-shin.html). Presidents may reveal national security secrets if they so choose, but socks are intended to cover up, not expose skin.
Proper sock length for a president extends well beyond the ankle; in this area I found Obama to be lacking in leadership. He appeared to make it acceptable for all future interviewees (and interviewers) of the male gender to flaunt their skinny or flabby ankles. It gives me the willies just to think about this presidential no-no. Since that fateful miscue, Obama has refrained from compounding his fashion faux pas, at least to my discerning eye. Thank heaven for that.
But his wife has taken up the cudgel in insidious fashion to undermine the integrity of the English language. She has perpetuated the casual dismantling of a centuries-old rule of grammar, that the object of a preposition cannot be “I”, it must be “me”, whereas the subject of a sentence can be “I” but never “me”.
For those who might have missed television coverage of Michelle Obama’s surprise visit yesterday with Jill Biden to earthquake–ravaged Haiti, here’s a clip from CBS:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6393134n&tag=contentMain;contentBody. You’ll notice early in the footage the first lady speaking at a microphone saying, “...a deeply moving day for Jill and I.”
Ouch! This Princeton University and Harvard Law School educated woman flaunts the rules of grammar. “For” is a preposition—she should have said, “a deeply moving day for Jill and ME.” Don’t just take my word for it. Here’s a link that provides more perspective: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/between-you-and-me.aspx.
You may say lots of people make this mistake. They do. But that doesn’t make it acceptable or correct. I expect more from the First Couple. I want leadership in more than just universal health care, nuclear disarmament, banking regulation, deficit reduction, education reform, equal opportunities for all, climate control, energy initiatives, foreign affairs, nutrition enhancement and a whole host of other presidential concerns. I want the Obamas to look and speak presidential.
We are, after all, living in an age when a pin-up ex-governor and an ex-pin-up model are the darlings of the Republican Party and its Tea Party cohorts. Will the American public reject thoughtful politicians in favor of those willing to pander to their plebian interests? I hope not. But 10 and six years ago we chose a president based on our belief that he’d be a good person to share a beer with, forgetting that he was on the wagon. So anything’s possible, between you and me.
It’s not their politics that gets me excited and excitable. Rather, it’s their lack of savoir-faire, their poor role modeling. They may appear elegant, sophisticated, urbane on the surface, but they disappoint upon deeper presentation.
You may recall back on September 21, 2009, I chastised the president for showing off his shins while sitting for an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2009/09/presidential-shin.html). Presidents may reveal national security secrets if they so choose, but socks are intended to cover up, not expose skin.
Proper sock length for a president extends well beyond the ankle; in this area I found Obama to be lacking in leadership. He appeared to make it acceptable for all future interviewees (and interviewers) of the male gender to flaunt their skinny or flabby ankles. It gives me the willies just to think about this presidential no-no. Since that fateful miscue, Obama has refrained from compounding his fashion faux pas, at least to my discerning eye. Thank heaven for that.
But his wife has taken up the cudgel in insidious fashion to undermine the integrity of the English language. She has perpetuated the casual dismantling of a centuries-old rule of grammar, that the object of a preposition cannot be “I”, it must be “me”, whereas the subject of a sentence can be “I” but never “me”.
For those who might have missed television coverage of Michelle Obama’s surprise visit yesterday with Jill Biden to earthquake–ravaged Haiti, here’s a clip from CBS:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6393134n&tag=contentMain;contentBody. You’ll notice early in the footage the first lady speaking at a microphone saying, “...a deeply moving day for Jill and I.”
Ouch! This Princeton University and Harvard Law School educated woman flaunts the rules of grammar. “For” is a preposition—she should have said, “a deeply moving day for Jill and ME.” Don’t just take my word for it. Here’s a link that provides more perspective: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/between-you-and-me.aspx.
You may say lots of people make this mistake. They do. But that doesn’t make it acceptable or correct. I expect more from the First Couple. I want leadership in more than just universal health care, nuclear disarmament, banking regulation, deficit reduction, education reform, equal opportunities for all, climate control, energy initiatives, foreign affairs, nutrition enhancement and a whole host of other presidential concerns. I want the Obamas to look and speak presidential.
We are, after all, living in an age when a pin-up ex-governor and an ex-pin-up model are the darlings of the Republican Party and its Tea Party cohorts. Will the American public reject thoughtful politicians in favor of those willing to pander to their plebian interests? I hope not. But 10 and six years ago we chose a president based on our belief that he’d be a good person to share a beer with, forgetting that he was on the wagon. So anything’s possible, between you and me.
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