Posted inUncategorized

The death on Black Friday

Everybody seems to have a take on the fatal door-busters sale at Wal-Mart on the first day of holiday shopping, giving a grim meaning to the retail jargon Black Friday (there was also the less-noticed Toys 'R' Us shootout). Here's mine:

Who lines up at 5 in the morning to mob a store, much less waiting all night for the honor, as apparently was the case at the suburban New York mall where the Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death? Apparently they are the same people who required police to be called for crowd control at 3 a.m. And the same people who stomped the victim and walked on, and are now being sought by police. According to the New York Times:

By 4:55, with no police officers in sight, the crowd of more than
2,000 had become a rabble, and could be held back no longer. Fists
banged and shoulders pressed on the sliding-glass double doors, which
bowed in with the weight of the assault. Six to 10 workers inside tried
to push back, but it was hopeless.

Indeed it was. "Jdimytai Damour, 34, was thrown back onto the black linoleum tiles and
trampled in the stampede that streamed over and around him." Mr. Damour was a temporary worker, failing to enjoy even the niggardly "benefits" and wages that Wally's real employees get. Wal-Mart has been criticized for security so poor that a mob could stampede and kill a 270-pound man. What kind of company allows this to happen?

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Posted inPolitics: National

Making serious economic reform, part II

In a previous post, I discussed economic reforms that should be made in the sick, corrupt financial markets. But this is only the start of efforts the next president and Congress must make to prevent a startling decline that is already evident in America. Whatever the Dow shows, most Americans are suffering and for the first time in generations, young people wonder, with good cause, if they can live better lives than their parents.

Real change is needed, and the question is whether the American people and their elected representatives have the guts to face the truth and move ahead. The laughable gas-tax holiday and much wishful thinking about alternative energy and hydrogen cars represent the school of destructive denial. This is "sustainability" that seeks to sustain the current unsustainable economic and social arrangements. It can’t be done.

Yet much of the current mess was caused, not by inexorable laws of economics, but by policy changes to benefit the rich and transnational corporations, as well as a sprawl economy at the root of the current recession. We can change it.

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