Smoking Ban and Gambling

While reading the link from Radley's post about smoking ban silliness, I came across this little piece:

The new smoking ban applies to bars that serve food and those that don't have keno licenses. Some bars have applied for keno licenses to keep their smokers happy, and a few decided to give up food instead of smoking.

The state/city is increasing it's customer base, it's not about public health, it's about more establishments getting keno licenses and increasing state/city revenue.

By the way, calling 911 to report a smoker is a dangerous activity that threatens dispatcher's ability to actually, you know, handle more important things, like immediate danger reports.

Evil Waltons

How could Wal-Mart do this to the people? The Waltons, with their $19B each should quit exploiting the people. Now 8600 more have volunteered to be exploited, with a waiting list of over 45,000.

War on Wal-Mart

The other night I watched a little of the CNBC documentary about Wal-Mart. It's a real interesting show that explains their culture and processes to keep prices low. I believe there is nothing inherently evil about Wal-Mart, even if I prefer Target.

Unfortunately, labor unions see Wal-Mart in a different light and Democrats are listening. The WSJ has an excellent op-ed today explaining the phenomenon (I don't usually like to excerpt a whole article but I don't have a free link).

Wal-Mart may be expanding in the People's Republic of China, but here in capitalist America the low-price retailer has become the Democratic Party's favorite pinata. The media like to portray this as a populist uprising against heartless big business. But what they don't bother to disclose is that this entire get-Wal-Mart campaign is a political operation led and funded by organized labor.

We've done a little digging into the two most prominent anti-Wal-Mart groups, and they might as well operate out of AFL-CIO headquarters. An outfit called Wal-Mart Watch was created by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), probably the most powerful union in America after the National Education Association. Wal-Mart Watch is backed by Five Stones, a 501(c)3 organization that received $2,775,000 in 2005 from the SEIU, or 56% of its $5 million budget. According to financial records, SEIU also gave Five Stones $1 million in 2004 to launch the anti-Wal-Mart group, and SEIU president Andy Stern is the Wal-Mart Watch chairman.

A second group, Wake Up Wal-Mart, is more or less a subsidiary of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). Wake Up Wal-Mart refuses to divulge its funding sources, but here is what we do know: The group was founded by the UFCW, is housed at UFCW headquarters, and its campaign director's $135,000 salary is paid by the UFCW.

Wake Up Wal-Mart also has close ties to the Democratic Party. Its union-funded campaign director is Paul Blank, who was political director of Howard Dean's failed Presidential campaign. The group sponsored a 19 state, 35-day bus tour across the U.S. earlier this year, staging anti-Wal-Mart rallies. Nearly every major Democratic Presidential hopeful has joined in the Wal-Mart-bashing, including Senators Joe Biden and Evan Bayh, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, and trial lawyer-turned-man-of the-people John Edwards. They all seem to believe they have to take this line to pass union muster for 2008.

Even Hillary Rodham Clinton has joined in the political fun. Never mind that she served six years on the Wal-Mart board during her time in Beltway exile as an Arkansas lawyer and, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was paid $18,000 per year plus $1,500 for every meeting near the end of her tenure. Most recently, Mrs. Clinton returned a $5,000 campaign contribution from Wal-Mart to protest its allegedly inadequate health care benefits. Maybe someone should ask her if she's returned her director's pay, with interest.
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Most of the local protests against Wal-Mart are organized through the left-wing activist group ACORN, an acronym for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN is the group that put the squeeze on the Chicago City Council to pass an ordinance this summer to require Wal-Mart, Target and other big-box stores to pay a minimum $10 an hour wage and $3 an hour in benefits by 2010. (Democratic Mayor Richard Daley vetoed the bill.) ACORN also pretends it is a locally organized and funded voice of the downtrodden masses. But guess where ACORN gets much of its money? Last year the SEIU chipped in $2,125,229 and the UFCW $165,692.

Then there are the anti-Wal-Mart "think tanks," if that's the right word for these political shops -- notably, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the University of California at Berkeley Labor Center. The job of these two outfits is to publish papers backing the economic claims of Wal-Mart critics. The UC Berkeley group recently asserted that Wal-Mart "reduces total take-home pay for retail workers."

The UC Berkeley Labor Center has received at least $43,550 from SEIU. The Economic Policy Institute received $100,000 from the SEIU and $40,000 from the UFCW in 2005 and has published several anti-Wal-Mart studies, particularly on the benefits of the Chicago ordinance. By the way, Andy Stern also sits on the EPI board. He's a busy guy.

Now, we're not predisposed to be pro- or anti-Wal-Mart. We've criticized Wal-Mart lobbying on policy grounds -- for example, when the company supported a minimum wage increase to court some nice publicity while also knowing this would harm any lower-priced competitors. However, it is simply fallacious to argue that Wal-Mart has harmed low-income families.

More than one study has shown that the real "Wal-Mart effect" has been to increase the purchasing power of working families by lowering prices for groceries, prescription drugs, electronic equipment and many other products that have become modern household necessities. One study, by the economic consulting firm Global Insight, calculates that Wal-Mart saves American households an average of $2,300 a year through lower prices, or a $263 billion reduction in the cost of living. That compares with $33 billion savings for low-income families from the federal food stamp program.
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Alas, what's good for working families isn't always good news for unions and their bosses. They hate Wal-Mart because its blue-coated workforce is strictly non-union -- a policy that dates back to the day founder Sam Walton opened his first store. Today the company employs 1.3 million American workers, and its recent push into groceries has made life miserable for Safeway and other grocery chains organized by the service workers or the UFCW.

Wal-Mart pays an average of $10 an hour, which is more than many of its unionized competitors offer. And typically when a new Wal-Mart store opens in a poor area, it receives thousands of job applications for a few hundred openings. So Wal-Mart's retail jobs of $7 to $12 an hour, which the unions deride as "poverty wages," are actually in high demand.

But as we say, this campaign isn't about "working families," or any of the other rhapsody-for-the-common-man union slogans. If Wal-Mart were suddenly unionized, Big Labor's membership would double overnight and union leaders would collect an estimated $300 million in additional dues each year to sway more politicians. Short of that, their goal is to keep Wal-Mart out of cities so their union shops have less competition. That's what the war against Wal-Mart is truly about.

I guess because Democrats aren't in charge of anything they don't get branded with the catering to special interest stick. But, when do you ever see them turning down union money or doing something the unions don't like? The 2 shining examples of this are Wal-Mart bashing and support for public schools.

More Shelf Blogging

The shelves may be a little hard to see, but there's 4 of them there. We needed some shelves in the girls' closet to hold their winter clothes while we go through this Indian summer. Bonus points for me because these shelves had to be extra sturdy so my 20 month old girls couldn't pull them down. I believe I accomplished that mission. Also, we kissed the vertical blinds in the living room goodbye and hung up some horizontal blinds with a valance. I give you Shade Blogging!


For more Shelf Blogging check here, here and here.

Political Questions

If you're like me, and for your sake I hope you're not, you find yourself flummoxed to come up with questions when a politician comes to your door soliciting a vote. I have opinions and I want these people to tell me what they believe, but I don't want them to just give me the standard little "I'm for this, this and this and against that, that and that."

Also, typically the people trawling around in my neighborhood are candidates for city council, state representatives or some other local office. These are some of the most important offices for me, but, I typically can't come up with a question to ask these people on the fly, so I'm looking for the kind of questions that get at the candidates inner beliefs. The kind of thing Democrat and Republican used to mean.

For example, I would want to know if they believe in free trade, what they think the role of government is in this country etc. Those aren't questions John Q. Campaigner are typically ready to answer, but they're important for Campaigner to have an answer. Especially because today's local politician is tomorrow's national politician. I don't want to be electing someone for local office when I don't believe in what they think on national issues.

So, in light of this I'm going to email some of the bloggers I most respect and see what they think. I'm looking for pretty general questions that aren't stacked to get an answer a certain way like, "do you think it was worth thousands of American lives to start an illegal war in Iraq?". If the question's loaded, Campaigner will know how I want him to answer it.

R.I.P Buck O'Neil

I was saddened to learn last night via the Bottom Line on ESPN that Buck O'Neil had passed. Buck was probably the most famous Kansas Citian, certainly the most loved. It's like a piece of the city died. But, I know that Buck O'Neil meant a lot to people outside of Kansas City as well. Wright Thompson, a former KC Star reporter, has a nice tribute to Buck on ESPN.

We've all lost that magnificent baritone voice now, and the world is poorer for it. Not in the way we normally are when a famous person dies. No, O'Neil's voice was truly a gift to all of us. It taught us that love is more important than hate. It taught us that forgiveness is more important than bitterness. It taught us to live life now, to eat dessert always, to never let a red dress pass by.

When he didn't get into the Hall of Fame this year, people rightfully howled. As the news reached him, a final denied dream in a life full of dreams denied, he just smiled.

"God's been good to me," he said that day. "If I'm a Hall of Famer for you, that's all right with me. Just keep loving old Buck. Don't weep for Buck. No, man, be happy, be thankful."

On a day that should have been the pinnacle of a life dedicated to helping others, he showed up at the podium in Cooperstown anyway to help honor the Negro Leaguers who did make the cut, and he led the crowd in a song that will never be heard again:

"The greatest thrill Â… in all my life Â… is loving you."

He sang those words to the folks there and to those at home. Sitting here now, trying to imagine a world without Buck, I can't stop thinking about that song. As a former reporter for The Kansas City Star, I had my share of interaction with Buck. I heard him make cynical school children stand and sing in loud voices. It's clear to me now that knowing and loving Buck has been the greatest thrill in my professional life. It's been a thrill for all of us who knew and loved Buck, either in person or in spirit.

Thompson felt it appropriate to point out that he worked in KC in his national article. I think that's appropriate, Buck was one of those people that made you proud to be a Kansas Citian. He was our own and we loved him.

I met Buck once and got my picture taken with him. He had taken hundreds of pictures with people that day (it was a Royals open house) but, he took the time to ask my name and several other questions. He was particularly interested in the girl I was with, I remember.

Sometimes I would see Buck at Royals games and I would wave, he would wave back like he knew me. It always made me feel like he remembered me from the day we took that picture. I think he made everyone feel that way whenever he was around.

Craig, over at Royals Authority, has the text from Buck's Cooperstown speech here as well as his personal Buck stories.

Alright, sit down. This is outstanding! I’ve been a lot of places. I’ve done a lot of things that I really liked doing. I hit the homerun. I hit the grand slam homerun. I hit for the cycle. I’ve had a hole-in-one in golf. I’ve done a lot of things I liked doing. I shook hands with President Truman. Yeah. Oh, man, I took — Oh, [shook hands] with the other President and I…hugged his wife, Hilary. So I’ve done a lot of things I liked doing. But I’d rather be right here, right now, representing these people that helped build a bridge across the chasm of prejudice — not just the ones like Charlie Pride and me that later crossed it. Yeah. This is quite an honor for me.

Next, Negro League baseball. All you needed was a bus, and we rode in some of the best buses money could buy, yeah, a couple of sets of uniforms. You could have 20 of the best athletes that ever lived. And that’s who we are representing here today. It was outstanding. And playing in the Negro leagues — what a lot of you don’t know. See, when I played in the Negro leagues — I first came to the Negro leagues — five percent of Major League ball players were college men because the major leaguers wanted them right out of high school, put them in the minor league, bring them on in. But Negro leagues, 40 percent of Negro leagues, leaguers, were college men. The reason that was, we always spring trained in a black college town and that’s who we played in spring training, the black colleges. So when school was out, they came and played baseball. When baseball season was over, they’d go back to teaching, to coaching, or to classes. That was Negro League baseball. And I’m proud to have been a Negro league ball player. Yeah, yeah.

And I tell you what, they always said to me Buck, “I know you hate people for what they did to you or what they did to your folks.” I said, “No, man, I — I never learned to hate.” I hate cancer. Cancer killed my mother. My wife died 10 years ago of cancer. (I’m single, ladies.) A good friend of mine — I hate AIDS. A good friend of mine died of AIDS three months ago. I hate AIDS. But I can’t hate a human being because my God never made anything ugly. Now, you can be ugly if you wanna, boy, but God didn’t make you that way. Uh, uh.

So, I want you to light this valley up this afternoon. Martin [Luther King] said “Agape” is understanding, creative — a redemptive good will toward all men. Agape is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. And when you reach love on this level, you love all men, not because you like ‘em, not because their ways appeal to you, but you love them because God loved them. And I love Jehovah my God with all my heart, with all my soul, and I love every one of you — as I love myself.

Now, I want you to do something for me. I’m fixin’ to get off this stage now. I think I done my six minutes. But I want you to do something for me. I want you to hold hands. Whoever’s next to you, hold a hand. Come on, you Hall of Famers, hold hands. All you people out there, hold hands. Everybody hooked up? Everybody hooked up? Well then I tell you what. See, I know my brothers up here, my brothers over there — I see some black brothers of mine and sisters out there — I know they can sing. Can you white folks sing? I want you to sing after me:

The greatest thing — come on everybody –

The greatest thing in all of my life is loving you.

The greatest thing in all of my life is loving you.

The greatest thing in all of my life is loving you.

The greatest thing in all my life is loving you.

Thank you, folks. Thank you, folks. Thank you, folks. Thank you, folks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now, sit down. Now, sit down. I could talk to you 10 minutes longer, but I got to go to the bathroom.