The United States of Greedy Bastards

One has to wonder whether old Sam Walton is rolling over in his grave today given the tarnishing the brand of his legacy, Wal-Mart by his heirs, their crappy management team and ongoing dismal public relations. The bruises from the scrums in the Black Thursday/Friday moshs pit are days from healing yet the chain has become the avatar of all that has gone wrong with American capitalism in the era of greed. The internet and You Tube are chock full of tales, pictures and videos of unruly shoppers run amok and it seems like the worst are the ones that were taken in various national Wal-Mart stores. I have run across more than one in which the chronicler of the marauding hordes was the one who was ejected from the premises, cast out as a heretic while the assailants behind the bargain day bashing were allowed to stay and buy more Chinese made crap lest the greatest shopping day of 2013 suffer any diminished profits.

Black Friday has become more of a national embarrassment each year, this year finally the last lines were crossed when the the big box stores and other retailers defiled Thanksgiving Day.

I have seen many comparisons between the hordes that descended on Wal-Mart and Target and a zombie apocalypse along the lines of the AMC television series The Walking Dead and they are spot on. We are not yet to the point where there are drunken hooligans ripping the entrails out of any what stand in their way between the $98 HDTV doorbusters special at Wally World and the checkout line but there is that certain dead-eyed, relentless glare of the undead evident in many of the You Tube videos but they move much faster.

It would likely pain the dearly departed Mr. Walton to see this today in the global retailer that bears his family name. Not that Sam wasn't a union hating big businessman (I have seen few who weren't) but there was a certain type of pride that comes from building a business from scratch the traditional American way rather than in just inheriting it and trashing the brand in the name of obscene profits. Engaging in foreign bribery, hell that's just the way that we roll anymore in America and the country's largest employer is like others using the practices to grease the rails for incursions into non-domestic markets. Lying, cheating and bribery have become the tools to succeed in American business, if you really have the political juice one can likely even procure NSA surveillance information on your competitors. It used to be that unscrupulous business practices were a scarlet letter of shame but have come to merit exalted status for job destroying CEO's who then have hagiographies churned out by the state-corporate media that encourage even more to adopt that type of behavior.

In the race to the bottom line it is the American worker and economy as a whole that get trampled. Even before the implosion of the housing bubble and the worthless derivative toilet paper that it was converted to - and subsequently reflated by a 2009 change in the mark to market accounting rules and then purchased by the Federal Reserve it was the plague of offshoring jobs that was setting us all up for the big fall. While Americans spent the early part of the century cowering after the September 11, 2001 attacks and the corrupt government's ongoing demagoguery and fear mongering for political gain the looting spree began as jobs were sent to India and other countries offering fewer regulations and a cheaper workforce, it was the greatest act of labor arbitrage in history and those jobs are never coming back. The waves of downsizings, restructurings and jettisoning of 'human capital' cut a swath through the American work force and as a result drove many who once had decent jobs into low-paying, thankless retail and service jobs - a good many at Wal-Mart. I wonder how Sam would have felt about that as it used to be that when he was alive the stores not only stocked a lot more products but they were festooned in red, white and blue and "Buy American" signs but this was back when we still actually had a domestic manufacturing base.

Wal-Mart was targeted by labor protests this weekend as well over their lousy pay and dismal work conditions. They really do treat their employees like crap but I find it hard to come down on big blue smiley when many others do exactly the same and worse at least at Wal-Mart there are such heartwarming gestures to the poorly paid that some stores held food donation drives for employees. Fast food goliath McDonalds has come under some criticism for it's McResource line that offers their serfs such sage advise as returning or selling their holiday gifts for extra money, breaking their food into smaller pieces to not feel hungry and to even get advice on how to apply for food stamps from the federal government. In fact both Wal-Mart and McDonalds employees are some of the biggest recipients of government aid it really speaks volumes to how low that we have fallen when two of American's most recognized global corporations are getting such attention for all of the worst reasons.  

While I am a libertarian (although one who has progressive leanings)  I have somewhat conflicting feelings over the role of unions that with truly free markets and a real version of capitalism where the best succeed and the worst allowed to fail, so totally unlike our ongoing government's bestowing of special treatment on zombie banks and too big to fails that are an abomination in that when the entire system has failed perhaps this time the protesters have it right. In the end all that matters is the the pigs can keep eating and the Obama administration continues to fill the trough to overflowing with the endless Wall Street bailouts while giving nothing to Main Street save a corporate scam of a health insurance reform plan. Talk about loosing the vampires to feed.

With the latest wave of reports on sales including this one from Bloomberg that retailers saw a drop in sales on actual Black Friday with the turkey day openings but in an ominous sign for the greedy bastards more people are choosing to just avoid the melees altogether. Amazon online sales were well up this year as the more sane shoppers just did their shopping from home therefore avoiding being mugged under the flourescent lights. The expansion into Thanksgiving did score a hit though with the more hard core types responding positively, nothing like a post-feast rampage to work off some of those calories. It is a dead certainty that given the enthusiastic response that big blue smiley and others will open even earlier come next Thanksgiving as the corporate state continues to wage war on family tradition.

Door Busters: Shoppers Throw Down for Cheap Crap

Black Friday has become permanently attached to the sick American psyche to the extent that is as much a cultural rite as it is a glimpse at the now thoroughly mutated form of capitalism that exists in this country today.  Combining the needs for instant gratification, foreign manufactured electronic devices and shallowness of the current national character with the insatiable greed of retail giants seeking to hit it big on the biggest shopping day of the year at all costs the annual post-Thanksgiving melees are a window into the very soul of a collapsing empire.  This year retailers escalated their assault on basic human decency and planted their flags in the middle of Thanksgiving itself with the majority throwing open their doors to bargain hunters looking for that holy grail of a deal at 8 pm about when the annual ritual of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys game was wrapping up. That was just when the doors opened, there are normally people who begin camping out in front of their big box stores at least the day before, often braving not only assault by their fellow losers and freaks but in some parts of the country with harsh weather conditions frostbite and hypothermia.  Some I imagine imbibe of alcoholic beverages to deal with the boredom and take the edge off of the cold.

The biggest difference this year is that the traditional ugly stories began to pour in earlier than normal. I have to admit that one thing which really fascinates me is watching the You Tube videos of the in store carnage.  The glimpses of wanton savagery span the country from a Wal-Mart in Fort Worth, Texas to Knoxville, Tennessee with a pack of obese women going after the Rachel Ray cookware to this throwdown from an undisclosed Target location. The poor Target “team members” should be eligible for hazardous duty pay. I wonder how long it is going to be until some lunatic gets so pissed off over being beaten to the door buster spectacular of the day pulls out a gun and just starts shooting people. There was a shooting last night at a Romeoville, Illinois Kohl’s location, this one by local police where a shoplifter was taken out while dragging a cop from a moving vehicle. There was also a Virginia man stabbed over a parking spot dispute and a Las Vegas man was shot by a thief to steal the television he had just purchased at his local Target and pepper spray was used on a man arguing with a Wal-Mart manager over a television in New Jersey. These are but a few of the grotesque tableaus this year. Big Blue Smiley apparently is reeling from negative publicity over their stores being ground zero for a good deal of the assaults, the poster of this You Tube video was allegedly kicked out for recording it. Notably today is the day when Wal-Mart workers are set to engage in a wave of protests against the heirs of the Walton family fortune and the slave labor conditions in their chain of plantations. 

The mob scenes and early sales reports encouraged the parasitic looters on Wall Street with the markets already up this morning as the retail brutality contributed to the gambling spree further inflating the unsustainable stock bubble. I have a growing dread in the pit of my stomach that the day when the 85 billion dollar per month Federal Reserve subsidizing of the house of cards finally does collapse – which is inevitable – that the mentality that drives Black Friday will spill into the streets the day that the ATM’s no longer have cash and the debit and credit cards no longer work. The scenes from the big box retailers should scare the living hell out of anyone with the ability to think critically. It is one thing to stomp each other into pulp over a $98 HDTV doorbuster deal but it goes to the next level when the object is food. I would venture to bet that millions of Americans probably have no more than a day or two of food on hand and when the shit finally hits the fan the day that the rigged markets can no longer be preserved and the mother of all economic crashes hits not even the full might of the police state will be able to contain it.  Think of The Road Warrior only with iPads.

Black Friday Devours Thanksgiving

I wonder what the over/under Vegas betting line is on people who will be trampled to death this coming Black Thursday-Friday weekend is? The biggest and baddest shopping day of the year for maxed-out and busted-down Americans has now been extended into Thanksgiving Day itself so we could be hearing the stories before the turkey gravy has had adequate time to congeal. On a positive note it offers an exit strategy from having to deal with those annoying relatives that one must tolerate for the holidays, when Uncle Dan has become heavily intoxicated and is ranting about Obama the Muslim, the “queers” getting married and America going to hell over legalized pot. Why hang around when you can go and mingle with even bigger assholes down at your friendly local big box retail outlet? As it sits right now Black Friday has officially jumped the shark with the bleed over into Thanksgiving as well as all of the “fun” of anticipating the deals being spoiled. Most of the big retailers have already released their ads and the deals are not what they once were.

Wal-Mart, the emporium of the burgeoining underclass opens at 6 on turkey day, there are such deals as a $98 thirty-two inch LED HDTV, a $38 Blu-Ray player and $299 iPad mini’s with a $100 gift card that you can use to buy even more Chinese made junk in the store. The variation of the normal retail bait and switch is Big Smiley’s 1 hour in stock guarantee on these and other coveted sale items. Guaranteed along with the inevitable deep discounts on movies, video games etc to generate a violent stampede through the big box store that will demolish all in it’s wake as it roars into the electronics department, normally located in the back of the store. The big day is always good for at least one horrendous incident at Wally World whether it be a stomping as the doors are thrown open or some poor old lady betting sucked under by a mob destroying the discount DVD displays. It should be mandatory for every Wal-Mart Super Store to have paramedics circling the building in the event that a victim is in need of immediate evacuation. I always get a kick out of the pictorial features of The People of Wal-Mart and just taking a gander at the dregs of humanity on display should have any sane person wanting to stay the hell away.

There will be early openings at Target, Best Buy, Toys R Us, Kohls, and the list is growing but none are as shameless as K-Mart though which has drawn criticism for plans to open at 6 in the morning on Thanksgiving Day and stay open for 41 hours straight.  It is not only dishonorable to family unity but is nothing less than sheer unadulterated greed, the real losers being the poor, forlorn employees who not only are unable to spend the day with their family but have to man the frontlines when the hooligans are unleashed - their employer could at least provide them with store colored riot gear. Plumbing the bottom of the barrel though is Macy’s who gussied up their 8 pm opening with the hogwash that the deals would begin “after families across the country have finished their holiday meals and celebrations”. My God where has the humility gone? The greedy bastards have been taking a ding in sales as the  government barometer of “consumer confidence” has taken a tumble so they are all in on Thanksgiving openings. What’s next in this soul less husk of a country, post-Christmas clearing sales at 11:59 on December 24th? What a disgusting orgy of consumerism, the Fox-o-sphere and crazy religious freaks constantly wail that the dirty liberals have “taken the Christ out of Christmas” but fail to hold retail giants to the same standards. That is a story for another time though.

There are those who bemoan the destruction of the American family and you can put down Black Friday’s absorbtion of Thanksgiving as Exhibit A on the list of culprits.  We really have so little time as it is and should honor tradition and spend the holidays with loved (and loathed) ones, after all they are family.  While I thankfully don’t have an obnoxious drunken “Uncle Dan” to tolerate during the annual pig-out feast I do have the misfortune of having to deal with my chronically bitching Jewish mother in law, a woman whose guiding philosophy of life is that everyone exists solely to kiss her big ass and once you get that straight well just sit back and enjoy the sweet potato pie. I also have a bigoted stepfather from some ass backwards Louisiana town down behind the cornbread curtain who could do everyone a favor and just find a local klavern hall to hang out in with others who share his views.  I am very thankful that  I don’t have to deal with him on turkey day but like the proverbial “jelly of the month club” he is the gift that keeps on giving come Christmas. While they are both annoying pains in the ass they are after all family,  the ones that people should be spending the holidays with instead of throwing down with total strangers in a scrum at the big box outlet. Sometimes it is best to just follow Bluto Blutarsky’s advice by drinking heavily.