Walmart’s Response To The New York Times Is Great

http://news.yahoo.com ^ | June 22, 2014 | The Daily Caller

[NKP_Vet]

Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, recently decided to go into the newspaper editing business.

The Arkansas-based company responded to an article from New York Times columnist Timothy Egan, titled “The Corporate Daddy” by doing the work that it felt Egan’s Times editors should have done.

“Thanks for sharing your first draft,” reads a red-inked note from Walmart, which is known more for its low prices than its snark.

“Below are a few thoughts to ensure something inaccurate doesn’t get published,” continued the note, which was posted at Walmart’s blog and is attributed to David Tovar, Walmart’s director of corporate communications.

The retail giant apparently couldn’t resist sarcasm after it found what it considered numerous problems with Egan’s piece in which he criticized the company for paying its 2.2 million employees what he called “humiliating wages.”

“Walmart is a net drain on taxpayers,” wrote Egan in the missive, adding that the company forces “employees into public assistance with its poverty-wage structure.

“We are the largest tax payer in America,” Tovar wrote in his edit. “Can we see your math?”

“We see more associates move off of public assistance as a result of their job at Walmart,” Tovar wrote.

Egan argued that “most advanced nations” look for ways to boost the middle class but that the U.S. had ceased doing that. “Witness the G.I. Bill, which helped millions of returning soldiers get a lift to a better life,” wrote the Times columnist.

“Did you know?” Tovar quizzed. “Walmart has hired more than 42,000 veterans this year.”

[kcvl]

NYT’s Egan: ‘Crackpot’ Republicans Behind ‘Lunatic Magnet’ Arizona’s ‘Crackpot’ Immigration Law

By Clay Waters | April 29, 2010 | 16:56

Timothy Egan, liberal New York Times reporter turned liberal nytimes.com columnist, is the latest former reporter to weigh in on Arizona’s anti-immigration law, “Desert Derangement Syndrome.”

It would be hard to top former NYT Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse’s hysterical conflation in her Tuesday print-edition column of Arizona’s stricter enforcement of immigration laws with a Nazi police state, but Egan gets in his share of insults, some of them courtesy of comedian Jon Stewart, the “Mark Twain of our day.”

But for all its diversity of land and people, Arizona is also a lunatic magnet. As I drove, I listened to the radio blather of a state in mob-rule frenzy of cranky old men. Once in Phoenix, I saw on television that sign in a car’s rear window, the new image of Arizona to the rest of the world: “I’m Mexican. Pull me over.”

http://newsbusters.org/people/timothy-egan#ixzz35Tk197gE

[kevkrom]

“We see more associates move off of public assistance as a result of their job at Walmart,” Tovar wrote.

If this is true, then it's a classic example of how statistics can be misleading - Walmart hires people on public assistance and helps them move into a job and off the dole, but while that transition happens, the employee is still on public assistance, which can easily be twisted to say that Walmart is causing them to go on welfare, because who wants to actually dig down deep enough to find the real story, when a factoid makes the case you want it to in the first place?

[kcvl]

NYT’s Timothy Egan: Middle Class Too Easily ‘Distracted’ To Know Own Best Interests

By Clay Waters | September 17, 2009 | 14:30

Timothy Egan, liberal New York Times reporter turned ultra-liberal nytimes.com “Outposts” blogger, titled his Wednesday night entry “Working Class Zero,” a condescending, stereotypically liberal attack on blue-collar folks too ignorant and easily “distracted” to fight for their own interests, which Egan defined as government-controlled health care.

Egan was vexed that many middle-class Americans were instead heeding “the brat’s cry of Joe Wilson” and condescendingly reduced the concerns of conservative protesters of the size and influence of the federal government to “generalized rage” stoked by “well-funded Astroturf outfits.”

http://newsbusters.org/people/timothy-egan#ixzz35TkHVect

******

NYT’s Egan: Bush Years of ‘Sanctioned Torture and War Built on Deceit’

By Clay Waters | July 2, 2009 | 15:26

Liberal New York Times reporter turned liberal nytimes.com blogger, Timothy Egan, posted “Capture the Flag” on Thursday, on how heartening it was to see American flags pop up in liberal domains. The post was ostensibly a plea for people of all political views to have faith in the future good of America. But Egan excused liberals for their lack of public patriotism during the Bush years, citing “years of sanctioned torture and war built on deceit.”

Traveling in California and New York over the last couple of weeks, I noticed something in the summer landscape of these two deeply blue states that is more reminiscent of rural America this time of year — a surfeit of American flags.

Among the offerings of street vendors in Harlem and outdoor stalls near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the flag is often fused with the image of President Obama, a burst of color against a bleak wall, sometimes with a Superman motif. In California, I saw Old Glory on bicycles in the Bay Area, on backpacks in Yosemite and at campgrounds under the redwoods.

It’s not unusual to see a flag in liberal provinces, of course. But in the Bush years of sanctioned torture and war built on deceit, many Americans withdrew from overt displays of patriotism. Some said they were ashamed of their country.

http://newsbusters.org/people/timothy-egan#ixzz35TkOcC1L

******

Former NYT Reporter Calls ‘Clown’ Limbaugh a ‘Sweaty, Swollen Man’

By Clay Waters | March 5, 2009 | 14:37

Liberal New York Times reporter turned liberal nytimes.com blogger Timothy Egan’s latest rant against conservative talk radio giant Rush Limbaugh, “Fears of a Clown,” was propped up on the front page of nytimes.com on Thursday for the delight of the paper’s liberal audience.

Last February, Egan called Limbaugh “talk radio’s leading gasbag.” Today, after lamenting about the ubiquity of Limbaugh on the radio, Egan piled onto the White House-driven bash-Rush bandwagon, focusing on Limbaugh’s speech to the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which was broadcast live on FOX News and CSPAN.

As someone who spends a lot of time on the road, I used to find Limbaugh to be an obnoxious but entertaining companion, his eruptions more reliable than Old Faithful. But now that Limbaugh has become something else — the face of the Republican Party, by a White House that has played him brilliantly — he has been transformed into car-wreck-quality spectacle, at once scary and sad.

http://newsbusters.org/people/timothy-egan#ixzz35TkZoG9k

[morphing libertarian]

wow, income is 1% of the WORLD’S population. There’s a bragging point.

[DoodleDawg]

Walmart could go a long way to increasing the manufacturing in this country by buying more American products.

According to Reply 12 Walmart is committed to buying $250 billion in U.S. made goods...over 10 years. Of course last year it was $50 billion over 10 years so who knows what the real amount is? In any case Walmart's sales are pushing $400 billion per year so their U.S. commitment represents a fraction of their total sales. Certainly well less than 10%. What percentage of their merchandise is made in China I wonder?

[kcvl]

Tea Party Dead-Enders

JUNE 5, 2014

Timothy Egan

The Tea Party is five years old this election season, which means it’s done teething and spitting up on itself, but still prone to temper tantrums, irrational outbursts and threats to take its toys and storm off if it doesn’t get its way.

As a movement, it is down to a couple of former talk-radio hosts running for office in two states of the old Confederacy, Texas and Mississippi. And in the latter, the Senate candidate, Chris McDaniel, has given a keynote to a group that considers Abraham Lincoln a war criminal. It’s not hard to make the case that the Tea Party has been distilled down to it logical essence.

“They don’t want to go to the moon,” said the comedian Bill Maher. “They want to howl at it.” Still, the Tea Party has also been around long enough to have a record, of sorts. Let’s look at the legacy:

No significant legislation, no changes for the better in American life, and no compromise, of course, with the majority of voters who say in numerous polls that the Tea Party has been mostly a negative force in politics. One follows the other, since by the absolutist nature of their philosophy Tea Party members believe that any effort to govern with those they disagree with is traitorous.

snip

So, no legislation. A shutdown that cost billions. A near-default that almost threw the United States back into recession. What else? Oh, science denial. Evolution, climate change, medicine — all a hoax, in one form or another.

snip

Which brings us to the last Tea Partiers standing. All along, surveys have shown that the Tea Party is thick with aging white men, angry, fearful, in open revolt against the new American demography. And their ideas came not from Republican Party elites or conservative think tanks, but from the true fount of Tea Party philosophy — talk radio.

No surprise, then, that the leaders of the last skirmishes being fought in the Tea Party rear guard are people who came out of the fear-breeding hothouse of far-right broadcasting. The latest Tea Party star in Texas is Dan Patrick, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor — not to be confused with the likable sports radio host of the same name.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/06/opinion/egan-tea-party-dead-enders.html?_r=0

[kcvl]

Timothy Egan Oct 3, 2013

Wrong Side of History

By TIMOTHY EGAN

Sarah Palin finally got her death panels — a direct blow from the Republican House. In shutting down the government, leaving 800,000 people without a paycheck and draining the economy of $300 million a day, the Party of Madness also took away last-chance cancer trials for children at the National Institutes of Health.

And now that the pain that was dismissed as a trifle on Monday, a “slimdown” according to the chuckleheads at Fox News, is revealed as tragic by mid-week, the very radicals who caused the havoc are trying to say it’s not their fault.

It’s too late. They flunked hostage-taking. About 30 or so Republicans in the House, bunkered in gerrymandered districts while breathing the oxygen of delusion, are now part of a cast of miscreants who have stood firmly on the wrong side of history. The headline, today and 50 years from now, will be the same: Republicans closed the government to keep millions of their fellow Americans from getting affordable health care.

They are not righteous rebels or principled provocateurs. They are not constitutionalists, using the ruling framework built by the founders. Just the opposite: they are a militant fringe of one party in one house of Congress in one branch of government trying to nullify an established law by extortion. This is not the design of the Constitution.

snip

And let’s never forget that these sacrifices, real and lasting, are being made for one thing: to block health care reform. Obamacare, when its component parts are explained to people, is enormously popular. Take one of the most profound features of the law — the ban on denying insurance to people with pre-existing conditions. Nearly half of all Americans fit that category. The insurances exchanges, for all their computer glitches, are flooded with interest.

We know now why Senator Ted Cruz, the most hated man in Washington, said he fears that once Obamacare is up and running people will like it — and then it will be too late for the obstructionists.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/timothy-egan/

[Balding_Eagle]

Trying, and succeeding, in destroying the thread.

[A_Former_Democrat]

Clowns like Egan never have constructive ideas that really work. They choose instead to tear down others since they can’t defend their own policies

Hey, Timothy, how’s that Great Society been working out in the ghettos? When’s the last time you’ve taken a nice leisurely walk thru the inner cities to personally observe the “success” of 50 years of the welfare state?

[IronJack]

Absolutely. Not all consumers are content to buy low-grade Chinese junk. And sometimes it’s just not worth Wal-Mart’s time to stock specialty or low-profit items. Those demands can be filled by smaller “boutique” shops.

“Big box” retailers force a change in the marketplace wherever they crop up for sure. But those changes are not necessarily bad, as long as the marketplace adapts.

[kcvl]

Timothy Egan's wife

Joni Balter plays the Gender Card on Gun Control

Posted on June 8, 2014 by Gregory Smith

When a liberal can’t win an argument with facts, he pulls out one of the following cards. 1. Race. 2. Culture. 3. Gender.

Let’s take a look the drivel Joni Balter has written:

"Let women’s voices be heard on gun control"

Jan 14, 2004 - Egan spent 1997 living in Italy with his wife, journalist Joni Balter, and their two children, who attended an Italian public school

Who lives a better life -- Italians or Americans?" Egan says. "We also started looking at place and the attachment to place. We Americans live in a mostly transient society, with no grounding to place, often moving frequently. Yet many Italians would not think of moving 40 miles from where their family has lived forever."

[NKP_Vet]

If you want to buy in bulk please use Sam’s Club and not the uber liberal controlled Cosco.

[nascarnation]

[nascarnation]

COSCO is China Overseas Shipping Corp
Costco is the Seattle based warehouse club.

[Lazamataz]

Tovar to Egan: “Can we see your math?”

Egan to Tovar: "Sure. It was on Lois Lerner's hard drive. Have fun getting it."

[Lazamataz]

First, I read this, upthread:

Timothy Egan (born November 8, 1954 in Seattle, Washington. He currently lives in Seattle and contributes opinion columns as the paper's Pacific Northwest correspondent. "I am mostly happy with my life. I have all the food I could ever need, reasonably clean drinking water, my income is in the top 1% of the world’s population, I live in a nice home, I have personal transport that will take me anywhere and at anytime I so choose. In general, life is good. Of course, and as mentioned above, those pesky little issues going on in this country and throughout the world need to be nipped in the bud, pruned down to a more manageable state, and most important, some type of organic bug spray must be applied. I will get to those uncared for rosebushes in time, one by one providing my opinion on the topic at hand. Perhaps even some solutions."

And then I see this:

... who is purported to be Egan's wife....

....and I realize there is some cognitive dissonance at work here.

[DoodleDawg]

If you want to buy in bulk please use Sam’s Club and not the uber liberal controlled Cosco.

I do buy some stuff in bulk and when I do I go to where the stores are clean, the quality is high, and where the staff doesn't act like they just got off the last shuttle from Venus. And that's Costco.

[Starstruck]

What percentage of their merchandise is made in China I wonder?

Included in the article: Furman is the chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. In an article at Slate, Furman wrote that Walmart’s low prices provide the “equivalent to a 6.5 percent boost in household income” for low-income households.

If Walmart raises the percentage of American goods too high, someone else is going to become Walmart.

[kcvl]

Stephen Gandel is a senior writer for TIME, covering real estate, economics and Wall Street. He joined TIME from Time Inc. sister publication Money, where he was a senior writer for several years. Prior to that, Gandel was the senior Wall Street reporter for Crain's New York Business. He has held positions at Individual Investor and the Riverfront Times in St. Louis. Additionally, his work has appeared in Fortune and Esquire.

Washington University

Bachelors, Economics, English

1992 – 1996

******

October 9, 2012

Stephen Gandel / Fortune:

Obama trounces Welch's job record — Jack Welch's hiring history isn't much to tweet about.

Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, has attacked the notion that President Obama and his policies aren't creating jobs. On Friday, Welch in a message sent through Twitter accused the administration, referring to it as “these Chicago guys,” of changing the number in the monthly jobs report, which showed that the unemployment rate had fallen to the lowest level since Obama took office. In the past, Welch has said that Mitt Romney’s business experience makes him more qualified to be able to create jobs from the Oval office than Obama.

[dirtymac]

you are kidding, aren’t you?

US manufacturing costs are too high due to unionization and govt regulations. We used to be the best because of our productivety. Now we are just expensive so buyers go overseas. If you want US manufacturing back then cure the problems.

Just buying fro US producers only exacerbates the problems with more regulations and higher union wages.