Time to Eat a Little Crow :(

Ouch, my gentle snowflakes, I may have to eat crow, bite the bullet, swallow my pride, go against my ideals even. I will have to shop at Walmart. I will have to shop at Walmart to get sustainable fish. And let me tell you this, it makes me mad. I quit shopping at Walmart several years ago for various reasons--political differences, treatment of their employees, the fact that the Walton clan just does not need anymore money! Now, I will have to go to Walmart because it is near 100 miles to a Target.

I have quit buying frozen fish from my local market because all that is stocked there comes from China. Besides taking jobs from Americans, it seems stupid to ship the fish all the way across the ocean and half-way across the US to get to me. I know cat fish are farmed in Alabama and Mississippi; trout in Colorado; tilapia surely somewhere on this continent.

No Fish Tale: Sustainable Seafood At Target, Walmart
Lesley KennedyWho needs to make the extra trip to a pricey gourmet market when you can get your sustainable seafood at Target, Costco, or Walmart?

NPR reports many of the big box stores are now selling seafood with the blue Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) label, meaning it “comes from a fishery that’s met a rigorous set of standards aimed at promoting responsible, sustainable catches.”

According to the media organization, Target stores have gotten rid of unsustainable seafood (think Chilean sea bass) and farmed salmon (due to environmental concerns—wild salmon is available, instead), and are currently stocking 50-plus frozen and fresh seafood options that are MSC-certified or Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP)-certified.

At Walmart stores, some 73 percent of fish was sustainable-certified as of last January, and all seafood will come from certified fisheries by June, NPR adds.

Prices could potentially rise if demand becomes greater than the supply, but so far, a Target spokesperson tells NPR, prices have remained the same.

Sustainable seafood that won’t empty our wallets? And that we can buy at the same time we stock up on paper towels, frozen waffles and Qtips? There’s nothing fishy about that.

Walmart, here I come. Fish only. Nothing else. Cripes, I already have a headache just thinking about it.
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A Letter to the Editor

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My gentle snowflakes, with some pride, I tell you that my hometown owns and runs a very excellent retirement community for the people who can still live independently. It is called the Homestead Retirement Community. 


Since the economic downturn, our little town has been seeking ways to cut costs. Some short sighted people have been campaigning to sell The Homestead. They want to take it out of the public sector (where it is run for the good of the occupants and the community) and sell it to some for-profit corporation or LLC (which must, because that is the duty of a for-profit group, run it with the sole desired outcome of making money--as much as possible). Now, the City Fathers have actually taken that very, fateful step:  the Homestead is for sale. 


I was personally livid over this development. Consider that:  me, livid. I have a nephew who gained a place in our family lore by uttering the phrase, "Careful, Glenna [that's me] will get ugly."


So, being me, I dragged out my soap box, dusted it off, climbed aboard, sharpened my "pen" and fired off a letter to my local paper.

I think it is horrendous that the City is trying to sell the Homestead. 

It may be "good business" but it creates a lousy perception of what "society" (as in the social fabric of the community) is in Alva! 

 If memory serves me correctly, Alva voted for the Homestead because there was a lack of adult living space for those citizens who were not in need of rest home care (Beadles, Share, etc) but who were concerned to keep living alone.  [I have, since this letter was published in the local paper, been set straight by a very highly placed source:  "citizens did not vote; there was a survey with overwhelming positive results."] 

The creation of such a facility in Alva would enhance the community. It would show that the people of Alva valued ALL members of the community. It would allow more people to stay active in Alva, longer. It was to be a contract Alva made with its citizens.

 Enid, Wichita, Oklahoma City offered the type of facility that the Homestead became, but they require a BIG buy-in that was forfeited when the residents moved out. In addition, those other places are not Alva and Alva residents are in Alva because they want to be--their friends are here, their church is here. 

I have taken several of my friends from out of town to see the Homestead. People from the Dallas-Ft Worth Metroplex, the Boston area, the Denver locale, the San Francisco region, all rave about how wonderful the place is. When I tell them there is no buy-in they all really do a double take in amazement. They bemoan the fact that there is nothing similar in their own geographic area or in the area where their aging parents live. 

Alva could certainly do a better job of advertising the Homestead. Also, if residents could bring their pet--say one small dog or one cat or one bird--more would move to the Homestead earlier, at a younger age. Someone bringing a pet could pay more of a "cleaning deposit" than others; they could pay a little more each month for the pet. I am sure some set of rules could be worked out.

I really, firmly believe that Alva should re-think this business of selling such a fantastic asset as the Homestead. Finally, since the oil and gas boom has come to town, surely Alva can find the money to continue offering this jewel to our older citizens.

I have not changed my mind. I still think it is an incredibly BAD idea to sell this community treasure.
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Progress?

"I'm very happy in my former life; we helped create over 100,000 new jobs." 

--Mitt Romney, several weeks go

"We started a number of businesses, invested in many others, and that, over all, created tens of thousands of jobs."   --

Romney, several days ago

"...helped create and ran a company that invested in struggling businesses, grew new ones, and rebuilt old ones, creating thousands of jobs. Those are the facts." --new Romney ad

Yes, those pesky, pesky facts! Well, at least, Romney is "flexible:"  He will change his "facts" just as fast as those facts ensnare him. 
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Should There Be a Parade?

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My gentle snowflakes, Perry and Romney and Gingrich and Palin, etc. are running around this mid-week all a-flutter because there has been no parade ordered up to "honor the troops." 


President Obama is somehow being un-patriotic. (Irony here folks.)

Well, it seems to me that a parade is a pretty poor "honor" for what we have put our troops through. 

Now, I will admit that I might be out of touch--never having been a member of the military myself and not understanding the military mindset. But, I can not even begin to imagine that a whole lot of soldiers really want (after years of their lives spent scrabbling around Iraq) to march up and down some city streets just so a few people can feel good about the whole "cakewalk" war thing.

Then there are all those troops who came home already--probably to be rotated back into Afghanistan and combat again next year. And all those sent directly from Iraq to Afghanistan. 

Seems not to be the time for a celebration of a mess that we have not managed to yet clean-up.

How about this? If we want to thank our soldiers, protect and expand their benefits--healthcare and education. Pay them better. Give them body armor--without them having to write home and ask their family and friends to take up a collection to get it. Make sure, if and when they do get home, that they go to the top of any list for any and all jobs available. Stop the big-banks from foreclosing on their homes. 

Hey, I could go on and on and on....  From the sublime to the ridiculous.

Send--that is you, personally--send one or more of them a welcome home card. Put five hundred dollars in it. 

And finally, DON'T EVER, EVER, EVER SEND THEM OFF ON ANYMORE WILD GOOSE CHASES like the last 10 years. No more bizarre, ideological machinations to prove the bona fides of a bunch of slimy, smirking chicken hawks.

Just saying.

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For the Boomers....

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Ahh, my gentle snowflakes, I rise for a point of personal privilege. (If you do not understand, I highly recommend you join a group/organization which adheres to some form of Robert's Rules of Order.)

As I age, I have been making my father's noises. For quite some time now, I have been making, especially, his morning noises and, lately, I have added his middle of the night noises. More or less, I have gotten used to it. Sometimes a particular noise will startle me. Mostly though, I have grown to accept them--as just gentle reminders of my father. It could be worse, I could have received the gene that gave him that ski slope of a nose! Bad enough that from the genetic lottery I drew the jug-handle ears.

This morning, though, when I put on my socks--I saw my mother's feet.

Not long and elegant. Oh, no, not long and elegant. No, I saw feet with tendons ropy, toes boney, veins pronounced.

I do not like it. Do not like it one bit.
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Anger Sowing Seeds of a New Consumer Movement

Posted from truthdig on Nov 20, 2011
By David Sirota

As we all know, America is angry. Really angry. To put it in pop culture terms, we’ve moved from the vaguely inspiring agita of Peter Finch in “Network” to the wild-eyed, primal-scream rage of Sam Kinison in “Back to School.”

When we pay attention to politics, we get peeved at Congress and the presidential candidates. When we tune into sports, we’re annoyed with squabbling players and owners. When we turn on the news, we fume at the smug pundits. And when it comes to the economy, we’re in a tizzy at big corporations.

Most of this indignation is nothing new; it is atavistic fury expressed in the modern vernacular. Yet, one strand of our anger—the kind directed at big business—may be truly novel, as our chagrin is no longer just that ancient animosity toward excessive corporate power. Instead, it has also become a personal disdain toward firms we deal with on a daily basis.

This is the key finding of the latest report from the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University. Its findings show that after years of rising anger, consumer rage has reached an all-time high.

Back in 2004, ASU’s researchers theorized that such apoplexy was an outgrowth of affluence. “Households simply have more products and services today, and thus more points of contact, increasing our chances that we will have a problem,” they wrote.

But, of course, 2004 was a comparatively prosperous time. Today, by contrast, recession-battered consumers have access to fewer products and services and yet are angrier at companies, meaning the sentiment likely reflects a response to deeper trends.

One of those is a decline in craftsmanship in the era of free trade and offshore production. With America now awash in foreign wares, we’ve imported the developing world’s lax regulatory standards and, thus, its lower product quality. That means poorly constructed furniture, malfunctioning electronics and all the other shoddiness that drives customers nuts.

Another maddening trend is the corporate sector’s shift from long-term customer care to short-term predation. Though firms have always tried to make quick money off clients, the intensity of this recession, coupled with investors’ insatiable demand for quarterly profit growth, has prompted unprecedented bill-padding, corner-cutting and inflexibility. Today’s typical air travel experience epitomizes the dynamic: You get hit with a baggage charge, shoved into an ever-smaller seat and then stranded in airport purgatory because you missed your connection. With this kind of experience being replicated in everything from debit card fees to interminable customer-service wait times, it’s no wonder we’re ticked off.

Finally, there’s what Mother Jones magazine calls “The Great Speedup,” whereby downsized companies are forcing their remaining employees to do more work at a faster pace than ever. While this means our workforce is generating more output, it also means that output often becomes less satisfying to the end user. So, sure, your energy company’s electrician may be servicing more homes, but he’s also more error-prone and no longer maintains a customer-friendly demeanor—because he’s being run ragged.

All of this is no doubt responsible for a spike in self-destructive temper tantrums. However, there is an upside: The angst is resurrecting the notion of consumer activism. And that’s a big deal.

Recent headlines tell this story. From moving deposits out of big banks to a mass abandonment of Netflix, customers are suddenly channeling the old Ralph Nader zeitgeist. We’re remembering that being a patron comes with power—and we’re finally getting mad enough to use it.

If that ends up bringing back a lasting consumer movement in America, then all the heartburn and stress of being a mistreated customer will have been worth it.

David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book “Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now.”

Oh, my Gentle Snowflakes, we can only hope.

The Republican Jobs Plan

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At last, we see the Congressional Republican jobs plan.

A sharp decline in fertility rates in the United States that started in 2008 is closely linked to the souring of the economy that began about the same time

Now, we can understand (NOT) their do-nothing policy toward helping the recovery of the country. If they can just stand around doing nothing long enough, available jobs will equal ready workers. This will be aided by the deaths of most of those currently seeking work.

Fewer babies now + expected mortality rates = fewer unemployed in 18-20 years. The unemployment rate drops! Problem solved.
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