Reason #5094489

On why capitalism destroys regular people. & in this world of St. Ronnie of Alzheimer's it is only the corporation that matters. Bah.

At least someone knows how to fill a piggy bank.

Unlike most American consumers, whose failure to save has exasperated economists for years, the typical American corporation has increased its savings so sharply that it probably has enough cash on hand to completely pay off its debts.

Notice how the author of this piece, Dianna B. Henriques, uses economists to blame working people for their inability to save, as if they could save anyway. You know us, just a bunch of wild consumers who aren't thinking about the future. Yeah right, everybody in a family works, sometimes more than one job, just to keep from losing it completely. It just pisses me off. Maybe if education were truly free, if health care was truly free, if people weren't worried about being spied on by their own government, if people could confidently drive over bridges, if, if, if,..., you're smart enough to get the drift. Oh, & Henriques sounds pretty French to me.

UPDATE: Why couldn't these corporations put their piggy banks to good use by actually providing for the workers that generated those profits. Here are a few stats.

...one third of lower middle class workers lack health insurance, while 44 percent of the working poor won’t have the minimum income needed to retire at age 67.
....
The subjective worries detected in the survey are not just free-floating anxiety; they reflect real problems of a fraying social contract.

Up Is Down

This is why I hate capitalism. How in the hell can the fact that one hundred (100) families will lose their livelihoods & the goddamned company's stock price goes up? I hate capitalism & capitalists for that matter, evil bastards.

...The New York Times will bow to growing financial strain and eliminate about 100 newsroom jobs this year, the executive editor said Thursday.
....
Shares in The New York Times Company rose almost 5 percent Thursday after the newsroom staff reductions were reported, closing at $18.84, up 86 cents.

Don't Eat Fruit

At least not Chiquita or Dole fruit.Via The Kid, over at The Twins' Place, I am reminded of my youth, more precisely, a Sociology 101 course I took, way, way back in the day. We were required to read 12 texts for those 3 credits & the one I remember, oddly enough, partially concerned bananas & criminal corporation. The author of that book has since, sadly, become a right-wing idiot. & he apparently blames his right-wing odiousness on the fact that his parents, actual working people (teachers) wouldn't let him watch such classic fare as Pillow Talk. Now it surprises me that the author to the previously mentioned book would cite these two as reasons to become an idiot, given Rock's clearly left-wing gayness. & Doris, well, she became one of those animal lovers who actually set up a foundation that gives money to poor areas of the U.S., the socialism of it all! Well, back to bananas. The worthless corporation that is Chiquita, don't but their bananas, buy organic, fair-trade bananas at your local food coop, has been sued for doing what it's been doing for over a hundred years. This is one more reason why capitalism is evil.

Victims of the bloody paramilitary conflict in Colombia are suing the US banana company Chiquita, accusing it of funding and arming guerrilla groups blamed for torture and thousands of killings.

The lawsuit, filed in New York, seeks $7.86 billion (£4 billion) on behalf of 393 victims and their relatives. They accuse Chiquita Brands of complicity in hundreds of murders carried out by the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, a right-wing paramilitary group known by its Spanish acronym AUC.

The company has courted controversy for more than a century amid claims about the aggressive tactics that it has used to influence the politics of the Central American countries in which it operates. In 1975 a US investigation revealed that it bribed the Government of the Honduran President – and military dictator – Oswaldo López Arellano to get banana export taxes reduced.

The company even spawned the term “Banana Republic”, first coined by the American humourist O. Henry in 1904, in reference to the American conglomerate United Fruit and its actions in Honduras. The company had dominated Central America since 1899 and changed its name to Chiquita Brands International in 1989.

This year Chiquita admitted that it had paid off rebel groups in Colombia, including the AUC, which is accused of carrying out massacres during Colombia’s long-running civil war before it began to disarm in 2003.

Don't buy their god damned bananas, or any other of their blood stained products.

& as long as we're on corrupt fruit companies, don't buy any Dole shit, either. Stop & think, of all the labor in the world, who gets screwed the most, those that actually do the agriculture that feeds us, farm workers. Profits before people, indeed. From the Organic Consumers Organization.

Already, courts in Nicaragua have returned more than $600 million in judgments against Dole and other companies, according to lawyers for the workers - judgments that have proved impossible to collect so far. The verdicts announced Monday marked the first case of foreign farmworkers prevailing in a U.S. court against Dole and Dow over harm from the pesticide, DBCP.

Fair Share

I think NOT. The problem with Wal-Mart is that very soon, at least in the small town I live near, there will be no where else to shop. This is what the ReThugs call progress.