Black Friday Long Reading Links
With any luck, you got to sleep in late and indulge in a pot of coffee and maybe biscuits and gravy for breakfast. If you are having a fairly leisurely day (or need something to read on your iPad while waiting for your loved ones to emerge with their Black Friday haul) here you go:
The Origins and Future of the Occupy Movement — from the New Yorker. There’s also a neat sidebar on how Zuccotti Park came to be ground zero of the occupation.
Lest We Forget: Why We Had A Financial Crisis — from Forbes, of all places. The rightwing and corporate effort to deflect responsibility for this mess continues full force and needs a routine corrective.
UC Davis Pepper-Spray Incident Reveals Weakness Up Top — from the Matt Taibbi at the Rolling Stone. Taibbi (via Glenn Greenwald) place the militarization of the police as a result of the WOT. I think that is dead wrong — the militarization of the police started in the WOD. The difference being that the police state is clearly being aimed at everybody — not just communities of color where that kind of oppression is easily approved of.
How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich — also from the Rolling Stone.
Have you read anything else this week that the rest of us should?
Thanks for that Forbes link Cassandra. I wish I had it yesterday when I spent a good deal of time around the turkey turning the conversation away from, “Where do they pee?” to “I’m glad we at least agree that banks profits should not be private, while we pay for all the loses.”
It’s really difficult to grasp or understand the economy these days and now it just got more difficult. While flipping through the WallMart catalog from the News Journal I came across a two dollar and eighty four cent electric waffle iron for sale. Can you believe it. While certain things like fuel and food sky rocket, waffle irons are cheaper than dirt apparently. It makes you wonder how many small children getting paid next to nothing had to work on those waffle irons in order for there to be a profit.
Might be a good time to make a short term investment in a company that makes waffle mix. I have a feeling that a whole lot of waffles are going to be made in the next couple of weeks.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZ4S1z6-t4
While flipping through the WallMart catalog from the News Journal I came across a two dollar and eighty four cent electric waffle iron for sale. Can you believe it.
And now you get the global economy.
Those $2.84 waffle irons are likely made in sweatshop conditions, the makers don’t make especially much, they don’t have to pay attention to environmental regulations and they don’t have to pay attention to long term quality. In other words, they don’t have to live with the regulatory oversight that we insist on for workers. It wouldn’t surprise me, either, that WalMart is eating some of the cost of this thing as the cost of getting people in the door.
$2.84 waffle irons or domestic manufacturing jobs?
We’ve chosen the $2.84 waffle irons.
Adding: Ted Kaufman also wrote about the financial crisis, focusing on how Congress enabled it.
That’s the crux of the issue in my view. Those 2 buck waffle irons only exist because people will buy them. Wal Mart is successful because people shop there. Local businesses often go out of business when a big box store comes in because shoppers give their business to the stores instead of to the local businesses.
I make a conscious effort to buy local products, even when the local products are more expensive. That includes dairy (Lewes Dairy) and eggs (chickens down the road from me). Somehow, we as consumers, need to incorporate the concept of best value in our shopping and not just buy based on price. I have not bought a single egg from a grocery store or big box store since I moved to Delaware this year. My highest priority is to buy local whenever I can. It’s a small thing on my part, but even small contributions are better than nothing. I may have to buy waffle irons from somewhere else, but at least I can do my part for some things.
Stores have been pimping loss leaders on Black Friday since before Nixon went to China.
Whoever thought they’d make big money selling waffle irons, never had a pancake.
@2.84 waffle iron may burn your house down.