Mike Isaac
September 21, 2011
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/09/netflix-alternatives
The curtain hasn't even opened on Netflix's new DVD-by-mail spin-off company Qwikster, and many customers are already walking out.
The company recently revised its quarterly projections of net subscribers to show 1 million fewer customers than it had previously expected. Much to Netflix's chagrin, folks are realizing that the king of mail-away media isn't the only game in town.
We've taken a look at some of Netflix's (and Qwikster's) main competitors, and judged each service accordingly. Do the rest offer enough to stand up to the best?
Netflix/Qwikster
Also known as Netflix: Redux. It's the same service we know and love, only completely different. Faced with massive customer backlash in the wake of a price hike, Netflix split itself into two separate companies this week. The streaming service will retain the Netflix branding while the DVD-by-mail service will be named Qwikster. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said the split will better serve customers in the long run because each company will be able to better focus on one type of service.
Netflix pioneered the DVD-by-mail service, creating an entire industry where one did not exist previously. But after serious flux in Netflix's new pricing system — which split the streaming and DVD mailing services into two separate plans starting at $8 a month minimum — there's no guarantee the company's customers will continue to stick around.
WIRED: It's been around the longest, and is the most familiar service. Massive offering of physical mail-away media. New game rental service sounds intriguing. Streaming to all iOS devices and Android smartphones.
TIRED: Can you say price increase? We don't like paying more money for the same service, and we're failing to see how splitting the companies in twain is going to benefit consumers. Streaming-only service still lacks selection compared to DVD catalog.
Amazon Prime
Amazon's elite-level service launched in 2005, offering two-day shipping on any of its products to members anywhere in the continental United States and other select countries for a reasonable $80 a year. Originally meant for those who couldn't wait more than 48 hours for their tangible goods, Prime expanded in February to offer instant, streaming movie and TV show access to existing Prime customers at no added cost.
WIRED: Fast shipping on everything Amazon! What other movie service offers that? Lower yearly rate than Netflix and Qwikster. Works with over 100 different web-connected set-top boxes, including the ever-popular Roku.
TIRED: Smaller media selection compared to other existing services. Lacks the DVD rental option that made Netflix famous.
Redbox
Redbox made it possible for legions of supermarket shoppers to pick up a movie on the cheap, without having to make multiple stops. Instead of leaving the grocery store (or 7-11, Walgreens or what have you) with only a TV dinner and a Mountain Dew in tow, Redbox's 30,000-plus DVD-rental kiosks make sure you won't go home alone on a Friday night again.
WIRED: Cheap, cheap, cheap. DVD rentals average two bucks a pop, with anywhere from 50 to 200 recent titles to select from in each kiosk, updated weekly. Game rentals to roll out this year.
TIRED: No streaming service? Bummer.
Blockbuster
Once the dominant force in the media-rental industry, Blockbuster has fared horribly over the past few years. After scoffing at Netflix's business model years ago, the big blue-and-gold company filed for bankruptcy last September.
However late, Blockbuster jumped on the bandwagon with its own Netflix clone mail-away service, but with the added advantage of allowing customers to return DVDs to brick-and-mortar Blockbuster stores. And finally, Blockbuster Express is a blue-and-gold Redbox rip, with kiosks placed in grocery stores and Kwik-E-Mart's across the country.
WIRED: The Dish Network acquisition could mean big things for Blockbuster when (or if) the companies get a game plan up and running.
TIRED: Brick and mortar is slowly dying, so the leg-up Blockbuster has on Netflix with in-store DVD exchange may soon be moot. Ripping off its two major competitors shows a lack of ability to innovate, possibly signifying that the company is still behind the times.
Hulu Plus
At $8 a month, Hulu Plus offers instant streaming access to a wealth of TV shows only a day or so after they've originally aired. But seriously, if you're paying a monthly fee, you shouldn't have to deal with mid-show commercial breaks. That's the whole point of paying for streaming service, right?
Still, I challenge you to find a more comprehensive archive of Hell's Kitchen reruns on the web.
WIRED: Streaming to all iOS devices and some Android smartphones and tablets. Tons of TV shows that aren't out to rent on DVD.
TIRED: Despite taking your $8 monthly fee, you still have to sit through asinine commercials. "Hundreds," not thousands, of movies to choose from. Again, no physical media. Rights agreements sometimes complicate how many episodes are available for viewing on the site.
Android Market
Google has struggled to keep up with Apple in its media service offerings, only recently debuting its movie rental service on the Android Market in conjunction with a complete interface makeover. Fortunately, renting flicks from Google is available on all Android devices running version 2.2 and up — that's something even Hulu can't say.
WIRED: Rental ain't pricey, averaging around two to five bucks a pop. Streaming to Android phones is nice. Compatible with PCs.
TIRED: No physical media. Not functional across all Android tablets.
iTunes and Apple TV
There's a down-payment to get Apple TV up and running in your home, and it's in the form of a small, sleek set-top box. Fortunately, it's only $100.
Along with Netflix compatibility, Apple lets you purchase and rent movies from its iTunes media store, along with the ability to buy TV shows (due to lack of customer demand, Apple discontinued TV show rentals last month). Further, you're able to watch streaming media on all of Apple's mobile devices. The company wants to hook you into an Apple-centric world, and the interconnection between its services makes it easier for customers to buy in.
WIRED: Purchase prices are par for the course, ranging from $1 to $3 depending on whether you want to rent or own. Ability to buy entire seasons of a show is convenient. Rumors and speculation have long suggested bigger plans for Apple TV's future, though Apple itself is staying mum on any potential developments.
TIRED: Lacks an "all-you-can-stream buffet" option, which can get costly if you watch a lot of flicks. Though its library is extensive, iTunes alone doesn't contain the esoteric indie films that Netflix totes. So if you're subscribing to Netflix and buying through iTunes at the same time, charges could add up fast.
Vudu
Wal-Mart got in on the media-services game in 2010 by buying Vudu, another streaming media company. Initially the service was available only in a set-top box version, but Vudu has since extended itself to other platforms as a standalone media service in and of itself, available to Playstation 3 users, Boxee for OSX owners and Windows-based PC users.
WIRED: Rentals and purchases stay on par with most other services, settling in the $1 to $5 range for rentals, and upwards of $5 for purchases. Titles available the same day they're released on DVD, unlike other services that require waiting periods. Streaming video available on iPad.
TIRED: No monthly unlimited movie-streaming option.
Showing posts with label Wal-Mart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wal-Mart. Show all posts
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Wal-Mart’s Authoritarian Culture
NELSON LICHTENSTEIN
June 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/opinion/22Lichtenstein.html
MONDAY’S Supreme Court decision to block a class-action sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart was a huge setback for as many as 1.6 million current and former female employees of the world’s largest retailer. But the decision has consequences that range far beyond sex discrimination or the viability of class-action suits.
The underlying issue, which the Supreme Court has now ratified, is Wal-Mart’s authoritarian style, by which executives pressure store-level management to squeeze more and more from millions of clerks, stockers and lower-tier managers.
Indeed, the sex discrimination at Wal-Mart that drove the recent suit is the product not merely of managerial bias and prejudice, but also of a corporate culture and business model that sustains it, rooted in the company’s very beginnings.
In the 1950s and ’60s, northwest Arkansas, where Wal-Mart got its start, was poor, white and rural, in the midst of a wave of agricultural mechanization that generated a huge surplus of unskilled workers. To these men and women, the burgeoning chain of discount stores founded by Sam Walton was a godsend. The men might find dignity managing a store instead of a hardscrabble farm, while their wives and daughters could earn pin money clerking for Mr. Sam, as he was known. “The enthusiasm of Wal-Mart associates toward their jobs is one of the company’s greatest assets,” declared the firm’s 1973 annual report.
A patriarchal ethos was written into the Wal-Mart DNA. “Welcome Assistant Managers and Wives” read a banner at a 1975 meeting for executive trainees. And that corporate culture — “the single most important element in the continued, remarkable success of Wal-Mart,” asserted Don Soderquist, the company’s chief operating officer in the 1990s — was sustained not only by the hypercentralized managerial control that flowed from the Bentonville, Ark., home office but by the evangelical Protestantism that Mr. Soderquist and other executives encouraged.
Wal-Mart attorneys have argued, and the Supreme Court agreed this week, that even if sex discrimination was once part of the company’s culture, it is now ancient history: if any store managers are guilty of bias when it comes to promoting women, they are at odds with corporate policy. Wal-Mart is no longer an Ozark company; it is a cosmopolitan, multinational operation.
But that avoids the more essential point, namely that Wal-Mart views low labor costs and a high degree of workplace flexibility as a signal competitive advantage. It is a militantly anti-union company that has been forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to current and former employees for violations of state wage and hour laws.
In other words, the patriarchy of old has been reconfigured into a more systematically authoritarian structure, one that deploys a communitarian ethos to sustain a high degree of corporate loyalty even as wages and working conditions are put under continual downward pressure — especially in recent years, as Wal-Mart’s same-store sales have declined. Workers of both sexes pay the price, but women, who constitute more than 70 percent of hourly employees, pay more.
There are tens of thousands of experienced Wal-Mart women who would like to be promoted to the first managerial rung, salaried assistant store manager. But Wal-Mart makes it impossible for many of them to take that post, because its ruthless management style structures the job itself as one that most women, and especially those with young children or a relative to care for, would find difficult to accept.
Why? Because, for all the change that has swept over the company, at the store level there is still a fair amount of the old communal sociability. Recognizing that workers steeped in that culture make poor candidates for assistant managers, who are the front lines in enforcing labor discipline, Wal-Mart insists that almost all workers promoted to the managerial ranks move to a new store, often hundreds of miles away.
For young men in a hurry, that’s an inconvenience; for middle-aged women caring for families, this corporate reassignment policy amounts to sex discrimination. True, Wal-Mart is hardly alone in demanding that rising managers sacrifice family life, but few companies make relocation such a fixed policy, and few have employment rolls even a third the size.
The obstacles to women’s advancement do not stop there. The workweek for salaried managers is around 50 hours or more, which can surge to 80 or 90 hours a week during holiday seasons. Not unexpectedly, some managers think women with family responsibilities would balk at such demands, and it is hardly to the discredit of thousands of Wal-Mart women that they may be right.
There used to be a remedy for this sort of managerial authoritarianism: it was called a union, which bargained over not only wages and pensions but also the kind of qualitative issues, including promotion and transfer policies, that have proved so vexing for non-unionized employees at Wal-Mart and other big retailers.
For a time it seemed as if the class-action lawsuit might be a partial substitute. By drastically limiting how a class-action suit can be brought, the Supreme Court leaves millions of service-sector workers with few avenues to escape the grinding work life and limited opportunities that so many now face.
Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of “The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business.”
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on June 22, 2011, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Wal-Mart’s Authoritarian Culture.
June 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/opinion/22Lichtenstein.html
MONDAY’S Supreme Court decision to block a class-action sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart was a huge setback for as many as 1.6 million current and former female employees of the world’s largest retailer. But the decision has consequences that range far beyond sex discrimination or the viability of class-action suits.
The underlying issue, which the Supreme Court has now ratified, is Wal-Mart’s authoritarian style, by which executives pressure store-level management to squeeze more and more from millions of clerks, stockers and lower-tier managers.
Indeed, the sex discrimination at Wal-Mart that drove the recent suit is the product not merely of managerial bias and prejudice, but also of a corporate culture and business model that sustains it, rooted in the company’s very beginnings.
In the 1950s and ’60s, northwest Arkansas, where Wal-Mart got its start, was poor, white and rural, in the midst of a wave of agricultural mechanization that generated a huge surplus of unskilled workers. To these men and women, the burgeoning chain of discount stores founded by Sam Walton was a godsend. The men might find dignity managing a store instead of a hardscrabble farm, while their wives and daughters could earn pin money clerking for Mr. Sam, as he was known. “The enthusiasm of Wal-Mart associates toward their jobs is one of the company’s greatest assets,” declared the firm’s 1973 annual report.
A patriarchal ethos was written into the Wal-Mart DNA. “Welcome Assistant Managers and Wives” read a banner at a 1975 meeting for executive trainees. And that corporate culture — “the single most important element in the continued, remarkable success of Wal-Mart,” asserted Don Soderquist, the company’s chief operating officer in the 1990s — was sustained not only by the hypercentralized managerial control that flowed from the Bentonville, Ark., home office but by the evangelical Protestantism that Mr. Soderquist and other executives encouraged.
Wal-Mart attorneys have argued, and the Supreme Court agreed this week, that even if sex discrimination was once part of the company’s culture, it is now ancient history: if any store managers are guilty of bias when it comes to promoting women, they are at odds with corporate policy. Wal-Mart is no longer an Ozark company; it is a cosmopolitan, multinational operation.
But that avoids the more essential point, namely that Wal-Mart views low labor costs and a high degree of workplace flexibility as a signal competitive advantage. It is a militantly anti-union company that has been forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to current and former employees for violations of state wage and hour laws.
In other words, the patriarchy of old has been reconfigured into a more systematically authoritarian structure, one that deploys a communitarian ethos to sustain a high degree of corporate loyalty even as wages and working conditions are put under continual downward pressure — especially in recent years, as Wal-Mart’s same-store sales have declined. Workers of both sexes pay the price, but women, who constitute more than 70 percent of hourly employees, pay more.
There are tens of thousands of experienced Wal-Mart women who would like to be promoted to the first managerial rung, salaried assistant store manager. But Wal-Mart makes it impossible for many of them to take that post, because its ruthless management style structures the job itself as one that most women, and especially those with young children or a relative to care for, would find difficult to accept.
Why? Because, for all the change that has swept over the company, at the store level there is still a fair amount of the old communal sociability. Recognizing that workers steeped in that culture make poor candidates for assistant managers, who are the front lines in enforcing labor discipline, Wal-Mart insists that almost all workers promoted to the managerial ranks move to a new store, often hundreds of miles away.
For young men in a hurry, that’s an inconvenience; for middle-aged women caring for families, this corporate reassignment policy amounts to sex discrimination. True, Wal-Mart is hardly alone in demanding that rising managers sacrifice family life, but few companies make relocation such a fixed policy, and few have employment rolls even a third the size.
The obstacles to women’s advancement do not stop there. The workweek for salaried managers is around 50 hours or more, which can surge to 80 or 90 hours a week during holiday seasons. Not unexpectedly, some managers think women with family responsibilities would balk at such demands, and it is hardly to the discredit of thousands of Wal-Mart women that they may be right.
There used to be a remedy for this sort of managerial authoritarianism: it was called a union, which bargained over not only wages and pensions but also the kind of qualitative issues, including promotion and transfer policies, that have proved so vexing for non-unionized employees at Wal-Mart and other big retailers.
For a time it seemed as if the class-action lawsuit might be a partial substitute. By drastically limiting how a class-action suit can be brought, the Supreme Court leaves millions of service-sector workers with few avenues to escape the grinding work life and limited opportunities that so many now face.
Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of “The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business.”
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on June 22, 2011, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Wal-Mart’s Authoritarian Culture.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Wal-Mart and the Essence of the Inhuman Corporation
http://www.alternet.org/economy/146243/hightower%3A_wal-mart_and_the_essence_of_the_inhuman_corporation
Jim Hightower
Wal-Mart and the Essence of the Inhuman Corporation
Think corporations share some of mankind's key characteristics, like compassion? Think again. As Joseph Casias' case illustrates, they're more ruthless than ever.
April 1, 2010
I'm curious about those five Supreme Court justices who recently decreed that a corporation is a "person" with human rights: Do you think they ever met Mr. Walmart?
If they had, they'd be forced to concede that corporate personhood is a sheer fantasy, for there is nothing even remotely human about the bloodless and brainless thing that is Walmart. For conclusive evidence of this entity's total lack of humanity, the learned judges should climb down from their high bench and visit with Joseph Casias, a 29-year-old former employee of a Walmart store in Battle Creek, Mich.
In fact, Casias was an excellent employee throughout his five-year tenure within the corporate person, even earning "Associate of the Year" honors in 2008.
"I always tried my best," he says. "I gave them everything. One hundred ten percent every day. Anything they asked me to do, I did. More than they asked me to do. Twelve to 14 hours a day. I thought I was part of the Walmart family."
Five months ago, however, he was coldly cast out of the family. What happened? It started with cancer -- a rare form invaded his sinuses and brain. He's getting treatment to control it, but he still suffers a severe level of chronic pain. Yet, Casias was able to keep doing his usual good job every day by using a controlled dose of marijuana that his doctor prescribed to alleviate pain -- a prescription that is perfectly legal under Michigan's medical marijuana law.
By carefully scheduling his daily dosage, Casias never came to work under the influence, and he never took the medicine on the job, so Walmart saw nothing but an employee performing well.
Until last November. In a routine drug screening by the company, Casias tested positive for pot. He showed his state medical marijuana permit to the corporate cogs, but instead of using common sense or showing a smidgeon of human compassion, the managers mindlessly clicked into Program 420g, Section 21-mj (or some such) of corporate-code -- and summarily cashiered Casias.
Oh, come on, he's no druggie -- he has a painful cancer and is using legal medicine! If he were taking Oxycontin or other harsh drugs, you wouldn't think of terminating your associate of the year.
But there is no "you" there. Walmart is a machine, a fabrication, not a sentient, reasoning person. So the machine responded to public outrage over Casias' firing by issuing an insensate legal statement: "In states, such as Michigan, where prescriptions for marijuana can be obtained, an employer can still enforce a policy that requires termination of employment following a positive drug screen. We believe our policy complies with the law, and we support decisions based on the policy."
Cancer is enough of a burden on a person without corporate callousness adding to the pain, but Walmart just kept piling on this employee. He's got no job, is facing $10,000 in unpaid medical bills and can no longer afford his cancer treatment, so what does the corporation do? It challenged Casias' eligibility for unemployment compensation.
Not that Mr. Walmart hates the guy. It's just the corporate way. For Casias, however, it's a disaster. "It's not fair," he says.
Fair? To a corporation, "fair" is a place to take your pig to try to win a blue ribbon. Corporations are literally inhuman, possessing no sense of moral responsibility or human decency.
The good news is that real people are rallying against the faux person's outrageous officiousness, and they've formed a Facebook page: "Let Joseph Casias Talk." With the corporate image taking a beating and some customers organizing a boycott, the machinery for damage control kicked in at headquarters, prompting the company to drop its ugly effort to deny unemployment payments to Casias. It adamantly refuses, however, to take the one step he most needs: rehiring. And how about apologizing?
To convey your own thoughts directly to Citizen Walmart, call (800) 963-8442. And to help reform the law to stop such corporate attacks on medical marijuana patients, contact the Marijuana Policy Project: www.mpp.org.
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.
Jim Hightower
Wal-Mart and the Essence of the Inhuman Corporation
Think corporations share some of mankind's key characteristics, like compassion? Think again. As Joseph Casias' case illustrates, they're more ruthless than ever.
April 1, 2010
I'm curious about those five Supreme Court justices who recently decreed that a corporation is a "person" with human rights: Do you think they ever met Mr. Walmart?
If they had, they'd be forced to concede that corporate personhood is a sheer fantasy, for there is nothing even remotely human about the bloodless and brainless thing that is Walmart. For conclusive evidence of this entity's total lack of humanity, the learned judges should climb down from their high bench and visit with Joseph Casias, a 29-year-old former employee of a Walmart store in Battle Creek, Mich.
In fact, Casias was an excellent employee throughout his five-year tenure within the corporate person, even earning "Associate of the Year" honors in 2008.
"I always tried my best," he says. "I gave them everything. One hundred ten percent every day. Anything they asked me to do, I did. More than they asked me to do. Twelve to 14 hours a day. I thought I was part of the Walmart family."
Five months ago, however, he was coldly cast out of the family. What happened? It started with cancer -- a rare form invaded his sinuses and brain. He's getting treatment to control it, but he still suffers a severe level of chronic pain. Yet, Casias was able to keep doing his usual good job every day by using a controlled dose of marijuana that his doctor prescribed to alleviate pain -- a prescription that is perfectly legal under Michigan's medical marijuana law.
By carefully scheduling his daily dosage, Casias never came to work under the influence, and he never took the medicine on the job, so Walmart saw nothing but an employee performing well.
Until last November. In a routine drug screening by the company, Casias tested positive for pot. He showed his state medical marijuana permit to the corporate cogs, but instead of using common sense or showing a smidgeon of human compassion, the managers mindlessly clicked into Program 420g, Section 21-mj (or some such) of corporate-code -- and summarily cashiered Casias.
Oh, come on, he's no druggie -- he has a painful cancer and is using legal medicine! If he were taking Oxycontin or other harsh drugs, you wouldn't think of terminating your associate of the year.
But there is no "you" there. Walmart is a machine, a fabrication, not a sentient, reasoning person. So the machine responded to public outrage over Casias' firing by issuing an insensate legal statement: "In states, such as Michigan, where prescriptions for marijuana can be obtained, an employer can still enforce a policy that requires termination of employment following a positive drug screen. We believe our policy complies with the law, and we support decisions based on the policy."
Cancer is enough of a burden on a person without corporate callousness adding to the pain, but Walmart just kept piling on this employee. He's got no job, is facing $10,000 in unpaid medical bills and can no longer afford his cancer treatment, so what does the corporation do? It challenged Casias' eligibility for unemployment compensation.
Not that Mr. Walmart hates the guy. It's just the corporate way. For Casias, however, it's a disaster. "It's not fair," he says.
Fair? To a corporation, "fair" is a place to take your pig to try to win a blue ribbon. Corporations are literally inhuman, possessing no sense of moral responsibility or human decency.
The good news is that real people are rallying against the faux person's outrageous officiousness, and they've formed a Facebook page: "Let Joseph Casias Talk." With the corporate image taking a beating and some customers organizing a boycott, the machinery for damage control kicked in at headquarters, prompting the company to drop its ugly effort to deny unemployment payments to Casias. It adamantly refuses, however, to take the one step he most needs: rehiring. And how about apologizing?
To convey your own thoughts directly to Citizen Walmart, call (800) 963-8442. And to help reform the law to stop such corporate attacks on medical marijuana patients, contact the Marijuana Policy Project: www.mpp.org.
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
With Friends Like These
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/?q=node/335
With Friends Like These: Wal-Mart, Health `Reform’ and Obama’s `Public Option’
By dlindorff
07/09/2009
All you need to really know about the Obama health “reform” initiative is that it is being supported by retail giant Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart, a corporation that was built on the philosophy of treating workers like dirt (the company famously locks its employees inside its buildings at night, forces workers who have checked out of their shifts to continue to serve customers, off the clock, if they are asked for help on their way out of the store, has bitterly resisted offering any health benefits, and has one of the worst records of labor law violations of any company in the country), is now signing on as an endorser of the Obama health reform effort, saying:
“We believe now is the time for action on this vital issue. We commend the leadership of elected officials who are committed to enactment of reform, and we appreciate the commitment to inclusion and transparency which has been present thus far.
“We are entering a critical time during which all of us who will be asked to pay for health care reform will have to make a choice on whether to support the legislation. This choice will require employers to consider the trade off of agreeing to a coverage mandate and additional taxes versus the promise of reduced health care cost increases.”
Why would a company like Wal-Mart, with its Paleolithic attitude towards its own workers, be supporting a plan that, at least ostensibly, claims to be trying to provide health coverage for the working poor?
There are several answers. First of all, from a competitive point of view, Wal-Mart probably figures that if there is an employer mandate to provide health benefits, with a hefty fine for those that refuse to comply, the company is in a better position to provide a minimal plan than many of its competitors, like K-Mart or Target. Second, the company’s executives may figure that the so-called “public option” will offer it a cheaper alternative, subsidized by the taxpayer, than existing private insurance plans. This is one valid point of attack from the right on the Obama plan: that a government-run alternative to private insurance would end up being a dumping ground for companies that didn’t want to pay for private insurance coverage plans for their workers.
Finally, Wal-Mart probably figures that the Obama plan is the best way to avoid a move to a single-payer system ala Canada’s, which inevitably would be heavily financed by corporate taxes.
There are few giant corporations in America that are worse than Wal-Mart when it comes to employee relations and treatment of workers, so when you see a company like that coming out in support of any government program—particularly one that is as critically important to the lives of ordinary working people as health care—you should immediately question the value and the intent of that plan.
The same thing can be said about the so called “savings” being offered by various segments of the medical-industrial complex in deals being struck with and touted by the White House (the pharmaceutical industry has promised to cut drug costs to the government and the public by $80 billion over 10 years, while the hospital industry has agreed to offer savings of another $150 billion over the same period). While these so-called savings are mostly bogus sleight-of-hands (for example, much of the “savings” being offered by the hospital industry consists of reduced government compensation for the treatment of the uninsured in emergency rooms, but of course, if the Obama plan is passed, and insurance coverage is offered to most Americans, there would be far fewer uninsured patients in hospitals anyway), the real reason these big industry sectors are coming on board the Obama plan is that they see it as a way to avoid, or push off to the future, a single-payer system that would dictate all their fees and prices.
The point is, if the very groups that have created the massively expensive and exclusionary health care system that we have today in America, and that for years have bitterly resisted any efforts to seriously reform it and to make it open to all, regardless of income or medical condition, are suddenly endorsing a plan that purports to be a real, progressive reform, we have to question the premise: that the reform really is real or progressive.
And the plan being promoted by President Obama and by the Democrats in Congress is not real or progressive. It is a plan that will further enrich the health care industry, that will not stop the continuing rise in health care costs, that will still leave millions of people without access to quality medical care, and that will end up costing taxpayers more than they are already paying.
The proof is the support for this plan being offered by the likes of Wal-Mart and the big medical industry players.
A Reader Suggestion:
One reader suggests an excellent idea: If Obama's "public option" is such a great idea, then let's use it for all federal employees, including members of Congress and also for our long-suffering veterans. Doing that would assure two things. First, the plan would start out with a large number of insured people spread around the nation, giving it the ability and clout to negotiate good prices from doctors, hospitals and drug companies. Second, because members of Congress, veterans and federal employees are all powerful interest groups, including them all in such a plan would insure that it would be a good plan, not some dumping ground for poor people rejected by the private insurance industry.
I say Democrats in Congress should put up or shut up. If they are sincere about offering a good, competitive "public option" to keep the private insurance industry honest, they should make the "public option" the insurer of veterans, federal employees...and themselves, right from the get-go.
With Friends Like These: Wal-Mart, Health `Reform’ and Obama’s `Public Option’
By dlindorff
07/09/2009
All you need to really know about the Obama health “reform” initiative is that it is being supported by retail giant Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart, a corporation that was built on the philosophy of treating workers like dirt (the company famously locks its employees inside its buildings at night, forces workers who have checked out of their shifts to continue to serve customers, off the clock, if they are asked for help on their way out of the store, has bitterly resisted offering any health benefits, and has one of the worst records of labor law violations of any company in the country), is now signing on as an endorser of the Obama health reform effort, saying:
“We believe now is the time for action on this vital issue. We commend the leadership of elected officials who are committed to enactment of reform, and we appreciate the commitment to inclusion and transparency which has been present thus far.
“We are entering a critical time during which all of us who will be asked to pay for health care reform will have to make a choice on whether to support the legislation. This choice will require employers to consider the trade off of agreeing to a coverage mandate and additional taxes versus the promise of reduced health care cost increases.”
Why would a company like Wal-Mart, with its Paleolithic attitude towards its own workers, be supporting a plan that, at least ostensibly, claims to be trying to provide health coverage for the working poor?
There are several answers. First of all, from a competitive point of view, Wal-Mart probably figures that if there is an employer mandate to provide health benefits, with a hefty fine for those that refuse to comply, the company is in a better position to provide a minimal plan than many of its competitors, like K-Mart or Target. Second, the company’s executives may figure that the so-called “public option” will offer it a cheaper alternative, subsidized by the taxpayer, than existing private insurance plans. This is one valid point of attack from the right on the Obama plan: that a government-run alternative to private insurance would end up being a dumping ground for companies that didn’t want to pay for private insurance coverage plans for their workers.
Finally, Wal-Mart probably figures that the Obama plan is the best way to avoid a move to a single-payer system ala Canada’s, which inevitably would be heavily financed by corporate taxes.
There are few giant corporations in America that are worse than Wal-Mart when it comes to employee relations and treatment of workers, so when you see a company like that coming out in support of any government program—particularly one that is as critically important to the lives of ordinary working people as health care—you should immediately question the value and the intent of that plan.
The same thing can be said about the so called “savings” being offered by various segments of the medical-industrial complex in deals being struck with and touted by the White House (the pharmaceutical industry has promised to cut drug costs to the government and the public by $80 billion over 10 years, while the hospital industry has agreed to offer savings of another $150 billion over the same period). While these so-called savings are mostly bogus sleight-of-hands (for example, much of the “savings” being offered by the hospital industry consists of reduced government compensation for the treatment of the uninsured in emergency rooms, but of course, if the Obama plan is passed, and insurance coverage is offered to most Americans, there would be far fewer uninsured patients in hospitals anyway), the real reason these big industry sectors are coming on board the Obama plan is that they see it as a way to avoid, or push off to the future, a single-payer system that would dictate all their fees and prices.
The point is, if the very groups that have created the massively expensive and exclusionary health care system that we have today in America, and that for years have bitterly resisted any efforts to seriously reform it and to make it open to all, regardless of income or medical condition, are suddenly endorsing a plan that purports to be a real, progressive reform, we have to question the premise: that the reform really is real or progressive.
And the plan being promoted by President Obama and by the Democrats in Congress is not real or progressive. It is a plan that will further enrich the health care industry, that will not stop the continuing rise in health care costs, that will still leave millions of people without access to quality medical care, and that will end up costing taxpayers more than they are already paying.
The proof is the support for this plan being offered by the likes of Wal-Mart and the big medical industry players.
A Reader Suggestion:
One reader suggests an excellent idea: If Obama's "public option" is such a great idea, then let's use it for all federal employees, including members of Congress and also for our long-suffering veterans. Doing that would assure two things. First, the plan would start out with a large number of insured people spread around the nation, giving it the ability and clout to negotiate good prices from doctors, hospitals and drug companies. Second, because members of Congress, veterans and federal employees are all powerful interest groups, including them all in such a plan would insure that it would be a good plan, not some dumping ground for poor people rejected by the private insurance industry.
I say Democrats in Congress should put up or shut up. If they are sincere about offering a good, competitive "public option" to keep the private insurance industry honest, they should make the "public option" the insurer of veterans, federal employees...and themselves, right from the get-go.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Wal-Mart on employer mandated health coverage
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssConsumerGoodsAndRetailNews/idUSN3043122520090630
Wal-Mart supports employer mandated health coverage
Tue Jun 30, 2009
* Wal-Mart signs letter with union, policy group
* Wal-Mart: should cover as many businesses as possible
* Cover part-time and full-time employees
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30 (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's largest retailer, said on Tuesday that it supports President Barack Obama's push to require large employers to offer health insurance to workers.
"We are for an employer mandate which is fair and broad in its coverage," stated a letter addressed to Obama and signed by Mike Duke, the chief executive of Wal-Mart; Andy Stern, the president of Service Employees International Union and John Podesta, the CEO of the Center for American Progress.
Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, also said separately that the mandate should cover as many businesses as possible, and cover part-time and full-time employees.
"Any alternative to an employer mandate should not create barriers or disincentives to hiring workers with disabilities, entry level employees, or people from low income families." said Leslie Dach, Wal-Mart's executive vice president of corporate affairs and government relations, in a statement.
Wal-Mart has drawn criticism from labor groups, who have accused it of mistreating employees and not offering adequate health care coverage. Former CEO Lee Scott worked to counter those critics before he retired from his role as CEO earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Obama has stepped up his push for health care reform. The president has left much of the details of health reform to Congress, but he has told U.S. lawmakers he is open to requiring larger companies to provide coverage for employees while exempting smaller businesses.
(Reporting by Nicole Maestri; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
Wal-Mart supports employer mandated health coverage
Tue Jun 30, 2009
* Wal-Mart signs letter with union, policy group
* Wal-Mart: should cover as many businesses as possible
* Cover part-time and full-time employees
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30 (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's largest retailer, said on Tuesday that it supports President Barack Obama's push to require large employers to offer health insurance to workers.
"We are for an employer mandate which is fair and broad in its coverage," stated a letter addressed to Obama and signed by Mike Duke, the chief executive of Wal-Mart; Andy Stern, the president of Service Employees International Union and John Podesta, the CEO of the Center for American Progress.
Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, also said separately that the mandate should cover as many businesses as possible, and cover part-time and full-time employees.
"Any alternative to an employer mandate should not create barriers or disincentives to hiring workers with disabilities, entry level employees, or people from low income families." said Leslie Dach, Wal-Mart's executive vice president of corporate affairs and government relations, in a statement.
Wal-Mart has drawn criticism from labor groups, who have accused it of mistreating employees and not offering adequate health care coverage. Former CEO Lee Scott worked to counter those critics before he retired from his role as CEO earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Obama has stepped up his push for health care reform. The president has left much of the details of health reform to Congress, but he has told U.S. lawmakers he is open to requiring larger companies to provide coverage for employees while exempting smaller businesses.
(Reporting by Nicole Maestri; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
Friday, March 27, 2009
Starbucks, Costco and Whole Foods team up
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE52L03920090322
Starbucks, Costco and Whole Foods team up on labor bill
Sat Mar 21, 2009
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Starbucks, Costco Wholesale Corp and Whole Foods Market are joining forces to propose alternatives to a bill that makes it easier for workers to unionize but is strongly opposed by U.S. corporations.
The three retail giants said on Saturday they sought a "third way" as big business and labor unions face off over the Employee Free Choice Act, backed by President Barack Obama.
The "card check" legislation would let workers form a union when a majority of employees sign authorization cards. That would change the current practice in which workers usually vote on unionizing, although the bill would leave the election option open for workers to choose.
Passing the bill is a top priority of labor unions, which in November helped Obama win the White House and the Democrats increase their hold on Congress. Unions, which suffered decades of declining membership, argue that elections allow anti-union managers to intimidate and harass employees.
U.S. businesses and investors oppose the legislation, with analysts saying retail names from Wal-Mart to Target would face higher labor costs and greater unionization risks. Wal-Mart said last week it was confident the legislation would be defeated in Congress.
Starbucks, Costco and Whole Foods, which invited other corporations, unions and public interest groups to join them, proposed instead that unions be given more access to meet with workers, stricter penalties for labor violations and a guaranteed right to request secret ballots in all circumstances.
"We believe in and trust our employees, which is neither anti-union nor pro-status quo," said Costco CEO James Sinegal.
The three companies will provide more details of their proposals on Sunday.
"Given the severe economic crisis facing America, it is time to avoid the polarization that has occurred on both sides of this issue, and instead, come together to find a productive approach," said Lanny Davis, an attorney with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, who was cited in the statement.
(Reporting by Edwin Chan; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Starbucks, Costco and Whole Foods team up on labor bill
Sat Mar 21, 2009
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Starbucks, Costco Wholesale Corp and Whole Foods Market are joining forces to propose alternatives to a bill that makes it easier for workers to unionize but is strongly opposed by U.S. corporations.
The three retail giants said on Saturday they sought a "third way" as big business and labor unions face off over the Employee Free Choice Act, backed by President Barack Obama.
The "card check" legislation would let workers form a union when a majority of employees sign authorization cards. That would change the current practice in which workers usually vote on unionizing, although the bill would leave the election option open for workers to choose.
Passing the bill is a top priority of labor unions, which in November helped Obama win the White House and the Democrats increase their hold on Congress. Unions, which suffered decades of declining membership, argue that elections allow anti-union managers to intimidate and harass employees.
U.S. businesses and investors oppose the legislation, with analysts saying retail names from Wal-Mart to Target would face higher labor costs and greater unionization risks. Wal-Mart said last week it was confident the legislation would be defeated in Congress.
Starbucks, Costco and Whole Foods, which invited other corporations, unions and public interest groups to join them, proposed instead that unions be given more access to meet with workers, stricter penalties for labor violations and a guaranteed right to request secret ballots in all circumstances.
"We believe in and trust our employees, which is neither anti-union nor pro-status quo," said Costco CEO James Sinegal.
The three companies will provide more details of their proposals on Sunday.
"Given the severe economic crisis facing America, it is time to avoid the polarization that has occurred on both sides of this issue, and instead, come together to find a productive approach," said Lanny Davis, an attorney with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, who was cited in the statement.
(Reporting by Edwin Chan; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Historians battle Wal-Mart over key Civil War site
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090102/D95F79I00.html
Historians battle Wal-Mart over key Civil War site
Jan 2, 2009
By STEVE SZKOTAK
LOCUST GROVE, Va. (AP) - Wal-Mart wants to build a Supercenter within a cannonshot of where Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first fought, a proposal that has preservationists rallying to protect the key Civil War site.
A who's who of historians including filmmaker Ken Burns and Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough sent a letter last month to H. Lee Scott, president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), urging the company to build somewhere farther from the Wilderness Battlefield.
"The Wilderness is an indelible part of our history, its very ground hallowed by the American blood spilled there, and it cannot be moved," said the letter from 253 scholars and others.
Wal-Mart and its supporters point out that the 138,000-square-foot store would be right behind a bank and a small strip mall, a full mile from entrance to the site of the 1864 clash that left thousands dead and hastened the war's end.
Local leaders also want the $500,000 in tax revenue they estimate the big box store will generate for rural Orange County, a gradually growing area about 60 miles southwest of Washington.
"In these economic times, the fact that Wal-Mart wants to come into the county is an economic plus," said R. Mark Johnson, a tire shop owner and chairman of the county's board of supervisors. "This is hardly pristine wilderness we're talking about."
Grant's Union troops were headed to Richmond on May 4, 1864, when they confronted Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The Battle of the Wilderness involved more than 100,000 Union troops and 61,000 Confederates. The fighting, according to National Park Service estimates, left more than 4,000 dead and 20,000 wounded.
Some 2,700 acres of the Wilderness Battlefield are protected as part of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.
Preservationists regularly square off against developers in Virginia, where much of the Civil War was fought.
This dispute, however, has stirred an outcry similar to the one in 1994 over The Walt Disney Co.'s plans to build a $650 million theme park within miles of the Manassas Battlefield. The entertainment giant bowed to public pressure and abandoned the project.
Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart, which opened nearly 200 stores in the U.S. in 2007, said it studied a lengthy list of sites in Orange County before settling on the spot near the battlefield and its gentle hills dissected by neat footpaths.
"We recognize the significance of the Wilderness Battlefield, but we are not building on the battlefield," said Keith Morris, a spokesman for the world's largest retailer.
Preservationists argue the store site is still significant because it was used as a staging area by Union troops.
"Is it blood-soaked ground? No, but it is a part of the battlefield," said Jim Campi, a spokesman for the Civil War Preservation Trust, which lists the Wilderness Battlefield as endangered.
Supervisors will have the final say, after county planners decide if the retailer should be granted a zoning variance. Hearings likely will be scheduled in February and March.
Supervisor Teri Pace said there are "more appropriate places" in the county for Wal-Mart to build. She envisions an economic development plan that taps the county's history - including President James Madison's restored home, Montpelier - and its agricultural heritage, which now includes several popular wineries.
"If we define ourselves and promote ourselves as something different, with tourism and agriculture, we really have huge opportunities here," Pace said.
---
On the Net:
Civil War Preservation Trust: http://www.civilwar.org/walmart08/
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.: http://www.walmart.com/
Orange County: http://orangecountyva.gov/
Historians battle Wal-Mart over key Civil War site
Jan 2, 2009
By STEVE SZKOTAK
LOCUST GROVE, Va. (AP) - Wal-Mart wants to build a Supercenter within a cannonshot of where Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first fought, a proposal that has preservationists rallying to protect the key Civil War site.
A who's who of historians including filmmaker Ken Burns and Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough sent a letter last month to H. Lee Scott, president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), urging the company to build somewhere farther from the Wilderness Battlefield.
"The Wilderness is an indelible part of our history, its very ground hallowed by the American blood spilled there, and it cannot be moved," said the letter from 253 scholars and others.
Wal-Mart and its supporters point out that the 138,000-square-foot store would be right behind a bank and a small strip mall, a full mile from entrance to the site of the 1864 clash that left thousands dead and hastened the war's end.
Local leaders also want the $500,000 in tax revenue they estimate the big box store will generate for rural Orange County, a gradually growing area about 60 miles southwest of Washington.
"In these economic times, the fact that Wal-Mart wants to come into the county is an economic plus," said R. Mark Johnson, a tire shop owner and chairman of the county's board of supervisors. "This is hardly pristine wilderness we're talking about."
Grant's Union troops were headed to Richmond on May 4, 1864, when they confronted Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The Battle of the Wilderness involved more than 100,000 Union troops and 61,000 Confederates. The fighting, according to National Park Service estimates, left more than 4,000 dead and 20,000 wounded.
Some 2,700 acres of the Wilderness Battlefield are protected as part of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.
Preservationists regularly square off against developers in Virginia, where much of the Civil War was fought.
This dispute, however, has stirred an outcry similar to the one in 1994 over The Walt Disney Co.'s plans to build a $650 million theme park within miles of the Manassas Battlefield. The entertainment giant bowed to public pressure and abandoned the project.
Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart, which opened nearly 200 stores in the U.S. in 2007, said it studied a lengthy list of sites in Orange County before settling on the spot near the battlefield and its gentle hills dissected by neat footpaths.
"We recognize the significance of the Wilderness Battlefield, but we are not building on the battlefield," said Keith Morris, a spokesman for the world's largest retailer.
Preservationists argue the store site is still significant because it was used as a staging area by Union troops.
"Is it blood-soaked ground? No, but it is a part of the battlefield," said Jim Campi, a spokesman for the Civil War Preservation Trust, which lists the Wilderness Battlefield as endangered.
Supervisors will have the final say, after county planners decide if the retailer should be granted a zoning variance. Hearings likely will be scheduled in February and March.
Supervisor Teri Pace said there are "more appropriate places" in the county for Wal-Mart to build. She envisions an economic development plan that taps the county's history - including President James Madison's restored home, Montpelier - and its agricultural heritage, which now includes several popular wineries.
"If we define ourselves and promote ourselves as something different, with tourism and agriculture, we really have huge opportunities here," Pace said.
---
On the Net:
Civil War Preservation Trust: http://www.civilwar.org/walmart08/
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.: http://www.walmart.com/
Orange County: http://orangecountyva.gov/
Monday, December 22, 2008
Obama, in a ‘slap in the face’
http://wsws.org/articles/2008/dec2008/warr-d19.shtml
Obama, in a ‘slap in the face,’ invites right-wing evangelist to the inauguration
By David Walsh
19 December 2008
President-elect Barack Obama’s various appointments and political choices are taking on an almost provocative character. The Joint Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies announced Wednesday that Rick Warren, a right-wing millionaire evangelist, will lead the opening prayers at Obama’s swearing-in ceremony January 20.
Warren is a religious bigot and know-nothing, hostile to gay rights and abortion rights, a believer in creationism and “free market enterprise for religion, as well as for everything else” and a supporter of American imperialism’s agenda to dominate the globe.
The son of a Baptist minister, he preaches a sort of New Age evangelism at the Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, where he has gathered a large following. The author of The Purpose Driven Life, Warren avoids for the most part the semi-fascistic rhetoric of televangelist and former Republican candidate for president Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, claiming to be a man of the “middle” and not the Christian right.
His mentor, he explains, is management consultant Peter Drucker and he has been compared to “entrepreneurs” like Ray Kroc (of McDonald’s) and Sam Walton (of Wal-Mart). In turn, he claims to be mentor to former GE chief Jack Welch and pastor to Rupert Murdoch, two of the most unsavory and ruthless business figures around. Warren’s web site approvingly cites this comment from Forbes magazine: “If Saddleback ministry was a business its influence would be compared with Dell, Google or Starbucks.”
Despite the affable, ‘up-to-date’ façade, Warren’s primitive and anti-democratic views are hardly a secret. He compares same-sex marriage to incest, pedophilia and polygamy, claims that socially-minded theologians advocate “basically Marxism in a Christian form,” denounces supporters of abortion rights as “Holocaust deniers,” and opposes stem-cell research.
On the right-wing Hannity & Colmes talk show on the Fox cable channel in early December, host Sean Hannity suggested that the US should kill Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—“We need to take him out.” The “non-political” Warren concurred, commenting, “the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped. … In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers.”
Speaking of homosexuality during a television interview in December 2005, Warren commented: “[I]s it natural? Is it the natural thing? … If Darwin was right, which is survival of the fittest then homosexuality would be a recessive gene because it doesn’t reproduce and you would think that over thousands of years that homosexuality would work itself out of the gene pool.”
In regard to Proposition 8, a measure to ban gay marriage, which was on the ballot this November in California, Warren told his supporters: “There are about two percent of Americans [who] are homosexual, gay, lesbian people. We should not let two percent of the population … change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years. This is not even just a Christian issue, it is a humanitarian and human issue, that God created marriage for the purpose of family, love and procreation.”
Warren thrust himself into the 2008 presidential election as well, hosting a forum this past August in which he quizzed presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain about a number of “hot-button” issues (see “Obama, McCain vie for support of Christian right”), including abortion, same-sex marriage, each candidate’s “greatest moral failure” and his attitude toward “evil.” Obama’s willingness to appear in such a setting and his pandering to the religious right were the most significant aspects of the event.
Now, after naming a host of Bush and Clinton leftovers and other pro-big business, pro-war functionaries to his cabinet and winning the ringing endorsement of the current president and vice-president in the process, the president-elect has picked Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.
The choice is cynical, made purely out of political expediency.
In a review of The Audacity of Hope (see “Obama’s The Audacity of Hope: Portrait of a modern American political operative”), we noted Obama’s transparent opportunism on the question of “faith.” Raised essentially without religion by his liberal mother, “a citizen of the world,” the aspiring politician realized at some point in his sojourn that “Americans are a religious people” and that he had to come to terms with the “African American religious tradition” if he was to find acceptance by the political establishment. His account of discovering “God’s spirit” in a church on the South Side of Chicago lacks the slightest ring of truth.
In inviting Warren, Obama is seeking to build up support among the most reactionary and backward elements of the population for his administration and its policies of war and austerity. The New York Times described the action as “an olive branch to conservative Christian evangelicals.” A further illustration of the “seamless transition” from the Bush to the Obama administration.
A host of gay rights and liberal organizations have denounced the inaugural invitation to Warren, decrying it as “a slap in the face.” Joe Solmonese, president of Human Rights Campaign, in an open letter to Obama, called the decision “a genuine blow” to gay and lesbian Americans. He went on: “Our loss in California over the passage of Proposition 8 which stripped loving, committed same-sex couples of their given legal right to marry is the greatest loss our community has faced in 40 years. And by inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.”
Solmonese noted that Warren “has often played the role of general in the cultural war waged” against gays and lesbians.
Kevin Naff, editor of the Washington Blade, a gay newspaper, argued that the Warren decision revealed a “tone-deafness to our concerns” that “must not be tolerated. We have just endured eight years of endless assaults on our dignity and equality from a president beholden to bigoted conservative Christians. The election was supposed to have ended that era. It appears otherwise.”
The People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, noted that Warren’s supporters would “portray his selection as an appeal to unity by a president who is committed to reaching across traditional divides. … [T]he sad truth is that this decision further elevates someone who has in recent weeks actively promoted legalized discrimination and denigrated the lives and relationships of millions of Americans.”
Sara Posner, writing in the Nation, commented: “Now it has officially gone too far: Democrats, in their zeal to appear friendly to evangelical voters, have chosen celebrity preacher and best-selling author Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration.’
Obama firmly defended the invitation to Warren at a press conference in Chicago Thursday. The soon-to-be president asserted that he would remain “a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans.” His decision to permit the evangelical bigot to deliver the invocation merely expressed his desire “for America to come together, even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues.” This was, he explained, “part of the magic of this country … that we are diverse and noisy and opinionated.”
This argument, a rationale for the worst sort of unprincipled politics, is absurd. It doesn’t take much insight to understand that providing a public and key political platform for a rabid enemy of gay and democratic rights undermines equality for gays and lesbians, along with everyone else.
The vast bulk of the population has no interest in “coming together” with the likes of Warren and the rest of the fundamentalist-evangelical Christian hierarchy, a social element deeply hostile to the working class, the poor and minorities, as well as to science, culture and everything smacking of the 21st, 20th and other recent centuries. Such a confluence of interests is “magical” indeed, rooted in fantasy and wishful thinking.
Obama and his entourage are clever politicians, but too clever by half. They calculate that they can move as far to the right as they like, because the official American “left” has nowhere else to go and, in any case, no stomach for opposing such a trajectory.
It’s perfectly true that the Nation editorial board, officials of People for the American Way and many well-heeled gay rights advocates will never break from the Democratic Party. In the end, these elements will rationalize and explain away every reactionary measure taken by the Obama administration—they are bound to the Democrats by class interest, defenders all of the profit system.
The mass of the American people, however, is another matter. They have no interest in sticking with the Democrats. Seeing Obama for what he is, a venal and dishonest representative of the American financial and corporate elite, will be an essential political experience and open up the floodgates.
Obama, in a ‘slap in the face,’ invites right-wing evangelist to the inauguration
By David Walsh
19 December 2008
President-elect Barack Obama’s various appointments and political choices are taking on an almost provocative character. The Joint Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies announced Wednesday that Rick Warren, a right-wing millionaire evangelist, will lead the opening prayers at Obama’s swearing-in ceremony January 20.
Warren is a religious bigot and know-nothing, hostile to gay rights and abortion rights, a believer in creationism and “free market enterprise for religion, as well as for everything else” and a supporter of American imperialism’s agenda to dominate the globe.
The son of a Baptist minister, he preaches a sort of New Age evangelism at the Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, where he has gathered a large following. The author of The Purpose Driven Life, Warren avoids for the most part the semi-fascistic rhetoric of televangelist and former Republican candidate for president Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, claiming to be a man of the “middle” and not the Christian right.
His mentor, he explains, is management consultant Peter Drucker and he has been compared to “entrepreneurs” like Ray Kroc (of McDonald’s) and Sam Walton (of Wal-Mart). In turn, he claims to be mentor to former GE chief Jack Welch and pastor to Rupert Murdoch, two of the most unsavory and ruthless business figures around. Warren’s web site approvingly cites this comment from Forbes magazine: “If Saddleback ministry was a business its influence would be compared with Dell, Google or Starbucks.”
Despite the affable, ‘up-to-date’ façade, Warren’s primitive and anti-democratic views are hardly a secret. He compares same-sex marriage to incest, pedophilia and polygamy, claims that socially-minded theologians advocate “basically Marxism in a Christian form,” denounces supporters of abortion rights as “Holocaust deniers,” and opposes stem-cell research.
On the right-wing Hannity & Colmes talk show on the Fox cable channel in early December, host Sean Hannity suggested that the US should kill Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—“We need to take him out.” The “non-political” Warren concurred, commenting, “the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped. … In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers.”
Speaking of homosexuality during a television interview in December 2005, Warren commented: “[I]s it natural? Is it the natural thing? … If Darwin was right, which is survival of the fittest then homosexuality would be a recessive gene because it doesn’t reproduce and you would think that over thousands of years that homosexuality would work itself out of the gene pool.”
In regard to Proposition 8, a measure to ban gay marriage, which was on the ballot this November in California, Warren told his supporters: “There are about two percent of Americans [who] are homosexual, gay, lesbian people. We should not let two percent of the population … change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years. This is not even just a Christian issue, it is a humanitarian and human issue, that God created marriage for the purpose of family, love and procreation.”
Warren thrust himself into the 2008 presidential election as well, hosting a forum this past August in which he quizzed presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain about a number of “hot-button” issues (see “Obama, McCain vie for support of Christian right”), including abortion, same-sex marriage, each candidate’s “greatest moral failure” and his attitude toward “evil.” Obama’s willingness to appear in such a setting and his pandering to the religious right were the most significant aspects of the event.
Now, after naming a host of Bush and Clinton leftovers and other pro-big business, pro-war functionaries to his cabinet and winning the ringing endorsement of the current president and vice-president in the process, the president-elect has picked Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.
The choice is cynical, made purely out of political expediency.
In a review of The Audacity of Hope (see “Obama’s The Audacity of Hope: Portrait of a modern American political operative”), we noted Obama’s transparent opportunism on the question of “faith.” Raised essentially without religion by his liberal mother, “a citizen of the world,” the aspiring politician realized at some point in his sojourn that “Americans are a religious people” and that he had to come to terms with the “African American religious tradition” if he was to find acceptance by the political establishment. His account of discovering “God’s spirit” in a church on the South Side of Chicago lacks the slightest ring of truth.
In inviting Warren, Obama is seeking to build up support among the most reactionary and backward elements of the population for his administration and its policies of war and austerity. The New York Times described the action as “an olive branch to conservative Christian evangelicals.” A further illustration of the “seamless transition” from the Bush to the Obama administration.
A host of gay rights and liberal organizations have denounced the inaugural invitation to Warren, decrying it as “a slap in the face.” Joe Solmonese, president of Human Rights Campaign, in an open letter to Obama, called the decision “a genuine blow” to gay and lesbian Americans. He went on: “Our loss in California over the passage of Proposition 8 which stripped loving, committed same-sex couples of their given legal right to marry is the greatest loss our community has faced in 40 years. And by inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.”
Solmonese noted that Warren “has often played the role of general in the cultural war waged” against gays and lesbians.
Kevin Naff, editor of the Washington Blade, a gay newspaper, argued that the Warren decision revealed a “tone-deafness to our concerns” that “must not be tolerated. We have just endured eight years of endless assaults on our dignity and equality from a president beholden to bigoted conservative Christians. The election was supposed to have ended that era. It appears otherwise.”
The People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, noted that Warren’s supporters would “portray his selection as an appeal to unity by a president who is committed to reaching across traditional divides. … [T]he sad truth is that this decision further elevates someone who has in recent weeks actively promoted legalized discrimination and denigrated the lives and relationships of millions of Americans.”
Sara Posner, writing in the Nation, commented: “Now it has officially gone too far: Democrats, in their zeal to appear friendly to evangelical voters, have chosen celebrity preacher and best-selling author Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration.’
Obama firmly defended the invitation to Warren at a press conference in Chicago Thursday. The soon-to-be president asserted that he would remain “a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans.” His decision to permit the evangelical bigot to deliver the invocation merely expressed his desire “for America to come together, even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues.” This was, he explained, “part of the magic of this country … that we are diverse and noisy and opinionated.”
This argument, a rationale for the worst sort of unprincipled politics, is absurd. It doesn’t take much insight to understand that providing a public and key political platform for a rabid enemy of gay and democratic rights undermines equality for gays and lesbians, along with everyone else.
The vast bulk of the population has no interest in “coming together” with the likes of Warren and the rest of the fundamentalist-evangelical Christian hierarchy, a social element deeply hostile to the working class, the poor and minorities, as well as to science, culture and everything smacking of the 21st, 20th and other recent centuries. Such a confluence of interests is “magical” indeed, rooted in fantasy and wishful thinking.
Obama and his entourage are clever politicians, but too clever by half. They calculate that they can move as far to the right as they like, because the official American “left” has nowhere else to go and, in any case, no stomach for opposing such a trajectory.
It’s perfectly true that the Nation editorial board, officials of People for the American Way and many well-heeled gay rights advocates will never break from the Democratic Party. In the end, these elements will rationalize and explain away every reactionary measure taken by the Obama administration—they are bound to the Democrats by class interest, defenders all of the profit system.
The mass of the American people, however, is another matter. They have no interest in sticking with the Democrats. Seeing Obama for what he is, a venal and dishonest representative of the American financial and corporate elite, will be an essential political experience and open up the floodgates.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Walmart represents 'mainstreamification' of iPhone
http://blogs.computerworld.com/walmart_represents_mainstreamification_of_iphone
Seth Weintraub
Apple Ink
December 9, 2008
Walmart represents 'mainstreamification' of iPhone
TAGS:$99, 4Gb, Apple, iPhone, Walmart
IT TOPICS:Macintosh & Apple, Mobile & Wireless, Personal Technology
A lot has been made of Apple's seemingly sure move to Walmart as a point of sale for the iPhone. Whether or not Apple releases an "everyman" $99 4Gb iPhone still remains to be seen, but this isn't the main point. The macro trend, if you haven't recognized it yet, is that the iPhone has gone beyond mainstream.
And the Apple brand? Don't worry, it will be fine. Walmart sells Coke and GE products, which are by some accounts the world's most valuable brands. They aren't suffering any dilution.
Walmart also sells iPods, and has for awhile, without any backlash. Heck, they may even start selling MacBooks. Do they sell Louis Vuitton handbags? Nope. Different demographic. But they do sell Sony.
Apple is trying to push this phone beyond even the middle class. The iPhone will now be in every small town in America. Beyond even the reach of Best Buy and AT&T stores, Walmarts are, for better or for worse, where a huge swath of Americans from all income brackets do their weekly shopping. The iPhone will be in front of every face, day after day. Week after week.
Just like the iPod has been.
If there is a $99 version, this will tempt the lower income demographic a bit more, but the biggest expense – by a landslide – is the AT&T monthly fees. In fact, on a few of AT&T's plans, the $99 will be eclipsed in the first month of wireless charges alone. This, however, will sell many more phones and won't tarnish the brand.
Not everybody is as sure as I am that cheaper iPhones are a good idea.
UBS analyst Maynard Um said yesterday,"A $99 iPhone would be atypical of Apple's premium brand strategy. More likely is a scenario in which select Wal-Mart, and possibly Sam's Clubs, are simply added as further iPhone distribution points."
Really? What would a $59 iPod do to the brand?
The most upset person is likely Steve Jobs who doesn't seem like a Walmart kinda guy. But considering the 4.5 million iPhones he could sell, it isn't really a decision at all, and he's made much more painful strategic moves in the past (selling part of Apple to Microsoft) that make this pale in comparison.
Seth Weintraub
Apple Ink
December 9, 2008
Walmart represents 'mainstreamification' of iPhone
TAGS:$99, 4Gb, Apple, iPhone, Walmart
IT TOPICS:Macintosh & Apple, Mobile & Wireless, Personal Technology
A lot has been made of Apple's seemingly sure move to Walmart as a point of sale for the iPhone. Whether or not Apple releases an "everyman" $99 4Gb iPhone still remains to be seen, but this isn't the main point. The macro trend, if you haven't recognized it yet, is that the iPhone has gone beyond mainstream.
And the Apple brand? Don't worry, it will be fine. Walmart sells Coke and GE products, which are by some accounts the world's most valuable brands. They aren't suffering any dilution.
Walmart also sells iPods, and has for awhile, without any backlash. Heck, they may even start selling MacBooks. Do they sell Louis Vuitton handbags? Nope. Different demographic. But they do sell Sony.
Apple is trying to push this phone beyond even the middle class. The iPhone will now be in every small town in America. Beyond even the reach of Best Buy and AT&T stores, Walmarts are, for better or for worse, where a huge swath of Americans from all income brackets do their weekly shopping. The iPhone will be in front of every face, day after day. Week after week.
Just like the iPod has been.
If there is a $99 version, this will tempt the lower income demographic a bit more, but the biggest expense – by a landslide – is the AT&T monthly fees. In fact, on a few of AT&T's plans, the $99 will be eclipsed in the first month of wireless charges alone. This, however, will sell many more phones and won't tarnish the brand.
Not everybody is as sure as I am that cheaper iPhones are a good idea.
UBS analyst Maynard Um said yesterday,"A $99 iPhone would be atypical of Apple's premium brand strategy. More likely is a scenario in which select Wal-Mart, and possibly Sam's Clubs, are simply added as further iPhone distribution points."
Really? What would a $59 iPod do to the brand?
The most upset person is likely Steve Jobs who doesn't seem like a Walmart kinda guy. But considering the 4.5 million iPhones he could sell, it isn't really a decision at all, and he's made much more painful strategic moves in the past (selling part of Apple to Microsoft) that make this pale in comparison.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Guns N' Roses in talks for exclusive album release
http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN1529368720080816?feedType=RSS&feedName=entertainmentNews&rpc=22&sp=trueGuns N' Roses in talks for exclusive album release
Sat Aug 16, 2008T
By Ed Christman
NEW YORK (Billboard) - The June leak of nine allegedly "mastered, finished" tracks from Guns N' Roses' long-delayed "Chinese Democracy" spurred a renewed round of speculation about whether the Axl Rose-led band will finally release the 14-years-in-the-making album.
But some concrete signs are finally emerging that the album's release could be imminent. That's because, according to sources, negotiations are under way for "Chinese Democracy" to come out as an exclusive at one of the big-box retailers -- either Wal-Mart or Best Buy.
Negotiations are also ongoing for conventional record company distribution, another source said.
Guns N' Roses is now managed by Irving Azoff's Front Line Management, and Azoff is a well-known proponent of issuing albums exclusively through retailers. He released the Eagles' "Long Road Out of Eden" through Wal-Mart, much to the chagrin of other merchants.
It's unclear who initiated the Guns N' Roses exclusive negotiations -- Front Line or Interscope, the band's label.
Representatives at Front Line and Interscope with knowledge of the situation couldn't be reached for comment. A Wal-Mart representative said the chain couldn't confirm this fall's exclusive album offerings. Best Buy representatives couldn't be reached for comment.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Wal-Mart loses trademark on smiley face
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/28/walmart-loses-tradem.html
Wal-Mart loses trademark on smiley face
Posted by Cory Doctorow, March 28, 2008
Greg sez, "In its claims for trademark infringement against an online parodist, Wal-Mart claimed that it had trademark rights in the ubiquitous yellow smiley face. Not only did Wal-Mart lose its case, the judge held it had no rights in the smiley face mark. The smiley face has been liberated!"
"This ruling shows that even the biggest company in America is subject to parody, and that trademark rights must yield to the right of free speech. This is a resounding victory for First Amendment rights and sends a clear message to big corporations that would try to use their deep pockets to intimidate and silence their critics."
For more on the story:
http://citizenvox.wordpress.com/2008/03/21/score-one-for-the-good-guys-court-rejects-wal-marts-trademark-claim/
Friday, March 28, 2008
Small Business Forced to Close by Wal-Mart
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/6649/1/324/
Small Business Forced to Close by Gov't. Subsidies to Wal-Mart
By Sherwood Ross
3-25-08
Small retailers the nation over are being pushed out of business by government subsidies to chain competitors such as Wal-Mart and Target through a variety of “corporate socialism” schemes, taxation authority David Cay Johnston says.
Municipalities are permitting “tax increment financing” that allow the big chains “to keep the sales taxes that you are forced to pay at the tax register,” Johnston said on the television interview program “Books of Our Time,” sponsored by the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover and broadcast by Comcast.
“Instead of that money going to the schools and the fire department and the police department and the library, it is funneled through a mechanism of local government, usually a special authority, to finance the purchase of municipal bonds so that means that the wealthy underwriters and the lawyers and auditors all get a piece of this money to buy the land and build the store,” Johnson told TV host Lawrence Velvel, dean of the law school.
The store is then leased to the big chain developer “at terms that amount to giving it to them for free or nearly free over a period of time,” Johnston said, “and it’s destroying local business.” An amazing aspect of this “corporate socialism” policy, Johnston says, “is that local business owners have not risen up and stopped this.”
“A system in which government, whether Federal or local, picks the winners in the economy, is not capitalism, it’s not competition, it’s not free market, it is corporate socialism, it is statism, it’s the state making these choices,” Johnston said.
In his new book, “Free Lunch”(Portfolio) Johnston amplifies this point by noting “Sam Walton practiced corporate socialism. As much as he could, he put the public’s money to work for his benefit. Free land, long-term leases at below-market rates, pocketing sales taxes, even getting workers trained at government expense were among the ways Wal-Mart took every dollar of welfare it could get.”
“Walton had a particular fondness for government-sponsored industrial revenue bonds,” Johnston continued, “which cost him less in interest charges than the corporate bonds the market economy uses to raise money.”
Johnston said in the television interview that if the public really understood what was happening they would not permit government subsidies to corporations to go forward.
Johnston pointed out: “Subsidies to retail cannot make us wealthier. Retail is at the end of the economic line. If you want to subsidize things, first subsidize education, then subsidize basic research, then subsidize applied research and development and subsidize infrastructure---rails and canals and highways---and maybe in some cases manufacturing and mining to get something going. But the least bang for the buck, and often the negative bang for the buck, would be subsidizing retail. What’s happening is wealthy families, the richest families in America, are getting welfare and they apparently have no shame about this.”
Johnston points out government handouts for Wal-Mart “reduce the costs of competing in the market” and by soliciting the subsidies “Wal-Mart shifted some of the risks of its expansion onto the majority of Americans who are not regular Wal-Mart shoppers.”
He said the fortune Wal-Mart is reaping is no different from what other corporate players are getting. “We are transferring enormous amounts of money to corporations and wealthy individuals,” Johnston pointed out. For example, he said, “We gave Warren Buffett’s companies a hundred million dollar gift last year.” (Buffett’s firm has a two-thirds-billion-dollar, interest-free loan from our government for more than 28 year, Johnston notes. Similarly, Donald Trump benefits from a tax enacted to help the elderly and the poor but part of which is now diverted to his casinos, Johnston says.)
“The incomes of the top one percent are exploding, are pulling away from everybody else,” Johnston said, “while the middle-class is stifling and the bottom is dropping out (of the economy).”
Author Johnson, for many years the tax reporter for The New York Times, has won a Pulitzer Prize and many other awards and uncovered so many tax dodges that he has been called the “de facto chief tax enforcement officer of the United States.”
The Massachusetts School of Law(MSL), sponsors of “Books Of Our Time,” is a non-profit institution dedicated to providing a quality, affordable legal education to minorities’, immigrants, and students from economically disadvantaged families who would otherwise not be able to attend law school and enter the legal profession.
--Further Information: Sherwood Ross, media consultant to MSL at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com
Small Business Forced to Close by Gov't. Subsidies to Wal-Mart
By Sherwood Ross
3-25-08
Small retailers the nation over are being pushed out of business by government subsidies to chain competitors such as Wal-Mart and Target through a variety of “corporate socialism” schemes, taxation authority David Cay Johnston says.
Municipalities are permitting “tax increment financing” that allow the big chains “to keep the sales taxes that you are forced to pay at the tax register,” Johnston said on the television interview program “Books of Our Time,” sponsored by the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover and broadcast by Comcast.
“Instead of that money going to the schools and the fire department and the police department and the library, it is funneled through a mechanism of local government, usually a special authority, to finance the purchase of municipal bonds so that means that the wealthy underwriters and the lawyers and auditors all get a piece of this money to buy the land and build the store,” Johnson told TV host Lawrence Velvel, dean of the law school.
The store is then leased to the big chain developer “at terms that amount to giving it to them for free or nearly free over a period of time,” Johnston said, “and it’s destroying local business.” An amazing aspect of this “corporate socialism” policy, Johnston says, “is that local business owners have not risen up and stopped this.”
“A system in which government, whether Federal or local, picks the winners in the economy, is not capitalism, it’s not competition, it’s not free market, it is corporate socialism, it is statism, it’s the state making these choices,” Johnston said.
In his new book, “Free Lunch”(Portfolio) Johnston amplifies this point by noting “Sam Walton practiced corporate socialism. As much as he could, he put the public’s money to work for his benefit. Free land, long-term leases at below-market rates, pocketing sales taxes, even getting workers trained at government expense were among the ways Wal-Mart took every dollar of welfare it could get.”
“Walton had a particular fondness for government-sponsored industrial revenue bonds,” Johnston continued, “which cost him less in interest charges than the corporate bonds the market economy uses to raise money.”
Johnston said in the television interview that if the public really understood what was happening they would not permit government subsidies to corporations to go forward.
Johnston pointed out: “Subsidies to retail cannot make us wealthier. Retail is at the end of the economic line. If you want to subsidize things, first subsidize education, then subsidize basic research, then subsidize applied research and development and subsidize infrastructure---rails and canals and highways---and maybe in some cases manufacturing and mining to get something going. But the least bang for the buck, and often the negative bang for the buck, would be subsidizing retail. What’s happening is wealthy families, the richest families in America, are getting welfare and they apparently have no shame about this.”
Johnston points out government handouts for Wal-Mart “reduce the costs of competing in the market” and by soliciting the subsidies “Wal-Mart shifted some of the risks of its expansion onto the majority of Americans who are not regular Wal-Mart shoppers.”
He said the fortune Wal-Mart is reaping is no different from what other corporate players are getting. “We are transferring enormous amounts of money to corporations and wealthy individuals,” Johnston pointed out. For example, he said, “We gave Warren Buffett’s companies a hundred million dollar gift last year.” (Buffett’s firm has a two-thirds-billion-dollar, interest-free loan from our government for more than 28 year, Johnston notes. Similarly, Donald Trump benefits from a tax enacted to help the elderly and the poor but part of which is now diverted to his casinos, Johnston says.)
“The incomes of the top one percent are exploding, are pulling away from everybody else,” Johnston said, “while the middle-class is stifling and the bottom is dropping out (of the economy).”
Author Johnson, for many years the tax reporter for The New York Times, has won a Pulitzer Prize and many other awards and uncovered so many tax dodges that he has been called the “de facto chief tax enforcement officer of the United States.”
The Massachusetts School of Law(MSL), sponsors of “Books Of Our Time,” is a non-profit institution dedicated to providing a quality, affordable legal education to minorities’, immigrants, and students from economically disadvantaged families who would otherwise not be able to attend law school and enter the legal profession.
--Further Information: Sherwood Ross, media consultant to MSL at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com
WAR MADE EASY
WAR MADE EASY: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to DeathDisinfo.com
In the critically-acclaimed and highly compelling film, WAR MADE EASY, a disturbing 50-year pattern of government deception is uncovered. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, and based on the book by nationally-renowned media columnist Norman Solomon, this documentary is a scathing indictment of five decades of U.S. media coverage of American-led military interventions, and the pro-war spoon-feeding by both journalists and politicans to the American public. Marking the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, this film hailed by critics — called “a superb form of visual investigation” by noted author Howard Zinn — is more timely than ever for its release on DVD from The Disinformation Company.
How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
Giving special attention to parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, WAR MADE EASY sets government spin and media collusion from the present, alongside virtually identical patterns from the past, guided by Solomon’s meticulous research and tough-minded analysis. Rare footage of political leaders and journalists from the past includes Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and news correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer. According to Solomon, whose work has been praised by The Los Angeles Times as “brutally persuasive,” the positive attention the film has received may indicate a new willingness to counter years of pro-war media spin and government deception. “These deep patterns of ongoing ‘perception management’ must be demystified and decoded if we're going to move beyond the horrors of perpetual war,” he said. “The way War Made Easy is being embraced could be an important step in that direction.”
An Official Selection of 2007’s International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam and the 2007 Montreal and Vancouver International Film Festivals, WAR MADE EASY, directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp, is an invaluable introduction to war propaganda and public relations that transcends partisan politics, and raises serious questions about the role of journalism and political communication in our society.
Available for interview: Norman Solomon
Solomon is a nationally syndicated columnist on media and politics, as well as the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a national consortium of policy researchers and analysts. He has been writing the weekly “Media Beat” column since 1992. The book on which the film was based, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, was published in 2005 and The Los Angeles Times called it “a must-read for those who would like greater context with their bitter morning coffee, or to arm themselves for the debates about Iraq that are still to come.” His latest book is Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State (October 2007).
About The Disinformation Company
The Disinformation Company Ltd is active in documentary production, book publishing and home entertainment. It is most widely recognized for its publishing and distribution efforts on subjects not usually covered by the traditional media. Recent DVD exclusives from The Disinformation Company include the best-selling Robert Greenwald documentaries Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, and Unconstitutional: The War on our Civil Liberties, as well as Robert Baer’s The Cult of the Suicide Bomber, and Greg Palast’s Bush Family Fortunes.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Wal-Mart milk to have no artificial growth hormones
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/n20434858-walmart-milk/
Wal-Mart milk to have no artificial growth hormones
LOS ANGELES, Mar. 21, 2008 (Reuters) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc said on Thursday that its private-label Great Value milk is now being sourced only from cows that have not been treated with artificial growth hormones, such as recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST).
The retailer said its Sam's Club chain also is offering milk selections from suppliers that have pledged not to treat cows with rbST.
While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said that milk from cows treated with rbST poses no risk to human health, Wal-Mart said it made the change in response to customer demand.
(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein; editing by Carol Bishopric)
Wal-Mart milk to have no artificial growth hormones
LOS ANGELES, Mar. 21, 2008 (Reuters) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc said on Thursday that its private-label Great Value milk is now being sourced only from cows that have not been treated with artificial growth hormones, such as recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST).
The retailer said its Sam's Club chain also is offering milk selections from suppliers that have pledged not to treat cows with rbST.
While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said that milk from cows treated with rbST poses no risk to human health, Wal-Mart said it made the change in response to customer demand.
(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein; editing by Carol Bishopric)
Sunday, March 2, 2008
When will iTunes replace Wal-Mart as No. 1?
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9880001-7.html
February 26, 2008
When will iTunes replace Wal-Mart as No. 1 music retailer?
Posted by Greg Sandoval
Apple's iTunes will likely whip past Wal-Mart Stores to become the largest U.S. music retailer sometime this year.
The NPD Group issued a report Tuesday that said Apple had outpaced Best Buy and Target to become the No. 2 U.S. music retailer. Unless the downward trend in CD sales suddenly reverses, Apple will be No. 1, said Russ Crupnick, the NPD Group's president of Music.
"Digital sales were up close to 50 percent and CD sales were down 20 percent last year," Crupnick said. "Even at half that growth rate in digital sales, Apple will in all likelihood catch Wal-Mart this year."
Anybody in their teens or early 20s is going to ask, "So what else is new?" To them, digital downloads has been part of their lives for years. It's only natural that a download store emerge as the top seller.
But anybody older is going to remember that it wasn't too long ago when music buying meant flipping through CD racks at the former retail powerhouses, Sam Goody and Tower Records.
"That's the question that the music industry has to answer soon: How do we get young people to start paying for music again? They've got to make it easier for teens to buy online."
--Russ Crupnick, analyst
Tower no longer operates retail stores, and Sam Goody's owner is renaming whatever locations it hasn't closed. "Yeah, it's astonishing--just in the post-Napster era--to see what's happened to the retail-sales environment," Crupnick said.
Apparently, the transition from offline to digital sales is occurring faster than most people expected. (Remember how record executives used to whip out statements like: "Discs are still how most people listen to music."
They may have been right then, but perhaps that won't be the case much longer.
Consider that the music industry is seeing pressure on CD sales from multiple fronts. In the offline world, there is a sort of death spiral going on, Crupnick said. As CD sales continue to slide, retailers like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Target devote less and less floor space to discs--which of course serves to erode sales even further.
Amazon.com, the e-tailer that used to be synonymous with ordering CDs off the Internet, has opened a music-download store to challenge iTunes.
Then there is the teen market that is abandoning CDs in droves. According to the report issued by NPD on Tuesday, nearly half of all U.S. teens (48 percent) did not purchase a CD last year. That is up from 2006, when about 38 percent of teens made no CD purchases.
Older music fans are transitioning at a slower rate but it's happening there too. In total, NPD Group said that the music industry waved bye-bye to about 1 million CD buyers last year.
Music remains popular, according to report, which found the amount of music acquired by consumers went up 6 percent. The trouble is that less of it is being paid for. Spending among Internet users fell from about $44 per capita to $40.
It must also be said that not all of Apple's success is due to the growing digital demand. Apple has flat out done a better job of retailing than competitors, Crupnick said.
For example, the music industry should follow Apple's lead and direct their attention to teenagers, Crupnick said.
Teens lack credit cards and this often prevents them from buying at almost everywhere but iTunes, Crupnick said. Apple avoids credit cards by pushing the gift cards, which teens can pay for at retail locations and then use them to purchase songs online by keying in a code. No credit cards needed.
"That's the question that the music industry has to answer soon," Crupnick said. "How do we get young people to start paying for music again? They've got to make it easier for teens to buy online. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has done a wonderful job of this. Teens have a way to do commerce with iTunes."
Tags:Apple, iTunes, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Tower Records
February 26, 2008
When will iTunes replace Wal-Mart as No. 1 music retailer?
Posted by Greg Sandoval
Apple's iTunes will likely whip past Wal-Mart Stores to become the largest U.S. music retailer sometime this year.
The NPD Group issued a report Tuesday that said Apple had outpaced Best Buy and Target to become the No. 2 U.S. music retailer. Unless the downward trend in CD sales suddenly reverses, Apple will be No. 1, said Russ Crupnick, the NPD Group's president of Music.
"Digital sales were up close to 50 percent and CD sales were down 20 percent last year," Crupnick said. "Even at half that growth rate in digital sales, Apple will in all likelihood catch Wal-Mart this year."
Anybody in their teens or early 20s is going to ask, "So what else is new?" To them, digital downloads has been part of their lives for years. It's only natural that a download store emerge as the top seller.
But anybody older is going to remember that it wasn't too long ago when music buying meant flipping through CD racks at the former retail powerhouses, Sam Goody and Tower Records.
"That's the question that the music industry has to answer soon: How do we get young people to start paying for music again? They've got to make it easier for teens to buy online."
--Russ Crupnick, analyst
Tower no longer operates retail stores, and Sam Goody's owner is renaming whatever locations it hasn't closed. "Yeah, it's astonishing--just in the post-Napster era--to see what's happened to the retail-sales environment," Crupnick said.
Apparently, the transition from offline to digital sales is occurring faster than most people expected. (Remember how record executives used to whip out statements like: "Discs are still how most people listen to music."
They may have been right then, but perhaps that won't be the case much longer.
Consider that the music industry is seeing pressure on CD sales from multiple fronts. In the offline world, there is a sort of death spiral going on, Crupnick said. As CD sales continue to slide, retailers like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Target devote less and less floor space to discs--which of course serves to erode sales even further.
Amazon.com, the e-tailer that used to be synonymous with ordering CDs off the Internet, has opened a music-download store to challenge iTunes.
Then there is the teen market that is abandoning CDs in droves. According to the report issued by NPD on Tuesday, nearly half of all U.S. teens (48 percent) did not purchase a CD last year. That is up from 2006, when about 38 percent of teens made no CD purchases.
Older music fans are transitioning at a slower rate but it's happening there too. In total, NPD Group said that the music industry waved bye-bye to about 1 million CD buyers last year.
Music remains popular, according to report, which found the amount of music acquired by consumers went up 6 percent. The trouble is that less of it is being paid for. Spending among Internet users fell from about $44 per capita to $40.
It must also be said that not all of Apple's success is due to the growing digital demand. Apple has flat out done a better job of retailing than competitors, Crupnick said.
For example, the music industry should follow Apple's lead and direct their attention to teenagers, Crupnick said.
Teens lack credit cards and this often prevents them from buying at almost everywhere but iTunes, Crupnick said. Apple avoids credit cards by pushing the gift cards, which teens can pay for at retail locations and then use them to purchase songs online by keying in a code. No credit cards needed.
"That's the question that the music industry has to answer soon," Crupnick said. "How do we get young people to start paying for music again? They've got to make it easier for teens to buy online. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has done a wonderful job of this. Teens have a way to do commerce with iTunes."
Tags:Apple, iTunes, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Tower Records
iTunes No. 2 music seller in US
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8V23V300.htm
The Associated Press
February 26, 2008
NPD: iTunes No. 2 music seller in US
By RACHEL METZ
Apple Inc.'s online iTunes music store is now the number-two music retailer in the U.S. behind Wal-Mart Stores Inc. as measured by unit volume, market researcher NPD Group said Tuesday.
NPD said that iTunes moved into second place due to the amount of music it sold during 2007, which was based on a 12-track CD equivalency for song downloads.
The market researcher began tracking music sold stateside during the middle of 2006. In the fourth quarter of that year, Best Buy Co. took second place behind Wal-Mart, while Target Corp. took third place and Apple's iTunes store fourth place, NPD analyst Russ Crupnick said.
For the full year 2007, Best Buy came in third and Target fourth, he said.
Crupnick called Apple's move to the number-two spot "fairly understandable given the pressure that's been on CDs and the almost 50-percent growth in digital downloading in the past year."
About 10 percent of music acquired in the U.S. was through legal downloads in 2007, and consumers who bought digital music legally through pay-to-download Web sites grew by 5 million to 29 million in 2007, NPD said Tuesday.
Meanwhile, an estimated 1 million consumers did not buy CDs in 2007, and 48 percent of U.S. teenagers didn't buy any CDs during the year, up from 38 percent in the year before, according to NPD data.
"It wouldn't surprise me if we see the same things continuing into 2008 because what our research is showing is that teens are continuing to check out on the CD," Crupnick said.
NPD also said that the amount of music consumers bought in the U.S. rose 6 percent in 2007, though the decline in CD sales and increase in legal digital download sales still led to a 10 percent overall decrease in music spending.
Apple shares fell $2.55, or 2.1 percent, to $117.19 in morning trading, while Wal-Mart shares rose 80 cents to $51.13.
The Associated Press
February 26, 2008
NPD: iTunes No. 2 music seller in US
By RACHEL METZ
Apple Inc.'s online iTunes music store is now the number-two music retailer in the U.S. behind Wal-Mart Stores Inc. as measured by unit volume, market researcher NPD Group said Tuesday.
NPD said that iTunes moved into second place due to the amount of music it sold during 2007, which was based on a 12-track CD equivalency for song downloads.
The market researcher began tracking music sold stateside during the middle of 2006. In the fourth quarter of that year, Best Buy Co. took second place behind Wal-Mart, while Target Corp. took third place and Apple's iTunes store fourth place, NPD analyst Russ Crupnick said.
For the full year 2007, Best Buy came in third and Target fourth, he said.
Crupnick called Apple's move to the number-two spot "fairly understandable given the pressure that's been on CDs and the almost 50-percent growth in digital downloading in the past year."
About 10 percent of music acquired in the U.S. was through legal downloads in 2007, and consumers who bought digital music legally through pay-to-download Web sites grew by 5 million to 29 million in 2007, NPD said Tuesday.
Meanwhile, an estimated 1 million consumers did not buy CDs in 2007, and 48 percent of U.S. teenagers didn't buy any CDs during the year, up from 38 percent in the year before, according to NPD data.
"It wouldn't surprise me if we see the same things continuing into 2008 because what our research is showing is that teens are continuing to check out on the CD," Crupnick said.
NPD also said that the amount of music consumers bought in the U.S. rose 6 percent in 2007, though the decline in CD sales and increase in legal digital download sales still led to a 10 percent overall decrease in music spending.
Apple shares fell $2.55, or 2.1 percent, to $117.19 in morning trading, while Wal-Mart shares rose 80 cents to $51.13.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
DVD FORMATS
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080220.RBLURAY20/TPStory/?query=Toshiba
DVD FORMATS: HOW SONY'S BLU-RAY TRIUMPHED OVER TOSHIBA'S HD
Stringer makes his mark
Sony's CEO led his company to victory in the high-definition sweepstakes by convincing the major studios to come aboard
BARRIE MCKENNA AND MATT HARTLEY
February 20, 2008
WASHINGTON, TORONTO -- Howard Stringer made history in 2005 for being the first non-Japanese executive to take the helm at Sony Corp. But he may be better remembered as the one who won the high-definition war, erasing the stain on the electronics firm's image ever since it lost the videotape war two decades earlier.
Although celebrated yesterday, the victory was sealed last month when Sony swayed Warner Bros. to back Sony's Blu-ray technology and quit producing movies using Toshiba Corp.'s rival HD DVD format.
What remains a mystery is just how big a push Warner needed to pick sides. Analysts say Sony only prevailed following a heated bidding war against Toshiba, with the reward reaching as much as $400-million (U.S.). Neither side has confirmed the size of any bids or payments.
It was supposed to be the technology equivalent of First World War trench warfare: A prolonged battle to the death between Toshiba and Sony for global domination in high-definition DVDs.
In the end, the denouement was more like Germany's swift 1940 end run of the Maginot line.
Less than two years after its first HD DVD player hit the market, Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida raised the white flag, declaring yesterday that it would stop making and selling the devices altogether within a month.
Toshiba's unconditional surrender leaves the spoils to Sony, maker of the rival Blu-ray disc player - a technologically superior format that had the backing of virtually all the major movie studies and retailers.
"We simply had no chance to win," Mr. Nishida acknowledged bluntly.
The final straw, he said, was Warner's decision last month to exclusively release movies in Blu-ray. The decision by Warner, with about 20 per cent of the movie market, put a critical mass of the industry in the Blu-ray camp.
With billions of dollars in global sales at stake, experts had predicted the Toshiba-Sony battle would go on for years - not unlike the 1980s battle of videotape formats between VHS (Matsushita) and Betamax (Sony). That war lasted a decade, leaving Sony battered and humiliated.
So how did this epic battle come to such an abrupt end?
The answer lies in part with the bruising Sony experienced with Betamax, which, like Blu-ray, was also the better product on paper.
For more that 20 years, Sony has been "haunted by Betamax" and was fiercely determined not to let history repeat itself, explained Xavier Drèze, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school.
"Sony was much smarter," Prof. Drèze said. "They understood this time they couldn't do it alone. They understood that they needed strategic partnerships with industry players."
The war was over when Sony managed to line up a critical mass of partners - in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and on Main Street.
The tipping point was Warner Bros. But Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. had already done the same - signing exclusive sealed deals with presumably rich royalty arrangements.
"This was heavy hitters in a back room talking about what the royalty structure was going to be and how much money they were willing to put on the table to be exclusive with one camp or the other. That was the determining factor here," concluded Van Baker, an analyst with market research firm Gartner Inc.
Until last month, Warner had been backing both technologies.
Last Friday, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced it would sell only Blu-ray DVDs. Officials said "customer feedback" prompted its decision.
Netflix Inc., Best Buy Co. Inc., Blockbuster Inc. and Target Corp. had earlier done the same.
"Everyone was tired of the format war, the retailers were tired of it, the consumer electronics vendors were tired of it and they just wanted this thing to get settled," Mr. Baker said.
"Consumers and the industry learned the hard way with Beta and VHS that a prolonged format war was disastrous. There was a lot of motivation to get one or the other to win and the only thing that protracted it was the amount of money flying around."
The groundwork for Sony's stunning victory, however, came months, even years ago. Prof. Drèze said Blu-ray had several things going for it that helped it to build loyalty with consumers and the industry.
Six years ago yesterday - and years before the first Blu-ray disc or player was sold - Sony had lined up most of the other computer and electronics makers, including LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung, Apple and Dell.
Sony also owned a major movie studio. So it could push its own technology.
Third, the company sold Blu-ray to rival movie studios with the promise of superior digital copyright protection.
Sony also used its PlayStation video game console, which also works as a Blu-ray player, as a sort of "Trojan horse," Prof. Drèze said.
Sony has already sold 10.5 million of its PS3 consoles, compared with roughly one million HD DVD players. PlayStation buyers, he said, unwittingly embraced Blu-ray and undermined HD DVD.
Ultimately, the technology is superior. Blu-ray can hold up to three times more data (200 gigabytes versus 60) and offers higher resolution.
In the end, it could be a pyrrhic victory for Sony. The age of hard copy discs is already giving way to digital downloads, stored and played from PCs, iPods and other portable devices.
"I don't think the heyday of DVD is going to return," said Mr. Baker, the analyst. "For most consumers, digital downloads are going to be very appealing."
How Sony lost Betamax
1 QUALITY OVER
QUANTITY Despite better picture quality, Sony's original Betamax tapes could record only one hour of video, while rival VHS tapes could store double that.
2 SECRET RECIPE
Sony initially failed to license its Betamax technology to a sufficient number of manufacturers, thinking it could go it alone. This led to a situation where VHS players competed against one another for share, driving down prices and making the format more attractive to consumers.
3 BUYING V. RENTING When both systems arrived in the United States in the mid-1970s, VHS machines were less expensive to rent. When consumers began to purchase rather than rent their video players, they tended to go with VHS machines. 4PORN CONUNDRUM Sony refused to license the Betamax technology to adult film companies, who turned to VHS tapes and ended up creating a multibillion-dollar industry.
How Sony won Blu-ray
1 BIGGER IS BETTER
Sony's Blu-ray discs can store upward of 50 gigabytes of data on a single disc, while HD DVDs hold about 30 gigs.
2 PLAYSTATION 3
By including a Blu-ray drive in its next-generation video game console, Sony was able to drive sales of both the PS3 and its new DVD format.
3 SOLID PARTNERSHIPS Not wanting to duplicate the Betamax mistake, Sony took the initiative to license its Blu-ray technology with as many partners as possible. When Blu-ray was first announced in 2002, Sony had already signed up eight partner companies committed to producing players.
4 CONTENT IS KING
By signing exclusive deals with more studios and content providers than Toshiba, Sony was able to squeeze its competitor to the sidelines. Warner's defection to Blu-ray was the fatal blow.
Matt Hartley
Dead technologies
Media formats we have used, loved and discarded for the next best thing
The cassette tape
A Walkman and roller skates, anyone? Tapes were the original portable format and made music pirates of us all. (Can I tape your Fleetwood Mac Rumors?) But they were hated by record companies. The sound quality tended to go tinny after a few dozen plays, and many tapes wound up melting in a car on a sunny day.
Eight tracks
Developed by plane maker Bill Lear, eight-track tapes were large and couldn't be rewound. And because of their high tape speed, didn't sound great. Nevertheless, they were popular in the 1970s, thanks to the auto industry, which installed thousands of eight-track players. When sales slipped, companies eager to pare formats quickly dropped the eight track. Vinyl
Cumbersome to play and easily damaged, albums faded out in the late 1980s. But album covers managed to become a genuine art form and another way to grab music buyers' attention. Lately, albums have a enjoyed a comeback, thanks to collectors, club DJs and scratching (ask your kids).
Compact discs
CDs are dead? They will be soon. Who needs all those plastic cases and discs when you can fill your hard drive and iPod with thousands of songs? Using a credit card, of course. Downloading music for free is wrong, isn't it?
DVD FORMATS: HOW SONY'S BLU-RAY TRIUMPHED OVER TOSHIBA'S HD
Stringer makes his mark
Sony's CEO led his company to victory in the high-definition sweepstakes by convincing the major studios to come aboard
BARRIE MCKENNA AND MATT HARTLEY
February 20, 2008
WASHINGTON, TORONTO -- Howard Stringer made history in 2005 for being the first non-Japanese executive to take the helm at Sony Corp. But he may be better remembered as the one who won the high-definition war, erasing the stain on the electronics firm's image ever since it lost the videotape war two decades earlier.
Although celebrated yesterday, the victory was sealed last month when Sony swayed Warner Bros. to back Sony's Blu-ray technology and quit producing movies using Toshiba Corp.'s rival HD DVD format.
What remains a mystery is just how big a push Warner needed to pick sides. Analysts say Sony only prevailed following a heated bidding war against Toshiba, with the reward reaching as much as $400-million (U.S.). Neither side has confirmed the size of any bids or payments.
It was supposed to be the technology equivalent of First World War trench warfare: A prolonged battle to the death between Toshiba and Sony for global domination in high-definition DVDs.
In the end, the denouement was more like Germany's swift 1940 end run of the Maginot line.
Less than two years after its first HD DVD player hit the market, Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida raised the white flag, declaring yesterday that it would stop making and selling the devices altogether within a month.
Toshiba's unconditional surrender leaves the spoils to Sony, maker of the rival Blu-ray disc player - a technologically superior format that had the backing of virtually all the major movie studies and retailers.
"We simply had no chance to win," Mr. Nishida acknowledged bluntly.
The final straw, he said, was Warner's decision last month to exclusively release movies in Blu-ray. The decision by Warner, with about 20 per cent of the movie market, put a critical mass of the industry in the Blu-ray camp.
With billions of dollars in global sales at stake, experts had predicted the Toshiba-Sony battle would go on for years - not unlike the 1980s battle of videotape formats between VHS (Matsushita) and Betamax (Sony). That war lasted a decade, leaving Sony battered and humiliated.
So how did this epic battle come to such an abrupt end?
The answer lies in part with the bruising Sony experienced with Betamax, which, like Blu-ray, was also the better product on paper.
For more that 20 years, Sony has been "haunted by Betamax" and was fiercely determined not to let history repeat itself, explained Xavier Drèze, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school.
"Sony was much smarter," Prof. Drèze said. "They understood this time they couldn't do it alone. They understood that they needed strategic partnerships with industry players."
The war was over when Sony managed to line up a critical mass of partners - in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and on Main Street.
The tipping point was Warner Bros. But Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. had already done the same - signing exclusive sealed deals with presumably rich royalty arrangements.
"This was heavy hitters in a back room talking about what the royalty structure was going to be and how much money they were willing to put on the table to be exclusive with one camp or the other. That was the determining factor here," concluded Van Baker, an analyst with market research firm Gartner Inc.
Until last month, Warner had been backing both technologies.
Last Friday, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced it would sell only Blu-ray DVDs. Officials said "customer feedback" prompted its decision.
Netflix Inc., Best Buy Co. Inc., Blockbuster Inc. and Target Corp. had earlier done the same.
"Everyone was tired of the format war, the retailers were tired of it, the consumer electronics vendors were tired of it and they just wanted this thing to get settled," Mr. Baker said.
"Consumers and the industry learned the hard way with Beta and VHS that a prolonged format war was disastrous. There was a lot of motivation to get one or the other to win and the only thing that protracted it was the amount of money flying around."
The groundwork for Sony's stunning victory, however, came months, even years ago. Prof. Drèze said Blu-ray had several things going for it that helped it to build loyalty with consumers and the industry.
Six years ago yesterday - and years before the first Blu-ray disc or player was sold - Sony had lined up most of the other computer and electronics makers, including LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung, Apple and Dell.
Sony also owned a major movie studio. So it could push its own technology.
Third, the company sold Blu-ray to rival movie studios with the promise of superior digital copyright protection.
Sony also used its PlayStation video game console, which also works as a Blu-ray player, as a sort of "Trojan horse," Prof. Drèze said.
Sony has already sold 10.5 million of its PS3 consoles, compared with roughly one million HD DVD players. PlayStation buyers, he said, unwittingly embraced Blu-ray and undermined HD DVD.
Ultimately, the technology is superior. Blu-ray can hold up to three times more data (200 gigabytes versus 60) and offers higher resolution.
In the end, it could be a pyrrhic victory for Sony. The age of hard copy discs is already giving way to digital downloads, stored and played from PCs, iPods and other portable devices.
"I don't think the heyday of DVD is going to return," said Mr. Baker, the analyst. "For most consumers, digital downloads are going to be very appealing."
How Sony lost Betamax
1 QUALITY OVER
QUANTITY Despite better picture quality, Sony's original Betamax tapes could record only one hour of video, while rival VHS tapes could store double that.
2 SECRET RECIPE
Sony initially failed to license its Betamax technology to a sufficient number of manufacturers, thinking it could go it alone. This led to a situation where VHS players competed against one another for share, driving down prices and making the format more attractive to consumers.
3 BUYING V. RENTING When both systems arrived in the United States in the mid-1970s, VHS machines were less expensive to rent. When consumers began to purchase rather than rent their video players, they tended to go with VHS machines. 4PORN CONUNDRUM Sony refused to license the Betamax technology to adult film companies, who turned to VHS tapes and ended up creating a multibillion-dollar industry.
How Sony won Blu-ray
1 BIGGER IS BETTER
Sony's Blu-ray discs can store upward of 50 gigabytes of data on a single disc, while HD DVDs hold about 30 gigs.
2 PLAYSTATION 3
By including a Blu-ray drive in its next-generation video game console, Sony was able to drive sales of both the PS3 and its new DVD format.
3 SOLID PARTNERSHIPS Not wanting to duplicate the Betamax mistake, Sony took the initiative to license its Blu-ray technology with as many partners as possible. When Blu-ray was first announced in 2002, Sony had already signed up eight partner companies committed to producing players.
4 CONTENT IS KING
By signing exclusive deals with more studios and content providers than Toshiba, Sony was able to squeeze its competitor to the sidelines. Warner's defection to Blu-ray was the fatal blow.
Matt Hartley
Dead technologies
Media formats we have used, loved and discarded for the next best thing
The cassette tape
A Walkman and roller skates, anyone? Tapes were the original portable format and made music pirates of us all. (Can I tape your Fleetwood Mac Rumors?) But they were hated by record companies. The sound quality tended to go tinny after a few dozen plays, and many tapes wound up melting in a car on a sunny day.
Eight tracks
Developed by plane maker Bill Lear, eight-track tapes were large and couldn't be rewound. And because of their high tape speed, didn't sound great. Nevertheless, they were popular in the 1970s, thanks to the auto industry, which installed thousands of eight-track players. When sales slipped, companies eager to pare formats quickly dropped the eight track. Vinyl
Cumbersome to play and easily damaged, albums faded out in the late 1980s. But album covers managed to become a genuine art form and another way to grab music buyers' attention. Lately, albums have a enjoyed a comeback, thanks to collectors, club DJs and scratching (ask your kids).
Compact discs
CDs are dead? They will be soon. Who needs all those plastic cases and discs when you can fill your hard drive and iPod with thousands of songs? Using a credit card, of course. Downloading music for free is wrong, isn't it?
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Wal-Mart dumps HD DVDs to back Blu-ray
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080215/tc_nm/walmart_dvd_dc
Wal-Mart dumps HD DVDs to back Blu-ray
By Franklin Paul
2-15-8
Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) has decided to exclusively sell high-definition DVDs in the Blu-Ray format, dealing what could be a crippling blow to the rival HD DVD technology backed by Toshiba Corp (6502.T).
The move by the world's largest retailer, announced on Friday, caps a disappointing week for HD DVD supporters, who also saw consumer electronics chain Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N) and online video rental company Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) defect to the Blu-ray camp.
In a statement on its Web site, Wal-Mart said that over the next few months it will phase out sales of HD DVD systems and discs. By June, it will sell only products in the Blu-ray format which was developed by Sony Corp (6758.T).
"We've listened to our customers, who are showing a clear preference toward Blu-ray products and movies with their purchases," said Gary Severson, a Wal-Mart senior vice president.
The move affects 4,000 Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in the United States, as well as related online sites. The stores will continue to sell traditional DVD players and movies.
The so-called format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray has been a thorn in the side of retailers, which have had to commit shelf space to devices from both camps even as they field complaints from frustrated and confused customers.
Next-generation DVDs and players, boasting better picture quality and more capacity, were expected to help revive the $24 billion global home DVD market. But Hollywood studios had initially split their alliances between the two camps, meaning only certain films would play on a consumer's DVD machine.
Like the Betamax-VHS battle in the 1980s, having two DVD standards has dampened sales of both and put retailers in a conundrum of having to either choose sides or sell products that have a chance of becoming obsolete very quickly.
The balance of power, however, tipped toward the Sony camp in January after Time Warner Inc's (TWX.N) Warner Bros studio said it would only release high-definition DVDs in Blu-ray format. With that, studios behind some three-quarters of DVDs are backing Blu-ray, although some release in both formats.
Blu-ray also has support from News Corp's (NWSa.N) 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp (LGF.N). Sony's PlayStation 3 game console can also play Blu-ray films.
"So if you bought the HD player like me, I'd retire it to the bedroom, kid's playroom, or give it to your parents to play their John Wayne standard def movies, and make space for a BD player for your awesome Hi Def experience," Wal-Mart's movie and gaming blogger, Susan Chronister, wrote in a posting.
To be sure, Toshiba has secured agreements with studios including NBC Universal's Universal Pictures, Viacom Inc's(VIAb.N) Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc (DWA.N).
Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) Xbox 360 also currently works only with HD DVD. However, Microsoft said in January it could consider supporting Blu-ray technology at consumers' behest.
Toshiba could not be reached to comment on Wal-Mart's move.
Earlier on Friday, the Hollywood Reporter quoted unidentified industry sources as saying Toshiba was widely expected to pull the plug on HD DVD in the coming weeks.
Toshiba spokeswoman Junko Furuta said none of what was reported in the magazine had been decided. She declined to comment further, saying: "We cannot comment on speculation."
(Reporting by Franklin Paul; additional reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo; editing by Phil Berlowitz and Gerald E. McCormick)
Wal-Mart dumps HD DVDs to back Blu-ray
By Franklin Paul
2-15-8
Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) has decided to exclusively sell high-definition DVDs in the Blu-Ray format, dealing what could be a crippling blow to the rival HD DVD technology backed by Toshiba Corp (6502.T).
The move by the world's largest retailer, announced on Friday, caps a disappointing week for HD DVD supporters, who also saw consumer electronics chain Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N) and online video rental company Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) defect to the Blu-ray camp.
In a statement on its Web site, Wal-Mart said that over the next few months it will phase out sales of HD DVD systems and discs. By June, it will sell only products in the Blu-ray format which was developed by Sony Corp (6758.T).
"We've listened to our customers, who are showing a clear preference toward Blu-ray products and movies with their purchases," said Gary Severson, a Wal-Mart senior vice president.
The move affects 4,000 Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in the United States, as well as related online sites. The stores will continue to sell traditional DVD players and movies.
The so-called format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray has been a thorn in the side of retailers, which have had to commit shelf space to devices from both camps even as they field complaints from frustrated and confused customers.
Next-generation DVDs and players, boasting better picture quality and more capacity, were expected to help revive the $24 billion global home DVD market. But Hollywood studios had initially split their alliances between the two camps, meaning only certain films would play on a consumer's DVD machine.
Like the Betamax-VHS battle in the 1980s, having two DVD standards has dampened sales of both and put retailers in a conundrum of having to either choose sides or sell products that have a chance of becoming obsolete very quickly.
The balance of power, however, tipped toward the Sony camp in January after Time Warner Inc's (TWX.N) Warner Bros studio said it would only release high-definition DVDs in Blu-ray format. With that, studios behind some three-quarters of DVDs are backing Blu-ray, although some release in both formats.
Blu-ray also has support from News Corp's (NWSa.N) 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp (LGF.N). Sony's PlayStation 3 game console can also play Blu-ray films.
"So if you bought the HD player like me, I'd retire it to the bedroom, kid's playroom, or give it to your parents to play their John Wayne standard def movies, and make space for a BD player for your awesome Hi Def experience," Wal-Mart's movie and gaming blogger, Susan Chronister, wrote in a posting.
To be sure, Toshiba has secured agreements with studios including NBC Universal's Universal Pictures, Viacom Inc's(VIAb.N) Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc (DWA.N).
Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) Xbox 360 also currently works only with HD DVD. However, Microsoft said in January it could consider supporting Blu-ray technology at consumers' behest.
Toshiba could not be reached to comment on Wal-Mart's move.
Earlier on Friday, the Hollywood Reporter quoted unidentified industry sources as saying Toshiba was widely expected to pull the plug on HD DVD in the coming weeks.
Toshiba spokeswoman Junko Furuta said none of what was reported in the magazine had been decided. She declined to comment further, saying: "We cannot comment on speculation."
(Reporting by Franklin Paul; additional reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo; editing by Phil Berlowitz and Gerald E. McCormick)
Friday, February 15, 2008
Wal-Mart Expands In-Store Clinics
http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/wal-mart-expands-in-store-clinics/20080207065909990001
Wal-Mart Expands In-Store Clinics
By MARCUS KABEL,AP
(Feb. 7) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will open its first in-store medical clinics under its own brand name after leasing space in dozens of stores to outside companies that operate the quick-service health stops.
Wal-Mart plans to open 400 cobranded walk-in clinics by 2010. "The Clinic at Wal-Mart" will jointly bear the names of Wal-Mart and its partners and have an identical look, prices and record keeping system.
The world's largest retailer said Thursday it will open "The Clinic at Wal-Mart " as a joint venture with local hospital systems in Atlanta, Dallas and Little Rock, Ark., starting in April.
Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart is among several U.S. supermarket and drug store chains that in the past couple of years have begun opening store-based health clinics, which are staffed mostly by nurse practitioners or physician assistants and offer quick service for routine conditions from colds and bladder infections to sunburn.
About 7 percent of Americans have tried a clinic at least once, according to an estimate by the Convenient Care Association, an industry trade group formed in 2006.
That number is expected to increase dramatically, as chains like Wal-Mart, CVS Corp., Target Corp. and Walgreen Co. partner with mini-clinic providers like RediClinic and MinuteClinic to expand operations. The trade group estimates there will be more than 1,500 by year-end, up from about 800 in November.
Wal-Mart has clinics in 77 stores, including nine in Wisconsin and Florida operated by local hospitals. Clinics in 23 locations in Florida and three other Southern states have been in limbo since last month when New York-based CheckUps shut down.
Now Wal-Mart has signed a letter of intent to work with local hospital systems and RediClinic to open cobranded walk-in clinics in 200 Wal-Mart Supercenters.
Wal-Mart has also signed a letter of intent to partner directly with St. Vincent Health System, a part of the Catholic Healthcare Initiatives system, to open four cobranded clinics in Little Rock.
Co-branding means the clinics will jointly bear the names of Wal-Mart and its partners and have an identical look, prices and record keeping system, Wal-Mart spokeswoman Deisha Galberth said.
Having the local hospital system involved will also increase the level of trust among shoppers, Galberth said.
Wal-Mart said this is the first step toward opening 400 cobranded clinics by 2010.
Retail analyst Patricia Edwards of San Francisco-based Wentworth Hauser and Violich said the move benefits Wal-Mart by giving the clinics added credibility.
"Especially among middle- and upper-income shoppers, it becomes more like stopping in at any location of their group health care provider. It doesn't have that connotation of going cheap," Edwards said.
Edwards said putting Wal-Mart's name on the clinics also fits with the retailer's drive for a public role in health care to counter union-led criticism that it skimps on employee health insurance.
Wal-Mart has introduced the clinics as well as $4 prescriptions for some generic medicines, and Chief Executive Lee Scott pledged last month to find other ways to help cut health care costs, including promoting the use of electronic health records instead of paper files.
Wal-Mart Expands In-Store Clinics
By MARCUS KABEL,AP
(Feb. 7) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will open its first in-store medical clinics under its own brand name after leasing space in dozens of stores to outside companies that operate the quick-service health stops.
Wal-Mart plans to open 400 cobranded walk-in clinics by 2010. "The Clinic at Wal-Mart" will jointly bear the names of Wal-Mart and its partners and have an identical look, prices and record keeping system.
The world's largest retailer said Thursday it will open "The Clinic at Wal-Mart " as a joint venture with local hospital systems in Atlanta, Dallas and Little Rock, Ark., starting in April.
Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart is among several U.S. supermarket and drug store chains that in the past couple of years have begun opening store-based health clinics, which are staffed mostly by nurse practitioners or physician assistants and offer quick service for routine conditions from colds and bladder infections to sunburn.
About 7 percent of Americans have tried a clinic at least once, according to an estimate by the Convenient Care Association, an industry trade group formed in 2006.
That number is expected to increase dramatically, as chains like Wal-Mart, CVS Corp., Target Corp. and Walgreen Co. partner with mini-clinic providers like RediClinic and MinuteClinic to expand operations. The trade group estimates there will be more than 1,500 by year-end, up from about 800 in November.
Wal-Mart has clinics in 77 stores, including nine in Wisconsin and Florida operated by local hospitals. Clinics in 23 locations in Florida and three other Southern states have been in limbo since last month when New York-based CheckUps shut down.
Now Wal-Mart has signed a letter of intent to work with local hospital systems and RediClinic to open cobranded walk-in clinics in 200 Wal-Mart Supercenters.
Wal-Mart has also signed a letter of intent to partner directly with St. Vincent Health System, a part of the Catholic Healthcare Initiatives system, to open four cobranded clinics in Little Rock.
Co-branding means the clinics will jointly bear the names of Wal-Mart and its partners and have an identical look, prices and record keeping system, Wal-Mart spokeswoman Deisha Galberth said.
Having the local hospital system involved will also increase the level of trust among shoppers, Galberth said.
Wal-Mart said this is the first step toward opening 400 cobranded clinics by 2010.
Retail analyst Patricia Edwards of San Francisco-based Wentworth Hauser and Violich said the move benefits Wal-Mart by giving the clinics added credibility.
"Especially among middle- and upper-income shoppers, it becomes more like stopping in at any location of their group health care provider. It doesn't have that connotation of going cheap," Edwards said.
Edwards said putting Wal-Mart's name on the clinics also fits with the retailer's drive for a public role in health care to counter union-led criticism that it skimps on employee health insurance.
Wal-Mart has introduced the clinics as well as $4 prescriptions for some generic medicines, and Chief Executive Lee Scott pledged last month to find other ways to help cut health care costs, including promoting the use of electronic health records instead of paper files.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Can Burt’s Bees Turn Clorox Green?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/business/06bees.html
January 6, 2008
Can Burt’s Bees Turn Clorox Green?
By LOUISE STORY
IN the summer of 1984, Burt Shavitz, a beekeeper in Maine, picked up Roxanne Quimby, a 33-year-old single mother down on her luck, as she hitchhiked to the post office in Dexter, Me. More than a dozen years Ms. Quimby’s senior, the guy locals called “the bee-man” sold honey in pickle jars from the back of his pickup truck. To Ms. Quimby, he seemed to be living an idyllic life in the wilderness (including making his home inside a small turkey coop).
She offered to help Mr. Shavitz tend to his beehives. The two became lovers and eventually birthed Burt’s Bees, a niche company famous for beeswax lip balm, lotions, soaps and shampoos, as well as for its homespun packaging and feel-good, eco-friendly marketing. The bearded man whose image is used to peddle the products is modeled after Mr. Shavitz.
Today, the couple’s quirky enterprise is owned by the Clorox Company, a consumer products giant best known for making bleach, which bought it for $913 million in November. Clorox plans to turn Burt’s Bees into a mainstream American brand sold in big-box stores like Wal-Mart. Along the way, Clorox executives say, they plan to learn from unusual business practices at Burt’s Bees — many centered on environmental sustainability. Clorox, the company promises, is going green.
But not even Clorox can sanitize the details of a fallout between Mr. Shavitz and Ms. Quimby that began in the late 1990s — when Ms. Quimby managed to buy out the bee-man for a low, six-figure sum. She has been paid more than $300 million for her stake in Burt’s Bees, and she spends her time traveling, refurbishing fancy homes in Florida and preserving large tracts of land in Maine. Burt himself, now 72, makes his home again in the converted turkey coop — expanded but without running water or electricity — but with $4 million or so to his name.
As unlikely as their journeys have been, Ms. Quimby and Mr. Shavitz are pioneers in an entrepreneurial movement that has lately won the affection of corporate behemoths.
Clorox was willing to pay almost $1 billion for Burt’s Bees because big companies see big opportunities in the market for green products. From 2000 to 2007, Burt’s Bees’ annual revenue soared to $164 million from $23 million. Analysts say there is far more growth to be had by it and its competitors as consumers keep gravitating toward products that promise organic and environmental benefits.
In the last couple of years, L’Oréal paid $1.4 billion for the Body Shop and Colgate-Palmolive bought 84 percent of Tom’s of Maine, which makes natural toothpaste and deodorant, for $100 million. Clorox is also creating eco-friendly product lines of its own.
Many corporate leaders have sold their shareholders on green initiatives by pointing out that they help cut costs — an argument that is more persuasive now, while energy costs are sky high. But as companies rush to put out more and more “natural,” “organic” or “green” products, consumers and advocacy groups are increasingly questioning the meaning of these labels.
Clorox, for one, will face plenty of skepticism. Environmentalists have long said that bleach is harmful when drained into city sewers. The disinfectant has become a stand-in for jokes about chemicals and the environment, and a new round seems to have begun this fall when the company acquired Burt’s Bees.
“Who likes Burt’s Bees now that it’s been bought by Clorox?” Alison Stewart, a host on National Public Radio, said in November. “You know, just slap some bleach on your lips, it’ll all be good.”
Clorox executives have been fighting what they call “misinformation” about bleach for years. The company says that 95 to 98 percent of its bleach breaks into salt and water and that the remaining byproduct is safe for sewer systems. And Clorox sells many products that have nothing to do with bleach — including Brita water filters, Glad trash bags and Hidden Valley salad dressings.
Still, after Clorox agreed to buy Burt’s Bees last fall, scores of customers called Burt’s Bees and accused the company of selling out. John Replogle, the chief executive of Burt’s Bees, says he personally responded to customers who left their phone numbers.
“Don’t judge Clorox as much by where they’ve been as much as where they intend to go,” Mr. Replogle says he told them.
For her part, Ms. Quimby is at peace with the Clorox deal. “I feel the fact that I was able to sell the company accelerated the process of land conservation in terms of what I could do,” she says. “So if there is any negative karma, I’m neutral.”
BACK in 1984, at the end of their first summer together, Mr. Shavitz suggested that Ms. Quimby use some of his beeswax to make candles. She did, and the candles sold for $3 a pair at a crafts fair. Ms. Quimby then started experimenting, making beeswax polishes for shoes and furniture from recipes she found in an old farmer’s manual. Those products found some fans, but didn’t sell well.
When the pair incorporated as a company — in 1989 or 1991, no one can quite remember when — Mr. Shavitz owned one-third and Ms. Quimby owned two-thirds, she says. The famous Burt’s Bees lip balm was born in 1991, and that item, a combination of beeswax and sweet almond oil, helped the company find a niche in personal care products.
Mr. Shavitz was still active in the company in 1993, when they moved its base to North Carolina. Sales had reached $3 million a year, and they wanted to find a state with lower taxes and more workers to keep their business growing, Ms. Quimby says.
During this time, the couple had a falling-out, their romance became strained, and Mr. Shavitz decided to return to Maine. It is unclear exactly when he moved back permanently; Ms. Quimby said it was in 1993, but in a written response to questions, Mr. Shavitz implied that it was later.
What is clear is that Mr. Shavitz lost out on a huge payday. In 1999, Ms. Quimby bought out his one-third share in Burt’s Bees by buying him a house in Maine. Much grander than a turkey coop, the home cost $130,000, Ms. Quimby says. She now calls that figure “embarrassing” considering how much she made from the company.
Mr. Shavitz did not respond when asked if he hired advisers to determine whether he had been paid a fair valuation for his stake. He sold the house in Maine a few months after Ms. Quimby bought it for him because, she says, he missed his turkey coop. (He has since enlarged it to about 12 feet by 20 feet.)
By 2000, Burt’s Bees was pulling in $23 million in revenue, according to the company. Ms. Quimby said she had always intended to sell the company and had received offers for quite some time before she put it up for auction in 2003. That year, AEA Investors, a private equity firm in New York, paid Ms. Quimby $141.6 million for an 80 percent stake in Burt’s Bees. If Mr. Shavitz had held onto the stake he traded to Ms. Quimby for $130,000, it would have been worth about $59 million.
At the time of that deal, Mr. Shavitz demanded more money and Ms. Quimby said she agreed to pay him $4 million. Burt’s Bees also pays Mr. Shavitz an undisclosed amount each year for using his name and image on its products. Through a Burt’s Bees spokeswoman, Mr. Shavitz declined to comment on any payments he had received or the reasons for his fallout with Ms. Quimby. When asked if he and Ms. Quimby were still friends, Mr. Shavitz said, “Sure.”
“What happened between us in our personal relationship in the past is history,” he said in a statement. “The magic of living life for me is, and always has been, the magic of living on the land, not in the magic of money.”
Under AEA’s watch, Burt’s Bees products expanded into stores like CVS, Walgreens and Target. AEA hired Mr. Replogle from Unilever, where he was general manager for the company’s North American skin care business, to be chief executive. This fall, AEA accepted Clorox’s bid. Ms. Quimby sold her remaining 20 percent share in Burt’s Bees to Clorox for about $183 million.
Ms. Quimby, 57, now runs Happy Green Bee, a company that makes organic clothing for children. She says she spent more than $50 million to buy 100,000 acres where she tries to restore the land to its natural state by blocking hunting, closing roads and dismantling bridges.
In the meantime, the task of defending Clorox’s purchase of Burt’s Bees has fallen on Mr. Replogle’s shoulders. He says that in six months, he will post a blog on the Burt’s Bees site about whether he thinks Clorox is making enough progress on its green initiatives. He says Burt’s Bees’ 380 employees have an opportunity to influence the direction of Clorox, a company that generated $4.8 billion in sales last year and employs 7,800 people.
Burt’s Bees maintains its founders’ green philosophies. Employees’ bonuses are based in part on how well the company meets energy conservation goals, and there are prime parking spaces for staff members who drive hybrid cars or carpool. It buys offsets for 100 percent of its carbon emissions and is working toward a goal of sending no trash to landfills by 2020.
Mr. Replogle calls his current job a “mission” and says he is trying to reinvent business with an idea he calls “the Greater Good,” based on the founders’ ideals. The premise is that if companies are socially responsible, profit will follow. Burt’s Bees not only prioritizes the natural origin of its ingredients but also emphasizes animal rights, responsible trade, employee benefits and the environment.
Like most natural-products companies, Burt’s Bees has the luxury of charging enough for its goods to pay for such causes. A 0.15-ounce tube of Burt’s Bees basic lip balm, for example, costs $3. The same-size tube of ChapStick, which uses synthetic ingredients, costs $1.69.
Burt’s Bees is not perfect, Mr. Replogle acknowledges. The company obtains all of its beeswax from hives in Ethiopia, so shipping the ingredient across the Atlantic adds to carbon emissions.
LATELY, Burt’s Bees has started to police its industry. The company’s research lab is full of competitors’ products labeled “natural,” and employees of Burt’s Bees test those assertions.
Burt’s Bees has also led a group of companies that have teamed up with the Natural Products Association to create a standard for natural personal care products, complete with stickers to label items that make the cut. To qualify, brands must create products that are at least 95 percent natural and contain no ingredients known to be harmful. The stickers will make their debut in April.
Consumers “walk down the aisle in the grocery stores’ health and beauty area, and they’re confronted with ‘natural’ at every turn,” says Daniel Fabricant, vice president for scientific and regulatory affairs at the association. “We just don’t want to see the term misused any longer.”
To prove his own bona fides, Mr. Replogle grabs a bottle of Burt’s Bees avocado butter hair treatment, squeezes some onto his finger and dramatically licks it off. He then passes the tube to two Clorox executives so they can have a taste.
“If you can’t put it into your mouth, you shouldn’t put it on your skin,” he says. “I’d like to see other companies do that.”
Clorox says it is reshaping its product mix so that more of its products will be eco-friendly by its 100th anniversary in 2013. Two weeks ago, the company introduced Green Works, household cleaning solutions labeled as 99 percent natural. The last 1 percent consists of preservatives and fragrances.
Clorox says Green Works is more natural than all other cleaning products.
“It is the standard-setter,” says Beth Springer, vice president for strategy and growth at Clorox.
Green Works products are so new that outside groups have had little time to evaluate the company’s assertions. But Clorox says it believes that consumers will pay more for natural products. So, while they may be more expensive to produce, they will also be more profitable. Clorox research recently found that 53 percent of consumers planned to buy more eco-friendly products this year and that 47 percent were willing to pay 20 percent to 25 percent premiums for them.
While Clorox has decided to keep its brand off of Burt’s Bees products, its name is on the Green Works cleaning line.
“We spent a lot of time talking with consumers who wanted to keep their homes clean and healthy but wanted more natural alternatives,” Ms. Springer says. “And they confessed in most cases they were disappointed with having to pay more for products that didn’t work. So we concluded that we would initially bring it out with the Clorox brand name endorsing it because it gave people a belief in its efficacy.”
Then she lapses into Burt’s Bees speak as she continues.
“If we think about the Greater Good,” Ms. Springer says, “one lesson we’ve learned is, if you set your mind to the goal of more natural and sustainable practices, you might actually surprise yourself with what you can accomplish.”
January 6, 2008
Can Burt’s Bees Turn Clorox Green?
By LOUISE STORY
IN the summer of 1984, Burt Shavitz, a beekeeper in Maine, picked up Roxanne Quimby, a 33-year-old single mother down on her luck, as she hitchhiked to the post office in Dexter, Me. More than a dozen years Ms. Quimby’s senior, the guy locals called “the bee-man” sold honey in pickle jars from the back of his pickup truck. To Ms. Quimby, he seemed to be living an idyllic life in the wilderness (including making his home inside a small turkey coop).
She offered to help Mr. Shavitz tend to his beehives. The two became lovers and eventually birthed Burt’s Bees, a niche company famous for beeswax lip balm, lotions, soaps and shampoos, as well as for its homespun packaging and feel-good, eco-friendly marketing. The bearded man whose image is used to peddle the products is modeled after Mr. Shavitz.
Today, the couple’s quirky enterprise is owned by the Clorox Company, a consumer products giant best known for making bleach, which bought it for $913 million in November. Clorox plans to turn Burt’s Bees into a mainstream American brand sold in big-box stores like Wal-Mart. Along the way, Clorox executives say, they plan to learn from unusual business practices at Burt’s Bees — many centered on environmental sustainability. Clorox, the company promises, is going green.
But not even Clorox can sanitize the details of a fallout between Mr. Shavitz and Ms. Quimby that began in the late 1990s — when Ms. Quimby managed to buy out the bee-man for a low, six-figure sum. She has been paid more than $300 million for her stake in Burt’s Bees, and she spends her time traveling, refurbishing fancy homes in Florida and preserving large tracts of land in Maine. Burt himself, now 72, makes his home again in the converted turkey coop — expanded but without running water or electricity — but with $4 million or so to his name.
As unlikely as their journeys have been, Ms. Quimby and Mr. Shavitz are pioneers in an entrepreneurial movement that has lately won the affection of corporate behemoths.
Clorox was willing to pay almost $1 billion for Burt’s Bees because big companies see big opportunities in the market for green products. From 2000 to 2007, Burt’s Bees’ annual revenue soared to $164 million from $23 million. Analysts say there is far more growth to be had by it and its competitors as consumers keep gravitating toward products that promise organic and environmental benefits.
In the last couple of years, L’Oréal paid $1.4 billion for the Body Shop and Colgate-Palmolive bought 84 percent of Tom’s of Maine, which makes natural toothpaste and deodorant, for $100 million. Clorox is also creating eco-friendly product lines of its own.
Many corporate leaders have sold their shareholders on green initiatives by pointing out that they help cut costs — an argument that is more persuasive now, while energy costs are sky high. But as companies rush to put out more and more “natural,” “organic” or “green” products, consumers and advocacy groups are increasingly questioning the meaning of these labels.
Clorox, for one, will face plenty of skepticism. Environmentalists have long said that bleach is harmful when drained into city sewers. The disinfectant has become a stand-in for jokes about chemicals and the environment, and a new round seems to have begun this fall when the company acquired Burt’s Bees.
“Who likes Burt’s Bees now that it’s been bought by Clorox?” Alison Stewart, a host on National Public Radio, said in November. “You know, just slap some bleach on your lips, it’ll all be good.”
Clorox executives have been fighting what they call “misinformation” about bleach for years. The company says that 95 to 98 percent of its bleach breaks into salt and water and that the remaining byproduct is safe for sewer systems. And Clorox sells many products that have nothing to do with bleach — including Brita water filters, Glad trash bags and Hidden Valley salad dressings.
Still, after Clorox agreed to buy Burt’s Bees last fall, scores of customers called Burt’s Bees and accused the company of selling out. John Replogle, the chief executive of Burt’s Bees, says he personally responded to customers who left their phone numbers.
“Don’t judge Clorox as much by where they’ve been as much as where they intend to go,” Mr. Replogle says he told them.
For her part, Ms. Quimby is at peace with the Clorox deal. “I feel the fact that I was able to sell the company accelerated the process of land conservation in terms of what I could do,” she says. “So if there is any negative karma, I’m neutral.”
BACK in 1984, at the end of their first summer together, Mr. Shavitz suggested that Ms. Quimby use some of his beeswax to make candles. She did, and the candles sold for $3 a pair at a crafts fair. Ms. Quimby then started experimenting, making beeswax polishes for shoes and furniture from recipes she found in an old farmer’s manual. Those products found some fans, but didn’t sell well.
When the pair incorporated as a company — in 1989 or 1991, no one can quite remember when — Mr. Shavitz owned one-third and Ms. Quimby owned two-thirds, she says. The famous Burt’s Bees lip balm was born in 1991, and that item, a combination of beeswax and sweet almond oil, helped the company find a niche in personal care products.
Mr. Shavitz was still active in the company in 1993, when they moved its base to North Carolina. Sales had reached $3 million a year, and they wanted to find a state with lower taxes and more workers to keep their business growing, Ms. Quimby says.
During this time, the couple had a falling-out, their romance became strained, and Mr. Shavitz decided to return to Maine. It is unclear exactly when he moved back permanently; Ms. Quimby said it was in 1993, but in a written response to questions, Mr. Shavitz implied that it was later.
What is clear is that Mr. Shavitz lost out on a huge payday. In 1999, Ms. Quimby bought out his one-third share in Burt’s Bees by buying him a house in Maine. Much grander than a turkey coop, the home cost $130,000, Ms. Quimby says. She now calls that figure “embarrassing” considering how much she made from the company.
Mr. Shavitz did not respond when asked if he hired advisers to determine whether he had been paid a fair valuation for his stake. He sold the house in Maine a few months after Ms. Quimby bought it for him because, she says, he missed his turkey coop. (He has since enlarged it to about 12 feet by 20 feet.)
By 2000, Burt’s Bees was pulling in $23 million in revenue, according to the company. Ms. Quimby said she had always intended to sell the company and had received offers for quite some time before she put it up for auction in 2003. That year, AEA Investors, a private equity firm in New York, paid Ms. Quimby $141.6 million for an 80 percent stake in Burt’s Bees. If Mr. Shavitz had held onto the stake he traded to Ms. Quimby for $130,000, it would have been worth about $59 million.
At the time of that deal, Mr. Shavitz demanded more money and Ms. Quimby said she agreed to pay him $4 million. Burt’s Bees also pays Mr. Shavitz an undisclosed amount each year for using his name and image on its products. Through a Burt’s Bees spokeswoman, Mr. Shavitz declined to comment on any payments he had received or the reasons for his fallout with Ms. Quimby. When asked if he and Ms. Quimby were still friends, Mr. Shavitz said, “Sure.”
“What happened between us in our personal relationship in the past is history,” he said in a statement. “The magic of living life for me is, and always has been, the magic of living on the land, not in the magic of money.”
Under AEA’s watch, Burt’s Bees products expanded into stores like CVS, Walgreens and Target. AEA hired Mr. Replogle from Unilever, where he was general manager for the company’s North American skin care business, to be chief executive. This fall, AEA accepted Clorox’s bid. Ms. Quimby sold her remaining 20 percent share in Burt’s Bees to Clorox for about $183 million.
Ms. Quimby, 57, now runs Happy Green Bee, a company that makes organic clothing for children. She says she spent more than $50 million to buy 100,000 acres where she tries to restore the land to its natural state by blocking hunting, closing roads and dismantling bridges.
In the meantime, the task of defending Clorox’s purchase of Burt’s Bees has fallen on Mr. Replogle’s shoulders. He says that in six months, he will post a blog on the Burt’s Bees site about whether he thinks Clorox is making enough progress on its green initiatives. He says Burt’s Bees’ 380 employees have an opportunity to influence the direction of Clorox, a company that generated $4.8 billion in sales last year and employs 7,800 people.
Burt’s Bees maintains its founders’ green philosophies. Employees’ bonuses are based in part on how well the company meets energy conservation goals, and there are prime parking spaces for staff members who drive hybrid cars or carpool. It buys offsets for 100 percent of its carbon emissions and is working toward a goal of sending no trash to landfills by 2020.
Mr. Replogle calls his current job a “mission” and says he is trying to reinvent business with an idea he calls “the Greater Good,” based on the founders’ ideals. The premise is that if companies are socially responsible, profit will follow. Burt’s Bees not only prioritizes the natural origin of its ingredients but also emphasizes animal rights, responsible trade, employee benefits and the environment.
Like most natural-products companies, Burt’s Bees has the luxury of charging enough for its goods to pay for such causes. A 0.15-ounce tube of Burt’s Bees basic lip balm, for example, costs $3. The same-size tube of ChapStick, which uses synthetic ingredients, costs $1.69.
Burt’s Bees is not perfect, Mr. Replogle acknowledges. The company obtains all of its beeswax from hives in Ethiopia, so shipping the ingredient across the Atlantic adds to carbon emissions.
LATELY, Burt’s Bees has started to police its industry. The company’s research lab is full of competitors’ products labeled “natural,” and employees of Burt’s Bees test those assertions.
Burt’s Bees has also led a group of companies that have teamed up with the Natural Products Association to create a standard for natural personal care products, complete with stickers to label items that make the cut. To qualify, brands must create products that are at least 95 percent natural and contain no ingredients known to be harmful. The stickers will make their debut in April.
Consumers “walk down the aisle in the grocery stores’ health and beauty area, and they’re confronted with ‘natural’ at every turn,” says Daniel Fabricant, vice president for scientific and regulatory affairs at the association. “We just don’t want to see the term misused any longer.”
To prove his own bona fides, Mr. Replogle grabs a bottle of Burt’s Bees avocado butter hair treatment, squeezes some onto his finger and dramatically licks it off. He then passes the tube to two Clorox executives so they can have a taste.
“If you can’t put it into your mouth, you shouldn’t put it on your skin,” he says. “I’d like to see other companies do that.”
Clorox says it is reshaping its product mix so that more of its products will be eco-friendly by its 100th anniversary in 2013. Two weeks ago, the company introduced Green Works, household cleaning solutions labeled as 99 percent natural. The last 1 percent consists of preservatives and fragrances.
Clorox says Green Works is more natural than all other cleaning products.
“It is the standard-setter,” says Beth Springer, vice president for strategy and growth at Clorox.
Green Works products are so new that outside groups have had little time to evaluate the company’s assertions. But Clorox says it believes that consumers will pay more for natural products. So, while they may be more expensive to produce, they will also be more profitable. Clorox research recently found that 53 percent of consumers planned to buy more eco-friendly products this year and that 47 percent were willing to pay 20 percent to 25 percent premiums for them.
While Clorox has decided to keep its brand off of Burt’s Bees products, its name is on the Green Works cleaning line.
“We spent a lot of time talking with consumers who wanted to keep their homes clean and healthy but wanted more natural alternatives,” Ms. Springer says. “And they confessed in most cases they were disappointed with having to pay more for products that didn’t work. So we concluded that we would initially bring it out with the Clorox brand name endorsing it because it gave people a belief in its efficacy.”
Then she lapses into Burt’s Bees speak as she continues.
“If we think about the Greater Good,” Ms. Springer says, “one lesson we’ve learned is, if you set your mind to the goal of more natural and sustainable practices, you might actually surprise yourself with what you can accomplish.”
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