September 17, 2018

Schnucks buying 19 Shop 'n Save stores in 'generational transaction,' with plans to rebrand them as

Schnuck Markets has agreed to buy roughly half of the Shop ‘n Save stores in the St. Louis area in a deal that CEO Todd Schnuck called a “generational transaction.”

The 19 Shop ‘n Save stores to be acquired — 14 on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River and five in the Metro East — will be closed in waves of three beginning October 7, undergo a renovation and reopen as a Schnucks store less than three days later.

A schedule of the closures and reopenings has not yet been released. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The approximately 1,500 Shop ‘n Save union-represented employees working at those locations will be offered jobs at the Schnucks stores, pending a background check.

https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/schnucks-buying-shop-n-save-stores-in-generational-transaction-with/article_d66ebfc5-b7ad-50e7-8641-61dcb9df24a0.html

September 16, 2018

Was watching the Brooklyn Book Festival on C-Span this morning

and there was a panel discussion on what has been happening to the middle class/working people in the country. The panelist were all well versed in the subject but this guy seemed to stand out and apparently he is running for President in 2020 as a Democrat. Took a look at his web page and some of the policies and liked what I saw.


https://www.yang2020.com/policies/

September 8, 2018

Elijah Lovejoy: An American Martyr

On this day in 1836 Elijah Lovejoy began publishing the Observer in Alton, IL ultimately he became a martyr for Freedom of The Press.

“Elijah Parish Lovejoy died in Alton, Illinois, on November 7, 1837. He died, so far as is known, as the only martyr in the United States of America to the cause of the Freedom of the Press.” So reads the legal motion to close the case of Lovejoy’s estate, 100 years after his death sparked new passion in the abolitionist movement.

BIRTH OF THE ST. LOUIS OBSERVER

After much soul searching, teacher-turned-editor Elijah Lovejoy joined the First Presbyterian Church in 1832. Soon afterward, the 30-year-old left the St. Louis Times newspaper to study at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey. When he had earned his preaching license the next year, a group of his St. Louis friends put forth a tempting proposition: return to Missouri and run a new Presbyterian newspaper, which they would fund. Eager to proselytize via the written word, Lovejoy agreed.

The St. Louis Observer debuted on November 22, 1833. In it, Lovejoy railed against Catholicism—something that didn’t sit well with the city’s French Creole and Irish residents but that was regarded as free speech and rebuked in a similar fashion. Lovejoy’s next topic of focus proved far more inflammatory.

In 1834, Lovejoy began editorializing against slavery, making points such as this one, from April 1835:

[Slavery] is demonstrably evil. In every community where it exists, it presses like a night-mare on the body politic. Or, like the vampire, it slowly and imperceptibly sucks away the life-blood of society, leaving it faint and disheartened to stagger along the road of improvement. . . . It becomes us as a Christian people, as those who believe in the future retribution of a righteous Providence, to remove from our midst an institution, no less the cause of moral corruption to the master than to the slave.

http://mohistory.org/blog/elijah-lovejoy-an-american-martyr/

September 1, 2018

How big is Missouri's Senate race? It's the top target of outside spending, nationwide

WASHINGTON • At the traditional Labor Day pivot toward Nov. 6 elections, Missouri is the top target for outside-group spenders in Senate races across the country, according to data analyzed by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Data compiled by the group from Federal Election Commission reports indicate that about $23 million has been spent so far, slightly over half of it by groups aligned with Democrats.

But that figure, which rises by the day, does not encompass all “dark money” spending or spending not yet reported to the FEC. For instance, the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity announced another $2.1 million ad buy attacking Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill. In February, it bought $1.8 million in ads attacking McCaskill for voting against Republican tax cuts.

McCaskill’s campaign, citing media reports on top of the CRP-analyzed data, estimates that at least $37 million has already been spent in Missouri outside of the campaigns of McCaskill, Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley and independent candidate Craig O’Dear. That spending, which includes harder-to-trace “dark money,” outpaces the combined amount of money raised by those three candidates for their own campaigns, and is on a pace to set records for Missouri Senate races.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/how-big-is-missouri-s-senate-race-it-s-the/article_6513cd7d-0b32-5462-a624-76be5f548d88.html

September 1, 2018

St. Louis prosecutor says police asked for 'exclusion list' of officers

ST. LOUIS • St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s office said Friday that police officials were the ones who prompted the creation of a list of 28 officers who will be excluded as witnesses in criminal cases.

In a statement, Gardner’s office said “key leaders” in her office and the police department for months had been having “in-depth conversations about prosecutors’ concerns regarding the credibility of several city police officers.” A spokeswoman said police officials then asked for a physical list of officers’ names.

The list was originally “intended for internal purposes to ensure integrity in the system,” the statement says.

A lawyer who represents officers, Brian Millikan, said Friday that he had seen the full list and represented some of the officers on it.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/st-louis-prosecutor-says-police-asked-for-exclusion-list-of/article_c789670d-42d4-5474-b205-b1eddf92a0cf.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

August 24, 2018

Being a Go-Getter Is No Fun

If you believe that the Reward for Hard Work is simply More Work, You would be absolutely correct according to this article and study.


The phrase “shit hits the fan” has uncertain origins. Some claim it’s a descendant of a World War II adage “the garbage hit the fan.” As the Online Etymology Dictionary has it, it derives from an old poop joke. The Yale Book of Quotations doesn’t have a say on the phrase at all (though “shit happens” is attributed to Connie Eble of Chapel Hill).

In any case, people have probably heard the phrase in reference to something gone awry at work or in life. In either setting, when the shit does hit the fan, people will tend to look to the most competent person in the room to take over.

And too bad for that person. A new paper by a team of researchers from Duke University, University of Georgia, and University of Colorado looks at not only how extremely competent people are treated by their co-workers and peers, but how those people feel when, at crucial moments, everyone turns to them. They find that responsible employees are not terribly pleased about this dynamic either.

To begin, the researchers began by establishing that people do, in fact, assign more tasks to those they perceived as more competent. In a survey, participants read statements about a fictional employee “Sam”—different groups read different statements about Sam indicating how much self-control he had (self-control was used as a proxy for competence). When Sam was presented as someone with great self-control, participants expected much more of Sam’s performance at his manufacturing job. In a separate experiment, undergrads were asked to delegate essays for proofreading to other students with varying levels of self-control. Unsurprisingly those with more self-control ended up with more work assigned to them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/being-a-go-getter-is-no-fun/393863/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=5b7f97dd1adf640001c100b3_ta&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

August 24, 2018

LOL! Procter & Gamble wants to trademark LOL

This is stretching things just a bit too far in my opinion.

Procter & Gamble is reported to have applied to trademark acronyms that are common in text speak.

If successful, terms including "LOL" (Laugh Out Loud), "NBD" (No Big Deal) and even WTF (too rude to spell out here) could be used to market products.

The global household products company has applied to use the acronyms in soap, detergents and air fresheners.

P&G reportedly registered the trademark applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office in April.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45289440

August 23, 2018

Racism keeping minimum wages down? Alabama ruling could help poor Texans. [Editorial]

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Racism-keeping-minimum-wages-down-Alabama-ruling-13172747.php

Raising the minimum wage is typically a nonstarter in the Texas Legislature. Democrats keep introducing bills to push the state’s minimum wage above the federal level set nearly a decade ago at $7.25 an hour, and Republicans keep rejecting their efforts.

But a recent federal court ruling tying minimum wages to racial discrimination might be the key to higher incomes for lowly paid American workers everywhere.

Several cities have attempted to bypass similarly recalcitrant legislatures, including Birmingham, Ala., whose City Council two years ago passed a bill raising its minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. The Alabama Legislature responded by imposing a uniform statewide minimum wage that effectively voided Birmingham’s law. The city subsequently filed a federal lawsuit whose ripples could touch other states.

Twenty-five mostly Southern and border states, including Texas, have similar laws that prevent local governments from setting their own minimum wages. Many, like Alabama and Texas, have histories of racial discrimination. The Birmingham lawsuit recounts the racist past of that predominately black city and ties it to the decision of Alabama’s majority-white legislature to override its minimum wage increase.

August 22, 2018

Mattel is cutting 22% of its non-manufacturing workforce

https://qz.com/work/1339506/mattel-layoffs-the-toy-maker-regroups-for-a-post-toys-r-us-world/

Sad about the recent demise of Toys “R” Us? So is Mattel.

The New York-based toy manufacturer lost more than $240 million last quarter, more than quadrupling its loss from the same three months of 2017. It blamed the liquidation of Toys “R” Us for a 14% drop in net sales. Shareholders were clearly taken by surprise; Mattel’s stock dropped nearly 9% in after-hours trading.

But you may want to save your sympathy for the company’s employees. More than 2,200 of them, representing 22% of Mattel’s non-manufacturing workforce, are being let go, the company said.

Their fate may have been hastened by the disappearance of Toys “R” Us stores, but Mattel’s misfortunes predate the loss of what had once been a major customer.

August 21, 2018

Kirkwood to suspend curbside recycling; officials expect other cities will have to do same

FYI - Kirkwood is a suburb of St. Louis located in SouthWest St. Louis County and is a fairly well to do area.

KIRKWOOD • Kirkwood will soon suspend its program of curbside recycling collection for residents, and officials say their city just might be the first of many in St. Louis County to take the same step.

The city’s single-stream program allows a variety of recyclables — such as plastic, cardboard, paper, and aluminum — to be placed in a single cart.

Bill Bensing, public services director, said in a memo to other officials that the city’s recycling processor had started charging the city $35 per ton for single-stream material dropped off at its facility. This is a complete reversal from the past, when the company paid the city $15 per ton for the material.

“This drastic shift in the single stream recycling market is largely due to China placing more stringent contamination limits on recyclable materials (from the United States),” the memo said. “It is thought to be the beginning of the end of single stream recycling as we know it today.”

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/kirkwood-to-suspend-curbside-recycling-officials-expect-other-cities-will/article_9cfbadce-cc6f-5b4d-a34c-cf449eae375d.html