Wal Mart Profits Up
Wal Mart must have utilized a new corporate performance management agenda within the last quarter. Their earnings rose a healthy 17%.
Consumers facing higher gasoline and food prices consolidated their shopping trips, heading to Wal-Mart where they could spend their tax-rebate checks on discounted groceries and drugs.
[...]“When energy and oil prices go up, on top of inflation in health care and core food items, there’s a great deal of pressure on the consumer,” Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott, 59, said today on a recorded call.
They are crediting the country’s sour economy for their own growth, because many people seem to want to do “one stop shopping” for their food and other household goods. There doesn’t seem to be any mention in the article about how Wal Mart can be good for the whole of the economy by insisting that their suppliers produce low-cost goods and effectively closing the doors of thousands of American manufacturing plants. Ohio alone has lost around 250,000 jobs to low-cost manufacturing overseas. Could this be a reason that Wal Mart is seeing record growth?
Wal-Mart’s second-quarter net income climbed 17 percent to $3.45 billion, or 87 cents a share, from $2.95 billion, or 72 cents, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company said. Excluding some items, profit beat analysts’ estimates by 2 cents. Revenue advanced 10 percent to $102.7 billion from $93 billion, the biggest gain since the fourth quarter of 2006.
Profit for the year that ends in early 2009 will be $3.43 to $3.50 a share, the retailer said in a statement. Wal-Mart had forecast $3.30 to $3.43 in February. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg estimated $3.47 a share on average.
Luckily someone in the country is still making good money. Sadly, it’s not anyone who worked in the Wooster Rubbermaid plant.
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Sphere: Related ContentDogs Die in Invasion
Looks like people may have to start wearing tactical gear while just lounging around in their own homes. And don’t forget the dogs. Have them fitted too.
Mayor Cheye Calvo of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and forced to kneel on the floor during the July 29 raid, which police said was part of an investigation into a scheme in which drugs apparently were sent to unsuspecting people.
The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland are investigating the incident, FBI spokesman Richard Wolf said Friday.
Calvo had asked for the federal probe.
“We lost our family dogs,” he said Thursday. “We did it at the hands of sheriff’s deputies who burst through our front door, rifles blazing.”
[...] Police said the scheme involved shipping drugs to unsuspecting people’s homes and intercepting the packages. About $3.6 million in marijuana had been seized, police told the AP.
In this instance, investigators told the AP, a package containing 32 pounds of marijuana was sent from Los Angeles, California, to Calvo’s house in Berwyn Heights, a town of 3,000 residents 10 miles from Washington.
The package was addressed to his Calvo’s wife, Trinity Tomsic.
The Calvo’s dogs were shot to death during the invasion. One was 7 years old and the other was 4. The family has no recourse because the invasion happened because of an “investigation” and someone thought the mayor was some kind of drug lord operative. Thanks to FISA and the “war” on drugs, the peace this family once enjoyed has been shattered forever.
Of course, the drug dealers share the blame. They are sending packages full of drugs to random strangers. The DEA knew this. They knew that the Calvos were probably innocent. But they wanted to show the big bad drug dealers who was boss. Except it wasn’t the big bad drug dealers who suffered two horrible losses during a home invasion.
I don’t know what the Calvos can do to rebuild their lives after this. I suppose they should be thankful that they didn’t have children in the home at the time. They can be thankful that neither of them were shot in place of their dogs. And they can be thankful that the government will shoot anything moving when they’re during a drug investigation and/or raid.
Or they can join millions of other people in demanding the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution be honored by all arms of the government- including the federal branch.
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