Friendly Neighborhood Wal-Mart Fact of the Day

On August 1 of this year, “A California trampoline vendor [sued] Wal-Mart Stores Inc., claiming the retail giant secretly withdrew more than $400,000 from the supplier's account as part of a fraudulent accounting practice”. The retail giant allegedly deducted money for trampolines Wal-Mart customers returned or the store rejected from trampoline company Leisure Kingdom’s account, even though Leisure Kingdom was not Wal-Mart’s direct vendor. Instead, Leisure Kingdom argues, the deductions should have come out of the account of Shen Tai, the actual vendor. Leisure Kingdom is also alleging that Wal-Mart “has refused to credit its account for the improper deductions”. [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 1, 2007]

Dollar General Store Comes to Creston, OH

Dollar General has sent a payment to the village of Creston for the purchase of land where it intends to build a store.

Mayor Ron White told the Creston council on Monday the company wants to break ground as early as next week, which will require removing a structure on the downtown parcel. The village owned about 3 acres and sold one to the company for $72,500. Council approved the sale in October.

Mayor White said a Dollar General representative told him without the persistence of councilwoman Linda Flory, the company probably would not have come to Creston.

"For lack of better word, she badgered them." White said.

I kept calling them and nagging them to take a look," Flory said. "I thought we needed a store there."

Flory said she has been working on it for the past year.

Dollar General has more than 8,300 stores across the country with nearly 450 in Ohio. The Company operates stores in Wooster, (2) Orville, Rittman, Apple Creek, Shreve and Millersburg.

The company began in 1955 selling all items for a dollar. Today, 30 percent of Dollar General's merchandise is still priced at a dollar or less, according to the company's web site.

The Creston store will be around 9,100 square feet and will offer paper products, cleaning supplies, health and beauty aids, snacks, housewares, toys, basic apparel and seasonal items. Dolllar General Stores are concentrated in under-served rural and urban ares. For fiscal year 2006, the company opened 537 new stores.

CREW Calls For Investigation into Boehner's Alleged Leak of Classified Information

Yesterday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) "filed a complaint with the Department of Justice" asking that it "initiate an investigation into whether House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) violated the law by leaking classified information." Last week, during an interview with Fox News, Boehner revealed the existence of a secret FISA court ruling that declared "a key element of the Bush administration's wiretapping efforts illegal." "There's been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people," Boehner told Fox's Neil Cavuto. Boehner's office claimed that his comments were based on a public letter from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and thus not a leak of classified information, but, as the Washington Post points out, "the letter referred only to 'approval' of a government surveillance request and did not refer, as Boehner did, to the court's rejection of surveillance of specific foreign communications routed through the United States." According to CREW, Boehner appears to have violated 18 U.S.C. § 793(d), which "provides that anyone with lawful possession of information relating to the national defense, which could be used to the injury of the United States, who willfully communicates that information to any person not entitled to receive it, is subject to up to ten years imprisonment."
Contact John Boehner and ask for him to resign at:
Washington, D.C. Office
1011 Longworth H.O.B.
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-6205
(202) 225-0704 fax
Residents of the 8th District
of Ohio may use the toll-free number: (800) 582-1001

Wal-Mart Fact of the Day

In July, 2006 in one of the first in a wave of recent recalls to hit Wal-Mart, the Consumer Product Safety Commission “announced the recall of over 750,000 office chairs sold exclusively” by the retail giant. The CPSC “said that the legs and back of the Mainstays Associate Office Chairs pose a risk of break or tipping over. Wal-Mart said its US stores had sold the chairs nationwide from April 2003 to April 2006 for about $36”. [Office Products International, August 1, 2006]

Democratic Party says state senator violated reporting requirements

The Ohio Democratic Party filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against state Sen. Kirk Schuring, alleging he violated federal campaign reporting requirements.

Schuring, a Jackson Township Republican who represents Stark County except its eastern edge, said he was surprised at the move and guessed that ''this is the kind of hardball style of politics that goes with a potential run for Congress.''

He has formed an exploratory committee to run for Ohio's 16th Congressional District; he has said he would run only if Ralph Regula, R-Navarre, who has held the seat since 1973, retires. The district covers Stark, Wayne and parts of Ashland and Medina counties.

The Democratic Party said Schuring has not filed a ''statement of candidacy,'' which is required when a candidate's campaign exceeds $5,000 in contributions or expenses. Schuring's campaign has said it has raised more than $135,000 for a potential bid.

''By deliberately confusing the voters of the area with his half-truths about his intentions, Kirk Schuring is trying to have it both ways,'' Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern said in a statement. ''After the scandals of (Bob) Taft, (Tom) Noe, (Bob) Ney and others, the last thing we need is a politician who doesn't think the rules apply to him and is deceitful to the voters of the district.''

Schuring said he is not an official candidate and has informed donors of that while collecting money. His legal counsel also has advised him that he must file a statement of candidacy if he is raising or spending money as a candidate, he said.

He said of Democrats: ''They must feel like I'm a force to reckon with, and that's why they've tried to put me in a bad light.''

The election complaint calls on the commission to make Schuring return his contributions and pay a fine.

Sen. Kirk Schuring:
Senate Building
Room #041, Ground Floor
Columbus, Ohio 43215
Telephone: 614/466-0626
Email: SD29@mailr.sen.state.oh.us

Fox News Markets War Supporters as War Critics

During an August 5 interview on Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday with Brookings Institution scholars Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, authors of a July 30 New York Timesop-ed that argued in favor of continuing the Bush administration's Iraq war escalation "at least into 2008," host Chris Wallace introduced O'Hanlon and Pollack as "two critics of the way the Bush administration has conducted the war." But, as Media Matters for America has noted, both were influential proponents of the Iraq war before the invasion, and O'Hanlon wrote a column in support of President Bush's troop escalation, as Media Matters has also documented.

O'Hanlon wrote that, while "[c]ritics rightly argue that it may well be too little, way too late" for a troop increase, "for a skeptical Congress and nation, it is still the right thing to try -- as long as we do not count on it succeeding and we start working on backup plans even as we grant Bush his request." O'Hanlon added: "However mediocre its prospects, each main element of the president's plan has some logic behind it." O'Hanlon further argued that "the president wants to move in the right direction on economic reconstruction" and that he "is rightly telegraphing to Iraqi leaders that they must reach compromises with each other." O'Hanlon concluded that "for now, Congress should also give the president the money and support that he requests."

This is not the first time a Fox News host has asserted that O'Hanlon and Pollack were Iraq war critics who have now become more supportive of the war without noting their early support of the Iraq war or O'Hanlon's January 14 column. As Media Matters documented, during the July 30 broadcast of Fox News' Special Report, host and Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume described the two as "[a] pair of longtime opponents of President Bush's policies in Iraq."

Goodbye Norma Jean by Lee Strasberg

Marilyn Monroe was a legend.

In her own lifetime she created a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived background could attain. For the entire world she became a symbol of the eternal feminine.

But I have no words to describe the myth and the legend. I did not know this Marilyn Monroe.

We gathered here today, knew only Marilyn - a warm human being, impulsive and shy, sensitive and in fear of rejection, yet ever avid for life and reaching out for fulfillment. I will not insult the privacy of your memory of her - a privacy she sought and treasured - by trying to describe her whom you knew to you who knew her. In our memories of her she remains alive, not only a shadow on the screen or a glamorous personality.

For us Marilyn was a devoted and loyal friend, a colleague constantly reaching for perfection. We shared her pain and difficulties and some of her joys. She was a member of our family. It is difficult to accept the fact that her zest for life has been ended by this dreadful accident.

Despite the heights and brilliance she attained on the screen, she was planning for the future; she was looking forward to participating in the many exciting things which she planned. In her eyes and in mine her career was just beginning. The dream of her talent, which she had nurtured as a child, was not a mirage. When she first came to me I was amazed at the startling sensitivity which she possessed and which had remained fresh and undimmed, struggling to express itself despite the life to which she had been subjected. Others were as physically beautiful as she was, but there was obviously something more in her, something that people saw and recognized in her performances and with which they identified. She had a luminous quality - a combination of wistfulness, radiance, yearning - to set her apart and yet make everyone wish to be a part of it, to share in the childish naiveté which was so shy and yet so vibrant.
This quality was even more evident when she was in the stage. I am truly sorry that the public who loved her did not have the opportunity to see her as we did, in many of the roles that foreshadowed what she would have become. Without a doubt she would have been one of the really great actresses of the stage.

Now it is at an end. I hope her death will stir sympathy and understanding for a sensitive artist and a woman who brought joy and pleasure to the world.

I cannot say goodbye. Marilyn never liked goodbyes, but in the peculiar way she had of turning things around so that they faced reality - I will say au revoir. For the country to which she has gone, we must all someday visit.