Grocery stores removing self checkout lanes

The last time I used one (a few months ago while in the UK) I became so annoyed I left the store without buying anything. The concept is great but when anything goes wrong you have to wait for someone to come around and fix it. Finding them is usually the start to the problem. It's faster and easier to go through the old fashioned but effective lines where actual people are working.

Albertsons LLC, which operates 217 stores in seven Western and Southern states, will eliminate all self-checkout lanes in the 100 stores that have them and will replace them with standard or express lanes, a spokeswoman said.

"We just want the opportunity to talk to customers more," Albertsons spokeswoman Christine Wilcox said. "That's the driving motivation."

Wilcox said the replacement of automated checkout lanes with human-operated lanes likely would mean more hours available for employees to work.

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Carl Bernstein: Closing News of the World is Murdoch’s Watergate–just the beginning of the "seismic event"

Writing in Newsweek, Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame) says that the closing of the scandal-ridden scandal-rag News of the World is the start of the crumbling of the Murdoch world-wide empire.

It's a long article, so there's much that could be featured. I'm going to skip over his excellent recap of the scandal itself and the growth of the Murdoch empire in the UK and US (but do read for that if for nothing else).

Instead, let's start here:

[T]he empire is shaking, and there’s no telling when it will stop. My conversations with British journalists and politicians—all of them insistent on speaking anonymously to protect themselves from retribution by the still-enormously powerful mogul—make evident that the shuttering of News of the World, and the official inquiries announced by the British government, are the beginning, not the end, of the seismic event.

News International, the British arm of Murdoch’s media empire, “has always worked on the principle of omertà: ‘Do not say anything to anybody outside the family, and we will look after you,’” notes a former Murdoch editor who knows the system well. “Now they are hanging people out to dry. The moment you do that, the omertà is gone, and people are going to talk. It looks like a circular firing squad.” ... As one of his former top executives—once a close aide—told me, “This scandal and all its implications could not have happened anywhere else. Only in Murdoch’s orbit. The hacking at News of the World was done on an industrial scale. More than anyone, Murdoch invented and established this culture in the newsroom, where you do whatever it takes to get the story, take no prisoners, destroy the competition, and the end will justify the means.”

“In the end, what you sow is what you reap,” said this same executive. “Now Murdoch is a victim of the culture that he created. It is a logical conclusion, and it is his people at the top who encouraged lawbreaking and hacking phones and condoned it.”

Though Bernstein believes that Murdoch himself may be safe, he finds it hard to believe that the master's top deputies didn't think they had his green light to run his business this way. And Scotland Yard is investigating:

Investigators are already assembling voluminous records that demonstrate the systemic lawbreaking at News of the World, and Scotland Yard seems to believe what was happening in the newsroom was endemic at the highest levels at the paper and evident within the corporate structure. Checks have been found showing tens of thousands of dollars of payments at a time.

Bernstein makes two Watergate comparisons. First, when he and Bob Woodward wanted to approach grand jurors and obtain private phone records, they sought Ben Bradlee's permission, who checked with corporate lawyers. Hard to imagine, he implies, that similar corporate "permissions" aren't in place, either case by case, or perhaps more likely, by institutional understanding.

Second, and related, is the degree to which the investigation turns Rupert Murdoch into Richard Nixon, the perp who can be tied to the cover-up, if not the crime. (Note: This is where the destruction of omertà comes in; by sacrificing underlings, Murdoch loses the protection that silence affords.)

I'll make two points of my own:

■ Murdoch has dynasty dreams. For me, James Murdoch is the crown jewel of this investigation.

If James Murdoch lands in jail, a novelist's eye can easily see the old man raging, mad with grief, in an empty castle.

■ Murdoch's business model: As I've written before, he's not a propagandist. He's a monopolist, an empire builder, who sells propaganda services to corrupt politicians in exchange for bigger monopolies, bigger empires. Crumble the empire and you crumble the man.

Scotland Yard is on the case. If I can suggest, channeling Bernstein: "Follow the money, folks."

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DeFazio: Audit the Pentagon — "We don’t know where $2.3 trillion went"

Representative Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) speaking on the House floor last Friday. He wants to suspend the DoD's exemption from federal audits. The context is a debate on 2012 Defense spending, to which DeFazio offers an amendment — audit the DoD.

Pretty interesting, since only the first half of this brief clip is DeFazio speaking. Watch (including the vote at the end):



DeFazio:

In 1990, Congress passed a law that required that all — all — federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, must have auditable financial statements every year. Since that time, the Department of Defense has spent $10 trillion ... [a]nd yet, no audit has been conducted. ... In 2005 Congress passed a ban on completing an audit ... Yet we don't know where ... $2.3 trillion dollars went.

His amendment will end that exemption.

Notice, if you stayed all the way through, that when the Republican from Florida objects to DeFazio's amendment, Scott Garrett, a Republican from New Jersey, rises in defense. Go Garrett.

And for you comedy fans, notice the voice vote at the end. The amendment passed by what sounded like 6–2. In the House of Representatives. Must have been happy hour in Washington.

$2.3 trillion is not nothing. Deficit freaks, where's your inner confidence fairy? Isn't he or she complaining just a little?

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Boehner refuses Obama’s latest budget deal, now "only" wants a few trillion in cuts, no tax increases

Someone's being played.  First the Republicans walked out of the Biden talks.  Now Boehner is refusing the President's more than generous offer to cut Social Security and Medicare as part of a larger deal absurdly skewed towards GOP goals.  It's those pesky tax increases, you see.  It's just not enough that the President caved on a clean debt ceiling, caved on having an additional stimulus instead of spending cuts, caved on postponing spending cuts until the economy is well again, caved on at least making spending cuts equal to tax increases, and caved on keeping cuts to Social Security and Medicare out of this.

Mind you, it's not entirely clear what the Republicans have even agreed to here in terms of any tax increases.

So the GOP walks, and Obama will just have to sweeten the deal to "save the hostages."  Did anyone else see this coming?

It's nearing time for the President to declare the Republicans not serious, decouple the debt ceiling vote from the deficit talks, and make clear to the markets that the US will continue to honor its debt regardless of whether the GOP holds the world economy hostage.

From Ryan Grim at HuffPost:

Obama had proposed to Republicans a "grand bargain" that accomplished a host of individual things that are unpopular on their own, but that just might pass as a huge package jammed through Congress with default looming. Obama offered to put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts on the table in exchange for a tax hike of roughly $100 billion per year over 10 years. Meanwhile, government spending would be cut by roughly three times that amount. It's no small irony that the party's dogmatic opposition to tax increases is costing the GOP its best opportunity to roll back social programs it has long targeted.

Republicans are now banking on a smaller deficit reduction deal that would still make major cuts, somewhere in the range of $2 trillion.

Do you see what Boehner is doing here? He'll agree to "only" a couple trillion if cuts if the President stops asking for tax increases (or, at the very least, if the President drops any serious tax increase proposals).

Yes, Boehner is facing pressure from the Teabagger caucus. But. He also knows that the President's goal is to get any deal here, (nearly) regardless of the cost, so Boehner is also playing the President. He's banking on the President's now-infamous statement that hostage takers must never be allowed to kill the hostages. He's hoping the President sweetens the deal even more.

Maybe the President can throw in the repeal of the Civil Rights Act and the 19th Amendment.

PS And don't discount the possibility that Boehner and Obama are playing all of us here. Obama offers a $4 trillion package that cuts Social Security and Medicare, freaking out Democrats. He offers a deal that raises taxes, freaking out Republicans. Boehner bravely says "you shall not pass," and both sides are "forced" to consider the "smaller" deal, "only" $2 trillion in cuts, that "spares" Medicare and Social Security and limits tax increases, so the Democratic base and the Teabaggers will sigh with relief at how "good" the $2 trillion package is, when they would have rejected it only a few weeks ago. In other words, Obama was never serious about the Social Security and Medicare cuts, but only offered them to freak us out and make us embrace the Biden deal instead. We may all be being played here. Read the rest of this post...

British Conservatives seeking education budget from Brazil

When you push the costs of education beyond the means of your people, you have to find the money somewhere. Interesting approach to higher education from a group of blue bloods who never worry much about their own ability to pay for things. Why are the Brazilians funding the financial gap for this government?

David Willetts, the universities minister, flew to South America last month to arrange a deal that he hopes will be highly lucrative at a time of cuts to state funding for higher education. The Brazilian government is planning to provide up to £18,700 a student.

Universities UK, the representative body for universities in this country, said it welcomed the plan, which promised "rich rewards".

The development follows a £200m cut by the coalition government to state funding for higher education, which will mean 24,000 fewer places for UK and EU students, including teacher training allotments, over the next two academic years. Figures published last week also suggested that 220,000 UK and EU students would be unable to attain places this autumn following a 1.4% year-on-year increase in demand for university places as of the end of June.

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Tribute to George Harrison - My Sweet Lord

It's an unusually early Sunday morning for me as I am jumping on a train to Melun to do a 60 kilometer bike circuit with a friend visiting from Holland. After following the Seine for a while and riding past a lovely old fortress that pre-dates the 100 Years War we ride by this place near the end. The gardens were the inspiration for Versailles but the history is quite a story. Politics has always been a full contact sport.

When I get home this afternoon it's time to whip up a batch of chicken salad with my leftover roasted chickens from the Algerian butcher up in Belleville. They marinate the birds in seasonings that are perfect. Add to that some yellow raisins marinated in bit of Grand Marnier, just enough mayonnaise and lots of cilantro and it's ready. Read the rest of this post...

David Cameron was warned over hiring arrested Murdoch editor

And it wasn't only one warning either. Cameron dismissed the criticism of his communications director hire. The Guardian:

The former Liberal Democrat leader, who had been extensively briefed on details that had not been made public for legal reasons, was so convinced that the truth would eventually emerge that he contacted the prime minister's office.

Ashdown, a key player as the Liberal Democrats agonised over whether to join in a coalition with the Tories, told the Observer that, based on what he had been told, it was obvious Coulson's appointment as Cameron's director of communications would be a disaster.

"I warned No 10 within days of the election that they would suffer terrible damage if they did not get rid of Coulson, when these things came out, as it was inevitable they would," he said.

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