TheCapeBlog

In fact, to the people on Wall Street who really run the country, profit seems to be the last consideration in valuing companies.
Here’s an example:
Business Week ran the numbers last year on Costco versus Sam’s Club, a direct competitor which is owned by Wal-Mart.
Costco, a membership wholesale company, pays its full-timers an average of over $16/hour and 92% of their employees’ health insurance premiums.
Wal-Mart on the other hand pays an average of $9.69/hour and 34% of health insurance.
What does Costco get for this? Lower turnover and higher productivity.

Continue reading Class Warfare is More Important than Profit

Got a haircut (resigned to layers), balanced the checkbook, paid bills, picked up the first of emergency supplies, got a good start on Jim B’s eBay project, deposited checks from a client, finally submitted a couple of refund offers (mailing deadline is the 13th and today is the 12th), followed on with some nice people who may have computers to donate to the Tech Academy, spoke with a senior staff member at my Congressman’s office about the goings-on at Edwards (great quote: “If we get stuck with the sex offenders while the rest of the people go home, that wouldn’t be much of a deal.”), stopped by the library so they could update my account and having done so, reserved several books online, attempted to negotiate a better APR on my one credit card and printed off directions to a couple of meetings tomorrow.

Continue reading Stupid post

More “evacuees” are expected at Camp Edwards this week.
Surprised?
This word didn’t come from our State or Federal representatives, or for that matter, Great White Father Mitt Romney.
No, the word was given, and buried at that, in an article quoting a spokesperson for a local housing agency about the need for more volunteers at the Base.

Continue reading More

It’s suggested by columnist Michael Levenson in this morning’s Globe that Romney’s wanted the Katrina evacuees at Camp Edwards to give himself an “opportunity to shine” after the last 2 1/2 years of stalemates by the predominantly Democratic legislature (Romney was elected in November 2002).
Mr. Levenson describes the enormous national media exposure that Romney has received as a result of this, his first real chance to display the management skills for which he was touted as the president and CEO of the Organizing Committee for the Salt Lake Winter Games.
Well, Mr. Romney has done well in some respects, especially his own PR, but has fallen flat on his face as far as assuring the public safety of the evacuees, the families currently living on Otis, and the community as a whole.

Continue reading BMOC

A Newsweek poll published today reported Bush’s approval rating at 38 percent. The survey found 53 percent of Americans no longer trusted him to make correct decisions in a foreign or domestic crisis, against 45 percent who did.
Meanwhile, that staunchest of Republican newspapers, the New Hampshire Union Leader, has ripped Bush a new one over the croneyism and incompetence in the Division of Homeland Security.
Could the tide FINALLY be turning? Let’s see what happens tomorrow, when your gummit and mine is scheduled to blow an ill-timed wad on its so-called commemoration of 9/11.

Knock on it as if you were knocking on a door.
If it sounds hollow, it’s ripe.
This works – believe it.

Patio screen doors – the kind with wheels on the top and the bottom – are the creation of the devil.
I swear, this is true.
Of all the household tasks to be done, installing one of these satanic doors is my least favorite.

Continue reading Getting By (With a Little Help from My Friends)

Guess I was wrong about Michael Brown, he didn’t (at least not yet) receive a medal for his mishandling of the post-Katrina relief efforts.
While Bush did get an incomprehensible bump in one poll for his mis-handling of the crisis, it was short-lived: now, only 39% of those surveyed by AP-Ipsos are fools and idiots.

Continue reading Predictions – Update

The events around the flooding of New Orleans and reaction thereafter are so surreal that they seem to have been scripted by Samuel Beckett or Harold Pinter.

Continue reading Theater of the Absurd

In an interview with Barbara Walters, former Secretary of State Colin Powell makes more sense in a few words than the thousands of pages of gibberish from the left-of-center that have inundated all of us about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Including the absurd, insane comment that George “Deficit” Bush is a small government kind of guy.