This day in history – August 10

1988 – 43 years after the end of World War II, President Reagan signs a bill providing payments of $20,000 to Japanese-Americans interned during the war. The payment is the equivalent of roughly $25 per day interned.

1984 – During the women’s 3,000 meter race at the Los Angeles Olympics, American and favorite Mary Decker trips on the heel of Britain Zola Budd, ending her quest for gold and producing an iconic photo of the agony of Olympic defeat.
Mary Decker

1984 – The movie Red Dawn is released, notable not only for its cast filled with young, future stars such as Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson and Jennifer Grey, but also for being the first movie ever released with a PG-13 rating. A Cold War classic, it was re-made last year.

1977 – Postal employee and serial killer David Berkowitz, aka Son of Sam, is finally arrested in Yonkers, New York after killing six and wounding seven in a series of shootings that took place over the course of a year. Berkowitz says his neighbor’s dog, possessed by a demon, told him to do it.

1948 – Allen Funt’s “Candid Camera” debut’s on ABC television. Originally a radio show called Candid Microphone, Funt’s television show would continue to be produced, either as a regular feature or as a periodic special, until 2004. When I lived in England the BBC broadcast an edgier Candid Camera-like show called Trigger Happy TV, which I thought was hilarious.

1846 – President James K. Polk signs the law establishing the Smithsonian Institution.

1792 – Mobs in Paris attack Tuileries Palace, home of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, forcing the King to take shelter in the Legislative Assembly. The attack marks the effective end to the Bourbon monarchy, as Louis was a arrested 3 days later, tried, and eventually executed.

32 Responses

  1. I thought ZB was South African. Did she run for UK?

    A quick look at Wiki and I now remember why she ran for Britain.

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    • mark:

      You know I thought the same thing, but the article I read to remind myself about the incident mentioned that she was running for the UK and I figured I just misremembered. I didn’t bother checking it further. Thanks for the clarification.

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  2. I remember the Mary Decker incident. The ’84 Summer Olympics are the only Olympic Games I’ve ever attended. We took our son and a friend to one of the baseball games at the Forum and watched future notables Bobby Witt and Mike Dunne pitch as well as the infamous Mark McGuire and Ken Caminiti play, among others that I can’t quite remember.

    It was the first time our son had been to that part of LA and we took a bunch of short cuts and side streets to get to the game. Along the way he saw his first homeless men. That was almost as notable as the game for them.

    And my mother’s best friend from high school was interned with her family in Manzanar.

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  3. Our daughter is on her way to Tanzania this morning. We found out last night that they re-opened all but one embassy they’d closed last week. Now all she has to worry about is the climb.

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  4. WOLVERINES!!!!

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  5. On our way out to pick up our new car………………yay. Nothing that exciting just another Camry SE. I wanted a Prius but my husband said “Hell No”.

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  6. Lasse Viren tripped and fell during the 10,000m in Munich and still won

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  7. pre didn’t race enough guys outside of the US…. He thought he was the only guy in the world who could drop a sub 4 on the last mile in the 5k

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  8. This is something I’ve talked about a lot. Business models, especially for retail, and why the WalMart model isn’t necessarily a gold mine.

    Quite a contrast to Walmart, which can’t seem to figure out how to pay a decent wage or get their employees insurance coverage. In fact, while recent government research shows that Walmart’s wage and benefits structure is a drag on the taxpayer, WinCo, which now has close to 100 stores and 15,000 employees, allows those who work with them long enough to qualify for a pension plan, into which the company pays 20 percent of their annual salary. From Think Progress:

    “More than 400 “front-line” workers — clerks, cashiers, and others who are not at the executive level — have retirement accounts that are worth at least $1 million, according to a company spokesman.

    It also provides full health benefits for those who work at least 24 hours a week, beyond the requirements in the Affordable Care Act. While the company is private and hasn’t made wage information available, Glassdoor reports that cashiers and clerks make more than $11 an hour. Thanks to these benefits and wages, the company has low turnover. An industry analyst estimated that the average hourly worker stays with the company for more than eight years.”

    http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/08/10/trumping-walmart-winco-foods-shows-how-to-keep-employees-and-customers-happy/

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  9. Scott, are you saying that the sheer volume of employees prevents WalMart from offering their employees a higher wage and perhaps a small sliver of other benefits?

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    • lms:

      Scott, are you saying that the sheer volume of employees prevents WalMart from offering their employees a higher wage and perhaps a small sliver of other benefits?

      I’m pointing out that the two business models are not directly comparable.

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      • Scott said “I’m pointing out that the two business models are not directly comparable”

        2011 Profit stats for Wal-Mart and Winco:
        Wal-Mart $15.7 billion, Winco $4.37 billion

        Number of employees:
        Wal-Mart 2,000,000, Winco 14,000

        Profits per each employee:
        Wal-Mart $7,850 , Winco $312,142.85

        Perhaps the cheap items shipped in from China and elsewhere aren’t bringing in the revenues Wal-Mart needs to actually provide it’s employees with decent wages and benefits. Or, perhaps Wal-Marts business model isn’t designed to provide any real wages or benefits to anyone in the corporation other than those at the top.

        Perhaps Wal-Mart needs to rethink it’s business model since evidently Winco’s business model, at least as it correlates to profits per each employee, is 39.76 times that of Wal-Marts.

        I agree, the two business models are NOT comparable, and I add to that, that Wal-Mart needs to do a better job.

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        • OH MY, as soon as I posted, I knew something was wrong with my numbers… I did not use a yearly profit amount for Wal-mart, I somehow grabbed a single quarter instead. So here are the RIGHT calculations using the YEARLY 2011 totals for both Wal-mart and Winco:

          2011 Wal-Mart profits $114.2 billion, Winco $4.37 billion

          Number of employees:
          Wal-Mart 2,000,000, Winco 14,000

          Profits per each employee:
          Wal-Mart $57,100, Winco $312,142.85

          And even with the correct yearly profit info for Wal-Mart, they are still far below Winco in this same profit per employee calculation.

          Have to keep in mind that most Wal-Mart employees, work less than full time hours, at minimum wage…. so assuming one of these employees actually gets to work 30 hours a week, their yearly wage is $11,310. Resulting in Wal-Mart receiving $45,790 per year off each of these employees.

          I still stick with my comments on Wal-Mart needs to do better.

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        • Geanie:

          2011 Profit stats for Wal-Mart and Winco:
          Wal-Mart $15.7 billion, Winco $4.37 billion

          You are confusing revenues and profits. In 2011 Winco had $4.73 billion in revenues. We do not know what its profit was because it is not a publicly held company and therefore does not release that information.

          FYI, Walmart’s revenues for 2011 were $447 billion.

          Or, perhaps Wal-Marts business model isn’t designed to provide any real wages or benefits to anyone in the corporation other than those at the top.

          It is designed to provide returns to shareholders.

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        • Scott… you are correct, my mistake. I apologize for making mistakes… but in my defense, it’s very hard to concentrate and focus while enduring great pain.

          But now that you corrected me and provided the correct revenue amount for Wal-Mart, that now makes their revenue per employee to be $223,500. Still less than Winco, but should be enough to pay their employees a decent wage and keep them off TAX PAYER food stamps and state healthcare. This correction actually did nothing to make them “look” better.

          And yes, while I understand their business model is to “provide returns to shareholders”….there isn’t any valid reason for paying an employee so little that they have to access food stamps and state healthcare when it’s obvious that with a breakdown of $223,500 a year for each employee they have, they certainly CAN afford to do so and STILL make plenty of money for all those “shareholders”.

          Makes me really wonder whatever happened to the term “stakeholders”,which is how businesses were ran, in which they included the employees (after all, an employee has a stake in whether the company they work for is successful or not as well). This business model, which included employees, seemed to work great in the past, and evidently STILL does for Winco and Costco. It seems to me that when “stakeholder” was replaced with “shareholder”, only the elite of a company reaps any and all rewards and leaves all the others, who were also (and still are) “stakeholders”, with not only NO rewards, but doesn’t even provide them with enough to fulfill the most basic of needs.

          And I STILL stand by my statement that Wal-Mart, and others like them, CAN DO BETTER.

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  10. “lmsinca, on August 10, 2013 at 1:50 pm said:

    On our way out to pick up our new car………………yay. Nothing that exciting just another Camry SE. I wanted a Prius but my husband said “Hell No”.”

    Why not? Are you guys a one car family?

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  11. jnc

    Why not? Are you guys a one car family?

    A one car and one old work truck family. He let me pick the color and I like the car anyway. I just wanted to be more eco friendly than him. He says we’ve already done our part and he wants to drive the car he wants not some tin can…………..hahaha

    His sister has a Prius and loves it but he’s pretty stubborn so I gave up. He drives more than I do anyway. I like to pick my battles very carefully. He owes me now…lol

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  12. When was the golden age of socially progressive business?

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    • McWing:

      When was the golden age of socially progressive business?

      I think it was sometime prior to the discovery of the law of supply and demand.

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  13. I’d say it was sometime right up until Ronald Reagan came to the WH to live.

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  14. What law did RR sign that ended it and what did the law change?

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  15. “I’d say it was sometime right up until Ronald Reagan came to the WH to live.”

    I would say that corresponds to the end of the post-WWII era of no international competition. During the 50s and 60s, US corporations not only had to satisfy US domestic demand, they had to satisfy international demand. US corporations earned economic rents which were split between labor and the government. Once Japan and Europe re-established their domestic economies and new upstarts like Taiwan entered the scene, those rents were competed away.

    And while that has been bad for the unskilled union worker, it has been a boon for consumers. And while not everyone is an unskilled union worker, everyone is a consumer.

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    • Once Japan and Europe re-established their domestic economies and new upstarts like Taiwan entered the scene, those rents were competed away.

      Perfectly stated, Brent. I saw it happen in my lifetime and being intimately connected to labor law it seemed like a week-to-week change in the 70s. I made this point repeatedly at PL for what must have been a year but some of the regulars were having none of it. It was all a conspiracy to them.

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  16. But that changed no law, it was merely the enforcement of existing law. What law was enacted that ended the golden era of socially progressive business and what did that law change?

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  17. When was the golden age of socially progressive business?

    What law did RR sign that ended it and what did the law change?

    What law was enacted that ended the golden era of socially progressive business and what did that law change?

    Troll, It’s your premise. Answer your own question.

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  18. I think Brent’s right about the timing, although yello is right about the breaking of unions being a huge problem for workers, union and non-union alike.

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  19. I cannot answer the question as I do not believe there ever was a golden era of socially progressive business. Lms seemed to imply that it did exist and ended when Reagan was President. If that’s the case, I wanted to know what legislation was signed by him and what did it do. It’s not like its possible to fundamentally change business through unilateral executive action. Or is it? I honestly don’t know.

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  20. I agree that a global economy has hurt the middle class worker or working poor while at the same time providing cheap goods but I was actually thinking of Reaganomics, supply-side, trickle down, whatever you want to call it.

    I believe there was a fundamental change during the Reagan years that has led to increased economic inequality and that WalMart is actually a prime example. I doubt there’s much to be done at this point. The American worker will have to figure out for themselves how they can fit into the new dynamic of globalization and maximized owner and shareholder profits that have grown exponentially since the 80’s at least.

    Like yello I was also thinking of unions and in particular the air traffic controller’s union and Reagan. At the time it even seemed like a good idea to me.

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