Wal-Mart Settles a Nearly $5.1 Million Insurance Lawsuit in Okla.

December 7, 2006

  • December 7, 2006 at 4:18 am
    media mogul says:
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    We thank you for your substantive comments, most of which are drawn from the standard apologia for Walmart and for unrestrained markets. Many of your comments are simply repetitions of untruths, half truths and incomplete truths, due to your limited and deficient education and solidified by your daily rough and tumble making a living..

    As always,the truth lies in the middle, without the ideology. I do not change the subject–as markets organize most of the world\’s economy, everything (gas, Walmart, textiles, you name it) is about the markets and their regulation.

    Instead of a simple pro-market position, educate yourself about all the holes in your position with the short introductory book by the pro-market Immanuel Wallerstein–World System Analysis (1987) Available at your local bookseller–if you can find one–otherwise through a category killer big copr. bookstore. He points out all you point out and more and provides additional perspective on what needs to be included in moving away from either/or positions to practical solutions to–if it is not too \”liberal\” to mention–having a decent future world for us and our descendants. Education never stops.

  • December 7, 2006 at 4:28 am
    Sam says:
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    Typical liberal: when he can\’t refute the truth, he refers me to a book he (supposedly) read rather than point out even one of the \”holes\” in my argument. Why did I bother to answer your post =point-by-point= rather than just suggest that you read Bastiat, Mises or Friedman?

  • December 7, 2006 at 4:34 am
    Sam says:
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    Wow Mogul dude, when you were typing all that about Bush Rove and Cheney were you wearing a tin foil hat so that Rove couldn\’t tell what you\’re thinking?

    You are living proof that moveon.org causes brain damage.

    Hey look, there goes a black helicopter!

  • December 7, 2006 at 4:43 am
    Chad Balaamaba says:
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    great anti-walmart diatribe; beautiful articulation connecting walmart to everything media mogul wants to demonize. However, the article was about wal mart obtaining life insurance, at their own cost, to cover their employees, who they do have to train. No part of the life insurance cost was paid for the employee, but now their families benefit? Sounds like we need more information to know exactly why this was occurring, however, I fail to see the sinister nature that others like Media Mogul do. Wal-Mart incurred the cost to cover training expenses. Aren\’t all employees important? I can tell you from experience, the cost of developing and training an employee often approaches their yearly salary; simply because some of these folks may be been low level employees does not make them any less important to the smooth running goal sought by Wal-Mart. Remember, Wal-Mart wasn\’t always the biggest; how did they get there? No, your arguments on forcing their production methods, etc, on manufacturers doesn\’t fly; why didn\’t Sears try it first? No, Wal-Mart, while not being in the business of providing insurance, security, etc, does provide employment, and while doing so, is the most successful retail establishment in history. Yup, that\’ll tick off some; it\’s easy for some to hate the successful ones. When someone comes up with a more successful retail plan, we\’ll shop there, but until then, Wal-Mart rules. Get over it.

  • December 7, 2006 at 5:14 am
    media mogul says:
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    Sam–not that old approach again–telling people not to rely on reading books or god forbid thinking for themselves. Instead, just give them easy either/or answers based on the great old ideologues and their tracts of the past. Tell them not to think about thinking new thoughts. Yes, I have also had people tell me the truth lies in Marx and Polanyi also instead of Friedman and company. Or the German Schumpeter–a pretty middle of the road realist and pragmatist.

    These debates are ages old and won\’t be settled in these tiny text boxes of Insurance Journal but instead by people doing their own reading and thinking. You did not achieve a point for point refutation but just adduced some additional opinions. Life is more complicated than you pretend from your extreme right ideological enclave. It sure is warm and comfy in there with a powerful volunteer army. But it has been worn out lately precisely by this sort of thinking. Reaching the limits of bad behavior, one might tend to think.

    Again, Wallerstein and others do not take the position on one extreme or the other that you recommend with your standard extremist texts–they try for practical solutions. They point out that certain entities and corporations take advantage of markets to dump pollution, exhaust resources without recycling or restoring them and to otherwise evade responsibilities to society as a whole, all with the pretext of greater profits–read up and figure it out, Sam. Corporations in the end are not allowed by people to be totally sociopathic anywhere in the world–although China and the US are closer in that regard than you may think…

    Remember the robber barons of the 19th century US and what had to be done with them? Markets will always enounter political restriant and legal regulation. These will tighten and they will diminish. You can\’t tell the tide not to come in.

    Milton Friedman\’s work is now decades in the past and thinking has progressed well beyond it. He was in fact a teacher of mine. He recently died at 94. We agreed on some things, but just not that idea of his for prvivatizing the National Parks, for example. In person, and sometimes in print, he was not bashful about saying he maintained his extreme position to further debate, strengthen arguments all around and produce better results. When asked if this was going to produce the best result for the future, he would not say, I am just arguing to argue or some such, but simply \”that depends.\” He would not be surprised to have his work superceded but I am sure he misses the opportunity to argue his points now. Hey, but you are there for him.

    Solving what are now world problems (pollution, warming, inequity, poverty, disease, resource exhaustion) depends on broader thinking than citing and following some old-fogie extreme positions (all markets, Friedman, no markets, Marx or Stalin). Hey, capitalism is great for me–but what about the rest of the present not to mention the future? Echoes of the \”me\” generation. Time to \”grow up\” and learn to \”share.\” Or face the consequences.MOst of the world would simply think you are the victim of a bad upbringing and socialization.

    Go on, get the book, Sam, read it.

    That does it for comments from me. Pretty soon other readers are going to be saying–\”why don\’t you two get a room?\”

  • December 7, 2006 at 5:28 am
    media mogul says:
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    Haven\’t you been reading along?

    Case is closed on Walmart doing this. In the courts. Plain and simple. Against public policy to insure non-key people. Exploitative. Unacceptable. Abhorrent to society as a whole. Subject to prosecution by IRS in many circumstances. Pay the man $1.4 million!
    Act more civilized next time, Walmart!

    In the end, even in the US, there are restraints on corporate behavior and there are consequences for their actions. They don\’t get to do anything they want. Thank goodness for some protection. The courts and society have spoken. Stop kvetching and get in tune with current legal and societal mores. Finis!

  • December 7, 2006 at 5:45 am
    chad balaamaba says:
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    just because you found a knee jerk liberal judge to agree with your \’with it\’ idea that it must be evil since Walmart did it does not make it an evil process.

    You still haven\’t made your case no why this is a sinister process? I see courts get it wrong all the time; you\’re just lining up behind another like decision. Please explain why this, while an overly protective policy, is inherently wrong? Did anyone show that Walmart insured these people\’s lives and then left banana peels for them to step on? While I have no interest in insuring your life, if I find an insurer willing to take the risk in exchange for a premium (that you aren\’t paying), why do you have a problem with this?

    By the way, it appears clear the majority of folks don\’t despise Wal-Mart the way you do, Mogul, so perhaps you should get with the times. If it\’s so despicable, why haven\’t they had any success unionizing? Why do people continue to work there? Why do you whine about this?

  • December 7, 2006 at 6:41 am
    media mogul says:
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    Sorry, couldn\’t resist.

    The court considered all your points and many more and decided the other way. They had the broadest and best evidence. The point of view of this court is shared by many other courts. My personal opinion is nothing compared to what is in them. Read the transcripts or just the summaries!

    Here is just one aspect of the problem in insurance talk. No, it is not healthy to be able to insure people without an insurable interest. Underwriters refer to it as a \”moral hazard.\” Heck, people with insurable interests kill people they have insured or helped arrange insurance for more than once in a while. I don\’t want both life and death contracts out on me at the same time. (!) You can\’t have thought your position through.

    I do not whine about Walmart, but take action–of which this has been but one small manifestation. Leaving aside never shopping there, it is important to resist the other things they are doing pointed out by others (and me) in this thread. Resist new locations, etc. I prefer to be with this progressive community than with uninformed people (who we are busy informing) chasing the (apparent) lowest price like lab rats.

    It is all about community and not just markets in the long run. But, hey, go on and destroy the planet. Good probably cannot be accomplished anyway, right? ME first. I can\’t wait to get that new hemi dodge or chrysler or whatever. Sound good \’cuz they free!

  • December 8, 2006 at 8:47 am
    Sam says:
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    You were never in the same city as Friedman, let alone classroom.

    And thanks for not even addressing one point of mine,or attempting to bolster one of your own by using reason and facts.

    Game, set, match, ya commie.

  • December 8, 2006 at 9:16 am
    media mogul says:
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    Well, in the last analysis, Sam and his followers have been drawn out and exposed as simple ideologues of unrestrained capitalism. It is always so easy to do.

    Note they always try to polarize and label things–liberal/conservative, either/or, with us or against us, instead of broadening their minds and finding practical and pragmatic solutions in the middle. The Iraq study group is demonstrating this to \”W\” right now–but he still does not get it. Just like Sam.

    Ideologies make ever complex reality so simple and make it easy for the inadequately educated and weak-minded to live their oblivious and destructive lives with a modicum of happiness. What is easier and more simple minded than to mouth one sided arguments about unrestrained capitalism without a thought for the social and cultural consequences? Come on, Sam and Chad, stop the madness. As if small town America, not to mention the nations, communities and cultures of the world should uproot and remake themselves and gut their traditions, languages, cultures and religions in the interests of your false gods of efficiency, distribution, technological change and all your other simple minded filth. It is always too difficult for people like you to think beyond what a cockroach does–ME FIRST AND ONLY–food, water, reproduction. Small town America or cheap clothes and DVDs? I\’ll take small town America.

    What can we expect though? The only communal activity this country has engaged in under the Bush administration was a justified national anger and grief misdirected from al Quaeda to Iraq and waging war to grab oil and solidify the hold of the Saudi royal family on their borrowed country. No wonder people\’s minds are so messed up. We used to have worthy common aspirations, goals and projects as a people, as a nation. Now its Iraq and tax cuts for the upper 1/2%, earmarks and abused pages. Disgusting!

    Milton Friedman, indeed a teacher of mine in the Cobb Hall building right next to what the students at that time called the Winter Palace (there\’s a hint of where and when–see if you can google out the rest), would find you a C- student, a frail disciple, a mere follower, a pale parrot, not an inquirer, not a thinker. Not to have advanced your thinking at all in several decades…tsk, tsk. Learning should be life long (there\’s another hint of where he taught). You should have worked harder in school or gone to a one with more diverse opinions–Friedman was only one of many strong voices where he taught.

    I do hope you are volunteeering yourself and your family for Iraq because they will need training for every other country where your brand of unrestrained capitalism will try to steal resources and slaughter people in the way. When people are willing to die in significant numbers to defend themsleves, it doesn\’t work so well anymore, does it?–even with your market driven technologies of mass destruction. Shock and awe never really happened among the average, non-military Iraqi, did it?

    Did you read the nice article about slave labor camps in the Amazon area in the newspaper this morning? Seems they provide metals and wood products to the big multi-nationals. There\’s your unrestrained market. Isn\’t it great? Better wood paneling for your behemoth Hummer, eh?

    The rest of the world, by the way, calls this chaotic and destructive unrestrained capitalism \”neo-liberalism\”–kind of ironic, isn\’t it? The world is more than just the US, and your pitiful US spectrum of conservative to liberal vanishes to nothing in comparison. 300 million in the US. How many in the world? My money is on the world. Have you read about the left-leaning, democratic elections in Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil and Chile? Outside monitors found them at least as fair and accurate as ours. You are out of touch with what is happening in the world. Heck, but as \”W\” has said about the judgement of history: \”We\’ll all be dead by then.\” When we don\’t talk to our enemies and friends to find practical non-extremist solutions in the middle, polarization and chaos reguarly ensues. And you\’re right on track to the big, big train wreck.

    What a pathetically narrow little world you live in. Just don\’t try to keep the blinders on other people\’s eyes. The times are changing.

    I\’m sure this unregulated capitalism is all principle to you, is it not? Or is it only complacent and narrow minded bullying (by proxy army) selfishness? Get ye to Iraq and defend my right to unrestrained capitalism! Maybe you\’ll find out what freedom means to others.

    Learn about the world. Become a human being.



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