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Wal-Mart stores and its Sam's Club chain are apparently hurting from the cuts in the federal food stamp program that went into effect in early November. The impact from the government's reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits had a much greater effect on the world's largest retailer than originally expected by the company. Combined with consumer fears about the economy and winter storms that also hurt store business nationwide, the cuts made a bad situation for Wal-Mart even worse, according to a statement from Wal-Mart Chief Financial Officer Charles Holley carried by the Associated Press. The estimated $5...

Companies blame all sorts of things for profit warnings, real and imagined. There’s at least some reason to believe Wal-Mart Stores WMT -1.14% when it blames food stamp cuts and bad weather. First, the assertion that food-stamp cuts impacted the company’s bottom line: On Nov. 1, the Great Recession boost to the food-stamp program — known as the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program — expired. That meant as much as a 5.5% reduction in benefits. A family of four, for example, would get $36 a month less.

(CNN) -- The White House has secured commitments from some of the nation's largest companies for a plan to boost hiring of the long-term unemployed. "What we have done is to gather together 300 companies, just to start with, including, some of the top 50 companies in the country, companies like Walmart, and Apple, Ford and others, to say let's establish best practices," President Barack Obama told CNN Chief Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper in an exclusive interview. "Because they've been unemployed ... so long, folks are looking at that gap in the resume and they're weeding them out before these...

The little girl sprinted from the bedroom, her bare feet slapping the cold terrazzo floor. Halting, she looked up at her mother, sitting on a stool in the kitchen. "Mommy, are you going to work today?" "Yes," Yanira Avezuela told her daughter, Kassidy Russell. The girl, 5, shrugged. "Tomorrow, I'm off," said Avezuela, smiling. "Yay," the girl shouted. Her braids bouncing, she hopped back to the bedroom. Kassidy's question is one she could not have asked her mother before last month. But at that moment before 9 a.m. Wednesday, a badge hung from Avezuela's bedroom doorknob. Over a green background,...

Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT: Quote) will lay off about 2,300 employees at its Sam's Club warehouse division, according to media reports on Friday. The job cuts, representing about 2 percent of Sam's Club workforce, are reportedly part of Walmart's efforts to improve efficiency at the business. Walmart thus joins other retailers who are laying off employees after a lacklustre holiday season. The layoffs would reportedly target a combination of salaried assistant managers and hourly employees. All affected workers will get 60 paid days to find another job at the company and if unsuccessful, will be eligible for severance....

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it's eliminating 2,300 workers at its Sam's Club division as it reduces the ranks of middle managers in a bid to be more nimble. The layoffs, which cut 2 percent of the membership club's U.S. employee count of about 116,000, mark the largest since 2010 when the Sam's Club unit laid off 10,000 workers as it moved to outsource food demonstrations at its stores.

Walmart announced on Friday that about 2,300 Sam’s Club employees would be laid off, the latest in a drumbeat of retail job cuts to start off the new year. Bill Durling, a Sam’s Club spokesman, said the layoffs would target a combination of salaried assistant managers and hourly employees. Certain positions, like telephone attendants, will be eliminated. “We realized we had pretty much the same club structure whether a club had $50 million in revenue or $100 million in revenue,” Mr. Durling said of the distribution of assistant managers. “What we’re trying to do is balance our resources.” Sam’s Club...

Excerpted from "Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA" Imagine a world without the New York Times, Fox News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and countless other tools used by the 1 percent to rule and fool. In a socialist society run by and for the working people it represents, the mega-monopolies like Walmart, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the corporations that run the tightly controlled “mainstream media” will be a thing of the past. It’s not news that the major US media are run by and for big business, or that the major media companies are themselves big businesses. Twenty years ago,...

Brooklyn - Council Member Inez Barron is opposed to her Council district being the site for Denny’s Restaurant reported new location on Pennsylvania Ave between Linden Boulevard and Stanley Avenue. “It is insulting for Denny’s to seek to come into a community that is Black and Latino. Just as we fought successfully to keep Wal-Mart with a similar history of discrimination and low wage workers with minimal benefits from coming to our community, we will wage the battles necessary to keep Denny’s out,” Councilmember Barron says. "Denny’s racist and discriminatory past cannot be ignored. In 1994, Denny’s paid out an...

New Obamacare health insurance enrollees may feel a pang of envy when they eye the coverage plans offered by Walmart to its employees. For many years, the giant discount retailer has been the target of unions and liberal activists who have harshly criticized the company's health care plans, calling them “notorious for failing to provide health benefits” and "substandard.” But a Washington Examiner comparison of the two health insurance programs found that Walmart's plan is more affordable and provides significantly better access to high-quality medical care than Obamacare.

New Obamacare health insurance enrollees may feel a pang of envy when they eye the coverage plans offered by Walmart to its employees. For many years, the giant discount retailer has been the target of unions and liberal activists “notorious for failing to provide health benefits” and "substandard.” But a Washington Examiner comparison of the two health insurance programs found that Walmart's plan is more affordable and provides significantly better access to high-quality medical care than Obamacare. Walmart offers its employees two standard plans, a Health Reimbursement Account and an alternative it calls "HRA High" that costs more out of...

<p>Wal-Mart’s wages are so low that many of its workers must rely on food stamps and other government aid programs, costing taxpayers as much as $900,0000 at just one Wal-Mart Supercenter in Wisconsin.</p> <p>So how did the report’s authors come up with the $900,000 figure? First, they took into account the number of Wal-Mart stores and employees across Wisconsin and the per-person costs of Badgercare, the state’s health care program, estimating that the cost of the publicly funded health care comes to $251,706 per year for a Supercenter that employees 300 workers.</p>

Generic drugs now account for well over 80% of all prescriptions. Just 10 years ago, less than half of drugs sold were generics. Much of the growth is because employers make generics extra-affordable through mail order programs (pharmacy benefits managers). Then you also have the grocery stores and big box retailers who do $4 generics. Meanwhile, a lot of breakthrough drugs that were patent protected are no longer so and are now selling as generics. But what you don't know about the pricing of generics can hurt your wallet. The big pharmacy chains discount generics 30% from the brand name...

A pregnant woman and her three daughters were waiting in the car while the father went into the store to grab a few groceries. The mother's water broke while he was shopping, however, and when he came outside, he saw his children yelling for him to hurry to the car. The man had only been inside the store for a few minutes, but in that short amount of time, the mother had given birth to her fourth child

Chinese branches of Wal-Mart have been forced to recall batches of donkey meat after it was found to contain fox. The US company has apologized and said it would reimburse shoppers in China who bought the “Five Spice” donkey product, which tests showed contained the DNA of other animals. […] Donkey meat is popular in China, though makes up a tiny proportion of all meat products consumed. Fox meat, on the other hand, is cheap because of its distinctive smell and the fact that eating it could pose serious health risks, a breeder told the Yangcheng Evening News. …

Polioce officer is totally ignorant of the 2nd Amendment

At 97 years old, Johnie Beckerleg has a variety of stories to tell, but after a trip to Wal–Mart he added one to the books he never thought he would about a man who tried stealing the car he was still sitting in. It's an unimaginable story but for Johnie Beckerleg of Dilworth it became reality. "It never dawned on me that anything like that could happen," Beckerleg said. While doing some Christmas shopping last Sunday at Walmart in Dilworth, Beckerleg stayed in his son's pickup in the parking lot when a man suddenly swung open the door and jumped...

This time 13 months ago, low-wage non-union workers had just mounted first-of-their kind strikes against the behemoths of the post-crash economy: fast food and Wal-Mart. One year later, we still don’t know how either effort will end. But their fortunes may have diverged. What had started with a walkout by a couple hundred fast food workers in a single city has spread to pull thousands off the job in a hundred municipalities this month. Those strikes reflect the theory behind several of 2013’s high-profile U.S. union-backed non-union organizing campaigns: that courageous and well-crafted strikes that don’t shut down a workplace,...

As the future of their show lies in doubt, the Duck Dynasty clan are still making millions thanks to their megabucks Walmart merchandising deal, MailOnline can today reveal. The Robertson family has a merchandise empire that is estimated by Forbes to be worth about $400million - and their deal with Walmart makes up around half of this. And today, as Walmart refused to comment on the future of their relationship with the TV family, just one glimpse at the chainstore's website shows fans are flocking to buy Duck Dynasty merchandise amid the furor over patriach Phil Robertson's homophobic comments. Meanwhile,...

Lonnie McCurry Sr., CEO of Skyjacker Suspension Systems, told Eric Bolling today that if “Duck Dynasty” leaves A&E his company is going with them. McCurry also said he was a huge fan of the Robertsons, “They are faith-based solid people.” (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Related… Walmart ran out of Duck Dynasty merchandise today.