TESCO and Fresh and Easy and Unions

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Tesco is the UK company that owns the American mini-market company Fresh and Easy that is based in the Western United States namely Nevada, California and Arizona.

Tesco does have attractive products they brought over or developed to their stores and these stores they have in our neighborhoods are inviting and decent places to shop.

However Tesco is double faced like many multinationals who cheerfully allow for labor unions in their home countries, but love to be non union in the United States such as T-Mobile. I could support the right for a company to be non-union, but they should be non-union entirely. If Tesco can work under labor unions in the United Kingdom they should do the same in the United States.

I am also wondering why UFCW Local 770 has not targeted Trader Joes or even Superior Markets and saved most of their rancor on Tesco. Maybe because Tesco is a wealthy multinational and that is why they are a prime target. However Trader Joes is owned by a huge multinational as well, Aldi in Germany.

Also, our very left winged state legislature knee capped Fresh and Easy to make it where a full service checker needs to serve the alcohol purchase from start to finish, which was designed to cripple Fresh and Easy.

I know we want more jobs that provide affordable health care since we do not have universal health care in our nation and jobs that provide living wages. However unions are not doing this for free either. Unions want the union dues from the employees at Fresh and Easy. I wish there was a neutral arbitrator that would conduct the elections free from bias from the corporation and the union. National Labor Relations Board is not neutral at all, if a Republican runs it its management owned and if a Democratic administration runs it is labor owned.

I do shop the union represented Stater Brothers. Maybe if the other companies that are represented by UFCW were ran like Stater Brothers maybe we would not have much a problem.

A Status Update

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I wrote to the Los Angeles Times reporter who wrote about the euthanasia malpractice at the Los Angeles City Animal Control center and encouraged him to investigate the issue at Devore which San Bernardino County mismanages.

School was average, got a A- or B+ in Geography class about world regions and a B- in World History after 1500, last class this Spring so I can transfer to Western Governor’s University. Also I am hoping there will be a tutoring vacancy at Chaffey College’s success center so I can help students on Political Science.

I donated some money to Ron Paul’s campaign. I may not agree with him entirely, but he is one of the best front runners, I was warm to Jon Huntsman, but he was for intervention in Iran and that removed him from primary consideration.

Student Loan Default Protest Counter Productive

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The people involved in the occupy movement are working on a misguided effort to sink the credit ratings of those who participate in this protest. However there is one way we could share the message to the colleges and governments about the increasing costs of education and how they pass the buck with student loans. Do not enroll for a semester. If we make the schools empty, then that would also spread a message.

I think the best solution is personal responsibility, if you can not pay the loans off in a reasonable fashion or at least pay half of the cost back you should reconsider the program you enroll for.

Borrowing 100,000 for a BA degree is silly if you are not going to have the ability or future potential to pay the fees. Yes, we need to reasonably fund our state universities. Fees went up 125% since I last went to UC Riverside. Yes, I believe we should not give free rides entirely. However fees should go back to 7 or 8 thousand instead of 12 thousand for the University of California as an example.

Basically all I am asking for is people to borrow what they can reasonably pay off. I know student loan debt is a crippling burden and the legal rules stating that students can not declare bankruptcy makes it hard for students to write off this debt. I think limiting how much students can borrow in exchange for being allowed to declare bankruptcy after all avenues are exhausted would be a good idea.

Road Runner becomes Pricey

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New price increases for the January bill in effect, your communications and entertainment will cost MORE money. I did write previous articles since 2008 about this issue and you can see some of them here.

Expect Road Runner Standard in the Los Angeles area to cost us now $52.99 from $50.99, when will these price increases end? We cant absorb this much longer. However if they don’t cap data for the time being to a fair use standard then the price suggested for their service is still a good deal.

Attention Educators

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I do understand this economy is rough on many of us, with school districts not offering raises and positions being cut I would like to ask for a big favor from many of you in the field. Just like many school districts do not have money for supplies, many of our parents of your students do not have the money either.

I have written a column on this previously on my blog, but I would like to reemphasize this issue.

School projects should not cost an arm and a leg and there should be a mandate that there should be projects that cost less than 5 dollars for students with families who do not have much money. Families should not need to do a James Cameron production for their book report or atom model project.

Also, there should be a fiscal limit of how much a teacher can mandate in how much can be spent for a school project on the parents. Unfunded mandates are indeed a burden.

Extra credit assignments should not require having to visit the store to build a thirty dollar contraption either. If educators have more empathy on their students parents, then the relationship will greatly improve.

Letter to the Los Angeles Times

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Re: Privacy vs. an open Internet (November 25, 2011)

Senator Feinstein should reconsider her support of the Protect IP bill; this bill claims to protect the intellectual property rights of the owners of creative work. However Protect IP will do more collateral damage to the technology industry at the same time which helps to employ countless Californians from Facebook, Google and Twitter to name a few.

Destroying the Internet by giving the recording, movie and pharmaceutical industry veto power will not create jobs or help our economy particularly in California. Less entrepreneurs willing to take a risk online this means less jobs and opportunity to recover from the recession.

Matthew Munson

Ontario, California

Regulate and Legalize Marijuana in California

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There is a new effort in California to end the prohibition of marijuana in our state. And you are all encouraged to visit the official website or their official Facebook page.

If you liked Proposition 19 and you are disappointed that it did not pass in 2010, find out about this new ballot measure that is coming our way. This ballot measure does more things than what Proposition 19 and the medical legalization initiative Proposition 215.

The prohibition of marijuana would be eliminated for adults, allows for hemp agriculture and products which bill was vetoed by Governor Brown recently. This measure does not change laws about use by minors, medical use, workplace use or impairment while using marijuana.

The same infrastructure that is used to regulate beer and wine would be the same infrastructure to regulate marijuana.

Prevents the state and local agencies from cooperating with the federal government in dealing with marijuana issues.

Allows for reasonable number of plants  12 outdoors or 24 indoors to be grown in a household for personal use not for sale. Also, these plants must be cultivated in an area not visible to the general public.

The current war on drugs has failed, we are stuffing people into prisons and drug cartels are causing problems due to our prohibition of marijuana just like gangsters plagued our cities during the days of alcohol prohibition. We spend too much money on this drug war on marijuana, but can not afford to do other police activities in our cities such as dealing with the rapists and murderers that exist in society.

Help our economy, reduce crime, and prevent access to the drug for our youth. Visit the official site and sign a petition as soon as possible.

Too Many People on a Black Friday

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After my shift on Friday I decided to visit another store to see if there was any deals left over and it became more of a bother than it was worth. I am generally a nice person, but when I am not paid to deal with the general public the niceness can dissipate rather easily. ‘

I was hoping to get a laptop since I returned to school to hopefully get my credential eventually so I could become a school teacher.

However with the parking lot crowded and people crowding the parking lot surrounding Best Buy, it was hard to make a decision on what to buy. I also had some tween girls going on Facebook, but if it is the most crowded time in the store web browsing should be quick and short so customers can investigate products so people can actually BUY stuff.

Also I noticed when I was looking at the screen while trying to get an opportunity to check to see if the pc was worth buying. The 11 or 12 year old girl was faking she was 21 to get on Facebook, I hope no expecting guys think she’s legal due to her status information on her profile page. I tried to tell the tween and her friends that I will report her to Facebook to kill her account if she doesn’t let me use the pc due to breaking Facebook regulations. But even if they vanished from that pc, and I bought that laptop waiting in line in that zoo was a bad idea. I saved a hundred dollars just buying elsewhere. (Parents, please monitor your child’s online activity and even if you do not give them online access. Check their names to see if they signed up without your permission.)

Best Buy was not a fun visit, I ended up picking up this at the Microsoft Store. I hope it turns out to be a good laptop. It may not have the good gaming graphics. However it can play most of the indie games on Steam and Final Fantasy 11.