Thursday morning, Walmart had a flashy announcement: Thanks to corporate tax cuts, it was giving its employees bonuses of up to $1,000. Walmart and President Trump pointed to the announcement as proof that the corporate tax cuts are really a boon to working-class Americans.
Walmart employees are eligible for the $1,000 bonus only if they’ve worked at the company for 20 years. Most Walmart employees, of course, haven’t worked there that long. Those employees will receive a smaller bonus based on seniority. Walmart didn’t explain exactly how the sliding scale will work but said the total value of the bonuses will be $400 million. Walmart has about 2.1 million employees, which works out to be an average bonus of about $190.
The one-time bonus Walmart announced this morning amounts to just over 2 percent of the total value of the tax cut to the company.
In the fiscal year 2017, Walmart had pre-tax profits of about $20.5 billion and paid an effective federal tax rate of around 30 percent. With a new corporate tax rate of 21 percent, the corporate tax cut is worth at least $1.85 billion to Walmart every year. Since this cut is permanent, the true benefits to Walmart will grow much larger over time. But it’s safe to say that, over 10 years, this corporate tax cut will be worth over $18 billion to Walmart.
But now it appears the announcement was timed carefully to cover for thousands of unannounced layoffs.
Business Insider reports that today, Walmart is abruptly closing numerous Sam’s Clubs stores across the United States. In some cases “employees were not informed of the closures prior to showing up to work on Thursday” and “learned that their store would be closing when they found the store’s doors locked and a notice announcing the closure.”
Sam’s Club shutdown? Employees at this S Loop store tell me they showed up to work and were told store is closed effective today. Sign on door says the same thing. Hearing other stores also affected. Waiting for answers from parent company, Walmart #khou11pic.twitter.com/RtbY7EhiIK
Walmart confirmed the abrupt closings and offered an explanation of sorts on Twitter. “Closing clubs is never easy,” the company said through its verified corporate account.
After a thorough review of our existing portfolio, we’ve decided to close a series of clubs and better align our locations with our strategy. Closing clubs is never easy and we’re committed to working with impacted members and associates through this transition.
Business Insider identified at least 68 stores across the country that closed today. Three of the stores are located in Hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico. More stores are slated to be closed in the coming days.
Walmart’s behavior is part of a pattern of corporate misdirection related to the GOP tax cuts. AT&T and Comcast both announced bonuses for their employees while also laying off thousands.
While Trump talks about a “jobs boom,” job growth was slower in 2017 than in any year since 2010.
a few days ago i was walkin past a basketball court and a ball Flew at me and i
1) didn’t flinch
2) caught the ball
3) threw it back at the guy
4) responded to his “thanks bro” with a nod
it was like the ghost of some guy named chad took over me so i didn’t like embarrass myself
a bro talked to me today and it caught me v off guard but instead of my voice rising an octave it dropped an octave and i suddenly was effortlessly speaking Bro™ back to him. this resulted in a very positive interaction
thanks, chad
Reblog to be possessed by Good Ghost Chad in your hour of need
This was my actual favorite part of working in a theater. People would come in and use a string of words no human had ever uttered and I’d have to be like “ohhhhkay let’s parse this out.”
When we had Moonlight: Moonshine, Moonrise, Midnight, Nightlight, Nighttime, Twilight
My favorite in recent memory, though: “The Big Sick” = “The Fat Bad”
I’m reblogging this again because I remembered my absolute favorite moment this happened at my theatre.
These three elderly women came in and bought three tickets to Justice League. About 20 minutes later they come out of their theatre and ask “Didn’t we buy tickets to that Thurgood Marshall movie (it was simply titled “Marshall”)?“ These old old women believed that the movie about Thurgood Marshall was titled "Justice League.” Unfortunately it had already come and gone at out theatre so we refunded them but I still can’t get over it.
Nope – I have never mentioned migraines in any post. I do not know anything about them and would not want to mislead people. Meltdowns CAN cause brain damage, if part of the meltdown involves hitting the head against things (even ‘soft’ things can cause microdamage that builds up over repeated assaults). The stress of meltdowns is severe and can cause all the same things that any extreme stress would cause a people.
But migraines is out of my experience – I doesn’t has them sos never asked or researched them so is not commenting on them.
(hope its ok that i add to this) I often get headaches after i have a ment down. I always just assumed that it was a mixture of emotional exhaustion and dehydration from crying. I would say it would not be too much of a leap to say that they could trigger a migraine as well. I personally have never gotten a migraine from them tho, and i do get chronic migraines
I often get what feel a lot like postictal headaches. Though mine do tend to be the migrainey kind, there are some differences and I’ve gotten better at distinguishing. Used to just assume I was getting two different types of migraines, before the seizures were recognized. (Complicated relationships between migraine and epilepsy anyway, apparently.)
For me at least, post-meltdown feels a decent bit like post-seizure anyway. Including the headaches feeling very similar. Pretty certain they are meltdowns and not seizures, btw.
No idea how common any of this might be, though a lot of us do seem to be dealing with some combination of these things. But, I was interested to see someone else mention migraine-type aftereffects in connection to meltdowns.
@dadhoc lost his job (they fired a bunch of ppl, whee)
I can’t even pay cash to pick up my meds bc there’s a new law in PA that they can’t even let you pay cash for your meds if the insurance requires a prior authorization so I’m facing down withdrawal if I don’t get an emergency supply like now
Davos got out of the yard and was missing for a while but we got him back but my nerves are shot
Good News:
Our synagogue is going to help us get our repairs on our house done so it’s all safe again
I’m teaching at my synagogue starting on 1/28, it’s a paid gig, my first class is on gender diversity and queerness in Torah
My rabbi and I had a really long good talk today, and he basically said he views the hate people have given me as proof of my goodness as a human being, bc ‘bad people are drawn to hate good people,’ which is the most refreshing take I have ever gotten on internet hate, and he knows me better than internet randos so I’ll take his opinion on whether or not I’m good
He thinks I should be a rabbi and I agree
@mistresskabooms and I are sharing a 5 lb bag of Sour Patch Kids courtesy of @gallusrostromegalus, and she has a new space heater for her room and I just filled my stomach with hummus and GF crackers.
So basically my family is critically broke but things are gonna get fixed. I’m super fucking stressed, but what else is new?
As much as I hate this, I’m gonna say again:
If you like what I do on the internets, and you’d like to support me and my family and make sure @mistresskabooms and @dadhoc and our pups are fed and clothed and sheltered, please consider:
Supporting me on Patreon!$1 gets you instant access to multiple chapters of multiple queer fictions, a bunch of short stories, some queer theory related rambling, and more.
Also, pro tip: any company that claims to care about the people producing their food? Well, maybe they do, maybe they don’t, but they sure don’t care about the people shipping and handling their food. Kind bars, for example? Fair trade ingredients, but the warehouses they’re shipped through aren’t climate controlled in summer and have bare concrete floors. Or the ones with chocolate are shipped through refrigerated warehouses where half the necessary tasks for processing them can’t be done with gloves on. (At least, not without way more experience than most temp workers have. I could put shipping labels on boxes while wearing gloves now, but I couldn’t then.) Or the tasks could and should be automated but aren’t, because it’s less expensive to pay a temp than to keep a machine in good repair. But despite all the cruelty involved in shipping the ingredients to the factory and shipping the bars to your grocery store (never mind at the factory itself), these granola bars are sold as the humane, fair-trade choice, because Unilever pays the farmers a little bit more for the cashews or cranberries, and probably still far less than what they’re really worth.
Warehouses are liminal spaces. No one thinks about them. They store product and reroute it, often repackage it; they rarely add anything to what the consumer perceives as the product itself. They also employ millions of people, usually at minimum wage or less than 150% of it. (If the starting wage is above $10/hr in my area, it means the working conditions are especially bad.) It’s a very hard environment to work in, even at the “good” ones. It destroys your clothes and your body. Some workers are union (particularly UPS), but the majority are not and many are temps.
If you publicly care about labor rights, please do not leave warehouses out of your activism. I have never seen an article that talks about warehouses as their own entity, only retail, food service, and factories. A few articles about Amazon, but those act like the problems are unique to Amazon, not every company that has “logistics” or “distribution” or “solutions” in its name and large buildings with loading docks. We break our feet and our backs so you can have your groceries or birthday presents. Don’t forget us.
Yes, this is hyperfocus and inertia. Inertia is a type of executive dysfunction where you are stuck doing whatever you’re doing until something happens to jolt you out of it so you can do something different. It gets its name from Newton’s first law of physics, which states that an object at rest will remain at rest, or an object moving in a straight line will continue in that straight line unless it is acted upon by an external force. (Source) Hyperfocus is the part where you’re focused on something and not really aware of anything else.
People with good parents get so offended when abused children speak negatively of their parents. Like…REALLY offended lol.
They say things like “Your mom would do anything for you” and “Your parents sacrificed a lot for you!” and “I don’t respect anyone who talks down on their parents.”
But just because YOUR parents would do anything for you and sacrificed a lot for you doesn’t mean it applies to all parents. We don’t have the same experience boo. You can’t tell me shit about what my mama would do for me. All moms and dads are not created equal.
PLEASE UNDERSTAND THIS.
my favourite was always “oh you just don’t understand how hard it is/was for her”
no, i do, she was constantly telling me that in between hitting me and depriving me of food, literally fucking pinning me to the floor and crying about how i made her so tired all the time
also you know what’s also hard? being a child who is 100% responsible for their parents’ emotional wellbeing and blamed for it when they have literally no control over what happens
UGH THIS
I wonder how many of those people were actually treated badly by their parents but forgot because things are okay now? Being told to be grateful to the person hurting you is an intrinsic part of abuse, and I think the more intuitive reaction to hearing other people talk about abusive parents when your own were not abusive is horror, not outrage towards the victim for speaking up.
When people get angry and jump to the parent’s defense I think it’s because they internalized abuse culture, not necessarily because they assume everyone’s parents are good. It indicates that the very idea anyone’s parents could be bad is absolutely taboo and should not be talked about, regardless of the truth.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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