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Defying the Laws of Physics at Walmart

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| Thu Mar. 28, 2013 9:43 AM PDT

One of the stories making the rounds this week is a Bloomberg piece about people getting increasingly frustrated with Walmart because the shelves aren't being stocked and they can't find the stuff they want. The culprit, apparently, is low staffing levels:

It’s not as though the merchandise isn’t there. It’s piling up in aisles and in the back of stores because Wal-Mart doesn’t have enough bodies to restock the shelves, according to interviews with store workers. In the past five years, the world’s largest retailer added 455 U.S. Wal-Mart stores, [but its workforce] dropped by about 20,000.

....At the Kenosha, Wisconsin, Wal-Mart where Mary Pat Tifft has worked for nearly a quarter-century, merchandise ready for the sales floor remains on pallets and in steel bins lining the floor of the back room — an area so full that “no passable aisles” remain, she said. Meanwhile, the front of the store is increasingly barren, Tifft said. That landscape has worsened over the past several years as workers who leave aren’t replaced, she said.

Something isn't right here. I'm no expert in retail logistics, but I do know enough about the laws of physics to understand that this really can't be true for more than a short period of time. At some point, when the back room gets full, then either (a) new merchandise gets shelved at the same rate it comes in, or (b) it starts overflowing out into the parking lot. Since (b) apparently hasn't happened, I conclude that the flow of merchandise onto store shelves has to be about the same as the flow of merchandise getting shipped in from Walmart's warehouses.

So how is that going? One person interviewed for the story said his local Walmart "would go weeks without products he wanted to buy, such as men’s dress shirts, which he found only in very large or small sizes and unpopular colors." OK, but that's probably a forecasting/MRP problem, not a shelving problem. Somebody's not ordering the right stuff for their stores.

Now, if, as reporter Renee Dudley says, Walmart has 13 percent more stores but 1.4 percent fewer workers, that's going to hurt. Stories of long checkout times or inability to get help in the shoe department make perfect sense. But the shelving thing seems a little iffier. They could certainly be chronically behind, leading to shelves that don't always have the latest and greatest stuff—and that's a genuine problem for Walmart execs—but over any period longer than a few days the actual flow of merchandise into the store pretty much has to match the flow of merchandise into the back room. Right?

POSTSCRIPT: And it's still Walmart, not Wal-Mart. Rebranding is hard!

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8 Things Justice Alito Has Ruled on That Are Newer Than Cellphones and the Internet

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| Thu Mar. 28, 2013 9:16 AM PDT

During oral arguments over the constitutionality of California's ban on same-sex marriage, Justice Samuel Alito offered a novel reason not to find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage: It hasn't been around that long. 

"You want us to step in and render a decision based on an assessment of the effects of this institution which is newer than cellphones or the internet?" Alito said to Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. "We do not have the ability to see the future." The framers presumably left the "no ruling on things younger than cellphones or the internet" clause on the cutting room floor while they were putting together Article III of the US Constitution.

As it happens, the mobile phone, which was invented in 1973, predates Alito's bachelor's degree, and the Internet dates back to the 1960s (although the World Wide Web came into being in 1993). And Alito hasn't always been so reluctant to rule on things "newer than cellphones or the internet." Here are a few examples:

  • McCain-Feingold: The 2010 Citizens United decision striking down restrictions on outside political spending by corporations and unions also overturned portions of the bipartisan campaign finance law that passed in 2002.
  • Bush's military commissions: Alito sided with the minority in the 2006 decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which struck down Bush's military commissions. Not only were the military commissions younger than cellphones or the internet, they're also younger than legalized same-sex marriage.
  • Bans on crush videos: Alito was the lone dissenter in a Supreme Court case ruling that a 1999 ban on the creation, sale and possession of materials depicting cruelty to animals violated the First Amendment. 
  • Arizona's harsh anti-immigration law: Arizona passed its harsh anti-immigration law in 2010, but only two years later Alito sided with the conservative minority who wanted to uphold part of the law that had been struck down by a lower court.
  • Obamacare: The Affordable Care Act passed in 2010. Two years later, Alito voted with most of his conservative colleagues on the court to strike it down.
  • Warrantless wiretapping: Early in 2013 Alito wrote an opinion in Clapper v. Amnesty dismissing a challenge to the 2008 FISA Amendments Act that retroactively legalized Bush's warrantless wiretapping program on the grounds that the plaintiffs couldn't prove they had been spied on by the government. 
  • Fake Military Honors: Last year Alito joined two of his conservative colleagues in dissenting from a decision that a 2005 law making it illegal to lie about receiving a military medal was unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment.
  • Speech as material support for terrorism: Alito sided with the government in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, a case in which the court held that under the PATRIOT Act, which passed in 2001, anyone providing any kind of "assistance" to terrorist groups—even say, posting an extremist video online—could be charged with material support for terrorism.

Either restricting people's fundamental rights based on sexual orientation is unconstitutional or it isn't. This list is by no means exhaustive—it's just a handful of cases in which Alito has been able to figure out how to interpret the Constitution without an egg timer. 

Earthquakes in Oklahoma

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| Thu Mar. 28, 2013 8:57 AM PDT

Here in my neck of the woods, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake is little more than a wee bit of exercise to help you digest your lunch. In Oklahoma it's a big deal:

Such seismic activity isn't normal here. Between 1972 and 2008, the USGS recorded just a few earthquakes a year in Oklahoma. In 2008, there were more than a dozen; nearly 50 occurred in 2009. In 2010, the number exploded to more than 1,000. These so-called "earthquake swarms" are occurring in other places where the ground is not supposed to move. There have been abrupt upticks in both the size and frequency of quakes in Arkansas, Colorado, Ohio, and Texas. Scientists investigating these anomalies are coming to the same conclusion: The quakes are linked to injection wells. Into most of them goes wastewater from hydraulic fracking, while some, as those in Prague, are filled with leftover fluid from dewatering operations.

Not to worry, though! Jean Antonides, vice president of exploration for a company that operates a fracking site in Oklahoma, says that anyone who blames their wells for the earthquakes is "either lying to your face or they're idiots."

Whew. That was a close call. But an industry spokesman would never lie to us, so I feel better now.

BY THE WAY: I'm breaking my rule and linking to this piece even though it includes an animated GIF. That's because it's a very sedate animated GIF, and actually demonstrates something that's worth animating.

Watching the Worm Turn on Gay Marriage

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| Thu Mar. 28, 2013 8:42 AM PDT

I missed out on all the DOMA blogging yesterday while I was off the net, but I doubt my voice was missed. When I got back to my RSS feed in the afternoon, it was practically wall-to-wall DOMA. Oddly, though, I still have something to add. It turns out that a number of conservatives had a reaction like this one, from CBN's David Brody:

In the media's narrative, you would think that homosexuals are the poor souls who have been banished by society like ugly stepchildren and are now rising to overcome incredible odds.

But what about today? Let's be honest: If you are a conservative evangelical who believes in the biblical definition of traditional marriage then guess what? You are one of the following: An outcast, a bigot, narrow-minded, a "hater" or all of the above. It's a different type of ridicule but it's still ridicule.

This produced a fair amount of mockery from liberals, including this nice mini-rant from Paul Waldman. But you know what? Brody is right. A lot of us really do believe that conservative evangelicals are narrow-minded haters. Next year, even more of us will believe that. A decade from now, Brody's beliefs will be viewed by most of us as pure bigotry, full stop. That's got to hurt.

Brody is finding himself increasingly at the business end of a tremendous societal pressure telling him that his lifestyle is wrong and he should keep his beliefs to himself. I won't lie and pretend that I don't enjoy the irony. But Brody's diagnosis is quite correct. He just hasn't yet figured out the cure.

The Great Healthcare Stalemate

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| Thu Mar. 28, 2013 7:41 AM PDT

I feel fine today. Thanks for asking! But what if I weren't? Then I'd have to go to the doctor. And that would cost a lot of money. It wouldn't cost me a lot of money, mind you, but it would certainly cost someone a lot of money. Probably MoJo, which is too bad since they have lots of better uses for their money than paying huge sums to insurance companies for their employees' aches and pains.

It would be nice if we could pay less. Unfortunately, as Ezra Klein points out, Democrats and Republicans have come to opposite conclusions about how to do that. Democrats, quite sensibly, point out that private insurance is the most expensive kind of healthcare there is, so perhaps we need more government involvement. Republicans, who are ideologically opposed to more government involvement, insist that Medicare is the big driver of high medical costs, even though there's no actual evidence for this. Ed Kilgore is despondent:

Beyond that, the arguments can get confusing. Sometimes Republicans seem to identify health care inflation strictly with rising public costs; shifting those costs to beneficiaries, from that perspective, "solves" the problem. Other times Republicans appear to believe that over-utilization of health care is the only real problems in the system; thus, exposing patients to more of the costs generated by their demands for care will "bend the curve" of health care costs. More direct reductions of costs via the use of the government's leverage "distorts markets" and can't, according to conservative dogma, possibly work.

How do you find a "compromise" between people with such diametrically opposed ideas of how the health care system works? Beats me.

Well, it's a good question, all right. Roughly speaking, if you place the rich countries of the world on a scale from most government involvement to most private involvement, you find countries like Britain and Canada at one end, and they spend the least. You find countries like Switzerland and the United States on the other end, and they spend the most.

Now, it's almost certainly true that if we switched to a purely private system and eliminated standard healthcare insurance as we know it, we'd end up spending less. This is the "skin in the game" theory, and it means that if we all had to pony up full cost whenever we visited the doctor or got an MRI, we'd pay a lot fewer visits to the doctor and demand lower cost MRIs. The problem, of course, is that this idea is universally hated and will never happen. This leaves Republicans in a quandary. It's really the only idea they have, but they can't seriously propose it because they'd probably get kicked out of office for the next 50 years or so. Their solution, in practice, is to (a) propose watered down versions of this idea hidden under enough layers that maybe no one will notice, and (b) relentlessly oppose every other idea without really offering any alternatives of their own. Remember "Repeal and Replace"? We never did hear much about the "Replace" part of that, did we?

Will this stalemate ever end? Probably someday. But not soon.

Look at This Drone Deaths Interactive

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| Thu Mar. 28, 2013 7:33 AM PDT

Pitch Interactive, a California-based data visualization shop, has created a beautiful, if somewhat controversial, visualization of every attack by the US and coalition forces in Pakistan since 2004. It doesn't fit on the blog, so we created a full-width page for it. You can look at it here.

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No Joke: North Dakota Named Freest State in the Country

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| Thu Mar. 28, 2013 7:18 AM PDT

On Tuesday, North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R) signed into law three of the nation's strictest anti-abortion laws, banning all procedures after six weeks, prohibiting abortions due to genetic abnormalities, and adding more hoops for doctors working at the state's one abortion clinic. On Wednesday, the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University unveiled its annual "Freedom in the 50 States" report, ranking each state's fiscal, regulatory, and personal "freedom."

Guess who's number one?

spirit of america/Shutterstock

The Center's rankings are quite thorough—you can see where each stands based on dozens of variables, including taxation, tort reform, fireworks laws, same-sex partnerships, happy hour regulations, the legality of raw milk, and whether or not the state bans salvia. But one thing is pointedly happy from the methodology, despite its seemingly obvious consequences for individual and economic liberty: reproductive rights.

Congratulations, North Dakota. This award will look nice up on the mantle next to the anti-choice March Madness championship trophy.

We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for March 28, 2013

Thu Mar. 28, 2013 7:11 AM PDT

Machine gunners with Echo company, 2nd Battalion 9th Marines, Regimental Combat Team 7, walk to a training site on Camp Leatherneck, Helmand province, Afghanistan, Feb. 28, 2013. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Ezekiel R. Kitandwe.

 

Biggest Oklahoma Earthquake in Memory Linked to Oil Industry

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| Wed Mar. 27, 2013 3:01 PM PDT
Wastewater left over from fracking wells eventually ends up deep underground, where it can cause earthquakes. Wikipedia

In November 2011, a destructive 5.7-magnitude earthquake rocked the grasslands outside the small town of Prague, Oklahoma. The shaking leveled 14 homes, shut down schools for repairs, and was felt across 17 states. It also troubled seismologists, who'd never expected an event so large to hit an area that was supposed to be seismically safe.

According to the results of a new study published online yesterday in the journal Geology, the temblor was potentially linked to the underground injection of wastewater from local oil operations. In fact, the fault that triggered the event ruptured just about 200 meters from active injection wells. Changes in water volumes deep underground may have reduced the stress on the rock, allowing the fault to slip. 

The underground disposal of wastewater has skyrocketed due to the recent uptick in hydrofracking operations across the country. Other studies have linked wastewater injection wells to earthquakes in otherwise seismically quiet areas of Arkansas, Texas, Ohio, and Colorado. The Oklahoma quake, however, was the most powerful. 

For the current issue of Mother Jones, contributing writer Michael Behar followed Katie Keranen, the lead author of the Geology study, into the fields of the Sooner State for an elegant look at the science behind the link between earthquakes and the oil and fracking industries. Behar also interviewed seismologists and government officials who are increasingly concerned that loose regulations on wastewater injection could cause the next big one in a region unprepared for seismic activity. And he details the shadowy ties between industry and science that may complicate meaningful regulatory change.

Catch the full story here.

Big Government or Marriage Equality? DOMA Puts Conservative Justices in a Bind

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| Wed Mar. 27, 2013 3:00 PM PDT
ryan toneyMarriage equality activist Ryan Toney, 18, of Washington, DC, stands in front of the Supreme Court. Pete Marovich/Zuma

Once upon a time, there was an overreaching and intrusive federal government that stuck a woman who lost her spouse with a $300,000 tax bill. Then a group of black-robed heroes who believe in constraining excessive government power saved the day and told the nasty feds they couldn't do that. 

That may sound like a conservative fairy tale. But in this particular story, the widow, Edith Windsor, who lost her partner of more than 40 years in 2009, is a lesbian; thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing her marriage, when her wife died she could not claim a tax benefit afforded married people and was hit with a $363,053 estate tax bill. So when the Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday concerning a challenge to DOMA, this was truly a test for the conservative justices, who have been handed an opportunity to demonstrate whether they truly possess a principled opposition to overreaching big government. Yet during oral arguments—which came a day after arguments on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, California's same-sex marriage ban—it was the Democratic appointees on the court who seemed more eager to ride to Windsor's rescue and uphold the conservative notion that the federal government cannot infringe on a state's definition of marriage.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg summed it up this way: DOMA diminishes "what the states say is marriage" by treating same-sex and opposite-sex marriages differently, denying federal benefits and recognition to same-sex marriages performed or recognized in a state. Under DOMA, Ginsburg commented, heterosexual couples were receiving "full marriage" while same-sex couples were getting "skim-milk marriage."

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