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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Saturday, February 04, 2006

The Warmest January Ever? 

...there hasn't been a great deal of blogging going around at Rancho Jack K. over the couple of weeks. Busy personal life, high demand for our only dial-up line, and other things have conspired to limit my on-line time. It came as a surprise, therefore to find out that so much of the U.S. has been gripped by an unseasonably warm January...


...I have spent three hundred dollars over the last month trying to keep my road plowed, my snowblower is broken down right now, and my contribution to the next generation now fear the prospect of a snow day because of all the shovel work that will face them if we get that much snow. There's three feet of snow out beyond the range of the snow blower or the ability of various family members to hurl shovels full of snow; within those zones, there's four feet or more. We've been out there stupidly moving all that snow around over the last month, when we could have been working on the base layers of our tans, brushing up on those difficult chips and sand wedge shots, hit the beach for some splash in the surf fun, or maybe slip on the tank tops and shorts and go on a picnic. It's been one of the warmest January's on record, after all...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:48 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Picking On The Walton's 

...they must be just about ready to head for the bunkers back there in Bentonville, Arkansas. All those true believers at that Big Shining Sam's Club on The Hill have to be wondering why so many people have turned against Wal-Mart all of a sudden. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the opposition to Wal-Mart Super Centers has become almost a cottage industry, with the most recent controversies in Washington and nearby in Bend, Oregon, starting out as issues over increased traffic and turning into disputes over fundamental employment policies. There has also been the gender discrimination class action suit filed by female employees, and of course there is the entire anti-Wal-Mart movement protesting their pay, health insurance, and anti-union behavior. Now, however, we are moving into the exciting world of Mega-Conglomerate As Agent of Social Change. Walmart is being sued in Massachusetts for failure to stock the "Morning After" contraceptive pill...

Given the rather squeamish feelings that Wal-Mart has - as a corporate policy - about anything that seems to be within a hard day's ride of the racy side of life, it's not surprising that the Bentonville folks would shy away from something as controversial as the Morning After pill. That particular drug is, after all, causing all sorts of issues with respect to pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions and all of the moral and professional questions raised by that conflict. This is bigger, though. This isn't about individual pharmacists acting from some personal moral standpoint; this is all about a corporation that stands accused of moving into moderately sized communities and driving the local mom-and-pop businesses - including the local drug stores - out of business in order to gain monopoly dominance of the local retail trade. Their particular argument represents the sort of silly goofiness that comes with trying to exert one's personal beliefs on others without seeming to do so. Of course it's not a "commonly prescribed" drug in your little universe when you don't have it to fill prescriptions. For God's sake, the various types of insulin that my diabetic son needs to take to survive aren't "commonly prescribed" if you don't happen to have very many type 1 diabetics in your community. Even in the sorts of small, remote communities in which I've lived most of my life, the one expectation is that - regardless of how unusual the prescription - my pharmacy will either have it or can get it in fairly short order...

It's one thing if Wal-Mart doesnt' want to carry certain music because of content or stock certain magazines or books in other parts of the store. Those are the sorts of personal business decisions that any business has the right to make, given that there are other available venues for consumers to explore. Pharmacies are a different thing, however. There may only be one or two in a given community, and the advent of a Wal-Mart to a town near you may result in that entity being the only game in town for certain time-sensitive drugs...like, for example, the Morning After pill. Failure to redeem the public responsibility to fill any legal prescription should rightfully lead the forfeiture of the right to dispense medications at all.
That's not the case, however, at least with Wal-Mart in Massachuttes for the moment. It's not terribly surprising, given the growing arrogance that the Bentonville gang has begun to show over the last few years. Still, in just about every way possible, it's wrong...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:28 PM 0 comments

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