Walmart

Amazon to start charging Maryland sales tax

If you live in the state of Maryland and purchase something from Amazon, an extra six percent will be added to your purchase price and funneled to Maryland in the form of a sales tax. This change goes into effect beginning today.

Until now, Amazon did not collect Maryland sales tax because they did not have a physical presence in the state. That’s about to change. Amazon is in the process of converting an old General Motors plant in Baltimore into one of its massive distribution centers. The new facility is not scheduled to open until next spring, but they will start collecting Maryland sales tax from Maryland residents beginning today.

I wonder how much taxes Amazon is paying to state and local governments for its new facility in Baltimore. Usually, when a business like Amazon comes into a location, it’s showered with tax incentives intended to attract them into establishing a presence. The idea is that they will hire lots of people who will then in turn pay taxes and spend their paychecks, thus stimulating the economy.

When I moved here to Maryland in 1994, twenty years ago, it was to work in a new gigantic Wal-Mart photo finishing lab that was being constructed in nearby Williamsport. The state and county essentially gave the land to Wal-Mart to build the facility. They also provided tax incentives for the next twenty years. After a few years, Wal-Mart sold all their large photo labs to Fujicolor. The lab closed in 2008, resulting in 125 people losing their job.

Personally I hate that I will now have to pay Maryland six percent of everything I buy from Amazon. I feel like they’ve done nothing to deserve it. I also feel like I pay Maryland enough without having to also pay a tax for the stuff I buy from Amazon. Oh well, what can I do about it, join the TEA Party?

I don’t think so. I’d rather just pay the stupid six percent tax.

Fujicolor to close Maryland facility

Fujicolor Processing has announced that they will be closing their Williamsport, Maryland plant on March 12. The Williamsport facility processes film for Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, and other retail stores that operate in the Northeast. The facility currently has around 125 employees who will now be out a job.

I used to work at the Williamsport facility. In fact, it’s the reason I am living here in Maryland. I was hired as a repair technician shortly after leaving the Air Force. I didn’t know anything about photofinishing equipment. They were looking for ex-military people with an electronics background. When operators had a problem with their photofinishing equipment, they would call for a service tech. One of us would show up with our tools and try to get the problem fixed as soon as possible.

It could get very hectic at times. It was very much a high-production environment. It wasn’t the greatest job I ever had, but it certainly wasn’t the worst. The photofinishing equipment broke down constantly. Most of the problems were mechanical in nature. Very rarely did a piece of photofinishing equipment have something wrong with it that had to do with it’s electronics.

It wasn’t all bad. That’s were I met my wife Sheri. She operated a machine called a splicer that constantly broke down. I found myself looking forward to when her splicer acting up. She would sit and talk to me while I worked on it. Once I got it working again, I would hang around just to make sure it was working. That of course was just an excuse to talk to her.

You would not believe how perverted people can be. Seeing many of the pictures developed from the film people turned into their local Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club for 2-day processing gave me a clear understanding of just how nasty some people can be. Take it from me, if a guy is going to take photos of himself with a long stemmed rose inserted in this rectum, chances are he’s not going to go for the one-hour film processing. He’s going to drop his order in the box and come back in two days.

I guess I’m not surprised the facility is being shut down. Who uses film cameras?

Walmart is still selling Nazi SS skull t-shirts

I was surprised at the level of response I got from yesterday’s post about Walmart selling t-shirts with the Nazi SS Death’s Head logo on them. I knew some blogs got over 55,000 visits in a single day. I just never thought this blog would ever be one of them.

If I have learned anything over the last 24 hours its that people love a story involving Walmart and Nazis. Go figure.

I was contacted yesterday by someone from a PR firm that represents Wal-Mart:

Rick:

Good morning. My name is Marshall Manson. I work for Edelman doing online public affairs for Wal-Mart. I noticed your post about the t-shirts that Wal-Mart is selling. I wanted to make sure you saw the company’s statement about this and knew that Wal-Mart is now removing the t-shirts from its stores. Obviously, with a company as big as Wal-Mart, that may take a day or two.

The statement is just below. If you would like to discuss anything, feel free to respond to this e-mail.

Statement from Wal-Mart:

We were not aware of the origins of the image until this morning when we learned about it through the blog Bent Corner.

We are deeply sorry that this happened, and we are in the process of pulling all of these t-shirts from our stores.

Respect for the individual is a core value of our company and we would never have placed this t-shirt on our shelves had we known the origin and significance of this emblem.

We are reviewing our product review process in an effort to ensure this never happens again.

Sincerely,

Marshall Manson
Edelman

If you would like a copy of the above correspondence sent directly to you by Marshall Manson, simply post something on a blog about Nazi’s and Walmart and wait about 30 minutes. I doubt it will take even that long. The very same email sent to me was sent to just about every other blog that posted something about this. Word for word.

The New York Times published an article about Walmart and bloggers. In it they mention Marshall Manson quite frequently. It’s an interesting read.

Marshall Manson asked me if I would post an update to my original post about Walmart and the Nazi shirts. Something about how quickly they responded to the problem once they realized they were selling Nazi swag. I would have no problem doing that, if I felt they had indeed acted upon the information that they were selling Nazi clothing.

The problem is that they haven’t yet done anything about the Nazi shirts.

Yesterday afternoon I stopped at a Walmart on my way home for work and found a stack of the same shirts still for sale in the men’s department. My wife also stopped at a different Walmart on her way home from work yesterday. She too found a stack of these Nazi shirts still for sale.

In my opinion, quickly taking care of a problem involves actually taking care of the problem.

Instead of having someone from a PR firm contact bloggers, Walmart should have concentrated on simply removing the shirts from their stores. They could have worried about contacting bloggers after their stores were free of Nazi clothing.

Marshall Manson claimed that because of the size of Walmart, removing the shirts from all the stores might take a day or two. I don’t think so. Walmart could have removed these shirts from every store in a matter of minutes if they actually wanted to. Would they be this lethargically slow if they found out they were selling child porn?

I don’t think so.

I’m more than a little ticked off that because of my post, white supremacists and neo-Nazis are now goose stepping to Walmart to buy these shirts. For example, over at the Resistance Records official website, members of the forum linked to my post and wrote about going to Walmart to buy these shirts. Resistance Records produces white supremacist and neo-Nazi music. It is the same record company behind Prussian Blue, the Nazi version of the Olsen twins.

One member of that forum even posted a photo of herself wearing the shirt she bought at Walmart. The shirt she didn’t even know existed until I posted about it on my blog.

I wish Walmart had acted more responsibly and taken care of this situation as soon as it was brought to their attention. Instead they worried more about trying to control the blogosphere then stopping teenage wannabe Nazis from buying Nazi SS shirts in their stores.

The reality is these shirts are so ugly, I doubt anyone was even buying them. Until wannabe Nazis learned about them on my blog.

Great.

Walmart is selling Nazi t-shirts

I stopped at Walmart today after work. I had to pick up a few things. As I was walking past the men’s clothing area, something caught my eye. I noticed something weird over at a wall of t-shirts. One of the t-shirts had a design on it that looked remarkably like something related to Nazis. Specifically, the Totenkopf or “Death’s Head.”

I took a picture of it with my camera phone:

Walmart is selling Nazi t-shirts - Bent Corner

Totenkopf

The Death’s Head symbol was worn by the members of the German Nazi SS. The Totenkopf on the Walmart t-shirt looks very similar to the divisional insignia of the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf. As you can see, It’s almost an exact copy:

Neo-Nazis love the Totenkopf

Neo-Nazis sometimes use the Totenkopf image because it is not as easily identifiable as other Nazi symbols such as the swastika. You might see one of these tattooed on someone’s arm while standing in line at Burger King and think it’s just a poorly done pirate skull.

It’s not.

Is Walmart purposely trying to sell clothing with Nazi symbols on it? I doubt it. They won’t even sell CDs with bad words on them. I doubt someone at Walmart corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas decided to sell clothing with Nazi symbols on it.

Whoever designed this shirt had to know the origin of the skull.