Even if a group of reporters has to start by hanging around some stores and observing how many of these weapons go out the doors, the effort would be worth it. The Times had a six-person team do a story Saturday on gun sales generally. Why not have six reporters hang out at Wal-Mart stores for a few days?
Beyond that, someone should ask Wal-Mart whether being forced to stop selling certain weapons would have a material effect on earnings and, if so, whether the company plans to list that as a risk in its next securities filing. It’s highly unlikely, but worth a try, as a way to start a conversation. Few public companies will ignore questions related to the integrity of their securities disclosures.
Another line of inquiry would involve getting a fix on whether Wal-Mart is more worried that taking what gun control advocates would see as a more responsible position on assault weapons sales would risk an overall consumer backlash that would cost more than lost sales on those products.
4. Boeing’s Dreamliner Crisis:
I assume that the key business reporting outlets are working on tick-tocks of how Boeing is coping with the crisis surrounding its new Dreamliner aircraft and how competitor Airbus is trying to take advantage of it.
But a story covering the struggles of the people behind the design, sale (and competitive fights) and setbacks of this game-changing plane would be a great book. I’m thinking of The Devil’s Candy by Julie Solomon, one of my favorite books, which was about the making of the disastrous movie version of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. Maybe this one will have a happier ending — but either way it has all the elements of a compelling read.
For the real story on boeing, it would be wise to go into cjr's archives on the subject:
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/the_la_times_pulls_no_punches.php
There's quite a history here - one which forms an indicment of modern American business managment and its approach to labor and manufacturing.
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 15 Jan 2013 at 08:27 PM
As we're talking about economics; labor mobility; automation; and the depression of wages, benefits, and job security for the middle class (the casualization of labor which I've written about here:
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/report_card_on_social_security.php#comments )
I came across this article which, if you read into it deep enough, is about the casualization of war... and the implications are a bit chilling.
http://www.esquire.com/_mobile/blogs/politics/final-days-longest-war-0213
" Here's one legacy: war made easier, with many duties outsourced to private contractors, and armed drones lessening the risk for pilots and ground troops — and vastly lowering America's threshold for using deadly force around the world...
The drone strikes will continue, as will secretive raids and small, hot flashes of combat, but will there ever be another war that requires so many bodies for the same effect?
And that's another legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe mine will be America's last generation of war veterans."
This is a scary thought. Do we have the ethical infrastructure and the checks & balances to handle a nation capable of automated war?
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 16 Jan 2013 at 12:45 PM