[LA Times] At least eight city of Bell officials were jugged Tuesday morning, a source said, as L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley prepared to announce criminal charges in the municipal salary scandal.
Former Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo, whose high salary sparked the outrage that led to the investigations of the city, was among those jugged in the sweep. No details have been released, but a source not authorized to speak publicly about the case said that Rizzo; former Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia; Mayor Oscar Hernandez; Councilmembers Luis Artiga, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal; and former Councilmembers George Cole and Victor Bello were among those jugged.
[Updated at 11:22 p.m.: Cooley filed charges against eight Bell officials Tuesday, alleging that they misappropriated $5.5 million in public funds. Rizzo has been charged with 53 counts of misappropriation of public funds and conflict of interest.
Among those jugged were former city administrator Robert Rizzo, former assistant city manager Angela Spaccia, Mayor Oscar Hernandez, councilmembers George Mirabal, Teresa Jacobo, Luis Artiga and former councilmembers George Cole and Victor Bello.
"This is corruption on steroids," Cooley said.]
The charges are expected to be detailed at a morning press conference, according to a source with knowledge of the case who was not authorized to comment publicly. A witness told The Times he saw Councilman Luis Artiga taken away in handcuffs Tuesday morning.
A neighbor of Hernandez said authorities used a battering ram on his front door after he failed to answer the door.
"They broke the door down," said the neighbor, who only gave his name as Jose. "They knocked down the door and they brought him out in cuffs."]
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2010 11:40 ||
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#1
No party affiliation mentioned anywhere, in any of the articles.
#2
Pappy, someone wrote Glenn Reynolds when he mentioned the "name that party" game last night that the Cali local officials don't run on a party ticket.
But I'm willing to bet a decent sum of money that all these clowns have previously self-identified as DemocRats.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/22/2010 21:48 Comments ||
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#3
"They knocked down the door and they brought him out in cuffs."
I'd have loved to have the popcorn concession for that one. :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/22/2010 21:50 Comments ||
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Bill Simon, CEO of Wal-Mart's U.S. business, at a Goldman Sachs conference last week, on behavior at a Walmart store around midnight at the end of a month:
"The paycheck cycle we've talked about before remains extreme. It is our responsibility to figure out how to sell in that environment, adjusting pack sizes, large pack at sizes the beginning of the month, small pack sizes at the end of the month. And to figure out how to deal with what is an ever-increasing amount of transactions being paid for with government assistance.
"And you need not go further than one of our stores on midnight at the end of the month. And it's real interesting to watch, about 11 p.m., customers start to come in and shop, fill their grocery basket with basic items, baby formula, milk, bread, eggs,and continue to shop and mill about the store until midnight, when electronic -- government electronic benefits cards get activated and then the checkout starts and occurs. And our sales for those first few hours on the first of the month are substantially and significantly higher.
"And if you really think about it, the only reason somebody gets out in the middle of the night and buys baby formula is that they need it, and they've been waiting for it. Otherwise, we are open 24 hours -- come at 5 a.m., come at 7 a.m., come at 10 a.m. But if you are there at midnight, you are there for a reason."
#2
Beware of generalizations. I go to Wally World after midnight because I'm a night owl, it's open & it's close to home. I have noticed huge crowds on some of those nights, but hadn't thought of relating that to the paycheck cycle.
#3
OTOH, billionaire Charles Munger, who benefited greatly from the Mother of All Bailouts, recently told U. Mich. students that people in economic distress should suck it in and cope.
The new bread lines have many sponsors.
#4
Color me skeptical on these baskets being filled with essentials. I usually see cartloads of junk foods, cokes, and yes baby formula. The junk foods usually consist of cases of candy bars which are in turn flipped outside the store by children selling the candy to raise money for their miscellaneous sports team. Yes I understand that sports teams do this legitimately, but those products are packaged differently than the store bought versions of same. However, I have noticed a decrease in this action since the food stamps have gone to the credit card style and total balance on the card after initial purchase can now be refunded in cash. That's right. Cash.
#5
Th few times I have been to our nearby Wal-Mart late at night, I have noticed considerably more Hispanics than during the day. Either these folks have day jobs, are illegals (scrutiny lighter) or just feel more comfortable going at this time of night. I saw a piece in our paper whereby a few hookers have been arrested for soliciting in front of this same Wal-Mart. Most ammo sales occur in the morning because when new shipments come in.
Would concur with #2. It is hard to make generalizations.
I know other retail outlets see patterns based on the day of the month, but this is a rather extreme version.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
09/22/2010 20:00 Comments ||
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#9
I've seen people in this neck of Montgomery County, Maryland, pay for 1/2 or so of their cart with a FoodStampsCard and then open their wallet and pull out a fat wad of cash to pay for the stuff Uncle Sugar won't cover.
#10
#9 Hello,
People know how to work the system. They get the food and sell it so they have a cash flow. They shop for others possibly. Over 60% of the grocery business in one large chain I know of is government assistance. Drug use is a up big time so they need cash. Meth is a big one currently.
#4
Apparently Summers and other economic advisors didn't know $hit about what to do about the economy. Back to the safe haven of liberal looney left academia where there is no opposition.
#5
When the going gets tough, the academics go back to the campus, running like hell away from the mess they caused out in the real world.
Posted by: No I am The Other Beldar ||
09/22/2010 10:27 Comments ||
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#6
Not only do Mr. Summers and others within the administration lack the requisite financial and economic knowledge, their leftest, ivy league arrogance will not permit them to heed the advise of those who do have the knowhow.
#9
Timing of his departure is allegedly due to tenure rules at Harvard. As excuses go, it's better than most: Though it would seem unlikely that Harvard would revoke his tenure if he stayed out longer, he does have some enemies over his old deviation from PC handbook with his comments on numbers of women in engineering.
#10
Karl Denninger: the only way out of this was [would have been] to pull liquidity and force the bankrupt to take their medicine, whether we wanted to do it or not. It doesn't matter if the rich and powerful banksters "think" this is a bad idea, mathematically it is not possible to inflate out of this, nor to stabilize the economy with ZIRP and QE. All we've done is enable the federal government to temporarily paper over the insolvency of half the population (and all of the major banks) by borrowing and spending 12% of GDP, building in even more damage that now has to be corrected and ensuring that even more pain must be suffered.
The Florida Democratic Party today said it made an "oversight" when it included Republican congressional challenger Allen West's Social Security number in an attack mailer.
West, who is challenging U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, in a nationally watched race, called the mailer "an unprecedented new low in American politics."
The Democratic mailer, echoing TV ads Klein's campaign has run, blasts West for an $11,081 tax lien from 2005 that was paid off four months later. Hummm, he paid if off in 4 months -- that's not paying bills? And I wonder where The good Colonel might have been in 2005? Possible confusion?
The lien notice was pulled from public records in Indiana and is reproduced in the mailer with West's wife's name removed and his address blacked out. But his Social Security number is visible in a column that says "Identifying Number."
The nine-digit number is not specifically labeled a Social Security number in the document. But West campaign manager Josh Grodin says there's no mistaking what it is.
Although the mailing came from the Florida Democratic Party, West and Grodin blamed Klein for it.
"I understand politics is a tough business. I expect to be challenged about my ideas, my beliefs," West said in a fund-raising e-mail to supporters. "But Ron Klein has clearly crossed a line. I'm not yet sure the potential damage that might come to my wife and me, and it makes me sick to think of what could happen to my daughters. My entire family is at risk of identity theft."
Said Klein spokeswoman Melissa Silverman: "This was a Florida Democratic Party mailer, and they have made clear that they will take appropriate action to rectify the situation."
Silverman didn't answer an e-mailed question about whether Klein's campaign consulted on or knew in advance about the mailer.
Florida Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff called the inclusion of West's Social Security number an "oversight" in a statement that included a barbed apology to West.
"After making every effort to remove all of Allen West's private information, unlike West who refuses to apologize to Florida's taxpayers for not paying his taxes and his bills, we apologize for the oversight of not redacting this information from the public record included in the mailer," Jotkoff said.
"To end, while this mail piece does not explicitly identify any Social Security number, in order to stop the crazy West accusations, we will pay for identify theft monitoring for the next two years." Not only do they publish his SS number, they are now calling him crazy.
Grodin said late today that West has been talking to lawyers about the possibility of legal action over the mailer.
#4
Inquiring minds might ask, not that there is anything codified, but what might the minimum time and experience level be, for a junior senator and War Veteran to run for the office of President of the United States?
#5
Starting with Truman all the presidents had some type of military service. President Regan and George W. both had stateside service in the reserves and guard respectively if memory serves. But if you want to follow the trend for the last two decades it goes Military, Non, Military, Non. Guess who the two nonservice presidents are.
#6
Beoeker I'm with you. But then I would vote SPOD for Prez and Joe M for vice right now given the current situation...
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
09/22/2010 11:58 Comments ||
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#7
I hope Lt. Col West immediately filed with his local Social Security office to change his social security number, and sent a notice to his credit card carriers and the three credit reporting agencies that he has done so and why. Also the FBI.
An excellent argument why we need a couple years of mandatory service out of high school and before college. It would cancel a lot of the indoctrination in socialist and misdirected/conditioned/programmed thinking picked up through 13 years of K-12 education.
#11
An excellent argument why we need a couple years of mandatory service out of high school and before college.
Because nothing teaches independence and individualism like forced labor!
Consider who keeps pushing for the revival of a draft and the "mandatory volunteerism" crap. Then consider if they're really interested in countering, or reinforcing, collectivist indoctrination.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
09/22/2010 14:58 Comments ||
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#12
Show us Obama's Birth Certificate and we will call it even.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
09/22/2010 20:33 Comments ||
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#15
I was talking about mandatory service in the sense of not fighting.
Fighting forces are best if they are volunteer. But who's to say a draft is going to only net folks who aren't willing to fight? I may be wrong but I'll bet there are more than a few folks out there who have gone into the armed services felt it was the least bad option, but at least it was a choice, and I'll bet they are more likely to succeed because at least they saw it as an opportunity rather than an obligation.
And I don't even know if we could sustain a force of three million people, or if there would be enough work for them. But hey, we are paying $2M for each alleged road construction worker today, so I'll bet a two-year stint at building roads or whatever could get a whole lot of roads built real cheap, and give some folks an idea of what we should be protecting instead of giving away. Too many people take for granted what we have and work hard to maintain. Some people think milk comes from stores, and not that stinky dairy that they built their house next to. This might change that, or at least help.
I'm sure liberals would do something to eff up the experience, though, so I don't know if it would be a good thing or not in that regard.
The mandatory service for Israel works out very well. They have their share of liberals, but it would be worse if they didn't have a mandatory service. It puts these folks right up against what they are fighting for, and believe me they have the idea of what is going on when they get out. Also, the two or three year break after high school helps focus their minds, and they excel at further education. And they learn how to do things in a practical fashion, not an idealistic of theoretical fashion that is doomed to failure because they never got exposed to reality.
An awareness of reality that is sorely lacking in the USA today despite the fact that that very same reality is standing in front of us with a knife.
#17
I've been in service both pre and post VOLAR. We do NOT want draftees in our modern military. And the Dems and Obama would love to have a good source of bodies for their brown shirts.
According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives.
"This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation. "Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room."
Obama rejected the military's request for 40,000 troops as part of an expansive mission that had no foreseeable end. "I'm not doing 10 years," he told Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a meeting on Oct. 26, 2009. "I'm not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars."
Woodward's book portrays Obama and the White House as barraged by warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and confronted with the difficulty in preventing them. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said, "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger." Terrorists attacks on America is good for America. See what they mean by liberalism is a mental disorder?
#3
Why don't you and your Weather Underground pals absorb it Obama?
Posted by: Water Modem ||
09/22/2010 15:24 Comments ||
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#4
Actually the US federal government should be making the point that the retaliatory response to a new terrorist attack would be of a magnitude that no enemy could possibly 'absorb.'
Unfortunately the Afghan intervention does not help here. Western forces are in Afghanistan to 'serve the Afghan people,' everyone's is begging the Taliban to negotiate, the bigoted, murderously intolerant Afghan people get to circumscribe the limits of free speech in the US.
#5
Victory in war includes aspects or semblances of "NATION-BUILDING", aka "WINNING HEARTS-N-MINDS", sub-aka SHOWING DEFEATED GOVTS-SOCIETIES WHY THE VICTOR'S WAY IS BETTER OR SUPERIOR THAN WHAT EXISTED PRIOR.
NO "NATION-BUILDING" + SIMILAR > BEARING THE RISK THAT THE CIRCUMSTANCES OR SITUATION, ETC. WHICH LED TO WAR IN THE FIRST PLACE WILL ONCE AGAIN RETURN.
One can give it A DIFFERENT PCORRECT-DENIABLE LABEL OR DEFINITION, ETC. but ONCE ALSO CAN'T ESCAPE FROM DOING IT.
#6
"We" in this context means "you, the cannon fodder, the little people". Our carnage will be the backdrop to just another opportunity to blind us with his oratory skills in the soliloquies.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/22/2010 19:26 Comments ||
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#8
You and your assh*le minions can absorb it, Bambi. And take the Dems with you.
We're busy trying to make enough money to pay off your wife's vacations the debt you've saddle us with,
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/22/2010 20:25 Comments ||
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#9
Put your wife and kids, and that Illegal aunt of your at ground zero of the next attack and then make that same comment you piece of shit! When they attack people die, mothers, brothers, sisters, and sons and daughters, they are all someones baby and all are American. How dare anyone make a statement like that! Shame on you Mr. President!
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
09/22/2010 21:05 Comments ||
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#10
"We can absorb a terrorist attack."
IOW: I don't have the balls to nip the problem in the bud. I'd feel so much better, idealistically that is, if they hit me in the head with a baseball bat before I did my job.
Long WaPo piece on struggles of glorious, non-purple US president as detailed by wonderful, brave, enlightened, clean-cut American reporter who looks like Robert Redford. This gushing installment looks at how brave Bambi was to stand up to his generals over how to handle Afghanistan.
Read it all, comrades and comradettes, if you know what is good for you.
[/peoplescube]
DrudgeReport has links to other articles about this. It might be worth borrowing from the public library after it comes out.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/22/2010 07:58 ||
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#1
In any Presidency you will have infighting as people try to get their views followed on very important matters. This leads to disgruntled folks talking to Woodward who became a bottom feeder during the George W. Bush years.
I may agree with the disgruntled this time (seems a lot of military in there), I may be happy that Woodward is sticking the shiv into both parties, but I still think this kind of journalism is pathetic because in most cases the other side can't even comment back because they are still "inside" the government.
#3
what is most disconcerting is their fatalistic advance acceptance of another terror atack on US soil. I mean, it'll prolly be just the little people ('proles') that get killed, right? And in teh meantime he can continue on his apology tours, bowing and scraping to our enemies. *spit*
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/22/2010 10:05 Comments ||
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#4
Woodward who became a bottom feeder during the George W. Bush years.
Man, Woodward went bottom feeder in the George H.W. Bush years. If not earlier.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
09/22/2010 10:14 Comments ||
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#5
Frank -- "We can absorb another terrorist attack" ought to make a great campaign slogan for 2012, no?
I want to see that plastered on every billboard in America. Signed, President Prissypants
#6
Imaam Hussien has released or delayed the trial of every terrorist and now we find out he is battling America's Generals regarding to stop the war against them. PERIOD.
#8
The Weekly Standard's blog has a pre-review (scroll down to 11:21 a.m. Sept.22), based not on the book itself, but on Mr. Woodward's pattern of behaviour. The key word detumescence is utterly delicious in this context.
[Bush] was asked to summarize the contribution made by his secretary of state, Colin Powell, to the war in Afghanistan. "Powell is a diplomat," Bush said mildly, "and you've got to have a diplomat. . . . He is a diplomatic person who has got war experience."
The praise was notable for how faint it was; dismissive, almost, and revealing in the inadvertent way that Woodward's books always are. Bush is a self-confident man--self-confident enough to denigrate, slyly and publicly, the veteran public servant who sits as his secretary of state.
#1
More narcissistic drivel. More "I blame Bush" blather. Were it any other president, he would address Iran and Pakistan and the saber-rattling comments by that islamic pigmy; dinnerjacket.
#2
Exactly right, BP. Without the media et al. behind him, he wouldn't have been elected to the Senate either. Too bad he can't be promoted for incompetence. Wait, how about Sec. Gen. of the UN? Perfect!
#5
The president has to, I think, shift the way he has been doing things.
Powell is spot on here. Notice, he doesnt take the typical frame the message tact. And if Obama didnt have so much contempt for all things military he would understand that the best optics are achievements.
#9
"What we got here...is a failure to communicate!"
--------
The Captain (Strouther Martin) to Luke (Paul Newman)
_____________
"You gotta get your mind right, boy!" Same to same
#10
The power he has had is that he was an effective con artist. How do people lose to a con artist?.
I believe you can see how its done in his actions and speech. You don't want to believe it but there it is.
[Dawn] President Barack B.O. Obama dismissed suggestions Monday that his cerebral style and exotic background made it tough for him to empathize with the economic fears of heartland Americans.
Obama's critics have frequently argued that his intellectual and academic leadership style or his upbringing in Hawaii, and for several years as a boy in Indonesia, make it hard for him to connect with everyday citizens.
"I think when the unemployment rate is still high and people are having a tough time, it doesn't matter if I was green, it doesn't matter if I was purple. I think people would still be frustrated and understandably so," Obama said in a town-hall style meeting on the economy on CNBC television.
"If you are out of work right now, the only thing you're going to be hearing is, when do I get a job? If you're about to lose your home all you're thinking about is, when can I get my house?"
Obama said he believed that Americans realized that he grew up in a single parent family and had financed his education, that culminated at Harvard Law school, with scholarships.
The president, who leads a Democratic Party fearing a beating over the slowly recovering economy in November's congressional elections, also denied that he was guilty of vilifying the US business community.
"In every speech, every interview that I have made, I have constantly said that what sets America apart is that we have got the most dynamic free market economy in the world and that has to be preserved," he said.
On the campaign trail to support a Democratic senatorial candidate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, later, Obama also said many critics' hopes for his administration's achievements may be unrealistically high.
Some of his Democratic critics grumble that "the health care plan (enacted) didn't have a public option," Obama said.
They also gripe that "you ended the war in Iraq but haven't completely finished the Afghan war yet," Obama went on.
But "I say, folks wake up! This is not some academic exercise. As (Vice President) Joe Biden put it, Don't compare us to the Almighty, compare us to the alternative," Obama pleaded.
All 435 House seats are up for grabs along with 37 of the 100 Senate seats in the November 2 election.
Several key analysts believe Republicans are in reach of winning the 39 seats they need to capture the House but are less likely to snatch the Senate.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
What a f'king liar. One again trying to play the 'race' card. Green, Purple, Black, doesn't matter.
Hey Bambi - YOU BASICALLY SUCK IN EVERY COLOR OF THE RAINBOW!
(And any combination of colors - your suckyness has nothing to do with color).
#3
Obama continues to show the signs of a dillusional pathological liar. He did not grow up in a single parent home.
Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Mânoa, where his father was a foreign student on scholarship. The couple married on February 2, 1961, but separated when Obama Sr. went to Harvard University on scholarship, and divorced in 1964. Obama Sr. remarried and returned to Kenya, visiting Barack in Hawaii only once, in 1971. He died in an automobile accident in 1982.
After her divorce, Dunham married Indonesian student Lolo Soetoro, who was attending college in Hawaii. When Suharto, a military leader in Soetoro's home country, came to power in 1967, all Indonesian students studying abroad were recalled, and the family moved to the Menteng neighborhood of Jakarta. From ages six to ten, Obama attended local schools in Jakarta, including Besuki Public School and St. Francis of Assisi School.
In 1971, Obama returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham, and attended Punahou School, a private college preparatory school, from the fifth grade until his graduation from high school in 1979. Wikipedia
#6
"you ended the war in Iraq but haven't completely finished the Afghan war yet,"
YOU ended the war in Iraq?? He ought to be impeached just for saying that.
#9
I agree with Darth Vader and Obama. Even if he were purple his policies would still have created his massive disapproval levels. Bad policies are bad policies.
#10
lol crazyfool. YOU BASICALLY SUCK IN EVERY COLOR OF THE RAINBOW! He does suck in any color. When I first read this headline, I thought "purple" as in SEIU purple.
#11
"cerebral style?" What does that even mean? Other than the media portraying him as some sort of "Academic," nothing about him is cerebral. There isn't an original idea in his commie playbook. His knowledge of history is atrocious. He stumbles over his words worse than George did if he doesn't have his script handy (read: teleprompter). His only real skill is the ability to play the part in the staged cult of personality (also not his own idea or even original). Perhaps that's what they meant by cerebral. He has some comic book supervillian's cerebro-powers to send tingles up the legs of the stupid.
#22
# 3, I believe as you do. The delusional part has been ever apparent. The history you related was correct(what I was aware of). The more we learn the smaller he will get.
The problem will be his enablers and his bunker mentality. He has a cookbook that he is following.
I still believe he is not an original thinker. His followers believe the same even that the Tea party people are extremists funded with Republican money.
#3
But now that I've had my morning nap, I think it needs to be in Seedy Politicians along with the rest of the articles on this topic, rather than War on Terror.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Bill Simon, CEO of Wal-Mart's U.S. business, at a Goldman Sachs conference last week, on behavior at a Walmart store around midnight at the end of a month:
President 
