It's a mid-term election year and you need to vote.

It looks like the Internet is winning the retail shopping war. Some estimates are that sales is increasing by a few hairs indicating some sort of consumer recovery.

Not so much for Macy's, cutting 2500 jobs, and JC Penney. CNN reports the company is cutting 2000 jobs and closing 33 stores. The list of stores sound like towns you might hear announced at a Grey Hound bus station, maybe not an Amtrak train station. Small towns long-decimated by Walmart super centers.

I lived near some of these towns where the stores are closing. I imagine these are very old buildings already in blighted neighborhoods. Some entire towns are blighted, probably because everyone in town stocks shelves or loads up the deep fryer during the week and makes popcorn on the weekends for minimum wage.

The piss-poor economy is reverberating back up the pipes far enough to wreak havoc on the financial system with even more Bad Corporate News. Best Buy sales dropped, there is an overabundance of retail inventory, which was falsely reported as a story that merchants were stocking extra inventory due to confidence in a growing economy.

Unemployment failed to pass in the Senate because the Republicans are playing politics by obfuscating between claims of not getting the amendments they want and the claim of not having the money to pay for it.

Not enough people are turning out to vote for mid-term elections and it has destroyed the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. If you didn't vote, it's your fault.

Bloody Black Friday, Saturday and Sunday

It's Sunday and the numbers aren't in yet for the long-anticipated post-Thanksgiving weekend sales, except the LA Times Reported the sales on Thanksgiving Day and  Black Friday rose a mere 2.3% It seems that impulse shopping and target or "mission" shopping can be graphed inversely proportional along a scale of disposable income.

Thanksgiving was once a feast before the Battle of the Big Box Stores. Now the battle starts early and it's the bloodiest on record. It's only expected to get worse as the years pass without increased employment or wages. Parents will be faced with the prospect of having nothing to distract their children on Christmas morning except themselves. It must be a horrifying thought to inspire such bloody violent shopping.

We should see the complete numbers by the middle of this week. I hope it was worth it.

Interestingly, More people were draw to the stores but spent less. The headlines of two major publications make them seem at odds with each other. The Wall Street Journal reports the sales dropped by 3% from last year while USA Today is reporting "Black Friday and Holiday shopping brighter than forecast." Bloomberg reports holiday sales up by 2.3%.

Slate reported that the shopping traffic was redistributed throughout Thanksgiving and Friday.

Food Safety - A Chicken Wing Conspiracy Theory

It's unfortunate for all Chicken-related industries along their entire chains of distribution that one of them was exposed for lax health and safety protocols. They apparently cannot deny their dependence on the government to provide the inspections necessary to keep them in line, and one company has now brought down the entire chicken industry, fear of Salmonella now spreads through the public like wildfire.

The slowdown in demand will increase the supply and consequently lower the price. The season for Hot Wings is upon us and last year there was rumor in the news media about a shortage of Chicken Wings.

• Slate.com  (http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/02/chicken_wing_shortage_drought_ethanol_standards_and_expensive_corn_have.html)
• Foxnews.com (http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/01/23/chicken-wing-shortage-looms-ahead-super-bowl/)

The rumors apparently were quashed in a report by Time Magazine (interestingly prior to the above Slate article.)

• Business.time.com (http://business.time.com/2013/01/31/reality-check-there-is-no-chicken-wing-shortage-prices-havent-really-soared-either/)

Rumors alone didn't effectively manipulate market prices, maybe affecting the ability of the government to regulate the industry will knock the support legs out from under competitors and send waves of fear to manipulate prices?

Since such manual controls exist for such manipulation, it stands to reason that they are exploited.

When a company has multiple processing plants, upgrades one plant when there is an outbreak of Salmonella, but then does not upgrade other plants until another outbreak is discovered, we must question the quality of everything we buy that was prepared and cooked by someone we don't know.

• FoodSafetyNews.com (http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/10/foster-farms-outbreak-highlights-prevalence-of-salmonella-on-chicken/)

Foster Farms decided not to recall it's chicken. It's too easy to say that customers failed to properly cook the chicken to 165 degree Fahrenheit internally. The two sides of this equation are the volume of contamination versus risky cooking methods.

Assuming it were possible for everyone to follow the directions properly and Salmonella was equally prevalent across the entire industry nationwide, all Salmonella might be eliminated from the bird during cooking. In the Foster Farms case, the outbreak is geographically focused in a specific region of distribution which suggests a possible risky cooking strategy involving a specific recipe indigenous to the region.

• CDC.gov (http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/heidelberg-10-13/index.html)

According to patient interviews, the majority (80%) of the cases were due to preparation in the home. It was not clear where the other twenty percent occurred. 

The fact that Foster Farms implemented new procedures at a plant in Western Washington following a previous outbreak there suggests that processing plant safety equally shares responsibility with cooking for control of Salmonella. If a recipe is to blame for under-cooking the chicken, who is responsible?