Category: The Dish

Krissy Clark investigates how big box stores profit enormously from SNAP benefits:

While we don’t know exactly how much individual stores make in EBT card sales, we know that EBT revenue really matters to stores’ bottom lines. This is something Walmart share-holders have learned firsthand. When Walmart announced disappointing profits and store sales last quarter, company executives blamed bad weather and the reduction in SNAP benefits that went into effect in November 2013, after an economic stimulus bill expired. …

Walmart is likely the biggest single corporate beneficiary of SNAP, but it’s not just Walmart. A growing number of stores have baked food stamp funding into their business models since the Great Recession. The tally of stores authorized to accept food stamps has more than doubled since the year 2000, from big-box stores like Target and Costco to 7-Elevens and dollar stores. It’s a paradox that the more people are struggling to get by, the more valuable food stamps become for business.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown doesn’t get why this is controversial:

Food stamp users have to shop somewhere, and Walmart is often cheaper than other grocery stores and has more (and healthier) options than the local bodega or 7-Eleven.

I suppose the animosity shouldn’t be surprising—Walmart can do no right in some eyes—but that Walmart is an affordable and accessible option for many on food stamps seems like a benefit to me, not a bug. If there is cause to be upset at here, it’s the fact that so many Americans are unemployed, living in poverty, and forced to rely on food stamps in the first place. It is not the fact that a company provides them with a place to buy affordable food (no matter how much you might personally not like that company).

John Sides updates his forecasting model:

One key piece of information is whether candidates have held an elective office before and, if so, which one.  Unsurprisingly, political science research has long shown that candidates who have held elective office and higher levels of office tend to do better on Election Day.  They usually run better campaigns and make fewer mistakes, if only because they’ve done it before. As we have begun to incorporate candidate experience into the model, our initial sense is this: Republicans may have a far better chance of winning control of the Senate than we or other analysts previously thought. Here is a preliminary estimate: The GOP could have as much as a 4 in 5 chance of controlling the chamber.

Harry Enten looks at the generic ballot, which also suggests a rough election for Democrats:

In the closing days of the 2012 election, Democrats led the generic congressional ballot by an average of 3.2 percentage points among registered voters, according to the final five polls that released registered voter numbers (CBS/New York Times, CNN/ORC, Gallup,United Technologies/National Journal and YouGov/Economist). The generic ballot is a standard polling question that typically pits a generic Democrat against a generic Republican in a race for Congress. It’s one of the best indicators of the national political environment. Over the past month, the Democratic advantage among registered voters on the generic ballot is down to 0.5 points. That’s a gain of 2.7 points for Republicans.

Kilgore considers the Democrats’ turnout efforts:

The X-factor is whether the social-media-focused, voter-to-voter motivational techniques deployed by the Obama campaign to such good effect in 2012 are replicable in a midterm. In the old days, for Democrats especially, GOTV centered on “knock-and-drag”—flooding heavily pro-Democratic areas with labor-intensive campaign contacts, especially immediately prior to or on Election Day. That is not so easy with geographically dispersed young voters (other than on college campuses), and with the spread of early voting. And that’s why the new GOTV techniques—less limited in time and place—are so important.

Earlier Dish on Senate forecasting here and here.

John McDuling gives a history lesson:

According to HighBeam Business research, the number of bowling alleys in America nearly doubled from 6,600 in 1955 to 11,000 by 1963. Over the same period, the number of people bowling in leagues increased from less than three million to seven million. Around this time, “action bowling,” which the New York Times described as “a high-stakes form of gambling in which bowlers faced off for thousands of dollars” was particularly popular in New York City. ““You’d go at 1 in the morning, and there were 50 lanes and the place was packed,” one exponent of the sport, hall of famer Ernie Schlegel told the Times. “The action was huge back then, like poker is today.” All of this ebullience was reflected in the stock prices of bowling companies such as Brunswick Corporation, which according to the Wall Street Journal [paywall] increased 1,590 percent between 1957 and its 1961 peak. That bowling stock bubble deflated, but it took a while longer for bowling to suffer in the real world.

As Zachary Crockett recently noted, the professional bowlers of yore were pioneers of the celebrity endorsement:

Throughout the 1930s and 40s, “Beer Leagues” dominated professional bowling. The best bowlers were recruited by beer companies – Miller, Stroh’s, Budweiser – and pitted against each other in tournaments. … Harry Smith, the top bowler in 1963, made more money than MLB MVP Sandy Koufax and NFL MVP Y.A. Tittle combined.  Sports Illustrated adds that Smith enjoyed a life of copious luxury:

“Harry does so well that he is able to support a wife and four children in style, tool around the circuit in a maroon Lincoln Continental and indulge a taste for epicurean delicacies. In short, he is the personification of the prosperity that has suddenly overtaken the world of professional bowling.”

In 1964, “bowling legend” Don Carter was the first athlete in any sport to receive a $1 million endorsement deal ($7.6 million today). In return, bowling manufacturing company Ebonite got the rights to release the bowler’s signature model ball. At the time, the offer was 200x what professional golfer Arnold Palmer got for his endorsement with Wilson, and 100x what football star Joe Namath got from his deal with Schick razor. Additionally, Carter was already making $100,000> ($750,000) per year through tournaments, exhibitions, television appearances, and other endorsements, including Miller, Viceroys, and Wonder Bread.

Just look at how much they recall:

General Motors announced on Monday that it’s recalling more than 1.3 million vehicles that may experience a sudden loss of electric power steering. GM’s new recall comes after 2.6 million vehicles were recalled earlier this year for ignition-switch problems linked to 13 deaths. GM models involved in the new recall include Chevy Malibus, HHRs and Cobalts, Saturn Auras and IONs, as well as Pontiac G6s from model years 2004 to 2010. GM says it will replace the vehicles’ power-steering motors, steering columns, power-steering motor-control units or a combination of those free of charge, depending on the vehicle.

Sara Morrison notices that the recall “includes ‘Service parts installed into certain vehicles before May 31, 2010 under a previous safety recall'”:

Yes, at this point, GM is recalling its own recalls.

In the first three months of 2014, GM has recalled 6.1 million cars. Last year, Toyota was the automaker with the most recalls, with 5.3 million. GM had just 750,000 recalls in that year, which means in the first three months of 2014 alone, GM has recalled more cars than it and Toyota did in all of 2013 combined. GM also said it expects to spend up to $750 million this quarter on recall-related repairs, more than double its previous estimate of $300 million.

Schuyler Velasco looks into what’s causing all these recalls and finds a silver lining:

The good news is that this seemingly unending stream is actually a side effect of US automakers building safer cars, says Joe Phillippi, an industry analyst and president of AutoTrends Consulting in Andover, N.J. “Safety technology is a lot more democratic than it was even three years ago,” he notes. “Now, even little cheap cars like a Mazda 3 compact have features that you could only get in [Mercedes-] Benzes and BMWs before. Lane departure warning systems, stability control, electronically controlled brake force distribution – nothing is exclusive to high-end cars anymore.”

As cars become more complex, however, problems – and subsequent recalls – become more frequent. And as car parts become more expensive and complicated, there is less diversity in suppliers. For example, Faurecia, a large global auto producer, manufactures seats and other auto parts for Nissan, Volkswagen, Ford, and GM, among others. If, theoretically, something goes wrong with one of its products, it could prompt a recall affecting several automakers.

Nicholas Freudenberg sees the GM recall as part of a bigger problem:

Meanwhile, Shikha Dalmia points out that the GM bailout has left some victims of faulty products without legal recourse:

If you are own one of the 1.6 million vehicles General Motors has recalled since February with faulty ignitions and you or a loved one had an accident in the car, there’s some more bad news. Your right to collect damages from GM has been signed away. If your accident happened in the years before the old GM’s 2009 bankruptcy reorganization, the managers of the auto industry bailout gave immunity to the new GM that emerged.

The GM bailout, which ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers more than $10 billion, is the gift that keeps on giving to the auto giant. Unless courts overturn that immunity, many victims of GM’s delayed response in recalling cars with faulty ignition switches will recover few damages.