Q, true enough. A&P was once a true corporate giant.

My point from the beginning has been to point out that it's no longer just the employees of the corporation itself (i.e. the office workers and such) who are getting shafted. The push to grab for more money is getting all the way down to the people who stock the shelves now.

Sure, it's happened before, but now we have the added frustration of cheap, low-quality imported products in the food stores COMBINED with the hiring (or at least the use) of illegal immigrants to do honest, legal Americans' jobs.

What amazes me is that there isn't a populist, street-level labor-song movement these days.

We're living in times when the American government is (AGAIN) cozying up to big corporations. In their rush to get as much work for as little money out of people as possible, our leaders are allowing these CEOs to run their businesses into the ground Stateside while freely encouraging trade with, and outsourcing to, third-world dunghills. They then have the nerve to collect all the money from people who found non-profit organizations in order to protest the abuse of people in those other countries.

We're seeing American "foreign policy" (so-called) get us all wrapped up, once again, in wars we aren't able to win. The gov't then freely allows just about anyone from wherever to come into our country and lets them flout our immigration and citizenship laws in the bargain! Here they are, spending billions in tax-payer money to promote "freedom" and "democracy" in these other places while they won't even bother honoring the principles they are supposedly championing elsewhere!

Honestly... where's an Aunt Molly or another Pete when you need them?

Oh, and while I'm at it, fuck US Social-Security-Disability and all their relatives, too.

I've been living for almost 9 years with a serious and almost totally debilitating disability, and these fuckers told me I could just go get "other work" after being unemployed FOR REASONS OF MY DISABILITY for over a year. The bastards actually MADE UP job titles for work that they think I can just "go get".

I actually worked, against doctors' orders, WITH the condition I have for 7.5 of those nine years. I went to work in pain, sometimes barely able to stand. I finally had to leave a job I shouldn't even have medically been allowed to do, but I needed to provide for my kids and wife and forced myself to work till I couldn't take it anymore. Now that I've finally admitted that the damned health issues have me beat, I'm supposed to just "go get".

Maybe if my name were some unpronounceable foreign blabber and I sneaked in under a damned fence... then maybe they'd lay off an American and give me THEIR job instead!

Now I can't even afford a friggin' guitar so's I can gig! Try supporting a family of five on food stamps when you don't even have the money to gas the car to go GET the damned food!

Sorry I've ranted; got about 1.5 hours of restless sleep last night/this morning.

Anyway, thanks for sharing so far, gang!