Product Placement

On Tuesday (Aug 29) while at Costco, I looked to see what products are now in the vanquished book section. In place of the books is now a long row of potato chips and similar snacks, most of them chemical-laden pseudo-food.

Once upon a time, Costco—for a corporate store—featured occasionally good books. Greg Palast's 2006 “Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats, Bush Sinks, The Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left, and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War”, ISBN 0739474618. The ISBN number is important as there is a similarly-named book by Palast that appears to be much watered-down. 2005's “The Complete Calvin And Hobbes”.

Starting around 2008, Costco's book selection became extremely watered-down, and credit to the people of Humboldt County, non-fiction book sales tanked. Given how useless Costco's offerings became, removing the book section was a mercy killing. Or a flushing.

But what do you expect? There have long been overlaps between Costco's corporate hierarchy and Micro$oft's. A look at the current Board Of Directors shows some “interesting” connections that suggest the best interests of Costco's “lesser” stockholders are not Job 1:

Susan Decker, "a director of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.".

Sally Jewell, who "served as the Secretary of the Interior under President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017".

Jeff Raikes, who "was the Chief Executive Officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2008 to 2014. Mr. Raikes held several positions with Microsoft Corporation from 1981 to 2008, including President of the Business Division from 2005 to 2008".

It gets better:

John W. Stanton clicks off a whole bunch of boxes, cell phones that are used to track the locations and communications of the little people while frying their brains and otherwise radiating them into oblivion, combined with Microsoft:

"Mr. Stanton founded and served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Western Wireless Corporation, a wireless telecommunications company, from 1992 until shortly after its acquisition by ALLTEL Corporation in 2005. He was Chairman and a director of T-Mobile USA, formerly VoiceStream Wireless Corporation, a mobile telecommunications company, from 1994 to 2004, and was Chief Executive Office from 1998 to 2003. Mr. Stanton was a director of Clearwire Corp. from 2008 to 2013, Chairman between 2011 and 2013, and interim Chief Executive Officer during 2011. He is currently a director of Trilogy International Partners and Microsoft Corporation..."

Maggie Wilderotter might as well be Stanton's Sibling In Satan, same background, plus some extras such as "biotechnology" for a Brave New World:

Mrs. Wilderotter was the Executive Chairman of Frontier Communications, a public telecommunications company, from April 2015 until April 2016 and served as Frontier’s Chief Executive Officer from 2004 to 2015 and Chair of the Board from December 2005. Prior to joining Frontier, she was a senior vice president of Microsoft Corporation from 2002 to 2004. From 1997 to 2002, she was President and Chief Executive Officer of Wink Communications; an interactive telecommunications and media company. Mrs. Wilderotter was previously a director of Xerox Corporation, DreamWorks Animation SKG, Cadence Design Systems; Hewlett Packard Enterprise and The Procter & Gamble Company. She is currently a director of Sana Biotechnology and Lytt, Inc.

Note the overlap between Micro$oft and Berkshire Hathaway. Friends Forever! Well, not *your* friend.

Costco's motto might as well be, “Eat or Inject S**t, And Die”. In the meantime, if you look for intellectual stimulation at Costco, your brain will perish from starvation.


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