The President of Home Depot is on the scene in NO. President Bush is..

[girl gone mad]

where?

The President of Home Depot is on the ground trying to assess the damage and coordinate assistance efforts.

The President of the United States is.. playing golf, playing guitar, attending fundraisers, promoting SS privatization..

[SharonAnn]

1. Be realistic. You don't want * "coordinating" assistance efforts.

That would make things worse.

[durablend]

5. Not to mention he might DROWN!

And we can't have that!

[lildreamer316]

15. Don't lead me

down that road; I'll get arrested...

[3waygeek]

23. That won't happen...

after all, shit floats.

[havocmom]

2. We might all wanna call into RW radio programs

for the next bazillion days and harp on this constantly.

[savemefromdumbya]

3. How can you expect

How can you expect a Yale graduate ex druggy, playboy to be able to cope with this sort of mess. Yikes it wasn't planned. Bush can only cope with planned 9/11 things.

[rateyes]

4. eating cake, and

fiddling while Rome burns.

[Inland]

6. Its the freeptard ideology at work.

Republicans run for office on the argument that private enterprise does better than government.

When in office, they prove it to be true, by fucking up most things and just abandoning the rest.

[Horse with no Name]

7. Well to be fair

He left his tricycle in Crawford and had to have SOMETHING to do.:shrug:

[Field Of Dreams]

8. Probably not a dry pretzel for Bush in all of New Orleans

Good or bad depending upon how you look at it.

[Proud2BAmurkin]

9. He's gonna fly in on a fighter jet

be patient

[LiberalEsto]

10. With a roll of socks in his crotch?

Not again!

[12345]

24. now, that made me smile.

first time all day. thanks

[LunaSea]

11. practicin...

for a singalong...

[myrna minx]

40. OMG-the guitar has the presidential SEAL on it?

Boy, how pathetic that he really requires all of that validation. Does his TP have the seal on it!?! That is sooooo dumb! He couldn't possible pick up a regular ol gee-tar, his precious lady lady hands can only touch a gee-tar with the PRESIDENTIAL SEAL on it. That is soooo lame!

[VOX]

12. Home Depot was a BIG * supporter in 2003-04. They even provided a venue

for one of his phony little staged talks about the economy.

http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=1600
Dec. 4, 2003
Presidential Mystery Solved: Why Bush Is Stopping at Home Depot
Bush Rewards Generous GOP Donor with Visit to Maryland Store on Friday; Energy Bill Includes $48 Million Tax Break that Benefits the Giant Retailer

WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Bush will make two stops in Maryland on Friday. The first is an exclusive, big-ticket fundraiser in Baltimore, where he is expected to add another million dollars to his massive campaign war chest. Then he’ll deliver a speech on the economy to workers at a Home Depot in nearby Halethorpe.

Bush’s appearance at the home improvement behemoth has left the locals a bit baffled. On Wednesday, The Sun in Baltimore ran a story on the president’s upcoming visit to the town of 20,000 in southwest Baltimore County. Titled "A Presidential Mystery," the article confirmed Bush’s itinerary but concluded that "nobody seems to know why" he’s going to Halethorpe’s Home Depot.

Research by Public Citizen suggests the president’s visit is yet another way to reward the nation’s second-largest retailer for its generosity to the Bush campaign and the Republican Party. Home Depot employees and their families have given $1.5 million to the GOP since 1999, according to data provided to Public Citizen by the Center for Responsive Politics.

During that time, no candidate has benefited from Home Depot’s largesse more than Bush. The total includes $907,950 in mostly "soft money" donations to the Republican National Committee before such giving was outlawed by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). So far this year, Home Depot employees and the company political action committee have contributed $31,000 to the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.
<snip>

[Mutley]

13. They're probably better off without him.

Remember all the craziness when he went to FL last year?

[ultraist]

31. I agree. They are better off without him.

It costs a city quite a lot for a Pres to visit and local police and officials have to devote time to before and during the visit. They need to focus on disaster relief, not *.

[Viking12]

14. He's looking to cash in on the disaster

at taxpayer expense.

[jmowreader]

17. You know if it wasn't for Home Depot, there would be price gouging

Bernie Marcus, one of the founders of Home Depot, singlehandedly ended the building-products industry's longstanding practice of price gouging after natural disasters.

The day after Hurricane Andrew hit, Bernie went to his computer and got a complete list of vendors servicing The Home Depot. He then picked up his telephone and called each one, informing them that he knew exactly what every item we sell cost two weeks before the hurricane and that if any item we purchased during that time was billed to us at a higher price, after the disaster was over we would never again do business with that vendor.

Then he instituted a policy that freezes prices in the stores at what they were two weeks before the disaster.

Then he put up big banners informing the public that our prices were the same as they were before the hurricane hit.

This had the desired ripple effect--no one at the retail level wanted to try to price-gouge, not with the knowledge that the biggest vendor has announced that they aren't doing it.

A couple of vendors tried ol' Bernie out. We have not done business with them since.

And this, my DU friends, is why Joe Homeowner in Metairie isn't going to pay $32 a sheet for 7/16" OSB.

Actually, what Nardelli is doing is in line with one of our core principles, Take Care of our Own. In a couple of days, the alert will go out to all the stores to send a handful of associates to the disaster area. We will work (and camp out on the floor in the main lumber aisle, to free up relief services for those who need it) so that our fellow associates can get their lives back together. A handful doesn't sound like much--each store is generally asked to send five good associates--but when you've got 1800 stores and there are maybe 25 Home Depots in the disaster area (there are nine in Louisiana and nine in Mississippi), we'll have plenty. We'll probably have enough to send associates out to help with the cleanup. If they ask for volunteers, I'm going.

[Viking12]

18. Yeah, sounds like a swell guy that Nardelli

:puke:

ISAKSON, JOHN HARDY (R) $2000
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE (R) $20,000
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE (R) $25,000
BUSH, GEORGE W (R) $2000

[UncleSepp]

21. Because he donates to Republicans, we can't say anything else?

The world isn't black and white. People do some good and some bad in this world. What kind of people would we be if we can only post the bad things about someone who does something we disagree with? The same kind of people who can only tolerate good things said about someone we do agree with?

[Viking12]

26. Of course he's doing this out of the good of his heart...

..and not for corporate PR.

:sarcasm:

[UncleSepp]

43. So what? Why isn't as important as what. Will it help, or not?

You can put that sarcasm tag away. Perhaps DU needs a "just plain mean-spirited and bitter" tag to replace it.

[jmowreader]

37. Yeah, and he cancelled the longevity bonus program too

Bernie and Arthur set up this thing where you got a bonus for working for us a long time. You got two months' pay at two years, then at every five-year anniversary you got $1000 for each year of service. Our training captain has been with the company 17 years, and two years ago she got handed a $15,000 check.

The first thing this fuckhead did was eliminate the bonus for new associates.

But even a Republican can do the right thing in an emergency situation, and Nardelli did the right thing. I still don't like the SOB, but he did good here.

[WiseButAngrySara]

19. Good luck if you do go, and thanks SO much for posting this...very

interesting read and perspective.

[jmowreader]

27. If I do go, I know the first things I'm putting in the truck

We'll probably take our older Load n Go truck; we have two now, one we use for store business and a new one we rent out.

First order of business: get the rental generator and all four of the rental trash pumps. A trash pump is a water pump made to pass big hunks of crap; these have six-inch hoses on both sides of them. These trash pumps have five-horse Honda engines on them, so as long as we're putting gas in them and keeping the oil up, they should run all through the operation. These aren't big enough to pump out a Home Depot, but they're plenty large enough to pump out someone's basement, and that's the idea. We won't need the generator for the store, because all Home Depots have 150kW natural gas generators, but if we've got to go help with the relief effort, it's very hard to run power tools in a place that doesn't have electricity unless you bring your own.

Second order of business: Grab all my tools. I've got enough tools to go in the carpentry business, and if I walk into a disaster area that's what they'll have me doing.

Third order of business: Get the store-use gas grill.

Last order of business before leaving: Buy a brick of film. We'll need it to document the devastation wrought upon the store.

And yes, one of the most important "tools" I'm taking is my gas mask. You know how much mold there's gonna be floating around that place.

[WiseButAngrySara]

29. Good luck and bless you...I hope you go. NO needs people like you

right now. I wish I could be there as well.

[Berserker]

22. Fuck Home Depot

They are as bad or worse than Walmart. When Home Depot moves into an area they also have their own crews that install everything they sell and this hurts the little contractors in the area. And before you stick up for these super store bastards how would you like them to compete with your job and you lose your income? Small contractors can't compete because they can't buy their material at Wholesale!

[jmowreader]

35. Are you certain you know what you're talking about?

Being that I'm slightly more familiar with Home Depot installs than you, let me explain how the Home Depot Services system works.

We run three install programs:

Sell, Furnish and Install (SF&I): Home Depot Services has an estimator for these products. The estimator brings out samples, you choose the items you want installed and Home Depot Services does the work. The only products in my area that are SF&I are siding, roofing and windows. The SF&I siding contractor in this area is a Raleigh-area vinyl siding company that was hanging aluminum before vinyl siding existed, the window contractor is a local out of Chapel Hill and the roofing contractor comes from Goldsboro.

Having said that, all of which is true, there is (or at least was) one SF&I product that is installed by a crew that comes from way out of area--decks. The Home Depot installed deck is (or at least was--the photos of the installed decks in the last sales flyer don't look like the deck we have in front of the store) made by Universal Forest Products at a factory in South Carolina. It's completely modular. The deck comes in disassembled on a truck and three workers assemble it on site. I think they're changing to site-built decks because the modular deck looks like shit and no one likes it. If that happens, we'll be calling the local deck contractors to apply to work for us.

Furnish and Install (F&I): Someone comes into the store and purchases an item, and an install. We hand the product to the installer, who is a local contractor, to be installed. Let me repeat that: Home Depot F&I installers are local contractors. Now understand, we don't just open the phone book and go "that one," there is a process they have to go through to become an installer. They need to provide us a list of people they've done whatever it is they're trying to do for us so we can inspect it, they need $2 million in general liability insurance (the industry standard is $1 million), they have to be in business for a certain number of years and they have to be a good stable company. There's a reason we don't just show up with a truckload of illegal immigrants and start hanging doors all over town: our biggest customer base is contractors, and if we start competing with our customers they'll go elsewhere. (Incidentally, we're thinking about building entire homes, and when we do that we'll follow the F&I lead we've already established and hire local contractors.) This is almost everything we install--doors, kitchens, you name it. We are starting a grassroots movement to get windows moved to F&I.

Install: Basically the same thing as F&I, except that the customer takes the product to his home and the installer meets it there. The only install-only products I can think of are faucets and garage door openers.

Contractors like working with Home Depot for one simple reason: they make at least as much money working on Home Depot jobs as they do working on their own jobs, and they don't have to sell a thing. Our door installer, who is Economy Repair Service, says he would much rather work for us than on jobs he sells, since in this area you'll do three free estimates for every one paying job. The other two will either defer the work, will shop his bids (and around here "we'll beat any deal" is the most popular motto for home-improvement contractors) or will use his bid to know what materials to buy so their buddy can do the work for a six-pack. If he installs a door for The Home Depot, someone in an orange apron has already sold the customer, and all he has to do is install.

[SoCalDem]

16. CAKE !!!!! you forgot the CAKE..oh.. and the golf

[spinbaby]

20. I don't want * in New Orleans

He and his entourage would just disrupt the rescue efforts.

[LiberalEsto]

28. They could use * to plug a levee

sandbags, dirtbags... what's the difference?

[Nikki Stone 1]

25. Does Home Depot have a contract with FEMA or DHS?

WOuld explain the guy's presence

[ultraist]

30. Likely HD does have gov contracts and they are going to make a killing

That's why the Pres is down there involved. It's big money for his corp.

[jmowreader]

38. We have a GSA schedule

A GSA schedule means that, for expenditures under a certain amount (and the certain amount is a hell of a lot), issuing bid requests is not required; if you need a drill, you can just go to Home Depot and buy one.

Neither Lowe's nor Wal-Mart has one.

Since FEMA and DHS both contract through GSA...there ya go.

[leesa]

32. Right. Home Depot. Gee. How much is THAT leech gonna cash in on

this disaster? That POS is best buds with the GOP whores.

[Cleita]

34. Oh, yes. n/t

[Cleita]

33. Prez of Home Depot trying to assess how much money they

are going to make. Unless * gets contracts for his cronies, there is no money to be made.

[jmowreader]

39. We are going to lose our ass over this thing, and it's all gonna be fuel

I know what Nardelli's doing down there now. I asked.

Nardelli took an entourage with him--the lumber global product merchant (GPM), the building materials GPM, the flooring GPM and the millwork GPM. A Global Product Merchant is a cross between a head buyer and a departmental vice president. They went down to estimate the amount of product--specifically, dimensional lumber, 7/16" OSB, 15/32" CDX plywood and all subfloor products, siding, any roofing and insulation products, all kinds of flooring materials, plus windows, doors and moulding--we're going to have to send to the Katrina area.

Because of the size and scope of this disaster, we're going to have to pull materials not only from stores and distribution centers, plus manufacturers' warehouses, but from foreign countries as well. The people in Louisiana and Mississippi are going to learn about 12mm plywood and metric-size shingles the hard way. (However, they are gonna be installing some pretty roof decks, man; that European plywood is fantastic!)

All's well and good so far. We can call Han Zhang Lumber in Shanghai, China, Canfor in British Columbia, or Sodra in Monsteras, Sweden, and just clean them out. No one else in the world is gonna be building shit for the next two years, but we can get the materials.

Now throw in our absolute no-gouging policy. We do not and will not raise the price of materials during natural disasters. Which means that we are probably going to buy plywood for $10 per sheet, stick a buck and a half worth of fuel to get it from Germany to Louisiana, drop it on the floor and put a $10.95 price tag on it. Do the math: losing 55 cents per sheet on each of the 29 million sheets of plywood we'll sell during this disaster means we made HOW much money?

And besides, the products you need to recover from a hurricane have very little markup on them even in quiet times.

[SidDithers]

41. Thanks for the rational answers in this thread...nt

Sid

[Hubert Flottz]

36. Selling his stay the course bullshit!

Selling WAR!

[crispini]

42. GAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's all.