Cesar Chavez Day

Cesar Chavez Day, It would be Cesar Chavez’s 85th birthday. Every year, his holiday is an opportunity for us to reflect on his legacy. But Cesar’s legacy is not just the thousands of lives he helped change, it’s also values that he stood for, and reminds us of our obligation to continue to champion those values wherever they are threatened, even today. We honor Cesar’s legacy every day we fight for justice for workers, when we march with them for change. That is why I will spend this Cesar Chavez Day at Pomona College, standing side by side with that college’s dining hall workers.

Through organizing, strikes, and boycotts with the United Farm Workers, men and women stepped out of the shadows and into the moral reckoning of an entire nation. The fact that the food we eat was harvested with suffering, transformed how Americans think about food. The movement work of the ’60s and ’70s continues to resound today in fields, supermarkets, and kitchens, as well as on the tables of millions of Americans.

Farm workers made gains through bravery, courage and solidarity. Like generations of immigrant workers who came before, the farm workers laid claim to the American Dream by founding a union of their own, to secure in a contract, fair wages, safe working conditions, and respect for their very humanity. And like those previous generations of workers who organized, the farm workers’ status as immigrants to this country was a vulnerability that growers used to intimidate, terrorize and divide them, just as textile mill owners had done the same to the men, women and children from Italy and Eastern Europe who they once relied on to be docile, silent and unwilling to protest.

Longtime Star Quarterback’s Big Gripe

Longtime Star Quarterback’s Big Gripe, The Donovan McNabb pity party continued on Friday when the former Philadelphia Eagles star said he was the most unfairly criticized quarterback in the history of the NFL.

Making himself out to be a football version of St. Paul, martyr McNabb made the comments during a 13-minute segment on ESPN’s “First Take.” While debating whether Tim Tebow should be on Twitter, Skip Bayless made the assertion that the New York Jets backup was the “the most unfairly, over-criticized quarterback in the history of this league.”

“Negative – I am,” McNabb interrupted. “I am. Nobody’s been criticized as much as I have.”

You want some cheese to go with that persecution complex? When was McNabb ever criticized by the mainstream press? He was rightly praised for being a top-tier NFL quarterback during his prime and was vehemently defended against any suggestion he wasn’t. The racial aspects of Rush Limbaugh’s comments aside, most*n*lysts also disagreed with his football take (that the defense carried Philadelphia). McNabb began his career 56-23, won a playoff game in five of his first six seasons and advanced to four straight NFC championship games. Even when he lost his first three, criticism was rarely lobbed his way. It was similar to how Peyton Manning rarely got called on his middling playoff record.

Then McNabb made the Super Bowl and frittered away much of the fourth quarter by huddling when his team was trying to make up a 10-point deficit. He reportedly vomited in the huddle during one of the drives. There were rumblings of McNabb’s late-game problems, but hardly a national uproar.

If Philadelphia fans were tough on him, that puts him in a special club reserved for every recent Philly athlete not named Chase Utley.

Why Walmart Is Worried About Amazon

Why Walmart Is Worried About Amazon, Five years ago, the world’s largest retail chain didn’t have to worry much about the world’s largest online mall. Only about a quarter of Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) customers shopped at Amazon.com (AMZN), according to data from researcher Kantar Retail. Today, however, half of Wal-Mart customers say they’ve shopped at both merchants. That’s leaving the mega-retailer-which long ago bested local brick-and-mortar merchandise stores and supermarkets across America-with a massive online competitor that is too tough to ignore.

Threatening Wal-Mart’s dominance are two trends: The discounter’s traditional customers-bargain hunters making less than $50,000 a year-are getting more tech-savvy, and more-affluent shoppers who began frequenting Wal-Mart during the recession are returning to Amazon as their finances improve. Amazon has moved into merchandise categories that Wal-Mart traditionally has sold, from diapers to vacuum cleaner bags. In its last fiscal year, Amazon posted 41 percent revenue growth, to $48.1 billion, vs. 8 percent at Wal-Mart. The chain’s 2011 online sales amounted to less than 2 percent of its $264 billion in U.S. revenue, says Kantar. “Amazon is always in our sights,” says Jeremy King, chief technology officer at the retailer’s @ WalmartLabs skunkworks in Silicon Valley. “My biggest issue is playing a catch-up game.”

In the last year Wal-Mart has increased its investment in its online business. The company has spent more than $300 million acquiring five tech firms since May and hired more than 300 engineers and code writers in the U.S. and India. Wal-Mart is also launching a program to allow the 20 percent of its customers without credit cards or bank accounts to make online purchases.

Winning Lotto Numbers

Winning Lotto Numbers, The record-setting $640-million-plus Mega Millions lottery jackpot numbers drawn Friday night: 2 – 4- 23 – 38 – 46, Megaball 23

The number of winners, if any, isn’t instantly known. Information on how many winning tickets were sold and in which states will be released overnight. The Pennsylvania Lottery website will have more information.

Across the country, Americans plunked down an estimated $1.5 billion on the longest of long shots: an infinitesimally small chance to win what could end up being the single biggest lottery payout the world has ever seen.

But forget about how the $640 million Mega Millions jackpot could change the life of the winner. It’s a collective wager that could fund a presidential campaign several times over, make a dent in struggling state budgets or take away the gas worries and grocery bills for thousands of middle-class citizens.

And it’s a cheap investment for the chance of a big reward, no matter how long the odds — 1 in 176 million.

For the states that participate, the money spent on lotto tickets doesn’t all end up as the winner’s personal fortune — much of it is used by states to fund education and other social service programs, which is why advocates promote the lottery. In Pennsylvania, it funds senior citizen programs.

Though the specifics vary among the 42 participating states and the District of Columbia, about half of ticket sales go into the actual jackpot. Another 35 percent goes to support government services and programs, while the rest funds lottery operating costs.

Who Won The Mega Millions

Who Won The Mega Millions, The unprecedented hysteria over the Mega Millions lottery, which teased Americans with its biggest jackpot in history on Friday night — a whopping $640 million — has finally concluded, at least for now. The Mega Millions group claims that three winners purchased the winning lottery tickets in Maryland, Illinois and Kansas; the winning numbers drawn on Friday night in Atlanta were 2, 4, 23, 38, 46, and the Mega Ball was 23.

“Three tickets matched all six numbers in the Friday, March 30, Mega Millions drawing,” Mega Millions said on its website. “Those tickets will split the jackpot, estimated at a record-shattering $640 million. Those tickets were bought in Illinois, Kansas and Maryland.”

If the lottery claimed a single winner, the ticketholder would claim about $462 million of the total $640 million, but after federal tax withholding, that number falls to about $347 million. If the money is split between three winners, each winner should claim about $115 million. Nonetheless, Mega Millions will be able to say it was responsible for the single biggest jackpot payout in the history of the lottery.

Sources say Mega Millions will eventually announce the winners on its website, but the winners will surely be discovered via the Internet before then.

The AP reported that Maryland lottery officials have announced early Saturday that the winning Mega Millions ticket was purchased at a convenience store in Baltimore County. Carole Everett, director of communications for the Maryland lottery, said it’s too early to know any other information about the lucky ticketholder.

Illinois sold a winning ticket in the small town of Red Bud, near St. Louis. The winner reportedly used a quick pick to select the numbers, according to Illinois Lottery spokesman Mike Lang. A winning ticket also was purchased in northeast Kansas, according to the Kansas Lottery website, but spokespeople for the Kansas Lottery offered no further details.

Man Survives Harrowing 10-day Ordeal

Man Survives Harrowing 10-day Ordeal, A 76-year-old diabetic Colorado man survived 10 days in the remote Nevada desert by melting snow and using skills he learned as a Boy Scout, but a friend who was with him and ventured away to get help died.

James Klemovich and Laszlo Szabo, 75, went to scope out some mines in the state when their car became stuck on a lonely road with no cell phone service, Klemovich’s wife, Joanne, said Thursday.

The men tried unsuccessfully to dislodge the car, and lit flares and started fires in hopes somebody would see them in northwestern Nevada’s Pershing County, an area where less than 7,000 people are spread over 6,000 square miles.

They used a towel in the car to strain ditch water and snow into water bottles, but, after four or five days, Szabo left to get help. Joanne Klemovich began to worry when several days passed without a phone call from her husband.

“I figured maybe they’d had an accident and they were stranded,” she said. “I thought maybe they were in a mine shaft. All kinds of things were going through my head.”

Joanne Klemovich said she was expecting the worst when authorities called Tuesday night to say her husband had been found by military personnel who were holding training exercises in the area.

“I thought it was bad news, but it was very good news,” she said by telephone from the couple’s home in Littleton, Colo. “I didn’t know what to even do or say.”

James Klemovich has diabetes, wears a pacemaker and had a triple bypass heart surgery, his wife said.

He told her he wasn’t panicking while he sat for days waiting for Szabo’s return, she said. He kept a journal, noting how much water he drank and what he did each day. And he wrote a letter each day for her.

Drinking regularly was likely the biggest factor in his survival despite the diabetes that could have sent his blood sugar dangerously out of whack, according to Rita Kalyani, who teaches endocrinology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

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