The Daily Brief

A consortium led by SuperValu Markets has agreed, pending approval of shareholders and the Feds, to purchase Albertsons Stores for about $17.4bn – a huge increase over the $9.8bn figure of last year’s failed negotiations. Here’s the breakdown:

If the sale is completed, the company will be split in to three pieces.

– SuperValu will take control of a total of 1,124 stores, under the Acme, Bristol Farms, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, Albertsons and Star Markets brands. It would also operate a number of grocery/pharmacy combination stores. SuperValu would become the nation’s number two traditional grocer – with 2,656 stores in 48 states and the District of Columbia.

– CVS, Inc. will purchase about 700 stand-alone drugstores, which would be rebranded as CVS locations.

– A group led by Cerberus Capital Management will take over about 655 mostly underperforming stores – including the entire Dallas-Fort Worth, Northern California, Rocky Mountain and Southwestern regions. These stores carry the Albertsons and Super Saver flags, as well as some combo grocery/drug stores. Cerebrus will also buy 26 SuperValu stores in the Chicago area to ease possible anti-trust concerns.

Judging by the way SuperValu handles their existing stores, the Albertsons stores they take over will likely keep their identity and the same UCFW union employees. Distribution operations, however, will likely be consolidated, causing some lay-offs, with about 2000 distribution and headquarters jobs in Boise in particular jeopardy. By far the largest single part of SuperValu’s current operation is wholesale distribution.

Cerberus is a commerical property management company. Those stores will likely be gutted or leveled, with smaller independent operators moving in.

As you might guess, Albertsons CEO Larry Johnston is a horse’s ass to a lot of people in Boise today.

Let me state here, in prelude, my apologies to all of you out there who, like Sgt. Mom and myself, hold, or have held, second jobs as store clerks while you were/are in, as well as all of you whom, like Cpl. Blondie, were/are store clerks while growing into greater things.

That said, let me state as well my preconception that retail clerks are, by-and-large, the Deltas of the world – just one jump above ambling home from work every day mindlessly muttering “soma… soma.”

Well, a couple of decades ago, my current GF (an accountant) and I, in one of our innumerable midnight musings, were arguing the ethics of short change. The question before the court was, “if you were loading your groceries in the parking lot of a supermarket, and found you had a penny too much change, would you return it?” Her position was that morality dictated that you must. Mine was that economics said you would cost them (as well as yourself) far more than the value of the penny to transact the return.

Anyway, to bring this to date, I was just at the local Rite-Aid, and my bill came to $6.45. I had five loose Washingtons in my pocket, as well as a whole handful of change. I threw down the paper, and four quarters. And then I specifically counted out three dimes and three nickels.

The clerk then said “no – six forty-five,” and pushed back a dime and two nickels.

There were three people in line behind me: I took my purchase, the three coins, and left – muttering in my wake, “oh G_d, free me from this world of idiots.”

The Carnival of Homeschooling is in its third week. I haven’t followed this subject for many years. But back when I was an advocate for homeschooling (before the internet was a ubiquitous fact of life) one of the biggest things standing between parents interested in homeschooling, and then acting on that interest, was information.

Hat Tip: InstaPundit

The Manolo offers for you this Carnivale of Fashion Don’ts. Lots of “what were they thinking!?!?!?” stuff.

I am particularly encouraged that the tide seems to be turning on the distressed look.

But I beg to differ here: white court shoes are a classic.

Hat Tip: InstaPundit

This AP story sounds like par for the course:

“It is just flat out impossible and unrealistic to meet the prescriptive provisions of this law by 2008,” Betty Serian, a deputy secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, said in an interview.

Nebraska’s motor vehicles director, responding to the survey by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, said that to comply with Real ID her state “may have to consider extreme measures and possibly a complete reorganization.”

And a new record-sharing provision of Real ID was described by an Illinois official as “a nightmare for all states.”

“Can we go home now??” the official wrote.

[…]

The August survey by the motor vehicle administrators’ group, which has not been made public, asked licensing officials nationwide for detailed reports on what it will take to meet Real ID’s demands.

It was not meant to produce an overall estimate of the cost of complying with Real ID. But detailed estimates produced by a few states indicate the price will blow past a February 2005 analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, which estimated Congress would need to spend $100 million reimbursing states.

Pennsylvania alone estimated a hit of up to $85 million. Washington state projected at least $46 million annually in the first several years.

Separately, a December report to Virginia’s governor pegged the potential price tag for that state as high as $169 million, with $63 million annually in successive years. Of the initial cost, $33 million would be just to redesign computing systems.

It remains unclear how much funding will come from the federal government and how much the states will shoulder by raising fees on driver’s licenses.

“If you begin to look at the full ramifications of this, we are talking about billions and billions of dollars. Congress simply passed an unfunded mandate,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Every motorist in America is going to pay the price of this, of the Congress’ failure to do a serious exploration of the cost, the complexity, of the difficulty.”

I am not a big fan of the Real ID Act. But, on some things, you just have to ride the tide. That aside, I would guess that this whining by the several states, to say nothing of the ACLU, is blown way out of proportion.

The latest meme of the Jackasses is that it is necessary for the next person to rise to the Supremes to possess a similar judicial disposition as Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, to maintain the “ideological balance” of the court. This sort of broad, sweeping standard makes the “abortion rights” litmus test look positively Lilliputian.

Further, for the Dumbos to hold up Justice Antonin Scalia as the gold standard of “strict constructionism” is the height of absurdity. He is a social conservative activist, as extreme as the “liberal activist” judges the Dumbos so love to deride.

Personally, Alito troubles me. I see him as a “big government” conservative, who will do little to check intrusions on our civil rights. However, he reflects a certain “judicial modesty”, which makes me believe the new Court will follow the Congress, and the Constitution, rather than try to lead it.