Jake Blumgart on why the aerospace giant is really ditching Washington workers:

As you've probably heard, last week Boeing infuriated local labor leaders and disappointed our state's politicians by deciding to open up a second 787 production line in South Carolina. While the company says this wasn't an anti-labor move and politicians like Governor Christine Gregoire have tried to spread the blame around so that no one's fully at fault, it's hard to read this as anything but a blatant power play by Boeing against the local machinists' union—whose members build the majority of the company's aircraft.

Relations between Boeing and the machinists have been acrimonious of late, with strikes accompanying four of the past seven contract negotiations. So the choice of Charleston over Everett can basically be interpreted as the new managerial line: Fuck you, machinists.

Read the whole thing, including Blumgart's demolition of the official Boeing company line, HERE.

Two men who claim the soft drink and snack maker stole their idea for a new drink — bottled water — sued PepsiCo in Wisconsin and won a $1.26 billion default judgment last month when the company didn't respond.

PepsiCo wants the court to toss the award or at least give it a chance to fight the accusations.

PepsiCo says it wasn't aware of the lawsuit until about a week after the award. And it says it should not have been served the lawsuit in North Carolina, where it is incorporated, but in Purchase, N.Y., where it is based.

The company says its response was also delayed when a secretary failed to act on letters relating to the case.

h/t: Abe Nielsen and nytimes.com

HuffPo reports:

The world's largest retailer wants to keep its customers even after they die.

Wal-Mart has started selling caskets on its Web site at prices that undercut many funeral homes, long the major seller of caskets.

The move follows a similar one by discount rival Costco, which also sells caskets on its site.

Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., quietly put up about 15 caskets and dozens of urns on its Web site last week.

Prices range from $999 for models like "Dad Remembered" and "Mom Remembered" steel caskets to the mid-level $1,699 "Executive Privilege."

And now for a line from one of the greatest poems of the 19th century, The Communist Manifesto:

All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.

Reason #1: You're lazy.
Reason #2: They know a "win-win-win-win-win-win" situation when they see it.
Reason #3: Not scared of pulling in some serious buckage.
Reason #4: Suuuuuuuweet!
Reason #5: Wait a second… I'm pretty sure a couple of these "teens" are actually 47. LAME!!

There's a great little study titled "The Rural Brain Drain" over here. It's about how the smartest people are fleeing small towns and not returning.

Our year and a half spent interviewing the more than 200 young people who had attended the town's high school in the late 1980s and early 1990s led us to categorize our young Iowans according to the defining traits of where their lives had taken them by their 20s and 30s. The largest group, approximately 40 percent, consisted of the working-class "stayers," struggling in the region's dying agro-industrial economy; about one in five became the collegebound "achievers," who often left for good; just 10 percent included the "seekers" who join the military to see what the world beyond offers; and the rest were the "returners," who eventually circled back to their hometowns, only a small number of whom were professionals we call "high fliers." What surprised us most was that adults in the community were playing a pivotal part in the town's decline by pushing the best and brightest young people to leave, and by underinvesting in those who chose to stay, even though it was the latter that were the towns' best chance for a future.

It's a long article that includes some solutions for the problem. You should read the whole thing.

As if this is an important story: "Identity-theft victim meets her identity thief."

Back in January, Michelle McCambridge found herself staring into the face of the woman who stole her identity.

Only a week earlier, she learned that someone had taken out credit cards in her name and racked up thousands in charges. A federal agent had shown her a surveillance photo. But the image didn't ring a bell.

Now the woman in thick-rimmed glasses was standing there at McCambridge's women's-casual counter at J.C. Penney at Southcenter, asking to open a credit account.

McCambridge's heart lept. She excused herself and secretly got the store's security crew to train their cameras on the woman.

And in those few minutes, the 23-year-old retail clerk and college student set in motion a federal investigation that has brought down what authorities say is a prolific ring of ID thieves responsible for victimizing at least 39 people.

Capitalism enters the underworld:

(NYT) After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one.

The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.

The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.