Wal-Mart and Salem Communications have severed ties with two entities run by pastor Bradlee Dean, who made headlines last week for a controversial prayer before the Minnesota House of Representatives. David Brauer reports that AM 1280 The Patriot, owned by Christian broadcaster Salem Communications, dropped Dean’s “Sons of Liberty” radio show, and Nick Pinto writes that Wal-Mart has told Dean’s ministry, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, that it can no longer fundraise in the parking lots of its Minnesota locations.

MinnPost’s Brauer notes that Dean was fired from AM 1280 before he gave his controversial speech before the House.

The station pulled Dean after he engaged in a six-minute song mocking African Americans and then likened President Obama to Osama bin Laden.

“For a minister to do that made no sense,” station manager Ron Stone told MinnPost.

Dean is in talks to move to Clear Channel owned KTLK, but that station says that Dean would have to make changes to his show.

City Pages’ Pinto spoke with Wal-Mart about the group’s fundraising activities in front of that retailer’s Minnesota locations, and Wal-Mart said that the ministry falsified information in its application to raise funds at the stores.

“They registered their request to solicit outside the store using a false name,” Walmart spokeswoman Ashley Hardie said. “As soon as we learned the group’s true identity, they were asked to leave.”

Word of Dean’s fundraising at Wal-Mart stores came to a head on Tuesday after Sally Jo Sorenson of Bluestem Prairie noticed them outside the Hutchinson Wal-Mart and attempted to ask ministry employees questions about their fundraising. The ministry refused to answer.

The message “If you see something, say something,” will be plastered on television and posters throughout Los Angeles’ Staples Center this weekend at the NBA All-Star game as part of a recent partnership announced Tuesday between the National Basketball Association and the Department of Homeland Security. Officials said the campaign partnership will “tip off” during the NBA’s “Jam Session” events.

The initiative is a move to ask Americans to help local law enforcement by keeping their eyes peeled for “suspicious activity,” DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and NBA Commissioner David Stern told press at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. The emphasis toward civilian “suspicious activity reporting” has surged in recent years, but advertising campaigns and high-profile partnerships have really begun to take off.

In December, DHS joined forces with the Mall of America and with Wal-Mart, launching the “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign initially in 230 Wal-Mart stores, with a target of 588 sites in 27 states. A short video plays at select checkout stations, telling shoppers to call local police if they see something suspicious. (The term “suspicious,” by the way, is rarely elaborated on or defined by DHS in campaign messages.)

Moving on to sports, DHS partnered with the NFL with its campaign at the Super Bowl in Dallas early this month. And now the NBA.

“We hope that this partnership will emphasize basically that security is a shared responsibility,” said NBA Commissioner David Stern at yesterday’s press event. “We think that sports is a terrific way to send messages, and to get people who go to events to focus on this very important message.”

Or maybe Napolitano is just a big sports fan.

“Our partnership with the NBA to bring the ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ campaign to professional basketball events throughout the nation is a vital part of our efforts to ensure the safety of players, employees and fans,” she told the press.

Inquiries have begun over how effective these campaigns are at protecting the country from terrorism. With sports fans and budget-conscious shoppers reporting “suspicious” activities every 10 minutes, does that help the security agencies or overwhelm the system?

David Rittgers, a legal policy analyst for the Cato Institute, said he thinks the national security agencies are overwhelmed with information.

“While there is value in getting a person on the street to be aware and report suspicious activities, you can also create too many false positives,” Rittgers said.

Rittgers said the Federal Bureau of Investigations receives about 700 messages a day, and the National Counterterrorism Center receives about 10,000 pieces of information daily. Clogging the system with even more reports of indiscriminate “suspicious activities” won’t necessarily bring these agencies closer to the information they need to prevent terrorist plots.

“People talk about connecting dots,” he said. “But it’s knowing which dots to connect that has value. …. The commitment to simply collect all the dots might not be as useful as a lot of people would propose.”

For example: “It’s not illegal to purchase a ski mask, it’s not illegal to purchase a gun, it’s not illegal to sit outside a bank. But it’s when you put those all together.”

The measure of success is still to be seen, but meanwhile the money is flowing.

“If You See Something, Say Something” are now being posted all over the country, according the DHS: on 9,000 federal buildings nationwide, at the Mall Of America, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Amtrak, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and the general aviation industry.

DHS allocated $2.9 million for the campaign in 2009, but an official told CNSNews.com that the agency has only spent $500,000 on the campaign to date, saying it is focusing its efforts on partnerships –- outsourcing security, if you will. And while Napolitano told the network the campaign has resulted in the launch of several investigations, she said it’s still difficult to measure whether it will effectively deter would-be terrorists.

Tom Emmer. Photo: Wikipedia

After providing an outside political organization with $150,000 to run ads for Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, the Target Corporation has come to symbolize the dangers posed by the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. The corporation’s CEO issued an apology letter after LGBT and immigration advocates protested the donation. National organizations such as MoveOn.org have turned against the company and the controversy was highlighted on MSNBC. For the company that was often know to progressives as the labor and LGBT friendly alternative to Wal-Mart, it has been a rough two weeks.

Despite the heat — and calls of boycott — Target has faced, campaign finance disclosures reveal that other Minnesota corporations have continued to give funds to MN Forward, the independent expenditure committee that ran the pro-Emmer ad. Since the last filing period in the middle of July, six corporations or trade associations have contributed $345,000 to MN Forward. The group of donors cover a wide array of industries and include well known local institutions such as Red Wing Shoes and Holiday, a local gas station chain. (Neither company returned phone calls for comment this afternoon.)

These donations may or may not be directly related to Emmer. MN Forward released a new list of endorsements Thursday that included a mix of Democrats and Republicans, though the Emmer commercial is still the only ad the organization has produced. With these latest donations, MN Forward has raised over $1.1 million. Previous corporate donors included Best Buy and beauty salon business Regis Corporation.

The new donations since the last filing period:

Holiday Companies: $25,000

Cold Spring Granite Company: $35,000

Red Wing Shoe Company, Inc.: $50,000

Pentair: $125,000

Federated Insurance: $100,000

Insurance Federation of MN: $10,000

Photo: The UpTake

Rep. Michele Bachmann said she had no comment when asked whether corporations are people, as the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled. She did say that pending health care reform legislation is “regulation on steroids” and decried “the dirty way that health care bill was put together, behind closed doors.”

Bachmann appeared at the State Capitol in St. Paul Monday with Minnesota Republican leaders to preview GOP proposals in Congress for ground rules on the health-care debate (video via The UpTake).

Pressed by a reporter about her repeated labeling of health-care reform as a government takeover, Bachmann explained that because the legislation contains federal mandates, “that is a tax,” and that other government involvement in medical decision-making meant that “that in effect is a takeover.”

Next question: Isn’t that simply government regulation? Bachmann’s response: “It’s regulation on steroids, to the point of government takeover.”

There will be “a tremendous cost to Minnesota if this government takeover goes forward,” Bachmann warned.

One of those costs is in jobs, she said. She repeated her oft-made claim that Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, estimated health care reform would cost 5.5 million jobs. Politifact found that wasn’t what Romer has said. Instead she has predicted a half-million new jobs from health-care reform.

To Bachmann, news that Wal-Mart will farm out the jobs of more than 10,000 workers at Sam’s Club is dire: “When Sam’s Club employees are being cut, you know that the heart of country, our economy, is hurt and in pain.”

Creative Commons photo by James Moore via Flickr

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789 has withdrawn charges of labor law violations by Wal-Mart against employees at its store in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood. The union, which is currently engaged in an organizing campaign at Wal-Mart outlets throughout the Twin Cities, accused the world’s largest retailer last month of illegally threatening to terminate workers who supported unionizing.

According to Doug Mork, organizing director for Local 789, four of the six workers slated to testify before the National Labor Relations Board backed out. At that point, UFCW wasn’t sure it had a strong enough case to proceed and withdrew the charges before the federal agency. Mork believes intimidation tactics by Wal-Mart were a factor in why the workers ultimately decided against testifying.

“It’s been a little bit hard to figure out,” he said. “It’s not quite so simple as to say they were scared off. I think that’s a piece of it.”

Despite the decision to drop the charges, Mork believes it will not be the last time they seek redress from the NLRB for Wal-Mart’s hardball anti-union tactics. “I suspect there will be more charges to follow,” he said.

Local 789 is part of a nationwide effort by the UFCW to organize workers at the country’s largest employer. The campaign, targeting more than 100 stores in 17 states, was prompted in part by the presence of a more labor-friendly administration in Washington, D.C., and to generate momentum for passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

Wal-Mart is arguably the country’s most notoriously anti-union company. In the past it has taken dramatic steps to keep collective bargaining agreements out of its shops. After workers in Canada voted to authorize a union in 2004, for instance, the company responded by closing the store.

According to Doug Mork, organizing director for Local 789, Wal-Mart has been engaging in standard, anti-union behavior since the campaign’s inception earlier this year. But in the second week of June a team of corporate representatives was dispatched to the Twin Cities from the company’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., to help smother any organizing momentum.

“They really turned up the heat inside the stores and really started to hammer folks,” Mork said.

He believes the dialed-up efforts are a reflection of Local 789′s recent successes in convincing workers that union representation is the correct choice. Employees at eight Wal-Mart stores in the Twin Cities have so far signed off on cards indicating that they want to organize, according to the union.

“We’ve seen considerable and steady forward progress,” Mork said, “not only in our core, active stores from the beginning, but now just in the last few weeks we’ve had a couple of new stores break lose and start to get more active.”

According to Martin Ostheus, regional director for the National Labor Relations Board, an investigator has been assigned to scrutinize the allegations against Wal-Mart. Ostheus expects a ruling on whether the charges have merit to be made by mid-August. There are no other complaints against Wal-Mart currently pending with the NLRB’s Minneapolis office.

Daphne Moore, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, says that the company is looking into the allegations. “We’re just learning about the filing,” she says. “We’ll review it and respond after that review. Generally we provide our managers with training on how to comply with labor laws and we also make sure that our associates know their rights.”

Moore also questions the union’s claim of growing worker support for unionization. “We have noticed that the UFCW has been working harder in its attempts to get Wal-Mart associates to sign union cards, but we don’t think our associates have any reason to be more interested than before.”

Mork believes Local 789′s efforts will eventually result in elections in Wal-Mart stores to decide whether workers want to have union representation, but he declines to predict when that might transpire. Up until then, he expects the retailing behemoth to continue to fight such efforts vigorously.

“In the past obviously Wal-Mart’s been tremendously effective in scaring the hell out of people and getting them to back down,” he said.

But galavanized by a more labor-friendly administration in Washington, the UFCW is once again looking to bring the company’s 1.4 million U.S. workers into the fold. The union is focusing on roughly 100 Wal-Mart stores in 17 states, including Minnesota. Yesterday UFCW Local 789 held a rally at the Wal-Mart store in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood:

Yet for the last five years, the United Food and Commercial Workers — the largest union in the country representing retail workers — has largely eschewed organizing drives aimed at Wal-Mart workers.

After years of unsuccessfully seeking a toehold within the retail chain, the union simply decided that under current labor laws trying to organize workers in the face of fierce corporate resistance was futile.

“Workers at Wal-Mart have wanted to organize for a long, long time and have made efforts in various places,” says Doug Mork, organizing director for UFCW Local 789. “But there just hasn’t been a real possibility. If their employers have been committed enough and capitalized enough to fight them to the mat on it, workers simply haven’t had the opportunity to organize under existing labor law.”

But the UFCW now vows that its capitulation to Wal-Mart is over. The union has started organizing campaigns in 17 states, including Minnesota, targeting more than 100 stores. The impetus for the organizing drive: the new administration in the White House and the possibility of passing the Employee Free Choice Act. Under the proposed legislation, workers would join a union after more than half of the workers sign a card indicating support. Under present law, an election must be held to determine whether a majority of workers are in favor of joining the union.

President Obama has consistently voiced support for the Employee Free Choice Act. UFCW organizers are utilizing cards with a picture of the popular president to entice workers to sign off on unionization. The cards include a 2007 quote from Obama specifically calling out Wal-Mart. “I don’t mind standing up for workers and letting Wal-Mart know they need to pay a decent wage and let folks organize,” he said at the time.

But the proposed legislation has floundered as the economy has tanked. President Obama has not made it a top legislative priority, and some former supporters, including Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark) and Arlen Specter (D-Penn.), have turned against it.

UFCW’s Wal-Mart campaign is part of an effort by organized labor to build support for the Employee Free Choice Act and apply pressure to Congress.

“Every union has been lifting up clear examples of where current law has not worked well,” says Mork. “Wal-Mart is clearly one of the examples for the UFCW. There’s adequate evidence that all sorts of people can look and say, ‘Yes, workers at Wal-mart wanted to organize.’ There’s been clear energy and interest in the past, and they’ve been able to completely shut it down.”

In the Twin Cities, UFCW has had discussions with workers at nine stores, according to Mork. But it’s difficult to say whether the union is gaining significant traction. Mork is reluctant to specify exactly how many workers have so far signed cards indicating support for joining the union.

“I don’t want to give Wal-Mart any information that they don’t have in terms of what’s happening here,” he says. “We’re certainly not a majority anywhere yet. But we’ve got stores where significant numbers of folks have signed.”

Wal-Mart seems unfazed by the campaign. “We have noticed that the UFCW has been working harder in its attempt to get Wal-Mart associates to sign union cards,” says Daphne Moore, a spokesperson for the company. “We don’t think our associates have any reason to be more interested than before.”

However, the retailer is notorious for the lengths it will go to keep organized labor out of its stores. When meat cutters at a Texas store voted to unionize a decade ago, the company responded by eliminating meat cutters from 180 stores in six states. After workers at a Wal-Mart in Canada voted to join a union in 2004, the company shuttered the store.

But less dramatic tactics are the backbone of Wal-Mart’s crusade to keep unions out of its stores, as documented in a 2007 report by Human Rights Watch. Managers are given extensive training in union prevention techniques. New workers are required to watch anti-union videos. There is a union hotline that managers are directed to call at the first hint of organizing so that advice can be dispensed directly from the corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Nelson Lichtenstein, author of the forthcoming book The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business, says such tactics have now become standard for national retail chains. “It’s no longer extraordinary,” says Lichtenstein, who teaches labor history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Now everyone does it. Target does exactly the same thing.”

While these tactics have undoubtedly played a major role in keeping organized labor out of Wal-Mart stores, some observers also argue that unions haven’t made a persuasive case to workers.

“Why is it that workers that everybody acknowledges are not really that well paid are also not willing to vote to put a union in place at Wal-Mart?” asks Charles Fishman, author of the The Wal-Mart Effect. “That’s the $12-an-hour question. … What it says is people don’t think the union has more to offer them than Wal-Mart.”

Fishman points out that if every Wal-Mart worker received a $2 an hour raise, it would eat up all of the company’s $12 billion in profits.

“If Wal-Mart were to be unionized, the stores might look the same,” he says. “The prices wouldn’t be the same, and the way the place operated wouldn’t be the same. Because there’s no room in there to be quote-unquote more generous to people on benefits or pay or staffing without changing the operation.”

After years of unsuccessful battles with Wal-Mart, the UFCW has been content in recent years to concentrate on bloodying the company’s image. The main vehicle for this effort has been the “Wake-Up Wal-Mart” marketing campaign. Through a Web site, protests and other communications tools, the UFCW has tarred Wal-Mart as a corporate behemoth that treats its workers like dirt and routinely violates labor laws.

There is some evidence that the campaign has been successful in affecting consumer behavior and instigating changes in Wal-Mart’s personnel policies. For example, the company has twice in recent years altered its health-insurance policies to make them somewhat more affordable for workers. And in December it settled 63 lawsuits alleging that Wal-Mart failed to pay employees their rightful wages for $352 million.

“They’ve had a positive impact, particularly on health insurance and particularly on the notion that somebody’s watching Wal-Mart,” says Fishman, about the “Wake Up” campaign. “We all know how we do the dishes, clean the kitchen, fold the laundry, rake the leaves if someone’s standing there with their arms crossed watching us.”

Now the UFCW hopes to capitalize on that groundwork by organizing workers.

Peter Rachleff, a labor historian at Macalester College, believes the time is ripe for the UFCW to take another run at Wal-Mart.

“Their anticipation of EFCA getting passed and their estimation of a changed political and economic climate all make this a time — not necessarilly a good time or an easy time — but a necessary time to shift their strategy and try to organize Wal-Mart,” he says.

But that doesn’t mean he believes they’ll be successful. “There‘s a lot at stake,” he says. “I’m not optimistic.”

Lichtenstein is even more blunt in assessing the UFCW‘s chances. “They know it will fail,” he says. “It’s designed to fail.”

But even failure can have an upside. “Demonstrating that failure shows we need something new,” Liechtenstein says. “We need a new law.”

But by Bloomberg News’ account, the deal helped Wal-Mart avoid a potentially much bigger price tag of $2 billion which could have followed from an order Judge Robert King Jr. issued in the case last summer.

America, as you prepare to watch this fantastically bizarre coupling of contenders on Thursday, I submit to you yet another study in contrasts–and perhaps the most striking yet.

In late-August of 1999 Joe Biden, acting in his capacity as ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was in Kosovo making headlines with a blunt warning to the Kosovo Liberation Army: disarm under the terms of a NATO agreement or lose the support of the U.S. Congress “overnight.” Back at home, he was fighting to keep Bill Clinton’s nuclear test ban treaty.

Sarah Palin was also making headlines in late-August of 1999–with tears in her eyes at a similarly exotic and distant local: the Wasilla Wal-Mart.

The headline from the Anchorage Daily News was “Wal-Mart rings up wedding; working couple walk down retail aisle after tying the knot in Wasilla store.”

Here’s an excerpt from the story:

He worked in the pets department. She was a cashier. A romance blossomed. And when it came time to say “I do,” they chose — where else? — an aisle next to menswear.

Jake McCowen and Rosalyn Ryan exchanged vows last week at the place where they met, work and fell in love: the Wasilla Wal-Mart.

A crowd of 200, including passengers from a tour bus and several dozen curious shoppers, watched the two employees tie the knot in an afternoon ceremony officiated by Wasilla Mayor Sarah Palin.

“It was so sweet,” said Palin, who fought back tears during the nuptials. “It was so Wasilla.”

Thursday ought to be interesting. There is no reason a politician couldn’t go from weeping at a Wal-Mart wedding to emerging victorious from a vice presidential debate in the span of nearly a decade. Why not? After all, who knows what she’s learned in her study of foreign policy and other issues of national import over the years. One gets the impression, however, that maybe she’s only just begun…