Wal Mart Narcs on Students Anti-Bush Poster
 

This is really hard to believe. Good to know what kind of Secret Service protection our tax dollars are paying for. Call the cops, he's criticizing the President

http://www.alternet.org/walmart/26503/#thumbtack

I find it hard to believe that George Bush cares about the thoughts of a non voting person.

And I also find it hard to believe this actually occured. One click will tell you that the site is "anti-walmart."

Besides, why haven't the secret service gone after Kanye for his little "George Bush doesn't care about black people" quote if they're all riled up over a poster.

I don't know what Wal-mart's policy is on reporting suspicious photos, but it's possible this was just a case of an overzealous employee.
Before I got a digital camera, I was always a little paranoid about who was looking at my film. You never knew who would looking through your private photos. It could even be Robin Williams for all you knew.

I wouldn't be surprised if this really did happen. A guy here had a bumper sticker with a picture of GWB wearing a crown...and the caption was Off with his Head!! A neighbor turned him in and the Secret Service was at his house shortly after.

As for the employee...my sister in law works for Walmart, and I think they use their discretion unless the picture is of an obviously illegal activity. I'll have to ask her for sure.

This item was carried in educational trade papers across the country, and given that they usually check their sources, I would wager that it's truthful.

That said, I dislike Wal-Mart anyways, I don't shop there, and I have no plans to shop there again.

The secret service doesn't alert the president every time they investigate a perceived threat to him. And just because they investigate it doesn't automatically mean the kid is going to the pokey. If someone reports a threat they have to check it out. I'm sure the investigators would be the first ones to admit that this was a bullshit call and a waste of their time.

"Off with his head" is technically saying they wish death upon him, which IS illegal. But the story in the original post seems to just be the case of a Wal-mart employee who thought it was an issue, and everyone else being afraid of being the person to sweep it under the rug...........

Perhaps nobody turned it in? This is simply because a Wally World employee turned it in. When something like that is turned in, the secret service has to check it out. In the town where I live an old guy years ago would get tanked up every Saturday and threaten to kill Jimmy Carter. He'd not get arrested for this, but whatever other mischief he got into would lead to his regular Otis Campbell act and the local cops would have to call the secret service nevertheless.

WTF happend to freedom of speech? I mean come on, did the freakin secret service have to come and check this out?

Man, this is another reason to why wal mart is evil.

Once the police decided to call the SS(love the irony of that), they have to check it out, so while the Walmart employee was over the top, the police had the final decision whether to persue it.
I seem to recall a woman, a grandmother, who had taken pictures of her naked toddler grandchild in the tub and was arrested on child pornography charges because the drugstore where she dropped them off called the police!!
Take your film to a photography store, always!! I had nude shots(midchest up) done of me holding my naked children when they were babies...I'd have been in jail had I taken those to a Walmart!

Hard to believe since it was on National Television, but may be

Didn't know that. Thanks.

Translated: One bored quasi-college student getting paid minimum wage with no hope of advancement looking for something interesting to do one lonely afternoon.

Wal*Mart = Nasty business at its worst because they get away with cheap ass wages, locking employees in stores overnight to work and hiring illegals by the truckload for even cheaper wages.

Their business practices suck sewer water.

This does not surprise me because they are an overzealous supporter of neo- cons. I can almost guarantee that had the picture been of Clinton nothing would have been done.

We are losing freedoms and people just keep letting shit like this happen and maybe complaining but not doing anything to stop it.

"When the people fear the government you have tyranny, when the government fears the people you have freedom" THOMAS JEFFERSON

Which do we have in the US today??????????????

ahh Both...

I think the people are in far more fear of the government, especially federal, then the government fears us.

I think it's very obvious in this current administration. And when you have companies turning people in (especially kids doind a school project) and the Secret Service rushes out, it adds to the fear of the government.

i guess you can ask walmart what they were thinking
http://www.outerbankschamber.com/members/alp00023.htm

I'm more upset about companies kept afloat by govt funding than all the Walmarts out there doing questionably cheap things to rise above competition. Unless Walmart gets subsidized as well.

I really like fudge-striped cookie packages for a dollar. More than I like unions.

But yeah, whoever is at fault for this being blown out of proportion deserves some measure of ridicule. But at least it ended decently (read: without any charges filred).

If it makes you feel better I have packed away my tinfoil hats and feel no threat or fear of the government. You make it sound like the secret service has never been called out for these types of things in the past, it has, it will and it forever will be if they are doing its job.

Utterly disgusting, and another reason why I won't set foot in Wal-Mart. But, in America's current political atmosphere, is it really surprising that the rights of citizens are being trampled?

And also because it was on TV didn't make it a threat. He was just voicing opinions and apparently rambling thoughts. West did not say he was going to kill Bush. Not to say the kid that made the poster did either, but because the Wal-Mart employee turned it in...

This isn't a problem with walmart. This is a problem with people who don't think others should have free speach. There are some people out there who blindly support bush and the war so much that they would rather see their neighbors go to jail for disagreeing with bush than let them protest the war. People like that piss me off.

For instance there was a protest in SLC about a month ago. It was a peaceful protest and as cars drove by some would honk. But one officer who was pissed about the protest camped his car and everytime someone honked he would pull them over and give them a ticket for illegal use of their horn in a non emergancy situation. This crap pisses me off more than anything. I'm not sure what happend with this but I believe the mayor was upset about the whole thing so maybe the tickets eventually got thrown out.

Why is it that some people feel the need to bring the hammer of justice down harder on people they disagree with?

The Secret Service is required to investigate any death threats to the president (or other cabinet members). If someone reports it to them, such as this case, they have to go check it out. Now, they may realize it's a stupid call, but they have to go anyways. Otherwise, if this kid was serious and did go psycho, they'd get screwed for not investigating.

Generally, all it takes is for some idiot to get a nice sit down talk with the Secret Service to immediately straighten them out and make them realize they screwed up, bad - and they'll never do it again. So the kid got a rude awakening to what you're not supposed to do in the real world. He'll be scared about it now, and in 5 or 10 years, he'll laugh about how stupid he was.

I can understand the Secret Service's job and I wholeheartedly respect that they take threats seriously. However, for noone from Wal*Mart to the local police to tell them that this was a kid, or to go to his school and confiscate the poster is a tad extreme.

I am sure or at least I would hope the Secret Service has more to do than to worry about a high school students project.

And if it truly "is their job to investigate all threats to the president" then why did we not hear of them investigating a known felon when G. Gordon Liddy announced on his radio show, "I name my shooting targets Bill and Hilary." Is that not more of a threat than some high schoolers project? Especially when there was a possibility of some of his listeners taking that seriously?

By the confiscation of this poster and the threat that, "the incident "would be interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could be indicted", should be warning flags that perhaps we are losing our right to free speech.

The Secret Service doesn't publish their investigations. The reason that you're hearing about this is because some journalist picked it up. As for the Gordon Liddy thing, I'm not familiar with the incident that you're referring to, but I can promise you that he was visited by the Secret Service, threatened, and told never to do it again or else he'd be serving jail time for threatening then President Clinton and his wife.

This student didn't threaton to kill Bush though. A thumb tack and a thumbs down is not threatening to kill someone.

You never know, Rekna. Once reported, the US Secret Service (part of the US Treasury, for some reason) has to investigate. The fault isn't there. The fault is with WalMart.

Very good point, I just assumed, Liddy would have talked about it on his show at the time, or that the "liberal media" at the time would have jumped on it and talked how Liddy was being investigated. But, perhaps they told him to drop it completely and the press other than reporting he said it didn't find it truly newsworthy.

:lol: :lol: That's halarious.

But will someone please explain to me what rights have been trampled? What rights we have lost? A lot of posters in this trread are saying this stuff and I don't understand what they're talking about...please explain.

Ding, ding, ding, and for good measure...ding.
Exactly!!! Imagine the maelstrom, should something had actually come of it.

Public: "You incompetent morons! You were given a lead months before this happened! How could you have let this go uninvestigated?!?"

Secret Service: "But...but...it was just a kid...doing a school project...and...and...the tip came from...Walmart!"

Public: "Yeah, Walmart handed him up to you on a silver platter, and you just ignored it!"

Or...something right along those lines. :rolleyes:

Hahaha Bill - and to think, this all started because of you...

Although we see all these topics recently where people go overboard on "small" things, imagine the backlash had it not been investigated...

To be honest, I think no matter what the government does, the people will still be unhappy with the measure.

Since apparently Wal Mart seems to do a far better job of disaster relief, maybe the secret service should considering hiring out.

The only problem, you know they'll give out regular blue vests and assure them they're bullet proof.

Where is this big erosion of civil liberties on America by the Secret Service doing it's job? Some of you people here seriously need to chill out.

I think both Wal-Mart and the SS over reacted, they really need to use discretion when it comes to these things.

And in response to Stevo I don't think people mean are liberties are directly being taken away. I mean obviously it's not like one day police are telling us we don't have freedom of speech any more. People are worried that slowly are rights are being taken away, in the form of turning America into a police state.

Sure we have freedom of expression, but if you put thumb tack over a picture of a presidents head your gonna be investigated. Or things like the patriot act in which many people see powers given to the authorites which seem unconstitutional. Or how about the right to bare arms, sure you can get a gun but you gotta get a permit to own one (not really clear on gun ownership laws)

It just feels like a slippery slope, where does it stop?

I believe in most states the law is that you must have a permit to carry a gun on you. As in having a handgun in a holster on your hip. And that you don't need a permit to own the gun, as in keep it at your house for protection.

If it is such a slippery slope, wouldn't we have all fell down by now? Sive me ONE instance. just 1, where rights are being taken away. So a kid puts a thumbtack in a picture of the president's head and the Secret services gets a complaint and checks it out. Good. thats their freakin job. And I have yet to see someone arrested for the book they checked out at the library. We've had the patriot act for 4 years now, like I said, if its so slippery why haven't I fallen down yet?

probably because your politics are such that you would endorse the restriction of your rights to free speech if it happened--but only at the hands of republicans, of course.
i find it beyond curious that the conservatives who have posted to this thread are across the board so blase about questions of free speech--i suspect that things would quite different be if this was still the clinton period and something had happened as a function of some right nutcase posting a poster about waco or ruby ridge that contained an implied threat to the president. if that was the scenario, each and every last conservative would find himself (strange that gender distribution too, in this space at least) would become an instant champion of free speech in its widest possible form.

as for walmart: their corporate politics are well-known and consistently imposed. this sorry display of paranoia/corporate censorship follows from their policies as the night does the day.

They confiscated the poster and didn't give it back.

I don't think that the employee who turned the picture in really cared about Wal-Mart policy, have you worked a job that starts at minimum wage? This person was probably a republican, or the rare person who actually knew what to do. Personally i think it was the right thing to do, what else are you supposed to do just leave it be, say oh well not my problem. This is the stuff you are supposed to report, a person has film developed and in that film there is a picture that is possibly threatening to the president, you shouldn't just let it pass you should stay on the safe side.
Where was free speech involved here, did the kid get arrested, were there any legal repercussions? So how can you say that this is a question of free speech?

Really? I wouldn't even think of reporting it. Then again I've heard people say that they wished presidents all the way from Jimmy Carter to George Bush were dead. I used a little common sense and didn't call the FBI and the Secret Service to report what was obviously a dumbass letting his mouth override his brain.

Now were I somewhere that the President was making an appearance and someone told me that they were going to make an attempt on the president that would be a different matter.

That's different i've heard people say things like that as well, but when i've heard it there has been context such as the person who said it being a leftist whom i know would never do it. In this case, at least the article suggests, the person who turned him in didn't know the sittuation, all they had to go on was the picture. So it would seem logical that these are the types of cases that you would report, the ones where you aren't sure if there is a threat.