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In early October, billboards began appearing saying "Voter Fraud is a Felony!" punishable by up to 3 1/2 years in prison and fines of $10,000. The billboards only appeared in low-income, minority areas.

“Black Friday” sales are debt traps for people to rush out and buy on credit. But we can fix this on both the wage and profit ends of the continuum. It’s not that complex a fix, but it requires seeing our country as a whole, as one people who rise and fall together. We can fix this whole mess and

Demos has some figures for thought in How Raising Wages Would Benefit Workers, the Industry and the Overall Economy. Here's a summary of the study from Demos:

It’s the biggest shopping season on the calendar and retail companies are expecting hundreds of billions of dollars in sales.

As Black Friday approached, the honchos at Walmart, the largest employer in the United States, found themselves at a loss to respond to a nationwide rebellion within the ranks of their near-captive workers -- people who work for an average wage of $8.81 per hour, according to The National Memo

Walmart has been on something of a charm offensive where the public is concerned (and an intimidation offensive where its workers are concerned), hoping to blunt the impact of the Black Friday rebellion.

"Everyone is part-timed to death at these stores," Walton said. "When they sign up for these shifts, it's 'I don't get enough hours, I'm dying for hours, so I'll work these shifts.' Until we do something to stop the part-timing of the workforce, we're going to see this happen." "Workers want to stop

Forget the stampeding shoppers, the half-priced waffle irons, or the pepper spray wielding wackos: barring a federal intervention, the main event this Black Friday could turn out to be a showdown between organized labor and its arch corporate nemesis, Wal-Mart.

A new study released by the progressive think tank Demos on Monday estimated that if retail workers were given a living wage, hundreds of thousands of Americans would be lifted out of poverty and the wage boost would significantly bolster the economy.

This strike follows a cluster of other Walmart strikes across the country over things like unsafe working conditions, sexual harassment, excessive hours, and low pay. Learn more after the jump. Natasha Lennard reports: