WELL, GO FIGURE: Kroger sweetens employee benefits as it moves to ramp up hiring.

Kroger is introducing a program to support continuing education for all part-time and full-time associates following six months of employment.

It is also increasing the company match for its 401(k) program to 5 percent, up from 4 percent previously.

It is investing $5 million more into a program that aids associates during times of hardship.

Last week, Kroger said it planned to hire for 11,000 new positions, including 2,000 management roles. At that time, it said would invest $500 million in associate wages and training and development over the next three years.

The grocer has attributed the investments to more funds as result of recent tax law changes.

If the GOP has any sense (I know, I know), it’ll be running ads with this kind of news between now and November.

Well, they’d better: Poll shows tax reform’s popularity with voters is shrinking. It’s not enough to do things for voters. You have to make sure they know what you did.

MILLION$ GIVEN TO BUSH-CLINTON KATRINA RELIEF FUND NOW UNACCOUNTED-FOR: You’ve heard the one about the guy who turned everything he touched into gold? With the Clintons, everything turns to gold … for them.

Charles Ortel, who looks increasingly like the corporate watchdog Ralph Nader should have been, pored over the Clinton Foundation’s public filings once again and what he found illustrates how doing good can so easily hide opportunities to do very well for oneself. Next Question: Didn’t the Bush presidents know with whom they were dealing?

RAISE THE CONE OF SILENCE: Watchdog finds EPA broke law by spending $43K on Scott Pruitt’s soundproof booth and not telling Congress.

In a report issued Monday, the Government Accountability Office said the agency violated the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act of 2017 when it failed to notify both House and Senate appropriations committees prior to obligating the money to install a soundproof privacy booth in Pruitt’s office.

Any office expenditure above $5,000 requires lawmakers be notified, according to the eight-page GAO report. The total cost of the soundproof booth and its installation amounted to $43,238.68.

The privacy booth cost $24,570, including delivery and assembly, according to the GAO. The remaining expenses included: “Concrete Floor Leveling” ($3,470); “Drop Ceiling Installation” ($3,360.97) “Prep and Wall Painting” ($3,350); “Removal of CCTV Equipment” ($7,978); and “Infrastructure Cabling and Wiring” ($509.71).

EPA Spokeswoman Liz Bowman said the agency would comply with the findings and alert lawmakers.

It’s important to cross all the I’s and dot all the T’s, especially when the press is out to get you.

CHRIS QUEEN: The Left’s All-or-Nothing Mentality. “The environmental protest suicide of a gay rights lawyer demonstrates the left’s commitment to leftism no matter what.”

JOURNALISM: So we’re just going to ignore that an ex-Clinton staffer interviewed Comey on the Clinton email scandal?

IT’S ALL ABOUT ADVANCING THE PROPER NARRATIVE: “Why is a 29-point gap considered only ‘slightly larger’ than an 18-point gap? And in 3 months? Seems like a huge leap. Am I misreading that? Have I forgotten the meaning of ‘slightly’?”

This is the passage: “Republicans lead by 60 percent to 31 percent among white voters without college degrees, slightly larger than an 18-point GOP advantage three months ago.”

REMEMBER WHEN THE INTERNET GAVE EVERYBODY A VOICE? NOT NOW: An exhaustive analysis by the Media Research Center produces devastating evidence that Silicon Valley giants Facebook, Twitter and Google are actively trying to strangle conservative voices.

How important is this to the future of the Republic? Brent Bozell, MRC’s founder and long-time chief, explains: “When the only ideas permitted are from one side, any prospect of intellectual discourse dies. If these platforms merely serve as an echo chamber of liberal talking points, everyone loses. Our country is divided and limiting free speech only makes matters worse.”

Like it says in Orwell’s classic, some animals are more equal than others. LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby has more.

NEWS YOU CAN USE!  Hate swallowing pills? Try this trick.

AND FOR THE FACT HE NEVER WAS PRESIDENT, WE SHOULD GIVE THANKS FASTING.  TOO BAD HE ALSO NEVER PAID FOR LEAVING A YOUNG WOMAN TO DIE:  I’m Not Going to Be President.

MATH.  I’M A FAN!  Can Humans Melt the Antarctic Icecap?

WESTERN SOCIETIES ARE DYING OF: Too Much To Lose.

WHEN PATIENTS AREN’T THE CLIENTS:  Canada’s government considers its doctors to be a cost source.

NEWS YOU DEFINITELY CAN USE:  Airline boarding passes are full of secrets.

CONTEXT MATTERS — SOMETIMES IT MAKES YOU LOOK COOL, SOMETIMES YOU JUST LOOK CONSTIPATED:  Not smiling doesn’t make you look cooler: study.

NEWS YOU CAN USE BUT REALLY DON’T WANT TO:   Animal feces and urine detected in counterfeit makeup.

YES, INSANE PEOPLE DO REPRODUCE!  Parents refuse to reveal their child’s gender.

I GUESS IT REDUCES THE CARBON FOOTPRINT:   Freeze-drying dead bodies could be the future of cremation.

JUST BECAUSE SOMEBODY IS YOUR FRIEND ON FACEBOOK DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE TO ATTEND HER WEDDING:  Woman goes broke attending 20 weddings in 4 years.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Even Starbucks Is Racist Now, Apparently.

In three years, Starbucks has gone from this…

…To facing this:

As Treacher writes:

I hope this fiasco proves instructive to Howard Schultz and everybody else at Starbucks. No matter how liberal you are, no matter how hard you work to establish and maintain your #woke credentials, all it takes is one slip-up. Just one viral video, taken on one of the cameras that we all carry now, and the angry mob will descend on you. Nothing you do or say will appease them. No apology will be sufficient. You can’t grovel low enough.

Read the whole thing.

FALLEN ANGELS WAS JUST A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL, RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT? GUYS? So it was snowing all afternoon today in Knoxville, it’s going down below freezing, and that breaks a 113-year-old record for cold on this date.

UPDATE: Nooo! “The temperature drop is in keeping with a prediction made 35 years ago by physicist Leona Woods Marshall Libby that temperatures would rise in the 1980s and 1990s, then fall. She is the woman who developed the tree ring method used in climatology to measure temperatures thousands of years ago. ‘Easily one to two degrees,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1979. ‘And maybe even three or four degrees. It takes only 10 degrees to bring on an Ice Age.'”

AT AMAZON, Education Supplies for Teachers & Homeschoolers.

OFT EVIL WILL SHALL EVIL MAR: Ingraham’s Viewership Increases 20 Percent Since David Hogg’s Boycott.

OPEN THREAD: Swap recipes, talk about quilting, whatever puts a bee in your bonnet.

SOUTH AFRICA IS JUST ZIMBABWE ON A 25-YEAR LAG: ‘They Eat Money’: How Mandela’s Political Heirs Grow Rich Off Corruption.

In the generation since apartheid ended in 1994, tens of billions of dollars in public funds — intended to develop the economy and improve the lives of black South Africans — have been siphoned off by leaders of the A.N.C., the very organization that had promised them a new, equal and just nation.

Corruption has enriched A.N.C. leaders and their business allies — black and white South Africans, as well as foreigners. But the supposed beneficiaries of many government projects, in whose names the money was spent, have been left with little but seething anger and deepening disillusionment with the state of post-apartheid South Africa.

Lefties are big on promising “equal and just,” but what they always deliver is unequal and unjust.

SHOT: Millennials so squeamish about handling raw meat it is to be sold in touch-free packs.

Possibly related chaser: Millennials are having less sex than any generation in 60 years. Here’s why it matters.