« What a difference 3 weeks makes | Main | Major speech? Let's make it a major motion picture! »

November 30, 2005

Walmart paints Chanel Red Raspberry on it's porcine lips

I wonder how much WalMart paid for this:

There's a comic side to the anti-Wal-Mart campaign brewing in Maryland and across the country. Only by summoning up the most naive view of corporate behavior can the critics be shocked -- shocked! -- by the giant retailer's machinations. Wal-Mart is plotting to contain health costs! But isn't that what every company does in the face of medical inflation? Wal-Mart has a war room to defend its image! Well, yeah, it's up against a hostile campaign featuring billboards, newspaper ads and a critical documentary movie. Wal-Mart aims to enrich shareholders and put rivals out of business! Hello? What business doesn't do that?

Wal-Mart's critics allege that the retailer is bad for poor Americans. This claim is backward: As Jason Furman of New York University puts it, Wal-Mart is "a progressive success story." Furman advised John "Benedict Arnold" Kerry in the 2004 campaign and has never received any payment from Wal-Mart; he is no corporate apologist. But he points out that Wal-Mart's discounting on food alone boosts the welfare of American shoppers by at least $50 billion a year. The savings are possibly five times that much if you count all of Wal-Mart's products.

Wow..a cheap shot at Kerry and a sychophantic homage to cheap goods purchased overseas so that those in poverty might stay poor. And we're only in the first two paragraphs.

Sugarcoating the problems that WalMart brings into a community is probably the only way guys like Sebastian Mallaby, who wrote this Washington Post column I'm citing here, can sleep at night.

Walmart just wants to "contain health costs"? How many other corporations do this by forcing the vast majority of their workforce to either not qualify for health care..or pricing it out of their reach? Which other corporation that claims to offer their employees health benefits is costing the taxpayers millions of dollars because their kids are enrolled in state health care?

Mallaby's contention that WalMart is good for the poor because the poor can afford to shop there is a joke. WalMart drives other businesses out, making it the only game in town. Then they can charge whatever they like for goods. Further, when jobs leave an area, that forces employees to go to work for the only game in town: WalMart. And then due to low wages, ineligibility for health care and high premiums..WalMart employees are forced onto public assistance.

Its unlikely that an individual hired to write opinion pieces for one of the largest circulation newspapers in the nation isn't aware of these issues.

But then guys like Tim McVeigh can justify blowing up hundreds of innocent civilians in the name of hating government. Justifying the screwing over of people in poverty (along with entire communities) goes down with a spoonful of sugar. No problem.

Posted by Carla at November 30, 2005 07:19 AM