Wal-Mart signifies all that is wrong in America

Here in Germany, most junk food is consumed in the form of Döner Kebap and Curry sausages. Sold by mom-and-pa shops throughout the nation, their nutritional value is, if anything, lower than that of Big Macs. McDonald's exists but plays a much smaller role than in America, other franchises play almost no role. (A handful of Burger Kings in the country, no Wendy's, no KFC.) We still eat the stuff and get fat.

My point is, junk food is a profitable business because people like junk food, and eating it is worth dying younger to them. Don't blame McDonald's, just look people in the eye, give them a stern look and say "You look disgusting, fatty -- shape up!". Big corporations like McDonalds are just convenient scapegoats for people who lack the civil courage to argue it out with their peers.

You may think I'm wrong but about what? The publics taste has changed? In case you didn't know, there is a fresh supply of young people eating at MacDonalds. You're reading too much marketing propaganda. As a matter of fact anyone who swallows all the right wing propaganda is just as bad as someone who swallows all the left wing propaganda. You don't know it but you're floating in the same boat (and it leaks). As far as "bribing" voters, the right wing is just as adept at it.

Gee, Thomas, I wonder who is overweight in this group? Sounds like we have some devout consumers who prowl the ailes of Wal Mart all day and all night searching for bargains.

MMMMMM...Doner Kebab!

Anybody who leads off with "corporate fascist" in the first sentence of a post is a joke. The BS only gets deeper when you say the Walmart workforce is "goose-stepping." This wildly wrong-headed hyperbolic talk is typical of heavily indoctrinated kids who have trouble dealing with reality and forming an opinion of their own, free of the hard left boilerplate that passes for thought in the liberal fever swamp. It's rhetorical junk.

Tantor

Congratulations Tantor. That got reported.

The leftist opposition to Walmart is not reasoned. It is irrational. It is no different than the London carriage drivers who beat up anybody carrying an umbrella when umbrellas were first invented, than the Luddites who sabotaged the mechanical harvesters when they were introduced, or than the cottage weavers who smashed the power looms when they were introduced.

Just as those dim and irrational troglodytes had to be dragged into a future of unlimited use of umbrellas, bountiful cheap food harvested by machines, and cheap clothing produced en masse by factories, so the economically illiterate unwashed and howling Left must be dragged into a future of cheap goods of great variety reaching the rural areas of America just like the cities have.

Tantor

Congratulations at your attempt to control thought that differs from yours. That's the difference between us.

Tantor

Ooohhh -- spooky. Thought control on A2K. How provincial.

What every American needs to know
What every American needs to know.

The owners of one of America's premiere retail corporations is comprised of five of the ten richest people in the world, all from the same family. Their personal wealth eclipses $100 BILLION dollars. Last year the companies CEO was paid a cool $11.5 million, more than the annual salaries of 765 of his employees combined! The company's profits are over $7 BILLION annually. In these difficult economic times how do they do it?

This company runs ads featuring the United States flag and proclaims "We Buy American". In 2001 they moved their worldwide purchasing headquarters to China and are the largest importer of Chinese goods in the US, purchasing over $10 BILLION of Chinese-made products annually. Products made mostly by women and children working in the labor hell-holes China is famous for.

Their average employee working in the US makes $15,000 a year, $7.22 per hour!

These employees gross under $11,000 a year.

The company brags that 70% of their employees are full time, but fails to disclose that they count anyone working 28 hours a week or more as full time.

There are no health care benefits unless you have worked for the company for two years.

With a turnover rate averaging above 50% per year, only 38% of their 1.3 million employees have health care coverage. -In California alone it's estimated that the taxpayers pay over $20 million annually to subsidize health care benefits for these employees who get none from this behemoth corporation.

According to a report by PBS's "Now" with Bill Moyer, their managers are trained in what government social programs are available for these "employees" to take advantage of so that the company can pass on those costs to you and me. It allows them to not only keep their $7 BILLION in annual profits, but to do so by substituting benefits they refuse to provide with benefits paid for with taxpayer dollars.

This company holds the record for the most suits filed against it by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A lawyer from "Business Week" (not exactly the bastion for supporting Labor) said, "I have never seen this kind of blatant disregard for the law."

They had to pay $750,000.00 in Arizona for blatant discrimination against the disabled! The judge was so incensed that he also order them to run commercials admitting their guilt.

The National Labor Relations Board has issued over 40 formal complaints against the corporation in 25 different states in just the past five years. The NLRB's top lawyer believed that their labor violations, such as illegal spying on employees, fraudulent record keeping, falsifying time cards to avoid paying overtime, threats, illegal firings for union organizing etc., were so widespread that he was looking into filing a very rare national complaint against the company.

Nearly 1 MILLION women are involved in the largest class-action suit every filed against a corporation. Although women make up over 65% of this corporations work force only 10% of them are managers.

The women who have become store managers make $16,400 a year LESS than the men.

The corporation took out nearly 350,000 life insurance policies on their employees. They did not tell the employees and then named the corporation as the beneficiary. They are now being sued by numerous employees, and although the corporation has stopped this practice of purchasing what is known as "Dead Peasant Policy's", a company spokesperson stated, "The company feels it acted properly and legally in doing this."

They force employees to work after ordering them to punch out. In Texas alone this practice of "wage theft" is estimated to have cost employees $30 million per year. Wage theft or "off-the-clock" lawsuits are pending in 25 states. In New Mexico they paid $400,000.00 in one suit and in Colorado they had to pay $50 MILLION to settle one class-action case brought against them. In Oregon a jury found them guilty of locking employees in the building and of forcing unpaid overtime.

With 4,400 stores they practice "predatory pricing." They come into a community and sell their goods at below cost until they drive local businesses under. Once they have captured the market the prices go up.

Locally owned and operated businesses put virtually all of their money back into the community which helps keep the local economies vibrant. This corporation sucks the money out of the local community, decreases wages and benefits and ships the profits out of state.

This company doesn't buy locally or bank locally. They replace three decent paying jobs in a community with two poorly paid "part-timers".

In Kirksville, Missouri when this company came to town, four clothing stores, four grocery stores, a stationary store, a fabric store and a lawn-and-garden store all went under. Eleven businesses are now gone.

(The above information can be found in "Thieves in High Places", James Hightower, The Penguin Group, New York, NY, 2003 p. 166 - 193.)

Now you know how they can claim, "Always low prices." Wal-Mart is the largest corporation in the world, larger than General Motors and Exxon Mobil. Wal-Mart will reap over 250 billion in sales in 2003, which is larger then the entire gross national product of Israel and Ireland combined. It has over 1.3 million employees. It sells more groceries, jewelry, photo processing, dog food, and vitamins than any other chain in the world.

Wal-Mart is owned by the Walton family.

They will also never see a dime from my wallet again.

Please feel free to circulate this memo to everyone on your email lists. Only we, the citizens of this great country can stop this race to the bottom.

"Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has."
---Margaret Mead, Anthropologist

I am. In fact, almost half of my body mass is overweight. We really need to get tough on those dangerous small businesses that sell us kebap and curry sausage.

It's not the kebap and curry sausage, it's the carbohydrates and sugars they sneak in that are cheap ways to make a meal look larger and taste better. A lousy cook always adds sugar to everything. Incidentally, I am not overweight and would only offer constructive criticism to those who admit they are.

Re: What every American needs to know


May I point out that the source of this screed, James Hightower, is a former crackpot quasi-socialist Texas government official under Democratic Governor Anne Richards who believes, among other nutty things, that the Dallas police assassinated JFK. He is hardly a reliable source. He is famous for hyberbolic statements detached from reality.



As long as I'm at it, Margaret Mead has since been exposed for writing essentially a fictional account of her observations in Polynesia. This quote has special resonance when you consider that her particular commitment was to spreading false accounts of reality.

You seem to be fond of sources who have difficulty with truth-telling.

Tantor

Tantor
Tantor, instead of attacking the author of the piece, why don't you tell us SPECIFICALLY which of the statements about WalMart's operation are not true? Documentation of the un-truths would also be helpful.

Then we will all have more information on which to judge WalMart.

BBB

Where is the proof that Margaret Mead wrote an essentially fictional account of her observations in Polynesia?

Lightwizard, tantor has referred to and skewed an argument within Anthropology, particularly between Mead and Derek Freeman, an Australian ethnographer.

I was aware of that -- the fued is well known. Playing games with words does not work with most A2Kers and I'm sure I'm not the only one to see through it.

The use of the word "exposed" is especially disingenuous.

At this pace, tantor's going to turn me against WalMart all by himself.

Lightwizard, many years after Margaret Mead left Samoa, some of the girls she studied later claimed they made up stories to tell Mead about their lives and customs. That doesn't mean that Mead lied in her studies, it means she received distorted information.

Kind of reminds one of Bush's claims about misleading CIA intelligence re Iraq and WMD, doesn't it?

BBB

http://www.cas.usf.edu/anthropology/women/mead/margaret_mead.htm

For a review of this debate see 'Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy: Scholarship Empire and the South Pacific". edited by Lenora Foersted and Angela Gillian, Temple University Press 1992. In particular read chapter 1 "Anthropologists in Search of a Culture; Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman and All the Rest of Us" by Eleanor Leacock.