Wal-Mart
Walmart: The Inhuman Essence of a Corporate Person (3/31/2010)
Wal-Mart, the new southern plantation
The Waltons and Wal-Mart: Self-Interested Philanthropy (pdf 2005)
Reports and Economic Impact Studies on Wal-Mart and Big Box Development
Debate about Wal-Mart in Chicago (1/18/2010)
Why Wal-Mart Is So Evil (10/3/2009)
So What's the Big Deal, If Wal-Mart Makes a Mistake?
Of the top 10 richest people in the US, four are Wal-Mart heirs. Even with the stock market way down, their joint wealth totals more that $79 billion.
Wal-Mart spends millions to avoid small fine for employee death
Lawsuits: a Volume Business at Wal-Mart. (8/13/2001)
The Groton Planning Commission wisely declined the Wal-Mart SuperCenter.
Support the campaign to help local independent businesses by buying from them rather than from chain stores.
Wal-Mart is a prime example of a monopsonist: a company which is such a powerful buyer that it can pressure its suppliers into suicidal terms. The only way suppliers can meet Wal-Mart's demands is by moving manufacturing to third world countries. The US has lost millions of manufacturing jobs in the last few years. Not only has Wal-Mart devastated thousands of small towns, vigorously opposed labor unions. pushed their minimum wage employees onto the public dole, strained public health facilities, it helped strip the manufacturing base from this country. The US trade deficit has soared, and overseas sweatshops have flourished.
Those low prices are not without cost. See the film: Walmart, the High Cost of Low Prices. (free and on-line).
Before Ronald Reagan there might have been anti-trust enforcement for Wal-Mart, but since Reagan, Republicans don't enforce anti-trust. That should change.
We can only hope that the new big box store development in East Lyme is not a stealth Wal-Mart.
ABC News Investigation: The Blueberry Children --Children as Young as 5 and 6 Working in the Fields of Large Blueberry Grower Featured by Walmart 30 Oct 2009 Walmart and the Kroger supermarket chain have severed ties with one of the country's major blueberry growers after an ABC News investigation found children, including one as young as five-years-old, working in its fields. The children were discovered at the Adkin Blue Ribbon Packing Company, in South Haven, Michigan, this summer by graduate school students working with ABC News as fellows with the Carnegie Corporation. The owner of the company, Randy Adkin, was once featured on a Walmart billboard advertising his "locally produced and locally sold" blueberries.
Wal-Mart's Violation of US Workers’ Right to Freedom of Association
How Wal-mart evaded 2.3 Billion in taxes.
Tell the FEC to investigate Wal-Mart According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart has been threatening employees that if they vote for pro-worker candidates like Barack Obama in November, the Employee Free Choice Act will pass, making it easier to form unions in Wal-Mart stores. Telling employees how to vote in a U.S. election is not only morally reprehensible, it's potentially illegal.
Video
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. Walmart (Watch it free on-line.)
What is behind the low prices at your neighborhood Wal-Mart? "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" is a feature length documentary that uncovers a retail giant's assault on families and American values.
Bibliography
To Serve God and Wal-mart, The Making of Christian Free Enterprise: Bethany Moreton.
Links
Breaking the Chain: the Antitrust Case Against Wal-Mart Harper's, July 2006
Harper's Magazine: Break up Walmart
Walmart (video)
The WalMart Effect. Charles Fishman
Big Box Swindle: Stacy Mitchell