Rinse, Repeat: Wal-Mart is Bad For America
Robert Greenwald, director of Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism and Uncovered: The War on Iraq is at it again -- this time with a work-in-progress about Wal-Mart, a company that not only fails to provide health care for its minimum-wage employees, it also routinely directs them to apply for Medicaid, food stamps and Section 8 housing.
He blogged about it on the Huffington Post, and I was quite amused to see two frequently-chanted urban myths about Wal-Mart being hurled at him from the comments:
1. Wal-Mart has to do these things to compete in this business environment. Wrong. Costco manages to compete with Wal-Mart and its employee benefit programs are excellent. Wal-Mart isn't doing this solely to be competitive; they are driving all the profits to the top, where CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. made $23 million in 2004.
2. Wal-Mart is providing poor people with cheap goods they can afford. Wrong again. Wal-Mart has a practice of regularly advertising a few "opening price-point" items it can lure people into the stores with, but in most overall price comparisons they lose.
Robert is looking to make the documentary participatory and is seeking contributions in the form of pictures or videotapes of how Wal-Mart has impacted your community, and how people may have fought back to stop them from coming to a place they're not welcome. They're also looking for donations to finish the film, and if you give $30, they will send you a copy of the DVD as soon as it's available this fall.
I really urge everyone to support this project in any way they can. Somebody really needs to take these corporate creeps on, and their pockets are so deep that none of our brave elected officials or the courageous members of the MSM are ever going to do it.
P.S. Don't tell my mom I wrote this. She full-on LOVES Wal-Mart. It's one of those things we Don't Discuss.
posted by Jane Hamsher @ 6/03/2005 12:24:00 AM
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