[CyberAnt]

There are 2 reasons Walmart is being attacked:

1 - they donate largely to REPUBLICANS

2 - they don't allow UNIONS

[PaulaB]

don't forget that they also keep 1.3 million people off of unemployment...liberals HATE this

[johnnyb_61820]

I wouldn't get too in love with Walmart as a conservative. Remember they often get land below market value with the help of local governments. In addition, they do have the ability to bully most of their suppliers into keeping in line, which isn't very good for a market economy.

Of course, if someone complains about jobs being shipped overseas, _and_ shops at WalMart, they are quite the hypocrite. They do contribute quite a bit to manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas. Is that a good or a bad thing? I don't really know.

The current execs at Wal-Mart leave a lot to be desired, at least one of which is serving time for running a prostitution ring.

On the other hand, they usually do a lot to help local communities and special needs people. Of course organized crime often did these same things (large gifts to charity, helping people publicly and privately, etc.) so that's not the only criteria of a good company.

Anyway, there is a lot of valid criticisms of WalMart, and I wouldn't just pooh-pooh it all away as a nasty liberal conspiracy.

[Question_Assumptions]

No, I don't like Wal-Mart for the same reason why I don't like Microsoft. They are anti-competative and are powerful enough to (A) act with monopoly-like power in the marketplace and (B) ignore the law when it suits them because they can afford the fines. I don't like bullies. When government gets too powerful, it acts like a bully. When individuals get too powerful, they act like a bully. When corporations get too powerful, they act like a bully. It's not a matter of where the power is concentrated but the concentration of power, itself, that is the problem.

[nmh]

YUP!

"There are 2 reasons Walmart is being attacked:

1 - they donate largely to REPUBLICANS

2 - they don't allow UNIONS"

AND

3 - Walmart has the sheer audacity to sell CHRISTIAN books and items. That's pure blasphemy according to the left.

Walmart doesn't do anything different than Target, K-Mart or any other discounter.

It is the above THREE reasons why you are being persuaded to shun them - never mind the hypocrisy that abound with competitors of Walmart.

[ladyinred]

When I see a giant company being attacked over and over, I always suspect liberals somewhere in the background. They hate anyone who makes money except themselves!!!

[shellshocked]

"There are 2 reasons Walmart is being attacked:"

Try "Monopolistic and unfair business practices".

[Richard Kimball]

My father ran his own appliance repair business for years, starting, I guess, around 1958, and ending with his death in 1994. There were, of course, other appliance repairmen around town. Sears decided to move into the appliance repair business in our area about that time, and entered into contracts with many of the appliance repairmen. They approached my father, and he firmly declined.

The other appliance repairmen extolled the virtues of contracting with Sears. Sears dealt with collections (always a problem in small business), the parts were Sears parts, so you could go to one supplier, instead of the eight or ten my father dealt with, and on and on. Unfortunately, one of the requirements was that Sears customers took precedence over your other customers. The Sears customer was pushed to the front of the line. The other repairmen got so much business from Sears, they pretty much let all their other accounts die on the vine. I don't know how much later, but it wasn't more than two years, Sears suddenly canceled all the contracts, and started hiring their own repairmen. The formerly independent businessmen had a choice: Go to work for Sears at a significantly reduced hourly wage, and punch a time clock, or rebuild their business from ground zero. My father, of course, had been picking up the business these other men had let go, and had more business than he could handle.

The Vlasic pickle story has been around for quite a while, at least a couple of years. I think it's a good cautionary tale, but really says nothing about Walmart that couldn't be written about any large corporation.

I've been rereading Sam Walton's autobiography, and he told of when he was an upstart and the tables were reversed. His particular story was about Proctor and Gamble. At the time, Proctor and Gamble insisted that if you were going to sell their products, you would enter their co-op advertising program, buy their displays, and agree to basically pay nearly a 30% markup on the product for the privilege of selling it. They told him, you can't run a store without Gleem toothpaste." He said, "I'll stock an end isle with Pepsodent and sell it for 30 cents less than Gleem, and we'll see if I can run a store without Proctor and Gamble products."

There are two morals to this story for a small businessman.

1. Don't let one customer become your entire customer base. If you do, he's not your customer, he's your boss.
2. If you buy doorknobs for $2 and sell them for a $1, you still won't get rich, even if you sell a million of them. Don't enter into contracts if you won't make money off them. Geez, you'd think all the MBAs at Vlasic would have figured this out.

[narses]

CyberAnt says:
There are 2 reasons Walmart is being attacked:

1 - they donate largely to REPUBLICANS

2 - they don't allow UNIONS


Three more:

They will NOT sell obscene music CDs
They will NOT sell RU-486
and
They donate money in support of SCHOOL CHOICE!

[Dysfunctional]

Those of us with first hand knowledge know you have no knowledge on the subject.

[MamaB]

I have read about how so many articles are made in China. Well, the other day, I was at an upscale chain store, and all the items I looked at were made in China! So, check out all the other clothing stores and see what you find.