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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.

"nasty liberal conspiracy"

In the first place - I never said it was.

In the second place - I do suspect it since the primary financier of this little GET WALMART is through the TIDES FOUNDATION (which the "shove it" person has been very vocal about) - which is funded by the HEINZ FOUNDATION.

As soon as the Heinz money is no longer involved - then I will believe it's not a liberal conspiracy.

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.

1. If they get any largess from the local government there must be some net value to the community.

2. Their suppliers must offer them the lowest possible prices if they want to do business. This forces suppliers to drive costs out of their system which is good for US competitiveness and for consumers. The fact that consumers are able to save so much money buying cheaper products is one major reason why inflation is so low. I would say that is very good for a market economy.

3. Yes, some jobs get shipped overseas. See #2.

4. How many execs do you think there are at Wal Mart? There will always be some bad ones.

5. Wal Mart spent 137.5 billion dollars with American suppliers last year. That's 55% of their total gross revenue for 2004 (source: www.walmartfactcheck.com). Would you guess that's good for America and worthy of admiration? or, do you think this is akin to the contribution organized crime makes every year to America?