There are SO many points in this article to pick apart. He pretty much hits every enviro-wacko capitalism-hating talking point there is in this screed.
The author states that those of us who think the environment isn't a major issue are now irrelevant. I don't HAVE to buy the greenest products. He says that businesses will have to change their practices to comply. Yes, or change their labeling to make it LOOK like they've complied.
He makes the standard Marxist point about a business doing good instead of just being greedy (as if there is no mutual benefit between business and customer, e.g. even though I hate insurance companies, where else would I get insurance if they disappeared?)
This is an ingenious move on Wal-Mart's part. I can see Wal-Mart using this move in two ways. The first (they think) is that it will disarm the left's hatred for them. That's not going to happen of course, but they'll advertise it so much that it will make the left look shrill. It demonstrates that businesses can strike back against activists. The second thing Wal-Mart will do is use this to further beat down their suppliers on price. "Give me a lower price or I'll announce that you aren't complying with our green standards".
Finally, if I'm a Wal-Mart stockholder, who's going to enforce this wonderful utopian idea? Are Wal-Mart profits going to be spent on policing this idiocy? Why should the environmentalists' utopia come out of my pocket? The last is a rhetorical question, of course - we know they're going to take it out of my pocket one way or the other.
I suspect we're going to go from the Left hating Wal-Mart to the Right hating Wal-Mart before long. I just read somewhere the other day that the bigger a business gets, the more a part of the establishment it gets to be. At this point in history, make no mistake, "the establishment" is liberal.
Sometime ago I posted my opinion that big business, in the wake of the firing of the head of General Motors, in anticipation of the deliberate bankrupting of the call industry, the subversion of the rule of law in the Chrysler bondholder case, the presumptive nationalization of the healthcare industry, to name some of Obama's usurpations, word spur these industries and many others to protect themselves with the million-dollar public relations blitz against the Obama administration.
Boy, was I wrong.
Obama is smarter than I am, he has managed, like Adolph Hitler in 1933, to co-opt virtually every industry out of fear and greed. The American Medical Association has just gone over to his side.
Our carmakers have become tame. Goldman Sachs is leading the charge against everything holy on Wall Street and in the banking community. Wal-Mart, whether experiencing a genuine conversion or merely finessing a public relations ploy, has given Obama a lot of running room.
If Obama succeeds in getting his healthcare and/or Cap and Trade, the America I grew up in will be gone forever.
