Sigh. Come on Jane Winterspeak, no Democrats are focused on putting Wal-Mart out of business. The anti-Wal-Mart movement -- including Wake Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch -- want to see the employer unionize, pay better wages and benefits, and stop choking out their suppliers. No one I know, including me, wants to see the largest corporation in America shutter its doors, deprive all manner of rural areas of their only nearby shopping center, fire 1.3 million people, drive a slew of suppliers out of business, and throw the economy into havoc.
The question is never Wal-Mart: Yes or no? The question is whether Wal-Mart's business practices, when mixed with its gargantuan size and clout, are having negative impacts on the economy, and if so, in what ways they can be changed. It's worth noting here that Wal-Mart itself recently decided its business practices were having negative impacts on the environment and committed themselves to a full-on greening. So obviously there's room for improvement, and the company has not achieve perfection in any and all ways. Nor is it necessarily true that such improvements would force them to lay off large numbers of workers: It's perfectly possible that Americans can handle a couple cents more per item, and better labor standards would allow Wal-Mart to expand into urban and blue areas that have thus far resisted their entry.
Update: That post was written by Winterspeak, not Jane. Thousand apologies.
