Tikkabik

I'm not a big fan of Wal-Mart, but I do find them useful on occasion when it comes to buying commodity items like laundry detergent or products I know I can't get cheaper without having to bargain-hunting. But after watching Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price I'm rethinking that, too. It's the first documentary I've seen in years that actually made me sick to watch.

Robert Greenwald does a fantastic job of assassinating just about every trace of Wal-Mart's character with this look at the retailer, from how they treat their employees to how they treat factory workers, the environment, their effects on the local towns and more.

But of all the extraordinary and egregious behavior that I saw in the film -- of all the small business owners that have been forced out of business, of all the "associates" (a euphemism for employee that drives me nuts) that have to go on welfare because they don't get paid enough, of all their union-busting activities, of all their environmental transgressions, of all the third-world laborers who work in subhuman conditions, one thing pissed me off more than anything: Corporate welfare.

It's the subsidies these sons of bitches get for setting up shop in a town or city that just galls me. Tax breaks, incentives, repayment of construction and building costs, and the like. Towns and cities just roll over with their legs spread and their tails wagging the second Wal-Mart tells them they're going to set up shop, and that's the end of it.

The other corporate welfare angle is something I mentioned in passing before -- that thousands upon thousands of Wal-Mart workers who are employed in part- or full-time jobs around the country are still paid so little that they have to go to state and federal agencies to get food assistance, medical aid and subsidized utilities.

Meanwhile, who takes up Forbes' 400 Richest Americans spots in positions 6 through 10? I'll give you a hint -- their last names are all "Walton."

Listen, I'm not averse to an entrepreneur succeeding in this country -- the last thing I'd ever want to see is United States reduced to a socialist environment like France where young people riot in the streets because they're not guaranteed lifetime employment -- but there's a point at which, to paraphrase Gordon Gecko from Wall Street, greed just ain't good anymore. It occurs to me that the Walton clan could skim just a fraction of the billions of their net worth -- so little that I doubt any of them would notice that it was gone -- and make the quality of lives of their "associates" an assload better.