Wal-Mart Haters UNITE!

[TheJake]

Where, oh, where did the money go? The city of Boulder, which could once bank on substantial income through sales tax, is faced with an unexpectedly tight budget. The culprit is corporate development in the east county, which is luring away shoppers who used to spend their hard-earned clams here. The situation is exacerbated by the decline of aging Crossroads Mall, which the community has failed thus far to refurbish and which sits in limbo, many of its stores closed.

As a result, City Council is being asked to make some tough choices, one of which is whether to allow Wal-Mart to build a store in the city. Council members are under substantial pressure from city staff and citizens to do something, and some on council are in favor of bringing Wal-Mart to town.

This is a bad idea, as Wal-Mart is to corporations what Al Capone is to Italians. Arguably the worst of the worst, Wal-Mart is connected with a host of civil and human rights violations that recall the days of 19th-century robber barons. Here are some of the highlights:

While earning profits in excess of $7 billion annually, Wal-Mart pays its average employee less than $15,000 a year for full-time work. Only 38 percent of Wal-Mart employees have health benefits. Can't they afford to do better? Not if the owners want to continue being some of the wealthiest billionaires in the world.
Wal-Mart pays even less overseas, actually lowering the labor standards and hourly wages in places like China, where minimum wage is 31 cents but where Wal-Mart pays 13 cents an hour-far below subsistence rate.
Workers in its overseas sweatshops are often children, mostly girls, who work 13- to 20-hour days seven days a week performing sometimes toxic work with no health benefits and no protection from workplace hazards.
Wal-Mart is pathologically anti-union, firing any employee who so much as hints at organizing. In one instance, Wal-Mart eliminated an entire department-its meat-cutting department-after employees voted to join a union. It now out-sources meat-cutting at non-union shops.
Wal-Mart bullies its suppliers into lowering their budgets, going over the budgets line by line and suggesting cuts. As a result, companies that hope to do business with Wal-Mart find themselves forced to take a similar anti-union stance-and to seek cheap, sweatshop labor abroad.
An unrepentant law-breaker, Wal-Mart has an abominable record when it comes to worker's comp, child labor violations and sexual harassment.
Clearly, Wal-Mart's behavior is not in keeping with the values of Boulder's progressive citizenry. Not one to offer criticism without offering a solution-at least not today-I would like to present a better idea, something the city can do that won't compromise the values of the community to such an extreme degree.

The city should open a whore house. If the city is so desperate for money that they'll consider welcoming Wal-Mart, a whore house is the obvious solution. While there are similarities-both Wal-Mart and whores screw people for money-whores are at least honest about it. Best of all, with a whore house, everyone knows who's getting screwed and who's doing the screwing.

I envision an environmentally friendly whore house built of 100-percent recycled materials with passive and active solar heating and bedside recycling. It will, of course, feature products not tested on animals, as well as a full bar and a restaurant with lots of organic, vegetarian options. We could make it part of the Crossroads redesign to ensure its patrons use existing bus routes.

Because Boulder is so dedicated to diversity, this whore house would be an equal opportunity employer with something for everyone from the average heterosexual man or woman to the pre-op male-to-female transsexual whose sexual preference is lesbian. It could provide the city with yet another option for increasing racial diversity, as well.

Of course, this is all about money. So can a whore house bring in as much in sales tax revenue as a Wal-Mart? Absolutely. It's not the world's oldest profession for nothing. With the right marketing and the high-class clientele-such as Arab sheiks who like to be naughty Muslims when they're not in Riyhad-Boulder will once again have cash to spare.

But prostitution is illegal and results in the victimization of sex workers, you say?

Hey, a community willing to host Wal-Mart shouldn't be dainty or coy about legalities or exploitation. If we're going to do it, let's do it. Many of Wal-Mart's business practices are legally questionable anyway, and when it comes to exploitation, Wal-Mart wrote the book. Why snivel about the fate a few dozen whores when Wal-Mart is using thousands of children as virtual slaves?

There's a possibility City Council won't embrace the idea of a whore house. Some people might think it's obscene. But the real obscenity is the 12-year-old Chinese girl who labors 16 hours a day at slave wages so that we can save 60 cents on the latest action figure-a child making toys for children.

Towns across the nation have successfully held Wal-Mart at bay, most of them without resorting to whore houses. Certainly Boulder ought to be capable of fending off this corporate predator. But in the event Council members actually approve the Wal-Mart instead of the whore house, I propose we give Wal-Mart a welcome it won't forget, repleat with acts of non-violent civil disobedience and daily mass arrests.

Can you say, \"Lock-down in Aisle 2\"?

I hate wal-mart. This is from a newspaper in Boulder, CO one of the nicest cities in the country.

Futhermore I hate wal-mart.