Dave Johnson would be just about the best blogger I’ve ever read this side of Josh Marshall. [And it's no coincidence that I've been reading both of them since before I knew what a blog even was.] His normal haunt is Seeing the Forest, but here at the Huffington Post he puts almost everything wrong with the economy today into a very tight nutshell:

Imagine a company in South Carolina that makes 20,000 pairs of shoes a week and distributes them to stores. Now, imagine that the company closes its South Carolina plant, opens a plant in a low-wage country, ships all the machines and raw materials there, ships back 20,000 pairs of shoes each week and distributes them to the same stores. Is that “trade?” Are the raw materials sent out of the country an “export?” Are the shoes brought back into the country an “import?”

The only thing that has been “traded” in this scenario is American jobs traded for huge executive bonuses. The workers in the low-wage country are not paid enough to buy any remaining American-made products. And, as the economic collapses as a result of shenanigans like this, American workers are no longer able to buy shoes so the executives won’t be getting bonuses next year.

I submit that nothing in this example is “traded” except that our standard of living has been traded away. And this exchange brings little benefit to the workers in the low-wage country. This is exploitative trade, not free trade, and we need to protect our workers, the workers in other countries and the world’s economy by demanding that our trade partners provide living wages and benefits.

[Emphasis in original]

Q. So why do we pick on Walmart?

A. Because these days that’s their entire business model.

I can’t truly suggest that economic meltdown is a corporate strategy, how could you ever keep it a secret? But it is clear that in corporate America, Walmart continues to benefit from rising unemployment following the Republican-inspired crash of 2008.

And then there is the matter of Walmart and political resolve in Chicago.

From Crain’s Chicago Business:

A move to bring a second Wal-Mart store within city limits has been stalled once again.

A city rules committee deferred a vote on an amendment to the Chatham Market shopping center development agreement that would repeal a clause aimed at keeping out Wal-Mart.

Alderman Howard Brookins Jr. (21st), who’s been fighting for a store in his ward since 2004 and introduced the proposal in April, says the committee is expected to vote on the amendment in July.

Also, he says he’s near the 26 votes needed to pass the measure once it gets before the City Council.

“It’s not a given, but it is close,” Mr. Brookins said. “Everyone sees how dire the economic situation is now. The ongoing delay would postpone when the store will be open and . . . able to put people to work.” (Emphasis mine. JH)

A Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokesman says the company is “cautiously optimistic” about getting city council’s approval to open a second store.

The veneer of civilization with its attending ethics and morals is thin. You only have to read accounts of Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto during Nazi occupation or Russians during the siege of Leningrad to understand the horrible depths humans will descend to to survive.

In the United States of America, six months into the first term of President Barack Hussein Obama we are light years away from those horrible times, but yet there are those already willing to exploit desperation.

It is easy to maintain high standards when times are good. People of character stand out when times are bad. Walmart in Chicago is not an either or decision. There are alternatives to the South Side’s food deserts. I hope the people of Chicago hold tight and pay close attention to those who are unmasked.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

That’s the starting wage for a frozen food stocker at the Safeway three blocks from my house in Pueblo, Colorado. Yes, unions do make a difference.

Klein wrangled an interview with a Wal-flack:

An Interview With Wal-Mart Spokesman David Tovar

Why an employer mandate?
We understand that others may have different opinions. Others in the business community may have different opinions. But for our business, this is the right thing to do. Every associate can become eligible for health care at Wal-Mart.

But to sharpen the question, why an employer mandate rather than a plan that dissolves the employer market entirely?

Look, this is the position that we took. We wanted to be part of the solution. We wanted to lend our voices to the momentum behind reform.

Ezra, you got rolled. He said nothing. You’ll have to practice more if you are going to pin down a professional snake like a Wal-flack.

I have been reading far to many blog postings like this one today, apllauding that Walmart has come out for President Obama’s health insurance plan. The libertarian CATO Institute actually has this one nailed:

A couple of years ago, I shared a cab to the airport with a Wal-Mart lobbyist, who told me that Wal-Mart supports an “employer mandate.” An employer mandate is a legal requirement that employers provide a government-defined package of health benefits to their workers. Only Hawaii and Massachusetts have enacted such a law.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Wal-Mart is a capitalist success story. At the time of our conversation, this lobbyist was helping Wal-Mart fight off employer-mandate legislation in dozens of states. Those measures were specifically designed to hurt Wal-Mart, and were underwritten by the unions and union shops that were losing jobs and business to Wal-Mart.

But it all became clear when the lobbyist explained the reason for Wal-Mart’s position: “Target’s health-benefits costs are lower.”

Walmart doesn’t care about whether its people are covered. It just wants to pass additional costs on to its competitors. And sure, we liberals should take advantage of whatever advantages we can when the stars align in a fortuitous way, but I’m with Atrios on this one:

While I get why some applaud Walmart’s embrace of an employer mandate, I also think that our employer-based health care insurance system really sucks and I’m not really excited about locking it in place.

Obama’s healthcare plan is better than nothing, but it is still far too timid. We need socialized medicine now, please.

How do you really feel about Walmart? Here’s your chance to express your true feelings — pro and con — about the world’s largest retailer. Write whatever you like in the comments section and engage your fellow readers in the conversation.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

This is extraordinary enough that I didn’t believe it the first time I read it:

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, on Tuesday endorsed the idea of requiring large companies to offer health insurance to their workers. The proposal is central to Obama’s hopes of covering the nation’s nearly 50 million uninsured and is disliked by some business groups.

The conservative chorus of hostility is already out there. Michelle Malkin correctly notes that the SEIU signed the same endorsement letter:

[T]his is not a sudden “about-face.” Wal-Mart and the SEIU, still bitter enemies on most other policy and employment matters, first joined hands on health care two years ago. The unholy alliance was forged out of mutual desperation and political expediency.

Why did Walmart it? This guy (who I think I remember arguing with somewhere back in the deep, dark history of this blog) is actually right:

Believe you me, Wal-Mart isn’t doing this out of concern for the proverbial poor, down-trodden masses. Wal-Mart is doing this because a government mandate for business-provided health care will kill their smaller, more-regional competition.

That’s why I’m afraid the company won’t have the courage of its convictions and actually lobby for President Obama’s plan. Most of Wal-Mart’s smaller, more-regional competition is already in a death spiral.

There is a culture in any large corporation. Some are positive, some negative and others simply benign. I don’t know that any of us have ever written directly about Walmart’s culture, but I found this passage in an article reflecting on Julie Roehm:

The social behavior of the town, the local woman [a Roehm neighbor] continues, is dictated by the retailer’s employee guidelines, which prevent anyone from accepting so much as a breath mint from a supplier. (And employees know they’re being watched: Wal-Mart reportedly has a stable of former FBI and CIA agents monitoring them.)

Take her friend who works for PepsiCo: If she’s invited to a dinner party at a friend’s house and brings a case of Pepsi, “it’s a disaster trying to figure out who can drink a Pepsi or not.” Or those who want to shop at the new Target that just opened one town over. “If her husband works for Wal-Mart, his wife can’t be seen there, so she’ll give her shopping list to someone else.”

After dishing for some 45 minutes, the woman suddenly hits self-preservation mode herself, pleading with me to keep her anonymous. “I am begging you, please. Oh my goodness,” she says, even though neither she nor her husband works for Wal-Mart or a supplier. “If all of this got out, we could be blackballed in two seconds. That’s the type of environment this is. Wal-Mart owns this town.”

I’m learning a great deal about the roots of Walmart culture from Bethany Moreton’s To Serve God And Wal-Mart.

Much hilarity and tragedy to follow.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

Q. Can lower level Walmart workers ever expect to retire?

A. New York Times, 2/17/06:

In his response to the store manager who asked about retiree health benefits, Mr. Scott wrote: “Quite honestly, this environment isn’t for everyone. There are people who would say, ‘I’m sorry, but you should take the risk and take billions of dollars out of earnings and put this in retiree health benefits and let’s see what happens to the company.’ If you feel that way, then you as a manager should look for a company where you can do those kinds of things.”

Nobody should be forced to work in order to pay for their medical care after age 65. Nobody.

Generally I don’t do crime stories, but this one is just amazing:

The Wal-Mart store on North Tryon Street hasn’t been open two weeks, and already there’s been 10 crimes reported there.

The most serious crime happened Sunday afternoon when two men car-jacked a shopper at gunpoint in the parking lot. They got away with his wallet, phone and sport utility vehicle. The victim wasn’t hurt.

That truck was recovered later that night. No arrests have been made.

Wal-Mart officials said they have security on staff, and that customers’ safety is their No. 1 concern.

They wouldn’t give any details of how they plan on keeping the public safe while shopping there, but they said precautions are in place.

Keeping you safe costs Walmart money. This is the result. Nevertheless, Walmart says “Trust us.” I’d demand a few answers first. “Do you have cameras in the parking lot?” might be a good place to start.

Anyone who knows me knows that apart from my family, the three things I love most in the world are Monty Python, the Philadelphia Phillies and reading (not necessarily in that order). Therefore, I’ve decided to take a page from Oprah and use this blog to promote literacy and history at the same time!

Nelson Lichtenstein’s history of Walmart, Retail Revolution, is now available for pre-order at Amazon for the low, low price of $16.50. [The Kindle edition is only $9.99!] Its release date is July 21st.

At 320 pages, two and a half weeks should be enough for even the slowest readers to finish it. Therefore, I’ll wait until August 17th to devote a whole week of posts to the tome. The discussion will take place in our newly-threaded comments. Like I originally planned, I’ll invite Professor Lichtenstein to post here on the book at that time (but I can’t make any promises he’ll accept).

And just to make sure everyone who drops by sees this, I’ll update you on the book club every Monday until it starts.

Assuming you work at a Walmart store, how many hours a week are you getting?

Walmart is at it again. From the Minnesota Independent:

Wal-Mart is threatening to fire pro-union workers at its store in the Midway neighborhood of St. Paul, according to a complaint filed today with the National Labor Relations Board. The charges, filed by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789, allege that starting on June 11 corporate representatives began telling employees that they could easily acquire a list of union backers and that those people would lose their jobs.

I know what some of you…cough…Someone and Bob…cough…are thinking. Isn’t Walmart innocent until proven guilty? Not when they have such a terrible record on labor law violations. Since 1995, the Republican-dominated NLRB has issued at least 60 rulings against the company. And do you remember those secret anti-Obama meetings? This company has no respect for law.

They also have no respect for the intelligence of the American public:

Daphne Moore, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, says that the company is looking into the allegations. “We’re just learning about the filing,” she says. “We’ll review it and respond after that review. Generally we provide our managers with training on how to comply with labor laws and we also make sure that our associates know their rights.”

[emphasis added]

Excuse me, I have to take five minutes off from writing this post in order for me to stop laughing….There, I’m back.

If Walmart cares so much about workers knowing their rights, it should post the phrase, “You have a right to join a union” in every break room in every store in the country. They won’t, because Walmart doesn’t believe in the rule of law.

That’s actually what cracks me up about all these Employee Free Choice Act discussions we have here. I read all about about the workers’ individual constitutional right to a “secret ballot.” Leaving aside the fact that the secret ballot isn’t going anywhere whether EFCA passes or not, there is no constitutional right to a secret ballot, even in actual political elections. [The Australian Ballot dates from the 1880s.] The legal right of workers to representation by the organization of their choice dates from 1935. Where’s the outrage when Walmart violates that? The selective outrage of Walmart defenders is no different from the Governor of Texas suggesting that his state should secede from the union. It’s a poke in the eye to our democracy and it makes me sick to my stomach.

Walmart is a civil conspiracy to violate labor law. Walmart’s many online defenders are part of this conspiracy. Shop there and you are a party to it too.

As Marc Gunther explains at ClimateBiz (via Walmart Watch), the Environmental Defense Fund has stopped sucking up to Walmart and started doing its job again:

As Gwen Ruta of the Environmental Defense Fund, a Wal-Mart partner, writes in her frank assessment of the company’s 2009 sustainability report, the problem is that all the good things that Wal-Mart is doing — increasing its use of renewable energy, driving efficiency in individual stores, improving its fleet operations and pushing up its recycling rate — are offset by the fact that the company is adding more stores and selling more stuff.

You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that Walmart’s environmentalism is a marketing ploy. Since this seems to be “taking credit for being ahead of the curve” day, I wrote this in August 2006:

The fundamental question is not how we make Wal-Mart more sustainable. The fundamental question is how do we make society more sustainable. If Wal-Mart becomes more sustainable yet their Chinese suppliers become even less so or they double in size and their customers drive there more often, what’s the point of praising them? Complimenting Wal-Mart for whatever it does to be more eco-friendly is useless if they take one step forward and bring the world two steps back. You have to look at the whole picture.

Let’s hope more environmental organizations jump on this bandwagon soon. There’s only so much “progress” the planet can take.