I’ll be blogging live this evening from the Cleveland premier of Wal Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price. I’ve got a front-row seat, power and wifi so I’m a happy blogger.

The showing I’m blogging is at the Workman’s Circle on Green Road in South Euclid between Cedar and Mayfield.

My headcount is fifty-three people have come to see the movie.

Our own Jaclyn, of the newly redesigned Let The Lady Speak, is introducing the movie.

H&H Hardware in Middlefield, Ohio, the controversial Ace Hardware closing opens the movie.

The China connection is made early in the movie.

Greenwald also goes out of his way to make the point that the people he is profiling are Reagan Republicans and life-long conservatives.

Ah, the little lie that Wal Mart told about H&H Hardware comes out. When the owner of H&H Hardware was shopping a business plan to prepare to compete with Wal Mart, he discovered that his building had depreciated, not appreciated, in the 10 years since it was built.

The appraiser told him that the depreciation was due to the Wal Mart being under construction. This is the part that Wal Mart doesn’t tell when it tried to poke holes in the movie two weeks ago.

One person being interviewed compares Wal Mart to a neutron bomb for the way it leaves downtown areas vacant and abandoned.

Jaclyn, sitting to my right, finds the sound levels in the movie distracting. The music is too loud in relation to the dialog. For whatever reasons, the production qualities of the movie are not the best.

$1,557,000,000 cost to the taxpayers every year from Wal Mart’s shifting of employee healthcare costs of to state health care systems.

An anonymous note typed on a computer and printed out that read We Need A Union was enough to mandate a phone call to Bentonville by the store manager. That day, the store manager sent an employee to the airport to meet the Wal Mart corporate jet bring in three corporate executives to deal with the union organizing problem.

Forced, unpaid overtime is the norm at Wal Mart. Working off the clock is expected if you don’t want to lose your job. Why isn’t this a national class-action suit? There are 31 suits in the courts across the country. In Texas alone, the movie tell us, Wal Mart cheats employees out of $150 million each year.

$1,008,000,000 in government subsidies to Wal Mart nationally.

Wal Mart moved a store from Cathedral City, California to just across the city line to avoid paying sales tax that was about to become due as part of a subsidy deal.

Herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers stored in Wal Mart parking lots run off into watersheds and contaminate drinking water in the City of Belmont, South Carolina. Visit Catawba Riverkeeper for more on the story.

There is a Walton family bunker that was built after 11 September 2001.

A preacher in the movie says that Wal Mart represents plantation capitalism.

A good movie, even with the production faults. Jaclyn did an excellent job of handling the questions and answers session after the movie and about 2/3 of the audience stuck around to talk to her.

If you couldn’t be at the premeir tonight, there are multiple showings of the movie around Cleveland all week. You can find one close to you on the movie’s website by typing in your Zipcode. I’ll be checking with Jaclyn to make sure I haven’t missed any screenings.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 14th, 2005 at 0520 by Jeff Hess and is filed under Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.