Wal-Mart founder and Poppy Bu$h

Movie:
http://www.walmartmovie.com/about.php

Wal-Mart is pro-active in driving small busniess out of business, in the areas they put their big boxes.
I thought the Repukes liked small business?:sarcasm:


Sam Walton Receiving Presidential Medal of Freedom from poppy bush.
How sick is that?

http://www.medaloffreedom.com/SamWalton.htm

and it didn't seem he was the cut throat his kids turned out to be. Weren't the employee shareholders and treated pretty well when the company began?
It seemed based on good policy, happy employees and happy customers.

It changed.

And in more ways than the most obvious, too.


Walton had a very different vision. All the sentimental, pro-America, pro-employee, pro-environment, pro-community crap that Wal-Mart still spews out were some of his goals and objectives for how his company was to be run.

But, damn, once things grew and once his heirs took over, things got nasty.

Now, they still profess those same ideals while doing things almost expressly opposite to their stated goals and beliefs.

They proclaim these ideals proudly, as though by simply stating them then suddenly it would become true. As though the public perception is all that matters, and how they actually practice is irrelevant.

Sound familiar?

If you don't know what I'm getting at, watch a GOP ad or listen to a Republican campaign sometime.

Its all lies and talking points designed to appeal to "traditional" Republican values. Stuff like keeping the government out of people's lives, keeping a blanaced budget and controlling spending, keeping taxes low for all people (not just the wealthy), looking out for the common man, ebracing all faiths, and respecting traditional values.

Anyone who has their eyes open, though, can attest that these are not Republican values, when put into practice.

Wal-Mart is the same way.

And, just like Republicans arrogantly trumpet things which once may have been their core values, Wal-Mart continues to dishonor the name of its founders.

sad. People have to be pretty stupid to not notice they've changed into the opposite of what they started and still proclaim to be.

Someone noted one of Walton's focus, to sell "made in America", I forgot to mention that part. Now it's "made in China". What a horrifying switch.

It would be great if some chain store turned to "made in America" and advertised that. America is ready to respond. Of course they'd have to find the goods.

I wonder if Republican's have gotten so bad just because there is no check on their power, a sort of mob rule kind of thing. It's a shame really...if one party is in power it's a great time to strut the best of what they are, not the worst of what they are.

I hope we learn from it and when we are in power (and we will be) we use the power for the good of the country, not the ego and pocketbooks.

And his spawn are merely following in his footsteps, refining and improving Sam's original monopolistic, cutthroat vision.

Sam was the one who had the original vision of WalMart, and how it could become massively successful. The key to the whole deal was vertical monopoly. A vertical monopoly is where a company controls the entire product chain, from raw resouce through production, distribution and final sale. It was an evil genius type of idea, you have to admire the simplicity and effectiveness of it, but loathe what the inevitable outcome would be.

It was also effective at skirting past and current anti-monopoly laws. Those are and were based on the old Standard Oil model, a horizontal monopoly where a company buys up all of its competitors. The WalMart model didn't buy up competitors, it just drove them into the dirt.

And it was Sam's idea to start attacking small towns first. At the time, many small towns starting to fail. Farms were going under at a record rate, and the businesse that lived off of those farming communities were suffering also. Sam realized that these businesses were vunerable if he could undercut their prices, which, with his vertical monopoly in place, he could quite easily. Thus, he would swoop into a Midwest farming community, slap a big box down on the outskirts of town, and go about driving the rest of the town's businesses right into the ground. Predatory pricing was the key, and Sam was the master of it. This proved to be a quite successful tactic, and the bigger WalMart got, the easier it became, and more and more small businesses were forced out of business. Once all of the competitors in town were gone, WalMart was free to charge what it wanted.

But all through this Sam kept up the image of a down home, folksy good ol' boy from Arkansas, driving around in his old red truck in his overalls. This image endeared him to many many people, including the very ones he was screwing over, and contributed to his revered status today. But don't let that image fool you. Sam was a ruthless, predatory businessman who greased the right palms, and kept his goal always in front of him, WalMart uber alles. Yes, most everything he did was indeed legal, but a large part of that is due to the fact that nobody ever concieved of vertical monopolies, and by the time that threat was recognized, Sam and WalMart had greased enough palms and become so well entrenched in political and corporate circles that nobody would dare cross him.

Thus, the Midwest is still littered with the bleached bones of small and medium size businesses that Sam drove through the wall. In town after town you will find dying small towns with a downtown that is a ghosttown, whose tax base has shrunk to a pittance, but they still have a big box WalMart out there on the edge of town, sucking out what little life and cash still remains. Sam is responsible for these dead towns in all of their masses. Yes, Sam kept up a good facade, but behind that everybody should know there lurked an evil mind whose work and vision spawned this monstrosity that we see today. Those who are following in his footsteps are merely expanding on his vision, not originating it.

One little note, when Sam passed away he willed control of the company, and the majority of his wealth to the children of his partner and brother, Bud Walton. The reason that he did this was because he deemed his own children not worthy. Apparently they were more interesed in doing good with the money, were and are wonderful philanthropists, and did not have the same cut throat business sense that Sam had. Thus, the empire skipped them, and went to his nieces and nephews instead, since they were just the right kind of ruthless assholes that Sam loved and cherished.

I've always wondered how it is that Walmart could have turned into such an evil after Sam Walton died, and I've always suspected he was more of an Old Man Potter than the media let on.

I live in Columbia Mo, where Sam went to both high school, my alma mater Hickman High(go Kewpies!), and the University of Missouri. Two of his nieces live here with their families, the Kronkes and Lauries. I also worked for an inventory company that did inventory exclusively for Wal Marts, and as we toured the Midwest twenty years ago, I got a close up look at not only how WalMart treats their employees, but also a good look at how they raped and pillaged town after town across the Midwest. I know all too well what was behind that folksy demeanor that old Sam liked to show, and none of it was pretty.

And sad to say, ever since the Lauries and Kronkes have come to my home town they have ruined it. It has gone from a quiet, laid back liberal college town to a sprawling mass of poor qualilty housing developments and strip malls. The only section of town that is really still true to itself is the downtown, and Kronke with his strip mall developments is trying his best to drive that into the ground too.

Sam had many flaws...however this was not the company he envisioned. As much as those in charge now claim they do everything like Sam would that was bs. Many remember Walmart used to be all about Made in the USA when he was in charge. I am not saying what he did was good for this country, or for small towns......however Walmart was a different company when he was in charge.

to insure against that vision being corrupted.

his vision got even more corrupted.

There you go. You get into money or power and the best of visions get corrupted.