Oh man, there were a lot of fucking hilarious looking Wal-Mart videos, but I had to go with the truther bullshit (for obvious reasons).

I’m wondering if the following passage might shed a little more light on why Wal-Mart is suddenly so pro-health care reform.

..in the Lawrence, KS, Wal-Mart store where they worked, every year employers chose a “Christmas family,” a needy family in the community, and donate their own money to make their holiday season a brighter one. For five years in a row, the associates have chosen a female worker in their own store. … Many more Wal-Mart employees rely on public assistance for their survival, including Food Stamps, for which the income cutoff is low: 130 percant of the federal poverty line. [130% of $14,810/yr for a family of three in 2005.]  Many Wal-Mart workers also depend on Medicaid.

Taxpayers are subsidizing Wal-Mart, and responsible government officials are getting worried.  In February 2004, [George Miller's office] released a report showing that each Wal-Mart store employing 200 people costs taxpayers $420,750 per year in public assistance.  One state tax official in the Midwest, charactertizing Wal-Mart’s “benefit package” as “Food Stamps and Medicaid,” says, “I can’t believe towns around here think a new Wal-Mart represents economic development.”

California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber … was outraged when she learned about the sex discrimination charges in ‘Dukes v. Wal-Mart’; she smelled blood when, tipped off by dissatisfied workers, her office discovered that Wal-Mart was encouraging workers to apply for public assistance, “in the middle of the worst state budget crisis in history!” California had a $38 billion deficit at the time, and Lieber was enraged that taxpayers would be subsidizing Wal-Mart’s low wages, bringing new meaning to the term “corporate welfare.” (Liza Featherstone; Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart, 145-147)

Lieber was angry, too, that Wal-Mart’s welfare dependence made it nearly impossible for responsible employers to compete with the retail giant.  It was as if taxpayers were unknowingly funding a massive plunge to the bottom in wages and benefits — quite possibly their own. (Featherstone, 239)

She teamed up with anti-Wal-Mart beauty queen Carolyn Sapp, and the two held a press conference on July 23, 2003, to expose Wal-Mart’s welfare scam.  The Wal-Mart documents — instructions explaining how to apply for Food Stamps, Medi-Cal … and other forms of welfare – were blown up on posterboard and displayed at the press conference. (Featherstone, 240)

And Mr. Vance, these seem like fine reasons for libertarians to not shop at Wal-Mart.

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