Sunday, March 27, 2005

It Pays to Be Wal-Mart

The Common Bastard has this appalling bit of news:

The U.S. House has approved a federal highway bill that includes $37 million for widening and extending the Bentonville street that provides the main access to the headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores.

Boozman spokesman Patrick Creamer said the congressman’s request for the money was penciled in for $3 million when the bill was in committee.

Pay an $11 million fine - 20 minutes worth of sales - with the bonus of no criminal charges for using illegal immigrant workers, initially ask $3 million for road improvements and get $37 million in the end. This has to be one of the best games of political patty-cake I have ever seen. I wonder if they would let me be the baker’s man in this political dough game…

Money is the yeast, brother.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I was thrilled to read this morning that Rep. (and Mayoral hopeful) Anthony Weiner joined Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Raul Grijalva (a favorite of mine when I lived in Tucson, AZ), among others, in protesting Wal-Mart's sponsorship of ABC's morning news segment, "Only in America," particularly when I read what he had to say: "More and more Americans are asking about the price that we have to pay when Wal-Mart comes into a community, treats workers poorly, violates immigration laws and squashes small businesses." What a pleasant surprise, and certainly something else to think about with regard to the upcoming Democratic mayoral primary.