Wal-Mart and Freddy Krueger

While I do have a contract with my employer, I have no contract with Wal-Mart to purchase from them, nor even to visit their stores.

Corporate defenders argue that poor Wal-Mart was subject to terms of their coverage contract with their "health insurance company". Really? Perhaps this mindless behemoth of retailing could stand up for its employees and tell their (many) insurers that they could "shove" the terms of their contract, ... or even spot their former employee the $ 470,000 the suit sought to recover. After all, it was all about the money from the beginning as far as the insurance company was concerned.

In the end, the taxpayer covers Wal-Mart's sad butt on this one, ... for their former employee falls onto the MedicAid rolls. I am pleased to pay taxes to care and provide for their former employee since they would not. Who made out in their deal? The insurance company and Wal-Mart? No, ... for Wal-Mart lost customers permanently, as you can read above. How many more new customers will Wal-Mart need to replace us in a deteriorating economy? Or do you think you will become the Woolworth's of the coming depression? Be careful, Wal-Mart, what you wish for!

Who was the insurer? Was there a contractual provision to recover costs paid, ... or is this just another specious argument to defend a corporate misdeed? "Misdeed"?, you Wal-Mart shareholders might screech, as if assaulting a corporation is akin to the permanent bodily injuries sustained by this woman, this mother.

In the end, a corporation is a human invention created solely to avoid the inconvenience of having a soul. For Mankind to maintain a semblence of control over its existence, it must, on occasion, take these mindless devices to the precipice, and throw them into the abyss. The "chapters", "11", "13", and so forth, read like Freddy Krueger novels, and allow corporations to be reincarnated in ways we mortals can only envy.

I've owned a corporation, worked for them, and invested in them. They are harder to kill than roaches, and spread more misery among us than the plague. Our fascination in them is based upon the greedy notion that if we strip our conscience from its "unholy" effect upon our investment dollars, ... we will succeed where our conscience would otherwise fail us. We will grow wealthy, and excuse any ill-gotten profits by this cognitive dissociation we call "the corporation". What a sick premise for how we should interact upon the Earth with one another.

I will buy from my local hardware store, ... the one I worked for as a kid. I will buy from my locally owned dairy and convenience store. I'll shop smaller and wiser, ... not "big box". I'll shop local and live local.

Wal-Mart will never know I am gone, for I was never there. But in the depths of their market research department, there is a database swelling with a number of American Consumers whom they can not touch, ... not with their schmooze, nor advertising, nor public relations. They know, ... somewhere in the bowels of the corporate offices in Benton, Arkansas, ... that some of us feel closer to this brain-damaged mother of a dead soldier, ... than we do to our 401K and 403B investments in their corporation. And that, ... in the end, will cost Wal-Mart Billions of dollars. Because, you see, ... I'd rather rather pay taxes and rest assured this mother is cared for, than buy from Wal-Mart, knowing they did not give a damn!

In the end, I was not born to fuel Wal-Mart's profits, ... but to understand what it means to have a friend, a mother, or a neighbor need my help. In the midst of an economic slump, ... a "recession", ... or whatever we find ourselves in, ... it is all the more important that I side with people, ... and not corporations. We are, you see, at the precipice again. Every hand I have held or shaken is worth far more to me than a slip of paper granting me a "share" in a corporation. No matter whjat the shares traded for today, ... they are always worth less than the people behind the corporate veil.

When did we forget that?