Poor Victimized Wal-Mart

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's biggest retailer, launched a national advertising campaign Thursday in an effort to burnish an image that has been tarnished by claims about its hiring practices, stance toward labor unions and actions against smaller competitors.

The company is running a full-page advertisement in more than a hundred newspapers, touting the number of jobs it plans to create in 2005, its employee-benefit packages and the diversity of its workers. The company also has started a Web site to support its campaign.

The ad, which is running in newspapers such as USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, says the company plans to create 100,000 U.S. jobs in 2005 and that 74 percent of its hourly employees work full-time.

"For too long, others have had free rein to say things about our company that just aren't true," Chairman Lee Scott said in a statement. "We've decided it's time to draw our own line in the sand."

Here's some of the BS from their web site:

The truth is Wal-Mart provides great value for customers, opportunities for our workforce, economic support for communities and a helping hand for charities across America. We work hard to make life better for everyone. Can our critics truly say the same?

Wal-Mart is committed to those who shop with us every day — many of whom depend on us to provide value for the products they want at the lowest prices possible. Last year, more than 90 percent of Americans — 270 million people — chose to shop at Wal-Mart.

That last statement is scary, but almost has to be a lie. While Wal-Mart is almost everywhere, it isn't everywhere. Certainly more than ten percent of Americans live far from a Wal-Mart. Millions live in nursing homes and prisons or would otherwise be unable to go to Wal-Mart even if they wanted to. And millions are babies and toddlers who may have gone to Wal-Mart, but certainly couldn't be said to have chosen to do so. And then there are those of us who KNOW that Wal-Mart sucks in just about every way possible and wouldn't shop there if our lives depended on it.

Wal-Mart works hard to make life more impoverished for everyone--not better. It has destroyed downtown after downtown after downtown, and even strip mall after strip mall! (I saw this on my train trip, especially in Grand Junction. There was a strip mall across from my hotel with I think two out of twelve units occupied--and I saw several others like it in that town of about 45,000. Then somebody came up to the hotel lobby and asked the clerk where the Wal-Mart was, and she responded "Which one?")

Now the bastards who are destroying America want us to feel sorry for their rich behinds. Go Cheney yourself, Wal-Mart.