More Unseen Expenses Created by Having Walmart In Your Town

Surfing Wal-Mart’s Crime Wave

Research published this week by the Tampa Bay Times reveals stunning statistics from 2014: 53 Wal-Mart stores in 3 Florida Counties (Hillsborough, Pasco, and Hernando) generated a paddy wagon caravan of 16,800 police reports in one year alone.

That’s two calls an hour, every hour, every day. “The calls eat up hours of officer’s time,” the newspaper reports. “They all start at one place.” One sheriff told the newspaper, “It is a tremendous strain on manpower.”

 Gee? Really?
Let's get this straight, the Waltons, the world's most wealthy and miserly billionaire family pulls in huge profits while straining the resources of the towns and states where their big box hells reside. And then it appears that they further use up more resources because they don't hire proper security and the stores are laid out in a way to almost encourage theft?

"A dozen years later, not much has changed. The Tampa Bay Times calculates that Wal-Mart, on average, produce four times as many calls as nearby Target stores. The newspaper said the retailer has been criticized “for shifting too much of its security burden onto taxpayers. Several local law enforcement officers also emphasized that all the hours spent at Wal-Mart cut into how often they can patrol other neighborhoods and prevent other crimes.”

Four times the number of cars as another local big box store but one that actually hires enough security to protect their property. Walmart's only too happy to foist those costs off as much as possible so as to extract every last half penny of profit they can.

Yet another reason why you will never see me spend a penny in Walmart. Not that I needed any additional reasons but more ammo's rarely a bad thing!

No Company On the Public Dole Should Be Allowed to Pocket ANY Profits

Make no mistake about it, the largest welfare user in this nation and around the world is Walmart, also the largest company on the planet too. They also make "profits" in the billions while underpaying employees to the point they cannot survive without skipping bills and going without electricity.

This is obscene that the Waltons, the richest family on Earth, is allowed to pocket money that should, by any rational thought process, be going to pay their employees livable wages.

But we know that is simply not the case and the Waltons are the greediest and most miserly billionaires there are. These are mentally defective greedheaded fools who think they need more money when there is no way they could EVER spend the money they already have.

Go and read, “I cannot continue to live and work like this”: How Wal-Mart drove me to shut down Park Avenue and then tell me how good you feel about giving money to Walmart and the Waltons. These are despicable exploiters who should be forced to pay livable wages or have their operating licenses yanked.

Awesome New Use for Closed Walmart Supercenter

Texas town comes up with the best use for an old Walmart by converting it into the largest single floor library in America. And adding a Farmer's Market for winter time indoor shopping and eating.

What had started to become a community blight has been transformed into an amazing and highly used community space.

A whole bunch more photos are available on their smug mug site. They have built it out rather incredibly awesomely. They have a theatre!

This is the best re-use I've yet seen. They took an empty shell and created something far, far more than it had ever been originally intended to be (a purveyor of low-end pre-landfill Chinese made schlock).

Good on you, McAllen, Texas. I don't guess I'll ever be in the area (Texas and I had a falling out a few years ago, something about human rights trumping asshole governors or something) but I would stop by and say hello if I ever found myself there.

And yes, that would be the ONLY Walmart building I will ever set foot in.

Walmart Continues to Value Profits Over People, Always

Walmart Taking Away Insurance For 30,000 Workers and blaming rising costs rather than their ever increasing greed requirements.

Walmart can pay living wages, Walmart can provide benefits to its employees. It chooses not to because it bumps their bottom line profits to foist those expenses on to the economies of the localities they infect with their Big Box Hellholes.

Make no mistake about it, when you shop at Walmart, you are removing money from your local economy permanently. Part of it goes into the Walton coffers and the other part goes into China.

Buying goods at Walmart harms America. Shopping at Walmart is un-American. Patriots vote every day of their lives with their wallets and the choices where they spend their money makes.

America Needs More Men Like Bernie Sanders

Walmart Ice Cream Sandwiches Don't Melt in the Sun

I don't know what is in a Walmart Ice Cream sandwich but it isn't ice cream. Ice cream has this weird ability to melt when it is exposed to warmer than freezing temperatures.

Whatever gelatinous chemical bomb this nasty crap is made from is not ice cream. After 75 minutes in the sun, the only visible signs of melting is some nasty watery liquid that has pooled a little on the sides.



This is not food. This is about as food-like as a plastic banana and maybe even less food-like.

The sad part are the comments on the video from deeply ignorant people saying that it tastes good and it probably won't give them cancer. Pretty sure their trust in Walmart to look after their well-being is deeply and badly misplaced.

Walmart is THE Money Sucking Leech

Or, Subsidy is a Four Letter Word

I do not shop at Walmart, I haven't spent a dime there in close to 20 years. And yet my money is STILL going to help bridge the gap between how much they pay and the services Walmart employees and their families need and use.

Walmart is the largest corporation on the planet. It is owned by the wealthiest family on the planet and yet I, not the wealthiest anything anywhere, am being forced to help pay for the services that Walmart has weaseled out of.

At best, this unethical, unseemly and unsustainable. At its worst, this is a codified business decision to maximize profits for as long as possible until the whole shithouse falls down around their ears.

Walmart CAN pay a living wage but they will not until they are forced to do so. This is, coincidentally, a strong argument against libertarian "ideals" of letting the free market sort everything out. The free market sorted out Walmart and we are still paying the price today, you, me, every single one of us is paying Walmart to exist.

I'd like to cancel that payment, now and into the future. If Walmart cannot stand on its own feet without my subsidies then they do not deserve to be in business.

How Wal-Mart Steals From Us All

Walmart's Executive Bonuses Cost Taxpayers Millions

This new report, co-published by IPS and Americans for Tax Fairness, reveals that taxpayers (note, NOT Walmart customers exclusively, we are all being forced to pay their executive bonuses) also subsidize much of the cost of Walmart’s executive pay.

Key report findings: 

• Walmart reduced its federal tax bills by an estimated $104 million over the past six years by exploiting a tax loophole that allowed eight top executives to pocket more than $298 million in “performance pay” that was fully tax deductible.  That sum would have been enough to cover the cost of free school lunches for 33,000 children for those six years.

• Michael T. Duke, Walmart’s recently retired President & CEO and currently Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors, pocketed nearly $116 million in exercised stock options and other “performance pay” during the period 2009-2014. That translates into a taxpayer subsidy for Walmart of more than $40 million—enough to cover the average cost of food stamps for 4,200 people for those six years.

• Taxpayers would save $50 billion over 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, if Congress closed this perverse “performance pay” loophole by capping the tax deduction at $1 million for each employee’s total compensation, with no exceptions for performance pay.

Full report: PDF

Full report with year by year data breakdown: PDF

CostCo IS Better than Walmart and Sam's Club

Pretty easy to see why I'll never willingly set foot in a Walmart or Sam's Club and am a regular customer at CostCo.

The full article is available on Atlasleft.

Sam's Club vs Costco Ruled No Contest, Sam's Club Fails for Profit Mongering

Sam's Club vs Costco: Do Lower Prices Trump Employee Happiness?

Hint: No.

I will never shop at a Sam's Club while I can go to a CostCo instead. I strongly prefer spending my money at a store that treats their employees like people and pays them livable wages.

"Sam's Club could treat its workers better, find ways to rev up sales and not lay people off just because they can. That, however seems unlikely as Wal-Mart will likely maintain its profit margin at Sam's Club by continuing to use its leverage to purchase at the best prices possible while squeezing and eliminating labor costs wherever possible."

Sam's Club and Wal-Mart have a long and disgusting history of treating employees like cattle to be used up and discarded. Which may work nicely for your bottom line for a period of time but the worm is turning and Wal-Mart's misdeeds are more and more known. And that leads more people to shopping elsewhere and marginalizing Wallyworld.

And that is a very good thing. People over Profits! Vote with your wallet and don't give your money to the evil empire that is Wal-Mart.