On Saturday 23 February 2002 19:59, Brian wrote:
> Not to start a flame war, but that's 3 anti-Walmart posts.  What the heck
> do you people have against Walmart?  Especially so bad that Jim "hates
> them worse than Microsoft"?

Well, imagine if you will all of Microsoft's anti-competitive tactics applied 
against the business districts of small towns all across America.  Here's the 
game they played in northeast Oklahoma while I was in high school there.  All 
dates are approximate, and I don't claim 100% accuracy on the details.

1979: Put in a Wal-Mart in Bartlesville and one 20 minutes' drive away in 
Nowata.
1980-1990: Suck the business out of both downtown districts by offering 
artificially low prices.
1990-1992: Now that downtown Bartlesville is dead and the nearby Kmart is on 
the verge of closing, raise prices in Bartlesville.  Continue to nurture 
Nowata's dependence.
1992: Threaten to move out of Bartlesville unless the city council subsidizes 
a Wal*Mart supercenter on the one remaining piece of virgin land a quarter 
mile away from the existing store (so you don't have to close the existing 
store during construction... besides, the old parking lot -- the largest in 
town -- isn't big enough for a supercenter).  If citizens organize against 
the new store, pooh pooh their concerns about traffic, noise, light 
pollution, parking lot runoff, etc.  If they persist, buy the newspaper's 
silence by becoming its biggest advertiser.
1993: Open the supercenter.  Bribe (with "donations") the local high school 
to get the band members out of class so they can play at the grand opening -- 
makes good publicity!
1993-1994: Hire half as many people as you told the city you would, and work 
them twice as hard.  Treat them like criminals.  If they ask for time off to 
pick their sick kids up from day care, fire them.  If they ask to rearrange 
their work schedules to take community-college classes, fire them.  If the 
security cameras in the break room catch them complaining, fire them.
late 1994: Close the store in Nowata, since obviously those people can drive 
to Bartlesville to shop at the new supercenter!

Still not convinced?  See if you can find the Doonesbury comics on the 
subject from late summer & early fall 1994 -- if Gary Trudeau wasn't writing 
specifically about Bartlesville's battle, it was a suspiciously similar one.  
--Ben