John Stossel stumping for Wal-Mart
Submitted by Melange on November 11, 2005 - 10:41pm.
Soapbox
I happened to tune into 20/20 tonight, just in time to catch John Stossel on his latest "give me a break" tirade. This time, he's vilifying the people who are anti-Wal-Mart. He began by interviewing Ted Turner (I didn't catch most of that, just the tail end). I've transcribed some of it below (and have left out the interview portions with "experts" claiming such things as "Wal-Mart's low prices amount to a wage increase to all Americans that shop there):
JS: But in America, capitalists are vilified, people hate them.
TT: Who does?!?
JS (in voiceover, showing movie clips in the background): Well, lots of people do. In today's media, the businessman is more likely to be the villain than even the Nazis. <cut to clip of Bill Maher saying "Nothing is like the Nazis....except for Wal-Mart" (laughter)>
JS: <cut to a clip of Wall Street with Michael Douglas> (in voiceover) And yet the media get business wrong.
Michael Douglas (from Wall Street script): It's a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred.
JS: "It's simply transferred, says Michael Douglas. It's a zero sum game. By that logic, if Wal-Mart owners profit, we lose. But that's a myth.
[snip] JS: Wal-Mart created wealth. It started with just one discount store, then its owner Sam Walton created ways to streamline the supply chain, speeding delivery to stores. He pushed suppliers to sell to him for less so he could sell things for less. That's been so popular that Wal-Mart now has 6,000 stores and they sell more goods than any chain, anywhere. As a result, Sam Walton's heirs are rich. Does their having billions mean the rest of us have less? No.
[snip] JS: Sam Walton's innovations have created thousands of new jobs and allowed millions of Americans to save money.
The entire segment is a Wal-Mart infomercial, complete with a former welfare mother tearfully thanking her former boss for the great opportunity of working there. Ugh!
By playing a man of the people but doing the work of the devil, he's a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Hmmm...three metaphors in one sentence. Probably a bit much.
I remember seeing a segment that Stossel did, geez - it had to be years ago, about the government having someone on the payroll whose job it was to watch the flow of ketchup. He's nothing more than a corporate shill.
I'd never really paid much attention to him - until I read the article in Outside magazine called Earth Shakers (I think.) It was a profile of the leading anti-environmentalists. It chronicled several instances of his "journalism" in which he was simply being, as you aptlly described him, a corporate shill.
Give us a break, Stossel.
We ought to have a contest. I do this all the time myself and then realize I've done it and have to decide whether to go back and eradicate it or let it stand.
Even worse, once I gave a history paper at an academic conference and the moderator publicly congratulated me on all the "subtle puns I had managed to work into it." I paled because I knew I had not intentionally put any in there.
As soon as I could get free, I ran off to scan my paper and notes to see what horrible thing I might have said. I can only remember 2 right now, but in one place I referred to "grime-ridden cities" and in another I had confidently stated that "automobiles drove the economy forward."
I'm guessing he's an ultra capitalist, government out of my life kind of guy, who has gotten government to benefit himself when he can.
We need to do to him what we've done to O'Lielly. Destroy his ability to speak with any credibility.
Protest of Wal-Mart's Refusal to Fill Contraceptive Prescriptions
Dear Wal-Mart executives,
Wal-Mart's policy of refusal to dispense prescriptions for Emergency Birth Control -- or birth control at all if the pharmacist who receives the prescription is opposed to it -- is appalling and should be revoked immediately.
We, as customers, believe medical decisions are between a physician and his or her patient. Pharmacists are directed to dispense prescriptions based on a doctor's orders, and the personal belief system of the pharmacist should play no role in whether or not a particular medicine is dispensed or withheld. We would prefer to pick up our prescriptions without a side order of someone else's morality or discrimination. Birth control pills aren't just for pregnancy! Some women are prescribed the pills to control heavy periods/bleeding or hormonal imbalances, while other women use the pill to assist in clearing up acne, for instance.
It is ironic that your pharmacists readily dispense Viagra -- a medication that assists a man in obtaining an erection for the purpose of having sex (which can lead to making a woman pregnant) -- and yet you have the audacity to claim that any of your pharmacists may decline to fill a prescription for birth control pills! That is the height of hypocrisy.
Without consumers and loyal customers, Wal-Mart would not exist. Your company would not be as large or as pervasive as it is today. By alienating the largest majority of your customer demographic (women), as well as insulting them and treating them as if they have no right to make their OWN decisions about their OWN bodies (and dictating that an employee CAN make arbitrary decisions about a woman customer's reproductive system), Wal-Mart is treading a dangerous path that could result in a widespread boycott across this nation.
We urge you to revisit your archaic stance on Emergency Birth Control and the dispensation of birth control pills. Women are NOT children, and we are definitely not YOUR children. The decisions about our bodies are private and we choose to discuss them with our health professionals. Your pharmacists have a primary directive -- that is to serve the customer in a courteous, professional manner. Personal biases or religious beliefs are better left in the parking lot when employees come to work each day. As customers, we don't CARE what your religious stance is on birth control; your job is to simply fill our prescriptions without further comment.
We urge you to revoke this discriminatory and harmful policy directed toward women.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned <------ this is YOU!
(btw, I'm #88 and I said, "A pharmacist's job is to fill prescriptions, not impose their religious or moral stances on what drugs they will or will not administer. I urge you to reform, rewrite and revise your company policy to ensure your pharmacists will fill ANY AND ALL legal prescriptions, free from any religious or moral opinion.")
Get Up! Stand Up! Don't give up The Fight!
Direct your lists to this important petition and spread the word! Let's have 8000 sigs by the close of the weekend!
Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way! -Thomas Paine
MAKE OHIO BLUE
Wal-Mart is a disgrace to American capitalism, they pay rock bottom to Americans, but the Americans that work at Wal-Mart can only afford to shop at Wal-Mart because they are paid bottom rate, the profits come from their cheap imports, made cheap because they support what is effectively slave labor in mainland China. And when people complain they crush the opposition with brutal force before a union can form and threaten their power monopoly, in the third world they crush the opposition with guns, in the first world they crush it with unemployment. I hope the high cost of low prices wakes people up to what Wal-Mart is really about, the world's largest and most successful pyramid scheme.
This is just so WRONG on SO MANY levels. Take this tidbit from Michael Douglas:
Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred.
NO, you moron! The Federal Reserve PRINTS PAPER MONEY at will! Deficit? What Deficit? Inflation? What Inflation? I know! PRINT MO MONEY!
But Mike thinks he's so cool with this so he then says, "It's simply transferred. It's a zero sum game. By that logic, if Wal-Mart owners profit, we lose. But that's a myth."
Riiiight Mike. Simply. But Stossel can't be upstaged! So he blurts out
"Wal-Mart created wealth", followed by some twisted American-Dream whitewash, completely ignoring how Sam Walton (March 29, 1918 – April 5, 1992) had virtually NOTHING to do with today's Wal-Mart Corporatist race-to-the-bottom Low Prices = Low Wages mentality.
Stossel misses the boat COMPLETELY (as usual) on the bigger picture of Wal-Mart's global policies of exploiting workers everywhere and bullying suppliers to "cut cost - no matter what".
Welcome to globalization: Wal-Mart's New World Order (sponsored in whole or part by their "friends" in the WH)
Stossel must not have read The Great Mogambo Guru - MONETARY INSANITY. A snip....
"In this edition The Great Mogambo Guru tells us all about How Money is Made, Inflation, The Federal Reserve Bank ("after all, just a damn private bank that has been given pure monopoly power over the money, credit, and all the other banks in the USA") and the concepts of Fractionalized Banking."
(btw, NY Spot price c.o.b. Fri. - Gold $469.10 Silver $7.76)
Got GOLD?
Wal-Mart's original "Buy America" plan. (The "originator", Sam Walton - RIP.) Now 70% of Wal-Mart merchandise is from China.
1. Show up * 2. Pay attention * 3. Speak your truth, and * 4. Don\'t be attached to outcome -- Angeles Arrien
of the movie here next week. And I happened to notice that John Stossel was here the other day speaking at the local college. Pitching Wal-Mart jobs to the graduates no doubt. Blech!
"...the measure of success is not 'Can you win?' It's 'Can you get your ideas adopted?' " ~ Wes Clark
at Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/11/11/224920/80
If you can, get yourself to a screening of 'Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price'