Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Technocracy

No, I'm not plugging my new book. This is the real thing.

You can't buy the Pensacola News Journal at Wal-Mart anymore.

The store ordered us off their property, told us to come pick up our newspaper racks and clear out.

So we did.

A few people called last week, some even wrote letters to the editor, and wanted to know why they couldn't buy the newspaper at Wal-Mart in the days after Hurricane Dennis.

Some managers at Wal-Mart didn't appreciate a column Mark O'Brien wrote last month about the downside of the cheap prices that Sam Walton's empire has brought to America. We all pay a little less, and sometimes a lot less, at the grocery store and department store because of Mr. Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart.

[. . .]

I might understand it if Wal-Mart said I ought to fire Mark because what he said wasn't accurate. But that isn't the case. Mark accurately reported that there are 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees in a health-care program that is costing Georgia taxpayers nearly $10 million a year.

Shouldn't we talk about that?

When we stop listening to people on the other side of the fence, when we try to silence and even punish people for thinking differently than we do and raising facts and figures we don't like, well, we won't be red, white and blue anymore.

That's why Mark still has a job and you can't buy a Pensacola News Journal at Wal-Mart anymore.


That's what we have here. The big corporations have their fingers in every part of the government, thanks to their Republican enablers, and they believe they can control information the way the Chimp administration does. Unfortunately, they've been getting away with it. Unfortunately, many people have to shop at Wal-Mart because, thanks to the power big business has usurped over the past 5 years, workers are treated like chattel instead of vital cogs in the wheel.

Hat tip: Skippy via Kos.

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