Big Box Bull

A local progressive candidate for alderman went into a 'main-street' liquor store and asked the manager for a donation to a private benefit that he/she was hosting. The manager agreed to cut the cost of his product and donated ice, CO2 tanks, cups, and an assortment of pop.

Two weeks later that same candidate threw a party for her/his volunteers and went to the Wal-Mart and bought cases of beer, wine, and pop with cash out of /her/his political fund. He/she supports the 'big box' living wage ordinance.

This parable is based on a real-life event.

The progressive candidate is very real and he/she is strident in support of the minimum wage increase for entry level workers at the long-hoped for BIG BOX STORES.

WAl-MART, like the fattening agent in American culture, McDonald's and its lesser lights, has swept the American landscape all but clean of main-street businesses: bankruptcies, loss of jobs, decline in home values resulting from economic catastrophe, urban blight, and clinical depression have all been the results.

Americans save a penny here and there and blow millions of dollars that should stay in their neighborhoods. They have freezers full of hamburger that will get tossed in a few months - I hope -pack the kiddies for a feed at MICKEYDs - I'm LUVVIN IT! -
and ring their hands when a diner closes two blocks from their houses.

Here in Chicago. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who could not even keep Andy Stern's radical numbers in house, lectured and warned Mayor Daley not to veto the Big Box Ordinance. Hell to pay! The standard chant is that Unions are mobilized! Okay.

Question - do individual Locals ask of their membership:
1. Do you have a Voters Registration card? Yes - Good
2. Can You Pass a Drug Test Today? Yes- Good
3. Do you or members of your family shop at Wal-Mart? Yes - wait a minute!
4. If the Rat Squad were to drive through the parking lot of Wal-Mart and find a bumper sticker for this Local on a vehicle, Would you mind if we took down your license plate number, ran a check on it, and asked you to explain its ( Foreign or Domestic?) being in that lot? Yes - Not too good.

There should be a grass-roots effort that mirrors the members of a community not stuffed to the gills on a diet of BS.

Don't Shop at Wal-Mart. Tell your family and friends not to shop there. Shop at the stores in your neighborhood that hire the kids from your neighborhood. You are asking those businesses to hire your kids' YOU have an obligation to shop there as well. Even though it might be a buck or two more. None of those dollars will end up in Sam Walton's hole in his Backyard in Arkansas.

Don't vote for the progressive BS slinger that is asking not only for your vote but also shaking down the merchants in your neighborhood and NOT supporting those businesses. Moblize - but get off the diet of BS.