This is what a shakedown looks like, D.C. style.
In the midst of the greatest economic recession since the Great Depression, Wal-Mart announced it would open up four new stores, creating 1,300 new jobs and providing low prices for the poorest residents of the city. In the worst ward, unemployment has averaged 26.5%.
These tangible benefits did not concern a liberal anti-Wal-Mart coalition that formed that included labor unions. They issued a wish list of 17 demands that ran the gamut from requiring a minimum wage of $12.50 per hour, to free bike racks and free shuttles to each store every ten minutes.
The blackmail worked. Yesterday the District of Columbia and Wal-Mart agreed that the low-cost retailer would commit to give away $21 million to for hunger relief, health programs, education and job-training programs. The Washington Post described other shake-down details:
“Under the deal, Wal-Mart agrees to seek District small-and minority-owned businesses for construction of its stores; create and fund training programs aimed at populations suffering from high unemployment rates; and open hiring centers in the wards where the chain opens stores.
The chain also agreed not to sell guns or ammunition and to install bike-sharing stations and bike racks at its District stores — features that will distinguish the new stores from many of its others across the country.”
DC Mayor Vincent Gray (D) called the unprecedented mandates a good thing, saying ““Wal-Mart is showing what it means to be a good corporate neighbor, and I encourage other firms interested in doing business in the District of Columbia to show a similar level of commitment to our residents.”
If anything, the D.C.-Wal-Mart deal will frighten away other retailers. They now understand the steep price required to be a “good corporate neighbor” in the nation’s capital.
New York pulls the same crap. All the leftwing idiots, like Bloomberg, Charles Barron, Al Sharpton, etc., who supported the Ground Zero Mosque because they’d supposedly bought the property have routinely come out against Wal-Mart opening a store on property it has bought and (unlike the GZM gang) actually paid for.
“The chain also agreed not to sell guns or ammunition…”
Sounds like DC didn’t learn its lesson last time it went to court over its abrogation of the 2nd Amendment.
Wal-mart is enabling thieves. By caving they are now as good as in league with the progressive monster. Like New Orleans, DC has a loathsome constituency which elects even more loathsome creatures to office. Consequently both cities are cesspools.
Wal-mart should take a cue from Ellis Wyatt; “I didnt wish to serve as the cannibal’s meal and do the cooking besides.”
Institutionalized extortion on top of corruption. Precisely how is this all legal? Can Wal-Mart sue for extortion or are they like most smart business people and don’t take it personally? Anyway they themselves will extort it right back out of the community by including every dime in higher prices.
It’s exactly what I would do while bowing and smiling ingratiatingly and having the last laugh.
I’d love to know how this is even remotely legal. Not only is it beyond absurd, but I cannot believe they agreed to that. Of course, had they not, they probably would have been labeled racist and everything else the idiots could think up.
Walmart actually wins!
They will increase their local prices to offset the additional costs. This will maintain their profit margins and, with their lower basic distribution costs, drive the local retailers out of business.
The locals will have to pay higher prices, have fewer choices, and, in the end, suffer additional reductions in their standard of living.
So the politicians win again!
I am curious how that bike “sharing” station is going to work out in S.E. DC.
Will they require the bike be secured with a credit card?
Yeah, but it doesn’t matter whose credit card they use; a stolen one is just fine as long as it hasn’t been cancelled yet.
..only the people lose and the poor lose the most. that is what liberals do for the poor.
I will boycott Walmart until they fully quit their Progressive streak.
I think it is charming that they negotiated a deal on the presence of bike racks. I am 100% in favor of that.
But this other stuff like job training, I have to wonder if Walmart is simply allowing its own training activities be out-sourced to some other location a few blocks away, thereby allowing the progressolyzer control freaks to think they have thrown Walmart to the mat. I.e., jiu jitsu.
If I ran Wal-Mart, I would have figured out exacly how much succumbing to these demands would cost, and then I would have used an equal amount running ads in DC explaining why 1,300 jobs would not be coming their area – and I would have named names.
Of course, it may not have done much good. A voter base stupid enough to elect Marion Barry will believe anything their corrupt city officials and union thug overlords tell them.
4. R_Logo
You forgot another factor. DC being a Leftist hellhole, the crime rate is horrendous. What happens after enough drive-by’s, flash mob robberies, assaults on Wal-Mart staff? The same things that happened when stores were driven out of the inner cities in most Democrat satrapies. Wak-Mart will give up and leave; after driving other stores out of business. So the locals will have NO options, unless some enterprising Koreans move in with small stores.
Subotai Bahadur
Walmart’s desire for expansion into big-city urban markets has resulted in it making several deals with the devil over the past few years in trying to pacify its liberal opponents.
Out in California, it’s been the battle over putting in Supercenters (though the company eschews that name now) with grocery stores, because the unionized grocers and the unions are worried about being undercut. And they still can’t get a store in New York City because of the unions and their supporters blocking proposed sites in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island (remember the person killed in the Black Friday trampling at Walmart a few years ago? One of the reasons the store entrance was so jammed was because it was about 100 yards past the NYC line in Nassau County, and not only had shoppers from there but also from Queens lined up at the door, because they don’t have any Walmarts in the city, but the ads for Black Friday bargains were still all over TV).
Ah, yes! Those lovely union scum, who all shop at Costco, and then harrass a Walmart.
Well, scum is scum.
Coming soon: complaints that prices are higher in Walmart DC stores than in Walmart stores in nearby communities… wonder why? hmmmm, must be racism.
WalMart loses in the short run, on account of the tremendous start-up costs. But they are figuring that they are likely to win in the medium term, in that they will put competing retailers out of business once the store is built.
In the process, they will help to put US manufacturers out of business by selling tons of low-quality foreign-made crap, and also by pressuring the few US manufacturers to keep cutting costs by cutting quality. WalMart can get by with selling crap because crap is the only stuff most people can afford these days.
The job training is a scam. What are they going to train anybody for, now that the entire US economy has been gutted out and all of the good jobs offshored? It isn’t as though anybody other than WalMart is going to hire the poor folks of DC. And WalMart doesn’t pay enough to live on, so it will become a drain on the various social services in DC.
But WalMart will lose in the long run, simply because the US economy is over-regulated, over-taxed, running a huge deficit, and not viable. The US standard of living is plummeting so fast that many people who used to shop at WalMart are now shopping at the dollar stores, or at flea markets, thrift shops, and yard sales – or not buying anything at all except for food and fuel. That is why, on the whole, WalMart is making money only in its overseas operations.
What gets me is the number of people who still insist that the US is a “free country” and the “only real land of opportunity” and that I am wrong for pointing all of this out.
*facepalm*
That DC Mayor thinks this is a good thing??? That dope doesn’t realize that he is about to start running current businesses and any potential businesses right out of town. He ain’t too bright is he?
My bet is that there were other DC demands that have not been made public. Walmart and the DC crooks both know what level of shoplifting the young men and women of the District will exact. There must be understandings about what will be done to those caught, what kind of security they’ll have and who’ll do it.
Walmart can’t afford 6% shrinkage via shoplifting and can’t afford publicity that reports that 86% of those apprehended for shoplifting in the District were black.
Walmart, I believe, won some of these points for what they gave up, above.