Stolen Election 2004 - An Action Site

http://stolenelection2004.com/articles.html

"Wal-mart" DOES NOT EQUAL "America"

They grew on the image of being American-made, home-grown, all that God-mom-apple pie stuff. I'm always amazed at people who LOVE Wal-mart, will follow the lowest price without realizing the sad economic implications that this giant small-town economy eater poses for most of our nation. There are many sites that tell you the truth about Wal-mart and its horrible corporate practices, its threat to other business, its domination of markets and prices, its harm to workers and hatred of unionization and employee rights, and abuse of workers elsewhere in the world, so I won't go into that (but please look them up, I'll link some here)...but I WILL share this bit about how now, most of the products sold in Wal-mart stores ARE NOT American made, a reality that conflicts with the image some still hold of this company. Read more:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/walmartchina113004.cfm "Most (70%) of Wal-Mart's Products Are Produced in China"

Excerpt: "If Wal-Mart were an individual economy, it would rank as China's eighth-biggest trading partner, ahead of Russia, Australia and Canada," Xusaid.

Blogmaster's comment: Oh, yeah. There aren't really a whole heck of a lot of American manufacturers anymore, so, they HAVE to get their products from China. Right? How did we get here? Wal-mart got us here. Thanks, guys. While we're chasing after low prices to make you rich, and you have to go outside of the US because employee benefits and worker's regulations make American-made products just too costly, you're selling America out from under us.

Other truth-about-Wal-mart sites:
http://www.ufcw.org/issues_and_actions/walmart_workers_campaign_info/index.cfm
http://www.walmartwatch.com/index.cfm
http://www.sprawl-busters.com/
http://www.davelippman.com/walmart/whyihatewalmart.html
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html The Wal-Mart You Don't Know - "The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?"
http://www.1worldcommunication.org/Walmart.htm "We have chosen Walmart as the target of our primary call for a boycott because of the company’s unfair labor practices around the world. Not only does this chain mistreat many employees that work for them, it also sells goods made by suppliers that grossly violate the rights of their workers around the world. Despite protests and a law suit they have refused to correct these problems."
http://comp.uark.edu/~scummin/psa/walmart.html Action from the Progressive Students Assn. of the University of Arkansas - it's cool that locals are involved!

Another comment from the blogmaster on this topic: I know, it's hard to boycott them because you want to support the working poor and others who work in their stores, and in most cases, (thanks to Wal-mart blowing out the competition) have NO OTHER LOCAL CHOICE of employment. Why should the workers suffer further? I know, I feel this way too. Why should we deny these people the right to earn a living, OUR money. What do you do? A dilemma, isn't it. My take is that if you must shop there, go informed. And perhaps find other ways to spread the word or express your dismay about the practices of this monster. Find ways to make others aware, and send a signal to the company that you will not support its bad-for-our-economy practices. But, in the final analysis, I feel that my dollars are my choice and my voice, and I refuse to walk into Wal-mart unless I absolutely must (I'm lucky enough to still live in a place with several other similar outlets - for now). If enough ex-customers do this (believe me, if we educated, aware people do this, the store will still not be hurting), perhaps it will send a message to the ownership to come down off their greed pony and start to behave like a world-aware, America-responsible company as many other companies do. We can always hope...

Where oh where has our govt. information gone???

Since 9/11, there's more secrecy than ever in government information. What do historians think? And who's tracking these changes in what our govt. shares with us?

http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/Issues/2004/0410/0410nch1.cfm

(First two paragraphs of article. To see more, click link above.)

Combating Government Secrecy—An Update
by Bruce Craig

One of the defining characteristics of government in the post-9/11 era is an increased emphasis on secrecy. The Patriot Act, when combined with the Bush administration’s implementation of several executive orders—including one relating to homeland security information sharing (E.O. 13311), another relating to classification of national security information (E.O. 13292), and the draconian order put on the books at the beginning of the current administration restricting access to presidential records (E.O. 13233)—have created impediments to government documents of an almost unprecedented scale. New reports show that federal agencies are classifying documents in record numbers, thus affecting present and future efforts by scholars seeking access to all sorts of government records. Government agencies are, in fact, responding to increasing numbers of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by clamping down even more on access.
To combat these trends, dozens of organizations including the American Association of Law Libraries, the American Library Association, the Federation of American Scientists, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the National Coalition for History have joined together in a new coalition—OpenTheGovernment.org. The group seeks to promote "the public’s right to know and reduce secrecy in the government."