GREED FILE - Wal-Mart and Winnsboro, South Caroline

"What happens when Wal-Mart leaves small towns behind" by Christopher Booker, PBS NewsHour 2/20/2016

Lets see; first Wal-Mart opens almost killing any local business, then leaves town.  Typical 'we don't care' and 'money before people' big business.

Excerpt

Around 90 percent of Americans live within 10 miles of a Wal-Mart store, according to the company.  Residents of Winnsboro, South Carolina, however, are no longer part of that overwhelming majority.

In January, as part of a company-wide restructuring, Winnsboro's Wal-Mart became one of 154 stores that shuttered its doors across the country over the past year.  As with the rest of the closures, the town's employees were given two week's notice before the store closed for good, rapidly removing what had become a commercial and social center of the small, rural community for the past 18 years.

The debate over Wal-Mart is a heated one.  And while the effects of the store coming to town have been seen more frequently, less is known about an area's economic and social implications of when the big box giant pulls out.

What's clear in Winnsboro, though, is that Wal-Mart's exit could potentially transform the town as much as its arrival.

MEXICO - The Wal-Mart Payoff Scandal

"The Bribery Aisle: How Wal-Mart Used Payoffs to Get Its Way in Mexico" by DAVID BARSTOW and ALEJANDRA XANIC von BERTRAB, New York Times 12/17/2012

NYT Video link

Excerpt

SAN JUAN TEOTIHUACÁN, Mexico — Wal-Mart longed to build in Elda Pineda’s alfalfa field. It was an ideal location, just off this town’s bustling main entrance and barely a mile from its ancient pyramids, which draw tourists from around the world. With its usual precision, Wal-Mart calculated it would attract 250 customers an hour if only it could put a store in Mrs. Pineda’s field.

One major obstacle stood in Wal-Mart’s way.

After years of study, the town’s elected leaders had just approved a new zoning map. The leaders wanted to limit growth near the pyramids, and they considered the town’s main entrance too congested already. As a result, the 2003 zoning map prohibited commercial development on Mrs. Pineda’s field, seemingly dooming Wal-Mart’s hopes.

But 30 miles away in Mexico City, at the headquarters of Wal-Mart de Mexico, executives were not about to be thwarted by an unfavorable zoning decision. Instead, records and interviews show, they decided to undo the damage with one well-placed $52,000 bribe.

The plan was simple. The zoning map would not become law until it was published in a government newspaper. So Wal-Mart de Mexico arranged to bribe an official to change the map before it was sent to the newspaper, records and interviews show. Sure enough, when the map was published, the zoning for Mrs. Pineda’s field was redrawn to allow Wal-Mart’s store.

Problem solved.

Wal-Mart de Mexico broke ground months later, provoking fierce opposition. Protesters decried the very idea of a Wal-Mart so close to a cultural treasure. They contended the town’s traditional public markets would be decimated, its traffic mess made worse. Months of hunger strikes and sit-ins consumed Mexico’s news media. Yet for all the scrutiny, the story of the altered map remained a secret. The store opened for Christmas 2004, affirming Wal-Mart’s emerging dominance in Mexico.

The secret held even after a former Wal-Mart de Mexico lawyer contacted Wal-Mart executives in Bentonville, Ark., and told them how Wal-Mart de Mexico routinely resorted to bribery, citing the altered map as but one example. His detailed account — he had been in charge of getting building permits throughout Mexico — raised alarms at the highest levels of Wal-Mart and prompted an internal investigation.

But as The New York Times revealed in April, Wal-Mart’s leaders shut down the investigation in 2006. They did so even though their investigators had found a wealth of evidence supporting the lawyer’s allegations. The decision meant authorities were not notified. It also meant basic questions about the nature, extent and impact of Wal-Mart de Mexico’s conduct were never asked, much less answered.

The Times has now picked up where Wal-Mart’s internal investigation was cut off, traveling to dozens of towns and cities in Mexico, gathering tens of thousands of documents related to Wal-Mart de Mexico permits, and interviewing scores of government officials and Wal-Mart employees, including 15 hours of interviews with the former lawyer, Sergio Cicero Zapata.

The Times’s examination reveals that Wal-Mart de Mexico was not the reluctant victim of a corrupt culture that insisted on bribes as the cost of doing business. Nor did it pay bribes merely to speed up routine approvals. Rather, Wal-Mart de Mexico was an aggressive and creative corrupter, offering large payoffs to get what the law otherwise prohibited. It used bribes to subvert democratic governance — public votes, open debates, transparent procedures. It used bribes to circumvent regulatory safeguards that protect Mexican citizens from unsafe construction. It used bribes to outflank rivals.

ALSO:

AMERICA - Did Wal-Mart Orchestrate Bribery Scheme?

"Wal-Mart Bribery Allegations: What Legal Problems, Penalties Could it Face?" PBS Newshour 4/25/2012

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): With more than 2,000 stores throughout the country, Mexico is an important foreign market for Wal-Mart. But a New York Times investigation has raised troubling questions over Wal-Mart's dominance there and how it came to be.

Among some of the findings: Former executives for the company orchestrated a campaign of bribery to obtain construction permits and build stores more quickly during the past decade, a paper trail of bribery documenting payments of more than $24 million, and top executives of the company seemed to shut down an internal investigation until recently.

Wal-Mart is now conducting an inquiry into whether employees may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. That's a federal law that makes it a crime for American companies to bribe foreign officials.

Bloomberg News also reports the company is the subject of a criminal probe by the U.S. Justice Department.

We look more closely at the law and potential violations with Joseph Hoffmann. He's a professor of law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law.

BIG BUSINESS - How They "Really Care" About Employees

Here's another example of why we have government regulations of business in America, as a reminder to GOP Anti-Regulators.

"Teens at Work" by Joseph Contreras, Newsweek

Thousands of adolescents work as unpaid baggers in Wal-Mart’s Mexican stores. The retail giant isn’t breaking any laws—but that doesn’t mean the government is happy with the practice.

Now, is there any doubt that Wal-Mart would do the same thing here in USofA if they could get away with it? You can bet they would!

POLITICS - Wal-Mart's Shelf-correcting System

"Wal-Mart's shelf-correcting system is model for government" article in "The Heritage Foundation" by Edwin Feulner, president.

The above article has its good points with one exception.

And don't forget the manufactured homes, some 10,777 of which are rotting away in Arkansas because FEMA ordered more than it needed.

Wait, New Orleans has neighborhoods still devastated as I type. Hummm.... A thought, these neighborhoods could use those manufactured homes, and they need plenty. DUH

The waste is in letting the manufactured homes rot in Arkansas, not in the quantity ordered. Simply turn them over to New Orleans authorities to use to rebuild the neighborhoods.