Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

The Waltons move John "The Con-ser-va-tive Knee-Jerk Liberal" Stossel's levers, and get this Charlie McCarthy to belch some very LOUD ventriloquism:

Wal-Mart's critics act as if economic competition were a "zero-sum game" -- if one person gets richer, someone else must be getting poorer. If Wal-Mart's owners profit, we lose. But the reality is exactly what our ordinary language tells us: We make money. We produce wealth.

Tell that wealth-creation business to the thousands of small-town businesses the WAL paved over. Tell that to the tens of thousands of garment workers it helped put out of work by becoming a subsidiary of the PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA. Tell that to the thousands of Wal employees who have family members on MEDICAID. But then Sinclair Lewis put it better (and we can quote in full because it's PD, sighhhhhhhhhhhhhh):

”And business! The roofing business! Roofs for cowsheds! Oh, I don’t mean I haven’t had a lot of fun out of the Game; out of putting it over on the labor unions, and seeing a big check coming in, and the business increasing. But what’s the use of it? You know, my business isn’t distributing roofing—it’s principally keeping my competitors from distributing roofing. Same with you. All we do is cut each other’s throats and make the public pay for it!”

True in 1922; true today.