As I read The Dispatch’s headline article
”
Super size suit over Wal-Mart
”
(May 10) I couldn’t help thinking of an appropriate analogy.
As I read The Dispatch’s headline article “Super size suit over Wal-Mart” (May 10) I couldn’t help thinking of an appropriate analogy.
So consider this one. Remember as a kid watching an old Dracula movie on TV? As the sun sets and the night falls, the scene in the old spooky mansion reveals the lid of a coffin slowly opening, squeaking all the way, as Dracula’s hand appears visible from the long box. With abated breath, we gasp as Dracula arises and steps out of the coffin.
Shivering, we ask ourselves how can it be, for hadn’t Dracula died when the townspeople drove a silver spike through his heart? Of course we later find out that the spike missed. And with that error of some eager but hasty townsperson, fear is renewed within the community. Now while Dracula finally does die at the movie’s end, we’re left to stress over the rest of the film wondering if good will triumph over bad Count Dracula.
It appears a similar event of “rising from the dead” has occurred with a local Dracula, in this case the group of Gilroy anti-Wal-Mart union activists who have, as it were, raised the coffin lid and stepped out, back into the Gilroy scene. Their new life is contained in the filing of a lawsuit against Wal-Mart, the city of Gilroy, and the Newman Development Group. And just when the folks of Gilroy thought the union had been buried in this case.
The question now is, who missed driving the “silver spike” into the heart of this local Dracula? According to City Manager Jay Baksa (same article) the city’s staff thoroughly and professionally reviewed the super center’s potential impacts on the environment. Their conclusion was that a super sized Wal-Mart did not violate environmental laws. And when the City Council recently voted 5-2 to approve a Super Wal-Mart, most everyone thought the final “stake” was driven for sure into Dracula’s heart.
Now we find out that’s not the case, unless the lawsuit is dismissed as having no merit. So Dracula’s on the loose again in town, and the hypocrisy of the union stinks as bad as the smell of foul garlic.
The Dispatch archives indicate that the union did not pursue this kind of hassling when Costco came to town. The supercenter is again being blamed for the potential economic impact on surrounding groceries, and resulting blight-like conditions in the community environment.
Mind you that this lawsuit is not being filed as a “restraint of trade” complaint under the Sherman Act, but as a violation of the California Environmental Quality Act. Wal-Mart, which is an unabashedly capitalist and bourgeois institution, is without question on the wrong side of the economic fault-line for all the self-styled progressives who refuse to agree that Gilroy’s economic development corporation has already addressed the environmental issues raised so often before. But rather than addressing this lawsuit as a union vs. non-union controversy, it’s presented as an environmental thing. That’s the foul smell!
Never mind that all across America, shoppers have voted for Wal-Mart with their cash and credit card business. No other store sells more groceries, toys or furniture according to a recent article in National Review. This is a boon for lower-income Americans who spend a disproportionate amount of their income on retail goods. As a Federal Reserve economist has said, “Wal-Mart is the greatest thing that ever happened to low-income Americans.”
And as the price of gasoline continues to rise into the sky, more low-income Americans will need the cost saving benefits that Wal-Mart provides. Last time I checked, America still was a capitalist country, in spite of left-wing liberals and socialists who continue to chop away at our capitalist foundation with the ax of governmental restrictions.
So, does our local “Dracula” really think there’s a chance to stay alive by winning this lawsuit? We’ll see. While the anti-Super Wal-Mart forces have won recently in Oakland and Inglewood California, here in Gilroy, we have the advantage of garlic – a sure weapon to put our Dracula back in his coffin.
As for Wal-Mart’s future in America, there’s one thing that will be its undoing, and it’s not the Dracula of union lawsuits like this one. Instead, as one economist has said, it’s the free market. Eventually, if some other retailer becomes more nimble and cunning than Wal-Mart, then it will get, as all businesses in America do, its own capitalist comeuppance.
