Ongoing saga of the United States of Wal-Mart

I'm fairly gratified that Maryland's Senate voted to override a veto and enact a law requiring large employers to provide health care benefits for workers. Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation, is a wonderful example of how the blind pursuit of profits, or of cheap consumer goods, works. You can't make goods cheap enoough to undercut all competitors without underpaying someone somewhere, and Wal-Mart is a well-known offender, costing states billions of bucks every year in public-funded medical coverarge. It gives me a bit of satisfaction that a handful of elected representative assemblies are actually representing the interests of their constituents and not paving the way for a bigger, more powerful Wal-Mart. (Turlock has been fighting Wal-Mart's plan to close its current store and open a gigantic one a half-mile away.)

I have not made a purchase from a Wal-Mart in more than 18 months - probably much closer to 2 1/2 years. My reasons do include my objections to Wal-Mart's business practices, but that, as I've mentioned elsewhere here, doesn't mean I'm somehow a moral paragon. Moral paragons don't shop at Target. No, I have to say, I'm driven more by a visceral disgust of Wal-Mart that overtakes me any time I enter any Wal-Mart. I want, immediately upon entering, to leave. In fact, I've more than once turned right around and walked out again, even in situations where there was something I really needed, and knew that the Wal-Mart in question was going to be the easiest place to get it. I hypothesized for a while that Wal-Mart must have a brain-eating machine installed somewhere in each store. That explained my disgust, and also the way people in a Wal-Mart become zombies. Later I realized that a simpler explanation would be that people turned themselves into zombies in order to numb themselves to the Wal-Mart experience. Possibly they're all on drugs, which seems like a viable strategy as well.

Members of the Maryland Senate said they intended to make large corporations behave themselves (an odd thought for anyone who's seen The Corporation), and denied any deliberate attack on Wal-Mart. Personally, I have unfathomable ill will for Wal-Mart, and would really like a legislative body or court someplace to kill it.