Post Promotes Author of Anti-Wal-Mart Book

     A can of shaving cream for less than a dollar or a garden rake for $3.88 is a great deal for the average consumer; to The Washington Post,
its just more evidence of how oppressive Wal-Mart really is.

     Finding scandal in low prices, the Post sent reporter Bob Thompson to accompany Charles Fishman, author of The Wal-Mart Effect, to a Wal-Mart SuperCenter in Hagerstown, Md.

     While the liberal media frequently criticize business for profit-making, Fishman, a senior editor for Fast Company magazine, slammed Wal-Mart in a December 2003 article, accusing it of eroding corporate profits for other businesses.

     The public image Wal-Mart projects may be as cheery as its yellow smiley-face mascot, but there is nothing genial about the process by which Wal-Mart gets its suppliers to sell their items wholesale at a low price, complained Fishman.

     Wal-Mart is legendary for forcing its suppliers to redesign everything from their packaging to their computer systems. It is also legendary for quite straightforwardly telling them what it will pay for their goods, the author complained in his article for Fast Company.

     Following his guests lead, Thompson shifted his April 13 article from expressing amazement at low prices on everything from tube socks to Easter candy to comparing the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer to a drug pusher.

     Almost no one turns down Wal-Mart. The sales volume it offers is simply too enticing, Thompson wrote, leading into a complaint by an unnamed tool company executive that selling to Wal-Mart was like getting hooked on cocaine.

     While Fishman may not go that far, he has called for increased regulation of the retailer. In a Jan. 27, 2006, interview with CPBlotter.com, Fishman suggested additional government regulation targeted at Wal-Mart, saying, We have a responsibility as a country, as citizens, to hold companies the scale of Wal-Mart accountable for their operations.

     Fishman later argued that Wal-Mart owes government bureaucrats for its success in the free market and suggested the retail industry was too unregulated. Wal-Mart couldnt do what it does without the United States of America and every one of the government entities in the United States. In return, he added, we are entitled to a sense of what the impact is.