Walmart

Defending Walmart - I am a senior citizen. I seldom shopped at a Walmart prior to my first retirement. Upon retiring, we started checking out Walmart, and I have to say have become convinced the prices are good and from a customer's standpoint, they are easy to do business with. I buy their store branded products, and find them to be as good, or in some cases better than the major brands. The employees who I informally interview aren't just courteous, but mostly are pro Walmart. You see a growing number of us seniors manning the registers, stocking the shelves, and greeting you at the door. For those of us who have worked in the private sector, we are in a degree of trouble. We thought we could live on a small pension, have a Social Security check, and Medicare to take care of our aging issues. The retirement we envisioned is gone! Some who have public pensions live in apparent luxury, not worrying about an income, and in most cases unworried about health care. We who are paying for their life style may seem envious, but in reality we are frustrated that we have to give them that which we can't afford. We imagine if we had what they have, gotten by unions, governments, etc. where would our nation be financially today? We recognize that the nation is financially broke! We realize the debt heaped on our kids and grandkids is crippling. Our personal survival is in no small part dependent on the success of Walmart. We go to the Whole Foods stores and realize what it would do to our meager budgets if we shopped there. We go to the Abercrombie and Fitch stores and realize we could have three shirts at Walmart for the price of one in the fashionable places that many of our retired public servants routinely frequent. If it seems we are bitter, you are right! We see the attacks on Walmart, and see our government give away phones, as an example, that we have to pay for. We see a government that pays for luxurious vacations, abuses that stagger the imagination, and frivolous spending by a government that just "doesn't get it". I sit with friends each morning over coffee and we discuss the utter frustration with our nation re-electing a President who isn't held accountable for what he has done, and hasn't done. His commitments to us haven't just been broken, they were trampled on. I try not to be cynical, but everywhere I turn I see significant problems. Poverty, and I suspect I fit the definition, is rising. Try to tell friends who have been unemployed for extended periods about the Affordable Health Care law, and they will laugh at you. Ask the single mom trying to pay $4 per gallon of gas to get to a job she badly needs about how not drilling for oil on public lands is helping the environment. Talk to a farmer who has the water turned off in California about the precious snail darter, or whatever else concocted to block their vegetable crop. Did I say I am a fan of Walmart? Of course! It is one of the only organizations in our country that seems to be pro-citizen.