Gandalf Grey
2007-08-21 17:52:33 UTC
Adam Werbach: Wal-Mart's New Fraud Salesman
By Cliff Schecter
Created Aug 21 2007 - 9:07am
How do you go from green to red? From the youngest president of the Sierra
Club, to a corporate-crony at one of the most polluted money-grubbing
machines in the history of mankind?
Just ask Adam Werbach, of Act Now Productions, the progressive DVD club
Ironweed and the Apollo Clean Energy Alliance Board. He'd whip out a gun and
tell you it's to protect the peace (hmm...maybe in addition to Wal-Mart he
can sign up the NRA as a client to "improve things from the inside?").
Werbach has joined the Wal-Mart borg [1], and is actually trying to convince
those with the ability to reason that he will change things from within the
company. He is working on their "sustainability" project, which means he is
somehow under the impression that there is something Wal-Mart wishes to
sustain besides high profits and low wages.
Oh, that's right, they will also be sustaining his bank account with a
rumored $400K per year fee that should ensure those late night sweats over
environmental degradation don't reach a level that would threaten to tarnish
the silver plating on his bed.
Werbach whines that many of his liberal friends no longer talk to him. I
wonder why that may be (although sadly I am suspicious he is exaggerating).
Could it be, and I am just spitballing here, that the company he once called
"a new breed of toxin," [2] is now his employer? Perhaps his old friends
know the following about his new friends and financial sponsor [3]:
Five of the 10 richest people in the country are from the founding Walton
family. But to help the company offer its proclaimed "Every Day Low Prices,"
workers are paid an average of $17,530 a year, nearly $2,000 below the
poverty level of a family of four. Almost half of the children of those
associates are uninsured or on Medicaid. In California alone, that annually
costs taxpayers $86 million, according to the New York Times.
Score one for progressive corporate governance!
What Werbach needs to realize is that Wal-Mart is beyond improvement and
yes, beyond redemption [4]. You want lead in your kids' toys or poison in
your food, well then Wal-Mart's A-O-K. As Erin Burnett of CNBC recently said
in moment when she let her guard down [5]:
"I think people should be careful what they wish for on China. If China
were to revalue its currency, or China is to start making, say, toys that
don't have lead in them or food that isn't poisonous, their costs of
production are going to go up, and that means prices at Wal-Mart here in the
United States are going to go up too."
Yes, such is the symbiotic relationship between Wal-Mart and China [6], that
this is apparently the choice we all have to make. Hey, the Waltons may be
loaded, but if it'll save a few pennies, they'll let you eat cake--replete
with rat poison and a scrumptious lead-based frosting.
Well Werbach's remaining progressive friends have a decision to make too. As
the saying goes: if you sleep with the dogs, you wake up with the fleas.
Werbach has made his bed. It's time for the rest of us who believe in
progressive values find our shut-eye in a very different place. Those who
really are forward-thinking need to stop working with this man, certainly
stop paying him and I would daresay, if you really believe in what you say
you do, stop returning his phone calls.
He has chosen to sell out. It doesn't mean we all have to join him in
Wonderland.
_______
Cliff Schecter
The Real McCain
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Cliff Schecter
Created Aug 21 2007 - 9:07am
How do you go from green to red? From the youngest president of the Sierra
Club, to a corporate-crony at one of the most polluted money-grubbing
machines in the history of mankind?
Just ask Adam Werbach, of Act Now Productions, the progressive DVD club
Ironweed and the Apollo Clean Energy Alliance Board. He'd whip out a gun and
tell you it's to protect the peace (hmm...maybe in addition to Wal-Mart he
can sign up the NRA as a client to "improve things from the inside?").
Werbach has joined the Wal-Mart borg [1], and is actually trying to convince
those with the ability to reason that he will change things from within the
company. He is working on their "sustainability" project, which means he is
somehow under the impression that there is something Wal-Mart wishes to
sustain besides high profits and low wages.
Oh, that's right, they will also be sustaining his bank account with a
rumored $400K per year fee that should ensure those late night sweats over
environmental degradation don't reach a level that would threaten to tarnish
the silver plating on his bed.
Werbach whines that many of his liberal friends no longer talk to him. I
wonder why that may be (although sadly I am suspicious he is exaggerating).
Could it be, and I am just spitballing here, that the company he once called
"a new breed of toxin," [2] is now his employer? Perhaps his old friends
know the following about his new friends and financial sponsor [3]:
Five of the 10 richest people in the country are from the founding Walton
family. But to help the company offer its proclaimed "Every Day Low Prices,"
workers are paid an average of $17,530 a year, nearly $2,000 below the
poverty level of a family of four. Almost half of the children of those
associates are uninsured or on Medicaid. In California alone, that annually
costs taxpayers $86 million, according to the New York Times.
Score one for progressive corporate governance!
What Werbach needs to realize is that Wal-Mart is beyond improvement and
yes, beyond redemption [4]. You want lead in your kids' toys or poison in
your food, well then Wal-Mart's A-O-K. As Erin Burnett of CNBC recently said
in moment when she let her guard down [5]:
"I think people should be careful what they wish for on China. If China
were to revalue its currency, or China is to start making, say, toys that
don't have lead in them or food that isn't poisonous, their costs of
production are going to go up, and that means prices at Wal-Mart here in the
United States are going to go up too."
Yes, such is the symbiotic relationship between Wal-Mart and China [6], that
this is apparently the choice we all have to make. Hey, the Waltons may be
loaded, but if it'll save a few pennies, they'll let you eat cake--replete
with rat poison and a scrumptious lead-based frosting.
Well Werbach's remaining progressive friends have a decision to make too. As
the saying goes: if you sleep with the dogs, you wake up with the fleas.
Werbach has made his bed. It's time for the rest of us who believe in
progressive values find our shut-eye in a very different place. Those who
really are forward-thinking need to stop working with this man, certainly
stop paying him and I would daresay, if you really believe in what you say
you do, stop returning his phone calls.
He has chosen to sell out. It doesn't mean we all have to join him in
Wonderland.
_______
Cliff Schecter
The Real McCain
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson