Walmart to Employees: We’ll Teach you to Vote Republican!

Monday, August 4th, 2008
by J.W.

Save Money. Live Better. Oh yea, and Vote Republican. Did you know that was Wal-Mart’s new slogan? I didn’t either until I heard about the discount giant’s new employee education campaign.

The Wall Street Journal discovered that the discount giant is calling on it’s top brass around the country to warn if Democrats win in November, they’ll have to take the “Live Better” part out of their new slogan. You see, Wal-Mart thinks if Democrats win, the evil Labor Unions will start raping and pillaging great corporate citizens like themselves and put evil ideas into the minds of their workers like “livable wages” and “healthcare” and that type of stuff.

Wal-Mart, of course, denies the allegation that they are telling people how to vote, they are simply “educating” them on what will happen if Democrats get control of the White House and Legislature. Let’s look at a quote from a meeting leader from Wal-Mart.

“I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won’t have a vote on whether you want a union.”

Wow, could it be any clearer that Wal-Mart doesn’t want to influence the vote? (rolling eyes) This is kinda like when my Daddy told me, “Son, I’m not telling you how to live your life, but if you ever do drugs, it’ll kill you. And if it doesn’t, and I find out you did drugs, I will kill you.” He obviously was just educating me on the harmfulness of narcotics and not trying to influence my behavior in any way.

You can’t really blame Wal-Mart for trying this. They’ve had it pretty good through the GOP years in Texas. They’ve had record profits, over $100 million in taxpayer-financed economic assistance, low wages for their workers and few benefits. According to the HHSC in Texas, over 4,000 children of Texas Wal-Mart workers were in the state’s CHIP program. Why pay more when you can vote Republican and give your workers less?

For an abbreviated version of the story, you can go over to NPR and have a listen.