In Wal-Mart We Trust

[Rage for Order]

Who did the most to help victims of Hurricane Katrina? According to a new study, it was the company everyone loves to hate

http://www.nationalpost.com/story-printer.html?id=b65bd77e-511f-4e00-88a7-a53a2a5ea4ca

Shortly before Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast on the morning of Aug. 29, 2005, the chief executive officer of Wal-Mart, Lee Scott, gathered his subordinates and ordered a memorandum sent to every single regional and store manager in the imperiled area. His words were not especially exalted, but they ought to be mounted and framed on the wall of every chain retailer -- and remembered as American business's answer to the pre-battle oratory of George S. Patton or Henry V.

"A lot of you are going to have to make decisions above your level," was Scott's message to his people. "Make the best decision that you can with the information that's available to you at the time, and above all, do the right thing."

This extraordinary delegation of authority -- essentially promising unlimited support for the decision-making of employees who were earning, in many cases, less than $100,000 a year -- saved countless lives in the ensuing chaos. The results are recounted in a new paper on the disaster written by Steven Horwitz, an Austrian-school economist at St. Lawrence University in New York. While the Federal Emergency Management Agency fumbled about, doing almost as much to prevent essential supplies from reaching Louisiana and Mississippi as it could to facilitate it, Wal-Mart managers performed feats of heroism. In Kenner, La., an employee crashed a forklift through a warehouse door to get water for a nursing home. A Marrero, La., store served as a barracks for cops whose homes had been submerged. In Waveland, Miss., an assistant manager who could not reach her superiors had a bulldozer driven through the store to retrieve disaster necessities for community use, and broke into a locked pharmacy closet to obtain medicine for the local hospital.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart trucks pre-loaded with emergency supplies at regional depots were among the first on the scene wherever refugees were being gathered by officialdom. Their main challenge, in many cases, was running a gauntlet of FEMA officials who didn't want to let them through. As the president of the brutalized Jefferson Parish put it in a Sept. 4 Meet the Press interview, speaking at the height of nationwide despair over FEMA's confused response: "If government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis."

More at the link

The story continues and some of it contains BS about how often times corporations will do the right thing, even if there is no profit involved (which I don't tend to believe). However, I wasn't aware of the level of support that Wal Mart provided in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. They get bashed constantly (and rightly so) for the negative aspects of the way they run their business. They should get credit when they do the right thing...part of the "positive reinforcement" behavioral conditioning thing.

[Rage for Order]

1. kick n/t

:kick:

[TheMightyFavog]

2. Even a stopped watch tells the correct time twice a day.

End of Line.

[DainBramaged]

3. CanWest produced this "article"

And it would NOT surprise me if Walmart PAID them for this piece of shit. And DON'T be surprised if someday down the road, we find out the Booshe misAdministration reimbursed them for every penny they spent.

NEVER trust WalMart, ever.




http://www.canwestwatch.org/

CanWest, the media monopoly American companies only dream of.

[Rage for Order]

9. Yes, CanWest produced the article, but not the study the article cites

"The results are recounted in a new paper on the disaster written by Steven Horwitz, an Austrian-school economist at St. Lawrence University in New York."

The full paper can be found here:

http://www.mercatus.org/repository/docLib/20080319_MakingHurricaneReponseEffective_19Mar08.pdf

[Vinca]

4. So they should do the right thing twice -

give the brain damaged lady who lost her son in Iraq the $410,000 back. They should be ashamed of themselves. Just because their insurance policies carry small print that justifies being immoral assholes, doesn't mean they ought to go out of their way to prove they are. How many seconds does it take Walmart to earn $410,000?

[ima_sinnic]

5. funny how this story comes out at the EXACT SAME TIME as the story of the Shanks

see http://walmartwatch.com/

screw them! I will "give them credit" for NOTHING. Those who truly care about suffering and misery don't look for "credit"--as they undoubtedly did by most likely hiring some slick PR person to put this little piece together. So they can go around and break their arms giving themselves attaboy pats on the back for their "generosity" and "bigheartedness" during Katrina--like everything else about the way they do business, they saw Katrina as nothing more than a chance once again to exploit the gullibilities and emotions of their marks, the consumers, many of whom are forced to shop at WalMart because all other stores have been driven out of business by their unethical "competitive" practices.

So they sacrificed a little inventory, some fixtures to make themselves "look good" during Katrina. Big.Fucking.Deal. They figured, they would get it back in spades, first from all the "goodwill" it generated and also from insurance and government tax perks (aka corporate welfare).

I look forward to the day when WalMart stores start closing and the good-for-nothing trailer-trash Walton family heirs have to start selling off their vacation homes, their gated family compounds, their private jets, their closets full of designer handbags and shoes. What a bunch of fucking PIGS. I haven't set foot in a WalMart in years (well, a couple of times I used their toilet to flush a few turds when I was on a road trip, as with their twin corporate pig McD's) and don't intend to, EVER. I will make sure before renting or buying anywhere that there is at least one alternative to WM in the area, and will shop online if necessary to avoid that stinking hell on earth.

[Rage for Order]

10. I love Wal Mart

They save me lots of money on the dry grocery goods, diapers, pet foods, and cleaning supplies I need. It's obvious that you're heavily biased against Wal Mart, to the point that you can't recognize that what they did after Katrina was a good thing. The research paper that this article is based on was obviously started way before the Shanks story broke, and it was published in March 2008; hence, that's why the news story also came out in (gasp!) March 2008. It's not a conspiracy. Check out the research paper cited here:

http://www.mercatus.org/repository/docLib/20080319_MakingHurricaneReponseEffective_19Mar08.pdf

[DainBramaged]

11. Target, Costco, and KMart do for me what Walmart does for you

So I am morally superior to you.:sarcasm:


Fuck Walmart may their stores melt in the sum.

[ima_sinnic]

12. you *think* you are saving money, which may be true in the short term

but in the long term, the damage they are doing to your community and to the world is costing you.
I really couldn't care less where you shop, however. I choose not to subsidize slavemasters, government welfare cheats, unethical capitalist exploiters, and general greed-heads. Also, better check those food labels--much or all of it comes from China--and we all know how careful they are about the quality of their goods and the ingredients they use.

[madmom]

6. They just can't do anything right for you people can they?

[DainBramaged]

7. Excuse me

madmom:They just can't do anything right for you people can they?

Wait, so your position is Walmart is a good thing??? You want to define your actual position here or just throw out one liners for our consumption?????


http://walmartwatch.com/

Maybe you should read this website IN DEPTH



These are the Shanks, who will have to turn to Medicaid for help since Walmart left them penniless, but that's the norm for WalMart, push off the burdens on the Government while keeping regulation at arm's length.

For shame.

On edit

Since when were members of DU "you people"????

And as KO says, WalMart, may your stores melt in the hot sun.

[ima_sinnic]

8. "you people"? so you're not one of "us"?

feel free to buy cheap, tacky crap at WalMart made by way underpaid child laborers who are beaten and sleep deprived.
feel free not to patronize your local mom & pop or small regional chain in favor of the greed-head swine who lock illegal immigrants into the stores all night to do cleaning and are too cheesy and cheap to pay a decent wage, who would sue a brain-injured woman who has no real resources to get back "their" insurance money, who bully suppliers into retooling their entire production line for "their" product and then drop them like a hot potato when they find someone else to use up.
feel free to go somewhere else, where "your kind of people" go, since "we people" are so overly critical of a corporate PIG.

[Lorien]

13. Methinks the author has another agenda. From the article:

No one who is familiar with economic thought since the Second World War will be surprised at this. Scholars such as F. A. von Hayek, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock have taught us that it is really nothing more than a terminological error to label governments "public" and corporations "private" when it is the latter that often have the strongest incentives to respond to social needs. A company that alienates a community will soon be forced to retreat from it, but the government is always there. Companies must, to survive, create economic value one way or another; government employees can increase their budgets and their personal power by destroying or wasting wealth, and most may do little else. Companies have price signals to guide their productive efforts; governments obfuscate those signals.

Aside from the public vs. private issue, Horwitz suggests, decentralized disaster relief is likely to be more timely and appropriate than the centralized kind, which explains why the U.S. Coast Guard performed so much better during the disaster than FEMA. The Coast Guard, like all marine forces, necessarily leaves a great deal of authority in the hands of individual commanders, and like Wal-Mart, it benefited during and after the hurricane from having plenty of personnel who were familiar with the Gulf Coast geography and economy.

There is no substitute for local knowledge -- an ancient lesson of which Katrina merely provided the latest reminder.

(snip)