Editor, The Record:
Will Rogers said that if you can build up a business big enough, it’s respectable. By that definition, Wal-Mart has achieved a measure of respectability in some people’s eyes, but not in mine. For rather than seeing this organization as an anchor for the new strip mall, I see it as an albatross hanging around the neck of our town.
Some communities have seen what Wal-Mart does when it moves into an area and begins draining away jobs and money and have fought to keep them out. And successfully, I might also add.
The council isn’t interested that when Wal-Mart moves into a community, there is a net loss in jobs. They have no comprehension that money that would be better spent in the community is siphoned off. It’s an economic trap that sucked in our council but, honestly, is that hard to do?
This is not me being anti-business. It is me saying that all businesses aren’t created equal and there are those that should be welcomed into our community and those that should not be.
I just wished that more of my fellow residents could take their blinders off and connect the dots and realize the long-term pain that their short-term thinking is going to cause. I’m going to have a long wait for that to happen.
Robert T. Rock
Mission