The people of rural Minnesota who shop at Wal-Marts puzzle me. At a bare minimum, if you like shopping at "big box" retail stores, could you at least do it at Target, which is a Minnesota-based business?
Secondly, when you bypass local stores in your community which already have the same products as the Wal-Mart that's 30 miles away, you are not doing your local community any favors. Your lack of caring for your businesses and schools is compounded when you are bypassing locally owned and operated businesses.
I am sick and tired of hearing people talking about the virtues of having a Wal-Mart in your town. I don't care if it's Montevideo, Sauk Centre, Litchfield, Willmar, and so on. Wal-Mart is a leech on our society, representing nothing but a desire to own the country.
Their representative says "the majority of our employees are full time." Yet they can't get an exact figure. Is he trying to insult our intelligence? That can mean as little as 51 percent are full time. What help is that when it hurts other businesses in town? What part of our tax dollars support the health insurance for Wal-Mart employees?
Under current Minnesota law, there is no obligation for Wal-Mart or other employers to disclose what burden their employees put on public medical programs. This past legislative session, Sen. Becky Lourey introduced legislation requiring public disclosure of such information.
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Surprise, surprise! Wal-Mart, among others, successfully blocked the citizen's right to know which large employers' cheap health insurance plans make their workers seek help from the state.
For Wal-Mart having SuperCenters in Hutchinson and Marshall, and Wal-Marts in Willmar, Montevideo, Redwood Falls, and Alexandria -- is that not enough pillaging of west central Minnesota? I wish I could scream from the rooftops, "Where, oh Wal-Mart, is the end to your naked greed?"
So you saved money by driving to Wal-Mart. Congratulations. You also kept money away from locally owned family businesses while helping our small-town schools consolidate.
The unwritten rule of "help thy neighbor" is vanishing from the countryside.
Shame on us for providing Wal-Mart a market in rural Minnesota.
Randy Olson
Sunburg
