Wal-Mart = Urban Sprawl

I moved out to the country in part so I could see the stars at night. Remember stars? They speak of the glory of God, don’t they?

I moved out to the country so I could see real songbird, the bluebirds and spring warblers. Herons come to my pond.

I moved out to the country because I wanted to raise my son in a place less dominated by American consumerism. I wanted him to see what the world looked like before it got taken over by shopping malls, gaudy retail signs, and traffic lights.

There’s a beauty and innocence in the country that you can’t find any place else. That feel of rural America can’t be replaced once its gone. Yet the rampage of urban sprawl eats up of the wide open spaces faster than you can say, “Low, low prices!”

But some things can’t be bought and sold. Once the stars are gone, how do we get them back? Once the songbirds have been driven away by the starlings and house sparrows that accompany urban sprawl, what will bring them back?

Once our town has been converted into just another ugly, harried, homogeneous piece of sprawl, how do we cope?

We already know that a Kroger Marketplace store is coming. With Wal-Mart, that makes two monster retail stores in a town of 3,000 people.

Someone will certainly make tons of money off the deal, but most of us will be losers in the end. With five Wal-Mart stores already within a half hour’s drive, why would we possibly want to kiss all the good things we have goodbye and bring just another chunk of diseased sprawl to our town?

Remember: you never appreciate what you have until they take it away.

New Jail? You’ll Need One When Wal-Mart Comes to Town

One of the cries of Brown County leadership concerns a new jail. The thought is that bringing Wal-Mart to town will generate enough tax monies for the county to build that jail.

Sadly, they’ll need a new jail should Wal-Mart take up county residence. Why? Because Wal-Mart stores boast a scary amount of crime:

• The average Wal-Mart in Ohio reported 188.5 police incidents per year in 2004.
• Police costs alone average $77.50 per incident, totaling an average of $14,608.75 per store in Ohio. (The average cost for moving those offenders through the county legal system, which has not been tracked, is certainly much higher.)
• Worse, most police departments find they must add an extra officer just to handle the increased crime generated by the Wal-Mart. That cost? $80,600 for an additional officer, which includes salary, benefits, training, and equipment.

But any large retail store creates a temptation to crime, right? True, but not all retailers are created equal crime-wise. An independent study conducted in 2005 compared Wal-Mart stores with Target stores located near each other. The results are shocking:

• The average Wal-Mart store generated nearly 5 times the crime of its neighbor Target store.
• Customers and employees were 6 times as likely to be assaulted at Wal-Mart than Target.
• Customers and employees had their vehicles stolen from Wal-Mart parking lots at 10 times the rate of the Target.

Clearly, Wal-Mart has a serious security issue.

The upshot?

The few bucks taxpayers save at Wal-Mart will be offset by higher taxes needed to handle the increased crime and subsequent criminal prosecution that haunts each store.

The neighborhoods Wal-Mart populates automatically become less safe. Worse, Wal-Mart sees far more crime per store than other large, retail stores.

Higher taxes and more crime—suddenly, that smiling Wal-Mart happy face seems out of place.

As for all those business taxes Wal-Mart will be giving Brown County to operate within its borders (money earmarked to build that ironic, new jail), just ask the State of Illinois what happened to $26.4 million in tax money Wal-Mart managed to avoid paying them.

But that’s fodder for another post…

For more, see the Wal-Mart crime study here.

We Need a Better Hope for the Future Than Wal-Mart

If I were a graduating senior this year at Western Brown High School who was thinking of going to college, what would bring me back to my hometown, my college diploma in hand?

Certainly not Wal-Mart.

Every small town needs a reason to keep its young people coming back, and few reasons can be less compelling than Wal-Mart. With most jobs at Wal-Mart part-time, with salaries under $10 and few benefits, can we believe that Wal-Mart is going to bring our kids back to Brown County? Or even keep them here?

Nearby West Union put in a Wal-Mart SuperCenter several years ago, its leaders hoping that the world’s largest retailer would be the cure for what ailed that community. If anything, West Union is even less of a destination than it once was. Many of the mom and pop businesses have closed up. A young person can’t even hope to take over the family business because Wal-Mart drove that family business out of business.

Short-sightedness on the part of community leaders who have drunk the Wal-Mart marketing Kool-Aid results in towns with a Wal-Mart instead of the kinds of 21st century businesses and thriving mom and pops that keep a community’s young people in the community.

Organic food production and co-ops are generating large revenues for those communities wise enough to see the trends. We already have much of that farming infrastructure in place in Brown County, making Mount Orab an ideal nexus for locavores seeking alternative local food sources, especially those grown organically. These food trends are hot and should be pursued intently by local leaders. Communities around the country who have invested in this burgeoning trend enjoy a renewed purpose, local pride, and the right kind of growth.

Instead, our community is going after Wal-Mart. How terribly short-sighted! (To see how short-sighted, consider reading Bill McKibben’s outstanding book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.)

Alternative, ecologically-friendly fuel sources will be hot for years to come. Many companies are investigating myriad options for new types of fuel. Our county could easily be known as the new hub for companies exploring tomorrow’s green energy sources, especially biofuels. Instead, our leaders are going after Wal-Mart. So much for inspiring our young people toward careers in science. So much for giving them a reason to come back to their hometowns and use what they have learned to better our community and the world beyond it.

Are our county and local leaders working toward any of these better alternatives to Wal-Mart? Or did they just settle for the lowest common denominator option, ensuring our young people have little reason to stay in the community?

Well, Wal-Mart is good for one thing—a massive increase in crime and more taxpayer dollars needed to pay for that crime. But that’s another post.

Why Christians Must Say No to Wal-Mart

After Sam Walton (the founder of Wal-Mart and a staunch supporter of American companies and values) died, his heirs and company leaders rapidly abandoned American manufacturers in favor of Chinese. At least 200,000 Americans have lost their jobs to Chinese workers slaving in factories all day every day making items for Wal-Mart. And why? So we can buy cheaper stuff with our ever-diminishing incomes.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart and the Communist government in China are laughing all the way to the bank. Estimates place the amount of income to China’s coffers from sales of goods at Wal-Mart at $27 billion a year in 2006 and growing at 20 percent a year.

The fact that we continue to help Wal-Mart line the pockets of the godless Chinese dictators should give us all pause. Especially Christians.

China is an atheist state and its leaders wish to keep it that way. To the dictators in China, genuine Christian revival threatens their stranglehold on the people. For this reason (and others connected to the dictators’ general hate for Christianity), persecution of born-again Christians continues to rise in China.

While China maintains an approved form of “Christian” church, that form is run by the state, a staunchly atheistic organization. The founding fathers of America wisely understood the reason that the state must stay out of the Church, but China has no such self-imposed limits. Any fellowship of Christians that does not bow the knee to the approved doctrine and will of the dictators is threatened with violence.

Voice of the Martyrs, a highly respected Christian organization that tracks the persecuted Church around the world, tracks abuses by the Chinese Communists against born-again Christians who refuse to join the compromised state “church.” Their figures show an increasing crackdown on freedom of worship and the house church movement responsible for the great revival China is experiencing.

Let all of us who call ourselves Christians understand that our brothers and sisters in China are beaten, tortured, and jailed for their faith. We can not only support them with our prayers, but by wiser choices in the goods we purchase (and the sheer amount of purchases we make). Hitting the Communist leaders in their wallets is one way to advance the cause of religious freedom in China.

We must also recognize that our lust for cheap goods poses a threat to China in other ways. As more and more factory work is shipped to China, people are sent to work in factories fifteen or sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, all year long. Missionaries are reporting that this slave labor is cutting into the revival going on in China as more and more people have less and less time available to devote to issues of the soul. Working people till they drop has a deleterious effect on the advancement of the Church in China.

We must also acknowledge that Wal-Mart is not the only source of Chinese goods in this country, though they are one of the largest. Their race to the bottom of prices has also forced the hands of thousands of other companies that have had to move their production to China to compete. While Wal-Mart is not the only player in this game, the company has helped create this mess and continues to foist it on us.

But we can say no.

Those of us who consider ourselves Christians must seriously consider whether our dollars are going to persecute our brethren in Christ in China. We need a gut check about the items we purchase and whether we wish to continue to tacitly support persecution just so we can have more cheap stuff.

The picture at left is of Jiang Zongxiu, killed for distributing Bibles. She’s just one of many Christians in China who paid the ultimate price for her faith. Or read the story of the torture of Lin Mei. The crime? Singing Christian hymns and telling others about Jesus.

The cost of doing business with Chinese leaders who hate everything Christians stand for is simply too high. Those of us who call ourselves born-again Christians must call for the end of this kind of treatment. We must stop funding a nation that encourages violence against our fellow Christians.

We can do that by boycotting Chinese-made products. And one of the best ways to do so is to stop buying them from companies that continue to do business with China.

And that includes Wal-Mart.

You’ve Got to Wonder About the Smarts…

Wal-Mart sells guns. As someone who freely believes in the right to bear arms, I think having a place to purchase guns is a good thing.

But you’ve got to wonder about the smarts of locating a ready source of guns (from the Wal-Mart) less than a mile from Mount Orab High School, Middle School, and Elementary School.

If the village council can’t see the problem there, then what other issues in the rush to say yes to Wal-Mart might they have missed?

You’ve just got to wonder…