Wal-Mart casts ominous shadow

To the Editor,

A fallen branch has been precariously dangling for over a year from a wire above the northbound traffic lane on Geneva Street in Bath. If it were to fall on a car making it veer into oncoming traffic it could cause fatalities.

Much greater danger lurks over our community due to lack of foresight of Bath Town and Planning Board. It would appear that the Board members do not follow any rules in safeguarding the community from uncontrolled and haphazard development. We have had a spate of dollar stores and a looming drug store war.

But the Wal-Mart project is the most ominous. Let us get it in perspective.

It is a global corporation, which gets its supplies from China where they pay 65 cents an hour, that is if they do pay them, and make them work overtime without pay. And it is not just a question of Human Rights, important though that is. Wal-Mart forces its suppliers to go to China for its business. That has wrecked US manufacturing and according to credible economic estimates, in a few decades the land of hope and promise will only have service jobs-financial management, transport industry, hotels, restaurants, accountants, lawyers, physicians and such. Education will become too expensive even for the moderately well to do and the rich will send their progeny to Beijing as Indians (of India) used to send them to universities in England.

On a more mundane level, it has been credibly reported that Wal-Mart forces employees to work off the clock, hires illegal immigrants, employs underage workers in hazardous jobs, discriminates against women and handicapped persons. It is currently facing the largest class action suit in US history for discrimination against women. Its health insurance is such that most employees are forced to apply for Medicaid adding to tax payer burden. It has, over the years, received over a billion dollars in subsides from 244 communities. With its advent, tax rates usually increase to pay for additional roads, and crime prevention. It keeps only 6% of the profit it makes in the community against 60% that local businesses do. It has sued 220 communities in N.Y. state to lower its taxes, has already left 350 empty stores across the USA and does not much care for ecology and distorts identity and culture towns. Traffic congestion becomes intolerable (an addition of 800 vehicles per hour per their own estimate for Bath.)

If we - tradesmen, farmers, shopkeepers, landowners, politicians, bureaucrats and general citizenry - do not do everything in our power to block the landslide, join hands with other communities who are involved in the same struggle, we will be crushed.
Syed Ehtisham
Bath