Encinitas Walmart slipped in through the back door. The official date is June 13th. Local citizens, budding activists all, kept up their pursuit of information and were given false or partial information from city planning staff over and over. Speakers at city council meetings would voice concerns and ask about rumors at oral communications. Patrick Murphy would repeat his usual denials that nothing was going on with Walmart. Don't you believe it. The Walmartization of America Redux: How the Relentless Drive for Cheap Stuff Undermines Our Economy, Bankrupts Our Soul, and Pillages the Planet by John Atcheson states,
"In his excellent documentary, Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price, Robert Greenwald carefully documents how Walmart’s giant box stores lower wages across the entire retail sector, impose high social and economic costs on the states and communities in which they operate, and destroy local businesses."When it was altogether clear last September that Walmart officials and city planners had done an end run around public opinion and open government precepts, Teresa Barth spoke openly about the weaknesses within the General Plan that would allow for this kind of action being considered legal because it is re-use not new construction.
Teresa Barth's words and the critics of Walmart don't argue the increasing economic insecurity. The point is to be truthful about what we are really paying for cheap things. There are similarities it seems between this Oscar Wilde quote of people "knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing" and "just because it's legal doesn't make it right." Both entail loss of humanity, the loss of soul.
