Tuesday, August 2, 2011

An Exceedingly Rotten Article

There's good journalism. There's bad journalism....And then there's gutter journalism. A perfect example of the latter is an article that recently appeared in the "Huffington Post". A "reporter" there took the testimony of ONE anonymous and obviously disgruntled employee of Walmart and proceeded to do a hit-job on the giant retailer. According to this employee, Walmart has track record of donating rotten produce to food banks and then writing it off on their income tax. It's absurd, folks...................................................................................................First of all, the response to the article by people who, you know, ACTUALLY MANAGE AND WORK AT FOOD BANKS says that the charges here are total bullshit. Walmart, according to these folks, always presents their donated items professionally and none of these folks have ever had a problem with the quality. Secondly, food banks just flat-out don't accept bad food. If they cannot use the food, they will not take it....And as far as this tax write-off goes (Walmart will supposedly get a 300-something million dollar credit for their 1.75 billion dollar overall food donation), does the writer think that Walmart SHOULDN'T take the deduction? I mean, come on, it's not like Walmart attorneys wrote the frigging tax code here........................................................................................................Look, folks, I'm not saying that Walmart is perfect. They clearly aren't (they should, for example, be providing their employees better health insurance plans). But for the "Huffington Post" to run an article such as this is decidedly dirty pool. Hopefully some of the more honorable progressives will call them out on it.

6 comments:

Dervish Sanders said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
The CDM said...

I would love to call Walmart the evil empire that it truly is, but I make my living doing Marketing work out of about 20+ locations, so....

Dervish Sanders said...

OK Will, I went ahead and did your research for you. In addition to appearing on his website, the article does also appear on the Huffington Post.

So, am I going to call out the Huffington Post because you've got a feeling in your gut that the article isn't accurate? Why would I do that?

Al Norman stands by his story. He says, "I believe the Wal-Mart whistle-bl­ower who spoke to me on condition of anonymity was honest, and relating what he saw with his own eyes. ... This source knew he would be fired if his identity was revealed".

Later, someone who says he is the source responds. He says, "I'm not a disgruntle­d employee, I still work in the produce department and send out the donations. I do my job and enjoy my place of work and the people I work with. I can't go to the health department with this as I need my job".

Al Norman has written 2 books about Walmart, and as far as I know he hasn't been sued by Walmart for libel.

Also... did Walmart's attorneys write the tax code? No, their lobbyists probably did.

btw, the article was published on 8/10/2010, a date that is almost a year in the past... hardly recent.

IrOnY RaGeD said...

Obviously "as far as I know" doesn't go too far with you.

But we knew that, didn't we?

Dervish Sanders said...

I posted the comment below BEFORE Voltron posted his comment (it mysteriously disappeared). I found the article. "As far as I know" means JUST THAT.

I originally alerted Will to this article by linking to it on Truth's blog. My link was to the article on the Sprawl Buster's website. I don't know why Will went out and found another place the article was posted.

Seems to me that if he wanted to criticize anyone he should have criticized the author. I don't know why he instead went after The Huffington Post.

...MY ORIGINAL COMMENT...

OK Will, I went ahead and did your research for you. In addition to appearing on his website, the article does also appear on the Huffington Post.

So, am I going to call out the Huffington Post because you've got a feeling in your gut that the article isn't accurate? Why would I do that?

Al Norman stands by his story. He says, "I believe the Wal-Mart whistle-bl­ower who spoke to me on condition of anonymity was honest, and relating what he saw with his own eyes. ... This source knew he would be fired if his identity was revealed".

Later, someone who says he is the source responds. He says, "I'm not a disgruntle­d employee, I still work in the produce department and send out the donations. I do my job and enjoy my place of work and the people I work with. I can't go to the health department with this as I need my job".

Al Norman has written 2 books about Walmart, and as far as I know he hasn't been sued by Walmart for libel.

Also... did Walmart's attorneys write the tax code? No, their lobbyists probably did.

btw, the article was published on 8/10/2010, a date that is almost a year in the past... hardly recent.

Dervish Sanders said...

Voltron said... Obviously "as far as I know" doesn't go too far with you. But we knew that, didn't we?

I had a response to this... but blogger deleted it. So forget it... If blogger won't accept my response to Voltron insulting me then I don't know why I should let my initial comment stand.