Here, Get Your Eyes Opened

The New Yorker: Selling Wal-Mart is long but worth the read to get a better sense of the public relations machinations behind the smiley face.

Written up in more detail at WIPE. But did you know Wal-Mart's average hourly pay for a full time worker is $10.51 and CostCo's is $17.46?

Something to think about. Found via the Grist Mill.

Also, here's another piece from Grist Mill explaining why a big box store like Wal-Mart can't really ever go "green".

Wal-Mart's initiatives have just enough meat to have distracted much of the environmental movement, along with most journalists and many ordinary people, from the fundamental fact that, as a system of distributing goods to people, big-box retailing is as intrinsically unsustainable as clear-cut logging is as a method of harvesting trees.