Letter to the Editor: Reader: Wal-Mart exploits communities

Once again Glenda Bly is spewing forth her rantings without doing her homework. I would like to clear up the misinformation she gave in last Sunday’s letter to the editor regarding Bill Richardson and Wal-Mart.

Americans want good jobs, affordable health care and a better life for their families. Big, powerful corporations like Wal-Mart are standing in the way. Every year, Wal-Mart gets huge profits from its national and international chain while more employees go on government assistance programs.

Each Wal-Mart store employing 200 people costs the taxpayers approximately $420,750 annually in public social services used by Wal-Mart workers, according to the Web site: WakeUpWalMart.com

Bill Richardson has joined with other lawmakers to educate elected officials and the public about how Wal-Mart’s low wages, poor benefits and shoddy treatment of its employees damage entire communities. We need to change the culture in this country of business making huge profits at the expense of low-wage workers and the American taxpayer.

Bill Richardson is not using “intimidation to pressure Wal-Mart into unionizing their employees,” as Bly wrote, but is instead participating in a grassroots movement that is standing up to rich, powerful organizations like Wal-Mart and spreading the word that it is time for Wal-Mart to do what is right instead of taking America in the wrong direction.

More information on this issue can be obtained at: WakeUpWalMart.com

Connie Belcher

Clovis

Bush administration must be stopped

It has to be said: This administration is rapidly palpably losing whatever might be left of its collective grip on reality.

The last efforts by Cheney, Rumsfeld and others to paint dissenters as, again, unpatriotic appeasers is both laughable and sickening. The good news is that most of us aren’t buying it anymore. But the bad news is that most of us aren’t absolutely outraged at the illegal and immoral things our government is doing in our name.

We, that is the American government and the corporations who call most of the shots, are an imperialist, conquering nation now seen by most people of the modern world as a killing machine about to be out of control.

But of course we’re already out of control and just getting started.

In the name of our own deepest values, we must stop this.

In the name of the judgment of history, we must stop this.

In the name of humanity, we must stop this.

Kirby Rowan

Portales

Detective Romero outstanding citizen

I just wanted to take a minute and commend Clovis Police Detective Roman Romero.

There are so many people out there who are against the war and shun the troops. I believe this statement he made to your reporter says it all: “My career is very important to me. I’m a policeman but before I’m anything, I’m an American. The country gives a lot and people have to give back — I believe in something larger than me.”

All of the branches of the military are now “volunteer service” and these young men and women should have nothing but our support. Their families and military family will help to ensure that his young family is taken care of in the event that he is deployed, as will the Clovis community.

Clovis should be proud to have Detective Romero on the streets and/or protecting our country.

Nikkie Rice

Sanford N. C.