I don't often agree with the Wall Street Journal, but this morning's editorial makes a valid point: that the city council has effectively created a Dis-Enterprise Zone aimed specifically at Wal-Mart. I can understand the intentions, yet disapprove of the method: creating different standards for one kind of employer is going to create more problems than it solves.

Pot holes

I recently drove through Chicago on I - 90 headed for Wisconsin. I didn't notice any potholes, probably because my maximum speed was 10 mph for almost an hour due to the morning traffic which, compared to L.A. where I was last week, is bad enough. L.A. makes Chicago look like a slug compared to a Greyhound. Let the city fathers concentrate on major problems, not ones that don't directly affect their windy (hot air from politicians) city.

As to the discussion about Wal-Mart, why is it any of our business what Chicago does? We don't live there and we don't have to go there if we don't like their rules. Neither does Wal-Mart so who suffers most, people who have to pay more for goods because of the city's grab for publicity, or the workers who need jobs that they won't get because the city decrees they must be paid more than comparable jobs in Wal-Marts nationally?

Re foie gras

I witnessed the geese, in this case, being force-fed in France to increase the size of their livers before being decapitated, their bodies pillaged for organs of extreme dimensions. Whenever the woman feeding them appeared they flocked, literally, to her for more food. Why is it any business of those who aren't directly involved with the production of foie gras? Leave it up to the public to order it or avoid it.

Wal Mart

Remember restriction and regulation usually start with small demands and gradual increases, sometimes exponentially, until we feel the noose and find it too late to escape. "Just $5.00 per household annually," can grow incrementally into an astounding number while we sleep and do nothing. What did national income tax start at? Was it one or two percent? Likewise social security.

If we allow City Councils to impose restrictions in select areas, restrictions as pointed out above, we are making our own potholes for the future. When is the last time you saw a law taken off the books, a penalty lowered, a modification to a rule or law that was lesser not more?

To me, the point isn't that Wal-Mart should pay living wages. Of course they should. My argument is that the Chicago City Council is turning into a small-town Scold Board. They're confusing their statutory requirement to set administrative policy with a discretionary power to legislate morality. A slippery slope indeed. What if the Port Angeles City Council started imposing a tax only on bars that featured live blues music?

Cheers & thanks for writing, Barry.

We need more, not fewer, arbiters of social justice. I suggest a reading of "Nickel and Dimed in America." I'm glad metropolitan markets resist big-box enterprises while they are becoming way too present and influential out here on the peninsula.

My issue isn't with the moral imperative to pay decent wages, or even the paradox that in order to sell stuff cheaply, Wal-Mart screws its own customers. It's with the notion that the Chicago City Council should be the self-anointed arbiter of social justice. A very slippery slope, greased, as it were, by duck fat.

Dude, I'm surprised that you would object to the new, groundbreaking Chicago law requiring big-box corporate pigs to pay a living wage to employees. There's a reason Wal-Mart has been unable to make inroads into major metropolitan markets - city folks are less likely to put up with the criminal exploitation of their working class, unlike the poor saps in rural areas who have few other employment (and shopping) options.

The windy city.....talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.....how about those pot holes big enough to injest SUV's? I'm from Milwuakee and when you drive to WI after landing in Chicago you take the toll road to the boarder. Since the 60"s, what is I43 in WI, has been a toll road to the south. The toll has gone up and up and they have more then paid for the highway, a gazillian times over.
The interesting fact is, that the second you cross into WI (the highway is no longer a toll road). The road's condition is perfect! In IL, you spend your time paying tolls and trying to avoid the huge pot holes for the 78 miles from the airport to the dairy state!
Go figure.....