The Best Defense Is a Strong Offence – Corporate Style

I have noticed for some time now that when large corporations (though other groups use this as well) are obviously going against the common good, a public evil, they enlist strong propaganda methods to justify their self-seeking ambitions.

In a simple level you can take Heinz catsup that loves to promote the slow rich catsup ~ meaning, you can’t get the damned stuff out of the poorly designed bottle without a knife or a hammer fist of Conan the Barbarian. Technology rescued them with the upside down squeezable bottle – though some restaurants still insist on the old bottles.

More to the point are two modern giant corporations – British Petroleum (BP) and Wal-Mart.

We are currently being flooded by BP ads extolling what a wonderful corporation they are who have spent millions making the southern coastland of our fair country better than it every was and are sharing the technology for well safety with the other oil baron peers. My gosh, these must be the most wonderful people in the world. But as the BloombergBusinessweek well points out “BP used to be a company that produces oil. Increasingly these days, it’s producing ligation in almost equal measure.” They are suing the EPA for being nasty to them since their colossal oil spill in 2010. You know the one that killed 11 rig workers, and spilled untold amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. They have spent billions in cleanup and other good things but they also are suing not to pay for all their damages. They were even willing to pay 5 billion in penalties in a plea bargain to dodge responsibility. It is a freaking mess making lawyers rich and detrimental to the common good. Bad BP.

The second of these mega giant corporations that is birthing wonderful commercial ads about itself faster the rabbits is Wal-Mart. They have really up the ante in self congratulations on the cheap goods – are steaks are so good you can stuff yourself on them (unless you are a Wal-mart worker and still can’t afford them.) They paint themselves as the best company ever to bless Americans with affordable goods. All of this ignores that their owners the Waltons are a part of the upper 1% of the upper 1% multi-billionaires while the majority of their workers have to rely on government subsidies such as food stamps to survive. They could just increase the prices by 1% and then be able to pay the workers a living wage. Just compare them to Costco to see the differences between companies who care about their workers and those who don’t.

click to enlarge

Wal-Mart is just boneheaded as well as immoral. I don’t shop there unless absolutely necessary and would hope others are not taken in by the advertising blitz. I wish we had a Costco in the area, I be there in a economic minute.