that would be a step up from the polite and erudite lying to our faces.
It is a small, humorous release. However, labels such as this one have been found to be quite effective. Your criticism is noted and I'm pretty sure if the admin found it inappropriate it would not have made the Daily Digest.

How does "special tax breaks" become their slogan just because they happen to use it? The term was being used, by liberals and libertarians and others, way before the Occupy movement even existed. Do you have a better choice of words for the concept that "special tax breaks" denotes?

Yes it is, and one that Objectivists tend to ignore. We want an impartial legal system that recognizes and defends individual rights, yet we have little to offer in the way of proposed reforms to counter the outsized influence (for good or for ill) that wealthy people and institutions exert over the content of our laws, the judges that interpret them, and the politicians and bureaucrats that enforce them.

Since you seem resistant on the point, allow me to offer the fact that labels such as "libtard" and calling the President "BO" or "Oh-bah-ma" or "Tyrant-in-Chief" achieve nothing. They are an idiotic self-amusement of writers who lack true erudition.

Long ago on another board entirely, we had a writer who pushed the word "flametard" to refer to those who made fun of him. He invited the ridicule in many ways, some of them purposefully provocative, but too often not. For example, though possessing a master's degree in journalism, he did not know that Cyrillic is an alphabet: he thought that it was a language. And he called other people stupid... You once accused me of being "ignorant about science" though you never heard of epigenetics.

Maybe "libtard" can come to mean a libertarian who is too stupid to understand Objectivism. (That should really advance the cause around here...) Or perhaps we could restrict it to mimes: ad lib artists in leotards. It could be transmogrified to tiblards: people with big thighs. Oh, we could call you "Kale: Ah, the Spinach Girl."

I can just see the next Presidential press conference. "Mr. President, how do you respond to the criticism that your administration tramples on our Constitutional rights?" ... "I would say that I am rubber and you are glue and whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you! Next question."

It does not matter, if the Partnership of Government and Business is by Force or Agreement ... it is still FASCISM!!! What you are describing with Intel is not business, it's THEFT...nothing more or less.
When I see the words "Special Tax Breaks", it takes me back to OCCUPY and those scum and my brain reels from the collective stupidity of that crowd. by using "Their terms" we sound like them.

Actually, the special tax breaks themselves sound more like Mouch. Granting or withholding special privileges for their friends and enemies was one of the chief means by which government thugs sought to increase their power over the economy in Atlas Shrugged.

If I were running a small business and paying a higher property tax rate than the politically connected big business down the street, I would be tempted to pay only the same tax rate as the bigger store, and file a discrimination lawsuit if the government attempted to collect more. Such a suit would probably fail, given today's court system, but the publicity would help undermine the public's faith in getting a fair deal from their local government.

I am not against Walmart. I am against crony deals. Often they backfire. For instance, Intel came into Colorado Springs. The lure they put out was 100s of high skilled jobs and revenues. They demanded huge concessions from the city, tax deals being only one. They did indeed come in, refused to pay 100s of subcontractors and although did the hiring, within a year and a half laid most of them off, pulled up stakes and built in another city willing to be a sucker. This is also HPs M.O. Large multinationals rely on cozy relationships with govt that start-ups do not enjoy. Fact: 93% of all net new jobs are created by start-ups. Notice the cities do not scramble to give them tax breaks. I see reasoned criticisms here-not whining.

I avoid Walmarts.

All this WHINING about Walmart , specifically, and corporations in general.... and a lot of regurgitating of Liberal talking points,.. especially the "SPECIAL TAX BREAKS" sounds just like MOUCH. Yes, my local WALMART got a break on their Property taxes. What they paid to the county in SALES TAX revenue MORE than Made up the Difference. TEXAS has been using this to a GREAT Advantage, in sucking Businesses out of California and New York.

Oh brother.

Looking at these comments ...
WELCOME, WESLEY MOUCH ... to Galt's Gulch!

How so g?

Ayn Rand stated that the question isn't "What should be done about the poor?", but rather "Should anything be done about the poor?".

The answer is, "If you wish to help them, no one should stop you."

The Collectivists do not like this, of course, because they need their redistribution of wealth to be the only source of help for the poor to maintain their power structure.

We had a Wal Mart open near us a few years ago. They were exempt from paying property taxes for five years. It was said that was needed to attract them to the area. They got additional exemptions from paying local taxes because it cost more to develop the location than they estimated. These are examples of what is publicly known. I should say that Wal Mart isn't special in this regard. A friend of mine spoke to the Pittsburgh mayor a number of years ago. He had offered a restaurant a three exemption from city taxes if they would open a location downtown. He pointed out that this was unfair to the existing restaurants but he didn't understand.

Apparently, your businesses aren't big enough to show up on the Congressional tax-writers' radar, or you're not spending enough on lobbyists?

I've been running business for decades... PLEASE, for once and always... TELL ME WHAT these "SPECIAL TAX BREAKS" are ... I must have missed that memo at the last Right Wing Conspirators Meeting.

Sounds a lot like a book I read.

Liberals are all about taking from you and me at the point of a gun, (IRS), and giving to people. More government. When the private sector is generous then they cannot justify government programs which are the hallmark of liberalism, which is NOT liberal or liberating at all but more in line with totalitarianism and communism where "they" the arrogant self proclaimed educated elitists believe they should RULE over you dictating to YOU how YOU should live your life.

Oh, so YOU were the ONE person using the 8 checkout lines while the rest of us who DON'T want do someone else's job are stuck in a line that takes an hour to get through.

Oh by the way, You mentioned the system telling you those are three for one, so I assume then that you leave the self-checkout go back to the store pickup 2 more then get back in the end of the line and HOPE against all odds that the self-checkout actually works and you don't have to wait for some manager to get their hands out of their pockets to come assist.

How about this for a strategy:

You LOOK AT THE ONLINE WEBSITE and see what their sales are BEFORE you go. Maybe prepare your shopping first, then shop and get out...

Personally I go to the store buy what I plan for and leave. I know what I am spending before I get there, with a 15% cash buffer in case I see something I forgot. I am not wasteful, but from a cost benefit perspective, wasting my time going back into the store, leaving the checkout line, or checking out then going back and checking out a second time sure does seem like an inefficient way to shop.

I also do not like doing somebody else's job and receiving no personal benefit like a discount on the items I buy as a "THANKS" for doing it yourself from the multi-billion dollar corporation and saving them HR, Salary, benefit, employee management, theft and so on.

But I, if you prefer doing it yourself, that is what freedom is all about, and more power to you.

I quit because it is obvious that in 8 lines with nobody using them , and 3 lines with an hour wait it was very obvious that the vast majority of people do NOT want to check themselves out, and I refuse to be herded by Walmart of Sam's club into what THEY dictate I should do.

The statists cannot tolerate anything that offers alternative to dependence upon them.

You are SO right, O.A.

Isn't that a problem?

Hilary was appointed to the Board of Walmart, I think it was 1986-1992, while Bill was governor of Arkansas. "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/us/pol...

I love to hear about businesses that succeed and people who get rich on their own merit, but Walmart isn't one. I'm actually not sure that one can exist today, with government the way it is.

"...maybe the problem is not Walmart maybe the problem is GOVERNMENT!!!" Amen to that!

Interesting. The first review of the book opines that the CEO's philosophy is in opposition to Ayn Rand's advocacy of "selfishness" and "greed," and Milton Friedman's view that a business' only goal should be to maximize profits for shareholders. I haven't read the book, but I'm inclined to think it's a false dichotomy. I don't think either Rand or Friedman was in favor of defrauding or knowingly harming customers, as long as you profit. (Well, maybe Friedman was on the latter, based on his defense of car companies that knew some passengers would be killed.) And I don't think Mackey is advocating sacrificing one's profits for the customers' well-being; it says he left a co-op he'd co-founded because his partner was anti-market. I think it makes good business sense to consider whether your customers and employees are well-treated and satisfied, as well as worrying about finances. I don't know if Mackey goes beyond that, but it doesn't seem in itself inimical to Objectivism