Saturday, January 31, 2009

How to slow Wal-Mart

So there's controversy about the placement of a proposed Wal-Mart near the Wilderness battlefield in northern Orange County. It's near a part of the battle field where soldiers from Vermont held the line in an important 1864 Union victory. Very honorable and needs to be remembered.

How do you slow Wal-Mart? Reduce the federal government. It's that simple.

Wal-Mart is building where there are people. There are people moving into northern Orange as growth from Washington, D.C. expands. Thirteen years ago, it was mostly forest and a few houses along Route 20. And we expect government to grow more with the stimulus bill now under consideration.

Sure, it's okay for four people to share the same West Wing office that Karl Rove once used. But unless they are sharing the same housing, they are part of the government expansion.

It's likely Wal-Mart has no better option for putting a new store in that area than the proposed site. They know the legal challenges that can come from building near battlefields. And face it. Most of Fredericksburg is part of historic Civil War battlefields. We need to honor the past but also deal with the present.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

They are actually planning to build away from the battlefield. They are building where the troops were in the rear with the gear. Wal-Mart and its supporters point out that the 138,000-square-foot store would be right behind a bank and a small strip mall, a full mile from entrance to the site of the 1864 clash that left thousands dead and hastened the war's end.
http://yankeephilip.blogspot.com/2009/01/walmart-on-battlefield.html