Wal-Mart wastes $2M battling $7,000 fine

Wal-Mart got off easy for the 2008 trampling death of an employee caused by a holiday shopping stampede at one of its Long Island stores. The retail giant had to pay an OSHA fine of only $7,000.

But Wal-Mart's greed and its desire to evade responsibility for this death are so counterproductive that it's spent $2,000,000 so far trying to fight this $7,000 fine.

Wal-Mart sounds like it's been getting legal advice from the Tea Party movement and Chris Chocola: The company's main argument is that OSHA doesn't have any real authority to issue fines - or do much of anything - even though Congress created OSHA for this very purpose.

The Labor Department's New York office has been forced to spend 17% of its available resources over the past 5 months on just this single case.

I think Wal-Mart is actually fighting OSHA in an attempt to try to weaken the agency so it can't go after Wal-Mart for anything else. Why else would Wal-Mart spend $2,000,000 contesting a $7,000 fine?

If the government's power to regulate Big Business is illegal as Wal-Mart claims, then shouldn't that create a precedent that would also put the kibosh on trying to police what individuals can do? I'm waiting for somebody to formally argue that the lack of regulation on Big Business means social engineering campaigns against the behavior of individuals are nixed too.

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/7/7/882290/-Wal-Mart-spends-$2-million-fighting-$7K-fine-(UPDATED))