As Black Friday Goes...

from the site Pepper Spraying Cop

Who would have thought the hot product for Black Friday would be pepper spray?  Cops spraying customers and customers each other, plus tasering and a couple of shootings--all part of the ritual apparently. Can't wait for Buy Small Saturday and Cyber Monday.

Actually the fashionable use of pepper spray since the despicable incident at U.C. Davis, in heavy video rotation on the Internet and cable news, was already being satirized at the collective site Pepper Spraying Cop, which included this fake-comes-true image:

Check Wikipedia and see that this instance of Black Friday is the only one that isn't overtly (as opposed to ironically) a catastrophe. Our society's dependence on consumption is at least as dangerous as its dependence on fossil fuel, and of course the two are intimately related.  Yet it is dependence in every sense of the word.  And so this Black Friday is both different from the others and exactly the same.

Black Friday follows Gluttony Thursday, and Think Progress has two instructive notes on that: the fact that hunger in the U.S. is increasing both statistically and in plain sight, and that the cost of the traditional Thanksgiving feast is increasing--clearly related to, and as clear evidence of the Climate Crisis.

Speaking of which there is a provocative new study that suggests it may take a little longer for civilization to destroy itself, which would be good news if there seems any likelihood that the requisite action will be taken to use the time to stop it from getting worse.(Which some claim is simpler --at least in part--than generally feared.)
Meanwhile, new evidence of the oppression of the 99%: the average Bush tax savings for the 1% is greater than the average annual income for the 99%:  about $66 thousand versus $58.5.

And what's keeping things from being even worse for the 99%?  The Obama federal stimulus and its millions of jobs, the federal tax cut for the 99% and unemployment insurance, both set to expire unless this Tuesday-to-Thursday workweek Congress prevents it.  And such Obama federal initiatives as the evil health care law--evil in the rhetoric of candidate Cowboy Rick, but a great boon to Governor Cowboy Rick who has been way less than shy about claiming as much of that money for Texas as he possibly can, I reckon.   

Black Friday

Santa Claus' sleigh these days takes the form of this huge ship, commissioned by Wal-Mart and built in Denmark specifically and only to haul goodies from China to the U.S. It takes just 13 people to run it, even though it's longer than a U.S. aircraft carrier. This ship is so big that it had to be built in five separate sections that were welded together. The command bridge alone is higher than a 10-story building. The ship has its own cargo crane rigs--11 of them--that operating simultaneously can unload the entire ship in under two hours. So this is where Christmas comes from, where Black Friday lives. Typically, cargo ships from China that bring consumer goods to California ports, return with cardboard and material for recycling--in other words, garbage. But these ships reputedly return completely empty. [Thanks to Bill T. for sending me these photos etc. awhile back.]

From "The Hollow Men" series by Howard Penning.

The Holloween Story: Hollow Military

Update: A version of this is Rescued at Daily Kos, Recommended at European Tribune , front-paged at E Pluribus Media and a top-rated article at Political Cortex.


As children don the costumes of ghouls and monsters for Halloween, it may be our uncomfortable duty (especially as we gingerly begin our Christmas shopping) to face some monstrous changes that now shape our reality.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpieces filled with straw*

The Hollow Military

The response of the Iraqi government to armed members of Blackwater USA, a for-profit corporation, killing 17 Iraqi civilians in one incident in September has led to an avalanche of attention on the role of private contractors, armed and not, in Iraq. This led to a number of revelations, including the recent U.S. government study that could not account for about a billion dollars paid to another for-profit security company, DynCorp International, ostensibly to train police in Iraq.

Yet these firms have operated in Iraq from the beginning of the war through the occupation. There are an estimated 180,000 civilian contractors in Iraq, at least 45,000 in armed roles (according to Joan Walsh of Salon in a TV interview), while there are 160,000 U.S. troops. Over the past four years, monies paid to such firms by the U.S. State Department have gone from $1 billion to $4 billion a year, officially. But even that doesn't measure the extent of the money paid to for-profit contractors and their power in Iraq.

Moreover, this use of contractors is not, as some media reports would have it, an accidental byproduct of a tiff between the Defense and State departments, forcing State to hire private security when the Pentagon refused to protect their diplomats in Iraq. It is the result of deliberate policy, articulated by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It is part of his philosophy of the "hollow military."

Here's what Naomi Klein writes in her book, The Shock Doctrine:

"...Rumsfeld saw the army shedding large numbers of full-time troops in favor of a small core of staffers propped up by cheap temporary soldiers from the Reserve and National Guard. Meanwhile, contractors from companies such as Blackwater and Halliburton would perform duties ranging from high-risk chauffeuring to prisoner interrogation to catering to health care." [p.285]

But the reality in Iraq has turned out to be even more extensive than Rumsfeld's dream. In his detailed report in Salon, P.W. Singer wrote:

"The use of contractors in Iraq is unprecedented in both its size and scope...What matters is not merely the numbers, but the roles that private military contractors play. In addition to war gaming and field training U.S. troops before the invasion, private military personnel handled logistics and support during the war's buildup. The massive U.S. complex at Camp Doha in Kuwait, which served as the launch pad for the invasion, was not only built by a private military firm but also operated and guarded by one. During the invasion, contractors maintained and loaded many of the most sophisticated U.S. weapons systems, such as B-2 stealth bombers and Apache helicopters. They even helped operate combat systems such as the Army's Patriot missile batteries and the Navy's Aegis missile-defense system.

Private military firms -- ranging from well-established companies, such as Vinnell and MPRI, to start-ups, such as the British Aegis -- have played an even greater role in the post-invasion occupation. Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root division, recently spun off into its own firm, currently runs the logistics backbone of the force, doing everything from running military mess halls to moving fuel and ammunition. Other firms are helping to train local forces, including the new Iraqi army and national police."

It's worth noting also, that according to A Pretext for War by James Baxter, these same corporations--whose infamous work in Iraq first came to light in the Abu Ghraib scandals--were influential in Pentagon circles before the war started.

As for Blackwater and other security firms, their roles as armed forces is extensive, unregulated and often unknown. But Singer asserts, "As it has been planned and conducted to date, the war in Iraq would not be possible without private military contractors." He quotes an estimate that over 1,000 contractors have been killed and 13,000 wounded, but they aren't counted in official casualties. The mercenaries are extremely well paid--the difference between Privates and Privatized is great. So it should not be surprising that, as Singer writes, "Halliburton's contract has garnered the firm $20.1 billion in Iraq-related revenue and helped the firm report a $2.7 billion profit last year. To put this into context, the amount paid to Halliburton-KBR is roughly three times what the U.S. government paid to fight the entire 1991 Persian Gulf War."

But this is only the beginning. Read on.

* verses from "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot.

by Howard Penning in Vancouver, BC.

Holloween Story: Hollow Government

Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

The Hollow Military is not only a strategy, it is part of an ideology. Conservatives who want the smallest possible government are getting their wish with the Bushite government, but in a perverse way. The Bushites have shed actual government employees, either by underfunding government agencies and functions, or by replacing real managers, experts, technicians and career public servants with appointees hired for their political party activism and ideological fervor. But they have not cut government spending. In fact they've turned the Clinton surplus into a huge deficit, financed by a foreign power with a putatively Communist government: China.

Under Bush, the basic function of government has become to distribute taxpayer money to select corporations. As Naomi Klein points out, this is a process that G.W. Bush began as governor of Texas. Klein writes:"The future president's commitment to auctioning off the state, combined with Cheney's leadership in outsourcing the military and Rumsfeld's patenting of drugs that might prevent epidemics, provided a preview of the kind of state the three men would construct together---it was a vision of a perfectly hollow government." [294]

9/11 provided them their major opportunity, so untold billions went through the hollow Homeland Security department to favored corporations, and billions more to Iraq. This was part of "a straight-up transfer of hundreds of billions of public dollars a year into private hands. It would take the form of contracts, many offered secretively, with no competition and scarcely any oversight, to a sprawling network of industries: technology, media, communications, incarceration, engineering, education, health care."

It is the realization of a "radical vision of a hollow government in which everything from war fighting to disaster response was a for-profit venture." [298]Conservatives laud privatization for the efficiency supposedly inherent in for-profit ventures. But it hasn't worked out that way, partly because of the dynamics of monopoly capitalism, and partly because the Hollow Military and the Hollow Government depends on the Hollow Corporation.

by Howard Penning

Holloween Story: Hollow Corporation in Iraq

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

The money from the Hollow Goverment to supplement the Hollow Military goes to the Hollow Corporation. Just as the Hollow Government doesn't actually do the public business, and the Hollow Military doesn't conduct the war, the Hollow Corporation doesn't do the work. They all hire somebody else to do it. And often enough, the people they hire, hire somebody else. And so on.

Sometimes this results in luxurious overspending and immense waste, as in the Green Zone and military installations in Iraq. As writes, "The operation is one of the most lavishly supported ever, and most of that has been due to contractors to whom we have outsourced almost all the logistics, and the protection of that enormous supply chain. But it has proven to be remarkably inefficient, all the while undermining our counterinsurgency efforts. According to testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Defense Contract Audit Agency has identified more than a staggering $10 billion in unsupported or questionable costs from battlefield contractors -- and investigators have barely scratched the surface."

In other situations, such as the billions wasted on the supposed "reconstruction" efforts in Iraq, it's a chain of subcontracts leading to no results at all, except waste and fraud, and to such situations as Bechtel being contracted to fix the electricity system, and after years, leaving Iraq with the electricity system in worse shape than when it arrived. Much of this travesty is a matter of public record through congressional investigations. As Klein writes:

"Freed of all regulations, largely protected from criminal prosecution and on contracts that guaranteed their costs would be covered, plus a profit, many foreign [non-Iraqi] corporations did something entirely predictable: they scammed wildly. Known in Iraq as 'the primes,' the big contractors engaged in elaborate subcontracting schemes."

Money would pass through one subcontractor after another, each taking their cut, until there was little left for the actual work, so it isn't too surprising that the materials were cheap, the work shoddy, and nothing was accomplished--while conditions got worse, and insurgency grew.

In the end the cheapest workers were hired, and often imported. Thus the mystery of why a country in which electrical and water systems, bridges, schools, etc. had been constructed before American bombs destroyed them could not be re-constructed is solved. I recall reading riverbend's blog early in the occupation in which she wrote about Iraqi firms eager to reconstruct their own country, and with the skills, knowledge and creativity to do it quickly and cheaply--but they were being ignored. These were the same people who constructed all this infrastructure in the first place--but U.S. based multinationals saw Iraq as a major opportunity to get richer quickest, and so Iraqis were rarely hired to rebuild their own country, especially not professionals. Which of course added immensely to the frustration and emnity of the Iraqi people.

But the story of the Hollow Corporation does not begin in Iraq--nor does it end there. Which will bring us, very soon, to Christmas.

by Howard Penning

Holloween Story: Hollow Corporation Christmas

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Donald Rumsfeld did not invent the concept of the Hollow Military out of thin air. It came, as Naomi Klein claims, from the Hollow Corporation of 1990s America. Companies that had previously manufactured their own products and "maintained large, stable workforces" in America went beyond moving factories to the South (the 1970s) or to Mexico and Asia (1980s). They stopped owning and maintaining factories at all. This became known as the "Nike model: "produce your products through an intricate web of contractors and subcontractors, and pour your resources into design and marketing." The other Hollow model was based on Microsoft: a small, tight workforce concentrating on "core competencies," while everything else ("from running the mailroom to writing code") is outsourced to temp workers. [Klein, 284-5.)

Rumsfeld came from this business background, and came to the Pentagon (Klein quoting Fortune magazine) "to oversee the same sort of restructuring that he orchestrated so well in the corporate world." [Klein, 285.]

By now--by 2007--the Hollow Corporation is a global fact. Another large factor in spreading it in the consumer goods area has been the spectacular rise of Wal-Mart, which as several books show (for instance, The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman ) has transformed the companies that supply the products it sells. Because Wal-Mart insists on huge quantities at low cost, companies have been forced to find the very cheapest materials and labor. In the vast majority of cases, they can't find labor cheap enough anywhere in America. They must subcontract to China.

As Wal-Mart grew to become "both the largest company in the world, and the largest company in the history of the world" (Fishman), so did the number of products supplied from China, so that as one scholar told Frontline, "China and Wal-Mart are a joint venture." And most big U.S. corporations that sell products must sell a lot of them through Wal-Mart, so they restructure to please Wal-Mart, and so they become part of that joint venture.

But just as a scandal involving Blackwater alerted many to the Hollow Military, the current scandal over the safety of products manufactured in China is alerting the public to just how much of what we buy is made (in whole or in part) in China, and how little is made by the American company whose name is on the label--including traditional and trusted names such as Fisher-Price, Mattel and General Foods.

The news came fast and furious, in a bewildering array of products, from deadly pet food and tainted toothpaste to leaded toys. Close to 20% of China's products, it turned out, did not meet its own health and safety standards. At first, Americans became extremely wary of Chinese products, especially food products. But then it became clearer that avoiding processed foods, vitamins and health products that don't have some ingredients made in China (including ascorbic acid in Vitamin C) is virtually impossible.

Then such trusted American companies as General Mills announced they would be doing more testing (while quietly admitting they hadn't been doing much before, or testing additives at all.) Whether the public was reassured, or simply in despair and denial, this storm passed. But it was a teachable moment in the extent of the Hollow Corporation.

For there are no Colgate Toothpaste factories in Anytown USA, not Anymore. (When U.S. Customs seized a supply of toxic Colgate, it was marked "Made in China" and "Made in India.) There are no Mattel or Fisher-Price toy factories with happy American elves. There is just a board of directors and a flotilla of managers coordinating subcontractors, including the well-paid ones (advertising and marketing agencies) and the very poorly paid ones (the workers who actually make the products.) That's American Know-How in 2007. Welcome to Hollow-een.

Long-term, doesn't it concern anyone that the skills and infrastructure to actually make things are disappearing from America, and that if anything happens to short-circuit the supply line from Asia, this nation may become a pitiful helpless giant?

But in the short-term, Christmas approaches, and problems with toys made in China continue. Just last week, Mattel recalled another 38,000 toys imported from China by Fisher-Price, as part of a larger recall of 665,000 toys.

China has rightly pointed out that checking for the health and safety of products is the responsibility of the importing country. But our Hollow Government doesn't have the expert personnel to do it anymore. Our Hollow Corporations would rather not spend the money on it, preferring to concentrate on marketing and advertising. They import from China because the products are made there as cheaply as possible--and they are shocked, shocked that corners are cut affecting health and safety.

And even if the U.S. government had the capability to protect the consumer, just how far they could afford to push China is a real question, since China owns so much U.S. government debt--in effect, owns so much of the Hollow United States and its future.

This leaves a real conundrum for many Americans this Christmas, especially for the millions whose hold on the middle class is tenuous: without the good wages for actually making things that these corporations used to pay, they work several lower-paying jobs to make ends meet. Paying for more expensive toys and gifts for Christmas from smaller exclusive U.S. firms is not a good option, assuming such toys and gifts can be found.

For those with sufficient discretionary income, there are continuing ethical problems of buying from companies dependent on sweatshop labor. Recently another trusted brand--The Gap-- has been tarnished by evidence of child labor sweatshop abuse exposed by journalists, forcing them to drop a subcontractor in India: they are shocked, shocked that 10 year olds were virtually enslaved by a lowest-bid contractor. The Gap reassures American consumers that the clothes they sell for Christmas will not include any tainted by this company. There are many roads from the Hollow Corporation and the Hollow Government to a hollow Christmas.

So as Americans cross their fingers and shop for Christmas, they may know that in the companies they once trusted for quality, and in the government they depend on to protect them, there is no there there. They are all hollow.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Is Wal-Mart A Potent Politicial Issue?

As the campaign heats up for Congressional seats in this November's election, the New York Times claims that "Democratic leaders have found a new rallying cry that many of them say could prove powerful in the midterm elections and into 2008: denouncing Wal-Mart for what they say are substandard wages and health care benefits."The erstwhile popular shopping choice, with more stores in more places than its top competitors combined, may now be a symbol for the economic race to the bottom that is affecting its core market of middle class and lower income Americans.

more at Shopopolis

Break Point

As Steven Wright famously said, "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?" So you get rid of the old stuff, but what makes it old? The idea of products built not to last irks us, but for a variety of reasons we routinely discard devices that work just fine. Obsolescence by any other name has helped nourish a sweet economy, but a hidden cost is coming due fast, in the poisonous waste quickly overwhelming the world's capacity to deal with it.

Giles Slade, who describes himself as an "unaffiliated scholar," produces these numbers in "Made to Break": At least 90 percent of the 315 million still-functional personal computers discarded in North America in 2004 were trashed (it was 63 million just a year before), and more than 100 million cell phones -- 200,000 tons worth -- were thrown away in 2005. Cell phones are especially dangerous, because their toxic components are too small to disassemble and recycle. They are also being trashed with amazing speed, with the shortest life span of any electronic product.

The overall effect is profound. "As the waste piles up in the United States, above and below ground" Slade writes, "contamination of America's fresh water supply from e-waste may soon become the greatest biohazard facing the entire continent." Even if there were places to take the stuff offshore, there won't be enough ships to carry it.

For the rest of this review in today's San Francisco Chronicle, go here.

Trapped in America

Thinking about a little summer travel? Gasoline is anywhere from $3 to $3.30 a gallon for regular, and it's not even May. By the fourth of July we could be looking at $4. So unless you're an oil executive, a road trip is pretty much out of the question.

Also by then the oil futures will have become the airlines' present, and flights will cost more. But that's an incidental, minor worry. Because your chances of getting a flight you can pay for are minimal anyway. The whole thing is chaos. You might have cell phones up your wazoo and instant text messaging on your electric toothbrush, but if you want a reservation, let alone a good price on a trip of any distance, be prepared to spend several hours talking to India. This prediction is based on known experience, an acquaintance who the other day spent literally 6 hours straight trying to book a relatively simple round trip. Nobody knew what they were talking about, and the prices changed wildly even while they were talking. Time-consuming chaos and complete madness, all in a foreign language (excuse me, but they don't speak American over there.)

But if you actually happen to get a flight, you're faced with a couple of extra hours at the airport, and vacation without a nail clipper or scissors, or anything that known terrorists---how many of them again?--are wont to use. Not even in your checked luggage, because kicking a hole in the cabin floor to get to the nail clippers in your black suitcase (easy to find among the other black suitcases) is a well-known terrorist trick.

But even if your flight leaves more or less on time and goes more or less where it was supposed to, your adventure has just begun. You made a reservation for a rental car at a particular price, so fool that you are, you expect the actual car to be gassed up and waiting when and where you were promised. Not a chance.

It's gotten so bad that it's made Dilbert. He goes to the counter for the mid-sized car he reserved but they have nothing to give him but a single glove somebody left behind. Not so funny when it happens to you, but if they accidently have a vehicle for you, there's still the dizzying doubletalk they give you as well as a price that is nowhere near what you agreed to, and funny thing, always higher.

But if you happen to want to leave the country, none of this matters because you're an American, and thanks to our clueless leaders, nobody in the whole wide world wants you. So stay home. It's your choice.

A New American Nightmare

China will market cars in America beginning in 2008. Its first model will be priced at 10 grand.

No word yet whether it will be sold by Wal-Mart.

Chronicle illo. by Lance Jackson 

The Store That Ate The World

Business journalist Charles Fishman begins with a disarming story of how Wal-Mart produced an environmental benefit when the company decided that paperboard boxes around cans of deodorant were unnecessary. So they disappeared—not only from Wal-Mart but from everywhere—thereby saving many trees. But the reason Wal-Mart did this, and the reason everyone else followed, are also the key factors in a new kind and extent of destructiveness.


Read the rest of my review of two new books on Wal-Mart in today's San Francisco Chronicle Book Review . Or the longer version at Shopopolis.

Time to get started on that Christmas shopping!
Aphrodite Goes to the Mall" by andree tracey.

An image in need of improvement, perhaps by improving
what the image is of?

Wal Mart Is Good For You---No Questions, Please
Washington Post

By Amy Joyce

One of the world's most private of public companies went public in an unusual way when it hosted a presentation of nine academic papers on Wal-Mart's impact on the economy, the retailer's latest move to repair its image.

The embattled retailer commissioned the independent economic research firm Global Insight Inc. to do a study and invite academics to present their own research at the conference. The presentations were made yesterday for an audience of about 150 in the District.

The event was a strange hybrid of academics and public relations at which attendees toted around registration information in plastic Wal-Mart shopping bags. A room full of people asking questions was reminded -- after a journalist asked about a statistic in a paper -- that reporters were not allowed to take part in the Q&A.

Outside, Wal-Mart critics greeted attendees. About a dozen demonstrators with the United Food and Commercial Workers union and its Wake Up Wal-Mart organization gathered outside the J.W. Marriott to protest the conference, some arrayed behind a large Wake Up Wal-Mart banner.

A few others handed out fliers headlined "Research Confirms: Wal-Mart Needs to Change" that touted some of the more critical findings of the academic papers. Security guards checked attendees' identification before allowing them to the registration table.

The conference's sessions featured statistics, charts and econometric models. The papers focused on different aspects of the world's largest retailer, finding positive and negative impacts. Academics and economists were rapt during the most arcane portions of the presentations; reporters, less so.

The conference comes at a time when Wal-Mart is battling critics over its image. Dueling movies about Wal-Mart are being released, and chief executive H. Lee Scott recently asked Congress to raise the minimum wage, a move that appeared to be part of an approach outlined for Wal-Mart by a consulting company to counter negative public perceptions.

Wal-Mart's conference was a year in the making, according to Bob McAdam, the company's vice president of corporate affairs. It was designed in part to counter anti-Wal-Mart sentiment, which McAdam said has resulted in studies with misguided statistics and conclusions. Labor unions and community groups argue that the company does not provide decent wages or health care to its workers and that it crushes small business.

A handful of the papers presented at the conference were at least partly critical. But the Global Insight study, paid for by Wal-Mart, painted the company in a positive light. Neither Wal-Mart nor Global Insight would disclose how much Global Insight was paid.

The other presenters, many of whom have been studying Wal-Mart for some time, received no compensation. Global Insight solicited papers, which it then selected "for relevance, methodology and academic rigor," regardless of papers' conclusions, the economic forecasting firm said.

The Global Insight analysis found that Wal-Mart saved consumers $263 billion during a 19-year period. It also found that by 2004, the company created 210,000 net new jobs. The firm's methodology was reviewed by an outside advisory board of economic experts.

Among the findings in other presentations: that the average state spends about $898 per Wal-Mart worker in Medicaid expenditures; that items typically sold in drugstores, such as aspirin and shampoo, decline in price when Wal-Mart enters a market; and that Wal-Mart stores had an adverse effect on retail employment, total employment and total payroll per person in the South, where Wal-Mart stores are numerous and where they have been open the longest.

Once Again, It Pays To Be Red

from the New York Times, excerpts (emphasis added) of this story on Wal-Mart, a big donor to Republican party and the Bush campaign. The OUTRAGEOUS CORRUPTION of this administration continues.

The Labor Department's inspector general strongly criticized department officials yesterday for "serious breakdowns" in procedures involving an agreement promising Wal-Mart Stores 15 days' notice before labor investigators would inspect its stores for child labor violations.

The report by the inspector general faulted department officials for making "significant concessions" to Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, without obtaining anything in return. The report also criticized department officials for letting Wal-Mart lawyers write substantial parts of the settlement and for leaving the department's own legal division out of the settlement process.

The report said that in granting Wal-Mart the 15-day notice, the Wage and Hour Division violated its own handbook. It added that agreeing to let Wal-Mart jointly develop news releases about the settlement with the department violated Labor Department policies.

The Labor Department reached the settlement in January after finding 85 child labor violations at Wal-Mart stores in Connecticut, New Hampshire and Arkansas, involving workers under 18 who operated dangerous machinery, including cardboard balers and chain saws.

Wal-Mart settled the investigation by agreeing to pay $135,540, but it continued to deny any wrongdoing.

In addition to allowing the 15-day notice, the agreement lets Wal-Mart avoid civil citations and fines if it brings a store into compliance within 10 days of when the department notifies it of a violation.

In exchange for these concessions, the inspector general wrote, there was "little commitment from the employer beyond what it was already doing or required to do by law."

Even though department officials asserted that the agreement was much like that with other companies, Mr. Heddell found that the agreement between Wal-Mart and the Wage and Hour Division "was significantly different from other agreements entered into by W.H.D." and "had the most far-reaching restriction on W.H.D.'s authority to conduct investigations and assess" fines.

Representative George Miller, the California Democrat who asked the inspector general to investigate the settlement, said the report showed that the Bush administration was seeking to do favors for a powerful friend and a major Republican contributor in Wal-Mart.

"The Bush Labor Department chose to do an unprecedented favor for Wal-Mart, despite the fact it is well known for violating labor laws, including child labor laws," Mr. Miller said. "The sweetheart deal put Wal-Mart employees at risk, undermined government effectiveness, and further undermined public confidence that the government is acting on its behalf."

Mr. Heddell said he did not find that the agreement resulted from improper pressures. "Nothing came to our attention indicating evidence of influence or pressure from internal or external sources," he wrote.

Martin Heires, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said, "We think it's important to note that the inspector general's office found that the agreement is in compliance with federal law."