ok, so first 250,000 people signed a petition to overturn the Legislature's early voting law, and it is also being challenged as unconstitutional. A state court put a hold on the legislature firing the PSC for doing their jobs and NOW a federal court says the legislature's Wal Mart bill is ALSO unconstitutional. When will folks wake up and realize the jokers in the legislature care a lot more about stupid, petty, personal politics than about sound policy for Maryland?

I'm glad that a judge had more sense than our General Assembly. This bill was a joke from the beginning. It's unfortunate that so much time and money was wasted on it.

Great news!

Tens of thousands of Montgomery Countians will continue to shop at Wal-Mart because one can buy so many items under one roof at bargain prices.

I hope this gets appealed. The other two retailers in Maryland that would meet requirements to be affected by this law have no trouble giving their fair due to the state but somehow Walmart who accounts for over 3% of the entire economy of the United States wants to cheapskate around their responsibilty to the state and the local communities.

For all of you Walmart sympathizers out there, you should talk to the people who work there before spouting your undying support. A friend of mine just quit Walmart as a manager after they slashed manager bonuses. Apparently the maximum bonus was lowered greatly despite high productivity (and in his case it was quite a bit above what they projected for his department). He also let me know that their new policy about regular employees is to run them out after a year or so because it's cheaper to train new ones than give raises to the old ones. Yes, good community conscious Walmart at work.

It's not Wal-Mart's responsibility to fund Maryland's Medicaid program. The government has set the rules for the program and if people qualify the government should not try to shirk its duty and impose its costs on business.

Is Wal-Mart a great place to work for? Probably not. But for many people, it is the best paying job around. Furthermore, Wal-Mart provides low cost products that save people a lot of money. For low-income people, these savings are quite important.

Wal-Mart's health insurance is available to over 80% of its employees, and over 90% (I believe) are covered on some form of health insurance. It is not being a "cheapskate" by any means.

"I hope this gets appealed. The other two retailers in Maryland that would meet requirements to be affected by this law have no trouble giving their fair due to the state but somehow Walmart who accounts for over 3% of the entire economy of the United States wants to cheapskate around their responsibilty to the state and the local communities."

Fair due to the state? Responsibility to the community? Wal-Mart's only duties and responsibilities are to its shareholders, employees, and customers. It is they who should hold the company accountable for its business policies, not the government. This basic premise is one of the bases for a free, prosperous society ruled by law and not by the abitrary whims of whichever interests control the machinery of the state. Which in this case is a cadre of leftists who have taken to manifesting their general hatred for the free market into an all out crusade against Wal-Mart.

The great expense wasted in this failed legislation could have been used towards healthcare initiatives. All that's left now is a bad taste in the mouths of corporations looking to invest in Maryland. When will Maryland voters realize that Miller and Busch do a tremendous disservice to the people of our state?

My favorite quote in the Post's article is by Mike Miller: "These guys are billionaires...It's these guys versus the little people..." Has anyone seen Mr. Miller's estate in Calvert County? I have. Has anyone seen the parties that he hosts? I have. Have you seen the rows of luxury cars parked along Camp Roosevelt Drive with the fleet of 3-seater golf carts shuttling his lawyer freinds to and from the events? "Little people"-give me a break.

Believe this my freinds. This lawyer turned politician is no friend of the "little people" he pretends to represent. He has never walked in the shoes of the "little people" and insults everyone by exploiting issues to promote himself rather than making change that matters for Marylanders.

Mike Miller is the poster child for everything that's wrong with the Democrat Party in Maryland.

I had no idea there were so many advocates for corporate irresponsibility. It says a lot about the personal values of Walmart advocates on this blog if low prices for consumer good are more important than good jobs and healthy local communities. The reason that in some towns there is only one place to work at (being Walmart) is because Walmart has run all the competitors out of town. Walmart does not provide affordable healthcare and it does in fact use the state to provide healthcare for its employees. I don't know how many articles I (and many others) have thrown on here to prove that point. Walmart owes the state money for this kind of business practice and therefore this is fair legislation.

If you support Walmart that's fine, but then you are also supporting the closing of small businesses and birth of low paying dead end jobs.

It's time we stop treating corporations as though they have greater rights than the citizens of this country.

It's time for corporations such as wal-mart to step up and take responsibility for themselves.

Let's get one thing straight, nowhere in this bill is wal-mart singled out. Nowhere. Try reading it. The only reason wal-mart is involved is because wal-mart is only large employer in the state that cares to not meet the requirements set forth by the law. That shouldn't be the taxpayer's problem, but you know what it is. We each, as taxpayers, are picking up an additional burden because a disproportionate number of wal-mart employees (compared to other employers with 10,000+ employees in the state) are, in fact, on public assistance - ranging from food stamps to medicaid. It's all well and good that wal-mart may OFFER coverage to employees, but its a different beast when those employees can not afford to have the premiums taken out of their rock-bottom pay to pay for rock-bottom health benefits. Instead, it's now the burden of us, the taxpayer, to help pay for public assistance to support hardworking people who work for a corporation that doesn't seem fit to offer high enough pay or quality benefits because, ultimately, at the end of the day the most important thing is the shareholder, and not the well-being of the employee.

It's this simple - if wal-mart (or any corporation) can sluff off responsibility for providing healthcare benefits of their employees onto the state, at taxpayer expense, then they will... because its better for their bottomline.

I must thank this judge for highlighting just one of the reasons I will NEVER spend a dollar at Walmart. I refuse to directly support unfair labor practices. One step this corporate monster could take towards responsibility and respectablity is voluntarily complying with the spirit and detail of the "Walmart Bill". We know this will never happen - they have spent too much lobbying and slithering to avoid the responsibility. American Taxpayers should not be left holding the bag for Walmart employee's healthcare costs. The list of unfair labor practices committed by Walmart continues to grow. I wonder - do this corporation's cheerleaders get a fair share of the profits as well?

no employer has a responsibility to provide any health insurance whatsoever to any employee. The fact that they do anything at all is generous on their part. It's as if someone gives you a new Ford for free and the state steps in and says, "wait, if you give away a free car, it has to be a Cadillac." The whole sense of entitlement is ridiculious and harmful.

When the MD legislature makes the employeers of illegal aliens responsible for the health care/education/and jail costs of whom they employ, then I'll listen to what they have to say about Wal-Mart. Why isn't Mike Miller as interested in the health costs illegal aliens burden the taxpayers with in our state? How about making sure all illegals are registered with the selective service Mr. Miller? If we have to institute a draft, you don't think I'll be sending my son to fight for the freedoms Miller is ready to give away to foreign nationals within our state. The democratic party in Maryland is useless, and finally the citizens are waking up. When we vote this fall to reelect our governor, why not give him a legislature that can actually move Maryland back to the "land of pleasant living" which it was before the democratic occupation.

Why doesn't Mike Miller try to organize a boycott of Wal-Mart in southern Maryland or say the Democrats don't want the votes of those who subsidize
Wal-Mart by shopping there?

Wal-Mart should be doing the same as the other 3 major employers of over 10,000 people in Maryland, and providing health care to its employees. As a corporation, it should take care of all of its workers. The question becomes why is it such a big issue for them to NOT provide health care? The other organizations and corporations manage to do it and make a profit. Is it that they want to make an obscene amount of money? What for, the shareholders, the CEO, to make larger political contributions?

Comparing Wal-Mart and their unskilled workforce to other companies requiring a skilled workforce that can command higher wages and benefits is simply disingenuous.

It's simple supply-and-demand, the most basic of economic principles -- perhaps that's why the leftists can't comprehend it all.

I love what Ehrlich has to say about the bill. It just shows the bankrupt GOP rhetoric, any time government does anything they don't like, they want to cry "activists" like its some kind of bad thing. "Its the work of an activist legislature," isn't that what a legislature is supposed to do, write laws that they believe pass constitutional and federal requirements, and if/when their work is overturned, they come back and fix the problems that the courts cites and all is well in a democracy.

And for all you Wal-Mart supporters, if the democratically elected legislature sets the laws of Maryland and the Waltons feel it is adverse, then give up on the 5 million Marylanders and our above average median income...though something tells me that will cost them a lot more than their precious 8% of their revenue!

One of the very best federal laws ever passed is ERISA, the 1974 Federal statute which served as the basis for striking down the Maryland statute. ERISA provides a valuable incentive for companies to provide health care coverage in the first place, by eliminating private sector health plans from meddling by 50 state legislatures. Many, many companies would not even bother to provide health coverage, if ERISA was not enforced. We need ERISA: it lies at the very core of our excellent health care system.

Any appeal would be futile. The extensive time and futile effort that went into the Maryland Statute reveals just how profoundly irrational the unions have become, in demonizing Wal Mart. Are there any intelligent union types out there?

"These guys are billionaires," he [Miller] said. "We're not going to let a big Arkansas corporation, protected by their contributions to the Republican Party, avoid their basic responsibility to the citizens of Maryland."

Yeah, you tell em, Mike. How dare them damn Arkansasans come in to our state and offer jobs to low-skilled workers who might not have one otherwise! No job at all is better than a low paying one with crummy benefits!!! Any liberal worth his union dues knows that. Why do you think we raised the minimum wage?

Its astounding how ignorant the legislature was on this federal statue. For those of you who hope this gets overturned, look not to judges who ignore federal law, that typically happens in the 9th circuit, not on the east coast.

The Maryland General Assembly acts like they're in a tyranny and they have no regard for common sense, federal law, or frankly the results of their dumb legislation.

BGE legislation: fire the PSC. Everyone under the sun told them that this would result in a downgrading of credit. They said that it was foolish nonsense. What happened? BGE, Pepco, and Delmarva power were downgraded. Still think you're going be paying $2.19 a yr? Ha, thanks MGA for failing Marylanders in your morally bankrupt attempts to be tyrannical.

Walmart Legislation: Everyone told them about ERISA and this was the focus of several BaltSun stories a ways back. I mean law professors who agree with them politically warned them. What'd they do? Ignore everyone and once against waste everyone's time and money.

Voting Laws: Don't even get me started here.

The fact of the matter is that our General Assembly made a promise to shoot our Governor down. They upheld their promise, but they also showed their true colors and stripes to Marylanders. When they're not there next year the legislators shouldn't be surprised.

Work for the people, not against us.