The Maryland bill of attainder against Walmart

George Will:

In 1786 the Annapolis Convention, requested by Virginia and attended by only four other states, called for a second gathering to revise the Articles of Confederation in order to strengthen the federal government. Some revision: The second meeting became the Constitutional Convention. It scrapped the Articles, partly because the Founders were alarmed by states legislating relief of debtors at the expense of creditors, often in ways not easily distinguished from theft.

Something not easily distinguished from theft recently occurred in Annapolis. In legislation ostensibly concerned with any company that has 10,000 employees but pertaining only to one, Maryland has said Wal-Mart must spend 8 percent of its payroll on health care or must give the difference to the state.

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Organized labor, having mightily tried and miserably failed to unionize even one of Wal-Mart's 3,250 American stores, has turned to organizing state legislators. Maryland was a natural place to begin because it has lopsided Democratic majorities in both houses of its legislature.

Labor's allies include the "progressives" who have made Wal-Mart the left's devil du jour. Wal-Mart's supposed sin is this: One way it holds down prices (when it enters a market, retail prices decline 5 to 8 percent; nationally, it saves consumers $16 billion a year) is by not being a welfare state. That is, by not offering higher wages and benefits than the labor market requires. Labor's other allies are Wal-Mart's unionized competitors, such as, in Maryland, Giant Food, a grocery chain. These allies are engaging in what economists call rent-seeking -- using government to impose disadvantages on competitors with whom they are competing and losing.

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Maryland's new law is, The Post says, "a legislative mugging masquerading as an act of benevolent social engineering." And the mugging of profitable businesses may be just beginning. The threshold of 10,000 employees can be lowered by knocking off a zero. Then two. The 8 percent requirement can be raised. It might be raised in Maryland if, as is possible, Wal-Mart's current policies almost reach it.

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Meanwhile, people who are disgusted -- and properly so -- about corruption inside the Beltway should ask themselves this: Is it really worse than the kind of rent-seeking, and theft tarted up as compassion, just witnessed 20 miles east of the Beltway, in Annapolis?

What Maryland is doing is attempting to raise prices at Walmart for the benefit of its competitors and the benefit of union special interest. If you are a customer of Walmart, these Democrat politicians are sticking their hands in your pocket and trying to lower your standard of living. But that is the Democrat way, they are constantly trying to lower your standard of living for the benefit of their constituency.