We want to set a tone going into our fiscal year that starts Feb. 1, that Wal-Mart Stores is going to be aggressive in taking care of customers, taking care of our associates, communications and merchandising.
I just think that it's maybe fashionable today to try to take individual actions and individual failures and take the broadest possible brush and try to paint a company.
Where we have been incorrect in what we have done, then I think we have an obligation to settle.
Where we're not wrong or where the cost of settling is so much that it is totally disproportionate to the harm or the error that we made, we're not going to settle.
I think in some ways we have allowed other people to set the agenda. Other people to define who we are.
You know, we opened a record number of stores last year.
Retailing, it's always true that there is some items that I wish we had a lot more of like the iPod and there is some items I wish we had a lot less of.
More and more, more and more digital, in particular, I think you'll see in our stores next year, as we start combining these digital products and they interface with each other, you'll see that represented in Wal-Mart.
Our customer base is not necessarily a leader, an early adopter.
And what I am trying to say to them that through our ads and through our discussions is if you don't want us in your community, that's your choice, but don't say it's because of wages.
So I think we have an obligation with our size to make sure that we are open to what people have to say to us because the people who criticize us, they're not all mean-spirited.
Many of them are doing it because they are concerned about smart growth.
There are going to be some people who never want Wal-Mart. That's OK.
We've got to figure out a way to cause communities to also want them, the political, organized bodies.
But they are also better, our competitors are better because Wal-Mart exists.
In some ways, people forget about average working people, and how they live their lives.
I don't think we'll win every election.
I would guess that any criticism about Wal-Mart could have some element of truth with 1,500,000 people.
One of the things that strikes me is so many of the critics are people whose lifestyle doesn't change when the price of fuel changes, or if they keep a Wal-Mart store out of their area.
The beauty of this country and what people participate in is the competitive nature that we allow to exist and the fact is that we are better because we have great competitors.
