I worked for Target over the holiday season and I did not know that Target had interest in Forensic labs, or they have a police state agenda. I believe it is appling that a corporation thinks there above the law. Invasion of privacy and seizures should be condemned not just by the government, but anybody in the private sector also. I am a member of the John Birch Society and I believe our government has oversteped the barriers of the Constitution

Now THERE'S a twisted Twilight Zone Libertarian concept - privatising the Police State, at a deep discount of course!!

I agree Josh. I do not consider big corporations like Target to be a part of the free market. Corporations like Target are recipients of eminent domain and corporate welfare. Corporations by their very nature are creations of the state that recieve limited liability protection. And here's a fact that most people do not know, government agencies actually own big chunks of stock in most of - or maybe even all of - the big corporations. Do some research on local, state, and federal government Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (also known as CAFR's). A couple of good websites to start with are www.CAFR1.com and www.CAFRman.com.

Target also partially sponsored a handful of high-powered digital cameras littered up and down Nicollet Avenue and Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. These are manned and maintained by the police, I believe.

http://www.mpls-watched.org/

Images can be cross-referenced with the digital "biometric facial recognition" quality photographs they take of us for our new driver's licenses [read: National ID card] now, no doubt.

We've all got a big brother here in Minneapolis.

Holy fingerprints, cheesecurls and bathmats Robin!

Target really DOES have everything, and why would cops in Minnesota go to NASA, why would the NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE ASSOCIATION deal with forensic science? Look we put a man on the moon, now lets check for finger prints.

Why isn't the libertarian party talk about how awesome it is that Matt Blunt privatised DMV's and then AAA said screw you and stopped doing it, now its impossible to get new drivers liscences in Missouri without waiting in line for hours. Go Statists!

Yes I can see it now, Drivers license that look like jail pictures. one front and one left with license numbers underneath.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-camera31.html

oh goody, now business are force to buy camera's for survallence whether they like it or not.

Thanks "Anonymous" for making that link relevant. I appreciate it.

Chris is that a serious complement or are you being snide? Just asking, because I thought that was an important link. Do you want to go there to chicago?

I'm am sure by now, everyone is aware that Alito is confirmed to the Supreme court. So even when Bush leaves, we got a lingering of Bush to follow for years on end in the Supreme Court.

I really hope we can get a Libertarian president and a majority to be libertarian in congress.

Yep...I was being serious. Not that interested in Chicago though....

Ah, Target. I can't get too excited about them being owned, in part, by government. The free-market solution is in our (voters/consumers) hands: buy more shares ourselves, vote to stop government doing it, or, perhaps, stop shopping there. At least they appear to have prioritzed "violent felonies," which I think we agree is a proper government function, and if the government can save taxpayers' money by getting help, free...

My problem with Target (and the reason I will never shop there again) is they have an unforgivably stupid return policy. I bought a six-pack of socks and tried to exchange the one pair that had a hole in it. Against policy. They required me to go back home, take the pair off my feet, two from the laundry, one that had been washed, and the two that had not been worn (one with a hole), and return all of them.

When I pointed out how this was an inefficient, lose-lose-lose proposition, they stuck to the policy (later confirmed by the manager and someone at "customer service" at HQ). So, I told them I was going to buy another six-pack, substitute the pair with a hole, and return it without leaving the store. And I did.

Authoritarian attitudes are their own punishment when you take the coercive power of government out of the picture. Not trusting customer service people to take care of the customer, the sock manufacturer and the store's own best interests is a handicap for big corporations that eventually does them in.

I quit my job as an Egghead Discount Software manager when I got the memo about how to organize my desk drawers. They were out of business within two years.

But speaking as a former retail manager and victim of returns fraud, shoplifting and vandalism, arsonists should be caught. I have no objection to Target helping catch them. I imagine they are much more concerned about staying unbiased in their findings than a government lab.

Sandra, government owning shares - large shares - in corporations is something that should concern every American. This is one of the reasons that corporations get special benifits like eminent domain and corporate welfare, both of which the corporations use to run small businesses out of business. This is NOT free market, it's fascism. You said that people should just buy more stocks. With what money? After taxes and living expenses most people can't buy too much, and those who can (and are not connected with the government themselves) are nothing compared to government agencies and their government employee unions.

www.CAFR1.com

www.cafrman.com

Also, what business does the government have owning shares in any corporations in the first place?

Well Chris thank you for the compliment then. There are so many issues, it is overwhelming what has happened to this country. To bad we Libertarians cannot take over a nice country or state and seperate us from the rest of the planet.

For that matter to bad there isn't a nice planet close by that is habitable to start anew.

This kind of story makes me glad that LP membership is climbing! Check out the home page for more info.

I stopped shopping at Target when I found out that Mark Dayton (now Senator from MN) was a Democrat and was running for office.

(Target is the company formerly known as Dayton-Hudson)

I'm also boycotting Kohls (Senator Kohl from Wisconsin)

I initiated a boycott of Target when they ripped out a local community near me to install a store no-one in that area will ever use. I have since had friends complain about poor store policies and bad treatment of customers at various branches. That they are now dabbling in Big Brother tactics is no surprise.

May/Hechts is under boycott for being the firm that put the knife to downtown Richmond VA. More corporate joy...

I don't understand Andy's objection to corporations having limited liability. Libertarians believe in the freedom for adults to make whatever contracts they like: if I get together with a few other investors and offer to buy goods and services from willing vendors, with the provisio that if things go terribly wrong and we can't pay you back then you can't take more from us than what we've invested. What's wrong with that?

Creech:

Trouble is, limited liability is also a shield that protects risky behavior and decisions, and also leads to corrupt behavior. I have watched corporations collapse and thousands of people lose jobs, but due to limited liability, the bastard directors and officers that caused the problem end up walking away with hundreds of millions of dollars. Limited liability actually rewards incompetence and corruption. Time to do away with it.

Just as a aside:

I would not be opposed to limited liability for small investors, those that owned less than a certain percentage of stock and waived their right to vote their shares and also for stock owned by mutual funds. But no limited liability for any individual that was a director or an officer, regardless of the amount of stock owned.

Mark, you are throwing the baby out with the bath water. The limited liability law doesn't protect fraudulent conveyance nor preferential treatment
for a specific prior time period. In fact, bankrupts can and do recover money from vendors that were paid in the normal course of business.
While laws would be tightened in this area by a
Libertarian administration, there is no way capitalism can spread its bounty without concepts of limited liability.

At some point the LP needs to come to grips with the notion that blind worship of private enterprise of any kind without regard to other mitigating factors limits the party's ability to appeal to anyone on the left. There's plenty of trouble and wrongdoing that private enterprise is guilty of and it's not un-libertarian at all to be against corporate fraud and corruption.

We could take a good swipe at the left in this country to come take a look at us if we had a greater argument to make on this point instead of just "all government bad, all private enterprise good" stuff. Reality does not reflect that outlook. There's some government that's good ( the Constitutionally authorized kind ) and there some private enterprise thats bad ( Enron, private pension agreements walked away from. etc)

Creech:

I guess if we can find a happy medium for instituting limits on liability, I can live with them. It is basically this unlimited blanket of limited liability that I am at odds with. Let's tighten it up to the point where there is accountability for those at the top, but protection for the innocent pawns at the bottom.

For example, if corporate officers A, B and C, screwed up and killed a pension plan, but at the same time, ended up with $50 Million a piece, it would be good to allow the pensioners the ability to sue Messrs. A, B and C for every cent they have. Now if the pension plan went bankrupt and A, B and C were not at fault, they would remain free from liability.

Mark, that's how its supposed to work. The Trustees of a Pension Plan (generally corp. officers) have a fiduciary responsibility to make sound investments. {and must carry liability insurance bonds for a some portion of the trust funds total assets.) The problem is the laws of
this country allow pension plan trust funds to be
grossly underfunded. Then, if the corporation
sponsoring the fund goes under or cannot pay the
underfunding, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp.
assumes the debt. PBGC charges premiums to meet these obligations, but the premiums aren't high enough (another political decision). So, in the end, we taxpayers may have to come up with the bucks to ensure GM's rank and file get what's been promised to them. Another problem is that
a corporation that has a great year and "wants
to do the right thing" is limited by the IRS in how much it can contribute to overfund the pension plan.

I have often said that the private sector can do wonders. Target is an example of that. Can you imagine, what would happen if most government duties were preformed by private entities? If a private company was hired to test new medicines, there would be no need for the Food and Drug Administration. If all public schools were privatized, there would be no need for the Department of Education, and so forth and so on.

Target is not only a store that sells products at discount prices, but is also active in the community combatting crime and criminality. They should be commended and rewarded. They do work in feilds that if runnned by governement would take days or weeks to do. If there was an award for such philantropy, I would be the first to present it them.

This is Target's way of greasing the palms that feed it. Instead of making a big donation to the coffers of a reselection campaign, they simply "accept" a high profile case or otherwise make the desired candidate look good. Its just a roundabout way of repaying political favors.

I do not like this idea. Target is simply doing the police state's work for them and in doing so, they are able to operate with fewer restrictions. Its like how Bush sent people to other countries to be tortured, well, I bet the police send things to Target that they cant get away with officially within their police agencies.

I worked at Target for about a year way back. I am well aware of the fact that they are absolutely anal about preventing shoplifting and they have security in stores that rivals that of a Vegas casino. But I did not know they were in bed with law enforcement to this degree.

I don't know that you can say they are in bed with each other. Not all corporations are great evil entities. Perhaps some well meaning execs decided that they wanted to help the community solve crimes, and so established this. You have nothing in that story that says they do it as a political favor. They analyzed already legally gathered evidence (since it was a private security camera, they'd have had to get permission to use it), and helped make an arrest. They donated equipment to law enforcement agencies that otherwise couldn't afford it, and helped a federal agency with better training. Target may be a corporation, but it is still privately owned, and they can help with what they feel they should.

According to my research, a good chunk of Target stock is owned by the government. Check out the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports for local, state, and federal government (www.CAFR1.com and www.cafrman.com are good places to start). Check out the institutional fund holdings of Target stock. The government is heavily invested in institutional funds.

I've also done some investigation into Wal-Mart and off the top of my head I can tell you that 3 large shareholders of Wal-Mart are CALPERS (California state employees pension fund - CALPERS was listed in the top 20 shareholders of Wal-Mart), The Illinois State Investment Board, and Iowa State University. The government has money invested in all of the big mutual fund companies. Remember that all government money is stolen from the people through taxes, fines, and fees.

I know that Target has been the benificiary of eminent domain and corporate welfare.

How can you call a company that is partially owned by the government and has recieved land through eminent domain and has recieved corporate welfare to be private? I don't consider those things to be a part of the free market, do you?

I would say that all corporations are evil to at least some degree. Why? Because they recieve limited liability protection from the government. If their liability was unlimited then I would not say this.

I'll be honest, I don't have a lot of the facts about the likes of Target and Wal-Mart, and while the gov profits when they do, I wonder how much of that stock is voted, or able to be voted. Things like what Target is doing, the point of this article and discussion, is approved by the company, and thus by the voting stockholders (if what little I know of business matters I am remebering correctly), and I doubt the gov votes its stock, or even has voting stock. It's supposed to be just a way for the pension plan to make more money for the pensions, even if that's not always how it goes.

The government does influence corporations by proxy vote.

How are small businesses supposed to compete against big corporations that are given special advantages by big government? Big government and big corporations are partners in crime.