Once upon a time there were three American grocery stores within walking distance of where I live: QFC, Top, Albertson’s.

QFC was swallowed up by corporate giant Fred Meyer and went away.

Top evaporated into the corporate greed aether.

Corporate giant Albertson’s wanted to merge with corporate giant Safeway but was told by the FTC it would have to divest some properties. Itsy-bitsy Haggen saw this as an opportunity to expand and went out on a financial limb to purchase a number of Albertson’s stores, including the one in my neighborhood. Corporate giant Albertson’s grabbed a leveraging opportunity to put Haggen’s finances at risk and essentially destroyed much of the Haggen store network after selling stores to Haggen at a good price and getting them back cheaply because of Haggen’s financial disadvantage.

Then Albertson’s closed most of the stores thus acquired to remove competition to the Albertson’s/Safeway merger.

Now there are ZERO American grocery stores within walking distance of where I live. There are two empty buildings and a large number of American workers who have lost their jobs.

And I now have to walk a great distance and take at least two buses to get to my nearest grocery store. God knows how many buses it would take to reach the next nearest. Isn’t corporate greed in America wonderful?

Karen Hedwig Backman, Federal Way