Last week in this space I wrote about a piggishly greedy corporation, Wal-Mart, and its ongoing effort to steal money from a disabled Gold Star mother who had once had the misfortune of being employed by them.

A hundred other column writers wrote columns about it too, and Keith Olbermann

Anyway, in the face of mounting pressure and threatened boycotts, the faceless bean counters who had made the decision to go after poor Deborah Shank backed off. The tipping point came when some rather large institutional investors called whoever thinks they're in charge down at Wal-Mart's corporate offices in Arkansas and told them that, if they didn't make this thing right, there would be a sell-off of Wal-Mart stock like they'd never seen.

So Wal-Mart was dragged kicking and screaming into doing what any decent person would do. And now they want a medal for it.

Screw them. As the business media clamors to portray the case as a shining example of corporate compassion, 1.3 million Wal-Mart "associates" are still laboring under the heartless policies of a company with no conscience and fewer morals.

The real laugh came when Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott called for a national health care system and chastised the business community for its lack of leadership in the matter. "I think business has been absent in this debate on healthcare. I'm not sure why," he said in an interview with the Financial Times.

Wal-Mart dropped its effort to steal Ms. Shank's money only when it became apparent that that pocketing her $417,000 would cost them millions in ongoing negative publicity, stock divestitures and boycotts. It was a simple business decision, and them worrying about their karma didn't enter into it.

But once in a while good does triumph over evil, and when it does it is a cause for celebration.

So celebrate.

As the tourist season once again approaches, the city itself looks even worse than it did last year. On Rainbow Boulevard, the "Gateway to the Falls" on which I happen to live, abandoned houses and vacant lots to the west give way, well, actually they don't give way to anything except the occasional hotel plunked down on one of the vacant lots and fixed-up unabandoned houses they're calling bed and breakfasts.

This is the district where Councilman Chris Robins is seeking to encourage foot traffic, at great expense to you, the city taxpayer. He should come down here around three in the morning, because he'd see all sorts of foot traffic, and not the kind he's seeking to encourage, either.

The Senecas, of course, are light years ahead on their various demolition and construction projects, most likely because they don't have Niagara Falls City Planner Tom DeSantis involved. Tom has been with the planning department here since things were actually pretty nice, so the fruits of his labors can be seen all around, especially in the downtown "tourist district."

To be perfectly frank, a blind monkey could have occupied DeSantis' office over the past 30 years and things could hardly have looked worse. He's the sort of fellow who's always at work on a "master plan" of some sort, which then gets put away in a drawer someplace, only to be resurrected and dusted off a decade later and called new.

He has ordered the widening and narrowing of Rainbow Boulevard so many times now he gets confused himself and occasionally has to take a drive down there.

He is a "professional" only in the sense that he has had his behind glued to the same chair for a long, long time, and it's stunning to me that Mayor Paul Dyster, like former mayors Vince Anello, Irene Elia and Jimmy Galie before him, think that DeSantis represents the best, the brightest or even the nominally passable.

If nothing else, the Senecas are rescuing the downtown aesthetically, keeping as much of it as possible from the eyesore status DeSantis and the other hacks at City Hall have conferred on downtown Niagara Falls. Where the city planning department has locked itself in an office for years at a time formulating the latest master plan, the Senecas have sent in the wrecking balls.

The results have been swift and decisive. The current hotel/casino is an architectural gem, the slums and outdated hotels have been reduced to rubble and, starting next month, construction will begin on their second structure, twice as big as the first one.

They've managed to do this in less than a decade, eliminating such white-man-made monstrosities as Lackey Plaza in the bargain.

As far as I'm concerned, our awesome new blind governor, David Paterson, should take some time out from admitting to his extramarital affairs and cocaine use and turn the whole damn downtown over to the Senecas.

I, for one, would feel a lot more comfortable with the Seneca Tribal Council running my neighborhood than with the motley collection of losers and misfits I've seen come and go at City Hall over the past 10 years.