This turned up on the OC Register’s site today. The story is that in November Sen. Barack Obama wrote a letter to Tim Mason, the CEO of Tesco, urging them to run their grocery store business in ways that Obama approves.

The presidential candidate signed a letter last week supporting a Los Angeles watchdog group that has criticized the British retailer for not building stores in underserved communities, as it has promised.

The Alliance for Healthy & Responsible Grocery Stores, a coalition of over 25 communities, delivered the Obama letter to Prince Andrew last week. The Duke of York toured a Compton Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market when it opened last Thursday.

In the letter, Obama urged Fresh & Easy parent company, Tesco, to make good on its promises to build stores in neglected neighborhoods.

“I hope these promises will be fulfilled,” the letter stated.

I don’t know what Tesco did or didn’t promise, but businesses don’t exist to “serve underserved communities.” They exist to make money. Democrats and especially people like Obama who have never worked in private enterprise just don’t seem to get that.

While I’m sure that politicians routinely lean on corporations to change their behavior, few politicians are co-sponsoring a bill that would legally designate corporations as either patriotic or not patriotic based on whether their practices met with liberal approval or not, and would deal with those companies differently based on their patriot status. In this case, Obama refers Tesco to an outfit called the Los Angeles Alliance for Healthy & Responsible Grocery Stores. They’re not a government agency, nor do they appear to be friendly to private enterprise. A quick check of their site shows that it’s an agglomeration of unions, far-left activists and other Democrats. I bet there isn’t an economist in the lot. They also appear to have been organized solely to antagonize Tesco. Thus, they’re hardly a fair arbiter worthy of Obama’s imprimatur. This letter to Tesco looks like a sop to the unions and activists.