Wal-Mart, the Democrats' new friend..

[Virginia Dare]

Wal-Mart has taken its lumps lately, especially from the Democratic Party over its treatment of employees. So the company has been courting the new majority on Capitol Hill by doing a lot of the standard stuff: hiring Democratic executives and donating more to the campaigns of Democratic candidates. Its political action committee has given 49 percent of its funds to Democrats this year, up from 32 percent in last year's election.

But last week Wal-Mart's outreach got personal as well -- it's now doing favors for the families of powerful Democratic senators.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR2007040201749.html?nav=E8

[zanne]

1. Whichever way the wind blows...

That's PR. Always has been, always will be.

[Auggie]

2. Money following power

[liberal N proud]

3. So it's courting now?

Smells like a lobbyist, looks like a lobbyist...

Don't bite Dem's, don't take the bait.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. The problem does not lie in their lack of support for Dem candidates.

It is their policies that undercut American workers, businesses and communities.

Even if the walmart employed the same number of people as the dozen small businesses that it supplanted when it came to town, when the store loses its profitability and shuts down the community doesn't lose one store - it has lost all those that were driven out of business by the walmart, gutting the community.

There was a store in my family - started in the 1890s it transformed itself over the years, as it went from one owner to the next, from a menswear store, to mens & womens wear, to a general clothing store with a shoe department, to a shoe store. It lasted for better than a hundred years, in its different incarnations, but closed for good two years after walmart came in and the downtown shopping collapsed.

To ever get me back walmart would have to: unionize; support US industry, rather than chinese, in accordance with Walton's original business plan; divest itself of all stores in communities of less than 50,000; in those divested areas, contribute to the reestablishment of sound local businesses as reparations for those they drove out of business.

Buying our politicians is not in any way a plus to their side.

[Virginia Dare]

8. Very sad story about your family business...

it's been repeated thousands of times throughout this country. Shopping malls and Wal-Mart were part and parcel the ruin of small downtowns. Remember when everybody could WALK to do their shopping? Both of my grandmothers did. We'll be forced to go back to that again very soon.

[ClintonTyree]

5. If Wal*Mart took all of the money they spend trying to buy....

a good public image, and spent it on their employees in the form of raises and healthcare, THEY WOULDN'T HAVE A POOR PUBLIC IMAGE! :banghead:

Who runs that friggin' company, Orcs and Goblins? :wtf:

[Virginia Dare]

6. Greedy assholes and their sycophants..n/t

[Virginia Dare]

7. delete

[gatorboy]

9. Huh. I guess Wal-Mart's "War on Dems" didn't last long.

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=162464&Disp=35&Trace=on

[mdmc]

10. bad for bidness

$