Hillary and Wal-Mart
Hillary's Long History with Wal-Mart
By Daniel Muniz

Democrats love to bash Wal-Mart. In fact, you really cannot be a leftist unless you are unceasingly accusing the gigantic retailer about everything from stealing babies to destroying the planet. But the Democrat’s most amazing critic is New York Senator Hillary Clinton. She has the audacity to constantly demonize Wal-Mart, like about not spending enough on health care for its employees, even though she was once a member of its board of directors; for six years!

But wait, it even gets better.

Although the hugely influential Wal-Mart political action committee (PAC) lopsidedly gives 78 percent of its donations to Republicans, the remaining 22 percent also finds its way into the wallets and purses of the nation’s noisiest Democrats such as senators Hillary Clinton, Evan Bayh, and even Senate Minority Leader, Harry Reid. Prominent house Democrats also get a share of Wal-Mart PAC money too, such as House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland.

The hypocrisy is so astonishing!

That is, these particular Democrats can incessantly bash Wal-Mart, yet they still take its PAC money. And nobody in the press even cares.

The media rarely stops hounding the Bush family and Dick Cheney about their relationships to oil companies. Popular culture and the news constantly remind us about Haliburton, Enron, and just about anything else related to oil and gas prices. But hardly anyone from the press ever bothers to mention Hillary’s Wal-Mart connection in their news report even though protesting the discount chain has received widespread national attention. In fact, the media almost acts as if it has never heard of Hillary’s past history with Wal-Mart?

From 1986 to 1992, while Hillary was first lady of Arkansas, she sat on the board of directors of Wal-Mart. And she did not become a board member to fill a vacancy. She was highly sought after especially since the Clinton’s actually had maintained a very long and warm history with founder Sam Walton and his wife Helen.

In addition, Hillary’s law firm even represented Wal-Mart.
 

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And Hillary herself was quite a corporate litigator back in those days. The media loves to trump up her credentials as partner to a prestigious law firm but they hardly ever mention what type of work she actually did, such as defending big corporations.

Although the Clinton’s themselves were not originally well off, they truly benefited from their relationship with the Walton family. Not only from Hillary’s paychecks as a board member but also for campaign contributions to her husband’s state and national political campaigns. She even took full advantage of utilizing Wal-Mart corporate jets for travel expenses.

Overall, Wal-Mart did very well when Bill Clinton was governor. And at the time, Bill Clinton was trying to polish his image as a centrist and as a pro-business politician, such as being a member of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), supporting free trade, etc.

But today, it is a different story for Hillary.

Wal-Mart has become the lightning rod for left wing partisans and union activists. Democrats pound away at the giant retailer since its enormous success has created a huge bull’s eye, even though many of the accusations are on the absurd. But the publicity that such criticism generates is definitely worth the protests and national attention.

But to no surprise, Hillary regularly dodges any questions about her history with the discount chain. And so does her husband, even though the Walton family played a huge role in both of their political careers.

So far, the Left has given Hillary a free pass on Wal-Mart.

Although certain segments of lefties have questioned some of her centrist viewpoints, such as Iraq, she has still gotten a free ride about her previous connections with the Wal-Mart Empire. Although her own criticisms of the giant retailer rings hollow, they still do a good job of revving up her liberal base as long as she is able to skirt around the messy details of her corporate history.

Even liberal outlets that already acknowledge the truth, such as Mother Jones and WakeUpWalmart.com, have only shown a muted displeasure about her past and about her hypocrisy. They have lightly covered the subject and they have also politely displayed their dismay but they are not yet willing to go to the lengths of the likes of anti-war activist, Cindy Sheehan, when she protested Hillary’s pro-war stance on Iraq.

The rank and file themselves of the left wing do not even seem to be all that knowledgeable about her past and current association with the Walton family, especially during union demonstrations. And more than likely, she would like to keep it that way.

But as long as the media glosses over this embarrassing duplicity, then it may not really be any sort of issue at all.

That could change if a national activist crosses the line and decides to bring her past and her hypocrisy into public debate; much like what Cindy Sheehan did with Iraq. However, the environment is much different than Iraq because Senator Clinton has to make a public stand in support of the war to appeal to a certain segment of the population. She is not obligated to do so with Wal-Mart so she can really say anything inflammatory and incendiary even though such criticism it is entirely misleading and disingenuous since she still accepts quite a bit of their PAC money.

And that is what makes the hypocrisy so much worse.

Every activist organization who bitterly opposes Wal-Mart has a long laundry list of transgressions that they insist that the giant retailer has committed. But during the time that Hillary sat as a board member, she accomplished practically nothing of what the activists have passionately argued for. In fact, she and her law firm did the exact opposite, which was to push for more free trade and for a better free enterprise environment.

The bottom line is this. If Hillary is so passionate about all the wrongdoings of Wal-Mart, why didn’t she do anything about it when she was part of its board of directors? And also, why hasn’t this question ever received any kind of national attention especially since the press goes out of its way to report everything about the oil connections of the Bush family and of Dick Cheney?

And by the way, the Wal-Mart of today offers far more generous health benefits to its employees than it did when Hillary was a board member.

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