| The USA Today published a story describing the Wal-mart connection to the Governator:
SAN FRANCISCO — Wal-Mart (WMT) and its founding Walton family have emerged as big backers of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, giving about $1 million in the past year
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Wal-Mart and the Waltons now rank No. 15 on its list of the 100 biggest donors to Schwarzenegger-controlled campaign committees, says the Foundation for Taxpayer & Consumer Rights, a non-partisan government watchdog group.
And why might the Waltons and Wal-Mart want to give so much money to Ahnold's campaign committee's? Oh, yeah, because they get a nice quid pro quo...
First, Ahnold vetoed a bill which would require release of statistics about forcing labor onto public assistance:
One union-backed bill, which Schwarzenegger vetoed early in October, would have forced the state to disclose names of companies whose workers get government health services meant for poor residents.
So, Wal-Mart doesn't want the citizens of California to know about the way they treat their workers and how many of them are being subsidized by the state. There have been several stories about that issue, including a story about Wal-mart contributing to the bankruptcy of Tenn-Care, Tennessee's Medicaid program. This practice allows Wal-mart to subsidize their business by raising costs for the state. Thus, their prices are not so cheap after all.
Ahnold then vetoed another anti-Walmart bill:
A second bill, vetoed last year, would have stopped employers from locking workers inside workplaces — a policy Wal-Mart has when employees stock shelves and clean floors after closing hours.
The bills reflect issues creating a public relations nightmare for the USA's biggest private employer, with 1.3 million workers, as it expands in California, the USA's biggest market. Critics including Wake-Up Wal-Mart accuse it of endangering workers by locking them in stores, and of reducing its health care costs at taxpayer expense.
In other words, Wal-Mart is putting the lives of their employees at risk in order to save a few bucks. Now, I know that's not a huge surprise, but this practice is an egregious violation of both personal dignity and decent working conditions. Apparently, Ahnold is really opposed to the idea of...uh...shoplifting? Well, maybe, or perhaps it could be this:
The Wal-Mart and Walton political gifts appear in new public campaign finance documents. They show that the same day Schwarzenegger vetoed the health care disclosure bill — Oct. 7 — his California Recovery Team logged a $250,000 gift from Christy Walton. She is the widow of John Walton, a Wal-Mart director who died four months ago. In the next three weeks, the Schwarzenegger-backed Proposition 77 campaign got $250,000 from Wal-Mart Chairman Rob Walton and $100,000 from Wal-Mart. Those gifts and others followed $200,000 to the Recovery Team last year from John Walton about two weeks after Schwarzenegger vetoed the lock-in bill.
This is just another example of Ahnold's devotion to the special interests. |
