I read this article today and that got me thinking,
Hillary Won’t Run
That’s my prediction, and I’m sticking to it.
by Douglas MacKinnon in The Weekly Standard
Everyone in politics just assumes Hillary is running. Maybe she won’t? After all, her poll numbers are pretty weak.
The left wing of the Democrat Party is pissed because she supports the Iraq War. To make matters worse for her, the activist base, the professional campaigners on the left, have latched onto WalMart and they have every intention of making them a big campaign issue. On Pundit Review Radio we interviewed WalMartWatch Executive Director and former college classmate Andrew Grossman. Feeling good after their victory in Maryland, this group is well funded and they aren’t going away anytime soon.
Hillary’s hypocrisy on the issue won’t stay buried forever. She is learning this the hard way.
Last week, she returned a $5000 donation from WalMart,
Clinton campaign spokeswoman Ann Lewis said the money was returned “because of serious differences with current company practices.”
Now wait just one minute. Hillary Clinton served on the WalMart board of directors from 1986-1992, during the company’s greatest period of sales and geographic growth.
Employes grew from 170,000 to 371,000
Sales grew from $11.09 billion to $43.86 billion
Net Income grew from $450 million to $1.60 billion
Retail Space grew from 53 million sq. ft. to well over 110 million sq ft.
During this period, WalMart was hardly shy about their intentions,
1989 Annual Report
(the company) set new sales and earnings records in fiscal 1989, while accelerating our new store program and strengthening the company for the long term benefit of our shareholders-customers-associate partnership.1990 Annual Report
275,000 Associates completed the most explosive decade of growth in WalMart’s history1991 Annual Report
A New Decade. A new era for WalMart, an era in which we plan to grow a truly nationwide retailer
Some on the left, like the Village Voice’s Ward Harkavy, have been pointing out Hillary’s hypocrisy on labor issues since she first ran for Senate,
Twice in three days last week, Hillary Rodham Clinton basked in the adulation of cheering union members. Her record of supporting collective bargaining, however, is considerably worse than wobbly.
Pity the thousands of unionists at last Tuesday’s state Democratic convention who chanted her name, and the hundreds of retired Teamsters at Thursday’s luncheon in midtown who had interrupted their Founder’s Day meal to hear the corporate litigator turned union-loving Democrat deliver a campaign speech.They would have dropped their forks if they had heard that Hillary served for six years on the board of the dreaded Wal-Mart, a union-busting behemoth.
The difference today is that WalMart is a huge issue for the Democrat base. They are energized against the company, well financed and emboldend by the recent anti-WalMart legislation they got passed in Maryland. Hillary won’t be able to duck the issue this time around, especially in a national campaign.
And she CERTAINLY won’t be able to get away with nonsense like this,
NY Daily News
Hillary has a wobble over Wal-Mart days
WASHINGTON – Sen. Hillary Clinton easily pointed at Wal-Mart yesterday as not doing enough about health care but found it a little tougher when asked if she had ever suggested the retailer do more when she was on its board of directors.
Well, you know, I, that was a long time ago, I have to remember,” she stammered, before pointing to her work on health care while First Lady.
Where to start with this one? Is Hillary admitting that she was an absentee director, the kind of person that was on the board, accepting stock grants and rubber stamping everything management wanted? Is that what she is telling us? That she was part of the problem that led to the tsumani of Wall Street scandals at companies like Tyco and Enron? The conventional wisdom today is that it was lazy, empty suites on corporate boards that allowed these scandals to happen. Hillary is now admitting that she was part of the problem.
Or is she admitting that she was lying when she waxed so eloquently about the vitures of WalMart and its founder Sam Walton in a 1987 documentary?
What she is doing is unintentionally revealing something else about her character. That she is a user, of anyone and everything she can to further her own ambitions. When she was toiling away at the infamous Rose Law Firm, a seat on WalMart’s board was a very prestigious position, especially for someone from Arkansas.
Seems pretty obvious that Hillary’s position on the board was a quid pro quo situation. WalMart wanted Hillary for her connections to the governor, and she wanted them for the legitimacy and opportunity they afforded her. Here’s more from WalMart’s First Lady,
In 1986, when Hillary was first lady of Arkansas, she was put on the board of Wal-Mart. Officials at the time said she wasn’t filling a vacancy. In May 1992, as Hubby’s presidential campaign heated up, she resigned from the board of Wal-Mart. Company officials said at the time that they weren’t going to fill her vacancy.
So what the hell was she doing on the Wal-Mart board? According to press accounts at the time, she was a show horse at the company’s annual meetings when founder Sam Walton bused in cheering throngs to celebrate his non-union empire, which is headquartered in Arkansas, one of the country’s poorest states. According to published reports, she was placed in charge of the company’s “green” program to protect the environment.
Like most people in the Clinton’s lives, the second they cannot get anything for themselves out of the relationship, they kick you to the curb, at least. Hillary wants us to believe that she has “serious differences with current company practices” yet those practices remain the same as they were when she was on the board of directors. WalMart was good for young Hillary, gave her credibility and opportunity, not to mention generous heapings of cash and stock.
To say that Hillary is in a no win situiation with regard to WalMart is an understatement. Pathetic, half baked answers like she can’t recall differences she aired as a company director, and returning campaign cash from a comapny on whose board she so proudly served, are not going to cut it, with her own base, or anyone else for that matter.
Could it be WalMart that saves us from President Hillary?