Hillary Clinton: The Wal-Mart Videos

[Better Believe It]

Hillary Clinton: The Wal-Mart Videos
By Bill Hogan and Alan Green

Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has studiously avoided discussing her five-and-a-half-year tenure as a director of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer.

Clinton, who served on the Wal-Mart board from November 1986 to May 1992, while she was First Lady of Arkansas, makes no mention of the experience in speeches, nor is it listed in her official biography or referenced anywhere on her campaign’s website. Indeed, as The New York Times put it last year, her stint as a director of Wal-Mart “remains a little known chapter in her closely scrutinized career.”

But a mammoth archive of Wal-Mart video footage that has gone all but unnoticed in the 2008 presidential campaign may shed new light into Clinton’s relationship with the company. In this segment from 1991, for example, made public here for the first time by the Center for Public Integrity, Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, introduces Clinton at the grand re-opening of the company’s original store in Rogers, Arkansas. “Without any question,” he says, “you’ve added more to our board than any person we’ve ever had on that board.”

“I’m so proud of this company, and everything it represents,” Clinton says in the video clip. “Anytime I travel and I tell people I’m from Arkansas . . . Wal-Mart’s on top of the list, and everybody wants me to tell them about Wal-Mart and Sam Walton and Helen Walton and all of the Wal-Mart associates. It makes me feel real good about what we’re able to do and what we can show and the sort of leadership we’re given.”

http://www.publicintegrity.org/clintonwalmart/index.htm


Click on the following link to view the video:

http://www.publicintegrity.org/clintonwalmart/samandhillary.html

[benddem]

1. WalMart was a different

store when Sam Walton was alive. I'm not a Hillary supporter but I think this is unfair.

[Levgreee]

5. How the heck was it different?Quote from board member at the time: "Labor unions are nothing but

blood-sucking parasites living off the productive labor of people who work for a living."

Wal-Mart says Tate's comments "were his own and do not reflect Wal-Mart's views."

But Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and other company officials often recounted how they relied on Tate to lead the company's successful anti-union efforts.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=4218509


It also utilized sweat shops during the time that Hillary was on the board.

[Zachstar]

6. And those comments are going to harm the clinton campaign in a time of recession.

If she thought otherwise then why is she keeping these years under wraps?

[ORDem]

2. She's a corporate panderer through and through.

:kick:

[MonkeyFunk]

3. This'll kill her

Americans hate Walmart so much. That's why they've never been able to establish a foothold in the US.

[Zachstar]

4. That comment does not help Clinton. Many small businesses have been forced out by Wal Mart

And in this time of economic recession (With businesses closing) People are not going to like what they see with this.

So why is this not on the Clinton website?

[mkultra]

8. i dont shop there

and neither should any true progressive. imho.

[MonkeyFunk]

10. I've never set foot in one

but if you believe Americans hate Walmart - especially the Walmart of Sam Walton when Clinton served, you're nuts.

[mkultra]

12. It does stain her from my POV

Alot of people are waking up to the ills of walmart. They are starting to think of them as preying on local merchants.

[IsItJustMe]

7. Let the vetting begin.

[Oilwellian]

9. I used the Walmart clips in a video

Among other things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmyYCMoT8c4

[nebula]

11. Hillary wants to turn America into one big sweatshop

"I'm proud of this company and everything it represents."

--Hillary Clinton

[quantass]

13. k&r