Daily Kos: Walmart quits ALEC

Daily Kos: Walmart quits ALEC:

'via Blog this'

Ouch. For the American Legislative Council (ALEC), that is.

(Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's No. 1 retailer and the biggest seller of firearms in the United States, is dropping out of a U.S. conservative advocacy group that has been a lightning rod over voting and gun laws.

Wal-Mart said late Wednesday it is suspending membership in the American Legislative Council (ALEC), which the retailer joined in 1993. [...]

"Previously, we expressed our concerns about ALEC's decision to weigh in on issues that stray from its core mission 'to advance the Jeffersonian principles of free markets,'" Maggie Sans, Wal-Mart vice president of public affairs and government relations, said in a May 30 letter addressed to ALEC's national chairman and executive director.

"We feel that the divide between these activities and our purpose as a business has become too wide. To that end, we are suspending our membership in ALEC."

That's a big fucking deal. A statement like that, so specific and so public in condemning ALEC's far-right efforts, coming from Walmart, will do serious damage to the organization. With a defection this big, it wouldn't be terribly surprising to see ALEC have to restructure and become something else. It's not realistic to think that these people, and the Koch funding that fuels them, will go away entirely, but ALEC as an entity might have reached the end of its tether.

You can certainly tell when Walmart puts big money into education they probably want their fellow Americans to have high paying, well insured jobs

Daily Kos :: News Community Action:

The jobs are so highly sought that some senior citizens are giving up their jobs to take the highly paid greeter job

"The faces that dominate the education reform debate today—where "education reform" means increased reliance on standardized tests, the results of which are then used to determine the fates of teachers whose job security has been weakened—are people like former Washington, D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and Harlem Children's Zone CEO Geoffrey Canada. They are, or can be packaged as, dynamic and visionary, educators who are passionate about kids. But lots of teachers could fit that bill, so why is someone like Michelle Rhee, who has spent very little time in the classroom, so prominent while the average teacher faces cutbacks and scapegoating? The answer, as in so many things, involves money. Not just any money. Billionaire money. Hedge fund money. Goldman Sachs money. Bill Gates money and Walton money. Michelle Rhee and Geoffrey Canada are prominent because they embody a set of ideas attractive to major philanthropists working to remake public education into their own vision of how the world works.

"

'via Blog this'

Big Alec contributor Walmart agrees to pay money "accidentally withheld" from their workers paychecks

How many government organizations does it take to investigate one company? In Walmart's case, at least three.
On Tuesday, the Department of Labor announced that Walmart had agreed to pay $4.83 million in back wages and damages to employees it had illegally denied overtime, following an agency investigation.

More than 4,000 workers, all vision center managers or asset protection coordinators, will receive money from the settlement.

"Thousands of employees will see money put back into their pockets that should have been there all along," said Nancy J. Leppink, deputy administrator of the Labor Department's wage and hour division, in a statement.
Walmart is also being investigated by the Department of Justice and the U.S. Congress over allegations that it systematically bribed Mexican officials in order to obtain permits for new stores.

While all U.S. workers are legally entitled to overtime when they work more than 40 hours a week, certain salaried managerial employees in "executive, administrative or professional" roles, are exempt from this provision under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

 Prior to 2007, Walmart considered its vision center managers and asset protection coordinators exempt, a policy the Department of Labor now calls a "misclassification."

Candidate Walmart's first campaign commercial

How the 1% Exploits America: Rob Walton, Walmart

LP - Particularly like passing off the cost for their employees onto the public. Nice touch.

According to the Postcrescent the Walton was busy buying elections that would change the face of education. It must be because they care about the children.

Walmart family heirs and others are changing the face of education in Wisconsin

12:00 AM, Sep. 18, 2011 |

Public schools in Wisconsin will have to make do with $800 million less from the state in the next two years, under the budget passed by Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature.
But state spending on programs that provide public dollars to private schools will see a net increase of nearly $17 million. For that, these private schools can thank Alice Walton and her family.
Walton, the multibillionaire heiress to father Sam Walton's Walmart empire, was the largest individual contributor to successful state legislative candidates in the 2009-10 election cycle that brought Republicans to power in Wisconsin, according to data from MapLight, a nonpartisan organization that tracks the relationship between money and politics.
Walton gave a total of $16,100 to these candidates, the data show. In fact, six of the top 15 individual contributors to last fall's successful state legislative candidates were Walton family members.
Other members of the Walton clan who contributed to Wisconsin elections include Alice's brother and sister-in-law Jim and Lynne Walton; sister-in-law Christy Walton; and niece Carrie Penner and her husband, Greg Penner.
Collectively, these six individuals have given at least $103,450 to Wisconsin candidates since mid-2008, state records show.

Full Story Here:  http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20110918/APC0101/109180515/Walmart-family-heirs-others-changing-face-education-Wisconsin