Free Republic

The Washington Free Beacon reported: A solar energy company owned by a Biden megadonor received a $500 million government loan to build a manufacturing facility in India, the Biden administration announced this week, raising questions about whether the company’s political clout played any role in the financing decision. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation granted the loan to First Solar, which is owned by billionaire Walmart heir Lukas Walton, to build a solar module plant in India. Walton contributed over $300,000 to President Joe Biden’s campaign last year, and over $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee, according to campaign finance...

Can we stop pretending that Barack Obama’s candidacy is some grass-roots uprising? Obama’s campaign has outspent Romney’s campaign. The Democratic National Committee has outspent the Republican National Committee. While Romney’s SuperPAC (Restore our Future), has outspent Obama’s SuperPAC (Priorities USA), that $40 million Romney SuperPAC edge doesn’t come close to making up for the Obama campaign’s $180 million edge. There is legally undisclosed spending going on here, and there’s reason to believe Romney benefits from more of it than Obama, but that’s not conclusive, and we don’t know how big Romney’s edge is in that category. Obama argues that his...

What does selling panties have to do with corporate income tax rates? Sam understood that if it cost a customer less to do business with you than a competitor, you would attract a lot of customers. The United States can apply the Wal-Mart strategy and achieve the same results. According to The Tax Foundation, the "average combined federal and state corporate tax rate in the U.S. is 39.3 percent, second among OECD countries to Japan's combined rate of 39.5 percent." It costs a company in America more in taxes than almost anywhere else. That doesn't make the U.S. very attractive...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said Tuesday it will pay as much as $640 million to settle 63 lawsuits over wage-and-hour violations, ending years of dispute. (read more at link...excerpted AP article)

Recently I saw two movies that attacked the controversial Wal-mart department store. A PBS documentary called Is Wal-Mart good for America? And Wal-Mart the high cost of low price an independent movie about Wal-mart and the Walton family. I also visited wakeupwalmart.com for more info this article is a refutation on most of the BS that appeared on the two documentaries. First of all we need to ask ourselves why "Wal-Mart is under ferocious attack by the left?" Wal-Mart delivers well on its promise of low prices to Americans. Being a resident of one of the poorest and liberal states...

Helen Robson Walton, widow of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, died Thursday evening at her home, the company said in a news release. She was 87. Walton was surrounded by family members when she died of natural causes, the news release said. "We are so proud of our mother and the life she led," said Rob Walton, eldest son of Sam and Helen Walton and chairman of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. "She devoted much of her life to helping others, and to improving the quality of life in Northwest Arkansas. "Today, my brother and sister, and the entire Walton and Robson families...

Nope, in our household that is not the equivalent of Payton Manning saying after the Superbowl that he’s going to Disney World. It has nothing to do with Disney World. It has everything to do with Sam Walton. Sam Walton’s creation, WalMart, initially flew below the radar of Wall Street and the national press. It did so in part because of its business model. Beginning in Bentonville, Arkansas, its stores were located in small towns, where no one in his right mind would deliberately locate a chain of stores. And by doing that, and succeeding at that, WalMart created the...

Hillary turns quiet on Wal-Mart ties By Beth Fouhy ASSOCIATED PRESS Published March 13, 2006 NEW YORK -- With retail giant Wal-Mart under fire to improve its labor and health care policies, one Democrat with deep ties to the company -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton -- has started feeling her share of the political heat.     Mrs. Clinton served on Wal-Mart's board of directors for six years when her husband was governor of Arkansas. The Rose Law Firm, where she was a partner, handled many of the Arkansas-based company's legal affairs.     She had kind words for Wal-Mart as recently as 2004,...

Eighteen months after the Chicago City Council torpedoed a South Side Wal-Mart, 24,500 Chicagoans applied for 325 jobs at a Wal-Mart opening Friday in south suburban Evergreen Park, one block outside the city limits. The new Wal-Mart at 2500 W. 95th is one block west of Western Avenue, the city boundary. Of 25,000 job applicants, all but 500 listed Chicago addresses... "we saw a little bit of everything -- people who hadn't worked for a long time, people who saw an opportunity to do something with themselves. That's the information I got from applicants."

The new Wal-Mart Stores Inc. location opening Friday in suburban Evergreen Park received a record 25,000 applications for 325 positions, the highest for any one location in the retailer’s history... The only other site that’s come close to the number of applications is a store in Oakland, California that received 11,000 applications for about the same number of positions last year. Wal-Mart's Chicago-area manager Chad Donath said generally stores receive between 3,000 and 4,000 applications for about 300 to 450 positions. He says Wal-Mart has been participating in job fairs and advertising the positions as it does in other communities...

Activists in Fairbanks, Alaska are engaging in a little Saul Alinsky type organizing. To show their true feelings about Wal-Mart, Fairbanks residents are going to shop at Wal-Mart-—but instead of picking something up, they’re leaving something behind. While other activists have taken up the idea of just pushing around an empty cart at Wal-Mart, in Alaska they’re filling those carts up with merchandise. Here’s their report: “A modification of the 'shop 'till you drop' action is to not push around empty carts, but to stuff them full of hard-to-reshelve items and then simply leave the cart in the aisle. This...

Among the more out-of-character things Wal-Mart Stores CEO H. Lee Scott has been talking up lately is the retailer's quest for more sales to more-affluent shoppers. To do it, the company's Wal-Mart (WMT) chain - which has built an empire out of going for the biggest discounts for the most price-conscious shoppers - is working to overhaul its merchandise mix, stores and image in hopes of snagging a share. "Our mistake was that we just kept our focus on how to get better value for that person who's under so much pressure," says Scott, explaining the strategy in an interview...

Warren Buffett is famous for two things. First, for amassing the second-biggest fortune in the U.S. as one of the most talented investors the world has ever known. Second, for an aversion to spending a dime of that $41 billion on anything but the strictly necessary. That includes declining to provide his kids with fortunes of their own, collecting yachts or racehorses, or giving large chunks of his wealth to worthy causes. Thus it may strike some as the supreme paradox that the man who is one of America's greatest misers in life will probably become one of its greatest...

Articles - Publication Date 9.1.2003 Bye-Bye To 'Buy American'? --------------------------------------------------------Today's U.S. consumer marketplace is a melting pot of people, products and paychecks. Manufacturers need to ask: Does 'Made in America' matter to their customers anymore? By David Drickhamer Editor's Note: This is the fourth installment of a seven-part series that details the strategic and often gut-wrenching shifts taking place in manufacturing. It appears in the September 2003 issue of IndustryWeek. IW will introduce a new installment each month throughout the remainder of 2003. Wal-Mart's story is as all-American as they come. It grew from a regional chain in the 1960s...

LET DOWN BY THE AFL/CIO AGAIN MARK A SITY 11/21/02 I was first let down by the AFL/CIO as a member of their union. It cost me a very good paying job cutting meat for Kohls Foods (retail grocery chain). The union pushed for too much in a soft labor market. The company caved in, but in order to keep its profit margin (and its livelihood) it found it necessary to eliminate its low seniority, high pay people (i.e. me). This was many years ago, and I have since moved on to a different career. The glut of meat cutters...