Ganging Up on Wal-Mart
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Wal-Mart has taken heat from labor unions like the AFL-CIO, journalists such as Barbara Ehrenreich (“Nickel and Dimed”) and politicians — especially those, it seems, bidding for the 2004 Democratic nomination. Senators Kerry and Edwards, Governor Dean, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich have each denounced the world’s largest corporation and the nation’s largest private employer ad nauseum. Too bad Wal-Mart no longer has a real chance to defend itself, not since the McCain-Feingold/Shays-Meehan campaign finance “reform” law prohibited corporations from making soft-money contributions, fund-raising, and spending on national political parties. It’s been decades since a corporation could support a specific candidate with its financial blessing.
Instead, corporations have been left with less-potent ways to contribute to election cycles: McCain-Feingold still allows for corporate-linked political action committees to donate, and Wal-Mart’s political action group, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. PAC for Responsible Government, has taken advantage of this. Its PAC ranks second highest in political contributions for the 2004 election cycle. In addition, a corporation’s employees can donate to national races and corporations can also pay lobbyists to take to Capitol Hill in their name.
But political action committees are also subject to limits on the contributions they can accept and make, and employees do not always donate with the corporation’s interests in mind. Wal-Mart itself still hasn’t been able to use money of its own during this campaign to counter Dr. Dean’s demogogic accusation that the corporation’s stores “kill small towns” or Mr. Edwards’s dissembling about how Wal-Mart is to blame for “driving down the pay scale for everybody.”
Under a barrage of Democratic finger-pointing, Wal-Mart hasn’t been given a just opportunity to speak up, either way, during this election cycle. No doubt one reason the Democrats have felt so emboldened to bash Wal-Mart is the comfort of knowing that the company is legally barred from fighting back by giving large corporate contributions to the Republicans. The Democrats complain that Wal-Mart is bullying workers. But the real bullies here are the Democrats, picking on a company that is prevented by law from fighting back.
