US Rep. Pelosi says Wal-Mart arrests "terrorizing"

Forbes ^ | 10-24-03 | Reuters

[libertyisnotfree]

US Rep. Pelosi says Wal-Mart arrests "terrorizing"

Reuters, 10.24.03, 6:15 PM ET

MEXICO CITY, Oct 24 (Reuters) - U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said on Friday police raids on dozens of U.S. Wal-Mart stores in the search for illegal immigrants this week amounted to "terrorizing" workers.

"It instills a great deal of fear in people who are only trying to earn a living and put food on the table for their family," Pelosi, a California Democrat, told reporters on a Congressional visit to Mexico.

Hundreds of workers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (nyse: WMT - news - people) locations across the United States were arrested on immigration charges on Thursday in an investigation into contractor cleaning crews.

"We think there might be a better way to go about this because the fact is that it is against the law for the employer to hire these people so there should be more focus on the employer and less in these terrorizing raids," Pelosi said.

She was speaking after meeting Mexican President Vicente Fox for talks on immigration and border security.

Pelosi said the Wal-Mart raids showed the need to legalize undocumented workers in parts of the economy other than just the agricultural sector.

Several bills to grant legal status to illegal immigrants working in U.S. agriculture are before Congress, including the Berman-Cannon bill which would let an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants earn legal residency.

Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service

[libertyisnotfree]

Wesley Clark has been reputed to be tight with wal-mart

[libertyisnotfree]

they shoud be in federal custody until trial,then deported

[ktw]

When Pelosi says something is bad for the country. Just reverse it. It really is GOOD for the country. That is how you deal with them.
In contrast, they are really telling the truth. Just take whatever they say, turn it 180 degrees. Then the truth is there. Really, very simple.

[autoresponder]

HDRC was on Wallmart's Board of Directors.

Also on Board of Directors for a Little Rock "parking meter" manufacturer that just happened to also make parts for machineguns amd other firearms.

Hillary also represented a Pennsylvania manufacturer that made titanium guided missle nosecones and illegall sold them to Saddam Husein in Iraq despite the DOD ban on such purely military useage parts.

This was all out there but the print media a TV networks ignored it all.

After all, she was a lib attorney and wife a the Arkancide Guv!

Steve Malzberg and some area callers used to kick this around overnights before the '96 elections and before the WH had Diz pull Steve off the overnight juggernaught.

Some here on FR know more detais then I do; been a while.

Corrections and/or additions welcome.

Your guided missle's fuel mileage may vary.

John of Staten Island, Jimmy from Brooklyn, Carl from Oyster Bay please lend us your files.........

Jungle Jim from CT

[libertyisnotfree]

she probably is surprised

If wal-mart falls, then so wil the rats

[libertyisnotfree]

HDRC and her business partner anne lewis sold missile parts to abu nidal as well

[libertyisnotfree]

anne lewis got busted in 93, but hitlery escaped trial

[libertyisnotfree]

Ain't that the truth!

[kcvl]

Hillary Clinton is a former lawyer for Wal-Mart


Hillary’s Past Belies Her Support of Labor
Wal-Mart’s First Lady
by Ward Harkavy
May 24 - 30, 2000

wice 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. If they had learned the details of her friendship with Wal-Mart, they might have lost their lunches.

She didn't mention Wal-Mart. Instead, she praised the Teamsters and other unionized workers as a "key movement in creating the middle class," and she pledged to "prevent anyone from turning the clock back," reminding them that "the Republicans are trying to do away with collective bargaining."

As she was leaving the dais, she ignored a reporter's question about Wal-Mart, and she ignored it again when she strode by reporters in the hotel lobby.

But there are questions. 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.

But nobody got greener than Sam Walton and his family. For several years in the '80s, he was judged the richest man in America by Forbes magazine; his fortune zoomed into the billions until he split it up among relatives. It's no surprise that Hillary is a strong supporter of free trade with China. Wal-Mart, despite its "Buy American" advertising campaign, is the single largest U.S. importer, and half of its imports come from China.

Was Hillary the voice of conscience on the board for American and foreign workers? Contemporary accounts make no mention of that. They do describe her as a "corporate litigator" in those days, and they mention, speaking of environmental matters, that she also served on the board of Lafarge, a company that, according to a press account, once burned hazardous fuels to run its cement plants.

Wal-Mart, though, was the crown jewel of Arkansas, the state's First Company fit for a first lady. During her tenure on the board, she presumably helped preside over the most remarkable growth of any company until Bill Gates came along. The number of Wal-Mart employees grew during the '80s from 21,600 to 279,000, while sales soared from $1.2 billion to $25.8 billion.

And the Clintons depended on Wal-Mart's largesse not only for Hillary's regular payments as a board member but for travel expenses on Wal-Mart planes and for heavy campaign contributions to Bill's campaigns there and nationally. According to reports in the early '90s, before Bill and Hillary moved to D.C., neither was raking in the big bucks, but prominent in their income were her holdings of between $50,000 and $100,000 worth of Wal-Mart stock.

A press report on the Clintons' finances during the early stages of Bill's 1992 run for the presidency showed that most of their income came from her $109,719 annual salary from the Rose Law Firm and tens of thousands of dollars in fees she received from serving on corporate boards. (She was on two others besides Wal-Mart's.) Her honoraria and director fees grew almost as fast as Wal-Mart's profits during the '80s—rising from $111 in 1980 to $6500 in 1986 to $64,700 in 1991, according to the same source.

During the same period, small towns all over America began complaining that Wal-Mart was squeezing out ma-and-pa stores and leaving little burgs throughout the Midwest and South with downtowns that featured little more than empty storefronts.

But selected small companies were doing quite well, thanks to the Clintons' friendship with Wal-Mart. The Boston Globe reported in January 1992 that Bill Clinton had introduced a brush company's executives to Wal-Mart executives, hoping that the two could do bidness. Executives of the brush company had been rebuffed in previous attempts to sell their products to Wal-Mart. Lucky for the company, it happened to be located in New Hampshire, where Clinton was trying to win a presidential primary. At the time, Hillary Clinton was still on Wal-Mart's board, and the retail giant was still resisting the unionization of any of its workers.

Last week, Hillary was wearing a different hat. She stood in solidarity with the elderly Teamsters as Local 237 president Carl Haynes greeted her warmly, endorsed her, and then left early on what other union officials described as "AFL-CIO business."

But the AFL-CIO was thinking of other business only a few months earlier when the union's leaders, including its chief, John Sweeney, marched specifically against Wal-Mart's oppression of its meat-market workers. According to a Web site run by activists at the AFL-CIO affiliate United Food and Commercial Workers, Wal-Mart "has profited by pushing its workers to the bottom of the wage scale." The union points out that hourly wages "average $2 to $3 per hour less than at unionized supermarkets." More grave for workers everywhere in the United States are these figures spouted by union activists: Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the country, "yet fewer than 40 percent of its workers are covered by the company's health plan."

The union notes that Wal-Mart's "hometown" judge in Arkansas issued a nationwide temporary restraining order against the UFCW, barring anyone associated with the union from entering Wal-Mart facilities to educate workers about their legal rights in the workplace. The union, however, successfully appealed the order—noting that the judge holds more than $500,000 in Wal-Mart stock. The case remains in litigation.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart's first lady, who also benefited from Wal-Mart stock, solicits support from union workers.

Which makes her words to the elderly Teamsters last week especially poignant: "You can count on me to stand up for the right to collectively bargain!"

Right on, sister!





http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0021/harkavy.php

[At _War_With_Liberals]

Most of the illegals were from Eastern Europe yet she grandstands in Mexico. Nope. No agenda there!

[libertyisnotfree]

Wal-Mart has many subsidiaries

you reckon this cleaning contractor was one of them?

[libertyisnotfree]

She and her La Raza bddies must be worried

[AmishDude]

Of course, Nancy Pelosi always looks surprised.

[libertyisnotfree]

SHE NEEDS ARRESTED FOR TREASON

[libertyisnotfree]

sorry forthe caps

[autoresponder]

My NYC lib sister agreed about Walmart's shady practices and history during the Klintonista period.

Was surprised INS and FBI nailed T.J.Maxx and Walmart sub; told her I thought feds had Walmart execs on tape proving complicity/conspiracy but I was not up on much.

Lib sister for once did not knock GW and John Ashcroft.

She is 100% against illegal aliens and giving them any status, rights, benefits, etc.

Senate just gave illegals in-state college tuition rights but denied them to native born American students from other states.

Where is that FReeper "Get a Rope"?

Over 70% of USA citizens are POed about this crud.

Just tell most lib NYers you are raising their taxes and fees to give them to border invaders!

[autoresponder]

Thanks for the addition

Isn't Ann Lewis Barney Frank's psuedo-sister?

Or something?

[claudiustg]

"I am getting more confused every day. "

I don't understand what the Dims are talking about half the time. It's like listening to someone with schizophrenia.

[azhenfud]

"I believe that if Clinton were still President, this raid would not have taken place."

Believe it if you wish, but I would not be astonished if Bush and/or his administration doesn't rush to "rescue" the illegaliens and earn himself some "points" with the "swing" voters. I surely hope he doesn't try to sell U.S. Citizenship at a WalMart price. We'll just have to wait and see what his reaction will be, and how many will fall for the "Oh those POOR people" spill in order to grant them "amnisty"....

[ridesthemiles]

It's like listening to someone with schizophrenia.

That's the best description of the rantings of all Demorats that I have ever heard. Congrats!!