News
4/12/09Blanche and the estate tax
[Arkansas News writer] John Brummett gives U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln some benefit of the doubt on her advocacy of estate tax cuts. It’s really about the “small” farmers, she insists, and not the Walton billionaires. Given her farm background, she undoubtedly feels some kinship, but mostly to enduring folklore of the Delta crowd.
3/23/09Arkansas Business’ 25 Wealthiest Arkansans (25th Anniversary)
For several years Arkansas Business ran a list, based on several sources, of the wealthiest Arkansans. That practice ended in 2001, a casualty of the combination of two factors: the fall of the stock market and greater difficulty in gathering data.
3/06/09Corporations Step Up Drive Against Bill to Ease Unionization
President Barack Obama’s public backing this past week of a bill that would make union organizing easier is driving companies to step up opposition.
Mr. Obama embraced the Employee Free Choice Act, a top legislative priority for unions, in a video address to the AFL-CIO winter meeting on Tuesday in Miami. It was one of his most vocal statements in support of the bill, which would let workers opt for unionization simply by signing cards, rather than through secret-ballot elections. An election gives an employer the opportunity to campaign against a union.
11/12/08Bargain bin: Wal-Mart gives to Nixon - two days after election
Political donors will often hedge their bets by giving to both candidates in a competitive race. But, in this month’s contest for Missouri governor, Wal-Mart found a way to make sure it was backing the winner: Wait until the polls close.
4/23/08Wal-Mart’s “PAC Mentality”
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the world’s largest retailer, has transformed its once-tiny political action committee into one of the nation’s biggest corporate PACs by promising salaried managers and other executives that it will make corresponding donations in their names, on a two-to-one basis, into a company-controlled charity.
4/10/08The Wal-Mart effect
The Waltons, individually and through their various family foundations, are by a large margin the largest donors to conservative education reform causes in the country. They’ve donated hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to educational causes nationwide, including the start-up funding that allowed the national private-school voucher movement to get off the ground more than a decade ago.
3/07/08Wal-Mart Lobbying Up 60 Percent in 2007
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, jacked up its lobbying budget by 60 percent in 2007, spending $4 million to influence the government on issues ranging from energy efficiency to retail crime.
1/04/08No discount on Wal-Mart’s lobbying efforts
Wal-Mart’s message to America is “Save money. Live better.” Its motto in Washington might best be summed up another way: Spend more. Lobby harder.
11/24/07Wal-Mart extends its influence to Washington
When Conservation International wanted to educate the world about Brazil’s indigenous Kayapo Indians, whose Amazon home is threatened by deforestation, it brought an unlikely advocate to Washington: S. Robson Walton, chairman of Wal-Mart Stores.
7/02/06The Ultra-Rich Give Differently From You and Me
Giving by the richest Americans has fallen in recent years, with the biggest declines at the very top, based on deductions Americans take on their tax returns. Among Americans who at death left a taxable fortune of $20 million or more, the average charitable bequest fell by $2 million, or 9 percent, from 1995 to 2004.
