Sen. Clinton’s Wal-Mart Years

3:33 pm EST April 9th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

The Center for Public Integrity just released this

Clinton, who served on the Wal-Mart board from November 1986 to May 1992, while she was First Lady of Arkansas, makes no mention of the experience in speeches, nor is it listed in her official biography or referenced anywhere on her campaign’s website. Indeed, as The New York Times put it last year, her stint as a director of Wal-Mart “remains a little known chapter in her closely scrutinized career.”

But a mammoth archive of Wal-Mart video footage that has gone all but unnoticed in the 2008 presidential campaign may shed new light into Clinton’s relationship with the company. In this segment from 1991, for example, made public here for the first time by the Center for Public Integrity, Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, introduces Clinton at the grand re-opening of the company’s original store in Rogers, Arkansas. “Without any question,” he says, “you’ve added more to our board than any person we’ve ever had on that board.”

In the video, Clinton is effusive in her praise of the company that she has now all but disowned.

Here’s a Pennsylvania-Walmart connection.

A Philadelphia judge ruled that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. must pay $46.7 million in attorney fees and other costs, bringing the total to $187.6 million owed to Pennsylvania employees who were not paid during rest breaks.

The total – $187,648,589.11 – awarded by Common Pleas Court Judge Mark I. Bernstein, represents the entire tally in the class action case that went on trial a year ago in Philadelphia and resulted in a $78.8 million jury verdict against the Arkansas discounter.

Last month, the judge awarded an additional $62.3 million in damages, for a total of $141.1 million.

The case involved 187,000 former and current Wal-Mart employees in Pennsylvania.