This study of the Walton Family Foundation was published in 2012 by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
It provides a history of the family fortune and a description of the Walton family and its political interests.
Helen Walton, widow of the founder Sam Walton, has supported Planned Parenthood, but otherwise the foundation donations have gone primarily to charters, vouchers, and other conservative causes. The family also donates generously to political campaigns, and most of its donations go to conservative Republican candidates.
Walmart has its admirers, but as the report shows, it has been sued for its treatment of workers, women, and immigrants. It is, of course, nonunion. Furthermore, when it opens a new Walmart in a community, it wipes out family-owned businesses.
One of the most startling statistics in the report is from Iowa, where the opening of a Walmart was soon after followed by the closing of hundreds of local grocery stores, hardware stores, building supply stores, variety stores, shoe stores, and clothing stores.
This is a report worth reading.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
WalMart is in the “…too big to fail” category of businesses. They eliminate competition and keep worker pay low so it feeds the need for workers to be on welfare/social assistance, and remain trapped in the class stratification of poverty.
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“the opening of a Walmart was soon after followed by the closing of hundreds of local grocery stores, hardware stores, building supply stores, variety stores, shoe stores, and clothing stores.”
All those small businesses that Hillary Clinton was pulling for in the debate the other night.
Of course, Clinton served on the corporate board of directors of Walmart for six years (1986-1992) (apparently without protest) while Walmart was systematically eliminating untold thousands of small business across the country.
Clinton is about as fake as politicians come. She needs makeup to cover up the makeup to cover up the makeup….(add makeupitem)
“Makeup all the way down”
It’s makeup all the way down
A faked up pall, like a clown
The Hill is naught but ruse
With lipstick and with rouge
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That happened here, but what happened next was worse. Wal Mart doesn’t invest anything in the stores. They run them as cheaply as possible and it shows. So what you end up with is one giant store that swallowed up the smaller stores, vastly reduced quality, and no choice unless you want to drive 25 miles to a decent grocery store.
They don’t pay people anything and they don’t hire enough of them, so the stores are in really bad shape. It kind of amazes me a national “brand” has been allowed to decline so much.
They have a saying where I live that the first generation builds the business, the second generation lives off the what the first generation built, and the third generation uses up what remains. It seems to apply to Wal Mart.
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That’s also the
“Philosophy of Parasites”
Philosophy of parasites
Is “Suck it till it dies”
Relentlessly through days and nights
Till naught remains but flies
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I’m not sure I can hold my nose long enough to read the report.
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EVERY teacher should boycott Walmart and encourage their students to do the same (subtly of course).
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So, how do we regulate and fix our “unbridled capitalism”? How do we even the playing field for the little guy? We assume greed and wealth hoarding are wrong, but why? What moral axioms does one have in order to make these assertions? A moral relativist, humanist or materialist have no absolute moral axioms; yet they make commentary about the greed of others, while having no absolute foundation from which to analyze. If sociobiology and Darwinistic principles are applied to the markets and competition, then what Walmart does is “natural”, and according to the atheist Richard Dawkins the founders of Walmart had the neural “meme” that made them more competitive.
Now a Theist has an absolute moral axiom to work and analyze from; that we “are not to lay treasures up on earth”…..that “those that care not for the cause of the poor despise their Creator”, etc. Are some things “kind of like sin”, or are they sin?
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I am not the greatest fan of Walmart but they are very helpful in community events here in North Central Washington (for schools and religious and service groups). Our town is relatively small but the mom-pop operations have continued as Walmart is more on t he outskirts of town. The small quality stores do well. Two large home improvement stores are nearby and doing well.
It ran K-Mart out of business which, I understand has always been a stated goal of theirs and the reason they try to build near a K-Mart. I just want you to know Walmart isn’t the biggest ogre in town. Sometimes I apologize to the “associates” for buying there (based on the non union repercussions that I hear). They laugh and say–“keep coming–we are thankful for the jobs”. For some, the grocery costs help families stay off of assistance.
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The crystal bridges art museum in Arkansas is beautiful. They support the arts, I give them that.
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Wal-Mart employees generally turn right around after work and spend grocery money at their employing store and what little disposable income is left goes into layaway of the latest Hisense flat-screen, Busch Light tall boys and Duck Dynasty apparel.
The old Tennessee Ernie Ford song encapsulates it nicely:
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
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