Reply #: Your WALMART references certainly do amuse, as they have a hypocritical element to them. [View All]

[MADem]

Here are a few facts for you.

Those horrible BASTARDS at WALMART have helped to feather the Obama nest to no small extent, indeed: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/13/wobama13.xml

Obama called hypocrite for wife's Wal-Mart link
By Philip Sherwell in New York, Sunday Telegraph

Business link: Michelle Obama


Yet, while her style and performance are winning plaudits on the campaign trail, a little-reported business interest of Mrs Obama's has opened her husband up to one of the criticisms that politicians fear most - the taint of hypocrisy.



She is taking a break from her main job, as a well-remunerated Chicago hospital executive, to campaign for her husband. But she has just been re-elected to the board of an Illinois food-processing company, a position she took up two years ago to gain experience of the private sector.

And the biggest customer for the pickles and peppers produced by Treehouse Foods is the retail giant Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation and the bête noire of American liberals, including Sen Obama, for its employment practices, most notably its refusal to recognise trade unions.

As the Illinois senator prepared to join the presidential fray late last year, he threw his weight behind the union-backed campaign against Wal-Mart. He declared that there was a "moral responsibility to stand up and fight" the company and "force them to examine their own corporate values".

According to the couple's tax returns, Mrs Obama earned $51,200 (£25,700) for her work as a non-executive director on Treehouse's board last year, on top of the $271,618 salary she was paid as a vice-president of the University of Chicago Hospitals.

She also received 7,500 Treehouse stock options, worth a further $72,375, as she did the previous year, when she banked a $45,000 salary from the company.