WalMart's Massive Mexico Bribery Scandal is Only the Latest Conservative Corruption

The only question I have is why ALEC isn't being regarded as a corruption scandal here.  I would suggest to our readers it is because big money is very successful at putting layers of protective insulation around itself to remain unaccountable for illegal actions.

In the emerging scandal of WalMart it is yet more proof that principled and conservative are far too often NOT words which belong together.  Not for the Koch Brothers, NOT for the Waltons of the WalMart empire either.

These are the people shaping our local, state and federal level legislation.  Conservatives are willing to look the other way in exchange for virtually unlimited amounts of money, and pat themselves on the back for their morality because they have a false but smug sense of superoiority for their backward values, values which are hurtful, damaging and not in the best interests of this country.  Values which include embracing white supremacists. Here's a news flash - just calling yourselves Christian doesn't make you either virtuous or morally upright, and neither does being repressive bastards who use government to promote the redistribution of wealth to the already wealthy who bribe you to do so.
We have massive expenditure of money to commit voter fraud in states like Wisconsin where there are large numbers of robo calls voters who are expected to vote Democratic, mass maillings funded by Koch Brothers money to misdirect voters to the wrong polling locations, or to deliberately misinform them about absentee ballot voting, and again to repeatedly send them to the polls AFTER voting is concluded.  The 'principled' conservatives who are anything but that passed a voter ID bill.......and then promptly closed the offices where the ID can be obtained in Democratic areas of the state while opening more and for longer hours in Republican areas of the state in a calculated effort to make voting even more difficult and expensive for citizens.  These are NOT people of conscience, these are NOT people who are patriotic supporters of honest elections.  These are cheaters, these are evil unAmerican assholes who are doing one thing and one thing only - attempting to grab power, by illegal means, and by illegal, unethical and immoral acts wrongly given legal cover.
It is true in the bribery scandals of Koch Industries, and it is now shown to be true in the latest WalMart scandal, which involves one of the big power players on the current board of directors in the U.S., someone who has been promoted to the hightest levels of control where it is probable he will be too powerful to be removed.

THESE are the conservative 'captains of industry', who should be rather termed 'captains of corruption' who are using ALEC to corrupt our government in turn.  They are conservative, and it is other conservatives who are willing to cooperate with them, in exchange for wealth and power.
This isn't NEW.  Any good student of history would be familiar with this pattern in our past.  We had this kind of corruption by wealthy men in the gilded age, we had this exact same kind of corruption in our financial industry prior to the Great Depression in the 1930s.  And we have had our conservatives trying to dismantle every single damned protection against that kind of wealth and attendant corruption- they ALWAYS go together in history - our naitonal history, and world history. 
If we do not push back against that redistribution of power and wealth from people, from the 99%, we will become a decayed third-world country, where there is a small group of wealthy and powerful individuals and the 99% in poverty and ignorance. The right, including the misguided religious right, are already pushing that ignorance.  The Tea Party wallows in ignorance, ignorance of science, ignorance of history, and their worst ignorance, in economics.
That it takes corruption to make that ignorance stick doesn't seem to bother them.  It should bother all of us, including intelligent, moral conservatives.
As you read this, ask yourselves how many people had to be silent for this to work, and how many more had to agree and assist.  The New York Times story is long, but it is well worth the read.
And then stop to think about what corruption these same people are committing in THIS country with OUR government.  My best guess is that WalMart is hoping it is too long a story for lazy Americans to read all the way through, too complex for lazy Americans to give deep thought, or to connect the dots. 
I'm hoping WalMart is wrong about lazy Americans.  READ IT.
From MSNBC.com:
Wal-Mart hushed up vast Mexico bribery case

NYT: Top executives focused more on damage control than on rooting out wrongdoing

By David Barstow

updated 4/21/2012 3:27:37 PM ET2012-04-21T19:27:37

MEXICO CITY — In September 2005, a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an alarming e-mail from a former executive at the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. In the e-mail and follow-up conversations, the former executive described how Wal-Mart de Mexico had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance. In its rush to build stores, he said, the company had paid bribes to obtain permits in virtually every corner of the country.

The former executive gave names, dates and bribe amounts. He knew so much, he explained, because for years he had been the lawyer in charge of obtaining construction permits for Wal-Mart de Mexico.

Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. In a confidential report to his superiors, Wal-Mart’s lead investigator, a former F.B.I. special agent, summed up their initial findings this way: “There is reasonable suspicion to believe that Mexican and USA laws have been violated.”

The lead investigator recommended that Wal-Mart expand the investigation.

Instead, an examination by The New York Times found, Wal-Mart’s leaders shut it down.

Follow the link.  Read the rest. Think about what these same people are doing, using conservatives to corrupt OUR government.

Then pour yourself another cup of whatever you drink............and read this.  Ask yourself........WHY THE STEALTH?  Do you want THESE people telling your legislators what to write, what to pass, how to vote - and then have them do it? I don't.  I don't think you do either, and that is why you should pay attention to this.

From MSNBC and the New York Times:

Conservative nonprofit ALEC acts as stealth business lobbyist

Membership includes nearly 2,000 state legislators — and corporations

By MIKE McINTIRE

updated 1 hour 33 minutes ago2012-04-22T04:56:58

Desperate for new revenue, Ohio lawmakers introduced legislation last year that would make it easier to recover money from businesses that defraud the state.

It was quickly flagged at the Washington headquarters of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a business-backed group that views such “false claims” laws as encouraging frivolous lawsuits. ALEC’s membership includes not only corporations, but nearly 2,000 state legislators across the country — including dozens who would vote on the Ohio bill.
One of them, Bill Seitz, a prominent Republican state senator, wrote to a fellow senior lawmaker to relay ALEC’s concerns about “the recent upsurge” in false-claims legislation nationwide. “While this is understandable, as states are broke, the considered advice from our friends at ALEC was that such legislation is not well taken and should not be approved,” he said in a private memorandum.
The legislation was reworked to ease some of ALEC’s concerns, making it one of many bills the group has influenced by mobilizing its lawmaker members, a vast majority of them Republicans.
Despite its generally low profile, ALEC has drawn scrutiny recently for promoting gun rights policies like the Stand Your Ground law at the center of the Trayvon Martin shooting case in Florida, as well as bills to weaken labor unions and tighten voter identification rules. Amid the controversies, several companies, including Coca-Cola, Intuit and Kraft Foods, have left the group.
Most of the attention has focused on ALEC’s role in creating model bills, drafted by lobbyists and lawmakers, that broadly advance a pro-business, socially conservative agenda. But a review of internal ALEC documents shows that this is only one facet of a sophisticated operation for shaping public policy at a state-by-state level. The records offer a glimpse of how special interests effectively turn ALEC’s lawmaker members into stealth lobbyists, providing them with talking points, signaling how they should vote and collaborating on bills affecting hundreds of issues like school vouchers and tobacco taxes.

Read it.  Read ALL OF IT.  Pay attention to it.

THINK.