Here's an interesting equation: Mark Taylor owns stock in Wal-Mart, and Andy Young, his campaign chair, has been hired as an advocate for the company, a company that tops the list in Georgia in terms of numbers of children of employees who are on the PeachCare rolls.
Why is Mark Taylor, who is supposed to be a friend to organized labor in Georgia, personally invested in Wal-Mart? I was looking for something entirely different today when I noticed that in Taylor's May, 2006 financial disclosure, he lists marketable securities in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. worth $10,530.00.
Earlier this year, we were all a little shocked to learn that Taylor's campaign chair, Andrew Young had been hired to advocate for Wal-Mart. See that entire article here in the 3/15/2006 edition of USA Today .
Add to this the "PeachCare" factor, a program that Taylor touts, and a program that has benefited thousands of Georgia children. Trouble is, a state survey found that more than 10,000 of those children have a parent that works for Wal-Mart- fourteen times more than the next highest employer. As a shareholder, has Taylor advocated for Wal-Mart to provide adequate health insurance for it's employees so that Georgia taxpayers won't have to do that for them?
In January, the Atlanta Journal reported that:
In Georgia, a state survey found that 10,261 of the 166,000 children covered by Georgia's PeachCare for Kids health insurance in September 2002 had a parent working for Wal-Mart. Georgia's PeachCare program was launched in 1998 to provide health insurance to children whose parents cannot afford or don't have access to those benefits.
The Wal-Mart figure was about 14 times the number for the next highest employer: Publix, with 734.
Wal-Mart is the state's largest private employer. But when the top four companies on the list were measured by number of PeachCare children per the number of employees in Georgia, Wal-Mart still dominated.
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4 comments:
There's a clear disconnect here between Taylor's support of labor and "the little guys'" right to a living wage. Wal-Mart is a corporate giant that can afford to do better. Instead they infest small towns and rural areas where low wage jobs saturate the local job market. Why on earth would Taylor's campaign chair work to try to improve such an entity's public image? And why would Mark Taylor invest in a corporate giant that keeps the "little guy" down?
Like a greasy-haired stump preacher with a brand new cadillac and a ring on each finger amongst a congregation of working class folks, this picture just doesn't look right.
Jo, does this not seem to you to be inconsistent with Taylor's position on organized labor? Or can he simply do no wrong in your book? Why don't his supporter insist that he sell the stock?
You've obviously memorized your Taylor Talking Points. Yes, we all know that his strategy is to just keep repeating that Cox is behind or "desperate." Somehow, then everyone will begin to believe it. Well, go ahead and click your heels together. Maybe you'll end up in Kansas. That's just as likely as Taylor winning.
I guess it is much easier to stick to the script than to come up with any really innovative ideas.
This information was on his financial disclosure and in the press. When you say you stand up for the little guy, and labor in particular, and you are an investor in Wal-Mart, that seems hypocritical to me, personally as I expressed it here. I've heard nothing at all about this particularly issue from the Cox campaign, by the way. This is my concern, and I do not work for Cox.
Are you fine with Mark's investment in Wal-Mart, given his stand with labor? I am sure that he was there asking for their endorsement last week. Think he talked about this? Doesn't his appeal to them make this issue fair game? It seems that Mark's only response to any criticism is "how dare you."
They don't call him Wal*Mark Taylor for nothing...
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