Protection money from Wal-Mart

When "a writer from the New York Times was doing a story on Microsoft a few years ago, he asked their top management about the size of their lobbying office in Washington -- and learned that they had no Washington office," economist Thomas Sowell wrote, back in 1999.

"But Microsoft's rivals in Silicon Valley have not only been lobbying," Mr. Sowell noted at the time, "they have been contributing big bucks to the Democrats and providing Bill Clinton with an audience of cheering executives during his visits to California."

What on earth did Microsoft's competitors expect to get for all that help and money?

"Is the Clinton Justice Department's anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft a pay-off to those who paid political tribute and a retribution against a company that didn't?" Mr. Sowell was not alone in asking, seven years ago.

"There is no question that ... business as a whole has been losing its ability to mind its own business and has become increasingly a plaything for bureaucrats and politicians. Is this what you would expect if corporate campaign contributions were just buying favors? Or is it more consistent with paying growing amounts of protection money?

"Incidentally, Microsoft has now belatedly entered the political arena," Mr. Sowell noted, back in the autumn of 1999. "There are even complaints that its influence is behind congressional reluctance to appropriate the kind of money desired by the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department."

And boy, once Microsoft learned the way the Washington protection payoff game is played, they went whole hog. According to Edward Roeder, founder of Sunshine Press Services, a news agency devoted to investigating money in politics, the software giant's budget for its Political Action Committee increased from about $16,000 in 1995 to $1.6 million in 2000. Total political donations from Microsoft and its employees to political parties, candidates and PACs in the 2000 election cycle amounted to more than $6.1 million.

"Ironically, what arouses the ire of The New York Times writer is that Microsoft did not have a Washington office before," Mr. Sowell noted. "That was 'arrogance' on Microsoft's part, if you believe the voice of the liberal vision. When not bending the knee to politicians and not paying up for protection are considered to be 'arrogance,' then you know that you are in the wonderland of political punditry."

Why revisit the tale of Microsoft's cold-dunk baptism into the Washington protection racket? The recollection was triggered by a piece in Tuesday's Washington Post, focusing on a different corporate giant that has been a target of much manufactured political ire of late.

"Wal-Mart has taken its lumps lately, especially from the Democratic Party over its treatment of employees," wrote Jeffrey Birnbaum of the Post, failing to note as usual that the discount chain's employees report for work voluntarily, are offered a group health insurance plan and tend to make more than the minimum wage.

"So the company has been courting the new majority on Capitol Hill by doing a lot of the standard stuff," Mr. Birnbaum of the Post reports, "hiring Democratic executives and donating more to the campaigns of Democratic candidates. Its political action committee has given 49 percent of its funds to Democrats this year, up from 32 percent in last year's election.

"But last week Wal-Mart's outreach got personal as well," the Post adds. "It's now doing favors for the families of powerful Democratic senators."

Last Tuesday evening, it turns out, the world's largest retailer sponsored a fancy reception in the Capitol's LBJ Room off the Senate floor to celebrate a yet-to-be-completed documentary about female members of the chamber called "14 Women." The film's three producers include Mary Lambert, the older sister of Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and Nicole Boxer, the daughter of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

But Wal-Mart, it turns out, has done a lot more to assist the project than merely pass out canapes and drinks. Last year the company became the movie's corporate sponsor when it handed the producers $150,000 to help complete the project.

"Mary Lambert contacted Wal-Mart and wanted to know if we might be interested in helping to underwrite the documentary," explains company spokesman Robert Traynham. "We thought it would be a great opportunity to help highlight the contributions that women have made in U.S. history and particularly in the U.S. Senate."

Yeah, right.

"American prosperity and American free enterprise are both highly unusual in the world, and we should not overlook the possibility that the two are connected," Mr. Sowell concluded, seven years back.

"Where those who hold political power treat businesses as prey, rather than as national assets to be safeguarded, the biggest losers are the public, whose standard of living never reaches the level of prosperity made possible by existing resources and technology."

Because -- like saloon keepers in Chicago in the '20s -- the capitalists now have to pay more and more "protection," just to stay in business.