The Unbearable Lightness Of Ned Lamont's Honesty
This week has provided some revelation about the honesty of Ned Lamont, whose primary run to unseat Joe Lieberman has captured the nation's attention. Earlier today I posted about his sudden case of amnesia when one of his key blogosphere supporters decided to use race-baiting to attack Lieberman on Lamont's behalf. Now it appears that Lamont used Wal-Mart, the liberal bete noir, as a punching bag without telling anyone that he owned a chunk of the retailer's stock:
Connecticut millionaire businessman Ned Lamont, who sharply criticized the employment practices of Wal-Mart this week in his campaign to unseat Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democrat primary, owns stock in the company, Senate records reveal.
"This is about waking up Wal-Mart, and this is also about waking up corporate America," Mr. Lamont said Wednesday at a Bridgeport rally against the retail giant, hosted by many of the same liberal bloggers who have boosted the former cable executive far ahead of Mr. Lieberman in the polls.
But Mr. Lamont and his family are part owners of the company, according to financial disclosure records he filed earlier this year with the secretary of the Senate. Mr. Lamont, his wife and a dependent child own as much as $31,000 in Wal-Mart stock.
Mr. Lamont and his wife jointly own two accounts containing as much as $16,000 in Wal-Mart stock. Their Wal-Mart holdings spin off as much as $3,500 in annual dividends. In addition, a trust fund he set up for one of his children contains as much as $15,000 in Wal-Mart stock and spins off as much as $1,000 in dividends.
In his remarks at the anti-Wal-Mart rally this week, Mr. Lamont never mentioned his shareholder status in the company. He did, however, criticize Mr. Lieberman for not doing more during this three terms in the Senate to help the workers he says are so mistreated by Wal-Mart.
These purchases do not come from a market fund or retirement portfolio. The Lamonts deliberately purchased Wal-Mart stock for themselves and their child. One presumes that the Lamonts did so because of Wal-Mart's performance and delivery of dividends to their stockholders -- all of which come from the same business practices that Lamont publicly blasted this week.
It gets worse. While he and his family continued to get thousands of dollars in dividends, Lamont supporters castigated Lieberman at the event for taking a one-time donation from Wal-Mart's PAC of $1,000. Lieberman says he sent the money back, but will Lamont's supporters now demand to know what their candidate did with his Wal-Mart money.
Lamont bills himself as a new kind of politician, but from what we've seen this week, he looks like the same old model we see too often in Washington: dishonest and hypocritical.
Posted by Captain Ed at August 4, 2006 09:36 AM
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