I'm replying to your comment (again) silence, since I played teaser in the last one and I have the info now.

I heard this on the radio a couple years ago about how the suppliers were strong-armed into coughing up money so the CEO could take credit with Bush and partake of the rewards. If the suppliers didn't contribute they might be dropped from the Safeway shelves.

That's the biggest reason I don't shop there anymore.

I'm actually glad because the majority of food they pimp is corporate and masquerades as healthy.

Published on Monday, July 14, 2003 by the Washington Post
Bush 'Bundlers' Take Fundraising to New Level
by Thomas B. Edsall and Mike Allen

As chairman, president and chief executive of Safeway Inc., the world's 11th-largest grocery chain, Steven Burd is the nexus of a wide network of subordinates and suppliers, as well as friends in corporate suites. And that is why he will play a critical role in President Bush's effort to raise the largest amount of money ever spent on a presidential campaign -- not by giving a lot of money himself, but by finding a lot of people to give relatively little.

At two Bush fundraising events in California last month, Burd filled 10 tables with Safeway suppliers, including rice farmers, strawberry growers and a cheese manufacturer, plus representatives of Breyers ice cream, Sunkist produce and Del Monte canned goods who paid $2,000 to hear Bush talk. Each donor wrote a four-digit "solicitor tracking code" assigned to Burd on his check so that the Safeway CEO will receive credit from Bush campaign officials and they can keep a running tally of his efforts. The possible rewards, depending on how much money he can bring in, include cocktails with campaign architect Karl Rove, dinner with Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans and photo opportunities and sessions with the president.

Almost all of the top Bush fundraisers are in the top 1 percent of the nation's incomes, and many are in the top one-tenth of the top 1 percent. Consequently, they are among those who benefit the most from administration legislation reducing the top income tax rate, the capital gains rate and the elimination of taxation on dividend income.

The Family That Gives Together...
Contributing to Republican candidates runs in Jack Abramoff's family
By Courtney Mabeus

Steven Burd, the top executive of Safeway, Inc., hosted two events that month in which guests paid $2,000 each to hear the president talk. Burd was a 2004 Bush-Cheney "Ranger" for having gathered more than $200,000 in support for the re-election campaign.

But it appears that being a part of the Bush Team requires deep sacrifices not only for employees and customers but the companies themselves.

Safeway still paying dearly for insisting on wage, benefit cuts

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20 [2004]

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Southern California grocery strike and the evidence continues to mount that Safeway CEO Steve Burd's decision to insist on employee wage and benefit cuts was a disastrous mistake for his company.

The company's financial bleeding continues today as the losses it attributes to the 4½-month strike are now almost three times what Burd originally estimated the union's contract demands would have cost him over three years. The Los Angeles Times reports today that Safeway Inc.'s stock has hit a 52-week low after the company reported a 21% drop in third-quarter profit because of the strike's lingering effects and warned that this slowdown would stretch into the future.

Emphasis added:

With Safeway's stock price now driven into the ditch, the only smart decision CEO Burd appears to have made in 2003 was a timely cash-out of $13 million in personal stock options. In the weeks leading up to the strike, Burd adopted a stock sale plan to unload 2 million shares from option exercises, and the compensation committee did not require that any of his option proceeds be held in shares of stock.

In other words, he took his money out and invested it someplace else.

and from a MSN Money article Burd gets this infamous designation:

5 lousy CEOs who get fabulous pay
By Michael Brush
Posted 4/26/2006

Bringing home the bacon

Safeway (SWY, news, msgs) chairman and chief executive Steven Burd earned $52 million, or $10.4 million a year, on average, over the past five years. During that time, shareholders lost 54% as the stock fell to $23.70 from $52.

Safeway spokesman Brian Dowling responds that you have to look at Burd’s whole tenure if you want to judge his performance. He joined the company in 1992. Since May of 1993, Safeway has produced 17.5% annualized returns.

"That beats the grocery-store sector and the S&P 500 by a country mile," says Dowling. "His tenure has been all about creating shareholder value." Dowling says Burd’s pay looks high over the past few years only because he exercised lots of stock options, the first time he has done so since joining the company.

You probably knew all this already silence but maybe others didn't. The media just isn't all over things like this when there's so many press releases being sent out by the companies that need to be waded through.