[Vision2020] low wages?

[Mark Solomon]

 From the NYTimes: Walmart/Walton family funding of American 
Enterprise Institute. m.

The New York Times

September 8, 2006
Wal-Mart Finds an Ally in Conservatives
By MICHAEL BARBARO and STEPHANIE STROM


As Wal-Mart Stores struggles to rebut criticism from unions and 
Democratic leaders, the company has discovered a reliable ally: 
prominent conservative research groups like the American Enterprise 
Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute.

Top policy analysts at these groups have written newspaper opinion 
pieces around the country supporting Wal-Mart, defended the company 
in interviews with reporters and testified on its behalf before 
government committees in Washington.

But the groups - and their employees - have consistently failed to 
disclose a tie to the giant discount retailer: financing from the 
Walton Family Foundation, which is run by the Wal-Mart founder Sam 
Walton's three children, who have a controlling stake in the company.

The groups said the donations from the foundation have no influence 
over their research, which is deliberately kept separate from their 
fund-raising activities. What's more, the pro-business philosophies 
of these groups often dovetail with the interests of Wal-Mart.

But the financing, which totaled more than $2.5 million over the last 
six years, according to data compiled by GuideStar, a research 
organization, raises questions about what the research groups should 
disclose to newspaper editors, reporters or government officials. The 
Walton Family Foundation must disclose its annual donations in forms 
filed with the Internal Revenue Service, but research groups are 
under no such obligation.

Companies and such groups have long courted one another - one seeking 
influence, the other donations - and liberal policy groups receive 
significant financing from unions and left-leaning organizations 
without disclosing their financing.

But the Walton donations could prove risky for Wal-Mart, given its 
escalating public relations campaign. The company's quiet outreach to 
bloggers, beginning last year, touched off a debate about what online 
writers should disclose to readers, and its financing to policy 
groups could do the same.

Asked about the donations yesterday, Mona Williams, a spokeswoman for 
Wal-Mart, said, "The fact is that editorial pages and prominent 
columnists of all stripes write favorably about our company because 
they recognize the value we provide to working families, the job 
opportunities we create and the contributions we make to the 
community we serve."

At least five research and advocacy groups that have received Walton 
Family Foundation donations are vocal advocates of the company.

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, for 
example, has received more than $100,000 from the foundation in the 
last three years, a fraction of the more than $24 million it raised 
in 2004 alone.

Richard Vedder, a visiting scholar at the institute, wrote an opinion 
article for The Washington Times last month, extolling Wal-Mart's 
benefits to the American economy. "There is enormous economic 
evidence that Wal-Mart has helped poor and middle-class consumers, in 
fact more than anyone else," Mr. Vedder wrote in the article, which 
prominently identified his ties to institute.

But neither Mr. Vedder nor the newspaper mentioned American 
Enterprise Institute's financial links to the Waltons. Mr. Vedder, a 
professor at Ohio University, said he might have disclosed the 
relationship had the American Enterprise Institute told him of it. "I 
always assumed that A.E.I. had no relationship or a modest, distant 
relationship with the company," said Mr. Vedder, who has written a 
forthcoming book about the company. The book, he said in an interview 
yesterday, would eventually contain a disclosure about the Walton 
donations to the institute.

A spokesman for the Walton Family Foundation, Jay Allen, said there 
was no organized campaign to build support for Wal-Mart among 
research groups. All of the foundation's giving, he said, is directed 
toward a handful of philanthropic issues, including school reform, 
the environment and the economy in Northwest Arkansas, where Wal-Mart 
is based. "That is the spirit and purpose of their giving," Mr. Allen 
said.

Mr. Allen said the foundation, which had assets of $608.7 million in 
2004, the last year for which data is available, has never asked the 
research groups to disclose the donations because "the family leaves 
it up to the individual organization to decide."

Those groups, for the most part, say they have decided not to share 
the information with their analysts or the public.

For example, Sally C. Pipes, the president of the Pacific Research 
Institute, a free-market policy advocate, has written several opinion 
articles defending Wal-Mart in The Miami Herald and The San Francisco 
Examiner.

A month after a federal judge in California certified a sex 
discrimination lawsuit against the company as a class action in 2004, 
Ms. Pipes wrote an article in The Examiner criticizing the lawyers 
and the women behind the suit. "The case against Wal-Mart," she 
wrote, "follows the standard feminist stereotype of women as victims, 
men as villains and large corporations as inherently evil."

The article did not disclose that the Walton Family Foundation gave 
Pacific Research $175,000 from 1999 to 2004. Ms. Pipes was aware of 
the contributions, but said the money was earmarked for an education 
reform project and did not influence her thinking about the lawsuit. 
Asked why she typically did not disclose the donations to newspapers, 
she said: "It never occurs to me to put that out front unless I am 
asked. If newspapers ask, I am completely open about it."

The lack of disclosure highlights the absence of a consistent policy 
at the nation's newspapers about whether contributors must tell 
editors of potential conflicts of interest.

Juan M. Vasquez, the deputy editorial page editor of The Miami 
Herald, which ran an opinion article praising Wal-Mart by Ms. Pipes 
of Pacific Research, said his staff researches organizations that 
write opinion articles, including their financing. But that does not 
always require asking if the organization has received money from the 
subject of an article, he said.

The New York Times has a policy of asking outside contributors to 
disclose any potential conflicts of interest, including the financing 
for research groups.

Several of the research groups noted that their mission is to be an 
advocate for free market policies and less government intrusion in 
business. "Those aims are pro-business, so it's not surprising that 
companies would be supporters of our work," said Khristine Brookes, a 
spokeswoman for the Heritage Foundation.

Last year, for instance, The Baltimore Sun published an op-ed article 
by Tim Kane, a research fellow at Heritage, in which he criticized 
Maryland's efforts to require Wal-Mart to spend more on health care. 
He objected to the move on the grounds that it was undue government 
interference in the free market, a traditional concern of Heritage.

"The existence of Wal-Mart dented the rise in overall inflation so 
much that Jerry Hausman, an economist from the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, is calling on the federal government to 
change the way it measures prices," Mr. Kane wrote. "Translation: 
Wal-Mart is fighting poverty faster than government accountants can 
keep track."

Ms. Brookes pointed out that the $20,000 Heritage has received from 
the Walton Family Foundation since 2000 amounts to less than 1 
percent of its $40 million budget.

Ms. Brookes said it was unlikely that researchers and analysts at 
Heritage were even aware of the foundation's contributions. "Nobody 
here would know that unless they walked upstairs and asked someone in 
development," she said. "It's just never discussed."

She said Heritage did not accept money for specific research. "The 
money from the Walton Family Foundation has always been earmarked for 
our general operations," she said. "They've never given us any funds 
saying do this paper or that paper."

A spokeswoman for the American Enterprise Institute said the group 
did not comment on its donors. The group's focus on Wal-Mart has been 
notable. In June, the editor in chief then of the group's magazine, 
The American Enterprise, wrote a long essay defending Wal-Mart 
against critics. The editor, Karl Zinsmeister, now the chief domestic 
policy adviser at the White House, said the campaign against the 
company was "run by a clutch of political hacks."

Conservative groups are not the only ones weighing in on the Wal-Mart 
debate. Ms. Williams of Wal-Mart noted labor unions have financed 
organizations that have been critical of Wal-Mart, like the Economic 
Policy Institute, which received $2.5 million from unions in 2005.

In response, Chris Kofinis, communications director for 
WakeUpWalmart.com, an arm of the United Food and Commercial Workers 
Union that gives money to liberal research groups, said: "While we 
openly support the mission of economic justice, Wal-Mart and the 
Waltons put on a smiley face, hide the truth, all while supporting 
right-wing causes who are paid to defend Wal-Mart's exploitative 
practices."

The lack of a clear quid pro quo between research groups and 
corporations like Wal-Mart makes the issue murky, said Diana Aviv, 
chief executive of the Independent Sector, a trade organization 
representing nonprofits and foundations. "I don't know how one proves 
what's the chicken and what's the egg," she said.

Last year, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a 
research and watchdog group, published a report, "The Waltons and 
Wal-Mart: Self-Interested Philanthropy," that warned of the potential 
influence their vast wealth gives them.

But Rick Cohen, executive director of the group, said he was more 
concerned about the role the Walton foundation's money might play in 
shaping public policy in areas like public education, where it has 
supported charter schools and voucher systems.

"These are certainly not organizations created and controlled by the 
corporation or the family and promoted as somehow authentic when they 
aren't," Mr. Cohen said. "More important, I think, is the disclosure 
of the funding in whatever's written, a sort of disclaimer."

At 8:02 AM -0800 2/9/07, g. crabtree wrote:
>With thanks to Tom Forbes @ Palousitics...
>
>(CNSNews.com) - Despite frequent and vocal complaints from critics 
>of the world's largest retail chain, Wal-Mart "has arguably done 
>more to help ordinary Americans, especially the poor and 
>disadvantaged, than any other institution in our society," according 
>to the authors of a new book being released nationally on Monday.
>
>"Wal-Mart does far more for America's working class than any labor 
>union, bloated federal bureaucracy or pandering politician," Richard 
>Vedder, co-author of "The Wal-Mart Revolution" and a visiting 
>scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told 
>Cybercast News Service in a telephone interview.
>
>Because of this and other factors, "Wal-Mart is saving America," 
>added Vedder, who also serves as a distinguished professor of 
>economics at Ohio University.
>
>"I know that sounds like an exaggeration," he said, but "the 
>economic transformation in U.S. retailing, which is personified by 
>Wal-Mart, has been good for both America and its economy."
>
>While admitting he was "an agnostic" regarding the retail giant when 
>he began more than a year of research and writing for the book, the 
>author argued that "Wal-Mart's basic business strategies have had a 
>profoundly positive impact on America's productivity, wages, 
>consumer prices and other key economic variables."
>
>Vedder stressed that neither he nor co-author Wendell Cox, a 
>public-private partnerships expert, received any kind of assistance 
>from the retail chain, even when they contacted the company seeking 
>information for their book.
>
>Nevertheless, their research of financial and academic studies led 
>Vedder and Cox to a number of conclusions, they said:
>
>
>Wal-Mart workers are paid fairly - given their level of skills and 
>experience, and compared to other retail firms, Wal-Mart employees 
>do well;
>The chain's health-care coverage, retirement benefits and other 
>benefits are similar to those of other retail firms, and very few 
>Wal-Mart workers go without health insurance;
>Big boxes mean big business, as communities with new Wal-Mart 
>outlets typically enjoy increased employment and incomes after the 
>store opens;
>Wal-Mart benefits the poor, in particular, in the form of lower 
>prices and new job opportunities; and
>Attempts to keep Wal-Mart out of communities through zoning 
>restrictions, mandatory health insurance or special high minimum 
>wages hurt citizens, especially those with lower incomes
>
>Vedder acknowledged that Wal-Mart and other big-box discount 
>retailers such as Target or Home Depot have been vilified as selfish 
>retailers that mistreat their workers, outsource American jobs, 
>uproot communities and harm the poor.
>
>"Nothing could be further from the truth," he said.
>
>"The criticism of Wal-Mart follows a rich American tradition of 
>attacking new retail innovations," the author noted. "More than a 
>century ago, some people were concerned that the mail-order catalogs 
>of Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Montgomery Ward were destroying local 
>retailing.
>
>"In the 1930s, angry small grocery stores attacked the new chains 
>like A&P that brought lower prices and greater choice to 
>communities," Vedder said. "Congress even passed laws to try to 
>prevent stores from offering low prices to consumers, although those 
>laws were found legally flawed or ineffective."
>
>He added that "the anti-A&P campaign in the 1930s and the 
>anti-Wal-Mart campaign 70 years later are remarkably similar" since 
>in both cases, "costly service providers have lost out to more 
>efficient companies that provide 'consumer welfare' to their 
>customers through low prices, greater choice selection and 
>relatively good service."
>
>'Not an either-or proposition'
>
>Chris Kofinis, communications director for WakeUpWalMart.com, took a 
>different view of the conclusions drawn by the authors of "The 
>Wal-Mart Revolution."
>
>"I challenge Vedder and Cox to walk a day in the shoes of a Wal-Mart 
>worker who struggles without affordable health care and gets paid a 
>poverty-level wage," Kofinis told Cybercast News Service.
>
>"I want them to walk a day in the shoes of a manufacturing worker 
>who had his job shipped overseas to China so they can wax poetically 
>about Wal-Mart's positive effects," he added.
>
>"But the truth is that Wal-Mart's negative effects far outweigh any 
>benefits people get from its 'everyday low prices,' and that's the 
>tragedy here," Kofinis said.
>
>"This is not an either-or proposition. It never has been, never will 
>be and never needs to be," he said. "Wal-Mart can provide low prices 
>and be a responsible employer, but they don't want to. That's the 
>unfortunate part of all this.
>
>"As long as companies like Wal-Mart continue down this path of 
>corporate irresponsibility, they are going to be the focus of a 
>growing political and social movement against them," Kofinis noted. 
>"It's really that simple."
>
>Despite his praise for Wal-Mart, Vedder readily agreed that the 
>company "is far from perfect," as proven last month, when the retail 
>giant agreed to pay almost 87,000 employees 
><http://www.cnsnews.com/Nation/Archive/200701/NAT20070126c.htm>over 
>$33 million in back wages.
>
>So, given the complaints from union-backed groups like 
>WakeUpWalMart.com about the company, what should be done about 
>Wal-Mart? "Nothing," Vedder said. "Putting the government in the 
>position - for which it is ill-equipped - of picking winners and 
>losers in a market economy would be a disastrous policy."
>
>Besides, he added, Wal-Mart's influence may have peaked, since the 
>company is starting to lose market share to Internet retailers such 
>as Amazon.com and eBay.
>
>"Change is progress," asserted Vedder.
>
>
>g
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:godshatter at yahoo.com>Paul Rumelhart
>To: <mailto:jampot at adelphia.net>g. crabtree
>Cc: <mailto:vision2020 at moscow.com>vision2020 at moscow.com
>Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 7:32 AM
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] low wages?
>
>g. crabtree wrote:
>
>>From a news story thoughtfully posted by Mr. Solomon. It's 
>>unfortunate about Mr. Woods difficulties but the article did point 
>>out one shining example of the untruths that the local anti 
>>Wal-Mart wackadoo's continually spout...
>
>"Woods had trouble finding other work that paid as well as his Wal-Mart job"
>
>And this is in Lewiston. A town with twice the employment 
>opportunities that Moscow currently (and for the foreseeable future 
>should our illustrious city council have its way) has. Sort of 
>shoots the theory that Wal- Mart comes to town and only provides 
>crappy, low wage jobs, that nobody in their right mind would want 
>wouldn't you say?
>
>g
>
>
>Let's see.  Racial harrassment, sexual harrassment, glass ceilings 
>for female workers, inadequate health care benefits, and unpaid 
>overtime.  I can see why "crappy, low wage jobs, that nobody in 
>their right mind would want" pretty much sums it up.  And that's 
>just the items I've heard about in the news lately.
>
>I can't just look past all that because they happen to employ 
>people.  I think standards are a positive thing, and that more 
>employees should set theirs higher.
>
>I'm sure Mr. Woods was happy at some level to have a paying job, but 
>going through two years of that kind of harrassment is too high a 
>price to have to pay.  I wonder if they fired the manager.
>
>Paul
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