[Vision2020] low wages?
J Ford
privatejf32 at hotmail.com
Sat Feb 10 02:43:01 PST 2007
Well, as long as you understand the true nature of the issues being
discussed here...that's all that matters, now isn't it?
Sheesh!!!
J :]
>From: Donovan Arnold <donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com>
>To: "g. crabtree" <jampot at adelphia.net>, Paul Rumelhart
><godshatter at yahoo.com>, Mark Solomon <msolomon at moscow.com>
>CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] low wages?
>Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 22:33:17 -0800 (PST)
>
>G,
>
> Don't forget Wal-Mart shuts down Mom and Pop shops, sucks up all the
>water, generates traffic, increases child abuse in third world countries,
>drives down wages, wipes out the rain forests, kills all the tuna, puts
>more people on the welfare rolls, promotes world hunger, inflicts stigmata
>on little babies, and causes global warming.
>
> Donovan
>
>"g. crabtree" <jampot at adelphia.net> wrote:
> BLOCKQUOTE { PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px } DL {
>PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px } UL { PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px;
>PADDING-TOP: 0px } OL { PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px } LI {
> PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px } And there we have it, the
>standardized mantra of the left. Wal-Mart is bad 'cause corporations are
>bad 'cause conservatives are bad cause Republicans are bad 'cause
>capitalism is bad etc. etc. etc.
>
> As long as the name of the game is dueling newspaper articles...
>
> Wal-Mart posse: Why the unions are on the attackMonday, October 23,
>2006
> The Wall Street Journal Wal-Mart may be expanding in the People's
>Republic of China, but here in capitalist America the low-price retailer
>has become the Democratic Party's favorite pinata. The media like to
>portray this as a populist uprising against heartless big business. But
>what they don't bother to disclose is that this entire get-Wal-Mart
>campaign is a political operation led and funded by organized labor.
>We've done a little digging into the two most prominent anti-Wal-Mart
>groups, and they might as well operate out of AFL-CIO headquarters. An
>outfit called Wal-Mart Watch was created by the Service Employees
>International Union (SEIU), probably the most powerful union in America
>after the National Education Association. Wal-Mart Watch is backed by Five
>Stones, a 501(c)3 organization that received $2,775,000 in 2005 from the
>SEIU, or 56 percent of its $5 million budget. According to financial
>records, SEIU also gave Five Stones $1 million in 2004 to launch the
> anti-Wal-Mart group, and SEIU president Andy Stern is the Wal-Mart Watch
>chairman. A second group, Wake Up Wal-Mart, is more or less a subsidiary
>of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). Wake Up Wal-Mart
>refuses to divulge its funding sources, but here is what we do know: The
>group was founded by the UFCW, is housed at UFCW headquarters, and its
>campaign director's $135,000 salary is paid by the UFCW. Wake Up Wal-Mart
>also has close ties to the Democratic Party. Its union-funded campaign
>director is Paul Blank, who was political director of Howard Dean's failed
>Presidential campaign. The group sponsored a 19 state, 35-day bus tour
>across the U.S. earlier this year, staging anti-Wal-Mart rallies. Nearly
>every major Democratic Presidential hopeful has joined in the
>Wal-Mart-bashing, including Sens. Joe Biden and Evan Bayh, New Mexico Gov.
>Bill Richardson, and trial lawyer-turned-man-of-the-people John Edwards.
>They all seem to believe they have to take
> this line to pass union muster for 2008. Even Hillary Rodham Clinton
>has joined in the political fun. Never mind that she served six years on
>the Wal-Mart board during her time in Beltway exile as an Arkansas lawyer
>and, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was paid $18,000 per year
>plus $1,500 for every meeting near the end of her tenure. Most recently,
>Mrs. Clinton returned a $5,000 campaign contribution from Wal-Mart to
>protest its allegedly inadequate health care benefits. Maybe someone should
>ask her if she's returned her director's pay, with interest.
>---------------------------------
> Most of the local protests against Wal-Mart are organized through the
>left-wing activist group ACORN, an acronym for the Association of Community
>Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN is the group that put the squeeze on
>the Chicago City Council to pass an ordinance this summer to require
>Wal-Mart, Target and other big-box stores to pay a minimum $10 an hour wage
>and $3 an hour in benefits by 2010. (Democratic Mayor Richard Daley vetoed
>the bill.) ACORN also pretends it is a locally organized and funded voice
>of the downtrodden masses. But guess where ACORN gets much of its money?
>Last year the SEIU chipped in $2,125,229 and the UFCW $165,692. Then
>there are the anti-Wal-Mart "think tanks," if that's the right word for
>these political shops - notably, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and
>the University of California at Berkeley Labor Center. The job of these two
>outfits is to publish papers backing the economic claims of Wal-Mart
>critics. The UC Berkeley group
> recently asserted that Wal-Mart "reduces total take-home pay for retail
>workers." The UC Berkeley Labor Center has received at least $43,550 from
>SEIU. The Economic Policy Institute received $100,000 from the SEIU and
>$40,000 from the UFCW in 2005 and has published several anti-Wal-Mart
>studies, particularly on the benefits of the Chicago ordinance. By the way,
>Andy Stern also sits on the EPI board. He's a busy guy. Now, we're not
>predisposed to be pro- or anti-Wal-Mart. We've criticized Wal-Mart lobbying
>on policy grounds -- for example, when the company supported a minimum wage
>increase to court some nice publicity while also knowing this would harm
>any lower-priced competitors. However, it is simply fallacious to argue
>that Wal-Mart has harmed low-income families. More than one study has
>shown that the real "Wal-Mart effect" has been to increase the purchasing
>power of working families by lowering prices for groceries, prescription
>drugs, electronic equipment and
> many other products that have become modern household necessities. One
>study, by the economic consulting firm Global Insight, calculates that
>Wal-Mart saves American households an average of $2,300 a year through
>lower prices, or a $263 billion reduction in the cost of living. That
>compares with $33 billion savings for low-income families from the federal
>food stamp program.
>---------------------------------
> Alas, what's good for working families isn't always good news for
>unions and their bosses. They hate Wal-Mart because its blue-coated
>workforce is strictly non-union -- a policy that dates back to the day
>founder Sam Walton opened his first store. Today the company employs 1.3
>million American workers, and its recent push into groceries has made life
>miserable for Safeway and other grocery chains organized by the service
>workers or the UFCW. Wal-Mart pays an average of $10 an hour, which is
>more than many of its unionized competitors offer. And typically when a new
>Wal-Mart store opens in a poor area, it receives thousands of job
>applications for a few hundred openings. So Wal-Mart's retail jobs of $7 to
>$12 an hour, which the unions deride as "poverty wages," are actually in
>high demand. But as we say, this campaign isn't about "working families,"
>or any of the other rhapsody-for-the-common-man union slogans. If Wal-Mart
>were suddenly unionized, Big Labor's
> membership would double overnight and union leaders would collect an
>estimated $300 million in additional dues each year to sway more
>politicians. Short of that, their goal is to keep Wal-Mart out of cities so
>their union shops have less competition. That's what the war against
>Wal-Mart is truly about.
>
> g (with a heartfelt thanks to T)
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mark Solomon
> To: g. crabtree ; Paul Rumelhart
> Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 9:40 AM
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] low wages?
>
>
> 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 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: Paul Rumelhart To: g. crabtree Cc:
>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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