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<div>From the NYTimes: Walmart/Walton family funding of American
Enterprise Institute. m.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The New York Times</div>
<div><br>
September 8, 2006<br>
Wal-Mart Finds an Ally in Conservatives</div>
<div>By MICHAEL BARBARO and STEPHANIE STROM<br>
</div>
<div><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
At least five research and advocacy groups that have received Walton
Family Foundation donations are vocal advocates of the company.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.</div>
<div><br>
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."<br>
<br>
Those groups, for the most part, say they have decided not to share
the information with their analysts or the public.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
The New York Times has a policy of asking outside contributors to
disclose any potential conflicts of interest, including the financing
for research groups.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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."</div>
<div><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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."</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>At 8:02 AM -0800 2/9/07, g. crabtree wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><b>With thanks to Tom Forbes @
Palousitics...</b></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> </blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><b>(CNSNews.com)</b> - 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.<br>
<br>
"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<b> Cybercast News Service</b> in a telephone interview.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Nevertheless, their research of financial and academic studies led
Vedder and Cox to a number of conclusions, they said:<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>
<ul>
<li><br>
<li>Wal-Mart workers are paid fairly - given their level of skills and
experience, and compared to other retail firms, Wal-Mart employees do
well;<br>
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;
<li>Big boxes mean big business, as communities with new Wal-Mart
outlets typically enjoy increased employment and incomes after the
store opens;
<li>Wal-Mart benefits the poor, in particular, in the form of lower
prices and new job opportunities; and
<li>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</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
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.<br>
<br>
"Nothing could be further from the truth," he said.<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
<b>'Not an either-or proposition'</b><br>
<br>
Chris Kofinis, communications director for WakeUpWalMart.com, took a
different view of the conclusions drawn by the authors of "The
Wal-Mart Revolution."<br>
<br>
"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<b> Cybercast News
Service</b>.<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
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 <a
href="http://www.cnsnews.com/Nation/Archive/200701/NAT20070126c.htm"
>over $33 million in back wages</a>.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"Change is progress," asserted Vedder.</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> </blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> </blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font size="-1">g</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><b><br></b>
<blockquote>----- Original Message -----</blockquote>
<blockquote><b>From:</b> <a href="mailto:godshatter@yahoo.com">Paul
Rumelhart</a></blockquote>
<blockquote><b>To:</b> <a href="mailto:jampot@adelphia.net">g.
crabtree</a></blockquote>
<blockquote><b>Cc:</b> <a
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</a></blockquote
>
<blockquote><b>Sent:</b> Friday, February 09, 2007 7:32
AM</blockquote>
<blockquote><b>Subject:</b> Re: [Vision2020] low wages?</blockquote>
<blockquote><br></blockquote>
<blockquote>g. crabtree wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font size="-1">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...</font></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote> </blockquote>
<blockquote>"Woods had trouble finding other work that paid as
well as his Wal-Mart job"</blockquote>
<blockquote> </blockquote>
<blockquote><font size="-1">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?</font></blockquote>
<blockquote> </blockquote>
<blockquote><font size="-1">g</font><br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Paul</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
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