Will the Walton Family Foundation become a $20 billion tax-exempt opponent of public education?
Bill Berkowitz October 12, 2005
Today most people think they know the story of Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, owned by the Walton family of Bentonville, Arkansas. Together the Waltons own 39 percent of the corporation that brings discounted merchandise to the public through Wal-Mart and its other stores. The company has more than 5,000 stores (3,400 in the U.S.), is the world's largest private employer, and is the world's largest company based on revenue with more than $280 billion in annual sales.
Wal-Mart's discounted prices, however, come with a heavy price tag. Workers are under-paid and overworked in sweatshops overseas, while their non-union counterparts in the U.S. often cannot afford healthcare for their families. Wal-Mart has been the target of a flood of suits; it is currently the defendant in the largest sex-discrimination class-action lawsuit ever, a suit representing more than 1.5 million women.
When Wal-Mart comes to town, many small businesses invariably close, permanently changing the "civil fabric" of local communities. Worse, the company's bottom line is dependent upon soaking up of hundreds of millions of dollar in taxpayer subsidies extracted from cash-strapped state and county budgets. A May 2004 study by the Washington, DC-based Good Jobs First titled "Shopping for Subsidies: How Wal-Mart Uses Taxpayer Money to Finance Its Never Ending Growth," found that the company has siphoned more than $1 billion in economic development subsidies from state and local governments across the country.
If Wal-Mart was just another gigantic retail chain that was virulently anti-union, niggardly with its benefits, and a drain on the economies of local communities, it would certainly be remarkable but it would pretty much fall into the "business as usual" category. However, Wal-Mart, and the Walton family that runs the company founded by Sam Walton, also does its damage in ways that are more insidious: Through its philanthropic ventures, the Walton Family devotes a significant portion of its holdings to boosting conservative political candidates and a conservative social agenda centered on the privatization of public education.
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full at Media Transparency --
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