[lbo-talk] Obama economist an apologist for Wal-Mart

sawicky at verizon.net sawicky at verizon.net
Tue Jun 10 08:28:00 PDT 2008


Like Jared, I'm keeping my powder dry on this.  (Jason is an acquaintance.)

A few points of information & considerations . . .

No question that it would be nice to see a recognizable liberal

mind among Obama's visible advisers.  There aren't any yet.

Furman is v-e-r-y smart.

Furman worked for Rubin, but Rubin is not in the same place as he

was in 1992-2000.  Guards should be up, but full-throated denunciations

are not yet in order.  To see where they are now, anyone can masticate

the Hamilton Project papers.  They're all on-line.

The Sun article -- and we should know The Sun sucks -- exaggerates in

saying JF sees Wal-Mart as any kind of model.  I invited JF to join my blog

and he put up two bits, one of which was a Wal-Mart piece.  It proved

how broad-minded I am.

JF is not anti-union, and he is pro-minimum wage (also EITC).

My unsolicited advice:  save your ammunition.

We can't have a crazy person in the WH. 


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Doug Henwood
> Sent: 06/10/08 10:51 am
> To: lbo-talk
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Obama economist an apologist for Wal-Mart
>
> New York Sun - June 10, 2008
> <http://www.nysun.com/national/obama-taps-wal-mart-defender-as-
> director/79665/>
>
> Wal-Mart Defender To Direct Obama's Economic Policy
> Appointment of Jason Furman Immediately Meets With Skepticism
>
> By JOSH GERSTEIN, Staff Reporter of the Sun
>
> Just days after clinching the Democratic presidential nomination,
> Senator Obama is naming as his economic policy director an economist
> who has clashed with critics of Wal-Mart by defending the company as
> a boon to poor Americans.
>
> The appointment of Jason Furman, 37, a former Clinton administration
> official who is a visiting scholar at New York University,
> immediately met with skepticism from some who have faulted Wal-Mart
> for being stingy toward its workforce.
>
> It's surprising because this guy seems to feel that Wal-Mart's low-
> wage, low-benefit business model is good for America. That's just
> flat-out wrong," the executive director of Wal-Mart Watch, David
> Nassar, said. "This guy helped to lend credibility to the Wal-Mart
> business model. That was disappointing then and it's disappointing
> now given this position," said Mr. Nassar, whose group is backed by a
> board that includes the president of the Service Employees
> International Union, Andrew Stern. Mr. Nassar quickly added that he
> was "not critiquing the Obama campaign."
>
> A New York-based labor organizer and writer, Jonathan Tasini, said he
> was puzzled by the selection of Mr. Furman. "It's legitimate to give
> you pause," Mr. Tasini, who ran an unsuccessful primary challenge to
> Senator Clinton in 2006, said. "There have been concerns raised about
> where Obama's economic policies will trend," the writer said.
>
> Mr. Tasini noted that, while Mr. Obama spurned labor groups by voting
> for a free-trade agreement with Peru, his past suggests he would be
> an ally of labor. "It's hard to believe that during his community
> organizing work in the poorest neighborhoods of his own city he
> didn't have something sink into him about income inequality. There's
> no way to read anything he has put out there as anything but
> rejection for the Wal-Mart model," Mr. Tasini said.
>
> As the company became a pariah in Democratic circles, Mr. Furman
> stepped out on the issue in 2005 by publishing a 16-page paper
> titled, "Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story." He argued that the
> huge cost savings the company has delivered to its customers, who
> tend to have low incomes, far outweighed any impact the chain may
> have had on wages.
>
> In a debate on Slate.com in 2006, Mr. Furman took on the tactics of
> the anti-Wal-Mart movement, which include trying to block new stores
> in places like New York. "If I heard that Wal-Mart was coming to my
> neighborhood, New York's West Village, I might rush for my mouse. But
> I wouldn't kid myself into thinking that my opposition had anything
> to do with helping the poor. If anything, I would feel guilty that I
> was preventing moderate-income New Yorkers from enjoying the huge
> benefits that much of the rest of the country already knows so well,"
> he wrote.
>
> "The collateral damage from these efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise
> its wages and benefits is way too enormous and damaging to working
> people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing
> 'Kum-Ba-Ya' in the interests of progressive harmony," Mr. Furman added.
>
> A spokesman for Mr. Obama, Joshua Earnest, said the candidate and Mr.
> Furman have not discussed Wal-Mart.
>
> During the primary campaign, Mr. Obama was sharply critical of the
> company. He has said he will not shop there and that Wal-Mart should
> pay "a living wage."
>
> At a January debate, Mr. Obama seemed to play to Wal-Mart's critics
> when he suggested that Senator Clinton's six-year stint on the
> company's board paled in comparison to his record as a community
> organizer in Chicago. "While I was working on those streets watching
> those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate
> lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart," Mr. Obama said, in one of
> his sharpest jabs at Mrs. Clinton.
>
> One economist who has disputed some of Mr. Furman's findings on Wal-
> Mart said the disagreement shouldn't disqualify him. "That's small
> potatoes. Jason's economic agenda goes way beyond that," Jared
> Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute said. "That's not anything
> close to a deal breaker."
>
> Mr. Furman had been affiliated with the Brookings Institution as
> director of its Hamilton Project, an economic policy project whose
> advisory council includes executives of Citigroup, as well as
> prominent hedge fund executives such as Eric Mindich of Eton Park
> Capital Management, Richard Perry of Perry Capital, and Thomas Steyer
> of Farallon Capital,
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>



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