It seemed like yet another conservative op-ed column with the usual harangue against unions and in support of Wal-Mart. The piece in yesterday’s Boston Globe, however, has a bit more of a back-story to it.
On Aug. 10, the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, participated in a nationwide back-to-school boycott of Wal-Mart. The ”Send Wal-Mart Back to School” campaign urges parents and teachers to pledge not to shop for school supplies at the bargain retailer.
Why would the NEA, an organization whose stated mission is to ”promote the cause of quality public education and advance the profession of education,” care about where parents buy pencils and backpacks? The union says Wal-Mart employees are forced to seek government-subsidized health care benefits, which drains billions from public money that could be used to fund public education.
The boycott is little more than a union solidarity move, coming at a time when Big Labor’s numbers are plummeting and the movement is experiencing the shockwaves of the rift within the AFL-CIO. […]
The NEA even criticizes the Walton family, the founders of Wal-Mart, for contributing to “anti-public education efforts like private school voucher initiatives and anti-public educations PACs.”
The piece was written by Michael Reitz, who is described as the director of the Labor Policy Center for the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a nonpartisan, public policy research organization based in Olympia, Wash. But, as Boston Phoenix writer Dan Kennedy noted, the Globe left out some pertinent details.
Such as the fact that Reitz’s work is financed by the Walton Family Foundation, the charitable arm of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton.
The Walton Family Foundation, which is the charitable arm of — yes — the Wal-Mart fortune left behind by the late founder, Sam Walton. According to Media Transparency, the foundation gave Evergreen $300,000 between 1998 and 2000, and has also given millions to other groups that support EFF’s conservative education agenda, such as tuition vouchers. No wonder Reitz expressed such shock and horror that the NEA “even criticizes the Walton family.”
The Globe has since run a “clarification,” informing readers that Reitz is on the Walton payroll. That’s a positive step, but I wish papers were a little more diligent about checking these things in advance. Reitz is one of hundreds of writers who receive financial backing from Scaife, Walton, Bradley, Coors, et al, to do little more than bombard news outlets with conservative talking points in the form of op-ed contributions. Once in a while, an editor gets lazy and doesn’t check the background of the writer. It’s pretty annoying.
It’s not like Google is hard to use.