The Waltons are a singular American family. Not exactly like you or me, to be sure. They are, according to Forbes, the richest family in America, with a net worth of $140 billion or more.
They were recently praised by Trump for raising the minimum wage for their 1 million workers to $11 an hour. On the same day, however, they closed down 63 Sam’s Club warehouse stores, putting more than 11,000 people out of work without notice.
I wish any member of the Walton family would try to live for a month on only $11 an hour wages. However, since they are all heirs to their great fortune, it’s likely that none ever held a paying job where they had to show up every day.
Here is an article about them that appeared on the Walton Foundation blog.
While other billionaires have pledged to give away most of their money to charity, the Waltons decline to join them. They know money is power. Also, it means you never have to go to work.
Their primary takeover target is education.
“The largest chunk of the foundation’s retooled and accelerated giving plan — $1 billion over the next five years — will go to education. While family members still evangelize about the benefits of “school choice” for struggling families, they’ve fought enough battles over the past two decades to determine that simply providing parents a slate of options among traditional public schools, charter schools, and private institutions isn’t enough to improve student achievement.
“For school choice to succeed, the Waltons concluded, the foundation has to move beyond making start-up grants for charters and focus more on building a constituency of supporters in local school districts.”
Typically, that means they have to actually buy elections, although the article doesn’t put it quire like that.
Their passion is charter schools. This is a handy way to bust unions and advance the privatization of public education. The Waltons claim to have started one of every charter schools in the U.S.
“Some critics have complained that the Waltons have donated a relatively small percentage of their enormous wealth to charity. Still, their giving is so substantial in terms of raw dollars that other critics contend it gives them too much influence over public policy. In response, the family has sought safe havens: school districts where there are plenty of skilled teachers and administrators excited about new educational models. In those places, the foundation has courted local officials open to charter schools operating alongside traditional neighborhood schools.
“The new approach means the foundation will exit cities where charters have been a tough sell, including Phoenix, Chicago, and Albany, N.Y. Its roster of 13 target areas now includes New Orleans, Oakland, and San Antonio, where charters are seen as ripe for success.”
See, they just sit around and decide how to privatize the public schools in your community. Arkansas is one of the poorest states in the nation. Couldn’t they just concentrate on raising up the families in their own backyard?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Several billionaires (Bill Gates and Warren Buffet) have pledged to give away their money and claim to be actively doing so, but curiously, they keep getting wealthier every year.
I wish I could get richer by giving away my money. I have tried this and it has not worked for me so far. But maybe I need more time or more money or both?
Personally, I prefer the billionaires who don’t pretend to be magnanimous, since the “philanthropy” of some is basically a accounting gimmick to maintain control over how money that would otherwise simply be “lost” to taxes is spent.
Despite their support for charters, the Waltons have done far (by orders of magnitude) less damage to schools than Bill Gates did with his back door Common Core ruse. Common Core was a gigantic, completely unethical experiment perpetrated on millions of school children with no informed consent from parents.
Most parents did not even know what hit them until their elementary school kids started coming home with idiotic and/or completely age inappropriate math homework problems designed to test knowledge of “arrays” and other concepts previously introduced in high school. My nephews loved math until they were exposed to endless hours of “explain how you got your answer” to simple problems that require no explaining at all (to say nothing of explaining with several different methods, as they had to do under Common Core).
AKA fauxlanthropy
Yes, or fraudlanthropy, since stuff like Common Core is actually a fraud — certainly by the scientific definition and probably also by the legal definition.
Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Jason Zimba and David Coleman are just lucky they have not (yet) attracted the attention of a state and/or US Attorney General.
…though I’m sure they have probably all deleted any potentially incriminating emails by now.
Bill Gates surely knows how to “wipe without a trace” and could easily have instructed the others.
Well said, Poet. If I have $7, pledge to give away half to charity, give not $3.50 but only $2, and only to foundations and political organizations that serve me and give back to me, winding up with almost $10 in my pocket, did I keep my promise? No.
crossposted at
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-Walton-Family-Billion-in-Best_Web_OpEds-America_Billionaires_Charter-Schools_Diane-Ravitch-180119-653.html#comment686553
with this comment which has embedded links at the site.
Education, a grassroots advocacy organization.
Learn the truth from the writing of this brilliant educator, who is Politico’s choice for AMERICA’S 50 MOST IMPORTANT AMERICANS.
* How Not to Fix Our Public Schools
* Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.
* The Trump Devos Demolition of American Education
*Detroit: The Broken Promise of School Privatization
From the Walton link:” The foundation seems intent on comparing those experiences with the views of other experts in the field, according to Sarah Reckhow, a political-science professor at Michigan State University and author of Follow the Money: How Foundation Dollars Change Public School Politics.
Ms. Reckhow says Walton Family Foundation program officers and advisers have become fixtures at academic conferences and seem to be more interested in deepening knowledge in the field than in pushing an agenda.
“It’s nice to see them engage like that and be open to research they aren’t funding, and to be asked hard questions,” she says. “I haven’t seen that from the other large education funders.”
And there goes another academic who has been co-opted by someone who should know that the Walton empire is out to kill public education and will use cherry-picked research to support the glory of charter schools and market-based solutions.
I have read and respected the work of Sarah Reckhow. I find no evidence that the educational policies and funding of the Walton Family Foundation are informed by asking “hard questions” especially questions about their love of schools with severe and early discipline of children who are not white and not rich and schools where charter managers are feathering their nests with absurd land and school services deals and off the charts compensation packages.
THE RICH DON’T PLAY BY THE SAME RULES. Rules don’t apply to them. They are like one big explosion over all those around them and beyond.
Wealthy people like the Waltons wield their money like a weapon of mass destruction that represents their own specific view of how our country should operate. This generally includes their own biased agenda that circumvents and tries to suppress the democratic process. They buy influence so their agenda prevails regardless of what the rest of the country believes. Vouchers are a perfect example. With 70% of regular people opposing them, they continue to expand because they are backed by deep pockets of dark money. The fact that vouchers actually have a negative impact on academics has no bearing on the decision to expand in many states.
By the way Vice News did a story about the fraud and embezzling in Gulen schools. A parent said that the academics are inferior, and students are not ready for college after finishing the schools. A former teacher said the teachers imported from Turkey have limited English, and the school is run by the “Turkish mafia.”
That fellow Gullen actually looks the part of the Turkish Mafia don.
I wouldn’t want to meet up with him in a dark alley, that’s for sure.
One can only imagine what goes on in his “compound” in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania.
Another cult leader, Sun Myung Moon was having wild sex orgies at his own US compound and allegedly brought young Korean school girls to the US as a “favor” for politicians and other officials — and subsequently as a means of blackmail.
Moon used to have a gigantic estate on Hudson River in Tarrytown. I saw it whenever I crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge. He was another mysterious cult leader.
The Moons & the GHW Bush family were business partners for many years.
The Bushes also partnered with the bin Ladens.
And with the Nazis before that.
Quite the all-American family.
What a world.
I think the dominance of the foundation money has been bad for ed reform, though, ultimately.
It’s really led to a very barren, limited debate. Look at any of their forums or conventions or gatherings. All of the big decisions have been made and they’re debating within the narrow sphere of “given that we all accept the main premise- the superiority of privatization- how can it best be put into place?”
I don’t know that the PUBLIC is aware how far down this road they are, that a lot of the issues we’re supposedly “debating” have been settled in ed reform and they really consider any further debate on their big picture agenda a waste of time.
I think the foundation money has led to that echo chamber effect because the foundations act as entry-level choke off points to exclude people who aren’t members of The Movement. It isn’t “excluding” people who disagree. It’s that people who disagree never get close enough to the gates even to be excluded.
I travel for work quite a bit in the “rust belt” and Wal Mart should spend less time busing unions and more unions and more time running stores. The stores are falling apart. There are places in Ohio and Michigan where they’re close to being eyesores in these small towns they parachuted into. They were cheaply built to begin with and they don’t invest anything in them. Our local Wal Mart is dirty- probably because they’re skimping on labor costs. Successful supermarkets aren’t dirty. If you’re selling food you need to put some money into keeping the place clean. Maybe focus on washing the windows instead of eradicating public schools? Maybe the heirs could take a slightly smaller cut and put some of that money back into the place it comes from?
I read a book about the founders of Wal Mart once. They were merchants. They stuck to what they knew. They would have seen the danger in a retail chain deciding they needed to rule the political and social systems.
That is why it is unwise to privatize anything people depend on. Corporations are not more efficient or less costly. People will always be secondary to their profit. Corporations will continuously lower the bottom line until the consumer is left with a sub-part product or service. We see this all the time with health care and charter schools.
That’s villainthropy to y’all!
Anyway, this post is timely–it comes as announcements that Sam’s Clubs are being closed across the country (which is mentioned in your post, but more details, here) to the detriment of workers (an article stated that “each club employs about 150 people”), communities & to small firms, “many reliant on supplies, services locations provide.” “Last week, Walmart announced that it would be closing 63 of its under-performing* Sam’s Club stores at various locations throughout the country.
While most of the news focused on the thousands of employees who would be affected by the decision, there’s also another significant group of people who will be harmed: hundreds, even thousands, of local small businesses.” (“Small Firms Bemoan Exits of Sam’s Clubs” by Gene Marks, Washington Post) In the Chicago Tribune 1/12/18 Business section, “Suburban Sam’s Club Stores Closing,” by Lauren Zumbach & Greg Trotter, “6 in Chicago area to shutter as company balances physical, online business; towns facing lost income.” “The announcement came the same day Walmart said it would raise starting pay to $11 an hour & hand out cash bonuses** as a result of the federal tax overhaul.” “After a thorough review,it became clear we had built clubs in some locations that impacted other clubs, & where population had not grown as anticipated. We’ve decided to right-size our fleet & better align our locations w/our strategy,” Sam’s Club President & CEO John Furner wrote in a letter to employees.’
Of course, they’re shifting to e-commerce (explained further in the article), which is what is meant RE: store closings (less employees, less taxes to pay these towns, more $$$$ for the Waltons, citizens be damned).
Sam must be rolling over in his grave.
*NOT “under-performing,” according to mayors & business people (who rely on the club’s.
**These are “one time” cash bonuses (wonder how much–?!)
supplies & services)
Speaking of billionaire at work and play
Apple has spent millions of dollars over the past few years lobbying for a slash in the amount of money it would pay in taxes to repatriate what is now over 250 billion dollars held in offshore accounts.
It has now been handsomely rewarded under the new tax bill and will avoid $38 billion in taxes.
Josh Hoxie (director of the Project on Opportunity and Taxation at the Institute for Policy Studies) puts this into context
http://fortune.com/2018/01/18/apple-bonuses-money-us-350-billion-taxes-trump/
”
This difference is more than double the annual cost of the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which covers the health care costs of nine million children from low-income families. CHIP is currently in crisis, with Congress debating whether it will be included in a spending bill to avoid a government shutdown.”
……….
“We have a deep sense of responsibility to give back to our country,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a press release, “and the people who help make our success possible.”
With respect, Tim, no you don’t.
Spending millions in lobbying dollars to save tens of billions of dollars in taxes isn’t really a display of “responsibility” to a country or its people. It’s a greedy act done for shareholders, who have been rewarded handsomely.
The rest of us have been had.”
//// End of Josh Hoxie quote
Under the new deal Apple will pay 38 billion but avoid paying more than 40 billion
And will still keep plenty in overseas tax havens.