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With more than $100 billion in personal assets among them, the five Waltons — Jim, John, Alice, Sam and Helen — occupy positions six through 10 in the Forbes billionaires rankings, twice as rich as Microsoft’s Bill Gates, the richest man in the world.
In this essay, written by Peter Gamble and Glen Ford and published by In These Times, the co-publishers of The Black Commentator not only remind readers of Wal-Mart’s hatred of the public sphere, as expressed through their retail empire’s disregard of non-discrimination laws, wage and workplace safety standards, and the social safety net …
“Wal-Mart is more than just a participant in the low-wage economy: It is the most important single beneficiary of that economy. It uses its economic and political power to extend the scope of the low-wage economy and threatens to extend its business model into other sectors of the economy, undermining the wages of still more workers.”
The two authors provide compelling evidence that it is the intention of the Wal-Mart family “to destroy public education.” Through their Walton Family Foundation, and working with the Bush administration, the Walton family has set course “to savage and massively disrupt the … public school (system) while positing ‘alternative’ forms of education.”
The “alternative form of education&rdquo to which the Walton’s are partial is the voucher system. Employing a voucher system would only serve to reinforce the gross inequities which exist in the current education system.
Should Bush, and the Wal-Mart family, prove successful in their bid to implement a voucher system, private schools would be under no obligation to accept students, and would likely reject the majority of those with histories of behaviour problems, learning disabilities, or unstable family situations. Deplorable conditions would await those doomed to be left behind in already struggling schools whose financial problems would only be exacerbated, as government monies directed to private voucher system schools would deplete the already scant resources available to our public education system. Make no mistake, if the voucher system arrives in the U.S., it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a part of Canadian educational practice. One more issue for all of us to be concerned about.
Update: Reader Donald Toffaletto sends in this link to an award-winning LA Times story about Wal-Mart’s devastating impact on communities.
Update, April 12: In a story written by Bob Fernandez, and published in the The Philadelphia Inquirer Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, Parkesburg Borough reports the economic decline of their community, and an acceleration of the crime rate. Wal-Mart “has completely changed the way we do business. It has overwhelmed us at times,” says Police Chief John F. Slauch. Municipal taxes from the shopping center don’t come close to covering its policing costs, the chief said.
