Reclaim Democracy!

Propaganda and the Voter ID Campaign

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By Lorraine Minnite 
First Published September, 2011 

Editor’s Note: Orchestrated, but unfounded complaints of widespread “voter fraud’ have duped citizens of  many states into accepting needless and harmful barriers to voting. Here, Rutgers University professor Lorraine Minnite, author of “The Myth of Voter Fraud,” debunks the misinformation spread by Hans von Spakovsky, a leading perpetrator of voting fraud myths,

Propaganda is playing a crucial role in the fast-moving campaign to enact more onerous voter identification (ID) laws in the states.  I want to show how the discussions of the issue of voter photo ID exhibit some of the salient features of political propaganda to obscure the real rationale for these laws: partisan political advantage.

As an example, consider the puzzling re-emergence of a sordid tale of election shenanigans from some three decades ago.  The scene is a series of Democratic primary races, and the locale is Brooklyn, New York, circa the 1970s and early 1980s.  In a 2008 Heritage Foundation legal memo on the case and countless other reports , op-eds , blog postings, and government testimony advocating for stricter voter ID laws, Hans von Spakovsky, the controversial former Georgia GOP county leader and one-time U.S. Justice Department official, has called this story “the best-documented case of widespread and continuing voter identity or impersonation fraud” in “living memory.”  It stands as a much-cited rebuttal to the critics who reject claims of an epidemic of voter fraud as unsupported by evidence.

Von Spakovsky’s source for this story is a 1984 Brooklyn grand jury report , and his abuse of this report is striking.  He takes historical events and twists them so that they point to the wrong set of villains.  The grand jury investigated an egregious case of political corruption committed by politicians and election workers, but he says the case is about voter impersonation fraud.  The findings and recommendations of the grand jury were sensible, but von Spakovsky distorts them to promote the call for more restrictive voter ID rules.  The grand jury did not come to these conclusions.

Von Spakovsky’s Brooklyn tale plays a role in the expansive propaganda campaign promoted by Republican Party operatives to stoke the anger of the party’s rightwing base (via the code word “fraud”), and to soften up a mostly disinterested public skeptical of backward-moving restrictions on the franchise – like the requirement to show a current government-issued ID to vote.  As I’ve argued elsewhere, central to this campaign is the myth of voter fraud .

Propaganda is a communications strategy that relies on specific rhetorical devices and methods of presenting information to persuade and influence the opinions of others in order to control their actions.  Propagandists distort the truth through selective storytelling, logical fallacies, unwarranted extrapolation, and repetition of false conclusions, providing a basis for hidden political agendas and fear-mongering.  In the contemporary discussions about voter ID, what could be more misleading than to go back 27 years to obscure events in Brooklyn documented in an almost impossible to find grand jury report?  Unknowing readers could think von Spakovsky is plucking the example out of a vast trove of evidence when he’s not.

Selective Storytelling
The 1984 Brooklyn grand jury report that is the source of von Spakovsky’s 2008 Heritage Foundation memo documents the results of an investigation by the Brooklyn D.A. into a pattern of corruption by a de-throned state senator named Vander Beatty and his allies within the ranks of the Kings County Democratic Party organization.

The Grand Jury found that over a period of 14 years, a group of people committed blatant voter registration and voting fraud to defeat opponents who challenged the status quo control of electoral politics in the borough.  The struggle reflected a conflict between an established black political class, supported by an older white ethnic-dominated political machine, and a black reform movement emerging from the public school-based battles for community control in Central Brooklyn.

The fraud was flagrant and could not have been committed without the assistance of elections officials who knowingly accepted bogus registration cards, violated state laws in the handling of registration cards, and attempted to conceal forged registration documents.

The culminating event occurred when the machine-backed Beatty lost a congressional primary for retiring Shirley Chisholm’s U.S. House seat to the reformer Major Owens.  Beatty’s gang snuck into the Board of Elections, hid in a bathroom ceiling until the employees went home for the day, and then tampered with voter registration cards to manufacture the appearance of fraud on the part of the Owens campaign.  The fraudulent fraud discovered, Beatty then used the forged evidence to charge Owens with fraud and to demand that the results of the election be thrown out.  He almost got away with this scandalous ploy.

Logical Fallacies
Von Spakovsky tells a disembodied version of this story and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the larger context that framed the corruption.  Moreover, to distract the reader from the fact that these events occurred a quarter-century ago, he ignores how rules and procedures have changed since 1984 (even in Brooklyn!).  von Spakovsky exploits the ambiguity of the word “fraud” to commit a major logical fallacy.  He claims this 27-year old story of internecine political warfare among Brooklyn Democrats presents the best-documented case of widespread and continuing voter identity or impersonation fraud that could be prevented with voter photo ID.  But since his premise is wrong, so is his conclusion.

The Grand Jury’s recommendations barely touched on voter ID.  Grand Jury members were sensitive to the danger of their report being used to justify the tightening up of access to registration and voting.  The report flatly states, “The Grand Jury is not advocating that existing electoral rights be restricted or unduly encumbered, but that safeguards be created to protect those rights from being undermined by fraud” (p. 3).

For the Grand Jury, since the main problem was document tampering, forgery, and corrupt politicians plotting conspiracies to rig elections, these safeguards largely took the form of a plea to improve administrative procedures, address under-staffing and training of Board of Elections personnel, and especially, to make changes to way the Board of Elections secured its facilities.  Von Spakovsky conveniently does not mention these recommendations, despite the fact that a discussion about the use of closed circuit televisions cameras, security mirrors, and alarm systems “to protect against illegal use of or entry into the facilities” (p. 26) takes up several pages of the report.

In addition, the grand jury called on the Governor and the State Legislature to “promptly study the problems of election fraud identified in this report…and evaluate various proposals and strike a balance between solving the problem of election fraud and continuing the recent gains in facilitating unimpeded access to the ballot box” (p. 21).  One proposal the grand jury thought worthy of study was to require identification from voters at the time of registration (which New York now does) and voting (which New York does not do).  More importantly, however, was the grand jury’s own recommendation to require identification of persons seeking admission to the Board of Elections .

Von Spakovsky commits another logical fallacy in setting up this story to justify his preference for stricter ID laws.  He argues that the reason why there is so little evidence of voter impersonation fraud (and, perhaps why we have to resort to an example from Brooklyn in the 1970s) is because, “Election officials cannot discover an impersonation if they are denied the very tool needed to detect it – an identification requirement” (p. 1).  But the ID requirement cannot both prevent fraud and make it detectable.  Advocates of government-issued photo voter ID, including von Spakovsky, have never marshaled reliable evidence of contemporary voter impersonation fraud.  If we have no evidence of voter impersonation fraud before the enactment of voter ID laws, and no evidence of voter impersonation fraud after the enactment of voter ID laws, how is it possible that voter ID laws are both preventing voter fraud and making it more detectable?  This is circular reasoning – if voter ID eliminates voter impersonation fraud, which is hard to do since there is virtually no evidence that it actually exists, how then does it make fraud detectable?

Unwarranted Extrapolation
Von Spakovsky states that, “Even though it led to no indictments, the New York investigation still serves a valuable purpose.  Most clearly, it demonstrates that voter impersonation is a real problem and one that is nearly impossible for election officials to detect given the weak tools usually at their disposal” (p. 7).

This is not correct.  A 27-year old grand jury report does not demonstrate that voter impersonation is a real problem today.  Nor does it “provide good reason to believe that [the…] conspiracy…could not have occurred if voters had been required to present photo identification when they voted” (p. 7).  Von Spakovsky incorrectly assumes that people this intent on stealing elections could be thwarted by a photo ID requirement (see this recent Washington Post article for the growing ease with which “untold thousands” of flawless fraudulent drivers licenses have flowed into the U.S. recently from a single source in China).

Von Spakovsky states that, “More recent cases provide evidence of what may be a wider problem that is very difficult to detect in jurisdictions that do not require voter identification” (p. 5).

What is that evidence?  Not much.  Von Spakovsky tells us that a college professor testified in 2006 before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that he was not able to vote once because someone else voted in his name.  The professor wasn’t able to find out why this occurred, what error was made, “and the polling place,” he said, “didn’t keep any record of it” (p. 7).  In 2007, U.S. Justice Department litigation against Noxubee, Mississippi Democratic Party leader, Ike Brown, unearthed a former deputy sheriff who said he saw Brown “outside the door of the precinct talking to a young black lady…and heard him tell her to go in there and vote, to use any name, and that no one was going to say anything” (p. 7-8).  Von Spakovsky’s third piece of evidence comes from a 2007 city council run-off election in Hoboken, New Jersey, where a homeless man living in a shelter said he was paid $10 to vote for a specific person.  No vote was actually cast because an alert election challenger suspected something fishy was afoot and physically chased the man away, calling the police who apprehended him.  Hoboken has non-partisan local elections, but the shenanigans appear to have been the product of yet another factional dispute within a local Democratic Party organization.

This is hardly evidence upon which one can erect a persuasive claim of widespread if undetectable fraud.

Fear-mongering
Von Spakovsky’s re-telling of a story about political corruption among Brooklyn Democrats of yore is peppered with references to “widespread impersonation fraud” and “a vote-fraud conspiracy that had been successfully carried out without detection for 14 years,” in which “thousands of fraudulent votes went undetected for 14 years.”  In fact, while egregious, the Brooklyn grand jury did not find that the corruption unveiled by the investigation was widespread in the way von Spakovsky implies. Their report states that the corruption was committed by “ a group of individuals…in a limited geographic area of Kings County from 1968 to 1982” (emphasis added, see p. 1-2).

No matter.  Propaganda does not hew close to the facts.  It seeks to manipulate emotion by selectively filtering and framing those facts.  It draws on myth and symbols where facts are inconvenient.  Even old Boss Tweed as a precursor to Ike Brown gets a mention in von Spakovsky’s memo.  And although “illegal aliens” never made an appearance in the Brooklyn saga, von Spakovsky throws them in as a looming threat to free elections.  He implies they are somehow eager to vote and asserts that this nefarious conduct can be thwarted with government-issued ID (“…requiring a government-issued photo ID can prevent illegal aliens from voting,” p. 8).

Repetition
Having carefully framed a story of petty political corruption from long ago as a cautionary tale of great relevance for our democracy today – and drawn the wrong conclusions – von Spakovsky distracts the reader from the big problems with his argument by repetitively asserting a link between his vastly exaggerated characterization of the problem of voter fraud and his preferred solution, restrictive voter photo ID requirements.

For example, on the first page of his Heritage Foundation memo, he lists “Talking Points,” one of which says, “Voter-ID requirements directly target in-person voting fraud.  An ID requirement would have defeated all the fraudulent practices employed by the New York vote-fraud conspiracy,” which isn’t true.

Referring to litigation that enjoined Ohio from implementing certain restrictions on voter registration drives (Project Vote v. Blackwell), he states, “Even if the court rulings were legally correct (a questionable conclusion), that is all the more reasons for a state to correct for potential fraud by requiring some form of reasonable voter ID at the polls,” (p. 7) as if states currently have no protections against potential fraud.

Two paragraphs later, von Spakovsky sums up the Brooklyn case:  “…the investigation provides good reason to believe that this 14-year-long conspiracy to submit thousands (if not tens of thousands) of fraudulent votes in New York City could not have occurred if voters had been required to present photo identification when they voted,” (p. 7) a claim that is simply unsupported by the case he presents.

Finally, on the last page of his memo, von Spakovsky makes this false claim: “In states without identification requirements, election officials have no way to prevent bogus votes from being cast by unscrupulous individuals based on fictitious voter registrations, by impersonators, or by non-citizens who are registered to vote – another growing problem.”  For the statement to be true, states that do not require ID documents also would have no rules and checks in place to guard against fraudulent registrations, not the case in any state.

Conclusion
In the age of the Internet, the expanding use of propaganda techniques in American politics is one of the most important, if overlooked, developments of the early 21 st century.  Hans von Spakovsky’s repeated reference to an obscure 27-year old Brooklyn grand jury report as the best evidence of the contemporary scourge of voter impersonation fraud is a kind of fraud itself.  Instead of evidence of fraud, he gives us evidence of the propaganda being used to distort the truth about fraud.  As good as it is, however, the propaganda about voter fraud can’t conceal everything.  The lack of concern among voter ID proponents like von Spakovsky for the likely ill effects of these new laws on the electoral participation of vulnerable citizens lacking the requisite ID  makes the ugly politics of the ongoing voter ID campaign all the more apparent.

Rutgers University professor Lorraine Minnite is the author of The Myth of Voter Fraud.

Voter ID laws are just one of  40 Ways to Disenfranchise or Suppress Voters

© 2011 Lorraine Minnite

Bozeman Resolution on Coal Trains

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Posted July 2, 2012

A resolution of the Bozeman City Commission to request that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hold a public hearing in Bozeman, Montana, and that it prepare a comprehensive Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) on the cumulative impacts of new and expanded coal export terminals in Washington and Oregon, as Bozeman will be significantly impacted by the transport of coal by rail from the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming to terminals along the Pacific Coast.

WHEREAS, currently, there are four coal-export terminal projects pending before the Corps: the Gateway Pacific Terminals (“GTP”) site at Cherry Point, Washington; the Millennium Bulk Logistics (“MBL”) site at Longview, Washington; the Oregon Gateway Terminal at the Port of Coos Bay, Oregon; and the Coyote Island Terminal site at the Port of Morrow, Oregon. Additional permit applications are anticipated for the Kinder Morgan project at the Port of St. Helens, Oregon, and the RailAmerica proposal at the Port of Grays Harbor, Washington. Additionally, existing export terminals at port facilities in British Columbia that are already receiving coal shipments are considering expansions.

WHEREAS, taken together, the announced capacity of the planned U.S. projects is approximately 150 million tons of coal per year. Operating at full capacity, these plans would mean approximately 60 coal trains—each about a mile and a half long—moving through Montana , Idaho , and the Pacific Northwest everyday. These trains will pass through Bozeman , Montana , and will potentially result in a significant adverse effect on our community that should be considered in any environmental review of these proposals.

WHEREAS, to ensure each individual permitting action accounts for the significant cumulative impacts of multiple proposed Northwest coal export terminals, the Army Corps of Engineers must first prepare a PEIS that carefully analyzes the combined impacts of multiple, similar coal export terminal proposals.

WHEREAS, such analysis is allowed for, and most likely required, under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Under Section 1508.25(a)(1) and (2) of the Council of Environmental Quality’s NEPA regulations, this environmental review must collect, analyze, and consider connected and cumulative actions for any federally supported project. Further, “cumulative” and “similar” actions should be discussed within a single environmental impact statement, necessitating the development of a PEIS.

WHEREAS, the railroad tracks in Bozeman bisect a significant portion of the city’s residential, commercial, and industrial activities, and the crossings at North Rouse Avenue, Wallace Avenue, Griffin Avenue, and Story Hill Road restrict access to Kelly Canyon, Bridger Canyon, and the Bridger and Bangtail Mountain ranges for residential, commercial, and recreational access. Additionally, the response time of emergency services, including law enforcement, fire departments, and emergency medical services, will be increased to the aforementioned areas, resulting in potentially life-threatening delays.

WHEREAS, the increased noise, air pollution, and inconvenience could lead to significant reductions in property values; and an increase in response times for emergency services could lead to increased property insurance and health care costs.

WHEREAS, increased train traffic, whether by an increased number of trains or cars per train, will cause significant increases in diesel exhaust, coal dust emissions, and noise pollution; and the longer and more frequent delays in vehicle traffic will result in increased emissions of air pollution from numerous cars idling for additional hours per day. These increases in pollution can reasonably be expected to have negative health impacts.

WHEREAS, increased diesel emissions and coal dust will negatively affect the agricultural sector of the Greater Bozeman area, especially farms and ranches adjacent to the rail line. This could cause significant negative impacts in local agricultural production, as farms and ranches may need to relocate to avoid contamination of their fields and pastures.

WHEREAS, Bozeman’s large and growing high-tech sector is a major factor in the economic vigor of our city, and the location of high-tech businesses in Bozeman is closely related to quality of life, which will be negatively impacted by increased train traffic. This could lead to a loss of new businesses locating in Bozeman, the exodus of existing businesses, a reduction in construction jobs and all the supporting businesses and services needed to support these businesses and their employees.

WHEREAS, increased noise and air pollution may negatively affect tourism, as most of the city’s hotels and many other tourist facilities are located close to the railroad tracks. Shortened stays due to these impacts would significantly reduce income among this critical economic sector in our area.

WHEREAS, the citizens of Bozeman would bear the costs to upgrade several railroad crossings and build new infrastructure to mitigate traffic delays and safety concerns, resulting in increased taxes.

WHEREAS, mounting evidence demonstrates the negative health impacts of coal mining, process, transport, and combustion.

WHEREAS, studies show living near major transportation routes and industrial areas correlates with higher rates of respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, due to diesel emissions, coal dust particles, and exhaust from idling automobiles.

WHEREAS, increased train traffic through the northern portion of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem and through the I-90 corridor may have a detrimental effect on the waterways, wildlife populations, and health of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Additionally, as more people choose to play poker from Florida and other regions, the increased interest in online gaming platforms highlights the need for robust internet infrastructure and digital safeguards. As tourism and outdoor recreation is integral to Bozeman’s economy, the ecological and economic effects of increased coal transport through the northern portion of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem must be analyzed.

WHEREAS, any environmental analysis of these proposals must consider the negative long-term effects of burning huge volumes of sub-bituminous coal. Domestic demand for sub-bituminous coal from the Powder River Basin has been rapidly declining due to more stringent emissions standards and access to cheaper and cleaner fuels. Coal exports from the Powder River Basin will permanently shape global energy markets. With access to cheap, abundant PRB coal, countries in Asia will be induced to build a new fleet of coal-fired power plants capable of burning the more corrosive, higher-alkaline coal. These new plants, with a minimum thirty-year life span, will lock in reliance on coal from the Powder River Basin and forestall the transition to cleaner energy sources in these developing markets.

WHEREAS, the City of Bozeman Community Climate Action Plan, adopted by the Bozeman City Commission on March 28, 2011, states: “Scientific evidence clearly tells us that the Earth is warming, and that anthropogenic (man-made) causes are influencing this trend. That was the conclusion of the second scientific assessment of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 and reinforced by the third and fourth scientific assessments by the IPCC submitted in 2001 and 2007. In 2007 the IPCC concluded, ‘The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.’”

Now therefore be it resolved that the Bozeman City Commission requests that environmental reviews of these proposals consider the effects on the City of Bozeman.

Be it further resolved that the Bozeman City Commission requests that the Army Corps of Engineers conduct a comprehensive Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement that includes an analysis of not only the direct impacts but also the indirect and cumulative environmental impacts, including the impacts on Montana communities, from all proposed coal ports in the Pacific Northwest.

Be it further resolved that the City Commission of Bozeman requests that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hold a public scoping hearing in Bozeman, Montana .

Go to Montana coal train information page

Corporate Power Over Ballot Questions: Archive of Older Cases

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This page is an archive of older cases of corporate ballot initiative abuse. See our main ballot initiative page here for current cases, background information, references to key legal decisions and more.

In California: 

  • Target Corporation succeeded in overturning a size cap in Davis at the ballot box in 2006 and Long Beach in 2007.
  • In 2005, two giant pharmaceutical companies committed $12 million to run a California ballot initiative on prescription drug pricing at the state level. Donations to Schwarzenegger’s California Recovery Team, the funding arm of his package of ballot initiatives, include $1 million from developer Alex Spanos, along with investments from Safeway Inc., E-Bay Inc. and Bank of America. Also, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Cendant Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Target Inc. each gave $100,000 to Citizens to Save California, a political action committee promoting the governor’s agenda. Their bid failed, but again at enormous cost to those who defeated it.
  • In 2004, a corporate consortium succeeded in passing Proposition 64 to rescind key elements of California ‘s Unfair Business Practices Act (see pre-election story + background links or a post-election analysis by one of the law’s defenders). The law, previously was one of the nation’s strongest tools for environmental and consumer protection, was emasculated in the name of stopping “frivolous lawsuits.” This was the law used by Marc Kasky to sue Nike in the Nike v. Kasky case (we filed an amicus brief (pdf) at the U.S. Supreme Court challenging Nike’s claim to a “right to lie” under the 1st Amendment).
  • Humboldt County, CA: In 2006, the Humboldt Coalition for Community Rights successfully drove passage of a ballot initiative to ban any non-local corporation from contributing to any candidate campaign, referendum or recall in county elections. Read a brief summary. HCCR won 55% of the vote, but was later overturned in court.
  • Some CA unions are pursuing a different strategy of requiring shareholder consent for corporate political expenditures. Though we have not thoroughly evaluated the potential efficacy of this approach, this particular initiative is seriously flawed in our view.

In Montana 

  • In 2006, Wal-Mart overwhelmed citizen activists in Ravalli County with a massive PR campaign and overturned perhaps the most democratically-enacted law in county history. Residents of the county’s four municipalities — those most likely to be impacted — were banned from voting by county officials, based on the argument that their towns can enact their own zoning regulations. With the core base of opposition disenfranchised, Wal-Mart won narrowly.
  • In 2004, a single out-of-state mining corporation, Canyon Resources, Inc., spent a staggering $3 million (in a state with well under a million people) in a failed attempt to overturn I-137, passed by state voters in 1998 to prohibit cyanide leach mining in Montana (see this op-ed for details). Even though the initiative failed, the fight sucked huge amounts of money from citizen groups and diverted thousands of hours of work from pro-active organizing.

In Utah

  • In November of 2007, residents of Heber (near Park City) will vote on whether to allow stores exceeding 60,000 sq ft. A proposed Wal-Mart is the focal point. Wal-Mart already overwhelmed a ballot initiative by residents in nearby Sandy, UT in 2005.

In Arizona.

  • Real estate interests advanced a 2004 initiative to overturn public campaign financing at the state level. This initiative was later removed from the ballot for mixing two issues in a single initiative — forbidden by state law. Months later, Wal-Mart succeeded in overturning a size cap in Flagstaff by running its own ballot initiative.This op-ed covers that battle and an one in Sandy, Utah, where residents won a battle at Utah’s Supreme Court to hold a fall 2005 referendum on whether land should be rezoned to permit Wal-Mart and Home Depot to build there, only to be defeated at the ballot box.
  • In March of 2007, Wal-Mart spent more than $275,000 (the developer kicked in another $25k) to convince voters not to support a rezoning decision that allowed a proposed new “superstore.” Wal-Mart won, 5,598 to 2,893. Protect Prescott Valley, the local opposition, collected $1,500 from the UFCW.

In Maine

  • HR 2050 was introduced and defeated in spring, 2005. The bill proposed to revoke corporate claims to enjoy Bill of Rights protections in the state of Maine.

 See Also

Wal-Mart Charity Evaluated

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Critics question company’s motives

By Liza Featherstone 
First published in the Nov. 21, 2005 issue of The Nation

With a combined fortune of more than $90 billion, the Waltons–the immediate heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton–are the richest family in the world. Five of the country’s ten richest individuals are members of Sam’s immediate family: his wife, Helen, and their three surviving children–Rob, Jim and Alice–as well as his late son John’s widow, Christy (John Walton died in June when his private plane crashed). Until recently, however, they gave away little of their fortune. As Sam Walton explained in his 1992 autobiography, Made in America, he didn’t believe in giving “any undeserving stranger a free ride.” Nor did he believe in being generous with company profits. “We feel very strongly,” he wrote, “that Wal-Mart really is not, and should not be, in the charity business.” Money that Wal-Mart donated to charity, he reasoned, would only come out of the pockets of “either our shareholders or our customers.” (He didn’t mention workers, perhaps a tacit acknowledgment that picking their pockets was just business as usual.)

As for politics, Sam couldn’t stand the stuff. At a 1988 Mother’s Day “toast and roast” honoring Helen Walton, then-Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas quipped that waiting for big campaign contributions from the Waltons was like “leaving landing lights on for Amelia Earhart.”

All that has changed. Since Sam died in 1992, both the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company and the family have dramatically escalated their charitable giving, becoming far more influential in the worlds of philanthropy and politics. It is hardly a coincidence that this transformation occurred after Wal-Mart became the nation’s largest private employer and a flytrap for much-deserved criticism. The company is battling numerous employee rights lawsuits in court, the biggest of these being Betty Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, a sex-discrimination class action representing 1.6 million women. Communities around the nation, charging that the company is a stingy low-wage employer with an arrogant disregard for local and national laws, are battling to keep Wal-Mart from opening or expanding stores. Several labor unions have made fighting Wal-Mart a top priority. This year two major national organizations, Wal-Mart Watch and Wake Up Wal-Mart, formed to lead a citizens’ movement to pressure the company to change its ways.

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), a watchdog group, released a report in September, The Waltons and Wal-Mart: Self-Interested Philanthropy, detailing the recent increase in Wal-Mart and Walton philanthropy and noting its likely relationship to the company’s image problems. Indeed, the increase has been staggering. The Walton Family Foundation (WFF) gave away $106.9 million in 2003–the most recent year for which data are available–twice as much as in 2000. Wal-Mart’s company PAC, now the third-largest corporate PAC and the second-largest corporate donor to the GOP, gave away $2.1 million in 2004, compared with just $100,000 in 1994. The Walton family, too, has greatly increased its political giving; in 2004, for example, Alice donated $2.6 million to the influential Republican PAC Progress for America, which supported the sleazy Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and gave Bush a critical push in the election’s final months. Since 1999 the Wal-Mart Foundation (WMF)–a company-controlled entity with no direct connection to the WFF–has tripled its giving and by the end of this year will have doled out more than $200 million in cash and merchandise, according to spokeswoman Melissa O’Brien.

The company also donated $20 million in cash and merchandise to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, garnering extensive–and partially justified–praise. To antigovernment zealots like New York Times columnist John Tierney and the wing nuts running the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Wal-Mart’s impressive response to the hurricane showed that the private sector is simply more effective than the government. It is true that when you starve government by draining its resources and electing officials who don’t believe in it, nothing seems to work. But Wal-Mart played a major role in that eviscerating process. Much of Wal-Mart’s philanthropy (as well as that of the Walton family) has been directed toward promoting anti-government politics, whether by lobbying against high taxes for the rich or contributing to Republican candidates, conservative think tanks and efforts to privatize education.

Jeff Krehely, who co-wrote the NCRP report, says that for his organization, such a sharp increase in giving, coupled with the company’s obvious desire to spin itself as a better corporate citizen, “raises red flags. We wonder, What’s the agenda here? What’s happening?” The WMF’s Melissa O’Brien told The Nation that criticisms of the company come from “special-interest groups” and do not influence its giving. She also told the New York Sun that the NCRP report was funded by Target, a charge Krehely calls “ludicrous.” (Dayton Hudson, Target’s former parent company, contributed to the NCRP in the 1990s. In 2000 the company reorganized as the Target Corporation and hasn’t contributed to the watchdog group since.)

Each Walton heir has philanthropic projects of his or her own–Alice, for example, is building a world-class art museum in northwest Arkansas–but the family fortune should be considered as one because most of the money is managed together. The giving is also largely administered together, through the Walton Family Foundation, as well as through close communication among its family members. (At least twice a year, the family meets to talk about how to spend its money.) The Waltons own about 40 percent of Wal-Mart’s stock, making Wal-Mart essentially a family business–highly unusual for a large multinational company. (Both the Wal-Mart Family Foundation and Walton Enterprises–the company that represents the Walton family’s interests–declined to cooperate with this article, or to make any of the notoriously press-shy Waltons available for interviews.)

Philanthropy obscures the often unseemly process by which the money was made–and for Wal-Mart that’s at least part of the point. Stephen Copley, a United Methodist Church pastor who serves on the board of the Arkansas Single Parents Scholarship Fund, a Springdale, Arkansas, charity that has benefited from Walton dollars, says that the program has “an incredible success rate. One lady even got a PhD. [The Walton money] does a tremendous amount of good.” However, he adds, “it’s great to help single parents go to school, but those same single parents might be working for Wal-Mart, and they can’t afford health insurance.” Copley, also head of the Arkansas Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, is troubled that in his home state, Walton and Wal-Mart generosity “gets great media…they look so good even though in reality their business practices are very bad.”

The Wal-Mart Foundation gives a staggering number of gifts, apparently in order to buy goodwill in as many communities as possible, rather than, as Krehely points out, “giving to sustain organizations.” The WMF’s 2003 IRS 990 form is 2,239 pages long, far longer than that of the Ford Foundation, which has billions more in assets. That’s because most WMF gifts are tiny: thousands or even hundreds of dollars to churches and Lions clubs and Boys and Girls clubs, $500 to the YMCA of Nashville and Middle Tennessee and to the Tulip Trace (Indiana) Girl Scouts Council and so on. Communities where Wal-Mart faced a particular battle over opening a new store–Inglewood, California, or New York City–enjoyed especially generous largesse. Like the flowers and other tokens of courtship from a suitor who later becomes a wife-beater, such gifts are often followed by demands for public subsidies and tax breaks. In this way Wal-Mart is repeating the strategy that has served it so well in Arkansas, where Wal-Mart and the Waltons’ charitable gifts are many and company critics are relatively few. Says Lindsay Brown, president of the Central Arkansas Labor Council, “It’s a hell of a plan, and it works.”

We are supposed to applaud philanthropy–the very word connotes altruism and “giving back”–but Walton and Wal-Mart giving serves as a reminder that philanthropy provides an alternative to taxation, a way for rich people and corporations to decide what to do with their extra money, as opposed to letting the rest of us decide through our elected governments. Since charitable donations are a tax write-off, as Krehely points out, “they are supposed to benefit the public good.” He thinks it is reasonable to ask whether a family’s–or a company’s–philanthropy serves the common good, or at least enough good “to make up for the public revenue that we’re losing.”

Funny he should mention taxes: Wal-Mart and the Waltons have, after all, been notably reluctant to pay them. Not only has the company lobbied for tax breaks in communities all over the nation, the Waltons–the family that former Wal-Mart board member Hillary Clinton has called “the best America has to offer”–have campaigned vigorously against the estate tax. They have donated money to its opponents, Republicans like John Thune of South Dakota and David Vitter of Louisiana, and enlisted one of Washington’s top lobbying firms, Patton Boggs–a leading anti-estate tax lobbyist–to represent their interests.

Chuck Collins of Responsible Wealth, a group of well-off people who strongly favor the estate tax, observes that the Waltons sometimes say the estate tax is not a priority for the family. “That may be true from their perspective,” he says, “but it’s a bit like an elephant saying it’s really not interested in stepping on anthills. When you’re America’s wealthiest family, you are a philanthropic and lobbying heavyweight even on your minor interests.” For instance, Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, one of a handful of Democrats who draw checks from the Waltons, supports estate-tax repeal (or crippling “reform”). “Senator Lincoln will wax eloquent about the small farmers of Arkansas,” Collins says, “but what’s really on her mind is Walton.”

In addition to campaigning specifically against the estate tax, the Waltons also give money to groups that generally favor tax giveaways to the rich, like Americans for Tax Reform. And the Waltons have already reaped the benefits of tax policies enacted by the conservatives they helped put in office: This year Bush’s dividend tax cut will save the family $51 million, according to Lee Farris, an estate-tax expert with the Boston-based United for a Fair Economy.

The Waltons’ philanthropy–and their hostility to paying their fair share of taxes–also needs to be viewed in the context of tax subsidies Wal-Mart has received for building new stores, which Good Jobs First places at more than $1 billion, an estimate that does not include the many other ways taxpayers subsidize Wal-Mart stores, for instance, through numerous forms of public assistance–Medicaid, Food Stamps, public housing–that often allow workers to subsist on Wal-Mart’s low wages. A report by the House Education and Workforce Committee conservatively places the latter at $420,750 per store; the Wal-Mart Foundation’s per-store charitable giving is just 11 percent of that amount ($47,222).

In addition to spending on Republican candidates, the Waltons have lavished funds on right-wing ideological institutions–organizations that serve the interest of wealthy individuals and lawless antiunion companies like Wal-Mart. From 1998 through 2003 the WFF contributed $25,000 to the Heritage Foundation, $15,000 to the Cato Institute, $125,000 to the Hudson Institute, $155,000 to the Goldwater Institute, $70,000 to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, $300,000 to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, $185,000 to the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy and $350,000 to the Evergreen Freedom Foundation.

Both the family and the company have made education a major funding priority. Many of the WFF’s education gifts have a distinct ideological tilt, emphasizing a “free market” approach to education reform, a vision the late John Walton embraced with particular enthusiasm. The WFF funds advocacy groups promoting conservative school “reform”–otherwise known as privatization–like the Center for Education Reform and the Black Alliance for Educational Options, as well as the actual programs these groups champion: charter schools and voucher programs. (The BAEO did not return calls for this article.)

Among such projects, the Waltons tend to fund the most mind-numbing and cultish, giving in 2003 alone nearly $3 million to Knowledge Is Power (KIPP) schools and millions more to other schools using the KIPP curriculum, which emphasizes regimented recitation rather than critical or creative thinking. Particularly widespread in low-income neighborhoods, such schools seem bent on disciplining and exhorting the poor rather than developing human potential (much like Wal-Mart as a workplace, with its relentless company cheers and dead-end jobs). Several years ago the principal of New York City’s John A. Reisenbach Charter School, which uses the KIPP curriculum and received $118,000 from the Waltons in 2003, told me proudly, as we watched fidgety second graders chant meaningless slogans, “We are getting them ready for business.”

The WFF has become the single largest source of funding for the voucher and charter school movement. Walton funding allows some charter schools to spend more per pupil than “competing” public schools. The ironic result is that while these projects are supposed to demonstrate to the public the wonders of a marketized approach to education, the WFF’s money gives its grantees an advantage over other schools, allowing them to perform better than they would otherwise. “[The Waltons] claim to support competition and the free market,” says Paul Dunphy, a policy analyst for Citizens for Public Schools, a Boston-based coalition, “but actually they are manipulating the market, conferring advantage on their pet projects.”

It’s a fitting paradox, since the Wal-Mart economic model, like almost anything held up as an example of the beauty of the free market, contains so many contradictions (yes, it’s extremely profitable, but look at all those tax subsidies). Because so much Walton and Wal-Mart philanthropy is crudely self-interested, it’s tempting to find an equally crude motive for the Walton family’s interest in education; many Wal-Mart critics have assumed that the Waltons must be planning to reap several more fortunes through for-profit education companies. That’s not completely baseless: John Walton was briefly involved in such a venture. However, he backed out, realizing such profiteering was hurting the credibility of his education reform efforts. And so far, for-profit education is still not a very profitable industry–especially when compared with retail.

The Waltons’ motives for supporting the privatization of education seem–at this writing, anyway–to be ideological, even idealistic, rather than an elaborate backdrop to a new money-making scheme. Like many rich Americans who have helped to finance the far right’s rise to power, they have embraced a worldview in which what’s good for the wealthy is good for everyone else. And greater cultural acceptance of the unfettered market–through an increasing tolerance for privatization of all kinds–will certainly make the world safer for a family business that thrives on weak government and lack of regulation. But it’s also likely that the Waltons, like most right-wingers, sincerely believe that their ideas have the potential to improve people’s lives. Why wouldn’t the Waltons genuinely believe in the free market? Look how well it has served them.

Helen Walton, now 85 and in poor health, is expected to donate almost all of her personal fortune–worth $18 billion–to the WFF upon her death, which, as the NCRP points out, will make that entity the richest foundation in the world. This should disturb progressives, since so much Walton money goes to support conservative causes. Yet although the current direction and political leanings of Walton “philanthropy” are clear, the future is a mystery. As Krehely observes, nothing is known about the politics or interests of Sam Walton’s grandchildren. This matters in a family foundation; this fall the Olin Foundation closed its doors, having spent down its endowment because the older generation did not trust the younger Olins to carry on the family’s right-wing traditions. Since the Waltons don’t say much about their future plans, or about their internal family politics, it’s unclear what lies in store for this–currently–right-wing fortune.

“The Waltons could be an enormous force for good,” says Responsible Wealth’s Chuck Collins. “As the company’s biggest shareholders, they could decide that Wal-Mart could pay a living wage. They could use their charitable dollars not to undermine public education but to boost educational opportunity. They could become major contributors to social good. But they’re not.”

One item in the Walton Family Foundation’s most recent IRS filing shows how uninterested this family is in true social responsibility: a measly $6,000 to something called the Wal-Mart Associates in Need Fund. Contrast that with the millions the family spends promoting right-wing causes, and it becomes painfully clear that the Waltons value conservative ideology far more than they value the human beings who have made them the richest family on earth. Told about these figures, Kathleen MacDonald, a Wal-Mart candy department clerk in Aiken, South Carolina, responded bluntly, “All I have to say about that is, it doesn’t surprise me. Like Bush, they don’t have a clue what working families go through.” MacDonald would like to see The Simple Life do a show about working at Wal-Mart. “I could see Paris Hilton on a register at Christmastime, or stocking shelves,” she says. Or perhaps Alice Walton as a greeter, on her feet all day, thanking us for shopping at Wal-Mart.

© 2005 The Nation

Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute. Thanks to Laura Starecheski, who contributed reporting, and to Meleiza Figueroa, a researcher on Robert Greenwald’s film, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, who, with the generous consent of her employers, shared her findings.

Montanans Organize to Stop Coal Trains, Exports

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Plans by coal corporations could create five-fold increase in train traffic, extensive traffic delays and large increases in noise and air pollution

Note: City Commission Vote! Gallatin Valley residents: come speak or express your opposition to exporting coal through Bozeman and show your support for this proposed city resolution at the Bozeman City Commission meeting on Monday August 13 (time TBD) at City Hall, 121 North Rouse Avenue (old library building). Thanks to all who came out to the July 9 Commission meeting to exporess your views and push this forward.

Please see bottom of this page for information on submitting letters to the editor of Montana daily newspapers and (for Bozeman residents) to City Council members.

Imagine dozens more trains than existing traffic levels passing through your town…every day and night. Trains with 70 or more cars carrying uncovered carloads of crushed coal. Time and money wasted in traffic back-ups of 8 or more minutes every half-hour. More noise pollution. Coal dust pollution. Higher taxes to pay for massive “externalities” created by transnational mining corporations like Arch, Peabody and Cloud Peak. All this so they can extract coal from Montana and Wyoming, transport it to Pacific ports and ship it across the ocean, while creating almost no new Montana jobs.

Citizens of Bozeman, Billings, Livingston and other many other communities in Montana, Oregon and Washington would suffer directly while the planet will endure environmental impacts from burning huge amounts of oil to ship cheap coal to China and other Asian nations, where it can be burned with inadequate pollution controls. Virtually no new jobs or revenues would be created in any Montana communities.

This disturbing picture already is coming into focus. We now see an average of five more trains daily passing through communities on the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe rail line through Montana and into Washington (many through Oregon as well). We believe the harms caused to our communities and the environment as a whole are unacceptable and must be halted through a grassroots uprising.

Perhaps we can learn from the lead of Coal-Free Bellingham, which is pushing to implement the Bellingham Community Bill of Rights. Instead of asking the EPA or Army Corps of Engineers to limit the number of coal trains, reduce the 500 pounds of dust that falls of each rail car, or seek help for traffic problems, their resolution says, “Whereas, the residents of the City of Bellingham possess the inherent and inalienable right to govern their own community…” and goes on to prohibit exportation of coal through their port. The group, working through our allies at the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, also has compiled an informative FAQ (pdf). The people of Bellingham are choosing to act as sovereign citizens, not as subjects. Will we?

Elsewhere, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a resolution on May 29 opposing the development of coal-export terminals in Washington, while Missoula took the modest step of passing a resolution asking the Army Corps of Engineers to study the health impacts of the proposed expansion of coal trains and export.

Contact info@ReclaimDemocracy.org or call 406-582-1224 to get involved and get contacts in your community. In Bozeman, an inaugural organizing meeting yielded four action groups: public education, state-level policy, developing city ordinances and networking to build alliances with sister communities and organizations. Contact us for the point person in any group of interest to you.

Background Links on the Coal Train/Export Controversy

News

Key Resources and Organizations

Bozeman, MT Organizing Updates and Resources
(contact us to engage or join local announcement list). See report on inaugural community organizing meeting of May 29.

Speak Up in Print! Express you thoughts in a letter to the editor to one of the Montana newspapers (below) in impacted communities. Reclaim Democracy! created this thorough free primer on writing effective letters to help you (and we’re happy to offer editing assistance).

Bozeman City Commission

  • Sean Becker, Mayor, sbecker@bozeman.net
  • Jeff Krauss, Deputy Mayor, jkrauss@bozeman.net
  • Carson Taylor, Commissioner, ctaylor@bozeman.net
  • Chris Mehl, Commissioner, cmehl@bozeman.net
  • Cynthia Andrus, Commissioner, candrus@bozeman.net

Betraying Public Education in the Name of Reform

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by Jennifer Rockne
April 2000

The following account was written for publication in Colorado, one of the “leading” states (following Florida, Texas and a few others) in instituting destructive high stakes testing. However, this is part of a national education-for-profit agenda that will spread quickly absent citizen awareness and opposition.

Headlines after the Colorado State Legislature passed Governor Owens’ school reform package declared victory for Owens. Unfortunately Owens’ win is a huge loss for many children in public schools throughout Colorado.

Owens’ bill mimics policies being promoted in several states in the name of improving schools with “standards and accountability.” But accountability too often is code for more control over classroom activity by people not in classrooms. Learning opportunities for crucial skills not measured by standardized tests may be diminished because people who don’t know much about education have decided it’s time to invoke tough standards.

Consider carefully that the primary opposition came from those who actually do the educating–and, as our children’s schools are transformed into giant test-prep centers, increasingly from parents as well. Owens’ bill mandates that some schools will fail regardless of objective achievement standards because they will be graded against other schools as if they were rivals in a zero-sum game. What a great way to discourage sharing of ideas and resources and to teach children that they live in a world of cutthroat competition!

Under Owens’ plan, schools grades will be based exclusively on standardized test results, stigmatizing schools that are working to meet the needs of the lower income, learning challenged, or non-native English speakers who typically are low on the bell curve already. Owens’ bill then will grant failing schools two years to dramatically boost test scores against other schools (by 2.5% annually) or local control will be stripped away and given to state or outside management. Didn’t Owens run as a Republican, the party that espouses more local control? Unfortunately his legislation is based on the corporate privatization agenda, not true conservative values.

Some standardized testing certainly is valuable. Common sense suggests we should determine what our educational goals are, then check in periodically to see how successful we have been at meeting them. Some goals can be measured by such tests, but unfortunately assessment threatens to dominate the educational process–with severe consequences.

Proponents of Owens’ fix will point to Texas where in-state standardized test scores improved dramatically. However the results of a University of Texas study last year prove the score increases are not due to improved student learning and do not translate to performance on national standardized tests.

As schools are driven to drill students in preparation for standardized exams, important opportunities for students to become critical and curious learners are sacrificed. For example, the voucher system implemented in Florida last year, which Owens’ agenda models, forced a shrunken curriculum of only test score-enhancing subjects, to the detriment of social studies and science courses whose content is not included in standardized tests. Theyve also cut back field trips that inspire kids with new experiences in favor of test-taking fairs.

Students in some of the failing Florida schools are offered rewards such as televisions and video game stations for producing top standardized test scores. Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation tend to be inversely related: the more people are rewarded for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward. We should be wary of damaging students motivation since learning becomes a chore when it is reward-driven.

Affluence is a primary factor in predicting test scores, yet our Governor wishes to impoverish further the poor schools while giving financial rewards only to the elites (under Owens’ bill, only “A” schools and schools showing the greatest improvement will be eligible for designated award dollars.) Research also demonstrates when teachers ultimately focus on raising standardized test scores, they tend to change their teaching style, and students’ performance actually declines. In one 1990 Colorado study, teachers were asked to instruct their students on a specific task. About half the teachers were told their students must “perform up to standards” on a subsequent test. The rest of the teachers simply were invited to “facilitate the children’s learning” on the same task. The students in the latter groups outperformed the groups whose teachers were faced with standards.

Studies in other states having reformed education also indicate that teachers are teaching the test, according to a survey conducted at the University of Texas. The pressure of performance standardized testing places on teachers and administrators has driven some to cheating for the sake of maintaining jobs and schools. They have excluded special education students from testing, altered answers, and passed test questions from school to school, sometimes to extremes. A recent investigation in New York revealed a standardized testing cheating scandal dating back a decade that involved 52 educators at 32 different schools. In Austin, Texas a grand jury indicted an independent school district for allegedly manipulating student information to disqualify low scores. Is this what we want?

Teachers in standards-oriented classrooms have their ethics challenged and discretion diminished, removing most opportunity for students to play an active role in designing their own learning. The wide-ranging and enthusiastic exploration of ideas that characterize the best classrooms cannot survive when emphasis is on preparing students to test.

To question our reliance on lectures, worksheets, and memorization, we must confront the possibility that we spent a good chunk of our childhood doing things that were every bit as pointless as we suspected. Active learners participate in their own education. They acquire facts and skills, but in a context and for a purpose. Students can learn skills within interesting problems, developing critical abilities for life beyond the classroom as members of civic society a role for which rote memorization of facts does not prepare them.

We always should strive to improve public education, but we should look to those involved in classrooms for ideas before following the model promoted by corporate think tanks behind the Governors agenda. Their privatization agenda is clear to anyone who reads the fine print; stripping schools of local control and hand-delivering them to corporate management is likely unless the public gets involved.

The right to a quality, public education is one of the truly great American institutions. Owens and other privatizers who seek to undermine our right should be recognized as traitors to the American ideal of equal rights and opportunity. Calling all Colorado citizens who care about protecting and improving public education: the time to act is now.

Resources

Look for these books by Alfie Kohn:

  • The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and Tougher Standards –the title speaks for itself.
  • Education, Inc. is a collection of essays explorings corporate influence in the education.
  • What To Look For In A Classroom is a collection of essays on various educational topics largely challenging pervasive myths in the field.
  • . . .and this one by Susan Ohanian: One Size Fits Few: The Folly Of Educational Standards
  • Alfie Kohns website is a rich source for resources, information and ways to turn concern into effective action in our childrens education.

Suggestions for motivated folks to act:

  • Talk informally to friends and acquaintances about the issues anywhere you go!
  • Write a letter to the editor of a local or regional paper.
  • Write to or visit your state legislators about the issue.
  • Attend and speak out at school board meetings and other community forums on education.
  • Refuse to participate in state and district testing programs. Really. It’s a growing trend that can play a key role. Parents can keep their kids home on testing days to protest this use of school ti and make sure other parent know this is almost always an option–even when they call the tests “mandatory.”