Posts
Well, sort of. Actually the title referred to pauper Tim Russert and his son who got a job in the media! But Mickey Kaus unintentionally put his finger on the biggest heist being perpetrated by the traditional purveyors of special interest goodies to big labor and giga-power mega-rich fat-cat Democrats like Sens. Mark Dayton and Jay Rockefeller.
Is there a conflict of interest between Wal-mart and the Democratic Party, as represented perhaps by its cats-paw Target?
Wal-mart's being targeted by Target Corporation allied with big labor is probably the brainstorm of long-time Target board member James A. Johnson and trusty sidekick Richard Holbrooke, who have long records of yeoman service to the cause of the Democratic Party and the enrichment of the wealthy do-gooders populating the summit of that not-so-grand, but very old party.
Matthew Cooper, now a Time correspondent recently involved in the Judy Miller imbroglio concerning First Amendment issues, wrote presciently in 1997 about Johnson’s burgeoning power inside the Beltway.
Preserving its government subsidy is Fannie Mae's central mission, which helps to explain why a fellow like Jim Johnson is the CEO of this $325 billion company. Johnson has only a modest business background. A Minnesota native, he was a longtime aide to Walter Mondale, the senator and later vice president. When Mondale lost the vice presidency in 1980, Johnson and Richard Holbrooke, the diplomat, founded Public Strategies, a Washington consulting firm that gave advice to business clients. Later he performed similar services for Shearson Lehman. When Mondale ran for president in 1984, Johnson was the chairman of his campaign. Maxine Isaacs, who later became his wife, was the campaign's press secretary. Considered likable and charming, Johnson and Isaacs were, in a small way, the Carville and Matalin of that period: the hot political couple. Johnson joined Fannie Mae in 1990 and became its chairman a year later.
Left unsaid in Cooper’s piece was Johnson’s stint with Target before he got the Fannie Mae job. Target, of course, is owned by the family of Sen. Mark Dayton, Minnesota Senator for the Democratic Farmer/Labor Party and brother-in-law to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Democratic Senator for West Virginia. Who, as his name indicates, is also independently wealthy, but could always use more.
Target was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1902. It is the sixth largest retailer in the United States behind Wal-Mart, The Home Depot, Kroger, Sears Holdings Corporation, and Costco, and is ranked 27th on the2005 Fortune 500. It sells more gift cards than any other retailer in the United States and is also the third-largest seller of music in the United States.
According to one Wal-mart critic:
Target allegedly engages in many practices that rival Wal-Mart faces criticism for engaging in; however, because of Target's smaller size in comparison to Wal-Mart, Target often escapes criticism. In addition, many people may overlook Target's practices because of its successful marketing to differentiate itself as being more upscale. Some questionable practices, like Wal-Mart, that Target allegedly engages in include: low hourly wages (lack of living wage), opposition to labor unions, and its contribution to urban sprawl Liza Featherstone, author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart, stated in an interview, "Aesthetically, we all like Target better, but their wages are in many places low or just as low, and they all represent the Wal-Martization of our economy, which is the exchange of low prices for poor work conditions.
Who controls "aesthetics" in the American marketplace? Not Walmart.
There are other reasons to suspect Target’s malign influence in the culture war against Wal-mart. Target conspicuously banned the Christian Salvation Army, from its stores last Christmas. Wal-mart in turn gave millions of dollars in contributions to The Salvation Army. The secularists behind the war against Walmart are pulling out all stops, including marshalling a recent PBS Frontline which purports to show how Walmart is hurting the US economy.
It’s a pretty safe bet that strategic planners for a Democratic comeback like Richard Holbrooke and James A. Johnson, who incidentally is now head of the Brookings Institute and The Kennedy Center and one of the top Mandarins of the MSM, may have revisited their Shearson Lehman mode a while back and have mapped out a way to construct the architecture of a full-scale offensive against Walmart.
Who DOES control aesthetics, or at least the frontal lobes of the lobotomized useful idiots on the American left. Perhaps it’s the bellwether of the American ultra-left, the ideological leader of the blame-America crowd, the Nation. Even veteran of the ultra-left Christopher Hitchens found the Nation too hysterically rabid an environment in which to work.
After all, it's partly about money & power and partly about payback. The Nation pointed out the guideposts to follow:
According to the November 21, 2005 issue of The Nation, recently both the Arkansas-based company and the
Walton family have elevated their charitable giving. To wit, Alice Walton donated $2.6 million to the Progress for America PAC, which supported the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. 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.
Oops, the aesthetics of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth just doesn't fit into the Feng Shui of progressive mythologizing.
So perhaps we are looking at a case of payback for poor John Kerry’s miserable 2004 effort, pitting pit-bulls of the Democratic left such as Nancy Pelosi and Typhoid Mary-land Senator Barbara Mikulski as well as the hyper-rich Brahmins like Mark Dayton and Jay Rockefeller against Walmart.
As a straw man, the Mandarinate is employing the widely discredited---not even Target allows them---labor unions in a fool’s errand against Walmart in Maryland to begin with and who knows where to follow. The big-city MSM drumbeat continues to fault Walmart's "aesthetics."
Predictably, the courts will have the final say on whether a state can discriminate against an employer of an arbitrary number of employees. And soon, the SCOTUS may have one more member who is not ambiguous about issues which hurt the pocketbook of the American consumer.
No comments :
Post a Comment