As Hillary Clinton Distanced Herself From Walmart, Her Campaign Treasurer Maintained His Ties

[Cheese Sandwich]

WASHINGTON -- Though former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is courting top labor leaders, picking up union endorsements and criticizing Republican efforts to undercut unions as she runs for president, her campaign treasurer's ties to the stridently anti-union Walton family empire may raise questions about the campaign's commitment to labor rights.

Jose Villarreal, Clinton's treasurer, has deep ties to the Democratic establishment. A San Antonio-based consultant and former partner at the powerhouse legal and lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Villarreal has long served as a trusted Clinton adviser and has had leadership roles on five consecutive Democratic presidential campaigns. At the State Department, Villarreal sent Clinton’s team messaging advice and served as the commissioner general for the United States’ pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo -- a role that earned him ambassadorial rank from President Barack Obama.

What makes Villarreal's role in the Clinton campaign intriguing is that he has remained within the orbit of the Waltons, America's richest family, even as Clinton has worked to downplay her own six-year term on the board of Walmart, the country’s largest private-sector employer. While Villarreal was on Walmart’s Executive Advisory Council until at least 2013, Clinton’s official campaign website biography makes no mention that she sat on the company’s board from 1986 to 1992. When questioned about Walmart’s anti-union stance, Clinton has said that she believes workers should be able to unionize and bargain collectively. She devoted just one paragraph in her autobiography to her time at Walmart, returned a donation from the company's PAC in 2005 and said in a 2008 campaign debate that the company's growth had "raised serious questions about the responsibility of corporations."

Clinton's attempts to distance herself from the retail giant may have been necessary for her to compete in Democratic primaries, since Walmart has for decades waged war against organized labor, a position abhorrent to many Democratic activists. In an acknowledgment Monday that Democrats and unions often have parallel interests, Clinton spoke out against “efforts across our country to undermine worker bargaining power, which has been proven again and again to drive up wages.” As Clinton goes about channeling this message to defend her left flank from Democratic primary rivals like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, the presence of Villarreal on her campaign team suggests that there’s only so many degrees of separation she can put up between herself and a company infamous among progressives for its fights against the specter of unionization.
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read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/14/hillary-clinton-walmart_n_7714918.html

[Cheese Sandwich]

1. Are Walton/Walmart Ties Hurting Teach for America’s Reputation?

The Walton Family Foundation has contributed more than $50 million to Teach for America since 2009.[1] Walton family member (and Walmart Vice Chairman) Greg Penner is a member of the Teach for America Board of Directors. Another TfA Board Member is Jose Villarreal, a close associate of Walmart and the Waltons, having served on the Walmart board from 1998-2006 and the Walton-owned First Solar board from 2005 to 2013.[2]

In many ways, Teach for America has become the Walmart model of education – low cost, low-wage and according to many critics, low quality. Teach for America trains well-meaning, high-achieving college graduates for just five weeks before sending them to serve out a two-year commitment by teaching in high-needs schools – in districts such as Newark, Philadelphia and Chicago, where thousands of experienced educators and support staff are being laid off and traditional public schools are being closed.[3]

http://walmart1percent.org/2015/02/09/are-waltonwalmart-ties-hurting-teach-for-americas-reputation/

[LWolf]

2. Teach for America

has earned its reputation.

We watched incredulously. There we were, celebrating TFA’s 20th anniversary in a room with 11,000 other TFA alumni. In addition to Klein (then-chancellor of the New York City schools), speakers at the plenary included Michelle Rhee, Dave Levin, Geoffrey Canada, John Deasy, and other high-profile promoters of market-based reform. The messages from the panelists were consistent and dire: Schools are in crisis; ineffective or lazy teachers and the union that protects them are to blame. The solution lies in the radical transformation of our public school system, which must, they argued, be led and staffed by those in the room. And then it became surreal: Joel Klein compared TFA to the democratic revolution then erupting in Egypt, prompting the crowd to rise to their feet cheering.

We attended the summit as critical alumni and as graduate students researching TFA. Speaker after speaker promoted market-based solutions: charter district reform, deregulation of teacher education, and merit-based pay. And focused on the role of TFA alumni in promoting these efforts. We arrived at the summit with strong reservations and left with the unequivocal understanding that TFA has fully embraced a corporate-sponsored agenda. After we returned from this pep rally for privatization, we began to trace the connections between TFA and corporate reform.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/28_03/28_03_kretchsond.shtml

Last year, Wendy Heller Chovnick, a former Teach For America manager, spoke out against her former organization in The Washington Post, decrying its “inability and unwillingness to honestly address valid criticism.” In recent years, such criticism has centered on Teach For America’s intimate involvement in the education privatization movement and its five-week training, two-year teaching model, which critics claim offers recruits a transformative résumé-boosting experience but burdens schools with disruptive turnover cycles.

In the interview, Chovnick referenced the extent to which Teach For America manufactured its public image, explaining, “Instead of engaging in real conversations with critics, and even supporters, about the weaknesses of Teach For America and where it falls short, Teach For America seemed to put a positive spin on everything. During my tenure on staff, we even got a national team, the communications team, whose job it was to get positive press out about Teach For America in our region and to help us quickly and swiftly address any negative stories, press or media.”ast year, Wendy Heller Chovnick, a former Teach For America manager, spoke out against her former organization in The Washington Post, decrying its “inability and unwillingness to honestly address valid criticism.” In recent years, such criticism has centered on Teach For America’s intimate involvement in the education privatization movement and its five-week training, two-year teaching model, which critics claim offers recruits a transformative résumé-boosting experience but burdens schools with disruptive turnover cycles.

http://www.thenation.com/article/what-happens-when-you-criticize-teach-america/

Kramer may be reaching for modesty when he downplays the ideological agenda of TFA. The number of TFA alums who are now school principals or hold other public and private sector leadership positions of influence is quite large. To the extent that they believe, as Sondel suggests TFA believes, “that public schools are irreparably damaged, [that] bad teachers and bureaucracy are to blame, and our only salvation is by diminishing the union, innovating and creating systems of choice and competition,” TFA does have an ideology, one that appears ensconced in the education reform movement of public school privatization.

http://nonprofitquarterly.org/2014/12/03/teach-for-america-at-25-and-the-movement-to-privatize-schools/

Wherever there is advocacy for vouchers and charters, there you will find TFA.

And their numbers are growing, fueled by their vast treasury, and their ability to fool young people into thinking that they are “progressive,” when they have become the frontline soldiers of the far-right enemies of public education.

http://dianeravitch.net/2013/10/21/teach-for-america-political-juggernaut-for-privatization/

[MisterP]

3. he looks like Nigel Lawson

[BrotherIvan]

4. Boo

So tired of this crap.

[Vattel]

5. Meh. I tend to judge someone by their record, not by their associates

and not by their campaign speeches. On that score Clinton is too conservative on economic issues for me.

[NCTraveler]

6. "As Hillary Clinton Distanced Herself From Walmart"

No doubt in my mind this is some kind of bizzaro Colbert shtick being attempted by some. Difference, Colbert is smart, funny, and on the left.