IN THIS ISSUE

Everday Low Prices: Wal-Mart's $135,540 Bargain
The Bush administration's response to Wal-Mart's child labor law violations gives new meaning to the term "slap on the wrist." Issuing a $135,540 fine to Wal-Mart, a company with annual revenues exceeding $250 billion, is tantamount to fining the average American worker about 3 cents. MORE...

NCLB: Offshoring Work from Chicago to Calcutta
American companies that move jobs offshore have been harshly criticized, so it's surprising to learn that the U.S. government itself, through a little-known provision of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), is providing a taxpayer-funded windfall for tutoring companies in India. MORE...

D.C. Voucher Program: Wrong in So Many Ways
The Washington, D.C., school voucher program, which had little support from local parents, was a bad idea from the get-go.  But the Department of Education (ED) found a way to take a bad idea . . . and make it worse. MORE...

Everyday Low Prices:
Wal-Mart's $135,540 Bargain

The Bush administration's response to Wal-Mart's child labor law violations gives new meaning to the term "slap on the wrist." Issuing a $135,540 fine to Wal-Mart, a company with annual revenues exceeding $250 billion, is tantamount to fining the average American worker about 3 cents.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued the paltry fine even though its own investigators had cited Wal-Mart for 24 violations of child labor laws, including one incident in which a minor was injured while operating a chain saw. What's more, the Bush administration's agreement with Wal-Mart gives the retailer 15 days' notice before DOL conducts future investigations—enough time to make good use of those document shredders sold in aisle 12. A DOL official defended the corporate giveaway, telling the New York Times that the agreement was "typical," but, as Rep. George Miller (D.-Calif.) pointed out, it was anything but.

DOL apparently even gave Wal-Mart the final say over a press release announcing the investigators' findings. After DOL's first press release made the unforgivable mistake of including a reference to the chain saw injury, DOL recalled it and replaced it with a more Wal-Mart-friendly version.

Fortunately, DOL's political appointees may not have the last word on Wal-Mart: It looks as if the Bush administration, which has sought to undermine the independence of inspectors general, forgot to make sure the DOL inspector general was on board. DOL's inspector general has announced it is investigating the Wal-Mart agreement. And Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general in Connecticut, where several of Wal-Mart's violations occurred, has called for a state investigation. Because of DOL's sweetheart deal with Wal-Mart, Blumenthal said Connecticut "has an obligation to undertake a more proactive and aggressive role" in investigating Wal-Mart's labor law violations.

As USA Today and other news organizations have reported, Wal-Mart's principal owners, members of the Walton family, have sought to buy influence and access through the family's ultraconservative money machine. And when the DOL fine was first announced, the money machine seemed to have exempted Wal-Mart from the laws that define employers' responsibilities. But, with any luck, Wal-Mart will have to start playing by the rules.


No Child Left Behind: Offshoring Work from Chicago to Calcutta

American companies that move jobs offshore have been harshly criticized, so it's surprising to learn that the U.S. government itself, through a little-known provision of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), is providing a taxpayer-funded windfall for tutoring companies in India.

NCLB requires school districts to offer tutoring to some students in schools that fail to meet the law's flawed adequate yearly progress requirements. Districts can contract with firms to provide that tutoring through computers and Internet hookups instead of classrooms, and, as a result, the United States is sending NCLB funds to tutoring companies in India (audio link). National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" reports that tutoring firms in India pay employees as little as $230 a month for full-time work.

The offshoring of NCLB will come as no surprise to critics of the Bush administration, which has done little to slow the flow of jobs overseas, or to critics of the U.S. Department of Education, which recently ordered American school districts and teachers to quit providing tutoring to their students. The effect of ED's decision, whatever its rationale, is that American students can get their reading and math tutoring from uncertified instructors in Calcutta, but not from certified teachers in Chicago.

With four years of President Bush's dismal job creation record, the worst since the Hoover administration, and with the administration's cavalier attitude toward offshoring guiding the next four years, Archie Bunker's nostalgic hope—"Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again" (audio link)--has become reality.


D.C. Voucher Program: Wrong in So Many Ways

The Washington, D.C., school voucher program, which had little support from local parents, was a bad idea from the get-go. But the U.S. Department of Education (ED) found a way to take a bad idea . . . and make it worse, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

The program, plagued by a shortage of applicants, doesn't even serve the children it was designed to serve, reports People for the American Way, which collected the documents. Fewer than 75 of the 1,200 voucher recipients come from schools identified by the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) as needing improvement. And despite legislative language requiring ED to give top priority to students from struggling public schools, more than 200 vouchers went to students already attending private schools.

At least as troubling is the documents' revelation that ED has:

• Hidden from the media and Congress a provision allowing voucher schools to reject low-scoring students
• Insulted a moderate Republican senator
• Admitted that it can't conduct an evaluation of the program this year as mandated by Congress

The Bush administration pushed the voucher bill through Congress by using one of its favorite tricks—gaining Democratic support by making promises it couldn't keep. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.) broke ranks with Democrats when she voted for the D.C. voucher program. After learning about ED's mishandling of the voucher program, she wrote: "I have been deeply concerned about this because my purpose for supporting the pilot program was to learn whether students currently attending failing public schools would improve academically in a private school environment."

So how does the Bush administration top the D.C. voucher fiasco in its second term? By proposing to cut many worthwhile education programs and to create a larger voucher program based on the failed D.C. voucher program.

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