Jon Corzine’s Campaign Against Working Families

From today’s Political Diary, (subscription required) as a follow-up on our post from last week, Corzine Joins Union Stunt Staged At New Jersey School:

Last week Sen. Jon Corzine joined with officials from the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association to blast the nation's largest retailer. The political attack on Wal-Mart came at the Samuel M. Ridgeway Middle School in Edgewater Park, N.J., and put Mr. Corzine, the state's Democratic candidate for governor, front and center of a national effort to paint the retail giant as an exploiter of children and the enemy of all things Democrats generally favor.

What's so bad about Wal-Mart? A press release issued for the Corzine event claimed that Wal-Mart breaks child-labor laws inside the U.S. and benefits from sweatshop labor overseas -- though no details were offered. Also tabbed was a partisan Democratic report claiming that Wal-Mart costs taxpayers $2.7 billion a year by not providing better health benefits for all of its employees -- the point being, we guess, that jobseekers are turning down jobs with richer benefits because they are somehow mysteriously forced to work at the big chain.

Campaigning against America's favorite retailer has become a well-funded sideline for Democratic political operatives who hope an anti-Wal-Mart groundswell can be merged into a grassroots effort to elect Democrats.

How Jon Corzine can pretend to represent the “little guy” and at the same time work to price entry level and low-skilled workers out of jobs, remains a mystery to us. Higher prices on goods for “working families, that’s sure to make New Jersey “more affordable.”

When the teacher’s unions gang up with Democrat politicians, the little guy is the last thing on their mind. It’s all about power and money – power for the politicians and money for the unions. Wal Mart shoppers and workers – merely a means to an end.

To borrow advice recently provided from the Orlando Sentinel's Peter Brown to Democrat Howard Dean: While on his “working families” tour Jon Corzine might want to visit a Wal-Mart... Here's a hint, Jon, people in working families believe that Wal-Mart is good for them. Otherwise, they'd work and shop elsewhere.