A dispatch in the national section of the Times begins:
Opening a new front in the assault on teacher tenure, a group of parents backed by wealthy philanthropists served notice to defendants on Wednesday in a lawsuit challenging Minnesota's job protections for teachers, as well as the state's rules governing which teachers are laid off as a result of budget cuts.
Isn't "wealthy philanthropists" redundant? If the philanthopists are mired in poverty, tell us so; otherwise, we will agree simply to assume that anyone giving away lots of money is rich to begin with. Especially since the subheadline over that paragraph is "Wealthy foundations back Minnesota Lawsuit." We don't hear anything in the story or the headline about how wealthy the teachers unions are. Nor do we usually hear, at least this prominently, about the wealth of the foundations or philanthropists involved when the legal cases being pressed are those that advance left-of-center, Times-favored (now there's my own redundancy) causes.