The New York Times reports today that David Koch, one of the rightwing billionaire Koch brothers, is buying broadcast ads to support the candidacy of Joseph Lhota, who is running for mayor as a Republican.
The Koch brothers can be counted on to subsidize almost any effort that privatizes the public sector and guts government programs that help people. After all, they don’t need government programs, why should anyone else?
Meanwhile, Bill de Blasio has emerged as the strong front-runner in the Democratic primary, and the latest poll shows him with 43% of the vote. If he wins 40%, he would avoid a run-off. De Blasio has positioned himself as the most progressive candidate in the race, while Christine Quinn is widely perceived as Mayor Bloomberg’s torch-bearer. Bill Thompson, who was endorsed by the UFT, is in the same range with Quinn, around the 20% mark.
De Blasio issued a press release strongly criticizing the co-location of charter schools into public schools without community input. He said that if elected, he would develop a process to hear from the community, and in the meanwhile, would impose a moratorium on co-locations. This infuriated Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of the Success Academy charter chain, who immediately blasted de Blasio as an enemy of “good schools,” i.e., her schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If Eva attacks someone, that person has my support. If the Koch Brothers are buyin. . . er, supporting someone, I would cross the Negev to oppose him/her. They are the perfect reverse barometer.
The Koch Brothers gave $20,000,000 to the ACLU to litigate against the Patriot Act. They also favor legalizing same-sex marriage, decriminalizing what are now illegal drugs, and cutting defense spending. Better load up on many jugs of cold water and suntan lotion.
Sources for that info or is my sarcasmometer broken?
Google search using your preferred wording and you’ll find various sources.
The larger point is that uninformed people on the Left assume that the Koch Brothers are neo-fascist right-wingers. Better informed people who read more than just left-wing sources know that the Kochs have long contributed to libertarian causes, and that some union leaders at their various companies have said that labor relations have generally been good. The Kochs abide by labor laws, even if they are philosophically opposed to them. More traditional conservatives differ with the Kochs on several issues.
Perhaps you should supply some links. The pages I found referred to the Koch ACLU donation as ” alleged,” and based on second hand, unconfirmed sources.
Regarding the rest,
The things they favor personally do not matter near as much to me as compared to the positions of politicians they bankroll.
Again, Rodgers12, sources please as I as a free thinker and not some imaginary “uniformed people on the left” will be more than happy to read your sources and make my own informed judgement as to the veracity of the sources.
And, thanks, Ang!
I don’t know what she’s complaining about. This is what reformers envisioned under the Milton Friedman Plan for publicly-funded schools, is it not? Public school parents and charter school parents would compete for adequate funding for their respective schools.
That’s what happening in every single city and state run by a reformer. Why should NYC be any different?
They deliberately chose an adversarial zero-sum “business” model for US public schools, and they were fine with that, until public school parents started to fight back. What did they think was going to happen?
What do they think “free market” means? They thought “publicly-funded” meant “cooperative”?
Does it work like that in the defense industry or any other publicly-funded private model? No. Of course it doesn’t. They got what they wanted. Parent versus parent, fighting over facilities and funding, and it’s only going to get worse. Too bad they put kids squarely in the middle.
The recklessness astonishes me. They dismantled a system with absolutely no thought to what might arise in that system’s place. Now that they see the results starting to appear, they blame….public schools. Maybe it wasn’t so smart to model education on a business after all?
First what great psychadelic drugs is she on? Charter schools have 10 times as many special ed and 100 times as much ESL????? How crazy is she? N.Y. city schools have about $23,000/student so that means charters have about $21,000/student. Chicago has about $15,600 and LAUSD about $11,600/student. So I think they can survive with their hedge fund contributors. Now, the district gives them $2,000 less. How much/student is there with the donations from the billionaires when now totaled with complete revenue/student?
If a system has had 20 years and is still a loser why are we even talking about it except as in the middle east there is a lot of money to be stolen there. Just think Syria and no one knows who used what material. Didn’t we totally permanently devastate Falluja with depleated uranium? Have you seen the birth defects from there? Who are we to say anything as with the charter schools as they are “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Has anyone taken a look at her schools scores and finances? Someone there should and report on it.
To be clear, her point of comparison is the school de Blasio’s son attends, Brooklyn Tech, which is one of NYC’s selective admissions high schools. I don’t know the specific numbers, but Brooklyn Tech probably has very few, if any, “special ed” students.
“But de Blasio wants to charge charter schools rent. Even though they are public schools by law. Even though they get no facilities funding. The rent will therefore come out of each school’s operating budget, which is supposed to pay for things like teacher salaries and instructional materials.”
Why does she ignore that public schools do not have a budget that allows for advertising or for rewarding its “head” with such huge salaries? How is she going to cut the salaries of people she’s already paying nothing? Is she going to risk hurting her own success to save some comparative pennies on school supplies?
No it is going to eat into HER bottom line and the fact that she is making a profit off of our city students, and, that real estate in NY ain’t free. She wants the same funding and payoff as public schools, but without the “restrictions” like her getting to choose whether funding her half a million dollar a year salary is worth it for the kids.
Why does she advocate for giving them even MORE money for facilities funding when it’s already a given that they’re getting more than their operating costs to turn a profit?
In what wacky land do her words make sense?
Success Academy wants free space so it can spend $400,000 for Moskowitz salary and $325,000 plus for marketing. Public schools spend $500 or less on marketing to combat her raids: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/education/10marketing.html?pagewanted=all
When it comes to education, things don’t go better with Koch.
I am supporting de Blasio and can’t wait until he hands these vipers the rent bill.
And this is why I am also voting for Catherine Guerrieror for public advocate. She doesn’t have a chance in hell because she doesn’t have the $$$$ the other candidates have, but I love her in each debate I have seen. She doesn’t support charters or co-locations. She is against the over-reliance of testing and she is a strong believer in unions. Because she is the underdog, she can speak her mind. The only negative I have on her is her support for Thompson.
Lhota support from Koch AND the pro-dead kittens voting block!