In Los Angeles, Robert Skeels is running against Monica Garcia, the school board president.
Garcia and two other candidates (including Kate Anderson, who is opposing Steve Zimmer), have received $1 million from NYC mayor Bloomberg, $1.5 million from Eli Broad and friends, and $250,000 from Michelle Rhee’s group.
Here is what Skeels says, responding to another reader, as he watches the massive campaign fund grow:
“…the ratio of plutocrat to union spending in this race is in orders of magnitude. All bidders indeed. My campaign has raised $17,245.22 with just contributions from working class families and community members of $25—$50. One big check from AALA of $500. UTLA hasn’t even sent me their promised $300 check yet. But these billionaires are giving my opponent millions upon millions to offset some phantasmagorical union advantage? You’re more than a liar Mr. U., you’re a shill for power and privilege. Essentially, just a single donor to the CSR corporate slush fund has more say over the election than all the families in my district. That’s some kind of democracy.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Put out in each post on this subject, a donation link. Maybe also, we can get this race into the Daily Kos and Huff Po. With only $100000, it will be possible to publicize the sources of support for the corporate reformers.
I would contribute, but that is not the point. We can’t beat these vultures with money, but we can with grassroots support. Keep fighting.
Is it not enough that they have a bought and paid for Superintendent? This is blatant union busting and ugly corporate greed at its finest.
Are there no progressive billionaires (or millionaires..) out there that care about public education?
Nope.
Some claim to, but then join the likes of DFERm and Students Last. That’s how the charter school scam infiltrated Washington State – bought and paid for by millionaires.
Don’t forget Ms. Garcia who is a frequent speaker for the Gulen movement’s Pacifica Institute receives money from the Gulen Movement frequently and other Charter School owner/operators.
Yes, this is exactly what Democracy in America is like. Was that a rhetorical question? It’s been this way since the very beginning. People came to America for money, land, and power. Sure, you can throw some religious freaks into the mix as well. We all ended up here because we had a relative who was poor and starving somewhere else. Let’s face the facts. We all came here to get paid, so let’s forget the lofty ideals. There are no surprises here. America was always just about money, so let’s face the truth.
No, Alex, you don’t get to be a billionaire by being a caring person. You become a broke teacher by being a caring person and doing things for other people. Congratulations! Our billionaires just want to get rid of public education as quickly as possible, and they are winning. Get ready for serfdom! We have about the same chance as a medieval serf overthrowing their king. Good luck with that!
Sorry to say I agree.
When the people have enough of these, they will revolt, but there are still circuses (football) and bread (LINK card) to keep the people down until the collapse of Rome.
You stated the facts perfectly.Your metaphor is so true.
Yes, it’s the new face of democracy where big money tries to counter normal union corruption of voting early and often. Deunionizing public education is the objective, but a legitimate one because no public sector should be unionized with the ability to strike against the public. America used to understand that before the public school teachers brainwashed the kids’ minds to think the collective comes first. But money doesn’t always win elections. Take heart. Maybe your thuggy friends will pull it out for you. Call Axelrod. He knows how it works. Call Plouffe.
All workers should be unionized. Moreover, the interests of public sector workers are identical to the public that pays for their services, quite unlike the plutocrats dumping obscene amounts of money into my school board race whose interests are the antithesis of those of the working families in my district.
I’ve said this countless times, but since it’s the profound truth, I’ll say it again. If these capricious plutocrats including Broad, Koch, Gates, DeVos, Bradley, Rhee, Bloomberg, Walton, Hastings, et al really cared about the children in my community, then they’d be fighting to assure a living wage for all and universal single payer healthcare for everyone. Those two things, more than anything else, would alleviate, or at least ameliorate, all of the issues these billionaires claim to care about. In the absence of that, their involvement is exposed for what it is, a quest for power and profit. You’re union canards reek of your juvenile political leanings.
Why don’t you save your Ayn Rand dystopian banter for the John Birch Society, or whatever other fringe groups you associate with? This is not the appropriate forum for your abject hatred of working people.
And how does one provide a living wage for everyone? We know HSAs for all would work for the health care, according to Ben Carson. Every forum is the proper one to advance Rand’s ideas. You might learn something if you could stop name calling long enough to listen.
Harlan Underhill is yet another Randian with blinders. How does one provide a living wage for everyone? The real question is why are there haves and haves not when we have enough resources and technology to provide for everyone on the planet. Rand’s ideas were part of novels – no research, no models, no verifiable theories. BTW, HSAs don’t insure that everyone gets the best care – in fact, they force folks without enough facts to make decisions on what is best for them – still plenty of room for bogus care, inadequate care, scams, etc.
Here’s what Newt Gingrich has to say,
“I am unalterably opposed to a bunch of billionaires financing a boss to pick candidates in 50 states. This is the opposite of the Republican tradition of freedom and grassroots small town conservatism.
No one person is smart enough nor do they have the moral right to buy nominations across the country.
That is the system of Tammany Hall and the Chicago machine. It should be repugnant to every conservative and every Republican.”
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Sorry, my reply above was meant in response to the Newt Gingrich quote below.
Another apology! I did put my initial reply in the right spot after all. It’s late, it’s the middle of the week, and I’ve been grading for the past three hours, only to go online to read more depressing news about the relentless assault on our public schools where even Democrats like Mayors Villagairosa, Emmanuel, and Booker, who are supposed to be our allies, are on the other side.
It’s worse than that. Those parents digging deep for $50 and $100 donations to candidates like Skeels are often giving money that would otherwise go to their schools. In my experience, these are the same dollars that help send kids in a trip to DC or buy laptops for the library or new uniforms for the band, or…
So when Bloomberg and Rhee et al swoop in with their mega bucks, they’re not only tipping the playing field, they’re also diverting very limited resources from starving neighborhood schools.
Would someone explain to me what Mayor Bloomberg’s motivation is? Would appreciate specifics, that’s a lot of money to spend on GP (general principle).
Thanks
It’s not that much money to Bloomberg.
To play the old game: If we assume that Bloomberg has a net worth of $30 billion, and then we assume that someone else has a net worth of $1 million, then his donation is the equivalent of the millionaire donating $33.
John D. Rockefeller used to give dimes to street urchins. Bloomberg gives to buy school boards so he can do to the nation what he did to NYC.
Diane is right. Bloomberg is doing to the nation what he has done to NYC, use great wealth and govt power to silence critics and steer assets of pub schls and pub sector to corporate interests. Hard to match their capital, so as Diane said before, we have to overwhelm them with our numbers. We need parents of each schl to fight for their schl with the teachers. We also need a brigade of democratic activists ready to go wherever a big fight is underway to push demo from the bottom up against the billions from the top down. The 99% folks have been doing this with Hurrican Sandy relief here in the NYC/NJ area. We need a “Democracy for America” org to counter TFA, Rhee, etc., by sending trained activists to communities under attack where they stand with the families and teachers. The soner we get a DFA of our own, the sooner we can add the weight of our numbers against the weight of their wealth.
The runaway train was fueled by the Supreme Court for national elections. This is a huge issue and needs serious attention. Voices with no money behind them no longer have volume. Perhaps we need to look back to the 60’s when gathering steam came from people who all believed in the same ideal and were willing to use their numbers to amplify their voices. We have become a democracy with equal voices for the wealthy. This needs to change.
“PLUTOCRATIC IMMUNITY!!!”
The problem is NOT the amount of money that can be spent – the problem is that a tiny fraction of the population is accumulating wealth that is not shared with the folks that work for them, and from products and services that are vastly overpriced. Limits on campaign spending DO limit free speech – what if unions, nonprofits and religious groups had raised more money, would we stop them? I don’t think so. And in the 2012 election it was clear that big spending didn’t help right wing causes and the tea party – something to mull over in the response to Bloomberg – why is his message more compelling?
“what if unions, nonprofits and religious groups had raised more money, would we stop them?”
I would want them stopped just as much as corporate thugs, yes.
The amount of money being spent on elections is directly related to the problem of money being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
Like I said, 2012 shows that money alone is not going to win elections. Anyone who disregards the role of culture and psychology is leaving out powerful stuff. It’s well known that a tiny minority of folks are perceived to be in the majority when the speak aggressively – something that Bloomberg is fully aware of. Limiting the amount of money in elections does nothing to aggregate speech – it’s not clear why the left has blindly gotten on this bandwagon of limiting political speech when it’s clear that limiting aggregate speech would have to follow.
Jon Carroll wrote in his column in the San Francisco Chronicle,”People schooled on the playing fields of irony don’t believe the universe has some special good luck just for them, because it doesn’t have special good luck period. It just has rich people wanting to get richer, suckers begging to stay poor, and sideline reporters commenting on the action.”
In our democracy we can expose inequites, but the dudes with the bucks still prevail.