A reader, who is obviously stunned by the all-out, multi-million dollar campaign to oust Steve Zimmer from the Los Angeles school board in tomorrow’s contest, asks this question:
“Is it over the top to say that the election of Steve Zimmer is the canary in the coal mine for American democracy? Maybe. But when you have a well qualified candidate who has many years of experience in the system and a TFA background, who is basically a moderate, and millions of dollars are going to unseat him, you have to wonder.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Moderates” are toxic to the Bloomberg-Rhee right-wing camp. The big juicy target of America’s pub schls offers the corporate crowd too great an asset to compromise when it appears that they outgun the opposition. Why compromise when you can overwhelm any resistance with a million or two here or there? This strangulation of democracy in America has been underway for decades; it is now maturing into a national war of major destruction on the 99% by the 1%. In all elections, the corporatocracy has won by spending the most, with Wall St investing enormously in Obama, whose career was launched by the Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker. As Diane has said several times, the only defense we have against their deep pockets is our vast numbers, so when we coalesce, consolidate and coordinate all the millions of folks being hurt by Rhee and Bloomberg, by Broad and Gates, we will stop them.
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Do not wonder anymore as this is just what is happening. Why do you think they sent Roy Romer here? There is $27 billion in school construction bonds to steal, and that is some of the story. Read yesterdays Huffington Post article on the Zimmer race and in it they have the contributions of only 11 organizations and people for Kate Anderson, who is running against Zimmer and is a full on privatizer corporatizer, have give her only $2.36 million for only one board race. Talk about buying government. I have never seen Kate Anderson at the LAUSD Board of Education in the over 20 years I have been going there. They threw Deasy at us for superintendent even though he quit his former job one week after the stories broke on his phony PHD and then two L.A. radio jocks find that he lied about some of his work record. I called every board member before they voted him in with this information and spoke to the agenda item to elect him superintendent before the vote about his phony PHD and they still elected him. It is all sooooooo corrupt. The Monica Garcia board election is the same mess as Zimmers only Zimmer is extraordinarily weird because he usually votes for what those now against him want and that is charter schools and a free hand with school bonds. They just want a 100% with no varience at all from their agenda of theft and destruction at everyones but their owns expense. Now Bloomburg has in N.Y. a $23.9 billion general fund budget. LAUSD is $5.8 billion but has $27 billion in construction. You can steal way more from construction than from the general fund as in LAUSD 85% of the budget is employees wages and benefits.
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It sounded like they were afraid Zimmer might be the fourth vote to get rid of the Super. I thought I read that the union was neutral on Zimmer.I can’t believe the board voted for the Super. even though he had phony credentials. Does that mean Zimmer originally voted for him even though it was known the Super. was a fake?
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Zimmer has had to walk a fine line during his years on the School Board. He has attempted to play the mediator on some tough issues, while sticking to principle on certain key issues like the use of testing and teacher evaluations. He has voted for Deasy a few times, and has made public statements praising Deasy. Most likely he would be a fifth vote, not a fourth vote, to fire Deasy, depending on how the other School Board elections go. That said, the “reformers” are going after him precisely because he is an independent voice, questioning the pro-corporate reformer march to privatization. No questions, no doubts allowed in “reform world.”
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We live in a plutocracy. Go back and read Justice Brandeis on the rise of the monopolies and their threat to democracy. They cannot co-exist. Probably one of our greatest legal minds and a true advocate for the people.
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