Lee Fang, brilliant investigative journalist for The Nation, has looked closely at Jeff Bezos’ interest in education, and the news is bad.
(Fang wrote this classic article about influence-peddling and corruption in the reform movement.)
Bezos is throughly smitten with the idea that the way to improve education is to privatize public schools and to eliminate teachers’ unions.
Fang writes:
—The Bezos Foundation has donated to Education Reform Now, a nonprofit organization that funds attack advertisements against teachers’ unions and other advocacy efforts to promote test-based evaluations of teachers. Education Reform Now also sponsors Democrats for Education Reform.
—The Bezos Foundation provided $500,000 to NBC Universal to sponsor the Education Nation, a media series devoted to debating high-stakes testing, charter schools, and other education reforms.
—The Bezos Foundation provided over $100,000 worth of Amazon stock to the League of Education Voters Foundation to help pass the education reform in Washington State. Last year, the group helped pass I-1240, a ballot measure that created a charter school system in Washington State. In many states, charter schools open the door for privatization by inviting for-profit charter management companies to take over public schools that are ostensibly run by non-profits.
Other education philanthropy supported by the Bezos Foundation include KIPP, Teach for America, and many individual charter schools, including privately funded math and science programs across the country.
On the other hand, Fang writes, the Washington Post had become dependent on the predatory for-profit Kaplan University, and Bezos has enough capital to build a firewall between the Washington Post and that industry.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Let’s see what he does with the Answer Sheet and our friend, Valerie Strauss.
Yes, that is whose articles I’ve enjoyed reading/learning from this summer. I guess no more Amazon for me, either.
Hope this won’t affect Valerie Strauss…
Regardless, I think it’s time for a boycott against Amazon and a clear statement to Mr. Bezos about why it’s happening.
Yes, I must wean myself off starting now.
Agree.
I do believe we must vote with our dollars whenever possible.
I avoid Walmart and Microsoft whenever possible and will now add amazon.
I was thinking the same thing MPG. Boycott Amazon. Who’s next?
I am adding Amazon to my list.
I think we need to poison the well from which these billionaires drink. If there weren’t so much money at stake, no one would give a hoot. Maybe a limit, like the public employee limit of $5.00 for a gift. Something that takes the “stakes” out of the “high stakes money” they are all after.
Fang’s article led me to another article on the sidebar, noting the 68th anniversary of the US attack on Hiroshima, which reminds me again of the other day’s discussion of whether shame was a thing of the past. Try to find the shame here:
“Many Americans on August 6, 1945, heard the news from the radio, which broadcast the text of Truman’s statement shortly after its release. The afternoon papers carried banner headlines along the lines of: “Atom Bomb, World’s Greatest, Hits Japs!””
“On the evening of August 9, Truman addressed the American people over the radio. Again he took pains to picture Hiroshima as a military base, even claiming that “we wished in the first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians.” By then, an American B-29 had dropped a second atomic bomb over the city of Nagasaki, which killed tens of thousands of civilians and only a handful of Japanese troops (along with Allied prisoners of war). Nagasaki was variously described by US officials as a “naval base” or “industrial center.””
Are you saying that we (USA) should be ashamed of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why?
And why shop Amazon?
Their return policy is worthless . . . .
We need to return to the 90-percent tax rate on millionaires and billionaires. This would go a long way to stopping this extreme concentration of wealth and power in very few hands. These billionaires, almost without exception, are trouble for our country. They want to destroy everything we have held dear.
Bezos is bad news; he is absolutely killing publishing with his pay-to-rent Kindles–remember, you don’t own those downloads–and his monopolistic antics.
What have you held dear, susannunes, that the billionaires are trying to destroy?
That’s just creepy.
Oh, I don’t know, Harlan. Maybe something about bombing civilian, non-military targets into oblivion.
Twice.
Re: ” . . . bombing civilian, non-military targets into oblivion.”
The Vietnam War idea of burning down a village to save it keeps sticking in my mind when Bezos’ privatizing proxies in government close down schools in order to save them.
“They want to destroy everything we have held dear.”
What does it mean for hedge-fund billionaires to set out with the avowed goal of stripping American workers of union-level wages and benefits? It’s only money, right?
They see it this way: If a thousand 52-year-old teachers keep their health coverage, and each gets a thousand dollars worth of health maintenance, that means some billionaire somewhere is out a million dollars. That money could have flowed to his bank account through real estate deals and tax exchanges when school properties were shut down and converted to private ownership.
What did we hold dear? The generation of black teachers who walked across the stage for their families, and went into education to give back and build their community. The Grandma and grand daddy who were the mainstay of the families, and have lost their homes. Our children’s own future.
It’s all selfishness on their part. These people are nothing but parasites and are killing this country to enrich themselves even more.
People need to ask just HOW much money does one need? 25 billion is TOO MUCH MONEY for one person, especially when that person got that way in part because he has grossly underpaid the employees.
And whatever happened to anti-trust laws? They got trashed, just like everything else.
Anti trust laws? What are those? I saw a wrist slap for Apple recently. In the 90’s the Ivy Leagues were in cahoots, price fixing their tuition and they agreed not to meet to fix tuition any longer.
Now every 1st tier school has the same price. They don’t even have to have a meeting, they just raise them at a fixed percentage every year. I’m sure they agreed to it years ago. Where is the justice department in any education price fixing scheme. Where is the IRS investigating these not-for- profit arms of billionaire corporations? DOA…
Gee, it turns out that even a “left-libertarian” like Jeff Bezos is a cast-iron, corpoRat dickwipe and an anti-teachers’ union fanatic?
That would NEVER have occurred to me. I’d just have trusted him to keep his nose OUT of that about which he has only the slightest familiarity, just like Bill Gates and Eli Broad…oh, wait.
It’s not really too hard to infer the ulterior motive behind his advocacy of CorpoRat schools: they gotta buy books, and Gates’ software, etc., SOMEWHERE, right?
Who BETTER to supply ’em than global, union-blocker and antagonist Amazon, nest paw?
Well, this is what we’re up against. Notice that we’re stepping forward and meeting it head-on right here on this site. Don’t be intimidated by the money, power, political muscle and media domination converging to destroy the people’s public education system, though, because daylight and democracy can expose them and defend our public education heritage.
Here, let’s laugh about it with Andy Borowitz:
“Mr. Bezos said he had been oblivious to his online shopping error until earlier today, when he saw an unusual charge for two hundred and fifty million dollars on his American Express statement.”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/08/amazon-founder-says-he-clicked-on-washington-post-by-mistake.html
And this:
Any monopoly position in the market comes with the capacity for abuse. And behind Bezos’s public image as a smiling geek there is a ruthless business strategist. In the book market, Amazon has followed the classic monopolist’s script of cutting prices to build up its market share and eliminate competition. Now that its competitors are struggling or gone, there is some evidence Amazon is raising prices, although the company denies this. In other areas, too, the online retailer has thrown its weight around like an old-fashioned monopolist. As Amazon expanded across the country, it has sought to avoid collecting and paying sales taxes on the goods that it sells, thus preserving an unfair price advantage over brick-and-mortar competitors. (For more on this, see the recent cover story in Fortune “AMAZON’S (NOT SO SECRET) WAR ON TAXES.”)
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/08/bezos-and-the-washington-post-a-skeptical-view.html?mbid=nl_Daily%20(302)
So disappointing. Bezos has a lot of power in Seattle, my hometown. He is transforming the landscape there with Amazon. Seattle has been fighting charters for awhile now. Hate to see this happen there.
jeff@amazon.com or send him mail at
Jeff Bezos
Amazon.com
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-122
You have alternatives to Amazon.
Remember, if you buy local, you’re not only supporting local stores, by shopping at a brick and mortar store you’re paying for jobs in the community.
You’re also paying state and or local taxes that will help you get your salary and pension.
If you have a really tough time breaking from the online shopping there’s:
instead of Kindle, there’s Barnes and Noble’s Nook. Yes they’ve encroached on indies, but at least they still staff stores and they’re not Amazon.
If you’re buying CDs, there’s CD warehouse.
I’ve just looked up and there are these for CDs/DVDs: wherehouse.com, thecdexchange.com
For book vendors, first in order is Powells’ Books, based in Portland which is *UNIONIZED*
Of course, it is always best to buy local and support the independents, but what if it is some tome that you need for a class or for professional development and you absolutely need -or it’s an out-of-print book or obscure one that your local store wouldn’t carry, then it honestly is hard to break the online addiction.
Other non-amazon book vendors (I think some of these are venturing into non-book items too):
abebooks.com
alibris.com
For magazines: you’ve got your AFT discount and then there are outfits like NetMagazines.
OK, of course, collecting media can be ill-minded, financially. But if you can’t yet break the habit, there are the above alternatives.
Ultimately I agree with the folks here: we’ve got to cut our $upport for Ama$on.
–Your purchase could mean the disappearance of your job to a charter school teacher or a Teach for America recruit on their way in between college and their MBA degree.
I had been an Amazon customer until I found first hand that there was the appearance of a corrupt side to Jeff Bezos and his company in his turning a blind eye towards his site falsely advertising the items that are sold and then ignoring when this was directly reported to him by the consumer. In fact, often Amazon would remove the customers comment that alerted consumers to the scam. It appears Jeff Bezos feels that consumer law does not apply to him or to Amazon. But if we make a choice with our purchases, by not doing business with Amazon until this is changed, then all consumers will be fairly treated, legally treated.
How quickly can he get this done. GOODBYE UNIONS – HELLO EDUCATED KIDS!!! All you creeps who really on a union to protect your job obviously know you are not up to the task,