Art Pope is a major political figure in North Carolina. I don’t know whether he is a billionaire or only a multi-millionaire. Jane Mayer wrote in the New Yorker a few years ago that he bought the state of North Carolina.
Art Pope made his fortune by owning a large chain of discount variety stores around the state. He is a libertarian to the extreme. He used his political contributions to help Tea Party Republicans defeat moderate Republicans. His investments in political campaigns paid off big time in 2010, when his faction won control of the state legislature. Then in 2012, a Republican was elected governor, and for the first time in a century or more, North Carolina had an all-Republican leadership, free to impose its will.
Governor McCrory appointed Art Pope as state budget director, giving him the power to implement his extreme ideology. (In Pope’s only try for elected office, he failed.) On Pope’s watch, the state legislature enacted charters, cyber charters, and vouchers. And cut the public schools’ budget. And reduced environmental regulations. And did whatever they could think of to reduce government and give corporations free reign. ALEC must point to North Carolina as its model state.
The best source of information on the damage wrought by these modern-day vandals is NC Policy Watch’s Altered State: How Five Years of Conservative Rule Have Redefined North Carolina, which sums up the depredations of the past five years.
Pope funded the extremely conservative libertarian Locke Institute, which acts as an advocacy group for his ideology. One of the directors of the Locke Institute started his own charter chain (he is not an educator) and has made millions of dollars on leases.
Know who owns your state.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
An interesting book to read about how all this “philanthropy” got started by the right wing especially is “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer. I’ve been reading it and it’s very enlightening about the real reason the billionaires got start. It was mainly a loop hole in the income tax system that allows them to not have to pay taxes on their “philanthropy” for a given amount of years then be able to have the interest tax free after that. So they developed their own “charities” (ALEC) that they could control how the money is used and mostly used it for their own benefit or ideology. Then they could still use the money as if they never gave it away and at the same time look very generous to the public. In the book there has been some mention about their attempts to take over the education of the country to promote their agenda and political ideology. I recommend reading this book as it gives further background as to what is happening in education reform.
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this also sheds light on some of the philosophies that have gotten us where we are. worth the read. http://www.salon.com/2016/03/07/the_democrats_are_about_to_blow_it_this_election_is_about_new_millennials_not_aging_baby_boomers/
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You think North Carolinians don’t know this already?
However, he doesn’t own my home. Or our business. And the charter expansion could not have happened without Race to the Top (and, thankfully, NC does require bonds to have a charter school—so that price tag is not left on the state when and if a charter closes here in the old north state). In fact, I know of recent charters that deed the property (donated for a charter) to the local county school district if the charter fails. And that charter has a waiting list. . .for whatever that’s worth. Not because schools were closed either.
The faster this G.A. makes people angry, the faster we can vote them out. ALEC might be cheering in the night time, but elections come in the morning.
The record is not over yet.
And still, even though most North Carolinians who pay attention to the national news are embarrassed about things going on in our state right now, 51% of the citizens in this state approve. So, there’s that. And don’t forget that many people view recent NC politics as simply the flip side to an all- Democrat leadership in decades past (for decades). And actually, even in the Jesse Helms days his main focus was the health of agriculture as a business in our state—that was his M.O. I don’t know enough about our agriculture to know how his strong arm impacted where we are now, but I imagine he wasn’t all bad, since we have long been an agricultural state.
I still think you paint with too broad a political brush when seeking to engender support for public school. It is not likely that people with strong ideology that directly oppose your personal viewpoints on things (and who may very well be strong supporters of public schools) will be won over by shaming or mocking or what they would consider to be intellectual elitism. Trust me; I grew up here. Some will view minority struggles as parallel to what we are seeing, and some will not. But all should be welcome in the dialogue. That’s how democracy works.
Enjoy your weekend in NC.
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He has an awful lot of power in North Carolina for someone whom North Carolinians, in his only run at public office (for lieutenant governor in 1992) rejected. He is also part of the Koch Brothers funding network. As a commentator above pointed out, Jane Mayer, in her superb book “Dark Money,” does an excellent job of exposing Pope. He is bad news indeed.
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David Koch is on the Aspen Institute Board. Gates gave almost $2,000,000 to the Pahara Aspen Institute, which was founded by Kim Smith. Her bio says she was a founding team member of TFA, a co-founder and former CEO of New Schools Venture Fund, a co-founder of Bellwether and a board member of Rocketship. Bellwether describes our kids’ schools as “human capital pipelines”. Fox’s Murdoch describes our kids’ schools as a “$500 billion dollar business sector”.
I hope Jane Mayer’s next subject is Boll Gates.
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In an interview, Kim Smith, said she was “genetically encoded to be a social engineer in education” (Her father spent 35 years at the ethically-dubious Columbia Teachers College). She continues the interview by saying, “Our marching orders (she co-founded and was CEO of New Schools Venture Fund) are…..build a non-profit that looks like a for-profit real estate deal… (Gates gave “New Schools Venture fund”, $22 million dollars). One of her goals is to create different school brands. New Schools Venture Fund’s projects include Aspire, Charter School Accelerator, Tech Innovation Fund and New Leaders for New Schools.
The separation, and branding, of K-12 schools, destroys the most important cohesive element that brings our nation’s people together.
Social stability and democracy depend on that cohesion.
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Wow. I think you’re right: we need something a “Dark Money” for the public school “reform” movement.
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