Harold Meyerson, editor of The American Prospect, writes in the Los Angeles Times that progressives in California should stay involved in state politics and join to defeat the power of big money.
As he shows, the big money interests have combined to elect conservative Democrats and defeat progressive Democrats. Because of the state’s “top-two” primaries, regardless of party, the big-money guys are picking malleable conservative Democrats and pouring millions into their campaigns to pick off progressive campaigns.
Bernie Sanders’ keystone issue was to limit the role of money in politics. In California, the moneyed interests are saturating legislative races with donations that their opponents can’t match.
Over the past two years, oil companies and “education reform” billionaires have been funding campaigns for obliging Democratic candidates running against their more progressive co-partisans under the state’s “top-two” election process. In this week’s primary, independent committees spent at least $24 million, with most of that money flowing to Democrats who opposed Gov. Jerry Brown’s effort to halve motorists’ use of fossil fuels by 2030, and a substantial sum going to Democrats who support expanding charter schools.
Six years ago, according to the Associated Press, just one legislative primary race had more than $1 million in outside spending, and four had more than $500,000. This year, eight races saw more than $1 million in such spending, and 15 more than $500,000.
In a heavily Democratic district outside Sacramento, a November state Senate runoff will pit Democratic Assemblyman Bill Dodd, who opposed Brown’s legislation, against former Democratic Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada. Dodd has already benefited from one independent campaign funded by Chevron and other energy companies to the tune of more than $270,000, and from an education reform campaign funded by charter school proponents such as billionaire Eli Broad in the amount of $1.68 million.
Since progressives can’t match their millions, they should do their best to expose them and their surrogates as the puppets they are.
Public education in California is a plum for the billionaires. They want to privatize it. Who are the biggest spenders in the self-named “education reform movement”? Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Reed Hastings, and Alice Walton. None is a parent in public schools. None has children in public schools. Two do not even live in California.
This is NOT what democracy looks like.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am in Dodd’s District and saw the huge number of ads sponsored by EdVoice show up in my mailbox. Also in my district is Assembly Member Bonilla, a former teacher who is terming out. She has always been an advocate for education. Her latest effort is Assembly Bill 1084, to prohibit the operation of for profit online schools such as K12, Inc. which gets full state funding (which is based on daily attendance), even if their students sign on for only one minute a day. Further, there are often no teachers to answer student questions. If you are in Cal., ask your legislator to support AB 1084. EdVoice wants to replace her with Tim Grayson who received huge EdVoice funding. Please don’t let them – vote for Mae Torlakson. More on AB 1084 here. http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_30002393/california-virtual-academies:-bill-targets-forprofit-operator-k12-inc
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Thanks Ray for this info. As a fellow California educator, but in the southern part of our state, I would appreciate knowing more about Mae Torlakson than I can find in her puff pieces online. She is the wife of our State Supt. of Ed, Tom Torlakson, who many of us feel has not represented us as we had hoped when we worked to get him re-elected and keep privatizer Wall Streeter, Marshal Tuck, out of Sacramento.
I will urge my associates to support AB 1084, and would like to know which of our Dem Assembly people are for, and against, this bill. Too many Dems are, as you say, not progressive, and as with Perea, are in it for the big money, and leap into jobs with the oil companies and other corporations that buy them for their access and insider knowledge.
In my district, Henry Stern (who I voted for), Senator Fran Pavely’s assistant and legal specialist, ran for state senate against a woman lawyer (Reznick) who was touted by many big political names including Diane Feinstein and Zev Yaralovsky. The money poured into her coffers after she entered the race late in the game. But so very fortunately, the people were not fooled by this candidate who was supported by the oil industry, the CoC, realtors, plutocrats posing as “dentists”, etc., and all the business Right Wingers. So We the People learned from this list of who supported her, whom we can and cannot trust to be working in the best interest of the public….it is a shameful list of famous pols.
Also…we in California cannot continue to sit back and accept our votes being tampered with by the media and candidates when they announce a winner before we West Coasters can even go to the polls and make our voices heard…all due to a time differential of three hours. It was disgusting to see Hillary declare that she had won with nary a vote counted in California. This DISENFRANCHISING of all California voters MUST STOP.
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I agree.
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This is the kind of thing why I and millions of others were BIG Bernie supporters.
But
the job can go on. If “Bernie’s Army” will continue the fight we CAN make progress to “take back our country” from these billionaires. The fight will be long and hard but it MUST be done.
As educators our responsibilities are for our children, present and future. I have huge concerns about Hillary and NOT about her stupid e mails but a Trump in the White House is unimaginable to any thinking person. AND again; even if Bernie had won the White House he stated from the beginning what he was trying to do was to start a movement. It was about an idea not about a person. He stated from the beginning he could not, no one could, do this by themselves
It is up to the living to carry on the noble work which he began, to take note of the ideals for which he – and others – have fought.
For the sake of ALL our children and grandchildren the fight must go on.
PLEASE
do not just voice your frustration on this and/or other blogs. WRITE or even better phone your political representatives. voice your concerns.
I have been saddened that the educational unions have not led a STRONG movement to fight for better schools
plus
ALL the thing which affect the future of our children and nation.
Just one: if climate change is not addressed NOW and with vigor there is no future for our posterity. Not my words. Words of our best climatologists who have spent their academic lives in studying the issue.
Even the oil company’s scientists have told their CEOs climate change was real yet they still propagandized that it wasn’t.
As educators we should be leading the fight for ALL the things which affect our children as real educators have done over the centuries.
With the horrific news that is just making the news this morning the Trump people who listen to his message of hate will try to further his agenda in all likelihood. People have said that with a terror attack things
could change on the political landscape.
DON’T LET THAT HAPPEN.
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Each time I see the AP describe the Center for American Progress, which is funded by the Waltons, as liberal, I am reminded that the nation does not have a free press. The 4th estate has ceased to operate, in main stream media.
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Where does Hillary Clinton stand on billionaire’s money in campaigns and the privatization of schools? Does she have something more than “I want to sound as if I am on your side without saying anything that will offend my donors and/or allies”?
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1st question: She stands as close as she can so that money can be deposited in her pockets.
2nd question: NO!
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Duane : OUCH !
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“Public education in California is a plum for the billionaires. They want to privatize it. Who are the biggest spenders in the self-named “education reform movement”? Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Reed Hastings, and Alice Walton”
I sincerely doubt that privatization for personal gain is the motive of the Business Round Table or the Philanthropy Round Table .Of Paul Singer and the Hedge fund crowd .I would believe its an added perk. Kevin Kumashiro who most have probably read lays out the assault that goes far beyond the pittance to be made by these and other Plutocrats and Oligarchs . It is about power and control with the aim of maintaining wealth . It is about controlling education and the media to control the message and the delivery.
https://www.aaup.org/article/when-billionaires-become-educational-experts#.V13RdDUw6-c
So when you are being attacked on a National level when the resources you can bring to the fight are limited . You have to concentrate those resources so as to change the narrative . The best opportunity we have had to do that is now fading away . No it is not Sanders or a cult of personality that would have brought the change. The sight of the Anointed One with the full support of the establishment machine and the media controlled by the billionaire class , going down to defeat would have shook them to the core .Obama was an insider unlike Bernie fully in Bed with his donors . Clinton /Obama two sides of the same coin although we really did “Hope for Change ” but we were never told what that change would look like .
As Matt Taibbi wrote ” And the narrative will be that with him out of the picture, the crisis is over. No person, no problem..This inability to grasp that the problem is bigger than Bernie Sanders is a huge red flag. As Thacker puts it, the theme of this election year was widespread anger toward both parties, and both the Trump craziness and the near-miss with Sanders should have served as a warning.The Democrats should be worried they’re next,” he says.But they’re not worried. Behind the palace walls, nobody ever is.”
They are not worried. .Sorry Gordon Wilder .I agree with your impassioned plea . But the Fast Track Trade Authority battle shows the futility of calling your congressman . The switch boards in DC and at local offices were melting . They have mastered a dog and pony show. There will always be just enough Democrats to cross over join Republicans and give cover to the rest . No matter how many times the legislation has to rise from the grave like a zombie .This is repeated on State levels around the Nation where conservative Democrats join with traditional republicans and Governors of both parties.
Civil disobedience will not claim back our Democracy either as the Democracy Awakening demonstrations proved. If you do not get media coverage you do not exist. Even if a thousand march or get arrested . How many teachers, parents , ever heard of a thousand arrests in DC this April. Chris Hedges in “Days of Revolt” tells of the day a half million anti Vietnam War demonstrators were in Washington the White House surrounded and Nixon turns to Kissinger . “Henry you think they’ll come over the barricades .” “As Hedges states that is where you want them “. He also states that anything but peaceful demonstrations will be crushed. Did that shorten the War maybe, maybe not , but it did end the draft. Other ways had to be developed to achieve policy goals that the American people were not willing to sacrifice sons for. Today’s Army consists of volunteers and mercenaries,many not even American. It also resulted in the Powell Document and the war on University Education and the News Media.
But that was a different America it was a time of relative prosperity, rising incomes, free or low cost education,pensions and employee sponsored health care. A time when woman entered the workforce more because they wanted to than they had to. A time that civil rights seemed to be the key to a bright future for millions of Americans of color as new employment opportunity held hope of opening a door to a middle class existence. The War was a single item issue when it ended so did a large progressive movement.
The attack on K-12 education is being tailored to a vision of education consistent with the desires of corporate America to have an abundant compliant workforce and is part of the attack that started 40 years ago aimed at the University System . Never again do they want the University system to be the center of resistance of intellectual thought . That threatens their hold on power and wealth. The de-funding of Public Higher Education education in part forces University Education to become vocational training as students and parents pay a Kings ransom for that education.
The Occupy movement as difficult as it probably was to structurally deal with,changed the narrative of the Nation. Overnight we went from Peter Peterson’s Fix The Debt and Tea Parties to income inequality and outrage at Wall Street . At least here in NY , Occupy was supported with money and bodies from organized labor at some point for several reasons but most probably to get Obama reelected, It was abandoned by Labor who did what they usually do . They sought as the AFT did by endorsing Clinton early to court special treatment in return for electoral support. That did not work to well for labor or for Occupy, which was crushed .
Had labor stuck with those disheveled kids on the streets, where might America be today . The outgrowth of Occupy was the youth movement support for Sanders those tens of thousands that came out in State after State off of college campuses with others under the age of 45 who heard that message of inequality and realized they have been shafted and and knew exactly by whom as Mike Lofgren said in “Goodbye to all that.”about farmers in the 1890s and workers in the 1920s . Those over 60 especially my retired teacher friends and other who like me had the benefits of going through life at just the right time don’t see it . They will be in for a rude awakening as the Pete Peterson crowd tries to turn the under 45 crowd against them and their pensions and entitlements.
We will be fighting a losing battle if we seek to go up against the power of big money in state and local races we can not compete with them in multiple races and they know it . We will win a few but never enough, Only when peacefully Parents join with Teachers , with College students , with Workers and Civil Rights groups Environmental groups and Consumer groups in numbers large enough to make them fear we are coming over the barricades with Pitch Forks as Nick Hanauer has said, will the plutocrats yield . The place to start is in Philadelphia not to take the nomination away from Hillary but to serve notice that she works for the people . That is how political revolutions start and that is how the Soviet Union fell , how the Arab Spring successfully created change . Although many did not end well they did not start as Democracies .
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In California, it often seems as if a billionaire is funding both or all the candidates in every race, and there is no one with the will to stick to progressive values in sight. That’s why I was so excited by Bernie. I felt like I hadn’t seen or heard of a true progressive before. To get the rich out of power here, there would have to be funding from a teacher’s union bigger than Michael Bloomberg’s ego. We don’t have unions that big. Nobody does.
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16 % of Californians are in Unions in NY 25% . So lets do NY . That is a huge segment of the population one that should be able to move a progressive agenda.
Problem 1 : Unions spend more time fighting each other for crumbs than they do working united.
Example:Cuomo gets elected in 2010 running against a right wing nut . He pushes neo liberal policy rather than a progressive agenda .
The problem in NY if you are Cuomo ,is Public Worker Pensions , Teachers … … He working with his buddies on Wall Street pushes a Fix the Debt style advertising campaign . To which private sector Construction Trades Unions contribute. The quid pro quo the rebuilding of the Tappan Zee bridge. Jobs for a recession bashed industry . Now that Billionaire Developers are after them do not expect Cuomo to do much .
Problem 2:
Unions do not educate their members they pay mostly lip service to issues . Most are autocratic in nature more concerned with maintaining leadership than movements. They have to become bottom up driven organizations where active members help push the narrative and become truly involved . Of course an active membership may challenge the current leadership.
But with all their faults they are” the only guys keeping the barbarians at the gate.” J.B. But it will be a losing battle unless they change become far more inclusive incorporating other groups Environmental, Consumer , Parents …… Trumka saw that and proposed that a few years ago it has not sunk in yet. The CTA gets it, they may yet aligned with Parents recapture Chicago.
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