You probably never heard of Rebekah Mercer. I never had. She is a billionaire who is one of the influential figures inside the Trump transition. Read about her here. The working people who believed in Trump are in for some very unpleasant surprises. A new oligarchy is taking shape. It will be mean. Hard.
“Mercer’s influence in Trump’s transition effort — detailed here for the first time — calls into question Trump’s campaign trail boasts that his own fortune, which he used to partly fund his campaign, would make him independent from deep-pocketed donors and special interests he railed against on the campaign trail. And the entanglement of connections between Trump’s aides and Mercer’s big-money political operation has prompted complaints from campaign finance watchdog groups, and grumbling from Republican operatives who contend that Mercer has too much control over Trump’s GOP.
“It would be difficult to overstate Rebekah’s influence in Trump world right now,” said one GOP fundraiser who has worked with Mercer and people in the campaign. “She is a force of nature. She is aggressive, and she makes her point known.”
“Mercer has a coveted seat on the Trump transition team’s 16-member executive committee. Her work, which she does mostly from home, includes collaborating with conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society — to which she has steered a combined $4.7 million or more — to recruit appointees for positions at the undersecretary level and below, according to a transition team source.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
WORKING FAST: Rebekah Mercer is listed as treasurer of Reclaim NY, a 501c(3) that seeks to influence legislation in Albany through pay-for-play and fake astroturf in the media. The vice chair of the group is Steve Bannon, the controversial Trump appointee who ran Breitbart news.
Among the issues they are promising billionaire bucks for are expanding charter schools, tax credits for religious schools and opposing a $15 hour minimum wage. Mercer has been successful in buying influence in Albany, giving Republicans a money boost in the last two cycles to retain the majority in the State Senate and help pick up Congressional seats, outspending Democrats by an order of magnitude.
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My head is spinning. Yet another far right wing/libertarianish billionaire who wants to bring us back to a platinum coated gilded age. From the article: “…..more than $25 million to the Koch brothers’ network…” Is that a joke? She gave $25 million to the Koch brothers, isn’t that like bringing coals to Newcastle, as the saying goes. I fall to my knees dumbfounded at the hideousness that is about to befall this nation. AND she’s a big fan of John (war monger) Bolton!!!!!
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Rebekah Mercer and daddy have a history with Steve Bannon and Breitbart, and they helped to fund the “documentary” ‘Clinton Cash.’ They have some ‘big’ ideas.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/13/inside-the-mercers-diy-media-empire.html
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Daddy Mercer is at Renaissance Technologies, which. according to Bloomberg News, is a “New York-based hedge fund firm that uses computers to spot market patterns.”
The Post reported the close ties between Daddy Mercer and Rebekah Mercer with some of Trump’s top people: “Their imprint is now evident on the real estate developer’s campaign, which is led by three close associates who ran Mercer-funded enterprises: former Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen Bannon, pollster Kellyanne Conway and Citizens United President David Bossie.”
Bekah and her daddy think the “markets” are made for people like them to manipulate, and like Trump, taxes are for losers. Naturally, they are fond of wrapping themselves in the flag too; while they rip of the public treasury and the taxpayer, they mouth words like “freedom” and ‘the Constitution.” It was Bekah Mercer who pushed Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway (ick) into the Trump campaign.
Guess what? The Mercers are now going to expect Trump to deliver for them…and boy, will he.
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Great,someone else who believes in “God” while sea level rises(flooding)and our bio sphere is collapsing,to the point,WE will be enjoying a radioactive hot battery to live on .
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That god will have called all the good people home by then so they don’t have to worry.
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They’re all over the place.
They tell doctors how to doctor, police how to police, and teachers how to teach. They’ve fouled up everything they’ve touched from healthcare to the military to universities to school lunches.
They all share the crazy commonality of telling people what to do … while never following their own advice … never content to do what they know best … only what they imagine best.
Their philosophy presupposes that actual educational experience really isn’t necessary. So, they set out to blaze new trails and actually set fire to a whole lot of very good stuff. And then they admire their own fabulous debris that’s in their rearview mirror … enjoying their turn at this educational wheel of misfortune.
We know the self-anointed educational egotists in our presence … fat-wallet types like Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Netflix Reed Hastings, and Exxon Mobil’s Rex Tillison. Good luck with that trinity of the self-admiring.
The master the spicy jargon and learn to blend in buzzwords like street corner connivers. They practice their bullshit and spark our lives with junk ideas, junk jargon … and then they junk the future of our kids.
We’ve endured assaults by phony pedagogical Zeuses like Rhee and Duncan and Coleman and King … each suffering from a mysterious messiah-complex. And each demanding that we suffer along with their certain absurdities.
And now we have Betsy DeVos … the national re-incarnation of New York’s monied-wizard of educational mayhen, Merryl Tisch … famous for scratching out some small fame in a profession she knows nothing about. Scholastic fakery presented as substantial genius. No one’s fooled. At all.
This posse of posers think algorithms, computers, and ouija boards are the educational tools of the 21st century. And they insist that all that went before should head for the attic.
The message of this appointment is two-fold. There remains an unserious concern about our schools. And there was little effort to search out the very best for a vital position.
That’s where we are folks … deep into the Age of the Know-It-Alls … and everyone of them seems determined to do their very best for mankind … including ruining it all in spectacular fashion.
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Denis Ian
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Dennis,
Things are changing and they are really not the same – or at the same level – as they were years ago. However, when you hit rock bottom, you have no where to go but up. There is still hope for people to peaceably organize, boycott, demonstrate, vote, and run for offices of all levels.
If this administration manages to take away pensions, SS, Medicare, and public schools, it will result in a Darwinian society, but also with tens of millions of people who will still be able to do all those things mentioned above. Hope is not lost at all, nor will it ever be.
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Norwegian Filmmaker
Perhaps you are more optimistic because of a misinterpretation of history .
The Union movement was dying in this country in the 1920’s
“During the 1920s, unions lost strike after strike as employer opposition to unions reversed many of the wartime advances by organized labor. Due in good part to a union-breaking campaign led by the NAM, union strength dropped from about 20% of the nonagricultural labor force in 1920 to less than 10% at the beginning of the New Deal. Over the course of these lean years for organized labor, union membership declined from five million in 1919 to just under three million in 1933”
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/history_of_labor_unions.html
Workers getting decimated does not lead to more organizing. It leads to more workers getting decimated. Which is why those on this blog who criticize union leadership as being tools of the system, sellouts have missed the point of history. They have been negotiating from a point of weakness since 1947 when the secondary boycott was outlawed. The decline has been steady. And the membership unwilling to make the sacrifices required to garner power. Some of those sacrifices involving limb or freedom.
There was a very powerful external threat to the Oligarchy in the 20’s and early thirties one that does not really exist today. The Great Depression magnified the possibility of that threat. Thus a few bones were thrown to the working class in the form of NLRA.
They have successfully pushed back since the end of WW2 with Taft Hartley. Eliminated the external threat while taking the decimation of Unions to new heights with each passing decade. At the same time they have increased the surveillance state and police state to levels never dreamed of a century ago.
The minimum wage if adjusted for inflation would not be 15 an hour but almost 15 higher than it currently is. Not seeing many successful organizing drives of this increasingly large group of people.
But what I am seeing is commercials on TV touting the joys and wonders of Koch industries. Seeing Peterson commercials of how we must save the country from future cuts in spending, by cutting that spending now.Seeing mainstream media dispersing economic group think rather than facts. So obvious to those in education, but remember the the narrative of the financial and restate markets before the crash. There were economists like Schiller , Baker, Roach,Rubini and others who warned as Roach (the chief economist at Morgan Stanley) said in 2004 we are heading for economic Armageddon. Instead you heard your home was a cash cow whose value could only go up.
As Chomsky said we have replaced the bludgeon with propaganda. But have no doubt the bludgeon is alive and well from Zuccotti Park to Standing Rock.
Forget the fake news on the internet. What the hell is Pundit wars on the cable networks . There is little or no investigative reporting on these networks . Two lying sacks of turd yelling talking points most with false narratives of group think is not investigative journalism CNN, MSNBC. That is Fox ratings garbage. Nothing fair or balanced about it.
They will do what they have always done, pit one part of the working class against the next . Those without pensions against those with pensions. They will pit Junior against granny on Social Security and Medicare as Hillary pitted Granny against the youth on college tuition and healthcare.
Oh the sight of those keep the Government out of my Medicare signs at Tea Party Rallies. They will not cut the safety net of entitlements to those already on it . But will change it for those approaching retirement a decade form now while they starve the programs through inflation. Just as there is no longer a minimum wage law ,when that wage is so low as to be meaningless .
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real-estate
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“calls into question Trump’s campaign trail boasts that his own fortune, which he used to partly fund his campaign, would make him independent from deep-pocketed donors and special interests he railed against on the campaign trail.”
Everything Trump did “called that into question”
I don’t feel at all sorry for his supporters. At some point people are going to have to take responsibility for voting for these people.
It wasn’t difficult to research “Donald Trump”. He’s 70 years old and he’s never done anything for anyone besides himself. He’s not going to transform into a completely different person with MORE power. He’ll be worse.
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Did you-all see ed reform is lining up behind Trump?
https://dfer.org/dfer-statement-president-elect-trumps-nomination-betsy-devos-secretary-education/
I told you they would. They want charter and voucher funding and marketing from Trump. They don’t care about anything else. They never cared about anything else.
He could close every public school in the country and ed reform would follow lock-step behind him. It’s an echo chamber. There’s no real dissent or debate in this “movement”- they’re a political lobby and they lobby on behalf of charters and vouchers. That’s ALL they do.
I knew ed reform would drop their “principled” opposition to vouchers, too. The one and only reason they told the public they were opposed to vouchers is because vouchers are politically unpopular. They didn’t mean a word of it.
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I tweeted DFERstatement. They will be happy with DeVos.
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Don’t remember if you have posted DFER’s statement. If you haven’t would you please post it? Gracias.
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Notice too the extent that ed reform dominates media coverage of Trump.
There is not ONE WORD about how Donald Trump will affect existing public schools. Not one word. It is ALL charters and vouchers.
One would think there are no public schools in the United States reading this stuff. THAT’S how much of an echo chamber this is- we have a President-elect who is opposed to 90% of schools in the country and that doesn’t even merit a sentence in a newspaper.
Kids in public schools are utterly and completely ignored. None of these “experts” can be bothered to mention their schools at all.
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Chiara, agreed. Although The NY Times had a front page article about DeVos, its editorial made no reference to her extremist, white-Christians-first views. She is no ordinary appointee. She has a record. Look at Michigan and Detroit.
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I’m looking at it in a kind of fatalistic way. This didn’t start with Trump.National political leaders have been out of touch a very long time. No one believes anything they say. Once Trump completely discredits every single national institution maybe there can be some kind of rebirth.
I wouldn’t have voted for it and didn’t vote for it- I was on the other side- but now that it’s here maybe there can be some kind of civic restoration after he destroys what remains.
I do think the focus on DC is misguided. Wealthy people own DC and have for decades and now Trump owns it. Whatever good comes out of or after Trump won’t come out of DC. The future of public schools is local. These folks are irrelevant to us and our schools. It’s not a great loss- they never valued our schools anyway.
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The wealthy own our statehouses and legislators too, pouring in dark money to influence state and local elections, even school boards. It is not just D.C. they corrupt.
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Just to give you a sense of how little regard there is for public schools in ed reform, read any of them on DeVos:
http://the74million.org/article/petrilli-20-big-questions-for-education-secretary-nominee-betsy-devos
Our schools are NOT MENTIONED. They have completely disappeared from any DC discussion.
Ed reform is now “choice”. Public schools have been disappeared. They no longer exist in DC circles.
Why would any public school hire any of these people? Your schools are not valued AT ALL in ed reform. It’s suicide to hire people whose one and only goal is to close your school! No charter chain would ever do that.
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Steve Bannon had his own alliance with the MERCER family. Since 2011, Robert MERCER has been a major backer of Breitbart, Bannon’s news site, and Bannon has served as a political adviser to the Mercers.
“You can make the case that Breitbart pretty much wrote Trump’s immigration policy,” Kurt Bardella, who resigned as Breitbart’s spokesman in March, told me.
He added, “Bannon is the poster child for that white, nationalistic, alt-right world view.”
After Trump’s victory in the Indiana primary, the MERCERS, with Bannon’s encouragement, moved into the Trump camp.
Later that month, Rebekah Mercer and Kellyanne Conway met with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner at Trump Tower to discuss the campaign. In late June, the Mercers transformed Keep the Promise into Make America Number 1, a Trump super pac, and the Trump campaign, at the Mercers’ urging, hired Kellyanne Conway as a pollster.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/kellyanne-conways-political-machinations
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Trumpism is obviously shaping up to become a crushing, autocratic, police state that goes out of its way to make life miserable for anyone and anything that get in the way of its agenda in anyway. Even individual, and media criticism will be crushed. For instance, what will happen to Saturday Night Live and John Oliver?
Trump’s favorite weapon of choice is tying anyone and anything up in knots in court for years costing them fortunes in legal fees that might lead to bankruptcy. Imagine the power he will have to use this weapon when he controls the federal legal system.
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This is an interesting article about her father, Robert Mercer.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2016-01-20/what-kind-of-man-spends-millions-to-elect-ted-cruz-
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Thank you Eric Brandon for the important link.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2016-01-20/what-kind-of-man-spends-millions-to-elect-ted-cruz-
This is exactly what I express about the manipulation in media like Breitbart,com where Steve Bannon is owned by The Mercers’ family whose brain power corrupts American Democracy.
It is still shockingly to me that Robert Mercer cannot apply his wisdom in logical mindset in order to bring harmony between man and machine.
If he can use his knowledge in computational skills to manipulate people into fear and love, why cannot he manipulate people’s emotion that leads to being civilized in a republican community.
What DOES “a name calling game” from President elect toward his own party senior members and Democrat candidate mean to Robert Mercer’s computer genius mind? Back2basic
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