Mercedes Schneider turns her well-honed investigative talents to exploring the history and funding of Campbell Brown’s website, The 74.
Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, has given generously to The 74. Brown sits on the board of DeVos’s American Federation for Children, which advocates for vouchers. Both share an interest in attacking teachers’ unions, teacher tenure, and public schools. DeVos gave Brown’s 74 a gift of $2.4 million in 2014. A token of friendship, I suppose. That’s what friends are for. We should all have friends like that.
Mercedes has done a phenomenal job of analyzing the tax records of The 74 to decipher its funders and its evolution.
Much information remains undisclosed. She urges its disclosure.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In 1789, the French taught the world how to deal with their ruling class made up of families like the DeVos clan.
But the Chinese have known this for millennia, long before the French revolution. The end of every Chinese dynasty was a blood bath as the new dynasty replaced the one that had become corrupt, and greedy. China went through this blood bath the last time in 1949 when the Communists won the decades long Civil War with the Nationalists. This wasn’t anything new. In China this process has a name: The Mandate of Heaven.
History now shows it is the only way to get rid of all that corrupt dirt and slime at the top. It doesn’t happen overnight. The corruption of the ruling class must cause so much suffering among most of the people that eventually the only choice is to risk everything to get rid of the monsters at the top. The suffering must be enormous for people to act with such violence and anger.
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If we had implemented the same tax rate as the Eisenhower administration, (about 90% for high earners), these people would not have amassed such great concentrations of wealth. Our country would have benefited tremendously from the additional tax dollars as they did under Eisenhower. We could have repaired our crumbling infrastructure and strengthened our social safety nets. Instead, we have a bunch of narrow minded billionaires that have the resources to destroy our democracy.
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It’s in-credible it exists at all.
Campbell Brown, from CNN to pure horse manure. That’s an ego-induced career shift.
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Horse manure does have a purpose just like cow flops and chicken shit. Is it possible Campbell Brown would make good compost for a garden of snakes?
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I agree that horse manure has more use than Campbell Brown’s 74 – we in Los Angeles have to suffer this woman’s LA School Report as if it were the only word on the schools in L.A. No one much questions what she says either. Her rag is simply a charter school propaganda tool.
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Is there no local blog like Philly’s School Notebook?
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Shouldn’t it be “The 3.5”?
Her blog content shows zero concern for anyone other than the 3.5 million charter school students, conveniently ignoring the 45 million public school students and their parents.
Her 15 seconds of fame are over. Her career accomplishments do not even compare to the work of even one veteran school teacher. Sad that she gets the kind of attention that makes her seem important.
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