Following on the great success of the campaign to “buy” Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey’s vote (it raised $60,000 in three days, which will be donated to charities for children in the state), a similar GoFundMe campaign has been launched in North Carolina.
It is a great consciousness-raising activity. The funds will go to an organization that supports public schools.
“Durham, N.C., February 3, 2017: When North Carolina residents Eunice Chang and Lekha Shupeck realized the only way to get Senator Richard Burr’s attention was to buy it, they launched a GoFundMe campaign to do exactly that: http://www.gofundme.com/buy-senator-richard-burrs-vote.
“Betsy DeVos gave $43,200 to Senator Richard Burr’s reelection campaign, and is getting Burr’s vote for a Cabinet seat in return. Meanwhile, as many North Carolina citizens know first-hand, Burr consistently fails to answer constituent concerns.
“He refuses to hold town hall meetings because they “don’t work for him.” It’s near impossible to get in touch with staffers in his offices: phones are “busy,” voicemail boxes are full, and emails and letters are largely ignored. Burr’s office has called his own constituents, trying desperately to get their senator’s attention, “out-of-state[rs]” and “lack[ing] civility and decorum” simply for voicing their opposition to his policy decisions. In the case of the phone campaign against DeVos’ nomination, Burr himself stated that the opposition was a “strategy hatched a long time ago” rather than a genuine outpouring of concern from North Carolina citizens.
“Clearly, that $43,200 means that DeVos gets Senator Burr’s attention and vote, while the citizens of North Carolina get dismissed and ignored by the person who is supposed to represent their interests. So if money is the only thing Senator Burr listens to, we want to put our money to work!
“Since we believe that what DeVos did by donating to Burr’s campaign was tantamount to bribery and unethical, we won’t be trying to buy his vote directly. Instead, our fundraiser donates directly to Public School Forum of North Carolina, an organization that does important work advocating for better public education in our state’s schools.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think there should be more than one more republican – 2 -5. Or 52! But more than one because then (s)he doesn’t have the burden or being THE ONE.
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Burr’s comment on the Rachel Maddow show on these phone calls is telling
“This is their strategy.”
he says smugly. This “strategy” he is talking about is the people’s opinion, but he refers to them as annoyances that prevent him and his family to have a good time.
Watch Burr’s comment at 11 minutes 25 seconds
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/gop-opts-for-fundraising-over-quick-vote-for-hotly-opposed-devos-869938243633
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With the charter school industry that’s favored by nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos bleeding vital funds from the public’s schools, the thoughtful person will ask: “Why are hedge fund people the main backers of the private charter school industry? After all, hedge funds are not known for a selfless interest in educating children.”
Well, the answer, of course, is MONEY.
For example, look at DeVos’ home state of Michigan: There are 1.5 million children attending public elementary and secondary schools and the state annually spends about $11,000 per student which adds up to pot of about $17 billion that private charter school operators have their eyes on. If these private operators succeed in getting what DeVos wants to give them — the power to run all the schools — these private profiteers could make almost $6 billion in profit just by firing veteran teachers and replacing them with low-paid inexperienced teachers, which is what the real objective of so-called “Value-Added” evaluations of veteran teachers is all about.
But wait! There’s more!
In fact, there are many more ways that big profits are being made every day right now by the private charter school industry. Here are just some:
The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals” because of the financial fraud, the skimming of tax money into private pockets that is the reason why hedge funds are the main backers of charter schools.
The Washington State Supreme Court, the New York State Supreme Courts, and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A “PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL” because no charter school fulfills the basic public accountability requirement of being responsible to and directed by a school board that is elected by We the People. Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money.
Even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “reporting” on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property.
NO PUBLIC TAX MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC.
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“For example, if a charter spends $2 million to buy iPads for its students, those iPads become the private property of the school which can then sell them at the end of the school year for $1 million, pocket the $1 million, and then get another $2 million from taxpayers to buy new computers for the next year…and repeat that process year after year. Nice.”
It indeed is. Thanks.
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Your comment contained a great Bumper sticker:
“Why are hedge fund people the main backers of the private charter school industry?
That nails it.
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