“In the Public Interest,” an organization that keeps track of privatization of the public sector, points out that Trump and DeVos have a lot riding on the outcome of the school board election in Los Angeles on May 16.
Their allies have invested millions of dollars in gaining control of the school board so they can turn students and schools over to private hands.
If they can defeat Steve Zimmer and Irma Padilla in run-offs, they will be able to divert public funding to charter entrepreneurs and corporate charter chains. They will squash democratic control of public schools. They will send tax dollars to corporate entities that are neither accountable nor transparent. They will widen the reach of an unregulated industry that has been marred by scandal, theft, fraud, misappropriation of funds, and self-dealing.
Citizens of Los Angeles. Stand up for democracy and public education! Vote for Steve Zimmer and Imelda Padilla!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Dump Trump and Bump Betsy.
Trump and deVos are ‘come lately’ villains to the LAUSD soap opera.
Last year and the year before, on this blog, I repeatedly warned about how well organized the billionaires had finally gotten (after the wikileaks Sony/LASR brouhaha) and that their new venture of Great Public Schools Now (in the redesigned iteration) was a winning venture for them. They did this to try to fool the public into thinking that it was not the Broad plan to take over another 50% of LAUSD to charterize, but it was. So many people hate Broad, and yet they know his power…so they and the LA Times did this secretive new dance. Even this week Howard Blume did an article with the Broad imprimatur at the end, boxed, to explain that it was paid for by Broad and his cronies.
There was no great uproar when they hired a well known, non- educator lobbyist to run this re-invented nefarious organization, nor when they hired her two bosses who had long time creds as highly successful corporate charterizers. For those who watch this closely, this is not new news. And now it is a fait accompli.
Too bad more attention has not been paid to Karen, Sara, Cynthia, Sari, Carl, Robert, Josh, and me, who have not hidden any of this info for the last few years…so here we are, with a $10 Million school board election which will probably see the two charter kids, Melvoin and Gonez, get on the BoE to join the ‘old timer’ Broad charter puppets, Garcia and Rodriguez, and all is then lost. LAUSD and public schools in our community will be only a memory.
Following right along…..
So tell me folks, are you going to avoid working for Kamala Harris when she runs for Prez in 2020, and instead push Hillary again? She is on the lecture circuit now and the word is she wants to run again with all her flaws and well in to her 70s, even though she and the old hacks on the DNC and the deluded Clintonians gave us Trump and deVos?
But then, I predict that the insane Trump will see to it to further obfuscate his collusions and law breaking, that she is indicted as soon as he finds an FBI leader who will “pledge their loyalty” to him.
It is all so disgusting.
Kamala Harris has limited national experience, and unfortunately Hillary turns off a significant part of the electorate. We need better candidates with national experience. When are we going to stop treating the U.S. Presidency as an on-the-job learning experience????
P.S. – today on CNN there was a story that “the Rock” was going to run for office inspired by Trump’s “success.” Actually we can trace this cult of celebrity back to go old Ronnie…
Looks like the civics lessons that are being taught in school are not working, and we have achieved what the founders feared…
“A republic … if you can keep it!”
The problem, David, is that civics lessons are no longer taught in public schools…and many of the text books are from the major Texas publisher which uses the Cheney’s and their advisors to determine language.
Also, Harris was the elected AG of California and is now our elected Senator. Not quite the novice you describe…and certainly not a TV reality show nut job who now inhabits our WH.
Regardless, Trump and DeVos are emboldening the pro-voucher creeps who got their heads handed to them in Utah a decade ago, but are now at it again. Utah’s in their sites to give all kinds of public money to vouchers for all. The public in Utah has rejected vouchers TWICE, but the billionaires and the anti-public education legislature never met graft they didn’t like:
http://www.sltrib.com/news/5287414-155/trump-devos-embolden-utah-school-voucher
The both have the GREED and MEAN genes. Where is their prefrontal cortex and MORALS? Undeveloped? No where?
OOPS, meant “WHERE ARE…”
A great German comedian has a line I’d like to paraphrase: If super rich Russians are called oligarchs, why do we call super-rich people in the our countries successful, players, or thought leaders? We need to link our oligarchs with those in Russia.
Instead of calling them reformers, we need to call them American oligarchs.
Some of us have been calling them oligarchs for years, Greg.
Don’t worry 😀!! The FBI may make that link!!
If you have been watching and listening to any of the insane BS coming from the mouths of either BD or #45 that should keep any person away from anything these two are for.