Bill Gates has a big new idea. He has gotten together with a few other big-time philanthropists and created a pool of $500 Million, with which they plan to solve the really big problems in health, education, and economic opportunity. They call their collaboration “Co-Impact.” One of the collaborators is Jeff Skoll, who was one of the producers of the public school-bashing hitjob “Waiting for Superman.”
Emily Talmage is not happy about what’s coming from this group. She sees it as yet another attempt by the super-elites to impose their will on the rest of us, who lack their money and power.
Let us stipulate: no one elected a Bill Gates and his friends to remake social policy. Sure, Trump is busy dismantling and shredding social policy, but who put Bill in charge? One thing we can say about the richest man in America: Every one of his interventions into American education has failed. There is no reason to believe he has learned anything from the slow collapse of VAM and the catastrophe of Common Core. To the contrary, he is still propping CCSS up with new millions, although it’s very name is mud.
Emily writes:
“Gates is one giant, gnarly tree in an dark, overgrown forest of private “givers” who are dead-set on remaking our nation into something reminiscent of a feudalistic society.
“I say it’s time to investigate the whole rotten system that’s allowing this to happen.
“Seriously, folks. This just can’t be okay.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Gates needs to to GO AWAY. What is he ON, anyway? Answer: HIMSELF and his $$$$$.
Most of what I read seemed to be about helping developing countries. So the question is, are these millions really going to help developing countries? Who will know if they do not. Here in the US, they claim success where there is demonstrable failure. One of the claims on the post was that they intend to collaborate with local people to make improvement a reality. Given that the Common Corpse was developed without collaboration (nobody ever asked me at least), can we trust that this is happening?
King Leopold of Belgium famously misled the world of his day as to his intentions in Congo. He said he was helping Christian missionaries when he was ruthlessly exploiting the Congo, causing many to die. Nobody understood his real agenda. Given the eviseration of investigative reporting in recent years, can we trust anyone today? Who holds the King Leopolds of our day accountable?
Most prominent in the article is the phrase “systems change” in developing countries. I think we all in this country know what “systems change” means by now. It means computerization. It means forcing people to use devices and collecting data when they do. “Systems change” does NOT mean clean water, food, or higher wages. It means privatization thereby creating more cutthroat competition for all of those things.
“One of the claims on the post was that they intend to collaborate with local people to make improvement a reality.”
Why now isn’t that just peachy that they intend to collaborate with the peeons?!
I hear Jeff Besos has more $$$ now. 😆
“(Common) Core, in fact”
Co-impact
Is Core, in fact
Dressed in newer clothes
Billy’s buds
Are Rheeally FUDs
And every teacher’s foes
One Giant, Gnarly Tree (with apologies to William Blake and SDP)
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told Gates so; his greed did grow.
And he destroyed ed careers
Night and day with marketeers,
And he fooled the world with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And he grew both day and night,
Till he bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
Left on my desk that it was mine,–
And into public school stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, sad, I see
My school outstretched beneath the tree.
Very nice!
Here’s another in a similar vein
“Bill and the Beanstalk”
Deep within the garden Gates
He planted seeds, for common fates
Beanstalks that would reach the
cloud
Common Core for teaching crowd
Beanstalks grew with public money
Grew in the Land of Milken honey
Put down roots in public schools
Teaching standards, teaching rules
Beanstalks to which teachers bowed
Channels to the data cloud
Techies harvest student fruit
The more they eat, the more we toot
SDP has outdone himself on that one.
I cross posted this article with TWO MUST READ COMMENTS ABOUT how LEGAL tax avoidance has got us into a situation where we need to depend on rich “philanthropists” to pay for things that are for THE COMMON GOOD, for which our GOVERNMENT WAS SET UP TO DO! https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Emily-Talmage-Beware-The-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Economic_Education_Health-171120-560.html#comment679881
Go there becasue the comment Iam copying below have the most incredible links to THE PARADISE PAPERS, which the MEDIA (owned by the billionaires) is NOT telling the people.
Here is my first comment The idea is to starve the government, and rely on good hearted billionaires and private companies, to do what the government should do FOR THE COMMON GOOD, like fixing roads and educating the citizenry.
This from The Guardian:
“The millions of leaked files in the Paradise Papers once again shine a bright light on where the uber-elite stash their cash. Until very recently the hidden web of investments made by the super-rich operated in the comforting darkness offered by secretive tax shelters.The disinfecting sunlight provided by whistleblowing-led investigations since 2013 has fundamentally altered how the world looks at, and regulates, tax affairs.
“Voters tax themselves, among other things, for schools, roads, a health service, for welfare provision, to pay their soldiers and build a diplomatic corps. When a group at the top of society secedes and forms a globally mobile republic, able to choose which jurisdiction they wish to operate under, the public is right to ask why we allow this to happen. Why should taxes just be for the little people?
This is true of corporate entities as well as individuals. Increasingly — and worryingly — the international profits of many corporations are showing up in tax havens.
“It’s clear a dramatic shift is under way: not only is the amount of wealth flooding into tax shelters around the world rising to unprecedented levels, but so much of wheeling and dealing is also done by a tiny fraction of humanity.
“After the austerity years of private affluence and public impoverishment, there are few takers for the idea that the rich shift cash offshore for laudable reasons. The public mood is one of cynicism, not merely skepticism — and it’s justified by the revelations that politicians have failed to take seriously enough for years.
“The first stories have already generated global headlines, but here in the US, where the corporate elite OWN THE MEDIA, and there is little in the media about this STUNNING PROJECT by journalists from 80 news organizations, who worked over a year, in secret to uncover the links.
Key revelations from the Paradise Papers:
“What the Paradise Papers has exposed is legal, so what is the problem?” They have an agenda, of course. They want to demonise the very concept of taxation because they want to roll back the state and construct a free-market “utopia” which, in practical terms, would be dystopian for the vast majority.
Submitted on Monday, Nov 20, 2017 at 5:19:21 PM
You are totally correct. If we had kept the same tax brackets as we had in the Eisenhower administration, we would have enough money to rebuild infrastructure and provide for universal healthcare, higher education etc. We would not have billionaires trying to usurp and profit from everything. Instead, we have an oligarchy where billionaires can use the rest of us as guinea pigs or play things while they hide trillions offshore.
Right on, Susan. My reaction when I hear railing against Bill Gates is that he is merely the “apple bright” of the “gnarly tree” that is our sick, twisted, trickle-up bought&sold govt (cf InService’s parody above).
We don’t need Bill Gates, and ‘philanthropists’ to do the work that tax money would do if it were not shipped offshore.
Here are two more links to the revelations of the Paradise Papers with links .
The message of the Paradise Papers could not be clearer. Tax-avoiding elites must be reined in
End these offshore games or our democracy will die | Aditya Chakrabortty | Opinion | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/07/end-offshore-games-democracy-die-paradise-papers
Why have we built a paradise for offshore billionaires? | Thomas Frank | Opinion | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/09/paradise-papers-offshore-billionaires#img-1
Thank you for the links. Somehow I’d missed the Thomas Frank column.
You are welcome… There are many more links at OPED, and you can go to my author’s page http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
for links to all my comments with embedded links to top issues of the day, and my series (much of which comes from Diane’s incredible site.
but here are links to those ,too.
series pages http://www.opednews.com/author/series/author40790.htmll
COMMENTS PAGE
http://www.opednews.com/author/comments/author40790.html
Vice News devoted an hour long show to the investigative journalists that analyzed the documents leaked from Appleby Bank. It was fascinating and infuriating at the same time.
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
“[Bill] Gates is one giant, gnarly tree in a dark, overgrown forest of private ‘givers’ who are dead-set on remaking our nation into something reminiscent of a feudalistic society.”
The US government and their stupid politicians have now been defeated and in a big way. For so many years, the people of the US bashed politicians as being stupid and lazy, complacent and useless. And, for many years this was indeed the truth as our politicians have destroyed our great country with their useless minds and thirst for money.
Now, today we have these billionaires with all this money who should have been taxed and the money should be sitting in US banks. However, this is not the case. The politicians have allowed the Gates and the Bloombergs of the world to grow into these monsters who think they suddenly are geniuses because they have all this money. We all know that money is not a direct correlation to intelligence.
But, by allowing the Gates, the Koch bros and the bloombergs of the world to prosper, we are now being governed by two. Washington DC and the others who so happen to be these goofy billionaires who think they have this found intelligence. How do we get out of this situation before it gets ugly by where the people start a revolution and start dragging people like Gates and bloomberg all over the streets like we saw Khadafy being dragged from a pick up truck all over the streets of Libya.
Philanthropic ventures like Co-Impact are really intent on privatizing public services, and diminishing the role of democratic governance in setting policies, not only in the US and abroad.
Nobody has elected these billionaires to determine social policies. Correct.
Further, the press release for Co-Impact said that the effort was inspired by Blue Meridian Partners. In that is true, then all of the talk of system change in publicity about Co-Impact is really about making social service and causes operate as pay-for-performance schemes for investors, with opportunities to rig the programs to guarantee the return on investment by cherry picking who participates, and what the benchmarks for performance are.
Here is more about Blue Meridian Partner. It is “a partnership of impact-driven philanthropists seeking to change the odds for America’s children and youth living in poverty, https://ssir.org/articles/entry/a_new_model_of_collaborative_philanthropy
Blue Meridian partners is a startup for pay-for-success investments sponsored by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (EMCF). At the end of Fiscal year 2015, EMCF had assets of almost one billion dollars. EMCF intends to spend down all of its money within ten years on pay-for-success operations (5-10 years). As part of this wind down, EMCF has set up Blue Meridian Partners.
Blue Meridian Partners will function as a new “capital aggregation collaboration” that will invest upward of a billion dollars in a portfolio of nonprofits in the expectation of having a national impact for children in poverty.
According to Nancy Roob, CEO of EMCF and Blue Meridian Partners: “We are able to reduce risk (to investors) by our intensive due diligence, rigorous selection process, and the accountability framework we create by linking future investment payout to performance metrics” https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2016/09/09/blue-meridian-partners-a-collaborative-form-of-big-bet-philanthropy-aims-to-give-1b-to-youth-programs/
So far, 12 “partners” are committed to investing up to $200 million in pay for success programs. Blue Meridian has eight voting partners who in the next five years will contribute $50 million to selected pay-for performance projects. Here are the voting members.
The Ballmer Group Philanthropy estimated net worth of Steve and Connie Ballmer $33 billion. Helped establish Blue Meridian Partners in with a $50 million donation. Steve succeeded Bill Gates as the CEO of Microsoft (2000-2014). Paid $2 billion to take ownership of LA Clippers basketball team. Set up https://usafacts.org to provide stats from multiple sources, curated by scholars.
The Sergey Brin Family Foundation at least $500 million Brin is co-founder of Google, President of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc.
The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. Wealth is from Avon Products (cosmetics, perfumes). Current grantees, with some these Meridian Partners, are listed here http://www.emcf.org/grantees/current-grantees/
Stanley and Fiona Druckenmiller. Stanley is Chairman of the Board of Harlem Children’s Zone, Major supporter of Republicans, intent on cutting so-called entitlement programs such as Social Security.
The Duke Endowment. 2016 grants of $56,600,000 to programs, most in north and South Carolina, many for United Methodist church preschool programs and online programs in social services, including health and education.
George Kaiser Family Foundation. Based in Tulsa, OK with weath from oil and investments in “diversified businesses in North America and overseas. Supports charter schools.
The Samberg Family Foundation. Wealth is from hedge funds, The foundation’s largest grants have gone to the heavily endowed Harlem Children’s Zone,
The David Tepper Charitable Foundation. David Teppler is a hedge fund guru with an estimated worth of $11.4 billion in 2017, Wealth came from buying “distressed debt” in the 2008 meltdown. He is on the Board of the Robinhood Foundation, a major funder of Teach for America and Uncommon Schools
Pay for Success contracts, also known as Social Impact Bonds, usually stipulate that the government funds that should have been devoted to securing the specific outcomes (specified in the contract or purpose of the bond) are owed to the investors–if the program meets specific targets for performance. How are those calculations made?
For a NYC preschool program, the Robinhood Foundation calculated that the “social worth” of a high quality preschool program was $50,650 per child…in 2014. This dollar amount is an estimate of social/government costs avoided, if “proper” pre-school and interventions are made and produce the best outcomes. Pay-for-performance and SIBs are designed toast that efficient and effectiveness can be guaranteed by the private sector, and not by government -run programs determined by citizen voice and professional expertise.
You can bet your whatever that pre-school programs do NOT invest $50,650 per child, probably not even in NYC. The calculations from the Robinhood Foundation are designed to market their pay-for-success programs to government officials who have a short term goal of cutting budgets for social services, including pre-school. The marketers, including government officials enlisted as “partners,” tell citizens that the “deal” will save taxpayers $50,650 per child in the long run. In fact, if the program succeeds in producing the carefully selected targets, taxpayers pay the investors–with an estimated 7% profit part of the payback. By design, this financial product is not about dressing social problems but about making money by privatizing social programs.
This kind of financial product is being marketed internationally. One effect is that governmental responsibilities for the public welfare and the common good, especially social services, are transformed into opportunities for government-endorsed private control and profiteering. Notice that Robinhood even has a metric for “quality of life.” It is appropriated from finance in medicine.
Click to access Metrics-Equations-for-Website_Sept-2014.pdf
We could actually use all that money from Bill and his “superfriends”, just not the way they want to give it. We should be back to the day where we taxed incomes at that extreme at 70-90% and didn’t give a break to capital gains over earned income. One of the reasons Bill can throw his monetary weight around is that he makes the vast majority of his money these days on capital gains from his Microsoft stock and other investments and is only paying 20% on what he makes, not even the nominal top rate of 35% on income. It’s allowed people like him (and Skoll, and the Kochs, and Besos, etc. ad nauseum) to accumulate the vast sums that they now use to shape social policy instead of our elected representatives, who are at least answerable to us on occasion. It’s long past time we demanded that those representatives go back to a taxation system that ensures that social policy is public policy, not the whims of a few rich donors.
Here is how the universities use offshore banks.
The GOP Tax Plan Tells Us Everything About Who Matters In American Democracy http://billmoyers.com/story/gop-tax-plan-tells-us-everything-matters-american-democracy/
Diane has referred to “the Billionaire’s Boy’s Club, for a long time, but now we know we recognize this ‘secret government’ — a ‘cabal’ of corporate entities and banks with great fortunes to spend on corruption our congress, so that it is LEGAL, to rob our nation of the money it needs to do all the things for which GOVERNMENT WAS CREATED….ACCORDING TO THE PREAMBLE TO OUR constitution.
Everyday, I find connections to the LEGAL offshore banking that has allowed the THEFT of our citizen’s taxes.
https://rantt.com/the-paradise-papers-how-ridiculously-easy-it-is-for-the-rich-to-avoid-taxes-15b082cffb68
I have been exploring the release of the PARADISE PAPERS
(SEE MY EARLIER POSTS above, on this thread , FOR LINKS )
The GOP Tax Plan Tells Us Everything About Who Matters In American Democracy http://billmoyers.com/story/gop-tax-plan-tells-us-everything-matters-american-democracy/
“The question of what the American government can afford is functionally meaningless. If any nation has ever been able to afford quality housing, education, health care, parks, museums — anything — the United States can.And we don’t need to tax anyone, rich or poor, in order to afford these fine things. The wealth — the fruits of our labor — already exists. Taxes are a way of managing the bookkeeping system, of setting national priorities for the distribution of wealth created by good ideas and hard work.
“Our country’s wealth is created by everybody. It’s not created by rich people. Rich people are what happen when the bookkeeping units we use to keep track of that wealth — the dollars — get stuck on particular individuals. Sometimes these people fall into the world possessing such accounting anomalies in the form of inheritances. Sometimes they siphon them from other people through the daily operations of commerce. Sometimes Washington decides to hand them more.
The current corrupt crop of Congressmen are about to finalize the bankrupting of our nation.
“President Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and congressional Republicans proposed a multitrillion-dollar tax cut for a particular slice of very wealthy citizens. There is much more than math at stake: These are matters of justice, social prestige and political power. There is no economic law that governs how the $19 trillion we produce each year must be distributed.
And it behooves ALL of us to adamantly refuse venture vultures a place to hide behind words like PHILANTHROPIST. We must repeatedly call them out, along with any who use descriptors for these rich-and-getting-richer capitalists such as of “good-hearted” and “well-meaning.”
It’s not just the tax system, folks. We need to have a two-pronged attack: the other prong is campaign financing – undoing Cit-United – revamping or dumping PACS – re-writing 501(c)3 & 4 laws. The second prong maybe should have first priority, because w/o democratic representation, we can’t hope to right the listing tax system.
Thank you for this– and your other timely postings, Diane!
While I welcome the “MeToo” consciousness-raising following the Weinstein scandal, I have been so frustrated by TV media news coverage in the days following the House passage of the tax-reform bill. 97% Moore, then Franken [now Charlie Rose, eek!] – 3% on detailed analysis of this problematic bill. Left-leaning news analysis shows once again missing the opportunity to educate the public, concentrating instead on hair-on-fire issue-of-the-instant (ratings!). [thank god for CSPAN]
For a broad spectrum on big issues, I get more from reading dianeravitch.net daily– by far– than by watching MSNBC & CNN.
“For a broad spectrum on big issues, I get more from reading dianeravitch.net daily– by far– than by watching MSNBC & CNN.”
Exactly! I used to turn to the NYT first thing in the morning, but that Gray Lady has nothing on Diane. Perhaps, too, it’s because education touches all aspects of life in a democracy.
Perfect, Christine: “Education touches on all aspects of life in a democracy.” Never been able to articulate why for me education is my path into interest in politics– that’s it.
“I say it’s time to investigate the whole rotten system that’s allowing this to happen.”
Marx and friends already did a good chunk of this investigation.
And here is the basic idea for the future: With freedoms implement controls which make sure, the freedoms really are provided for everybody equally. Without control on income, only some people will prosper, and without control on the reach of freedom of speech, a few people will be able to determine the fate of the rest.
In short, with enabling freedoms, also implement extensive and specific controls on influencing other people’s lives.
In case you guys haven’t seen it: Gates has just bought a new playground in Arizona. He’ll call it Belmont.
“Belmont will create a forward-thinking community with a communication and infrastructure spine that embraces cutting-edge technology, designed around high-speed digital networks, data centers, new manufacturing technologies and distribution models, autonomous vehicles and autonomous logistics hubs,” Belmont Partners said in a press release, according to KPNX.
In addition to 80,000 residential units, Belmont Partners said the new city will have 3,800 acres for office, commercial and retail space and 470 acres for public schools.
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2017/11/12/Bill-Gates-buys-Arizona-land-to-build-future-smart-city/6391510528677/
In case you guys need a concrete example how billionaires use the infrastructure, built from tax dollars, to their advantage (and hence need ammunition to demand a 90% taxrate for the filthy rich)
… the Belmont development is expected to rely heavily on the future construction of Interstate 11, which is planned to go right through Belmont, …
Diane’s article (which is quoted in the article) about the need to investigate Gates is right on:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/time-for-congress-to-inve_b_5473992.html
Building a “model city” off of 25,000 freshly paid for acres. Wonder who’ll be invited to live there?
Now this.
Seriously (and you’re so right): who put this man in charge? Certainly nobody that I know.
We should set up a “suggestion” mailbox on the outskirts of every village, town, and city:
“Love to check out your ideas, Bill. Just put ’em in the box and we’ll have a look. Thanks!”
“Love to check out your ideas, Bill. Just put ’em in the box and we’ll have a look. Thanks!”
Yeah, we’d treat his suggestions with the same care as he treated all the complaints about Windows. But to make the experience even more familiar to him, he’d have to pay a support fee for every suggestion he makes, we’d then send him a 50 digit code he’d have to enter by hand into a box which then would reply 10 times “wrong code enter again” before accepting the 11th entry.
How well you related your “lived experience”!
2Serious flaws in our financial infrastructure AR ethe root cause of all our rotten systems dysfunctione. What’s being doe to education is criminal. The financial systems is an updated/ automated relic of the 500 year old origins and is way out of sync with modernity and it’s human needs. This is what need investigated for the sake of education, democracy and every other public need that grow. We are in late stage capitalism and it’s a decline e of civilization unless recognized and fixed by end of next d we cade. Thank a for this article
.