Gay Adelmann, co-founder of Save Our Schools Kentucky, reports that the Koch Brothers have landed. They are not welcome.
Gay wrote this article that was published in the Louisville Courier-Journal. Families in Jefferson County (Louisville) want the state legislature to stop messing with their public schools. Many of the meddling legislators are associated with ALEC, the far-right group that doesn’t believe in local control or democracy. Please read her article.
In addition, she sent out this letter warning about the unwanted arrival of the field operation of the Koch Brothers. She hopes they leave town soon, and empty-handed.
She writes:
“Hello friends,
“I hope you had a wonderful holiday. I wanted to give you the latest news from Kentucky.
“The expression goes, “If you want to hide something, the best place is plain sight.” Well, the Koch operatives have gotten so comfortable hiding in plain sight in Kentucky, they’re starting to get a little sloppy. In fact, they sent a rookie in to start up a new “independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization” and he’s been playing a little too fast and loose with the “research.”
“From making an outrageous claim earlier this year about gang violence being behind the increase in murders in Louisville (in order to push some agenda, I’m sure),
http://wfpl.org/gangs-are-behind-louisvilles-growing-homicides-study-says/
“to this unbelievable piece blaming universities for the opioid crisis and babies out of wedlock (more Koch agendas at play).
“Wait, what? And the media gives this guy a platform? Yeah, sadly.
“This admitted “millennial-is-just-a-marketing-ploy” executive director of Pegasus Institute was featured on a painful podcast encounter with one of his critics following his gang violence piece. This led to this insightful follow-up assessment from said critic via a blog on Medium.
“But he escaped my radar until this past week, when he made the mistake of going after the local school board for the largest district in the state. He claimed a state takeover was the “last best hope” for the urban district that serves 101,000 of some of the state’s highest poverty (and therefore lowest performing) students. Who is this guy? How did he become such an expert on Louisville, or pedagogy for that matter? Is he even aware that in just the past year or so, our community put pro-public education board members in place, and just 6 months ago, that board removed an ineffective superintendent? Our work is just getting started! And since these same greedy carpetbaggers are also currently going after our teachers’ pensions, local control over our student assignment plans – and ramming a shiny new charter school law down our throats – some of us weren’t having it!
“Connecting the Koch dots is easy when you’ve got Koch Institute in your bio and Art Laffer on your advisory board, as this guy does! To help expose these Koch fiends to the rest of our community, I wrote the following opinion piece, which appeared in today’s Sunday paper.
“I am reminded of another expression my uncle shared with me at the start of my career in financial services 25 years ago. He said, “Remember: Pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered.” Folks, the hogs have arrived, and they’re running amok. It’s time we sharpen some knives, turn up the heat on the grill, and send them the message they are not welcome in Kentucky.
“Thanks,
“Gay
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Now, that is a conclusion I like. Sounds like someone who read Thomas Jefferson’s advice and took it to heart.
Gay Adelmann wrote, “Hogs get slaughtered.
“Folks, the hogs have arrived, and they’re running amok. It’s time we sharpen some knives, turn up the heat on the grill, and send them the message they are not welcome in Kentucky.”
Is there any difference between ALEC, the Koch brothers, Charles and David, and those Hogs that are begging by their actions to “get slaughtered?”
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And they just bought about 40% of Time magazine.
Most people do not know they own (fund and manage) ALEC and run America’s shadow government.
Since they are in the 80s, I wonder who they will assign to run it all if they ever make it to the Elysian Fields.
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Unfortunately for us one of them is only in his late 70s. The other is in his 80s.
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“Maleasean Fields”
Elysian Fields await
The heroes of the age
Maleasean Fields are fate
Of Kochs upon the stage
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Koch Bros need to go and anyone who caters to them should be scolded with an iron fist.
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Getting rid of Charles and David Koch will not change anything if they have raised their children to replace them.
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Charles Koch and his wife have two children and one grandchild.
David Koch and his wife have three children.
The Koch brothers intensely guard their private lives, and not much is known about the lives of their children. David had said that he does relish fatherhood and family time, albeit late in life. The information I found didn’t even list the date of births of their children and grandchildren. That is how secretive they are.
I think it would be a safe bet that both Charles and David have had their children raised to grow up and become brutal oligarchs that are psychopaths or sociopaths to carry on the family tradition of subverting the U.S. Constitution and turning the United States into a tyrannical Alt-Right theocratic oligarchy.
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Thanks, Gay Adelmann, for your excellent reporting, and for working this thankless beat.
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There has got to be some BAD, GREED genes in the Koch Bros family. I have no other reason for their horridness.
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I try to be an optimist and believe that the men’s father had a lot to do with their abusively blind ambitions. Is it possible that when they are no longer alive their overwhelming need to have things Their Way will not be passed on in such a clear cut manner?
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I would agree with you. I have read that one has a daughter who says she is apolitical. I have a hard time believing their children would be as vile as the parents. It’s generational. The Koch Brothers are the same age as the NFL owners who have a problem with players taking a knee.
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The Koch brothers did not earn their wealth. They inherited it from their father who earned his first $50 million working for Stalin in Russia building the USSR’s oil industry that has fueled the wealth of many of Russia’s current oligarchs who are former KGB just like Putin.
Their father raised Charles and David to become the monsters that they are. If Charles and David raised their children the same way, some of those children will turn out just like them and they will be the ones to control the family fortune when their dads end up in hell for all eternity.
There are four brothers, not two, and when the father died without a will, the four brothers battled it out in court for a decade to see who would end up with the family business. Charles and David won by buying out the other two brothers.
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I was born in Louisville, KY, and educated at KY publicly-operated schools. I am delighted that Kentucky is going to be getting charter schools, and that parents will be given more choices, in how to direct the education of their children.
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Charles,
I am responding to your previous email. Thank you for the web advice. I am checking with the site administrator.
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Charles wrote, “parents will be given more choices, in how to direct the education of their children.”
Ah, how wrong-headed you are. The only choice parents get to make is to apply for their child to attend a publicly funded, private sector, charter schools that has more overpaid administrators, and lower paid teachers that are forced to work longer hours causing a high turnover among the bullied teachers.
That’s where the choices stop.
After the application is filled out thanks to often misleading claims that arrived as advertisements in the parent’s e-mail or old-fashioned mailbox, then it is the choice of that test score insane corporate charter school that often bullies and abuses children to accept or deny the student based on the child ability to take tests, make no mistakes on their school work, and keep their mouths shut while sitting at their desks with hands folded like a petrified log.
Once accepted, the parents have no say other than the power of removing their child and walking them back to the public schools where there are more choices outside of the academic subjects that are tests. How many corporate charter schools offer drama, band, sports programs, PE, chorus, etc. … subjects and time that are not tested and would cut profits if they were offered.
But if the child is removed from that often lying, fraudulent, misleading corporate charter school, the money stays behind and the public school is required by law to teach that child anyway putting more of a burden on the traditional public schools.
If you think I’m wrong, prove that I’m wrong but from reputable sources, not from the lying,
conspiracy theory generating Alt-Right media or any source funded by ALEC and the Koch brothers or the Walton family, et al.
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