Carol Burris writes:
Patrick Byrne is the present chairman of the EdChoice. He is also the CEO of Overstock.com. Ed Choice is the new name of the Friedman Foundation. Milton Friedman, of course, introduced the idea of vouchers in the 1950s and founded the foundation with his wife to push school privatization.
In 2007, Patrick Byrne and his family financed over $4 million of the $5 million raised by Families for Choice, a PAC formed to support vouchers during a 2007 referendum in Utah. Upon realizing that vouchers were rejected by 62% of voters, he referred to the referendum as a “statewide IQ test that Utahns failed.” He publicly concluded that “They [the parents of Utah] don’t care enough about their kids.”
A month prior to the vote a video of Byrne surfaced in which he said, referring to the minority dropouts of Utah, “You may as well burn those kids. That’s the end of their life.” When asked by the NAACP to apologize, he refused.
Byrne seems to delight in making outrageous and hurtful statements.
He was fined nearly $1 million for defamation of character on a website he created called Deep Capture LLC. In articles he posted on the website he said that Canadian businessman Altaf Nazerali was “a criminal, arms dealer, drug dealer, terrorist, fraud artist, gangster, mobster, member of the Mafia, dishonest, dangerous and not to be trusted.” He linked him to Osama bin Laden.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune:
“The ruling said Byrne, Mitchell and Deep Capture LLC “engaged in a calculated and ruthless campaign to inflict as much damage to Mr. Nazerali’s reputation as they could achieve.” They engaged in a vendetta in which the truth “was of no consequence,” the judge wrote.”
Byrne has contributed to pro-school choice candidates outside of his state. For example, he gave $465,000 to Indiana candidates and PACs, beginning with Mitch Daniels’s gubernatorial campaign. Daniels was a founding Board member of EdChoice who enacted both voucher and neo-voucher programs in Indiana. You can read more about how Mitch Daniels systematically sought to destroy public education in Indiana here.
It you had a nonprofit organization committed to helping children by giving them opportunities through School Choice would you have Patrick Byrne as your Board Chairman? What does that say about the School Choice movement?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Referring to the minority dropouts of Utah, “You may as well burn those kids. That’s the end of their life.” When asked by the NAACP to apologize, he refused.
“Williams (NAACP spokesperson) noted that Byrne didn’t mention white children who don’t graduate. Utah is 83.5 percent white, 11 percent Hispanic and 1 percent black.
“It says he’s not sympathetic to the minority community and he means exactly what he said,” Williams said of Byrne’s lack of an apology.
He will probably be praised by DeVos and Trump, for loyalty to Trump’s agenda.
He’s absolutely awful.
Boycott Overstock.com to protest financing of privatization. I am. Other privatizers dismantling public education are billionaires vulnerable to boycotts despite the GOP and Dems coddling them.
“Byrne seems to delight in making outrageous and hurtful statements.”
Proof that Trump isn’t alone in this world. He had Byrne and Betsy, et al.
The number of ignorant, arrogant billionaires in this country is astounding! Just because some people may have wealth, they still do not have class or judgment.
It’s not called billionairrogance for nothing.
“Billionairrogance”
Billionairrogance
Threatens us all
Billyan ignorance
Making the call
Patrick and Billy
And Eli and Mark
Folks who are really
Lost in the dark
Don’t forget Jeff, now the richest man in the world.
They are not poor souls lost in the dark—they are the knights of the dark side. 😉
Patrick and Billy
And Eli and Mark
Folks who are really
Knights of the dark
“A Billionaire by any other name”
Bezos or Bozos?
One and the same
That which we call rose
What’s in a name?
Mate
I like “knights of the Dark”
Let’s go with it.
I’ll give you credit if I ever publish it in a book.
Actually, I was collecting my stuff for a while, but decided to stop because it was more effort than it was worth. Now I just post it and it gets lost in the blogosphere, forever floating on the waves of the internet, perhaps to wash up some day on a far and distant shore, like a message in a bottle.
If you find it. Let me know.
SOS messages resurface all the time. Here is one from 40 years ago
The arrogance and greed of the elite never fails to astonish me. Glad I have never purchased anything from Overstock.
Drumph is just a big fat reflection of what is wrong with this country.
Vote with your money and your time every day.
“Overstocked with Airs”
Patrick Byrne is overstocked
With ignorance and airs
Not a reason to be shocked
It’s apt for billionaires
Better title
“Overstocked.con
“Byrne is the son of John J. Byrne, former chairman of Berkshire Hathaway’s GEICO”
Yawn. Another billionaire family who don’t know the first thing about public schools but want to eradicate them. The Byrne Family funded that entire voucher political campaign.
Can’t the extremely wealthy find some other way to occupy their idle hours? Were the public really clamoring for billionaires to butt into schools wealthy people don’t use, don’t value, and never enter?
What about health care? Can we palm them off on the health care sector for a while? Why are our kids stuck with them?
Please, no! Capitalists at their worst have already infected healthcare even before they really got “into” public schools. We need to neuter them; make them pay their taxes and not give them write offs for philanthrocapitalism.
“He is also the CEO of Overstock.com.”
Huh, yesterday I ordered a laptop through Overstock—today I canceled it after reading the article.
I found him repulsive, too, but I am losing track of what businesses I am supposed to boycott because of incredibly boorish (at the very least) behavior from top executives. If I only shopped those who shared my political views, I would have a really hard time. I am sure I am hypocritical almost every time I go out the door to shop, and my hypocrisy is probably monumental online. By their nature, these billionaire business moguls control an incredible amount of commerce, much of which we may not be aware of at a glance. We have got to figure a way of having an impact as a group. I thought it was interesting that the stock price of the resorts of the latest miscreant dropped dramatically after his exposure, no pun intended. I don’t want to put the thousands of people who work in his ventures out of work, but I hope it leads to his ouster if possible. I doubt there is any way to separate him from his billions, but separating him from a role in his companies may be possible. Perhaps it is time for public shaming to come back. Anybody got some scarlet letters?
I think the general principle is to avoid big companies. I didn’t realize, overstock was a big company.
Even if the boss of a small company is an asshead, she is not controlling our lives and has no potential screwing half the world. With small companies, we all have a choice, with big ones, none of us do.
I take some comfort in knowing that Patrick Byrne thinks investing in bitcoins is a good idea.
I just hope he has a lot invested when it crashes and byrnes.
🙂
I would say that this is proof that Racism is behind it all. I mean, how old is he now? And he was doing this in the 50s? OMG…..I used to live on the Eastern Shore of Virginia where they have one main private (now, two) . Broadwater Academy…..created because of integration because of racism, plain and simple. Many of the students that go there are typically rich and think they are better than anyone else. They are also white. My daughter couldn’t afford Broadwater. Now, they had fine teachers and good resources, but I am proud that my daughter attended a racially diverse school where she had great teachers.
The other private school recently formed and staffed by some of the same teachers my daughter had in the public school. These teachers were ones who left because of the rules, regulations, and standards tests that became the norm. They broke away and formed their own school. What a world……