I don’t like Reed Hastings. I don’t like that he hates public schools and wants to turn every one of them over to a private corporation. I would never subscribe to Netflix, because it would put money into his overflowing bank account. He is a billionaire.
However I do not live alone and the other adult member of my family subscribed to Netflix despite my protestations.
Then she started watching shows with language I found very offensive. And then, much against my will, I became addicted to that show, called ”Orange is the New Black.” I warn you that the language and the visuals are XXX rated. No, XXXXXXX rated. I got hooked by the story and the characters. It is a story about women in prison, and there is quite a bit of graphic and prurient stuff. You are warned.
The one redeeming feature, having just finished the sixth season, is that the series demonstrates how repulsive, how corrupt, how disgusting privatization is.
Do you think Reed Hastings noticed that the private prison corporation that took over “Litchfield Prison” cut corners at every chance, cutting education programs, cutting the budget for food, hiring inexperienced and brutal guards (Prison Guards for America), subjecting the inmates to even worse indignities than when the government ran the prison? The private corporation cares only about profits, not the lives of the prisoners. The corporation’s budget-cutting caused a riot (that is exactly what has happened in privatized prisons).
The program is a powerful indictment of privatizing public services. I hope Reed Hastings watches his own hit series and learns about the inevitable human costs of privatization.
He is a smart man. He is a billionaire. But can he learn?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
To paraphrase Upton Sinclair
“It is
difficultimpossoble to get a billionaire to understand something, when his billions depend upon his not understanding it”LikeLike
“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.” John Maynard Keynes
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.”
John Maynard Keynes
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Reed Hastings has a position on the Facebook board that gives Zuckerberg full reign to destroy democracy. His allies on the board are Marc Andreesen who falsely claimed India was better off under colonialism and Peter Thiel who said it was an oxymoron to have women vote in a capitalistic democracy.
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He would Reed what he wants to Reed from it. Charter uniform colors? Synchronized locking systems? A drama about a fraudulent charter becoming a real school?
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What a great idea!
A series about a public school that is privatized. In the privatized school, all the children wear the same uniform and march silently in rows along a straight line. The budget for food is cut to the bare minimum for sustenance. The teachers are all TFA, no experience, five weeks of training, brought up in suburbia, taught to “love” the little needy children whom they must discipline and turn into “little testing machines.”
Call it “Plaid is the New Black.”
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Yes, but the production crew soon realizes they are in over their heads. The writers are fired and replaced with hacks, and the series devolves into a drama about military school pranks and then Hunger Games with zombies. Ultimately, the whole thing becomes an unpopular video game.
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H-m-m-m-m-m-m-m . . . . . I wonder which former president and First Lady recently struck a multi-million dollar deal to be producers or consultants on film products put out by Netflix?
Let’s see, we would need a president and First Lady who loathe public school teachers and public education, and we we’d need a CEO who wants to eliminate all local school boards and replace them with representatives appointed by your state legislator or assembly person.
What a match made in heaven! Hatred of public schools, hatred of local democracy, money to be made from movies and documentaries that falsely portray teachers and public schools, and a love of standardized testing and school privatization.
Obama, Michelle, and Reed are the latest threesome in vogue. Watch for them . . . . The dirty, filthy tricks they will impose on public education make all that pruriency in “Orange Is the New Black” seem like a Mary Poppins skit.
https://nypost.com/2018/05/27/reed-hastings-and-the-obamas-are-making-bank-with-netflix-deal/
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Watching Pres. Obama betray the people of Flint (Fahrenheit 11/9) was horrible to witness because his callousness was unimaginably cruel.
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Michael Moore called Obamas drinking Flint water “disappointing”
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/05/04/flint-water-crisis-michael-moore-barack-obama/83940370/
I call it grotesque, unbelievably irresponsible and cynical.
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I call it indecent, cruel, and deceitful, one that generates horrible karma. It will come back to him, no doubt.
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Robert
I wish you were right, but unfortunately, people like Obama seem to be immune to any sort of accountability.
He bailed out big banks who brought on the financial meltdown of 08 to the tune of trillions (and refused to prosecute the fraudulent bankers) while essentially ignoring millions of underwater homeowners (many of them African Americans) who faced foreclosure and subsequently lost their homes and hence all their assets.
And yet many (if not most) of those people still love him.
A now he is cashing in on his favors to the big banks, big pharma and big insurance.
The scariest thing about what is going on now is that there is no longer any check — either ethical or legal — on this sort of behavior.
And Presidents of both major parties do it.
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Who bailed out the big banks?
“Was TARP Passed Under Bush or Obama?”
“Just a third of Americans know that the bank bailout was enacted by the Bush administration; nearly half incorrectly say it was passed under President Obama.”
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2010/08/10/was-tarp-passed-under-bush-or-obama/
Proof that the GOP 24/7 propaganda machine is powerful at deceiving and manipulating.
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The Presidency has become just another business venture, a way to increase ones wealth by a factor of ten, 100, or even 1000.
The latest President is just more obvious in the way he goes about it and makes no pretense about his purposes.
But look at the Obamas, who have already increased their wealth by almost a factor of 100 since leaving office. And look at the Clintons, who are on their way to increasing it by a factor of 1000 (billionaire status)
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I completely agree with SDP!
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If he did Reed it, I’m sure he would Reed it Hastily
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I know this is way off topic….but what happened to your post about Andy Smarick? It’s gone now. Did you offend Mike Petrilli again by beating up one of his favorite people n the cockroach world??!!!
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It returned at 11:30 am. I added the link and a few extra words.
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Cockroach? Please,, that is ssooooo offensive. Better to say “zombies.”
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Yes, it is offensive.
To cockroaches.
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Zombies are undoubtedly infested with cockroaches, worms, bacteria and other niceties.
So, yes, zombies would seem to cover the bases.
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“Civility”
Civil gist?
Or civil buzz?
Civil is
As civil does
“Family Friendly Reform?”
“Badass” isn’t kosher
But school destruction is?
Tell me what is wrong here
Cuz something seems amiss
(“Badass Teacher Association”– BAT)
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School Infestments
Infesting in schools
With chartering tools
Objective of ghouls
And errand of fools
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I hope Mikey likes that one.
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There is a recipe for the individual who cannot learn. Even smart people can be ignorant dolts.
To become an ignorant smart person:
They started out with a pre-programmed bias.
That bias leads them to only read, watch and listen to information that feeds their specific bias.
In time, as their brain becomes rancid from that bias, to promote and support their bias, they start to lie and one lie lead to another until that’s all they do.
Eventually the lies become their reality, their truth, and the bias has become a terminal cancer, because they have crossed over to the other side and are now insanely dangerous to everyone else and even themselves.
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One of the most damning things about unequivocal bias or being an ideologue must be the aspect of not questioning oneself and not learning from mistakes. Look at our president, his regressive and reductive intellectual, if you will, spiral down a toilet.
No mistakes, no excuses, just blame and distribution of it.
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Your simile is equally insulting to those w/unequivocal bias & ideologues. At least such folks have limits against which they test incoming data. #45 has no such barriers, for all his wall-talk. His lines are drawn only in sand, easily smeared-out & re-drawn in favor of whoever talks tough [intimidating him], & whoever talks fawningly [mirroring him].
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I don’t think there is a toilet in the world capable of flushing Trump into the sewers where he belongs with all the other sewer-slime deplorables.
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I think it is a bit inaccurate, to extrapolate a fictional TV show, and apply its theme indiscriminately to other enterprises. There are many services that can be performed by the private sector, more efficiently and at a lower cost than the public sector. Overnight package delivery is one. The US Postal Service never would have come up the concepts behind Federal Express on its own.
Canada has privatized their air traffic control system, and it has been an outstanding success. Canada is a large country, with a dispersed population, and the nation depends on air service in its Arctic territories. The USA is considering privatizing air traffic control, and the concept has the enthusiastic support from the PATCO labor union, the Federal Aviation Administration ,and the airlines.
Using a fictional TV show like this to determine if some government services can be privatized, is like telling a married couple who is having marital problems, to go watch “I Love Lucy” reruns.
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Many American socialists/progressives/liberals often point to Sweden, as a socialist paradise, that the USA should emulate. Sweden has embraced school choice/vouchers, and privatized their national rail system. Even Absolut vodka, is now in private hands.
It works.
see
https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/01/04/sweden-isnt-socialist/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Top5&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTVRka00yUm1Zall3T1RndyIsInQiOiJVbzhabmVNdnp2VEJOQytCdklLQnp6eXV3ZGE5K1ZCdSs2YlozaktEVXF0Qlwvd0lqXC92RXRCNWdUNXd4TEpWczJjaGRJTVhaWVVvZHJvdGNEQ29LS1B4WXRocUZLd2VmdUFpZTd4VnJGREVoelp4cTVxaVQyRldld0dGSFJOVGpcLyJ9
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The Swedish School System is indeed privatized. It’s a disaster. If you read this log, you would know that Swedish schools have deteriorated in quality since privatization, their scores on international tests have plummeted, and segregation has increased. The Swedishgovernmentis now trying to figure out how to get out of this mess.
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Charles,
Canada has also nationalized it’s forests and lumber supply to regulate the market in order to protect that asset as an economic boon to the country. Canada is a mixed bag, and it’s NOT the prime example of a socialist democratic country, while France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, and Scandanavia, with their single payer healthcare systems, work extremely well.
Market solutions in public education have not worked well at all because teaching and learning are highly nuanced endeavors before kids ever set foot into schools, while they’re in school, and after they graduate. Other countries have those issues addressed well in advance compared to the United States, where we have 29% of our minors living below the poverty line.
It is the free and unbridled market here that has contributed widely to class polarization, pay inequity, and poverty, which acutely affects children’s readiness to learn when they enter schools. Companies don’t share the wallets by paying all sorts of level employees a living wage. Productivity has risen vastly since the Reagan years, and personal wealth building has not only stagnated, but declined amongst 85% of the population because of declining wages, shirking of unions, healthcare costs, and college debt, just to name a few.
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“Productivity has risen vastly since the Reagan years, and personal wealth building has not only stagnated, but declined amongst 85% of the population because of declining wages, shirking of unions, healthcare costs, and college debt, just to name a few.”
Add the fact that more than 80% of jobs in manufacturing have been replaced by automatcion. Since the 1980s, the manufacturing sector more than doubled its output while human jobs went in the other direction, down.
And with the advent of AI, more human jobs will be lost.
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It’s a dilemma, Diane. Do we subscribe or not because of the billionaires who run it. But, like you, I am also addicted to “Orange is the New Black” because it educates me. I also appreciate the food and cooking programs, “The Magic Pill” , Stranger things…….ok. I subscribed, too. I live by myself and can’t stand watching sports.
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Reed Hastings went to private prep education. I wonder if he would send his own kids to the schools that he promotes.
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The thankfully deceased Paul Allen never attended a public school either. He met Gates at Lakeside, a school that rejects BiLinda’s tech con.
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Writing as a “teacher” (I realize in the time that I’ve gotten to know you all virtually and at the NPE conference that I was never a real teacher), the answer is a big, fat, unequivocal “No.” Having their children attend exclusive independent schools is part and parcel of their Keeping Up With the Joneses mentality.
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former “teacher”
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“…the other adult member of my family…” Never thought you would throw one of your loved ones under the proverbial bus! But then again, you convinced me to get it too. Consider yourself thrown under the bus as well.
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It does not strike me as odd at all. Fox News featured figure after figure from the social right wing that could not abide the crude turn in the American culture. But their programming led to a more crude America. No one noticed. I know people who will rail against the liberal media and ignore the same sin on Fox.
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slight revision
“I know people who will rail against the liberal media for minor examples of bias and ignore total lies and misinformation on Fox.”
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another slight revision
No need for the “and misinformation” in that sentence. 🧐
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agree
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I have no problem subscribing to Netflix despite its repugnant owner & where he puts his $profits. Netflix shows everything! The formula he’s locked into has no bounds other than “already aired on TV/ movie theaters.” Way, way too much for any ideologue CEO to review/ censor. My millennial kids continually inform me of edgy, progressive, anti-privatization/ pro-democratic series they find there. Hastings is actually performing a public service w/resonance that goes far beyond any ed-reformer crap he could cook up w/his profits.
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I think I read recently that Netflix bought HBO.
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Is this a good time to mention that Beto O’Rourke’s wife is the daughter of a billionaire real estate developer and a charter school administrator?
Amy’s the director of education development for La Fe Community Development Corporation. She’s also the executive director of the La Fe Preparatory charter school, which she helped start. In fact, Amy has always had a passion for teaching and helping children.
https://heavy.com/news/2018/11/amy-sanders-orourke-beto-wife-bio-photos/
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That’s all in Beto O’Rourke’s Wikipedia bio.
I gave generously to his campaign against Cruz.
No more support unless he and his wife support public schools.
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The candidate that supports public education and kicks tech tyrants and their Center for American Progress neo-liberals to the curb, will get my vote and support.
The hedge funders’ Cory Booker and R.I.’s Gina Raimondo can wither and die out of the spotlight.
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I guess that means you will not be voting.
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“Do you think Reed Hastings noticed that the private prison corporation that took over “Litchfield Prison” cut corners at every chance, cutting education programs, cutting the budget for food, hiring inexperienced and brutal guards (Prison Guards for America), subjecting the inmates to even worse indignities than when the government ran the prison?” — I bet most of the people watching it do not ask this question, they are there for the pictures. You think too much of the viewing public. One of my co-workers thought that Avatar is about aliens, he would not for a second buy an argument that it may be a parable about indigenous people of America.
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I still think that Reed Hastings is smart enough to understand the underlying moral in his most popular series on Netflix. He is not the average Joe. He is not the “viewing public.” He is a very smart man.
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