i always watch my words when I mention John Arnold. In 2014, I referred to him as a billionaire who used to work for Enron, the hot energy company that went bankrupt, leaving its many employees without a dime since they invested in the company’s worthless stock. I got an email from John’s PR person telling me that he would sue me if I didn’t retract my words implying that he benefitted while others suffered. At that moment, I was in the hospital having my broken knee replaced and I had no fight in me, nor any desire to be sued by a billionaire. I apologized.
Here is a headline from the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
John and Laura Arnold Join Other Billionaires in Move Away From Traditional Philanthropy
I don’t have a subscription. It’s behind a paywall.
The story:
”The Laura and John Arnold Foundation is changing its structure so its billionaire founders can rely more heavily on political advocacy as they work toward goals such as reducing the cost of health care and overhauling the criminal-justice system.”
Another passion of John Arnold is pensions. He thinks they are a danger to our society. He once tried to fund a PBS special on the “pension crisis,” but it was canceled after investigative reporter David Sirota challenged the funding deal.
He is also passionate about hating public schools and loving charter schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
He’s also funding a bright young cancer researcher, Vinay Prasad in Oregon, and a nefarious, insurance-industry driven “think tank” called ICER, which is supposedly trying to fight the pharma industry to “bring down drug costs.” Prasad, who is an excellent oncologist, researcher and a vocal, articulate critic of drug prices, unquestioningly takes Arnold money, claiming he “doesn’t care” where Arnold’s money comes from and intentionally ignores the issues you cite. And the job of ICER is to use its “data” to shift profits from pharma to hedge funders, not bring down drug prices. The Arnold malignancy knows no bounds; it only recognizes, exploits and defiles any source of public monies that actually benefit regular folks.
“The Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Hastings Fund, and Education Cities have announced the launch of a new nonprofit dedicated to advancing education reform and expanding opportunity for all children in the United States.
With the goal of increasing access to high-quality public education, the City Fund will expand on the two foundations’ support for efforts to improve district and charter schools in cities such as Denver, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C”
The Arnold’s told the public they would improve “district and charter schools”
Can anyone point to anything they did to improve any public school?
I don’t mind that they promote charter schools- they can pour billions into marketing and promoting and charters and it looks like they will.
I mind that they pretend to support public schools. That’s deceptive and unfair to the families who attend public schools because they accept these reform schemes based upon the reformer’s promises to “improve” their schools, NOT replace their schools.
The Arnold Foundation does not support public schools.
It’s really shocking how powerful they have become. They’re essentially a privately-run government, not elected but hired by 5 billionaires and wholly unaccountable to the public:
“Previously, several of us operated within a dual structure supporting the education giving for both the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and the Hastings Fund. We are in the process of changing this structure and have added new team members to create The City Fund. The Laura and John Arnold Foundation and the Hastings Fund will continue their support of the work as anchor funders.
The new organization includes leaders from Education Cities, as well as expert practitioners from the state, district, charter and non-profit sectors. This new team will help us provide better support to local leaders. We are just getting started and will have a website up in short order, but now that our team is hired, we wanted to share the news.”
Go over to the US Department of Education and look. Their approach is identical to the billionaire ed reformers, down to whole phrases and terms. They’ve merged. It’s one big echo chamber and the elected governments are the SUBORDINATE in these “relationships”
The Coloradan reported that the widow Steve Jobs and Hastings each gave the current California Governors’ campaign the max they were allowed.
“They’re essentially a privately-run government, not elected but hired by 5 billionaires and wholly unaccountable to the public:”
I have maintained that those who manage estates worth more than the GDP of a small country are indeed just that, Nonwithstanding the assertion of citizens United to the contrary. If a person has the ability to Marshall large amounts of cash to persuade people they know what is right, and can hire people to sit around and contemplate how one might linguistically get around saying the truth outright, that person fulfills the same role as a competing government, and they should be treated by law as such.
Suggesting that Apple should be considered the same as my friend who has a dairy herd is as toxic an idea as I ever heard. How long before the fish ladies show up at the palace?
As more and more billionaires use government representatives as paid servants, there is little hope for democracy and the will of the people. Our rights are being diminished, and our social safety nets shredded so that the 1% can create a “boutique” country that will serve their interests and do their bidding. It’s the 99% that need political advocacy, not billionaires.
retired teacher,
AMEN to: “It’s the 99% that need political advocacy, not billionaires.”
WHAT is WRONG with the RICH? Do they really hate us workers who do all their work? Or do they just want slaves?
The rich hate slaves because when they look into their eyes they see the loathing that understands the wealthy’s cruelty.
The rich cannot be “satisfied”. That is what’s wrong with the rich. Our whole system is set up for competition. The rich have already beat the poorest and the middle class and now all they have left to compete with are each other. Greed begets greed. He who dies with the most money (or toys) wins….that’s their motto. They cannot be satisfied financially or emotionally…they are morally bankrupt and devoid of human compassion.
It’s not clear whether their driving ambition is more money or power or both. Money=power and they want to control us.
Read Anand Giriharadas book, “Winners Take All”
Whenever they make a gift, they buy control and subvert democracy.
Respectfully, LisaM,
John Arnold, Charles and David Koch, Bill Gates and the rest of the richest 0.1% have put competition aside. The current situation more resembles an oligarchy carving up the people’s assets, one of the assets- Main Street schools.
This overcompensated teacher would be happy to swap his pension for a 401K so as to fatten the wallets of financial advisors and stockbrokers, reduce taxes on the rich, and make this country great again. I’m willing to eat cat food in my retirement for the sake of my country. I’m just as much of a patriot as John Arnold.
John Arnold benefited and continues to benefit from the suffering of others. Don’t forget, Californians died because of Enron’s crimes against humanity. There, I said it. Now sue my anonymous arse, John Arnold!
Stay anonymous or JA will get you
Both Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, “Looting the Pensions” and National Protect Pensions Coalition (NPPC) do a great job of describing what Arnold is. Town and Country reported he is working with Pew on community surveillance projects. Arnold plotted with Pew on pensions, too. Arnold’s funding of the police to do aerial surveillance of Baltimore, without the knowledge of elected leaders was reported by the Baltimore Sun. And, of course he funds education centers like Douglas Harris’ ERA at Tulane.
Maybe, Arnold can tell us who funds EPIC at Michigan State University and explain why the Center, the Ed. Dean and the Provost don’t answer the question when asked by a member of the public.
From People’s Action,”Billionaires are avatars of inequality and greed.” In 2018, billionaires increased their wealth $2.5 bil. per day. But, the hollow can never be sated.
In 2011, Arnold and Pew found each other. As detailed in a new study by progressive think tank Institute for America’s Future, Arnold and Pew struck up a relationship – and both have since been proselytizing pension reform all over America, including California, Florida, Kansas, Arizona, Kentucky and Montana.
Few knew that Pew had a relationship with a right-wing, anti-pension zealot like Arnold. “The centrist reputation of Pew was a key in selling a lot of these ideas,” says Jordan Marks of the National Public Pension Coalition.
Later, a Pew report claimed that the national “gap” between pension assets and future liabilities added up to some $757 billion and dryly insisted the shortfall was unbridgeable, minus some combination of “higher contributions from taxpayers and employees, deep benefit cuts and, in some cases, changes in how retirement plans are structured and benefits are distributed.” Soon the truth would come out. The “unfunded liability” crisis had nothing to do with the systemic unsustainability of public pensions. Yet the public was being told that the problem was state workers’ benefits were simply too expensive.
The recalculation of funds, politically motivated, forced Ohio teachers to lose their cost-of-living increases, presumably in perpetuity.
Hell is too good for the Pew and Arnold families.
I live outside of Baltimore. Can someone tell me what was really going on with the surveillance? This had to be for more than stopping crime and it just quietly went away.
LisaM
You may be right about the bigger picture. When the inevitable rebellion occurs, drones will be used to suppress it. The rich will need skilled people to implement the action.
Z-berg has social media info. to identify suspects. He and a Russian partner have access to new technological advancements through an award inventors compete for. (Recently, there was a warning about the situation.) The Russian partner owns 23 and me, which could be used to identify familial connections to those suspected of rebellion. It’s evident that Z-berg has disdain for Congress. Russia is led by a dictator. The pieces fit together?
Small picture- The grants from the wealthy to the police, buy privilege for the rich while the bulk of the costs for enforcement are paid by the community, who get no privilege. (The police should wake up to the fact that Wall Street’s fund managers want a huge slice of their pensions. And, Arnold and Pew are leading the attack.) I doubt that it was the ACLU’s threats that deterred Arnold. I’d speculate that Arnold’s effort continues, if not Baltimore, elsewhere. (Journalists pose a danger to the wealthy which is why they have bought up all of the media.)
Similar to Arnold, the Koch’s doled out a few bucks to state universities and bought employer privileges at schools the public sacrificed to create for the middle class and poor as an alternative to legacy admission schools.
The public has to be unaware or complicit in the plots for them to work. Some among the 99% have to be willing to sell out their neighbors, communities and country.
@Linda….I refuse to voluntarily give my DNA sample to some company for ancestry testing. Not that I’m guilty of anything, but because of the privacy issues (or lack of) and the fact that these companies and their data can be sold to the highest bidder. I don’t understand the people that are jumping onto this bandwagon like it’s no big deal. We have very little privacy left and I, for one, want to keep as much privacy as I can. These are scary times and it’s hard to convey to my 2 teenagers that the big, bad boogeyman is walking around with them all day long in the form of that stupid IPhone that they carry around.
Here’s a plug for DNA testing. My partner has lamented for decades that she lost her family. Her mother came from Austria in 1920s, the rest of the family went to Canada before the Great War. She just discovered her cousins and family in Winnipeg, thanks to a DNA kit. All the names of ancestors match. She’s thrilled. We are going to Winnipeg in the spring.
@Diane…That is a wonderful story…. now what if some odd illness/disease shows up in the family line and an insurance company refuses to cover this or denies a policy because of the DNA data floating around? I believe we are so close to this happening. Science is a great and wonderful thing, but when does it cross the line? Who will be brave enough to stand up and say “ENOUGH”.
I understand your wariness. But this discovery of long-lost family has been a blessing.
LisaM
Agree, scary times.
Suspects are being apprehended after DNA analysis of family members. Our individual DNA isn’t required for us to be found.
And, at Universal Studios’ theme park, visitors are forced into facial recognition and finger printing programs.
Curious, Diane. Ancestry.com or 23andMe? No agenda, just curious. No need to answer if you don’t want to. Won’t be offended at all.
23&Me
Tangential topic- some people saw dollars in making an on-line list of ed bloggers, presumably so as to help the public get info. We can all guess, after looking at the list, where the $ came from. #3 in the category that Diane was shoved into was a Microsoft V.P. whose head shot looked like a model wannabe. He had 59,700 results in a Google search. #3, a Norwegian, was a little better with 91,300 results. And Diane Ravitch, #2, blew them both out of the water with 1,580,000 results.
Diane was too important to exclude if the site was to have any credibility, but the compilers of the list shortened her bio to exclude her work at the U.S. Dept. of Ed.
No bottom too low.
John Arnold had one agenda:get rid of public pensions and he found such a treasurer in 2011 governor who would help him accomplish it. He mentored RI’s Treasurer gina raimondo, the Wall St venture capitalist whose Point Judith is still in the RI pension even though this 10 year-very poor investment that has 0% rate of return is in year 13(a story for another day) and raimondo is still getting 2.5% (125,000) in annual fees for an investment sitting there doing nothing. Meanwhile John Arnold donated to raimondo. She took substantial campaign funds from him who has a longtime axe to grind against public pensions. http://www.truthaboutjohnarnold.com/states/ri
Arnold (of Enron infamy) gave an initial $500,000 to Engage RI to support Raimondo’s bid for treasurer. Obviously, Engage RI was a semi-dark PAC designed to channel money into RI political candidates, primarily Raimondo. Early in 2012 after the pension legislation was passed on November 2011.
the PAC was dissolved and everything controlled by the Engage RI group (that included Collette Tours, Gilbane Construction, Crossroads of RI and others) was deleted from the internet.
On the surface it is simply another case of the strong stealing from the weak. Public servants are a minority among the general population. The rich, like the Arnolds are obsessively organized and usually control the economy and hence the politics. And Arnold was able to control the RI pension through raimondo…it was a way that the hedgefunds could dip into the last money pot available…pension funds…This was a scheme to transfer pension wealth to Wall St and in RI, the only state where it occurred, COLA money was now given as fees to raimondo’s hedgefund investors and in return they supported and contributed to her campaign…a type of pay to play… And by the way, Brown’s Rhode Island Innovative Policy Lab, which helps Governor Raimondo’s office craft initiatives was funded with nearly $3 million from Raimondo backers John and Laura Arnold.
People like the Arnolds are so wealthy that they buy their principles, or at least their allegiance and force them to abandon their principles…This site might be of interest https://www.truthaboutjohnarnold.com/about
Sprawler47- you may already know the following-
Brown University’s education department includes a Gates’ Impatient Optimist. When the professor was in Columbus, Oh. for a Gates’ sponsored education event for mayors (also there- Hanushek from Stanford and the right wing, Hoover Institute), the event promos didn’t link the Brown professor to Gates. Reminded me of how the Pew guy testified in state capitols but didn’t identify his links to Arnold.
Hanushek’s 37 page c.v. doesn’t list grants received. His wife runs the Stanford Credo center.
My opinion – Stanford and Brown are think tanks with students not universities. If they were universities, they would adopt the UnKochMyCampus.org model policy to prevent donor influence.
I’d like to see a chart like the ones that portray the Kochtopus only related to the tentacles between Gates and Arnold.
Add to the think tank with students’ list, Johns Hopkins.
Bloomberg is the major benefactor of Hohns Hopkins
Bill Gates and John Arnold sponsored a meeting about higher ed at Bud McKeon’s center (BPC) in September. Bottom line- based on the panelists (former Kaplan- now Purdue Global and school privatizer Susan Davis) it would have been a lesson in how to’s for greater concentration of wealth and how to’s to take more from the 99%. McKeon, Gates and Arnold, are predator birds of a feather. Mother Jones, “”How a mysterious overseas shell company used a former GOP Congressman to lobby Trump and Congress”.
If the Gates Foundation president gives a speech on a public campus like she has in the past, the community should make it clear, the Gates staff are persona non gratis wherever the common good exists.
Excellent analysis Chiara.
When Bill Gates and John Arnold and their spouses mine for a target, expect democracy to die in the explosion. And, check the people for reduced circumstances.