On this site, we have often complained about the philanthropists who impose their bad ideas on schools, which this far have consistently failed.
This article in The New Yorker reviews the new world of philanthropy, where the rich pay as little as possible in taxes and use their foundations to reorder the world as they think it should be. When they give, they end up in control, undermining democratic institutions and as rich as ever.
I strongly recommend a book titled “The Spirit Level,” which demonstrates that the most equal societies are the happiest societies.
On this subject, I recommend a book discussed in this article, Anand Giridharadas’ Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
New America which is funded by the head of Google has a new president. She credits her Broad residency with her employment by Chicago Public Schools, She was in New Orleans associated with New Leaders principals during the disaster capitalism that followed Katrina. She was with McKinsey and Co. which was in the news last year after allegations that the firm enables authoritarian regimes.
From Pres.Tyra Mariani’s bio, “…lead the transformation of New America into a new kind of think and action tank: a civic platform that connects a research institute,
technology lab, solutions network, media hub and public platform.” Considering media reported that N.A. staff who had warned against concentrated social, economic and political influence were fired, I presume the term “public forum” is meaningless window dressing.
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Does New America see itself as a parallel or replacement government?
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very wealthy people are the economic equivalent of third world countries. we should consider them antagonistic to the interests of the majority until they prove otherwise.
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IMO
New America has proven it’s an enemy of the citizens. Citizens sacrificed to build public universities as a quality alternative to legacy admission colleges. One of New America’s higher ed papers recommends state taxes be used to fund both public and private (legacy admission colleges). The diversion of funds, simultaneous with starvation of public money is intended to extinguish the common good.
Additionally, Diane posted about the adverse implications of an opinion column in the New York Times written by the head of N.A.’s education policy unit.
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Our currents laws and tax code are slanted to favor the interests of the wealthy. Oligarchs and other members of the 1% can misuse the 501(c) (3) laws to reduce their taxes and take a large “charitable” deduction. Lots of these so-called non-political organizations or foundations are often lobbying groups like ALEC. These unchallenged loopholes result in roughly $10 billion dollars in uncaptured taxes each year. These tax avoidance strategies shift more of the tax burden on to everyone else while some wealthy individuals can reap huge deductions so they can pay for their own vanity projects that impose their world view on the rest of us. In doing so they avoid subjecting most of their agenda to public scrutiny and democratic procedure. It is a way for the wealthy to impose their vision others while lowering their tax burden. We need to revise our 501(c) (3) laws and outlaw the abusive application of the law to organizations that shape public policy. Public policy should be democratically determined and not the result of oligarchs and billionaires making deals behind closed doors. America needs to understand the 1% gets preferential treatment in the tax code.
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You bet!! My uneducated parents used to be able to do their own taxes. Few loopholes….just a straight numbers game. Bill Clinton came into office and all of a sudden, the tax laws started changing drastically and no one could understand the code anymore. Everyone then had to start hiring someone to do the taxes. Sly, the way politicians made it so that the common man could no longer figure out what was going on with our tax dollars.
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Working people would be much better off if we collected more tax from billionaires without loopholes. We wouldn’t be subjected to so-called philanthropy that dictates public policy. When did we ever vote for privatization of our public schools? Many of these billionaires favor a small, weak government that cannot regulate or check their overreach.
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That, plus publicly-funded elections at all levels of govt.
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Love this post. Tax capital gains and dividends as income. Return to the progressive tax rates that existed during the Pax Americana of the mid-twentieth century. And, Green New Deal.
Bernie declared today! AOC will be with him! Go Bernie! The future belongs to us.
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D,
Don’t forget Jane Meyer’s “Dark Money,” excellent expose on the Koch Brothers network of weaponized philanthropy….
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Bill Gates has a positive review of Winners take All printed on the cover. It sounds like it was written by a robot.
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I saw that and was amazed that he blurbed a book criticizing him and his ilk.
Did he read it?
I doubt it.
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Bill Gates had a surprising answer about the 70% tax rates .
https://www.good.is/articles/bill-melinda-gates-letter-tax-wealthy?utm_source=thedailygood&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailygood
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At SSIR, an article Feb 20, 2019-
“Can Machine Learning Double Your Social Impact”. One cited application is predicting where conflict will breakout..
The article uses the program, Educate Girls, to tie in the need to know student demographics, school attendance, etc.
And, from another source, Apple/Google pressured to drop app that tracks women- enables gender apartheid.
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