A front group for the California Charter Schools lobby, which calls itself “Families and Teachers United,” released a flyer that attacked school board member Scott Schmerelson, a pro-public school member of the LAUSD school board and well-qualified educator. Schmerelson has been endorsed by every Democratic club in Los Angeles.
The scurrilous flyer accuses him of investing in mutual funds that include products that are harmful to children (tobacco). Anyone whose pension is invested in large mutual funds knows that individual shareholders do not choose the stocks in the fund’s portfolio. My own pension fund includes companies I find abhorrent and there’s nothing I can do about it.
The flyer accuses Schmerelson of “double dipping” because he collects a pension for his decades of service as an educator in the LAUSD schools and a salary as a board member, like other board members.The flyer does not mention that board salaries were increased in 2017 based on the recommendation of an independent commission.
Should he give up his well-earned pension? Of course not! Should he refuse to take the same salary as other board members? Of course not!
Who paid for this vile, lying, unethical anti-Semitic ad?
Ad paid for by Families and Teachers United, sponsored by California Charter Schools Association Advocates. Committee major funding from
Charter Public Schools PAC
Not authorized by a candidate or a committee controlled by a candidate.
Funding details at http://www.fppc.ca.gov.
This may be the most expensive school board election in LA history, even though the billionaires have no ideas other than charter schools. None.
Who are they? Blogger Sara Roos names names.
How about full public disclosure of the income and investments of the billionaires who fund the CCSSA?
Sara declined to reproduce the flyer, so as not to give more visibility to this trash.
Methinks the charter billionaires are angry at Scott for telling the public that more than 80% of LA’s charters have empty seats.
Schmerelson, a man of unblemished integrity, responded to the anti-Semitic flyer with a statement denouncing the depths to which the charter lobby is willing to sink. He notes that the group that produced the flyers by the billionaire Waltons and Reed Hastings.
The election is March 3 but early voting has started. VOTE FOR SCOTT SCHMERELSON!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sickening
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Is the picture the ad to which this post refers?
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Yes. There are more. This picture is the heart of the ad.
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Many charter school zealots have zero scruples. They will do anything to win. We need to label such disinformation campaigns as lies, and ads that target an ethnic and/or religious group are a violation of the Constitution. We are living in post truth America.
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What happens when mad scientists combine pigs and vultures? We end up with fancy named organizations that support publicly funded, private sector charter schools that lie, lie, lie, and lie again to defeat anyone running for a school board seat that isn’t a charter school puppet.
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I know who’s “vile” here and it’s not charter schools and their supporters. It’s educrats like Diane Ravitch who’ve sold their souls to the teachers’ unions, including getting big bucks for speaking at their convention last year.
On Mon, Feb 17, 2020 at 11:02 AM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “A front group for the California Charter Schools > lobby, which calls itself “Families and Teachers United,” released a flyer > that attacked school board member Scott Schmerelson, a pro-public school > member of the LAUSD school board and well-qualified educat” >
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Jim Waters, no one sells their souls to teachers’ unions. Only corporations and billionaires buy souls.
How much did Trump and/or the GOP pay for your soul?
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I think this Jim Waters post prove that charter lovers like him are also rabid Trump supporters.
It makes sense when their very favorite charter school CEO – Eva Moskowitz – was instrumental in the confirmation success of Betsy DeVos after Moskowitz made it her personal mission to demand DeVos be confirmed. As Moskowitz made very clear in her non-stop lobbying and public relations effort to praise DeVos, Betsy DeVos represents the values that all charter supporters embrace.
I assume that Jim Walton, like Eva Moskowitz, embraces the values of Betsy DeVos, just like all members of the California Charter Schools Assn whose funders also adore DeVos.
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Diane Ravitch has never been a member of union. As a private citizen and public figure, she is free to speak wherever she is welcome. Tant pis, as the French say, too bad!
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Vile: Ref Rodriguez, convicted criminal; Nick Melvoin, dirty mole; Austin Beutner, investment banker, Doris Fisher, sweatshop owner; Reed Hastings, monopolist; charter operators, thieves.
They have the money. We have the numbers.
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Jim Waters: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hee heee hheeeee hee (oh, make it stop!) haaaaaaaaah haa oh my Lord. That’s a good one, Jim. Tell us another one. Something equally ridiculous like, I don’t know, Kenyan Muslim President Obama put chemicals in the drinking water to turn high-school kids transgender, unborn baby sings like Elvis, Trump is a patriot, Pelosi coven casts spell to shift Bermuda Triangle over Mar-a-lago, Lindsey Graham to star as Frank N. Furter in remake of Rocky Horror Picture Show, Network for Public Education infiltrated by shape-shifting lizard aliens from Alpha Draconis, doctors revise report to say that Limbaugh doesn’t HAVE cancer but IS a cancer, Jim Jordan seething that Stephen Miller left him for new bride. That kind of thing.
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This just in: Miller and new bride plan spawning; uncertain about whether they will eat young
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You are, sir, pretty far out of line….
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I don’t know who you are, Jim Waters, but I see you signed as jwaters@freedomkentucky.com.
I assume you are a libertarian supporter of Trump and DeVos. You oppose public schools as a matter of principle.
Just to set the record straight, I didn’t speak at any union convention last year or the year before. I spoke at NEA in 2010 when I was honored as their “Friend of Education.” I was not paid. I spoke at the AFT convention several years ago. I was not paid. It’s true that I have a lecture agent, and that I have been paid (usually by universities or large organizations), to speak. That’s a matter of my choice, and so far, as I know it is neither illegal nor unethical. Many of your rightwing heroes are paid far more than me. I retired from the lecture circuit when I turned 80 almost two years ago. I’m still speaking to unions and teachers, at no fee. Although I have never belonged to a Union, I applaud them because unions built America’s middle class. I hope they grow and prosper and provide a counterforce to the oligarchs who are destroying the middle class.
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What have they been smoking at the Bluegrass Institute? Perhaps Moscow Mitch can get them the good stuff, given his extensive criminal connections.
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Well said, Diane!
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Interesting that this individual (most neutral term of which I could think, took a while to tamp it down) uses a post about obvious anti-Semitism to attack the de facto patron saint of public education. Says everything I need to know about the writer. Don’t need to know anymore.
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If there was no money in charters, the slime that Waters champions would exploit elsewhere. Charters are where the vilest bottom feeders gorge on money taken from communities – money intended for kids’ educations.
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In March 6 of 2019, Jim Waters’s attitude about the speech of a Democratic state representative was quoted. The Rep.that Waters harangued opposed tax credits for religious schools. (3-6-2019).
It’s past time that the legitimate discussion about the USCCB and state Catholic Conferences, like Kentucky’s, got the SPOTLIGHT turned on them for their political activities in undermining separation of church and state… past time to stop tax support for schools that discriminate in employment based on sexual orientation (allegedly, the latest example, a Catholic school in the state of Washington today) … past time that the conditions that allow child sexual abuse in religious schools should be examined and… past time, that the libertarian embrace of theocracy was exposed.
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The CCSA was put back on its heels by democratic (lower case) support for teachers and students following the strike. Charters want revenge. They intend to take the school board, the mayor’s office, and half of the students in Los Angeles. They said so in emails to public officials they thought could be private. They are unscrupulous. If we teachers and supporters of public schools stop canvassing our neighborhoods, the ¢¢$A will use deep pockets to destroy democracy and public education. They don’t stop. Neither can we.
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unscrupulous added to dangerously well-heeled: the fight feels so formidable
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CCSA and their minions seem to have a hard time finding qualified candidates who can match the depth of experience that both Scott Schmerelson, Jackie Goldberg and George McKenna have amassed. They all have REAL records of achievement, but their opponents can often only offer criticisms and a laundry list of priorities without any solid suggestions as to how to carry them out. So, their only option is to attack the public school supporters, regardless of accuracy. It’s called “casting aspersions” or better yet, “character assassination” of the worse kind. And, BTW, so far, the first 3 complaints registered against Scott’s stock ownership were thrown out. It’s expected that the same will happen with any others.
In the meantime, more flyers paid for by CCSA are going out with the same false and outdated information.
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Congratulations on a splendid job of investigative reporting and one that is a model for the many smear campaigns now in the works. I am not in California, but Ohio has plenty of people who are trying to undermine publc education, including some who are employed as TFA recruiters.
Naming names and the amount of money flowing into destroying public education is also urgent work given the scale of these efforts, deep pockets, and attack dogs like Jim Waters who could learn a thing or two if read any of Diane’s books, including Salying Goliath. I know for a fact that Diane decides when to accept and when to waive her speaking fee.
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Wow.
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I don’t know… something about calling this amateur junk “anti-Semitic” feels overblown and perhaps even risky as rhetoric. Distasteful and amateur and crass? Yes, definitely. But let’s not forget that “
our side has invested MILLIONS in making the “kids not profits” campaign work (close to $5m) just last year when we pushed hard to rein in the charter lobby and won significant concessions. And we did it with “evil billionaires and profit mongers” narratives that stuck (and for good reason but still, talk about an anti Semitic trope!). Heck there are right now UTLA billboards with Eli Broad’s face on them. Many charter leaders in major urban areas are observant Jews, especially in LA and Bay Area. As is Austin Beutner, Nick Melvoin, many philanthropy heads etc. Do we really want to give their side the opening (or the idea) to call us out on that? That would undermine our most effective message to date. Feels a little like whistling past a graveyard folks….
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Mimi,
Plastering a dollar sign on the face of a Jewish man who just happens to be completely ethical is a well-worn anti-Semitic trope. Der Sturmer and other Nazi publications did it with frequency.
If the charter folks don’t like Scott Schmererson, they should say why. Hanging a dollar sign around his neck is vile and reeks of anti-Semitism.
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I get it, I’m just saying our sides does it over and over too… like literally what you described.
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I’m a member of our side and I don’t recall any caricatures of Eli Broad or Michael Bloomberg that were anti-Semitic in nature. If you find any, please let me know. The biggest malefactors of the Disruption movement are DEVOS and the Waltons. Since they are opposed to unions and a living wage, they may fairly be caricatured but not because of their religion.
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It’s the “happy (Jewish) merchant” theme , and many mainstream media organizations (Huffington Post, Washington Post, NPR and others) have employed it (anti-Semitic trope) against Bernie Sanders as well, depicting him rubbing his hands together in articles about his funding, for example.
https://fair.org/home/its-media-not-bernie-sanders-that-have-an-antisemitism-problem/
But I would not consider any of those organizations to be on “our” side.
They are all corporate owned and/or sponsored.
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Correct there. 90 percent of the media is owned by, I think, six huge corporations and most of their CEO’s were educated at Harvard.
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Thanks for this clarification, Diane. I wastrying to figure out where the anti-Semitic slant came in.
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Here’s just one example from “our side.” Cartoons like these were all over the city around the time of the strike. Does this pass the anti semitism test or no? Why or why not?
The image says nothing about religion, but neither does Schmerelson’s. Help me understand how one image is CLEARLY anti-Semitic but the other one isn’t…
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I respectfully disagree, Ms. Lorenzo. This flier is CLEARLY anti-Semitic, for it is indistinguishable from a long line of anti-Semitic propaganda that used such imagery. Completely indistinguishable material was used by the Nazis and is used by neo-Nazi groups today. I was horrified. This is definitely not whistling past a graveyard. It’s calling out clear use of standard anti-Semitic iconography, as standard as was the “Blood and Soil” chant of the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.
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I must say that the anti-Semitic trope escaped me. I am very familiar with the NAZI posters with their revolting captions, but I am insensitive to other images. It strikes me that the audience would have to know that this man was Jewish in order for the one who is interpreting the message to read “money-hungry Jew ” instead of “money hungry man”. I guess I am just not sensitive to the imagery.
This brings to mind a sort of solipsism. If a racist makes a racist joke in the forest and no one gets it, does it make a sound? Perhaps the voters will not even know?
All the same, I do not wish to make light of the matter, just of my own ignorance.
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I am not going to post links to the kinds of descriptions and imagery that I’m talking about here because I don’t want to perpetuate this stuff. It’s easy enough to know that this is a Jewish man because of his Jewish last name. The Nazis, btw, issued a textbook that all German children used called Rasse und seele (Race and Soul) that taught the stereotype of the perfect Nordic type and contained photos and descriptions to teach that other supposed races were inferior. This flier is CLEARLY anti-Semitic. It pictures a Jewish man with a Jewish last name as rapaciously money grubbing and so a danger to society at large–the very charge laid against the Jews by Hitler and his henchmen and promulgated by his Propaganda Minister, Goebbels.
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We have laws in place defining anti-Semitic defamation. California law against defamation prohibits making statements of purported fact that are false about public figures, whether proven injurious or not. Injury is assumed. Billboards with Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump’s faces that say “corporate special interests want to buy our democracy” are not defamation. They spend lavishly on privatizing control of our public schools, so the billboards are correct. There’s nothing to call UTLA out on, whereas posters claiming Scott Schmerelson is “getting rich quick at the expense of our kids” is false. He is not getting rich, not quick, not slow. Picturing him with wads of cash, a large dollar sign necklace, and a cigar, along with the lie about him getting rich quick is defamatory. It’s against the law, open and shut. There needs to be swift justice.
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Of course, depicting him as interested only in money could not be more ironic coming from a charter school organization backed (set up?) by billionaires.
But if there is one thing the Deformers don’t get, it is irony.
Two things: irony and hypocrisy.
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Here is an example of the category to which this vile flier belongs, a Nazi poster. The German word Kasse means “cashbox.” https://www.kedem-auctions.com/product/collection-of-anti-semitic-postcards-%E2%80%93-first-half-of-20th-century/
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Several more examples of this trope can be found here: https://www.kedem-auctions.com/product/collection-of-anti-semitic-postcards-%E2%80%93-first-half-of-20th-century/
I’m not going to go on, though I could for a very long time. This stuff–these depictions of Jews as financially rapacious and having sold out Germany for profit–was ubiquitous. It was the MAIN argument that the Nazis made to the public at large, and led to their gaining power and committing genocide. Never forget.
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Thank you, Bob Shepherd.
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The Nazi publication Der Sturmer often printed cartoons of Jews with long noses and fistfuls of cash. The Nazi propaganda machine constantly played on this theme that Jews were money-changers and interested only in money. It was part of the demonization of Jews as a group and paved the way for Krystallnacht and the Holocaust.
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An enterprising organization should develop a deck of cards with the faces of school deform villains- ace of spades- the Gates family, the remainder of the spade suit- Walton heirs, John Arnold’s family, Kim Smith (Pahara, New Schools Venture Fund, TFA, and Bellwether), Eli Broad’s family, Betsy DeVos’ family, Reed Hastings, Bloomberg …
a deck of cards issued as a companion pack identifying think tanks, lobby shops and plutocratic college departments, including maps showing location, AEI, Fordham Institute, SIEPR, Schools of Government and Education at Harvard, New America, BiPartisan Policy Center etc.
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Great ideaa, but I think we need bothh Goliath’s and David’s, since we have spades and clubs (disruptive) and diamonds and hearts.
The Queen of Clubs would have to be Betsy.
The King of Clubs would be Trump.
Diane would definitely be the Queen of Hearts.
And the joker would have to be Arne Duncan.
But That leaves a lot of cards for others on both sides.
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Bill Gates would be the Gates of Spades
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David Coleman would be the Jack(ass) of Clubs
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And Rahm Emanuel would be the Jack(ass) of Spades
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Michelle Rhee would be the Rhee of Clubs
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How about using the dark, gothic style of tarot cards, too?
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The Waltons would prolog be the Sicks of Clubs
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I’m starting to imagine the images on these cards you are coming up with already. The sicks of clubs would probably look like something out of the plague during the dark ages.
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Interesting idea, a deck of cards picturing Disrupters who, with misleading language and unfeeling poker faces, gamble on students’ futures with experiments in venture capitalism. They’re all jokers wild.
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The graphic displayed here has Betsy depicted as The Queen of Dark money so something along those lines would work, although I think she should look more sinister (more like a VAMpire)
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Jackass of spades and other ideas – clever.
The idea could be a money maker for NPE, great gift item for Massachusetts citizens, Detroit kids, Ohio taxpayers,
and L.A. teachers fighting for the common good against the education oligarchs
If I’m the first to imagine the literary work or product, I place the idea in the commons.
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Linda,Thanks for generously relinquishing rights to profit from the idea.
One problem is that the Deformers greatly outnumber the dark cards in the deck.
We could assign them red cards, of course, but it just seems very wrong to depict Deformers as diamonds and hearts, unless you made them Blackhearts (aka blagards) and black diamonds (attached to the most dangerous slopes at ski areas)
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Lloyd’s idea to combine playing cards and tarot cards might take care of the number problem
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The CCSA is vile to its core.
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At least one of the “activists” who was quoted on the flyer does not live in District 3. How did this get overlooked??
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