Maurice Cunningham is a dogged researcher into Dark Money and its role in the pursuit of privatizing public education. Cunningham is a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts. Open the link and read in full.
In his latest post, he reports that Koch money as well as Walton money, Zuckerberg money, Gates money, and Dell money, is supporting the “National Parents Union,” a front for the billionaires.
He writes:
There’s millions of dollars sloshing around Massachusetts Parents United and National Parents Union these days. Some of it is from Charles Koch…
The Koch connection was apparent when Charles Koch put a proxy on the board of National Parents Union. Now we know for sure Koch has money invested in NPU. Others holding stakes in NPU (housed in the same shop as Massachusetts Parents Union and run by the same team) include Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Michael Dell, Reed Hoffman, John Arnold, Eli Broad, etc.
It’s not just Koch, the Waltons are tossing even more money at NPU.
NPU is also feasting on big bucks from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropic arm.
Cunningham reminds us to “follow the noney. Dark Money never sleeps.”
And he adds:
We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The National Parents Union” is a front for billionaires that want to shred democracy. We have a tremendous income disparity in our country. Robert Reich has said that the real divide in American is not Republican or Democrat. The real divide is between the wealthy and everyone else. This billionaire alliance confirms what Reich has said. It is necessary for all of us little people to work together to get the money out of politics so that government this country can be one of, by and for the people.
RETIRED: Nicely written. We can see two distinct issues here:
(1) the disparity of wealth and (2) the use of wealth as power to weaken the democratic principles embedded in the U.S. Constitution and other founding documents.
In the recent Post Office debacle, we are seeing the same game plan worked out that we have experienced with public education; only apparently in this case, they forgot the value of going slow; and they (Trump and his sycophants),in their short history of greed and stupidity, they forgot the longer history of institutions like the Post Office and how important they are to The People. Also, it’s easier for THE PEOPLE to notice the demise of U.S. Post Office than it is the demise of public schools.
BTW, yesterday (the 17th) I received a notice from a financial institution that has FOR YEARS arrived a couple of days after the first of the month. Hmmmm. . . .
Below is a general take on the planning for privatization and takeover that, because of the closeness of the election, was accelerated in the PO so that The People noticed what was going on. It makes me sick to my stomach to see those blue mail boxes all piled up like junk in the back of a truck headed for the dump. But it’s the same game-plan used for Public Education.
First, create a long-term badmouth narrative pointing up ONLY weak-spots and problems, while adding a slew of fake problems; and avoiding or even hiding ANYTHING good about them.
Second, drain the said institutions of their resources so they find it more-and-more difficult to do their work well. And fire anyone who actually wants to do well (stupid that they are), and especially those who “get it.” Top it off by HIRING political hacks devoid of experience in public service or in the particular institutions they are in charge of.
Third, create a counter-narrative about how wonderful business is; point up philanthropic ventures and how privatizing public institutions would fix all those awful problems (like in education, charter schools, or hiring babysitters instead of teachers who are likely to “get it”). This includes working across all cultural groups and orders to change the governing the paradigm in people’s minds: FROM championing democratic principles and their manifestation in public institutions (publicly funded) TO capitalist principles and their manifestation in pay-to-play structures and in-your-face door-slamming of “certain types,” devoid of anything but lip-service to public service, publicly funded, for the good of all. <–What’s THAT about? It doesn’t even make money and pay for itself.
Third, do everything in your power to control the curriculum in higher education (Koch is good at this), especially economics departments (be sure to add bells and whistles, and money), so that ideas that are embedded in the U. S. Constitution and purveyed by “radical” professors, are quietly washed out of the minds of those who will end up peopling high-dollar think tanks. Fire those professors one at a time. They just cause trouble anyway.
Democracy? What was that? CBK
It is good to know that if Democrats do not get satisfaction from DeJoy at their hearing, there are other steps that can be made because the USPS is a democratic entity. The Board of Governors can remove DeJoy, and he can reverse the damage that DeJoy has inflicted. Of course, all of this depends on who are the members of the Board of Governors.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Governors_of_the_United_States_Postal_Service
Trump already picked the majority of the USPS Board of Governors.
Trump’s/GOP woman problem- 6 board members-all male.
RETIRED: . . . I wanted to say that it speaks of SOME KIND of intelligence on the part of Trump to even THINK ahead like that . . . however, then I thought the board set-up probably has Steve Bannon’s fingerprints on it . . . or Stephen Miller, or those of any of the number of similarly character-deficient and spiritually dead people presently surrounding Trump. CBK
Well-said, CBK. And the playbook is simple as a-b-c to implement, once you’ve got 1% owning 40% of national wealth– 10% of households owning 70% of the nation’s net worth/ bottom 50% of households owning 1.5% of it. It only took 12 yrs of Rep admins to get that trickle-up ball so front-weighted it was self-propelling. Sometimes I blame Dems for abandoning workers, falling in w/ privatization schemes etc. But mostly I see it as, once the bulk of nation’s wealth is in the hands of a few, the rest is predictable.
bethree5 I don’t think that the below from the initial blog note is NECESSARILY true:
“‘We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.’ – Louis Brandeis”
But in fact, FOR MOST it is true. I do think, however, there are some who have boatloads of money but who also understand and fund a longer-view relationship between (a) wealth and (b) a civilized culture of people who also embrace truly democratic principles.
I don’t know for sure, but I doubt many here overtly desire a variable of communism. My guess is that many Americans give a political pass to the wealthy precisely because they think they might, themselves, become wealthy “some day.”
In that context, I think we also need to ask ourselves if we want a political culture that puts an end to that dream? or is there a way forward without reverting to such implied extremes? CBK
“…drain the said institutions of their resources so they find it more-and-more difficult to do their work well. And fire anyone who actually wants to do well …” This hits home for our district’s schools as they have been pushed toward privatization — with all of the invasions and directives hitting low-scoring schools year upon year, what confuses so many employees is the reality that following new directives has no actual value.
ciedie The higher-ed correlate is the question: How much of the rhetoric in teacher education masters programs has to do with teachers NOT being political, NOT rocking the boat, keeping one’s political head down, etc.
In my own experience having taught in such a program for many years, the pressures in this vein from every direction were subtle but powerful and consistent. My classes were 95% filled with teachers who had been teaching for some time. It was variable but in too many cases there was similar pressure at the school-site level for my teachers.
Whereas in my view, in a democracy, for teachers NOT to be politically astute and to NOT be able to raise such questions and foster dialogue in the company of their students, is a blot on an educational system that finds its very life in a democratic political climate. If not teachers, then who?
. . . parents? which is probably why we even have “parents united” groups in development as we speak. I can hear the bells, whistles, and sounds of coins in piggy-banks now. Jingle, jingle. CBK
Always the same names behind each and every ed reform initiative and lobby and idea.
Ed reform is an echo chamber.
There could be one large ed reform org instead of all these cookie cutter subsidiaries and the results would be exactly the same. Always anti-public school and always promoting charters and vouchers. There are no other “ideas” in the “movement”.
Let’s go the “leadership” page, shall we? Oh look! It’s the exact same high profile ed reformers who cycle in and out of ed reform orgs and the US Department of Education! That’s a coincidence.
Dan Weisberg
BOARD MEMBER
Peter Cunningham is the founder of Education Post. He served as assistant secretary for communications and outreach in the U.S. Department of Education during the Obama administration’s first term.
Peter is affiliated with Whiteboard Advisors, a DC-based education policy, research and communications firm.
Not a single leader of public schools, supporter of public schools or public school parent.
Yet they are supposedly the spokespeople for public school families.
Call me crazy, but if I have a kid in public schools I think I’ll work with people who actually support and use public schools. None of these people do.
https://nationalparentsunion.org/#bibb-hubbard
Arne Duncan denied that the Obama Administration was captured by the ed reform echo chamber his entire tenure.
Look at where the Obama education people went immediately after the US Department of Education. Every single one of them went directly to an ed reform org. Not one of them does any advocacy for public school students. They revolve in and out of ed reform orgs and government, always the same 150 people. No one with any dissenting views are ever hired or heard from. The DeVos appointees have the exact same background.
In a country where 90% of students and families attend public schools, we have had ZERO public school advocates in the Bush, Obama and Trump Administrations. None.
Is it any wonder public school students have gotten the short end of the stick for 20 years? NONE of these people work for them.
Arne Duncan was a leader of the Ed reform echo chamber. He surrounded himself with people from Gate and Broad.
As superintendent in Chicago, his Renaissance 2010 plan proposed closing public schools and replacing them with charters.
Read Eve Ewing’s “Ghosts in the Schoolyard” for a devastating critique.
Arne paved the way for Betsy DeVos.
Diane You’ve hear of the “fog of war”? We should coin a new term:
The Fog of Money and Power.” CBK
There’s only two ways the DeJoy hearing can go, if it goes at all.
(1) DeJoy is so saturated with a capitalist-business mindset that he CANNOT EVEN THINK in terms of public service or how these relate to our U.S. Constitution; and so he starts right off trying to set the PO up to save and make money for itself . . . just like any good business person would, . . . the privatization of the Post Office, but now at the service of the Stupidest President Ever who wants to use the situation to suppress the vote.
OR (2) he is, like many other oligarchs of our time, deeply contemptuous of the very idea of democracy and so is deliberately destructive of it when he has the chance.
I’m still head-slapping over the whole idea of Parent Unions funded by oligarchs. George Orwell will never really die. CBK
DeJoy will make USPS more efficient by closing post offices in rural areas, eliminating “redundant” drop boxes in urban areas, blocking overtime, eventually disbanding the postal workers union (which just endorsed Biden).
Diane . . . good businessman that he is . . . My question is this:
Does DeJoy realize he is also a U.S. Citizen; or does he just hate the guts out of that fact? CBK
https://nationalparentsunion.org/#bibb-hubbard
The National Parent Unions refers to public school graduates as “survivors” of public schools.
That’s certainly “agnostic” right? Just completely unbiased – they slot every school that is public into the “failed” category. That isn’t “science” and it isn’t “scholarship”. It’s ideology.
Do ed reformers really believe that every public school graduate in this country is a “failure”? They know they’re denigrating 95% of people right?
You have to be a graduate of the Chicago Lab School or you don’t make the cut?
It’s nonsense. Frankly, if all these people attended expensive private schools I question whether private schools are doing a good job. I’m not impressed with their performance.
Let’s look at the awesome quality and superior performance of the private school graduates in ed reform, shall we?
Is producing Donald Trump really something to brag about? We’re SURROUNDED by graduates of the most expensive private schools in the country. How’s that working out for us?
Maybe try hiring some public school graduates. See how that goes. It surely can’t HURT at this point.
I don’t have any faith in politicians but I just have one request for Joe Biden. Hire ONE person in a position of power who values public schools and will fight on behalf of public school students.
They don’t have any advocates and they comprise 90% of students and families. That’s ludicrous and unfair and it shouldn’t be permitted to continue. Get them one person in DC who works for them. It’s been 20 years. They are more than due.
We are at that point in World History (Enlightenment to present) that we begin to talk about rights and freedoms. Today almost all of my ninth graders seemed to understand the idea that one way to limit freedom of expression is to shout over all the smaller, quieter voices.
Wealth creates a bully pulpit. Whether you agree with the speaker or not, the wealthy get to say more than the rest of us. This is why Citizens United is so dramatic a ruling. It denies the reality of the loud voice as the agent of limiting free speech.
What will happen to a voice deferred?
Will it dry up, like a raisin in the sun?
…
Or will it explode?
Why did all of that money and influence flow to Massachusetts as the location for the Parent Union operations and under the cover of being part a Democratic initiative? I do not know but from the link below, one reason may have been Elizabeth Warren. http://www.masspoliticsprofs.org/2020/02/06/two-and-a-half-ways-maybe-3-the-waltons-and-charles-koch-welcome-themselves-into-the-democratic-primaries/
Thanks.
Business barons use politicians to pillage the peasants of Main Street.
The peasants failed to recognize that the barbarians weren’t at the gate, they were rising among them each time a Republican was elected.