Dutch historian Rutger Bergman stunned the super-elite at the World Economic Forum at Davos by telling them that the biggest problem in the world today is the refusal of the richest to pay their fair share of taxes. He said that listening totheir discussions was akin to a fireman’s conference that never mentioned water.
He became an instant folk hero for his bold truth telling.
Davos is an annual gathering of world leaders, CEOs, and billionaires from all over the world.
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Poor Bill Gates. He has poured billions into reinventing education, and nothing has worked. Nothing! Not even in his home state.
One of his fondest desires was to open charter schools in Washington State. He poured millions into a referendum (the fourth in the state), and it barely passed. Then the highest court in the state said the charters couldn’t be supported by the general fund, because they are not really public schools. Public schools have elected boards. At last, he gently persuaded the legislature to tap into the lottery money to pay for Bill’s charters.
But, as Carol Burris writes, the charters did not outperform public schools and did not close achievement gaps.
Oh, woe. Poor Bill!
Burris writes:
“The 2012 initiative was Washington State’s fourth charter school ballot initiative. The previous three attempts failed — in 1996 (64.43 percent opposed to 35.57 percent in favor), 2000 (51.83 percent opposed to 48.17 percent in favor), and 2004 (58.3 percent opposed to 41.7 percent in favor).
“The fourth and final attempt was not pushed by the parents of Washington State. It was pushed and funded by billionaires. The collection of signatures to get the charter initiative on the ballot was a well-coordinated effort that cost nearly $2.5 million.
“Funders of the initiative included Microsoft founder Bill Gates (who contributed over $1 million) and California billionaire Reed Hastings of Netflix. A dark-money group based in New York — Education Reform Now Advocacy, an arm of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) — contributed large sums as well.
“Without the financial push by billionaires both within and outside the state, the initiative, which barely passed on the fourth attempt, would likely have failed, as did the three previous efforts.
“Let’s fast forward to 2019. What was the outcome for all of those millions contributed allegedly on students’ behalf?
“The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University, which is funded by pro-charter organizations, recently issued its report comparing the academic growth over a three-year period of students in Washington’s charter schools when compared with their true public school (TPS) counterparts. What it found was that charter school students did no better.
“From that report:
“Over that time, the typical charter school student in Washington demonstrated no statistically different academic growth in reading and math when compared to their exact-match counterpart in nearby district schools (TPS). The trend across the two growth periods shows a slight downward trend in reading and math as the number of students served grew. The finding of no meaningful difference in learning gains held across most of the different student groups within the charter population. Only English language learners [ELLs] experience significantly higher learning gains associated with charter school attendance. Other student subgroups such as students in poverty, Black students, and Hispanic students experience non-significant positive gains on average. “
“It should be noted that the small gains experienced by English Language Learners disappeared when Hispanic ELLs in charters were compared with Hispanic ELLs in public schools. The report also confirmed that charters in Washington, as elsewhere, enrolled fewer special education students and fewer ELLs.
This is a shocking development: The infamous billionaire Koch brothers have a plan to disrupt American education, beginning with five states.
Their goal is to break up the public education system and enable public funding to flow to every kind of school, whether religious, private, homeschooling, for-profit, anything and everything. They call it “educational pluralism.” At the Koch Conference last year (700 people who paid $100,000 to attend), they declared that K-12 schooling was “the lowest hanging fruit,” and they planned to enter the field to disrupt public schools. Their ally Betsy DeVos paved the way.
The Koch brothers are living proof that this country needs a new tax structure to disrupt their billions, which they use to destroy whatever belongs to the public.
The Washington Post reports:
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — The donor network led by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch will launch a new organization next month to focus on changing K-12 education as we know it.
The effort will begin as a pilot project focused on five states with a combined school-age population of 16 million kids, but officials said Monday that they aren’t ready to identify them yet because they’re still finalizing partnerships with some of the country’s leading educational organizations.
The still-unnamed entity purportedly plans to focus on three buckets: changing public policy to address “the root causes” of failing schools, developing new technologies to promote individualized learning, and investing in teachers and classrooms.
The announcement came Monday at the end of a three-day seminar where 634 donors who have each committed to contribute at least $100,000 annually to Koch-linked groups gathered under palm trees at a luxury resort in the Coachella Valley.
The Koch team is modeling its amped-up education efforts on its successful overhaul of the criminal justice system, which began in friendly states before moving to the federal level. In that case, Koch World sought out unlikely allies and played the long game for years before any big legislation passed.
In the past, most conversations about education at these twice-annual Koch confabs have quickly turned into bashing teachers unions. So it was notable when Brian Hooks, the chairman of the Koch network, went out of his way to praise teachers and acknowledge that many have been picketing recently.
“For too long, this issue has been framed unnecessarily as us vs. them, public vs. private, teacher vs. student, parent vs. administrator,” Hooks told a ballroom of donors. “The teachers who have expressed frustration in the past several months are good people. I mean, they’re teachers. We all remember the positive impact that a teacher or several teachers have had on our lives. They’re expressing legitimate concerns. But the current approach means that nobody wins, so they need better options.”
Hooks recognizes that many will question their motives, but he said the goal is to “really shake things up” by “coming alongside concerned teachers” to “find a better way.” Teachers union leaders, who are closely aligned with the Democratic Party, have accused the Koch groups of trying to undermine traditional public schools. Koch and his allies say the system is broken and requires wholesale changes. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been a longtime ally of the network.
“This is a tough one, no doubt,” Hooks said. “It’s a challenge that a whole lot of people look at and say is impossible. But we see a tremendous opportunity to unite people to help ensure that every kid has the opportunity to succeed.”
Philanthropist Stacy Hock of Austin, a major Koch donor who has been funding education efforts at the state level in Texas for years, says that traditional forms of classroom instruction encourage “soul-crushing” conformity, and she has emerged as an outspoken advocate of “personalized learning.”
“Families are getting more and more comfortable with experimenting and taking risks,” she said on the sidelines of the meeting. “Education should be getting way, way better and way, way cheaper, but the opposite is happening.”
Hock said the new Koch initiative, as it ramps up, will identify what’s working at the local level and push for those things to be replicated elsewhere. “What we’re seeing all across the country are little flames,” she said. “What I don’t yet know is how to throw gasoline on all those flames….
— Previewing their K-12 push, Koch strategists pointed to research being conducted with their financial support by Ashley Berner at Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Education Policy. Her main interest is expanding what she calls “educational pluralism,” which is when the government funds all types of schools, including explicitly religious ones, but does not necessarily run them.
“Berner points to examples such as the Netherlands, which funds 36 different types of schools, from Islamic to Jewish Orthodox to socialist,” the Charles Koch Foundation notes in a summary of her work. “Alberta, Canada, funds homeschooling along with Inuit, Jewish, and secular schools. In Australia, the central government is the nation’s top funder of independent schools. Other countries with plural school systems include Denmark, Finland, Germany, and Sweden.”
“It’s the democratic norm around the world. In pluralism, choice and accountability are two sides of the same coin,” said Berner, who wrote a book in 2017 called “Pluralism and American Public Education: No One Way to School.” “We’ve got to start supporting politicians who are willing to make compromises. Americans are tired of the battles between charters and district schools; these take up too much energy and resources. A pluralistic system doesn’t pit entire sectors against one another.”
In a somewhat ambivalent article in the New York Times, Jennifer Medina and Dana Goldstein write that the L.A. teachers’ strike was a setback for charter schools. They say that in the age of Trump, charters are no longer popular with the Democratic Party, which is moving left. They point out that the teachers held a massive rally in front of Eli Broad’s museum to express their displeasure with his support for charters.
The ambivalence in the article comes in two parts. First, they treat somewhat skeptically the union’s accurate portrayal of the link between charters and billionaires. Second, they stress that charters are popular and have long waiting lists. They are wrong on both counts. The charter “movement” is a billionaire obsession. Think Waltons, Gates, Broad, DeVos, Koch brothers, Hastings, Bloomberg, Anschutz, etc. Read the NPE report, which the reporters obviously have not read, called “Hijacked by Billionaires.” Without the billionaires, there is no charter “movement.”
Second, they are peddling charter lobby propaganda when they write about the public demand for charters.
Why would unions support charters? Nationally, 90% are non-union. In L.A., 80% are non-union. Moreover, they drain $600 million a year from the L.A. public schools, which are underfunded already.
Contrary to the report in the Times, LAUSD board member Scott Schmerelson wrote on his Facebook page this week that 82% of the charters in L.A. have vacancies.
But the main point of the article is heartening: Charter Schools have become toxic for most Democrats. They even list Senator Booker as a supporter of the striking teachers, which is odd, as he announced his run for the Democratic nomination in 2020 at a charter rally in New Orleans. Maybe he whispered his support. The Democrats will have to choose: unions or charters.
The article begins:
LOS ANGELES — Carrying protest signs, thousands of teachers and their allies converged last month on the shimmering contemporary art museum in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. Clad in red, they denounced “billionaire privatizers” and the museum’s patron, Eli Broad. The march was a preview of the attacks the union would unleash during the teachers’ strike, which ended last week.
As one of the biggest backers of charter schools, Mr. Broad helped make them a fashionable and potent cause in Los Angeles, drawing support from business leaders like Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix; Hollywood executives; and lawmakers to create a wide network of more than 220 schools.
Mr. Broad was so bullish about the future of charter schools just a few years ago that he even floated a plan to move roughly half of Los Angeles schoolchildren — more than 250,000 students — into such schools. In 2017, he funneled millions of dollars to successfully elect candidates for the Board of Education who would back charters, an alternative to traditional public schools that are publicly funded but privately run.
His prominence has also turned him into a villain in the eyes of the teachers’ union. Now Mr. Broad and supporters like him are back on their heels in Los Angeles and across the country. The strike is the latest setback for the charter school movement, which once drew the endorsement of prominent Democrats and Republicans alike. But partly in reaction to the Trump administration, vocal Democratic support for charters has waned as the party has shifted further to the left and is more likely to deplore such schools as a drain on traditional public schools.
When the Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, announced a deal between the teachers’ union and the school district after the weeklong strike, it became immediately clear that the fate of charter schools was part of the bargain: The union extracted a promise that the pro-charter school Board of Education would vote on a call for the state to cap the number of charters.
It was the latest in a string of defeats for a movement that for over a decade has pointed to Los Angeles and California as showcases for the large-scale growth of the charter school sector.
Backers of charter schools argue that they provide a much-needed choice for parents in poor neighborhoods, where low-performing schools are often the norm. Many supporters expressed frustration that student achievement had not been a focus of the debate around the Los Angeles strike. Overall, the city’s public school students tend to perform worse in reading and math than their counterparts in many other large urban school districts across the country, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The low performance of district schools, charter supporters say, has led to about a fifth of the district’s students being enrolled in charter schools…..
But the defeat in the court of public opinion is clear: After years of support from powerful local and national allies — including many Democrats — charter schools are now facing a backlash and severe skepticism.
Over the past two years, charter school supporters were dealt painful political defeats in California, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and other states.
As the push for alternatives to traditional public schools has come to be more associated with President Trump and his secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, the shift in Democratic Party politics has been especially pronounced. President Barack Obama supported expanding high-quality charter schools, and pushed teachers’ unions to let go of some of their traditional seniority protections and put more emphasis on raising student achievement.
But after a wave of mass teacher walkouts across the nation, and with a noticeable shift to the left in the party, ambitious national Democrats now seem more hesitant to criticize organized labor. Senators Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were among those who said they supported the striking teachers in Los Angeles. The city’s charter school leaders couldn’t help but notice that no equally prominent elected Democrat rose to the defense of Los Angeles charter schools as union leaders attacked them.
Tomorrow we find out if the majority of the LAUSD board answers to the public or to Eli Broad and his fellow billionaires. As part of the strike settlement, the board agreed to vote on a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter schools. They will vote but will the majority vote for or against it? Tomorrow we learn which votes were purchased by Eli and friends.
The following press release came from Los Angeles Alliance for a Nrw Economy, which fights for a fair economy, for working people and for the environment.
MEDIA ADVISORY for TUESDAY, January 29 at 12 PM
Contact: Haley Potiker – 714-457-2852 – hpotiker@laane.org
Parents Bear Witness to School Board Vote on Charter Moratorium
LAUSD parents who were leaders in teachers strike support show up to make sure district keeps its promise on charter industry moratorium
WHO: Parent leaders in teachers’ strike support effort
WHEN: TUESDAY, January 29, 2018 at 12 PM
WHERE: LAUSD Headquarters, 333 S. Beaudry
WHAT: Parent activists will be available for comment at LAUSD board meeting
LOS ANGELES — The tentative agreement between UTLA and LAUSD includes a commitment by the Board of Education to vote on a resolution calling on the state of California to impose a moratorium on charter growth in LAUSD. Parents who have been organizing together with UTLA to combat privatization will attend the meeting to hold the board accountable to their promise.
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.
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.
The billionaires assembled at Davos are frightened by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez!
She proposed raising taxes to 70% for those who have over $10 million a year in income. The tax kicks in over $10 million.
Poor dears!
Attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, are worried about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). So says CNBC, which reports that the multimillionaires and billionaires at the annual elite gathering are all but quaking in their expensive winter boots at the thought of her proposed 70 percent marginal income tax rate. “It’s scary,” claimed Scott Minerd, a high-ranking executive at investment firm Guggenheim Partners. Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio predicted the call for a 70 percent top tax rate would pick up steam ahead of the 2020 election. Michael Dell, the head of Dell Technologies, with an estimated net worth of slightly more than $31 billion, proclaimed that it wasn’t necessary. “I do not think it will help the growth of the U.S. economy.”
But no one could top Ken Moelis, the head of the Moelis & Co investment bank, who claimed the freshman congresswoman’s proposal would “be disastrous for the economy,” because it would take away the incentive to work. He also asked:” “What’s going to happen to the two-workforce family? You forget where 70 percent starts to kick in.”
For the record, Ocasio-Cortez would like to see that top marginal rate kick in at $10 million. I don’t know too many families earning that sort of money even if they send all their children and assorted pets to work, and I doubt you do either, unless you live next door to the owner of a hedge fund.
If their taxes above $10 million are raised, they will have NO incentive to work!
They will be the idle rich! A hamburger at Davos costs $56!
How can a person scrape by on only $10 million plus 30% of added income?
This is what they should worry about. OXFAM just reported that 26 people have more wealth than 3.8 Billion people.
“THE COMBINED WEALTH OF the 26 richest people in the world is the same as the combined wealth of the world’s poorest 3.8 billion people.
“According to Oxfam’s Public Good or Private Wealth report, the number of billionaires has doubled since the 2008 financial crisis, and their wealth has grown by 12 percent. Over the same period, the wealth of the world’s 3.8 billion poorest people declined by 11 percent.
“Released a day before the world’s richest and most powerful gather at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam’s report shows that the “growing gap between the rich and poor is undermining the fight against poverty, damaging our economies and fueling public anger across the globe.”
“While the richest people have seen an increase in their fortunes of $900 billion, or $2.5 billion a day, over the last year, the poorest 3.8 billion people, almost half of the world’s population, are living on less than $5.50 a day, the report found.
“Despite the growth of their fortunes, these people, as well corporations, are paying lower tax rates than they have in decades, according to Oxfam, which cites President Donald Trump’s tax plan as an example.
“The recent U.S. tax law is a master class on how to favor massive corporations and the richest citizens,” said Paul O’Brien, Oxfam America’s vice president for policy and campaigns.“
Politico reports:
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/24/ross-government-shutdown-food-banks-1122842
Wilbur Ross is a billionaire. He says that missing a paycheck or two is no big deal. Not for him, it isn’t.
White House Trump aides set off furor with out-of-touch shutdown remarks
One of President Donald Trump’s top aides likened the shutdown to a “vacation.” Another called it a “glitch.” And on Thursday, Democratic leaders pounced after Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said he didn’t “really quite understand why” unpaid federal workers are going to food banks.
As the government shutdown stretched into its 34th day and as roughly 800,000 federal workers are bracing for their second missed paycheck, the White House is facing an intensifying backlash over seemingly out-of-touch comments from Trump’s group of largely wealthy advisers.
The comments are also handing Democrats leverage as party leaders and Trump have failed to reach a compromise on the president’s demand for $5.7 billion in border wall funding.
One of the latest missteps came on Thursday when Ross went on CNBC to encourage federal workers to seek low-interest loans to tide them over, and appeared to minimize the shutdown’s toll on thousands of workers who live paycheck to paycheck.
“These are basically government-guaranteed loans because the government has committed, these folks will get back pay once this whole thing gets settled down,” Ross said. “So there is really not a good excuse why there really should be a liquidity crisis now.”
“Now true, the people might have to pay a little bit of interest, but the idea that it’s paycheck or zero is not a really valid idea,” he continued.
Federal employees have reported going to homeless shelters to find food for their families, but when asked on Thursday about the desperate measures, Ross replied: “Well, I know they are, and I don’t really quite understand why.” Ross argued with loans backed by the guaranteed back pay, federal workers should be able to find the money to carry them through the shutdown.
Regardless of the individual cost on federal employees, Ross said the shutdown won’t be too damaging for the country’s image or economy. “You’re talking about 800,000 workers and while I feel sorry for the individuals that have hardship cases, 800,000 workers, if they never got their pay — which is not the case, they will eventually get it, but if they never got it, you’re talking about a third of a percent on GDP so it’s not like it’s a gigantic number overall,” he said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quickly pounced on the comments, characterizing them as a “let-them-eat-cake attitude….”
Some of the president’s allies have started privately worrying that the seemingly callous comments reinforce the perception that the president and his team of wealthy advisers are out of touch with the public.
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Carol Burris writes here about “National School Choice Week” and who pays for it.
She writes:
Planning and managing National School Choice Week is a year-long endeavor. National School Choice Week is an organization, yet it has no donate button, nonprofit status statement, nor 990 income tax form that I can find. It does have a president who used to work for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at the American Federation for Children, a 501(c)(4) lobbying and advocacy group founded by her billionaire family.
The week has an official dance and on its website is a “happiness blog” on which representatives of an online charter chain, connected to the for-profit K-12, encourage everyone to paint a rock to show their love for “choice.”
It also has lots of right-wing billionaire bucks behind it. In 2016, Media Matters, a progressive nonprofit that researches conservative groups, did a masterful job of exposing where the money comes from to fund National School Choice Week. The week was started by the right-wing Gleason Family Foundation that also funds the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Uncommon Charter Schools, the libertarian Cato Institute and anti-union organizations that promote “right to work.”
The peculiar issue about school choice is how the right-wingers were clever enough to hoax Obama and Duncan, Cory Booker and Hakim Jeffries.
Peter Greene doesn’t object to the fact that Betsy DeVos was born rich, married rich, and has always lived in a bubble.
But he was taken aback by her conclusion that kids today live sheltered lives. They don’t know anything about entrepreneurship and hard knocks (like she does?).
They lack grit and character because they are sheltered. Like she was?
Did I mention that a quarter of the children in the U.S. live in poverty, and half of them qualify for free or reduced lunch, the federal standard for poverty/low-income. In some cities, like Cleveland, every child is poor, by federal standards. They don’t seem to live the sheltered life, do they?
