Archives for category: Billionaires

Karen Wolfe, parent activist in California, reports that Marshall Tuck—candidate for state superintendent of schools— is once again the candidate of the privatizers. She learned that he recently returned a gift of $5,000 to an anti-gay crusader.

More troubling is the money he did not return.

She writes:

”Tuck’s donors include Doris Fisher (whose Gap retail company has faced numerous child labor scandals), Eli Broad (a former top investor at AIG whose non-accredited Broad Academy trains privatizing “education leaders”), Alice Walton (the anti-labor heir to the Walmart fortune), Reed Hastings (a Silicon Valley billionaire who has tried for years to take away the right of local voters to elect their own school boards.)

“Tuck’s campaign is also apparently being funded by political action committees, despite its pledge last August that it “has not accepted—and will not accept—contributions from companies or PACs.”

“On January 11, Tuck’s campaign reported receiving $23,725 and $37,430 from a group called Govern for California, chaired by George Penner, husband of Walmart heir Carrie Walton Penner, as well as $5,000 from Fieldstead & Co.”

“Fisher, Walton, Broad, and Hastings are leading financiers of the movement to privatize public schools. Ironically, while California is a blue state, its Silicon Valley billionaires have funded an aggressive and politically powerful movement to destroy public schools and replace them with charter schools.

”The primary election will be held on June 5, with the general election this November.

“Tuck’s opponent, Tony Thurmond, is a social worker, former school board member, and current member of the state assembly. He has been endorsed by Senator Kamala Harris, U.S. Congressional Representatives Barbara Lee, Eric Swalwell, and Karen Bass, and the teachers’ union.

“Tuck, on the other hand, has the same pro-privatizing platform that voters rejected when he ran for the position four years ago. It’s the same education platform of Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush and John Kasich, and Vice President Mike Pence: Deregulate public education, outsource school services, make it harder for teachers to gain tenure, and expand the market of “school choice.””

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Buffett: We Got $29 Billion from GOP Tax Cut

By dianeravitch

February 28, 2018 //

Warren Buffett said his company benefitted mightily from the GOP tax “reform.”

A $29 Billion plum.

””The $65 billion gain is nonetheless real – rest assured of that. But only $36 billion came from Berkshire’s operations. The remaining $29 billion was delivered to us in December when Congress rewrote the U.S. Tax Code.”

I wonder what the Koch brothers and DeVos family got?

Categories Billionaires

Good News! Phony Billionaire Charter Group Collapses: ADDENDUM

By dianeravitch

February 6, 2018 //

One of the nation’s leading corporate education reform groups— Families for Excellent Schools—has collapsed. It adopted a name to suggest that it spoke for poor black and Hispanic families, but the families it represented were wealthy financiers from Wall Street, Greenwich, Connecticut, the Walton Family, and the Eli Broad family.

This is the group that spent millions to run ads attacking Mayor deBlasio when he had the gall to challenge Eva Moskowitz’s demand for free space in public schools and the right to force the city to pay for any space she was required to rent. Eva had the support of the powerful financiers of FES and Governor Cuomo, and together they beat DeBlasio and taught him not to challenge Queen Eva.

FES expanded to Massachusetts and poured millions of “Dark Money” (undisclosed names) into the referendum battle to lift the cap on charter schools. After the election, the state investigated the millions in outside money that poured into the race, fined FES nearly half a million dollars for failing to identify its donors, and banned them from operating in the state for four years.

Then came the embarrassment this week when FES was compelled to fire its leader, Jeremiah Kittredge, for inappropriate sexual behavior with a non-employee. As Politico reported, Kittredge was one of the most prominent reform leaders in the nation. But he acted like a jerk, making stupid vulgar comments about a woman’s breasts at an education reform conference, the Philos retreat. Kittredge was one of Eva Moskowitz’s closest advisors.

Then today came this announcement:

**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE** FEBRUARY 5, 2018

New York, NY – Statement from Bryan Lawrence, Board Chair of Families for Excellent Schools:

“This is a sad day for everyone at Families for Excellent Schools. We are very proud of the work we’ve done to help thousands of families stand up for educational opportunity in their communities, and believe our vision of a world where every child has access to an excellent school has never been more important.

“Unfortunately, after a series of challenges over the past year and particularly given recent events, we have determined that the support necessary to keep the organization going is not there. We are beginning the process of winding down our work. I want to thank all those who have given their heart and soul to this organization since its inception; I know they will continue to advocate for the families and communities we serve.”

Mercedes Schneider wrote about the fall of this phony group here:

Families for Excellent Schools (FES) Is Shutting Down. Marvelous.

Politico explained the declining fortunes of FES this way (and hedged on whether FES was closing partially or completely):

The pro-charter group has seen its fortunes decline sharply over the last year. Its influence in New York has waned as de Blasio has largely declined to criticize charters and much of the local press turned its attention away from Families for Excellent Schools’ relentless schedule of rallies and press releases aimed at pressuring the mayor.

By 2016, the expensive rallies the group was best known for were no longer leading to policy wins at the city or state level, and the strategy was eventually abandoned.

And most crucially, the group suffered a disastrous political defeat in late 2016 from which it never fully recovered, sources say. After funnelling $20 million into a pro-charter ballot initiative in Massachusetts known as Question 2, the question was defeated at the polls by 25 points.

Several sources indicated its once-prolific fundraising became significantly more challenging in the aftermath of the Massachusetts loss.

https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2018/02/05/families-for-excellent-schools-planning-to-close-following-ceos-firing-235707

So, the big rallies with the matching T-shirts were no longer impressing politicians. The money was drying up. The executive director was caught in an embarrassing moment of monumental grossness.

Sad. The ed reform movement seems to be cracking up. Students First, gone. FES, gone. Who is next?

ADDENDUM:

Correction by a reader:

“Jeremiah Kittredge’s behavior was not just “an embarrassing moment of monumental grossness.”

“Jeremiah Kittredge guy was a serial creep. Consensual or not, Jeremiah was basically f—ing his way through the Families for Excellent Schools headquarters:

“POLITICO: “Kittredge has been involved in multiple consensual sexual relationships with colleagues throughout his relatively brief career in education reform, including at least one employee who reported directly to him, according to five sources with direct knowledge of the situation.”

“That’s from here:

https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2018/02/02/charter-champions-firing-came-after-sexual-harassment-allegations-233549

“Jeremiah picked the wrong year(s) to be engaging in this kind of Don-Draper-in-Mad-Men type carousing. (Mad Men took place in the early to mid 1960’s) Given the current MeToo/Times Up atmosphere, his behavior was / is monumentally anachronistic.”

Categories Billionaires, Corporate Reform, Dark Money, Education Reform, Failure

“This Land Belongs to You and Me,” not Trump, DeVos, and the Koch Brothers

By dianeravitch

February 4, 2018 //

One of my favorite non-education bloggers is Andrew Tobias (except on the rare occasions when he ventures into education), who cuts through the economic morass with a fine scalpel and recognizes Trump for the phony that he is. I subscribe (free) at AndrewTobias.com. He gave me his permission to post his latest. Open here to read his links.

Tobias writes:

YOU Get $930! And YOU Get $930!”

John Grund, one of your fellow readers, offers this wonderfully clear analysis (thank you, John):

Here’s another way to think about the Republican tax bill: Think like an owner.

Sit down quietly and let your mind inventory all that you own as an American. I like to start with the Statue of Liberty. It was a gift from France to the American people; I’m an American person, so that includes me. And the Park Service charges admission, so there’s that.

From there, I like to fly over the country in my mind, surveying all that you and I own. All the beaches and waterways. All the roads and bridges. All the public lands and forests. All the great national landmarks and parks. All the wonderful buildings our fathers and mothers built for us: the libraries and colleges and theaters.

Take your time. It takes time to even touch on how much there is. The public hospitals and clinics. The harbors and canals. The lighthouses and navigation markers. The reservoirs, rivers, lakes and water systems. The radio and television airwaves. The courts and city halls and schools. The warships, guns and warplanes.

And now reflect that corporations are granted a charter by the state (which you and I own, of course) that allows them to do business. And think of corporate taxes as the rent those corporations pay for using all that we own – the roads to deliver their products, the monetary system the underpins commerce, the police to keep their trucks safe, the schools to train their workers, the military to protect it all.

The Republican tax bill cuts the rent you earn on all that property. The corporate tax rate drops from 35 percent to 21 percent of profits.

Now perhaps you are a gracious and benevolent landlord, and you say you don’t really mind giving your renters a break. You’re feeling generous.

But remember you have a mortgage against all that property, too. It’s the national debt, and you use the rents – the taxes – you receive as owner to pay off that mortgage. And remember that the rents have to pay for upkeep on all that property. Are the roads and bridges in great shape, with plenty of money squirreled away to keep them that way? Or are they in dire need of long-delayed maintenance and restoration?

This is one case where it is right to think like an owner, because that is what you are. Be a calculating landlord when you consider the Republican tax bill.

Isn’t that kinda great?

One could certainly tinker with the implementation. For example, how about revenue-neutral corporate tax reform? Adopt the more-globally-competitive 21% were adopted — but pay for it by closing loopholes that most big corporations have been using to pay far less than the nominal 35% rate.

But the gist of John’s essay, I think, is exactly right.

Again, I urge you to watch Reagan budget director David Stockman’s critique of the massively ill-advised tax cut.

And again, note how beyond nuts — how bizarro-world — it is that this tax bill, designed to help the middle class (yeah, right), and that’s gonna cost Trump a fortune, “believe me” (yeah right), includes a special provision for real estate developers like Trump.

I’m all for the much-heralded $1,000 bonuses a few million employees (maybe 5% of American workers?) have gotten from corporate employers . . . perhaps in part to curry favor with the strong man in the White House, perhaps in part to help Republicans hold Congress in the next election, and surely in part because they’d like to do something nice for their valued employees. That’s great.

And I’m all for the modest but real tax breaks many middle-class Americans will see (if we can afford them; though: can we afford them?). Bloomberg estimates $930 a year for people in the middle fifth of taxpayers ($60 for people in the bottom fifth). But don’t you get it? The motivation here is to help those at the top. You get $930! And you get $930! And you get $930! And — if I’m in the top 1% — I get $51,140. Unless I’m in the top tenth of that group — $193,380. Unless I’m in the top tenth of that group — where Trump and his friend Carl Icahn and his pal Wilbur Ross and his pals Sheldon Adelson and the Mercers and Betsy Devos presumably are. That number Bloomberg doesn’t even try to estimate, but it would be a lot higher.

When the ultra-rich were taxed at a 90% top federal tax rate (Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower), it was too high (though designed to lower our National Debt, relative to the economy as a whole, which it did help do). And when they were taxed at 70% (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter) it was still too high (though it, too, helped shrink the Debt relative to the economy as a whole). Even when they were taxed at 50% (Reagan’s first cut), I would argue it may have been too high.

But, with his second cut, Reagan, and then Bush 43, and now Trump have exploded the National Debt — borrowing not to build infrastructure that’s been crumbling for 35 years, but to enrich the already-rich by cutting their taxes to record-low levels.

Criminal.

Well, not literally. But immoral.

And dishonest (Bush told us “by far the vast majority” of his tax cut would go to people “at the bottom”).

And . . . well, tragic.

Only Clinton and Obama managed to turn the deficits around, leaving their successors with economies growing faster than the debt . . . thus shrinking the debt relative to the economy as a whole.

This massively irresponsible Republican tax cut reverses that, once more. It puts us back over $1 trillion in deficit spending . . . gets the debt growing faster than the economy again, as under Reagan, Bush, and Bush . . . and is sold to the voters as, “Look! You get $930! And you get $930!” (And me? Don’t bother your pretty little head with that. If you can’t trust Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and Devin Nunez and Vladimir Putin — Trump trusts him, why shouldn’t we? — whom can you trust?)

Right?

Copyright © 2018 Andrew Tobias
All rights reserved.
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Categories Billionaires, Economy, Equity

What DeVos Invested in Before She Was Confirmed

By dianeravitch

February 3, 2018 //

In the case of the money-hungry DeVos family, you find what they care about by what they invest in. Or invested in.

PR watch reviewed the list a year ago.

She had big investments in student debt collection. That’s a money maker.

https://www.prwatch.org/news/2017/01/13207/betsy-devos-ethics-report-reveals-ties-student-debt-collection-firm

Why does a billionaire need more? That’s above my pay grade. What do you think?

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, For-Profit

BREAKING NEWS: Koch Brothers Declare War on Public Education

By dianeravitch

January 30, 2018 //

The Koch brothers have decided to target K-12 public schools.

The multi-billionaire Koch Brothers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase control of departments in America’s colleges and universities, to spread their libertarian gospel of greed and undercut any commitment to the common good. At their recently concluded meeting of like-minded donors, the Koch’s announced that they are expanding their ideological campaign to include the destruction of the K-12 public schools in America. Choosing a school will be like choosing a pair of shoes in their vision, which is shared by Betsy DeVos,a member of their donors’ Network.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2018/01/30/daily-202-koch-network-laying-groundwork-to-fundamentally-transform-america-s-education-system/5a6feb8530fb041c3c7d74db/?utm_term=.e7ddbc619216

Arizona is ground zero for the Koch Brothers this spring. Steve Perry, the African American entrepreneur from Connecticut appeared at the meeting to urge the privatization on. The Washington Post was lowed to send a reporter on condition that the donors’ names were kept secret.

“Making a long-term play, the billionaire industrialist Charles Koch and his like-minded friends on the right are increasingly focused on melding the minds of the next generation by making massive, targeted investments in both K-12 and higher education.

“Changing the education system as we know it was a central focus of a three-day donor seminar that wrapped up late last night at a resort here in the desert outside Palm Springs.

“We’ve made more progress in the last five years than I had in the last 50,” Koch told donors during a cocktail reception. “The capabilities we have now can take us to a whole new level. … We want to increase the effectiveness of the network … by an order of magnitude. If we do that, we can change the trajectory of the country.”

“Leaders of the network dreamed of disrupting the status quo, customizing learning and breaking the teacher unions. One initial priority is expanding educational saving accounts and developing technologies that would let parents pick and choose private classes or tutors for their kids the same way people shop on Amazon. They envision making it easy for families to join together to start their own “micro-schools” as a new alternative to the public system.

“The Charles Koch Institute distributed roughly $100 million to 350 colleges and universities last year, up sevenfold over the past five years. What’s newer is the emphasis on elementary and secondary education. The network declined to offer exact figures but said it will double investment in K-12 this year, with much more planned down the road.

“There are about 700 people who each contribute a minimum of $100,000 per year to the constellation of organizations that comprise the Koch network. For years, many of these megadonors have urged Koch to wade into the battles over what they call school choice. Charles resisted, believing that his network had no special comparative advantage to move the needle in this area.

“Then he commissioned Meredith Olson, a vice president at Koch Industries, to interview members of his network about what they are doing in their home states to explore whether there is a way to scale their education efforts nationally. She developed a three-prong strategy: “reform, supplement, innovate.”

“The lowest hanging fruit for policy change in the United States today is K-12,” said Stacy Hock, a major Koch donor who has co-founded a group called Texans for Educational Opportunity. “I think this is the area that is most glaringly obvious.”

“In 2018, Koch donors see Arizona as ground zero in their push. Doug Ducey, the former chief executive of Cold Stone Creamery, became a member of the Koch network in 2011. Since 2015, he’s attended the seminars as governor of Arizona. Last year, he signed legislation to dramatically expand the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts program so that students can use taxpayer dollars that would be spent on them in public schools to cover private-school tuition or other educational expenses.

“Teacher unions, worried that this will undermine the public system, collected enough signatures to put the law on hold and create a ballot proposition to let voters decide in November whether to expand vouchers. [Note: Signatures for the referendum were collected by parents and SOS Arizona, not teachers unions.]

“Addressing the seminar yesterday, Ducey touted the measure as further reaching than anything that’s been tried in other states. He warned that, under Arizona law, if advocates lose at the ballot box, they will not be able to legislate on the topic in the future. “This is a very real fight in my state,” Ducey said. “I didn’t run for governor to play small ball. I think this is an important idea.”

“The Koch network is likely to spend heavily to support the voucher law, setting up a battle royal with the labor movement.

“Ducey introduced Steve Perry, the headmaster of Capital Prep Charter Schools, who has been traveling Arizona to speak in support of the law. “The teacher unions are unencumbered by the truth,” he told the Koch donors. “It is a distant relative that is never invited to dinner.”

“Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, highlighted field operations that the network has built in 36 states to advance its agenda, including on education. “We have more grass-roots members in Wisconsin than the Wisconsin teachers’ union has members,” he said. “That’s how you change a state!””

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Billionaires, Education Industry, Education Reform, Evil, Koch Brothers, Privatization

Rolling Stone: Inside the Koch Brothers’ Toxic Empire

By dianeravitch

January 29, 2018 //

Ever wonder why the Koch brothers want to quash environmental regulations? Why they support ALEC, which writes model legislation for states to deregulate corporations? Why they are in an alliance with far-right titans like the DeVos family?

Ever wondered how they made their wealth?

This article, published in 2014 by Rolking Stone, answers your questions.

Categories ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Deregulation, Education Industry, Environment

The Video of My Speech to the California School Boards Association, Asides Included

By dianeravitch

January 28, 2018 //

I earlier posted the text of the speech I gave to the CSBA on December 1, 2017. I usually deviate from the written text, and I did in this instance. I followed Marshall Tuck, who made his name working in the charter industry for the Green Dot charters. There were about 4,000 people in the audience.

California is overrun with charters. The California Charter School Association is a powerful lobby in Sacramento, always seeking more funding and less accountability. CCSA is supported by billionaires like Reed Hastings of Netflix and real estate mogul Eli Broad. Governor Jerry Brown is their ally. He vetoed legislation to ban for-profit charters. If Hastings and Broad had their way, there would be no elected school boards, and every school would be privatized. They may be successful in their own careers but they know little or nothing about education. They just don’t like democracy.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

“We Are Rich and We Do What We Want”: A DeVos Family Reader

By dianeravitch

January 28, 2018 //

This is your reading assignment for the holidays!

Please write a book report.

Jeff Smith of Grand Rapids, Michigan, has compiled a reader about the lives, beliefs, and whims of the super-rich DeVos family.

I haven’t finished reading it. It is a big endeavor.

Jeff Smith writes:

“This is exactly why I have spent years monitoring, investigating and critiquing the DeVos Family. They are the most recognizable and powerful manifestation of the systems of power and oppression in West Michigan. Now, I know there are plenty of people who share the belief that without the DeVos Family, Grand Rapids wouldn’t be where it is today. I fully agree with that belief, but for reasons that are the exact opposite of those who hold the most powerful family in West Michigan in high regard.

“When Rich DeVos and Jay Van Andel founded the Amway corporation, they did so by embracing some of the most deeply entrenched lies about this country. Rich DeVos has written numerous books that promote his values. In his book Believe, DeVos, in talking about freedom, states, “that call of freedom went forth from a rugged wilderness, and Europe and Asia and Africa sent their sons of adventure to hew out a new society in a land of forests and savages.”

“This statement from DeVos is essentially an affirmation in his belief of Manifest Destiny. For those who don’t know, the company that DeVos founded with Jay Van Andel, was originally going to be called The American Way, but was changed to Amway so as to abbreviate their take on Manifest Destiny.

“In addition to believing in Manifest Destiny, Rich DeVos is also deeply committed to the values of capitalism, or what he likes to refer to as the free enterprise system. In his book Believe, DeVos states, “The free-enterprise system has outperformed, outproduced any other in the world. It is a gift of God to us, and we should understand it, embrace it, and believe in it.”

“The above statement is the perfect encapsulation of what the patriarch of the family, Rich DeVos, believes and is firmly committed to. The DeVos Family is a deeply religious family, regardless of how one defines religious beliefs. The family comes out of the Calvinist tradition and are members of the Christian Reformed Church. However, the DeVos Family, in many ways embraces a form of Christian Reconstruction. Those who practice Christian Reconstruction theology believe that society should be governed by biblical values, rather than secular values. This is exactly why the family has for decades developed relationships and funded organizations that are deeply committed to homophobia, anti-reproductive rights, patriarchy, white supremacy and free market capitalism.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires