Archives for category: Koch Brothers
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Beware the Elites Who Want to Change the World.

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2018 //
30

This is an unusually good opinion piece that appeared in the New York Times a few days ago.

Think Gates, Zuckerberg, Walton, Hastings, Koch, and many more who use their wealth to impose their ideas on what they consider lesser lives.

The author is Anand Giridharadas.

Please note the mention of charter schools, a bone used by the elites to distract us from wealth inequality and the necessity of providing a better education for all.

It begins:

“Change the world” has long been the cry of the oppressed. But in recent years world-changing has been co-opted by the rich and the powerful.

“Change the world. Improve lives. Invent something new,” McKinsey & Company’s recruiting materials say. “Sit back, relax, and change the world,” tweets the World Economic Forum, host of the Davos conference. “Let’s raise the capital that builds the things that change the world,” a Morgan Stanley ad says. Walmart, recruiting a software engineer, seeks an “eagerness to change the world.” Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook says, “The best thing to do now, if you want to change the world, is to start a company.”

“At first, you think: Rich people making a difference — so generous! Until you consider that America might not be in the fix it’s in had we not fallen for the kind of change these winners have been selling: fake change.

“Fake change isn’t evil; it’s milquetoast. It is change the powerful can tolerate. It’s the shoes or socks or tote bag you bought which promised to change the world. It’s that one awesome charter school — not equally funded public schools for all. It is Lean In Circles to empower women — not universal preschool. It is impact investing — not the closing of the carried-interest loophole.

“Of course, world-changing initiatives funded by the winners of market capitalism do heal the sick, enrich the poor and save lives. But even as they give back, American elites generally seek to maintain the system that causes many of the problems they try to fix — and their helpfulness is part of how they pull it off. Thus their do-gooding is an accomplice to greater, if more invisible, harm.

“What their “change” leaves undisturbed is our winners-take-all economy, which siphons the gains from progress upward. The average pretax income of America’s top 1 percent has more than tripled since 1980, and that of the top 0.001 percent has risen more than sevenfold, even as the average income of the bottom half of Americans stagnated around $16,000, adjusted for inflation, according to a paper by the economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.

“American elites are monopolizing progress, and monopolies can be broken. Aggressive policies to protect workers, redistribute income, and make education and health affordable would bring real change. But such measures could also prove expensive for the winners. Which gives them a strong interest in convincing the public that they can help out within the system that so benefits the winners.”

There is more, if it is not behind a paywall.

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Equity, Fake, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Hypocrisy, Inequality, Koch Brothers, Philanthropy, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Wisconsin: This is Not a Joke: Scott Walker is Touting His Record as “the Education Governor”

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2018 //
20

Scott Walker will face off against Democrat Tony Evers in November’s gubernatorial election.

Evers is the state superintendent of education.

Walker is running on his “education record,” which includes busting the teachers’ union, expanding vouchers and charters, defunding education, both K-12 and higher education. At one point, he even tried to rewrite the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin, changing its emphasis on “the search for truth” and “improve the human condition” to one focused on career training (“meet the state’s workforce needs.”)

Politico reports that the Koch brothers are investing in another term for their puppet:

SEVEN-FIGURE AD BUY TOUTS WALKER’S EDUCATION RECORD: Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin is launching a $1.8 million television and digital ad campaign highlighting Gov. Scott Walker’s education record. Specifically, the conservative group details past praise of Walker’s education record from his Democratic opponent in the governor’s race, Wisconsin state Superintendent Tony Evers. Watch the ad here.

— Caitlin Emma and Daniel Strauss reported last month that Walker is staking his reelection on his education record — and his political future could rest on how that message plays with voters. Walker essentially broke the state teachers union with Act 10, explosive legislation that he championed in 2011, gutting the collective bargaining rights of labor unions. Rather than run from the controversy sparked by the bill, Walker is embracing it, insisting that battling the teachers unions gave school districts more control over their staffs and helped officials balance the state budget, both of which have made schools better.

— Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin notes that Evers praised Walker’s most recent budget as a “pro-kid budget.” But Evers, one of the few statewide officials elected with Democratic support, has gone after Walker for cutting education funding or keeping it flat during the early years of his administration. Evers said the cuts prompted school districts to push for increases in property taxes. When he spoke to POLITICO last month, he took credit for “90 percent” of Walker’s recent budget proposal.

— Democrats, through the Democratic Governors Association, also recently announced a $1.8 million ad buy backing Evers. The ad campaign paints Walker as an insider politician who shunned Wisconsin residents while pursuing higher aspirations and traces Evers’ career from the classroom to superintendent of 2,000 public schools

Categories Koch Brothers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Wisconsin: Two Former Aides of Scott Walker Turn Against Him, Support Evers

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2018 //
9

A former top aide to Governor Scott Walker turned against him and made an ad endorsing his Democratic challenger Tony Evers.

“A second former top aide to Gov. Scott Walker has come out against him, saying the GOP governor’s team told him to meet with payday loan lobbyists and discouraged him from creating documents that could be turned up under the state’s open records law.

“Former Financial Institutions Secretary Peter Bildsten joins ex-Corrections Secretary Ed Wall in excoriating their former boss, claiming they were told not to send emails and cutting digital ads for Walker’s Democratic challenger, state schools Superintendent Tony Evers.

“A third former top aide to Walker has also contended he was told not to create documents that would have to be turned over under the public records law.

“I was told to avoid creating electronic records,” Bildsten says in a digital ad debuting Monday. “I thought Scott Walker was different, but he’s just another politician looking out for himself.”

The people of Wisconsin should throw this charlatan out of office. Walker has earned a stunning defeat. Let’s hope this is the beginning of the end for this puppet of the Koch brothers.

Categories Fraud, Koch Brothers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Arizona: Why You Should Vote NO on Prop. 305! No Vouchers!

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2018 //
0

Save Our Schools Arizona is a group founded by public school parents to fight the expansion of vouchers.

Prop 305 is a referendum that will appear on the state ballot in November. It calls for the universal expansion of vouchers so that all students can use public money to attend private and religious schools with taxpayers’ dollars.

Parents are fighting this. They fought the Koch brothers in court to get this referendum on the ballot.

This video explains what the issues are and why you should vote NO to support public schools, the schools that belong to everyone.

Voucher schools are not transparent and not accountable. Every dollar that goes to an ESA is taken away from public schools.

Vote NO!

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Koch Brothers, Support for public schools, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Here Come the Vampires to Suck Away Your Right to Organize

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2018 //
9

Peter Greene writes here about the mass email that went to teachers in many states, advising them about their right to stop paying union dues and have no collective bargaining on their behalf.

Teachers have been targeted by the rightwing Mackinac Center in Michigan, which has never before shown any interest in teachers’ wellbeing.

But there they are, ready to help you kill off your union.

And, wow– it sure is inspiring to see the one percenters so deeply concerned about teacher freedom of speech. I mean, to devote all this time and money just because they want to make sure that every teacher has a chance to exercise her rights. It’s inspiring. Just like all those other times they were out there in the schools making sure that teachers were free to express their opinions and stand up for students and advocate for better education without fear of losing their jobs and– oh, no, wait. They DeVos’s and Koch’s were the ones agitating for the end of job protections so that teachers could be fired at any time, including for speaking up and exercising their First Amendment rights. In fact, the number of times that groups like Mackinac have been out there standing up for teachers’ rights, First Amendment and otherwise, would be, by my rough count, zero. None.

It’s almost as if this whole thing isn’t about teachers’ First Amendment right at all.

It’s almost as if this was just a ploy to bust up the unions and make sure that teachers had even less voice in the world of education. It’s almost as if this was a way to drain funds from the Democratic Party.

Do you think the Koch brothers and the DeVos care about you? Don’t be fooled.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Koch Brothers, Teachers, Unions

Why Arizona Voters Should Vote NO on Voucher Expansion

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2018 //
1

After a long and bruising battle, voters in Arizona will have their first chance to vote on vouchers in November. Arizona has vouchers now for specific groups of students, but last year the legislature enacted an e passion that would make vouchers available to all. Arizona is beloved by ALEC, the Koch brothers, and the DeVos family due to its choice programs. After passage of voucher expansion, supporters of public schools gathered over 100,000 signatures calling for a referendum. The Koch brothers sent in lawyers to try to block the referendum (Prop 305), but the state courts ruled that it could go forward. Then the Koch operatives pushed the idea that the legislature should repeal and re-enact the voucher expansion law, which would force the opposition to start over. But, in the days after the mass protests of the #RedForEd movement, the legislature was unable to gather enough votes for repeal.

Why are the Koch brothers and Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Childre so frightened of a referendum? Vouchers have lost every time they have been put to a vote.

How do vouchers work in Arizona?

This article, published a year ago, says that oversight of public money is nearly a sham.

“As the program expanded, resources to scrutinize the expenditures — made using state-provided debit cards — never kept pace. The Legislature gave the Department of Education money for the program butwouldn’t authorize spending much of it.

“The warnings of lax oversight and little accountability proved prescient. Money was misspent but the state recovered almost none of it.

“For example, some parents transferred all of their scholarship money into a 529 college-savings account and then left the program — preventing the state from recouping the funds.

“Others pocketed the money and sent their kids to public schools.

“Some purchased books or other materials using their state-issued debit cards and then immediately returned them. The refunded money was put on gift cards, allowing parents to spend it with no scrutiny.

“And despite the Legislature’s vehement opposition to public money paying for abortions, the ESA program became one of the only state programs to allegedly fund the procedure. In 2014, payment to a health clinic led education officials to believe ESA money had been spent on an abortion.

“These illegal expenditures of taxpayer money have sparked little outrage and no widespread calls for changes from either the Governor’s Office or the Legislature.

“State leaders’ apathy is in stark contrast to their condemnation of and crackdown on abuse of social-welfare programs. Arizona has in recent years implemented among the nation’s most restrictive rules for lower-income recipients of cash assistance.

“Chris Kotterman, lobbyist for the Arizona School Boards Association, said that “double standard” reflects the special status Republican state leaders afford school-choice programs.

““Private-school choice is much more favored than cash assistance to the poor,” Kotterman said. “If it’s a welfare program, then strict accountability is necessary … On the school-choice side, there’s an inherent assumption that parents, no matter what, are able to make the best choices and the government should get out of the way.”

Categories ALEC, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Fraud, Koch Brothers

News: Supreme Court Rules 5-4 to Support Janus vs. Unions

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2018 //
39

As widely anticipated, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against a law in Illinois requiring non-members of public sector unions to pay fees for the benefits they receive from collective bargaining. This decision is expected to reduce the membership and revenues of unions, a long-sought goal of reactionaries.

The named plaintiff is Mark Janus. In Roman mythology, Janus is represented as two-faced.

From CNBC:

Supreme Court rules nonunion workers cannot be forced to pay fees to public sector unions
Tucker Higgins | @tuckerhiggins
Published 57 Mins Ago Updated 18 Mins Ago
CNBC.com

The Koch brothers must be celebrating!

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Wednesday in Janus v. AFSCME that non-union workers cannot be forced to pay fees to public sector unions.
The case concerns whether public employees can be forced to pay so-called “agency fees” to fund the work of public sector unions.
Experts said that a holding in favor of Janus would be the most significant court decision affecting collective bargaining rights in decades.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Wednesday in Janus v. AFSCME that nonunion workers cannot be forced to pay fees to public sector unions.
The case, one of the most hotly anticipated of the term, is the second in two days to hand a major victory to conservatives, following Tuesday’s holding by the court that President Donald Trump’s travel ban is constitutional. Some experts have said that a holding in favor of the plaintiff, Mark Janus, would be the most significant court decision affecting collective bargaining in decades.

Janus, an employee at the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Human Services, asked the court last summer to overrule a 40-year-old Supreme Court decision. It found that public sector unions could require employees affected by their negotiations to pay so-called “agency fees,” which have also been called “fair share fees.”

Those fees, approved by the court in the 1977 case Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, cover collective bargaining costs, such as contract negotiations, but are meant to exclude political advocacy.

Janus argued that his $45 monthly fee to the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees was unconstitutional. He said the fees infringed on his first amendment rights, and that, in the case of public employees whose contract negotiations are with the government, the fees were a form of political advocacy.

Categories Koch Brothers

Mississippi: What Happens When a State Refuses to Fund Its Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2018 //
13

Mississippi is usually ranked #49 or 50 or 51 on any measure of poverty or funding for schools. Of course, its students have low scores because standardized tests accurately measure family income.

A state that refuses to fund its schools will have high poverty, a poorly educated citizenry and workforce, and a stagnant economy.

In 2015, educators and parents tried to pass a state referendum to force the Legislature to spend more, but a coalition of very wealthy people from inside and outside the state swamped the voters with propaganda and defeated the referendum. The Koch brothers debated a quarter million dollars (pocket change for them) to ensure that poor black and white children in Mississippi did not get enough funding to offer a decent education.

I recently posted Jeff Bryant’s Report on the pending state takeover of the public schools in Jackson, Mississippi. First, they underfund the schools, then they declare they are failing. And officials who can’t provide a decent education anywhere in the state plan to impose their will on the children of Jackson. You can be sure that their solution is charter schools, not more funding.

A teacher in Jackson wrote this comment after she read Jeff’s article.


Diane, you and I have corresponded several times over the years about the conditions in my school in Jackson. I regret to inform you that the conditions of the physical plant are now beyond words. When I was moved from a classroom with carpet that hadn’t been cleaned in years, a room where I fought respiratory and skin ailments for years, I found my new room infected with black mold. It took a few weeks and a trip to the doctor, but I got that mitigated to the point where I can deal with it.

Then over the Christmas holidays, the city of Jackson suffered a cold snap that destroyed the city water system. Jackson Public Schools had to close for a week due to the water crisis. When we resumed classes, our building’s pipes, I believe had also frozen, leading to a re-occurrence of a sewer line break that has literally rendered the main hall and its classrooms a s—hole. About fifteen years ago, the same situation had occurred when I was also on the main hall. Eventually the district dealt with the situation by going under the building to dig out the contaminated soil and re-plumbing the pipes.

I’ve told everyone who will listen, but the situation only got worse until they finally closed the restroom when the new poop was coming from. Even so, there is always a lingering odor of raw sewage which becomes unbearable after a rain and when the temperature warms up. When I was checking out of my room this week, the stench gagged me, and I swelled up with tears because the whole situation is just so surreal.

The facilities manager was in the building and I told him that I had been trying to decide whose office I needed to visit with a box of poop to put on the desk and ask “How would you like to smell this all day every day?” I told him that it would be his office. He assured me that they will address it this summer.

I also told this story to the principal who related that there is the intent to go back under the building, dig the dirt out again, and once more re-plumb the pipes. If it is effective, then it should hold out long enough to get me through to retirement.

Jackson Public Schools announced this week that they will issue a bond to put money into repairing aging buildings. Our building is one of the oldest in the city, with the distinctions of once having been the only high school in the state for African Americans. We’ll see if our building’s problems will be adequately addressed.

It is absolutely true that the power brokers in this state don’t want to pay for African American children to be educated. When Jackson Public Schools mainly educated the children of the power brokers, the schools were just fine. Now that those children are educated in the private and suburban schools, we see those schools excelling. Meanwhile, the students left in tax-poor JPS are languishing in second-world conditions.

My experience leads me to advocate for a new school funding mechanism that does not put schools at the mercy or benefit of their local tax base. Our country is clearly OK with relegating a third of our children to poverty and its consequences or we would have already done something about it.

(Thank you for letting me rant.)

Lorraine

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding, Koch Brothers, Mississippi, Poverty, Privatization, Racism

Virginia: University Admits Koch Foundation Bought Control of Key Decisions

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2018 //
34

 

After years of denying that the Koch Foundation exercised control of hiring and firing professors by giving millions of dollars, George Mason University was compelled by the release of documents to admit that it was true. 

“Virginia’s largest public university granted the conservative Charles Koch Foundation a say in the hiring and firing of professors in exchange for millions of dollars in donations, according to newly released documents.

“The release of donor agreements between George Mason University and the foundation follows years of denials by university administrators that Koch foundation donations inhibit academic freedom.

“University President Angel Cabrera wrote a note to faculty Friday night saying the agreements “fall short of the standards of academic independence I expect any gift to meet.” The admission came three days after a judge scrutinized the university’s earlier refusal to release any documents.

”The newly released agreements spell out million-dollar deals in which the Koch Foundation endows a fund to pay the salary of one or more professors at the university’s Mercatus Center, a free-market think tank. The agreements require creation of five-member selection committees to choose the professors and grant the donors the right to name two of the committee members.

“The Koch Foundation enjoyed similar appointment rights to advisory boards that had the right under the agreements to recommend firing a professor who failed to live up to standards.

“Cabrera emphasized in his note to faculty that the “agreements did not give donors control over academic decisions” — an apparent reference to the fact that the Koch Foundation did not control a majority of seats on the selection committees.

“A university spokesman said Cabrera was unavailable for an interview. On Monday night, Cabrera issued a statement saying he is ordering a review of all the university’s donor agreements that support faculty positions to “ensure that they do not grant donors undue influence in academic matters.”

“Cabrera’s admission that the agreements fall short of standards for academic independence is a stark departure from his earlier statements on the issue. In a 2014 blog post on the issue, he wrote that donors don’t get to decide who is hired and that “these rules are an essential part of our academic integrity. If these rules are not acceptable, we simply don’t accept the gift. Academic freedom is never for sale. Period.”

“In 2016, in an interview with The Associated Press, he denied that the Koch donations restricted academic independence and said Koch’s status as a lightning rod for his support of Republican candidates is the only reason people question the donations.

 “The documents were released to a former student, Samantha Parsons, under a Freedom of Information Act request she filed earlier this year after years of having similar requests rejected.“Parsons, who now works for the activist group UnKoch My Campus, said the documents are strikingly similar to agreements the Koch Foundation made with Florida State University that caused a similar uproar.

“She said provisions giving the foundation a say in which professors are chosen are especially alarming.

“The faculty is supposed to have the independence to choose the best-qualified candidate,” she said.”

The University recently renamed its law school for the late conservative Supreme Justice Antonin Scalia. This occurred following a Koch gift of $10 Million, plus $20 Million from an anonymous donor.

Some 300 colleges have accepted Koch funding.

When Duke historian Nancy MacLean wrote “Democracy in Chains,” criticizing the Koch-funded economist James Buchanan, she was viciously attacked by libertarians for her portrayal of Buchanan as anti-democratic and unduly influenced by Koch libertarianism. She must be smiling as the mask of impartial scholarship is stripped away by student activists.

Big Money Rules

 

Categories Academic Freedom, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Reform, Higher Education, Koch Brothers

Breaking News: #RedForEd Beats Koch Brothers in Arizona, Voucher Referendum Moves Forward!

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2018 //
18

 

The Koch Brothers have bankrolled an effort to derail a referendum on voucher expansion this November. It lost in the courts, and their next ploy was to have the legislature repeal the law that was under challenge, then re-enact it under a new name, wearing down the opposition.

But last night, the Arizona legislature failed to get the votes necessary to repeal the voucher expansion law and force opponents to start over. 

This is a huge victory for the #RedForEd Movement. Now the voters get to decide whether to continue the Koch brothers’ Plan to privatize public education.

Congratulations to SOS Arizona and the 50,000 teachers who showed up in red T-shirts to speak up for their students, their profession, and public education.

Democracy wins!

Categories ALEC, Arizona, Democracy, Education Reform, Koch Brothers, Privatization
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