Making the case against power philanthropy

This is the second time I've posted excerpts from this 2013 article which originally appeared in Dissent Magazine.

Joanne Barkan is on the case of the new breed of muscle philanthropists who hide their obscene wealth in tax-sheltered foundations and use it to exercise unaccountable displays of power over public education and all aspects of public life. She makes the case that the super-rich don’t need billions of dollars in tax relief annually to exert their will in the public sphere.

Writes Barkan:

One hundred years later, big philanthropy still aims to solve the world’s problems—with foundation trustees deciding what is a problem and how to fix it. They may act with good intentions, but they define “good.” The arrangement remains thoroughly plutocratic: it is the exercise of wealth-derived power in the public sphere with minimal democratic controls and civic obligations.

Power philanthropists exercise greater control than ever over public ed. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation have taken the lead, but, says Barkan, other mega-foundations have joined in to underwrite the self-proclaimed “education reform movement.” Some of them are the Laura and John Arnold, Anschutz, Annie E. Casey, Michael and Susan Dell, William and Flora Hewlett, and Joyce foundations.

The so-called reforms include: privately-operated charter schools; "Parent Trigger" laws; using students’ scores on standardized tests to evaluate teachers and award bonuses; abolishing teacher tenure; and ending seniority as a criterion for salary increases, layoffs, and transfers.

Barkan proposes a list of reforms that would rein in the excesses of the giant foundations reduce their leverage in civil society and public policymaking while increasing government revenue.

Read her entire article, Plutocrats at Work: How Big Philanthropy Undermines Democracy, in the latest issue of Dissent.

Duncan's darling Rhee shows up at GOP convention

Duncan campaigned for Rhee and Fenty in 2010.

Arne Duncan has long been one of Michelle Rhee's ardent fans. Violating all DOE protocols, Duncan went out on the stump for her and former D.C. mayor Fenty two years ago even at the risk of offending the district's African-American voters (they can't vote in the presidential election).

So what did Obama and the Dems get in return for their unflagging support of Rhee? Her first stop after getting booted out of the district was Florida, where she became Tea Party guv Rick Scott's top ed advisor.

Now the new darling of ALEC and the right-wing union union busters has shown up at the GOP Convention in Tampa to tout “Won’t Back Down,” a film produced by gay-hating conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz. Rhee's job is to connect the film with the corporate reform fraud know as the parent trigger.

The film was shown at the convention at an event sponsored by Rhee’s advocacy organization, StudentsFirst, and the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Referring to the film's negative portrayal of teacher unions, Rhee's fellow panelist Bush commented: 

"What I love about the film is it puts a human face on nerdy policy," said Bush, the former governor of Florida.“This is the one little Switzerland where the left and the right can agree.”

As NYT's Michael Winerip reported back in February, Duncan continues to pal around with Rhee even while his own Office of the Inspector General  has been investigating whether Washington school officials cheated to raise test scores during Ms. Rhee’s tenure.

I'm not sure who Bush means by "the left" unless it's faux-Democrat Duncan who is now being mentioned along with Rhee as possible Romney choices for a cabinet post. 

In a close November race, Arne Duncan could well become a major obstacle to Obama's re-election because of negative impact on the nation's 5 million teachers, many of whom see current administration education policies as being no different or even worse than the Republican's.

Obama would do well to dump him now or at least announce his post-election replacement.

Another anti-teacher film backed by Anschutz

Anschutz

Major studio films with celebrity stars have become the latest weapon of choice in the war against teachers and public education. It all began with Waiting for Superman and will be followed-up with the September screening of  Won't Back Down, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal as a parent and Viola Davis as a teacher who work together to organize support for a petition to overhaul the school and resuscitate it academically. The more than obvious parallel here is with the so-called Parent Trigger scheme which enables a small group of petition-signing parents to turn a public school over to private operating companies.

Both films are bankrolled by borderline fascist billionaire Philip Anschutz, an anti-union fanatic whose homophobic views would make Chick-Fil-A owner Don Cathy blush.

Anschutz' ownership of The Washington Examiner, a daily tabloid, and The Weekly Standard, probably the nation’s most influential conservative magazine, provide the outlet for his extremist views on taxes, national security and President Barack Obama that the 130 or so companies he owns don't.

Anschutz' propaganda films are slick and sophisticated. But we did a decent job of debunking WFS. I look forward to even stronger critiques of WBD.

Anschutz makes Koch Bros. "look moderate..."

Bankrolled L.A. mayor's corporate school  reform & 'Waiting for Superman"

Robert Skeels posts on Dissident Voice about Philip Anschutz' connections with Mayor Vilaraigosa's corporate school reform initiative in L.A. Anschutz has donated at least $100,000 to the Mayor's Coalition for School Reform — a slush fund to elect privatization friendly school board candidates for Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

Anschutz, a reactionary that makes the fascist-friendly Koch Brothers look moderate in comparison, also funded Waiting for Superman, the poverty pimping propaganda piece by the smug mendacious hipster Davis Guggenheim. How far to the right is Anschutz? Master researcher and educator Kenneth Libby’s “Philip Anschutz and Walden Media: What Kind of Agenda?” exhaustive list shows huge sums of Anschutz’s fortune going to organizations that are anathema to social justice and public schools, including Hoover, AEI, Heritage, Cato, etc., along with school privatization favorites like KIPP and Alliance for Choice in Education.

Town says, "frack you" to Anschutz

Phillip Anschutz, bankrolled the anti-public school  propaganda film, Waiting for Superman. Now he's financing another film glorifying the so called, "parent trigger", a law which gives a group of parents the power to fire all their school's teachers and hand it over to a private management company. 20th Century Fox is preparing a September release for “Won’t Back Down” starring Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal. 

Anschutz is a far right-wing, evangelical billionaire who inherited his fortune from his father's oil business. He is also media mogul, publisher of the Weekly Standard, the S.F. Examiner, and owner of L.A.'s Staples Center. He was also the force behind California's anti-gay initiative. 

But his biggest profits come from his energy interests. He's the owner of Anschutz Exploration Corporation, a Colorado driller with 22,200 acres under lease in the town of Dryden, N.Y. where Anschutz intends to do hydrofracking for natural gas, a process that poses a threat to the town's drinking water. 

But in a victory for opponents of fracking, a New York State judge ruled on Tuesday that Dryden can ban natural gas drilling within its boundaries. Responding to a suit by Anschutz, State Supreme Court Justice Phillip R. Rumsey ruled that state law does not preclude a municipality from using its power to regulate land use to ban oil and natural gas production. The ruling is the first in New York to affirm local powers in the controversy over drilling in the Marcellus Shale, a gas deposit under a large area of New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

“The communities targeted for drilling need the power to determine for themselves when, where and if fracking is permitted,” Katherine Nadeau, the water and natural resources program director for Environmental Advocates of New York, said in a statement. She said the ruling would energize “the dozens, if not hundreds, of cities and towns concerned with industrial gas drilling.” -- N.Y. Times