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Right-Wing Billionaires Invest in Wisconsin's Recall Elections to Save School Privatization Agenda
As co-chair of Wisconsin’s powerful legislative Joint Finance Committee, Alberta Darling was charged by Governor Scott Walker with cobbling together the most anti–public education budget in Wisconsin history. And Darling delivered, with a plan to slash $800 million in funding for public schools across Wisconsin while at the same time scheming to shift tens of millions from the state treasury into the accounts of private schools.
A volunteer waits to gather signatures for a recall petition against Sen. Alberta Darling (R) outside of a polling station at Village Center in Shorewood, Wisconsin, Tuesday, April 5, 2011. Darling has backed a plan to slash $800 million in funding for public schools across Wisconsin while at the same time scheming to shift tens of millions from the state treasury into the accounts of private schools. She was delivering for American Federation for Children (AFC), the powerful national network of billionaire campaign contributors that has been pouring millions into school privatization fights across the country.
AFC is not just shaping the agenda in Wisconsin. Like the American Legislative Exchange Council, which produces model legislation designed to shape state agendas on a host of policies, AFC outlines legislative goals, crafts specific proposals and then works with allied legislators and governors to implement it’s agenda.
It is in the forefront of high-stakes school “choice,” voucher and privatization fights in Pennsylvania, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana and the District of Columbia.
Organized by Michigan billionaires Dick and Betsy DeVos, Americans for Children is officially nonpartisan. But Dick DeVos is a former Republican nominee for governor of Michigan and Betsy DeVos is a former chair of the Michigan Republican Party. Together, they have poured tens of millions of dollars into the ideological and electoral infrastructure that supports school privatization.
“Dick DeVos has used his family’s fortune and status to create an intricate national network of nonprofits, political action committees and federal groups known as 527s that effectively fund the political arm of the school voucher movement,” notes a People for the American Way study of the political projects of the heir to the Amway fortune and his wife. “Nowhere is the impact of the DeVos family fortune greater, though, than in the movement to privatize public education.”
AFC chair Betsy DeVos has for decades been a high-stakes political player on behalf of school privatization. But that does not mean groups with which she is associated always play by the rules. One DeVos-led group, the political action committee “All Children Matter,” was fined a record $5.2 million by the Ohio Elections Commission after being charged with illegally shifting money into the state to support candidates considered friendly to private-school “choice” initiatives. It was also fined for political misconduct in Wisconsin, where the group’s 2006 campaigning violated campaign finance laws by expressly urging voters to cast ballots against legislative candidates who backed public education.
Those troubles led to the evolution of “All Children Matter” into “American Federation for Children,” which has collected money from a who’s who of right-wing billionaires, including the political operations of Charles and David Koch—top donors to Scott Walker’s 2010 campaign and, in the case of David, the subject of a much-publicized prank phone call to Walker during the current dispute in Wisconsin.
Ardent backers of Walker and his legislative agenda, Americans for Children “spent an estimated $820,000 on independent expenditures and phony issue ad activity in the 2010 fall legislative races,” according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
AFC has reprotedly spent more than $500,000 in television ads to support Darling and other Republicans facing recall elections because of their support for Walker’s anti-labor legislation.
The group does not want to lose its grip on policymaking in Wisconsin—a state they hope to position as a national leader in the fight for school privatization.
In particular, they want to keep Darling in charge of the Joint Finance Committee and the legislative processes that could make Wisconsin the testing ground for radical school-choice initiatives.
In June, as Darling was promoting Walker’s budget and new school privatization measures, watchdog groups filed an open records request seeking her office’s letters, e-mails and correspondence relating to the effort. For two months, Darling refused. Finally, One Wisconsin Now filed a lawsuit demanding that the senator be compelled to obey the law.
Darling finally released the documents and they reveal that her office was regularly e-mailing with advocates from… the American Federation for Children.
Darling may want to gut public education. But she cannot change the math: one plus one equals two. And a legislator who spends months refusing to release details of her dealings with a powerful interest group really does have something to hide—just as her constituents have reason to wonder whether their senator’s ID shouldn’t read: Alberta Darling, R-Privatized Schools.
Darling is certainly not alone. Republican legislators across the country are aligning with AFC, and carrying its agenda.
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16 Comments so far
Show AllThe DeVos are eating our children.
Silver lining: What with all of the meds and crap food we pump into our kids, they'll die of poisoning before too long.
I wish that I lived in her district so that I could vote for her opponent, Sandy Pasch, tomorrow. I also hope that my cousin Luther Olsen loses his race tomorrow.
You can count on the American people to keep voting these bastards into office. In Florida the retirment state, the people voted Rick Scott for governor, he was convicted of Medicare fraud and had to pay the largest fine in history for Medicare frathievery even knew his history and still voted him in to watch over their Medicare. In Wisonsin I am surprised Scott Walker doesn't just have the Koch brothers move into the Governors mantion, didn't they get elected? Fox news lies hey republicans where are the jobs you schellaced on.
Sorry, Rick Scott was not convicted of Medicare fraud. He was never charged or fined for any crime. He should have been convicted but that's just my fantasy. He got to walk away from his fraudster company with millions and he paid no price for all the fraud of his "health" care company. Columbia HCA was charged with Medicare and Medicaid fraud and
fined $1.7 billion, a record fine. Did anybody go to jail for all this massive fraud? As an extra reward, the jackasses in FL elect this filthy vermin as their governor.
O.K. It was his company that took the wrap for him, he is a con and the dip shits still voted him into office! Fox news lies, where are the job, jobs, jobs ass holes?
So where is the reporting on what the teachers union and teachers are doing to combat this privatization effort, and what are Wisconsinites thinking? Report on those things.
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
The hairpiece strikes again!
Once again, we get John Nichols' "I can only see republican corruption" in this typical, devious, pretentious article.
There is no mention that the Obama administration and the democrats are pushing for the privatization of schools.
In June there was a "rally" in protest of a Georgia decision against "Charter schools".
Both Bill Clinton and Obama's Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan were cited in an article on the American Federation for Children's website for going to the rally (?) and speaking up in proud defense of their cause. (June 23, 2011 article on the federationforchildren.org- website- .org indeed!)
John Nichols conveniently forgets to tells us these facts.
The corporate party has two names, democrat and republican.
Nichols and his ilk are the most devious supporters of what they pretend to be protesting.
They whisper sweet words and flatter while they poison your future by trying to convince you to support your enemies. They are worse than slime.
The neo-boyars that rule this country have already wrecked a lot of what was education with their NCLB policy - now they want to make sure that only a priviledged few get a real education. Privatization = THEFT.
Wisconsin voters, you are not just voting for yourself, you are voting for the entire world, get these bastards on the run, a vote for a republican or the teabaggers is a vote to reinstate slavery in America. A republIcan vote is a vote to allow the Koch brothers to determine how your children, and my grandchildren will be educated. The teabaggers have made it clear the world economy does not matter, they want their way just like a bunch of know it all teenagers! They are spoiled and make no sence. Fox news lies, where are the jobs republicans? Jobs, jobs, jobs, remember?
There is no party when there is big money. And constitutional is correct in his statements. K-12 General Fund nationwide is about $700 billion. DOD is about $686 billion. When you throw in construction bonds there is another avenue to easy profit. What is a rich guy supposed to do when they make it so easy and cheap to control. I am just a businessman and if we do not educate our children so that I can profit, so be it. I am entitled and you are not.
This is how it is today. This is why there has to be regulation as the sharks are on the loose without restraint. There are $27 billion in bonds at LAUSD. They build for 2-3 times per sq/ft as the average. A lot of free money. A $6.3 billion general fund. How would you like just the toilet paper contract?
On top of that, when you take over, as they have in a lot of places, you get to control hearts and minds for your purpose. What do you think that purpose would be????? Good or Bad?????
NOTICE TO CITIZENS: You may have inadvertently thought you were supposed to pay attention to the silly, money wasting, "can't recall why we're having them" elections in the cheese state. Nothing could be further from the truth. You are supposed to be paying attention to the Standard and Poors crisis.
Here's a link to help you get back on track:
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/on-the-record/transcript/poor-standard-rating-credit-agencies039-credibility
This is happening in Indiana. Mitch Daniels has systematically cut funding to Public Education while supporting privatization of education. Charter and religious schools are receiving vouchers of tax payer money for each student that comes to them from the Public school system. Today they announced that 2,200 student have taken the vouchers. This number is not large, but large enough to take away needed funding from individual schools. Private schools, like the 4 Catholic schools in Indianapolis, should not receive tax payer money, especially since districts like Franklin Township, are now charging families, per child, for riding a bus to school. Parents are held legally liable for children attending school, but low income families can't afford to pay for school bus transportation.
Mitch is gutting Public Education and the ability of children to access it.
The DeVos's made zombies out of my folks with their mlm crap. 1 part Rich Dick DeVos bs dorkway mlm, 1 part Rush-to-get-my Lobotomy, and 1 part of foX news I think was the stew.
It's time to sound recall as the army might put it, and the Tea Party "love it," on ALEC.