text:
Waist Watchers #4 starring April Flores, Desiree Devine, Glory Foxxx, Kelly Shibari, Veronica Bottoms and Kandi Cobain from Zero Tolerance.
Reviewer Mindee Mounds says
Waist Watchers #4 is not a new video, but if you are new to the BBW genre, or if youre a long time fan and have not watched this video, you need to. This is a good quality video with sexy girls and lots of jiggling flesh.
First up, April Flores treats us to her first ever B/G scene. Its a good one. April shows us why shes a star, and theres lots of different positions, dirty talk, tit fucking and bouncing curves. The only real disappointment here, is the cum shot that sprays across her back. It would have looked much better on her face or tits. She does recover the scene by giving her mate a good cock cleaning as this show fades away.
Next up, comes Desiree Devine, and this is in my opinion, the weakest part of the video. Desiree does do some great tit fucking, and a really hot reverse cowgirl, but overall she seems to lack enthusiasm, and she wears something over her midriff the entire time which deprives the viewer of watching her big, soft belly bounce.
Glory Foxxx is in jail and working for her "get out of jail free" card. She bangs the daylights out of her guard with lots of sexy talk and bouncing boobies, belly and butt. She takes a hot cum shot in the face and on her massive tits and cleans him up good. And, for those who like their ladies with ink, Glory will be your girl.
Kelly Shibari turns in a great performance here with her beautiful, sexy body. Theres a lot to like in this scene, where Kelly turns her partner all around as they get down and dirty. A great cum shot ends the show.
Veronica Bottoms starts things off with a nice masturbation session until her boyfriend comes along to help her out. She bounces her sumptuous curves and shows off her massive boobies and butt. For those who like their womens pussy unshaved, Veronica will be a special treat for you!
Kandi Kobain puts the cherry on top of this video as she shows off her beautiful body. We get to look at her from many different angles and she doesnt disappoint in any one of them. Her partner finishes up on her big, soft tits as this video comes to a close.
Waist Watchers #4 is a good straight suck & fuck video. The ladies show off their succulent curves and look good doing it. Watch this one!
Mindees choice: Power On!!
ED Expo Returns to NO
Katrina Jade GOTM
Marica Hase Official Site
CatalystCon Sessions, Speakers
World Bukkake Tour
Cum Swallowing Auditions
Venus Anniversary 20
BBWcon Takes Over Vegas
Freedom Acres Party
Porn Star by Herschel Savage
TexXxas Fan Event
Shawna Lenee Dogfart GOTM
Paradise Marketing New Website
GFE at Sheri's Ranch
Samantha Hayes Interview
Dead But Dreaming ~ Reviewer Rated
Dava Foxx Self-Booking
Gina Valentina's 1st IR
Submission of Emma Marx: Exposed ~ Reviewer Rated
BBWcon 2016
New Webcam Opportunity
NaughtyAllie Facelift
Nina Elle MiniView
Kahlista Stonem Available
Sanders, Trump Joint News Conference
Naughty Massage
Redefining the Status Quo
Jenevieve Hexxx at Trixie's
Ocean News from Lexi Love
Hard Squeezes
APAC and Sex Worker Rights
New From Rodney Moore
RNSU Radio Thurs March 24
New Girls
What We Signed Up For
The Directors
What is Consent?
Bee, Evans at Sexpo
New Gay News Site
Alana Evans on MTV
Sexpo Cosplay
Cruz Receives Porn Offer
Poking Around AVN 2016
Deadly Famous
Planet Venus
The Hedge Against Exploitation
Performers File Unpaid Wage Claims
Gone by Sssh.com
Daddy's Girls 2 ~ Reviewer Rated
Interrogated ~ Reviewer Rated
Emma Marx: Boundaries ~ Reviewer Rated
Control ~ Reviewer Rated
50 Shades of Grey ~ Cinema Seen
Treacherous ~ Reviewer Rated
The Gardener ~ Reviewer Rated
Shades of Scarlet ~ Reviewer Rated
These Things We Do ~ Reviewer Rated
Cum in Me Baby 4 ~ Reviewer Rated
Father's Day ~ Reviewer Rated
Our Father ~ Reviewer Rated
Proud Parents ~ Reviewer Rated
The Temptation of Eve ~ Reviewer Rated
The Sexual Liberation of Anna Lee ~ Reviewer Rated
Perfect Secretary III ~ Reviewer Rated
Submission of Emma Marx ~ Reviewer Rated
Bound by Desire, Part 2 ~ Reviewer Rated
Bound by Desire ~ Reviewer Rated
Get My Belt ~ Reviewer Rated
Diary of Love ~ Reviewer Rated
Clown Porn: The Parody ~ Reviewer Rated
Obedience School ~ Reviewer Rated
As I see it: Barracuda
Reviewer Rated ~ Fifty Shades of Grey
The Truth About O ~ Reviewer Rated
It Was Always You ~ Reviewer Rated
Color of Love ~ Reviewer Rated
Massage School Girls ~ Reviewer Rated
DD Doctors ~ Reviewer Rated
Star Trek TNG Parody ~ Reviewer Rated
Lost and Found ~ Reviewer Rated
Boob Bangers 8 ~ Reviewer Rated
Justice League of Pornstar Heroes ~ Reviewer Rated
Analysts ~ Reviewer Rated
MILF Busters ~ Reviewer Rated
Hardcore Brie XXX ~ Reviewer Rated
Plumpers At Play 6 ~ Reviewer Rated
Waist Watchers 4 ~ Reviewer Rated
BBW Heavy Tits 5 ~ Reviewer Rated
Movie Reviews Section Index
Nylons 7 ~ Reviewer Rated
Big Babe Blowjobs 6 ~ Reviewer Rated
Mindee Mounds New AINews Reviewer
Not the Cosbys XXX ~ Reviewer Rated
Busty Housewives ~ Reviewer Rated
2040 ~ Reviewer Rated


text:
School of Communication
School of Communication News
CW executive gets Emerson degree, oversees hit show
Traci Blackwell is a CW television network executive relishing in a Golden Globe win for a show she oversees, Jane the Virgin, just months after receiving her Emerson College master's degree.
Poll: 47% say Patriots cheated
The Emerson College Polling Society (ECPS) says 47 percent of Americans think the New England Patriots are "cheaters" in the wake of the so-called Deflategate scandal.
Polling Society admitted to national organization
The Emerson College Polling Society (ECPS) has been named a Charter Member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Transparency Initiative—joining the ranks of more than 20 top polling organizations, including the Pew Research Center, the Gallup Organization, and the Washington Post.
Boston Olympics proposed by students in project
Kelsey Doherty '14 Donovan Birch '14, and Luke Fraser '14, did a project for their sports communication class last spring advocating for the 2024 Olympics to come to Boston.
Student Powerade Olympics ad gets award
A spec television commercial for Powerade that was produced last year by more than 40 Emerson students majoring in marketing or film recently received a Hatch Award from The Ad Club of Boston—recognizing an interesting outside-the-classroom collaboration.
Cisco visits Emerson marketing class
Marketing executives from Cisco recently used the ideas of Emerson graduate students to help boost the software company's "Internet of everything" campaign.
LA graduates search for local jobs
Like many recent Emerson College Los Angeles graduates, Leah Casselman '14 and Brad Cryan '14 are staying in southern California after they complete their studies this month, joining the 4,000 other alumni who have settled in the region.
Gianvito: Sony attempts to protect profits
Sony's decision to axe the movie The Interview due to an unprecedented cyber attack, which U.S. officials are blaming on North Korea, could have a lot to do with protecting its profits, said John Gianvito, a filmmaker and Emerson associate professor.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
or 4 Easy Pays of $7.49
+ S&H and tax
In Stock
Sold Out
We're sorry. This item is not available at this time.
Pre Order Possible .
Shop with confidence—any item you purchase from our Christmas in July® Sale can be returned for any reason for a refund of the purchase price, minus the S&H and Q Return Label fee, until January 31, 2017.


text:
|Message view
|« Date » · « Thread »
|« Date » · « Thread »
|Rob Weir <robw...@apache.org>
|Draft mailing list notification post
|Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:57:12 GMT
On the wiki here: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/Email+Migration+Post Feel free to make changes directly on the wiki, or suggest them as responses to this note. I don't think we want to overburden the reader with a recitation of migration facts, but instead motivate them to take the desired actions. But since this will be for many the first note they officially receive from the PPMC, it should probably have some introductory information, and a welcome and invitation to get involved (stay involved) with the project. -Rob
|View raw message


text:
Nothing is forbidden anymore. The Washington Capitals can seemingly surrender a two-spot to any team in the league just so they can have fun with the comeback effort. That's precisely what we got in the home den of the New York Rangers on Sunday: a disheartening start, a soaring comeback, and lots and lots of fun hockey.
Taylor Chorney was the setup man in a lovely sequence finished off by Justin Williams for the game's opening goal. Then it was all Rangers. JT Miller tied the game with a solo drive and a tricky release, then Chris Kreider got the lead by converting a broken play, then Dan Boyle converted a power play before the first period was up.
In the second period, the Caps clawed their way back in with a Russian team-up, Dmitry Orlov to Evgeny Kuznetsov, to make it 3-2, and then TJ Oshie crashed the net to tie the game again. An Ovi Shot from the Ovi Spot gave the Caps the lead, which Justin Williams doubled with a power-play gutshot from the slot late int he period.
Jason Chimera scored a shorthanded goal on relief goalie Magnus Hellberg. No, seriously. Evgeny Kuznetsov forechecked superbly to set up Marcus Johansson for the game's seventh goal. SEVENTH. GOAL.
Caps beat Rangers 7-3! Hahahahaha))))


text:
Submitted by JP
Share More
Jody Lean:
April 17, 2013 at 3:07 am
Thanks, now when I hear that song I will think of "Wind beneath my Wong". I always thought that song was too syrupy sweet.
Dean Gordon:
April 17, 2013 at 12:26 pm
That font is brutal to read
Sarah Mullens:
April 17, 2013 at 12:28 pm
What is with that font?
Tatiana Nathalie Ochoa:
April 17, 2013 at 9:09 pm
We get to choose font on galaxy phones. That one looks like gothic font....I would know. I have it.
Paulmichael Contreras:
April 18, 2013 at 1:01 am
My condolences to your eyes/brain.
Trebor Eladnitram:
April 17, 2013 at 9:08 pm
Would of veena better if it was wang
Sam Plank:
April 17, 2013 at 10:31 pm
soooooooooooo she's your fart? lol
Bethany Pyda:
April 17, 2013 at 11:12 pm
#1: your font is annoying. #2: you need to charge your phone. that is all.
Jose Baeyens:
April 18, 2013 at 7:40 am
Oh my GOTH... ;-)
Pauline Mirazi:
April 19, 2013 at 1:20 pm
what an awful font.
"Best of" Lists


text:
David Davies
Revolving Door
Who's coming and who's going. Tell us about your job move! Receive the Revolving Door Newsletter with expert analysis by email twice a week.
October 15, 2010: David Davies has been named chief executive officer at Phaidon Press. He had been managing director at Bauer Media. (Publishers Lunch)


text:
Chris K. Daley is an author, publisher, and has been a successful Internet entrepreneur for over ten years.
Being an policy team debater in both high school and college led to a life-long interest in news, politics, and current events. He also has a love of military history, in particular naval history.
Chris lives in southern California with his wife, daughter, and an always friendly Airedale.
Becoming Breitbart: The Impact of a New Media Revolutionaryby Chris K Daley
View All Available Formats & Editions
- LendMe LendMe™ Learn More
In 1991 Andrew Breitbart was working as a waiter after he had barely managed to graduate from college. In 2011 he was hijacking the press conference of a United States Congressman and forcing him to resign from office. How did Breitbart manage to transform his life over that 20-year span to become a conservative activist who exercised such an impact? Becoming Breitbart seeks to answer that question by digging deeply into his professional life.
With Breitbart's death on March 1, 2012, the obituaries and retrospectives of his life focused on his prominent role in conservative politics. Mostly overlooked was Breitbart's role in Drudge Report and The Huffington Post, two of the most important news websites. Becoming Breitbart concentrates on Breitbart's evolution into a New Media powerhouse. How did Breitbart's relationships with Matt Drudge and Arianna Huffington lead him to success? What tactics did he use to achieve his political victories over ACORN and Anthony Weiner?
Becoming Breitbart attempts to gauge Andrew Breitbart's legacy. What was his impact on the media and on politics? What lessons can be drawn from his life?
This analysis is approximately 80 printed pages.
Product Details
- 2940014264853
- Publisher:
- Chris Daley Publishing
- Publication date:
- 03/22/2012
- Sold by:
- Barnes & Noble
- Format:
- NOOK Book
- File size:
Meet the Author
Chris K. Daley is an author, publisher, and has been a successful Internet entrepreneur for over ten years.
Customer Reviews
Average Review:
and post it to your social network
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
See all customer reviews >


text:
Over 1 crore LED lamps distributed in Gujarat under government scheme: Energy Minister Saurabh Patel
Patel said one month after the launch of the scheme, the Gujarat government had slashed the LED bulb price by Rs 10.
Old family businesses don't understand technology, hesitate to invest in startups: Saurabh Srivastava
Venture capital investment follows a he...
Overall market not worth buying into: Saurabh Mukherjea, Ambit Capital
Overall economic growth is not showing any signs of a pickup as the un...
Snapdeal appoints Saurabh Bansal to head Category Management
Bansal's new responsibilities will include undertaking end-to-end category management and he will also focus on the continued expansion of product and brand assortment.
Four Gujarat discoms top-most performers for 4 years: Saurabh Patel
"All the four distribution utilities in the state of Gujarat figure in the top most category of A+," Patel said.
No quick economic recovery but expect Sensex at 29,000 by end of FY17: Saurabh Mukherjea, Ambit Capital
Last 3-4 months have convinced me that the banking system is not going to the dog house and that is why I took the crisis call off the table
Jabong CMO Saurabh Srivastava quits
Saurabh Srivastava has quit as chief marketing officer at Jabong in less than five months of joining the online fashion portal.
Saurabh Agarwal of StanChart joins Aditya Birla Group
Saurabh Agarwal of StanChart to join Aditya Birla as chief strategy officer; Dev Bhattacharya to handle new ventures.
Looking at selling 600,000 ACs this FY; aiming at 15% market share: Akshay Dhoot, Videocon Group
"Till now, the air conditioning market has been completely untapped in India. There has been about 2%-2.5% penetration."
Pistol at February 9 event: ABVP's Saurabh Sharma
Around 7.30pm they lit torches and candles and moved towards Ganga dhaba, breaking ABVP's human chain as we were fewer in num ber," Sharma said.
ABVP's Saurabh Sharma, the other face of JNU story
Sharma not only broke the jinx for ABVP in JNUSU polls after 15 years but has also been quite vocal about what he calls "anti-national activities".
EESL to go public in next 2-3 years and expand operations globally: MD Saurabh Kumar
The company expects to close $200 million loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and another $350 million from the World Bank, Kumar said.
Startups must invest more in product development: Anirudh Dhoot, Videocon Group
"As the director, I have learned to strike a balance between keeping up with the legacy of the brand and at the same time embracing the technological progressions. "
Stock market is a slave of earnings: Saurabh Nanavati, Religare Invesco AMC
"I would say equity as an asset class continues to remain attractive compared to real estate and gold."
Indian stocks still not cheap enough: Saurabh Mukherjea, Ambit Capital
I do not think the market is cheap. My reading of the global situation is, leave aside India, more pain for equities across the world is yet to come: Mukherjea
Gujarat government to develop convention centre in Vadodara: Saurabh Patel
The Tourism Corporation of Gujarat will open a convention centre here to tap the potential in MICE segment, Gujarat Minister Saurabh Patel said here today.
Budget 2016 takes us back to UPA era; Sensex target 22,000: Saurabh Mukherjea
Market rallied back in 2014 on hopes of strong pro-growth policies by the Modi-led government which would boost growth in Asia's third largest economy.
The shift in government spending from capex towards revex is retrograde: Saurabh Mukherjea, Ambit Capital
My three takeaways from yesterday's budget would be TVS Motors, Ashok Leyland and PI Industries
Saurabh Mukherjea's top sectoral picks for the new calendar year
Mukherjea says the domestic economy is in a unique situation, and what is good for the economy may not be good for the stock market.
Time for select stock picks in growth sectors: Saurabh Mukherjea, Ambit Capital
"The earnings growth for benchmark frontline cos only happens when they are able to appropriate the benefits of economic growth."
Videocon's Akshay Dhoot has found a tech fix for losing things
The 'gadget buff', technology head of Videocon, keeps track of his belongings with a TrackR sticker.
ETMarkets webinar: Strategise to face Fed rate hike with Saurabh Mukherjea
Catch Saurabh Mukherjea of Ambit Capital, who is known to have predicted the 2008 financial crisis, at 2-3 pm, TODAY.
TPV Technology appoints Saurabh Grover as country head
TPV Technology, which manufactures and sells LED and LCD displays under AOC brand globally, today announced the appointment of Saurabh Grover as Country Head.
At 22K, long-term investors can start buying: Saurabh Mukherjee, Ambit Cap
"It is very difficult to nail the bottom and say how quickly we will rebound. In my view, 22,000 is the level when the market will be more attractive for buys."
Metropolitan Stock Exchange CEO Saurabh Sarkar to quit
The board of the exchange, earlier known as MCX-SX, would be meeting next week to appoint the successor to Sarkar.
Videocon heir Aniruddh Dhoot and wife Pooja spotted at a luxury hotel in South Mumbai
Fellow Hyderabadis — tennis star Sania Mirza (right) and vice-chairman GVK, G V Sanjay Reddy (below) — were snapped at Mumbai's domestic airport last week.
Videocon's Venugopal Dhoot's dinner in honour of Yes Bank's Rana Kapoor
In attendance were many industry leaders including Niranjan Hiranandani, MD Hiranandani Group.
Dhoot Group
Dhoot Group
Challenging status quo adds fresh perspective: Saurabh Arora, CEO, Lybrate
It provided a perspective on how a large company is run — from procurement of raw material to finished goods being sold at a retailer.
Kotak's focus on high-integrity research helped it build a market-leading offering: Saurabh Mukherjea
Saurabh Mukherjea says the two companies in Indian institutional broking that he has tried to learn from are CLSA among the foreign brokerages.
How Saurabh Saxena's app made Ratan Tata invest in it
With a person like Ratan Tata, it is more about the small interactions that you can have with him, says Saurabh Saxena.
Junior Dhoots set to transform Videocon from a tech follower to a tech leader
At present, LG is the market leader in home appliances, while Samsung and Sony are competing for the top slot in the flat panel television market.
Expect earnings growth to struggle similar to post-1991 reform years: Saurabh Mukherjea
We remain circumspect on the Sensex; we continue insisting our clients to stay selective while picking stocks, says Mukherjea.
TPV Technology appoints Saurabh Grover as country head - India & Saarc
Grover will be based out of AOC India's headquarters in Gurgaon, and will be responsible for managing the overall business operations for India and Saarc.
US Fed to hike by 20 bps in December, 60 bps in 2016: Saurabh Mukherjea
Going forward, the Fed may hike rates by up to 60 bps in calendar 2016, which could put further pressure on the domestic market.
Spending time at ground level in early days made me get my hands dirty: Saurabh Arora, CEO, Lybrate
"I spent a major portion of my time on working at the ground level to learn how things were built," said Saurabh Arora.
Shiv Sena RS MP Rajkumar Dhoot awards Rs 5 lakh to men who nabbed terrorist
Shiv Sena MP Rajkumar Dhoot today announced award of Rs 5 lakh for the men who apprehended the terrorist in Udhampur district on Wednesday.
Videocon's Anirudh Dhoot throws a party for Kolkata Knight Riders
Anirudh Dhoot, Director, Videocon Group threw a party for Kolkata Knight Riders, the defending champions of the Indian Premier League, in Mumbai recently.
Fair value for the Sensex is at 28,000: Saurabh Mukherjea, CEO, Institutional Equities, Ambit Capital
There is pain in the macroeconomy, pain in the banking system, pain in the real estate sector and there is some pain even in the money market, says Saurabh Mukherjea
Saurabh Kumar named India's new envoy to Iran
Saurabh Kumar, an IFS officer of 1989 batch, was today appointed as the next Indian Ambassador to Iran.
Videocon's youngest Dhoot did his first "internship" at the age of 13 in Poland!
As the newly minted head of tech at Videocon, Akshay Dhoot aims for innovation and connected devices.
Videocon Industries's Anirudh Dhoot does not take his passion for postcard collection lightly
Anirudh Dhoot , director, Videocon Industries takes postcards seriously and has collected over 3,000 of them over 30 years.
Saurabh Vijay appointed Adviser to World Bank ED
Saurabh Vijay has been appointed for a period of three years from the date of taking over charge of the post, an order issued by DoPT said.
In a correction, real estate prices will not fall in all cities: Saurabh Mukherjea, Ambit Capital
"A steep correction is on the cards in residential realty space and wider implication of a slowdown will include huge stress on GDP."
When InMobi's Naveen Tiwari asked Foodpanda's Saurabh Kochhar, 'Where's the oomph'?
Foodpanda's co-founder & CEO, Saurabh Kochhar, was pushed into a rethink by an eclectic bunch of mentors.
Lance Naik Hemraj's widow for moving to ICJ in Captain Saurabh Kalia case
The widow of slain soldier Hemraj said it would be a great injustice to the martyrs if the Indian government does not approach the ICJ.
Do something concrete: Captain Saurabh Kalia's parents to government
Parents of Saurabh Kalia thanked the Centre for indicating that it could approach the International Court of Justice against his brutal torture by Pakistan.
Gujarat Gas Company to provide 2 lakh new domestic gas connections: Saurabh Patel
Gujarat Gas Company Ltd (GGCL) will add more than two lakh new household gas connections and install over 25 new CNG stations in the state, Energy Minister Saurabh Patel said.
GGCL to provide 2 lakh new domestic gas connections: Energy Minister Saurabh Patel
Gujarat Gas Company Ltd will add more than two lakh new household gas connections and install over 25 new CNG stations in the state.


text:
tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44201064930842074352016-07-23T10:13:01.451-07:00Schooling in the Ownership SocietyNews and analysis of corporate school reform and the privatization of public educationMike Klonskyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-81210628252951250572016-06-20T04:39:00.001-07:002016-06-20T04:39:35.316-07:00Privatization has become the standard conservative response

Privatization guru Milton Friedman

Donald Cohen at TPM gives us a good history of privatization and the current attack on public space and public decision making.

Today, after 50 years of attack on government, privatization is a standard conservative response to tight public budgets, a key pillar of attacks on government, and a lucrative market opportunity for domestic and global corporations. Large corporations operate virtually every type of public service including prisons, welfare systems, infrastructure, water and sewer, trash, and schools. For example:

In 1988 AFT president Al Shanker proposed a new idea: To create charter schools where teachers could experiment and innovate and bring new ideas to the nation's public schools. Today, nearly 3 million children attend charters, and large corporate chains and billionaires are funding the rapid growth of privatized, publicly funded charters.
"Cities have been discovering that public services do not necessarily have to be reduced by government or paid for by taxes," the Privatization Council's David Seader told the Milwaukee Journal in 1986. Individuals can pay for what they use and private companies are ready to take their money.

Cohen on Bill Clinton

Perhaps Clinton's most significant contribution to privatization was ideological. The NPR reports redefined government services in market terms – "citizens" became "customers" of public services and competition became a guiding management principle.
A new pro-public movement, with this history in mind, is growing quickly, says Cohen.

It has become clear that the 40-year conservative assault on government is enriching some and leaving more and more Americans behind. Groups across the country are organizing and starting to see success. Water systems are being remunicipalized, private prison companies are losing contracts (and both Democratic presidential candidates have pledged to end for-profit incarceration), and a growing movement is focused on rebuilding our national commitment to public education.
Mike Klonskyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-48509401481241752292016-06-12T10:56:00.001-07:002016-06-12T19:46:25.405-07:00What is the BIA and what the hell are they doing in Uganda?

Shannon May

Some might see it as the great white hope coming to save and fix the poor in Africa. I see it as cultural imperialism -- taking the worst aspects of American corporate-style school reform and spreading, with the might and power of power-philanthropy and the World Bank, to countries that can least afford to resist.

Bridge International Academies (BIA) is a for-profit organization active in privatizing public education in several African countries including Liberia, Kenya and Uganda. They have already built 412 for-profit schools in Kenya in six years. BIA co-founders, Shannon May and her husband, Jay Kimmelman, have raised more than $100 million from Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and the Omidyar Network (eBay founder Pierre Omidyar) to push their "Education in a Box" model in Africa.

According to the Washington Post:

BIA — which is supported by the World Bank; Pearson, the world's largest for-profit education company; and billionaire education philanthropists Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, among others — operates a chain of for-profit schools in a few African countries, charging what it says is an average of $5 a month to families for high-quality nursery and primary education in places where public education is poor or nonexistent.
Curtis Riep, a Canadian doctoral student, doing research about BIA, on behalf of Education International (a federation of 396 associations and unions) was recently arrested by Ugandan authorities. Riep was arrested on charges of "impersonating a BIA officer" and trespassing, but was cleared of all charges and released two days later. But the episode put a spotlight on BIA and how the company works.

According to Education International, the whole affair was a set-up by BIA in order to intimidate Riep and any other researchers from shining a light the group's operations.

The Bridge formula is designed to be replicable. Its 5,000 trained teachers read scripted lessons from e-reader tablets. Parents pay an average of $6 per pupil, and have access to a 24-hour hotline.

May, who earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from UC Berkeley, explains the formula, referred to here as "Academies in a box" or "McDonaldization".

Instead of hiring expensive teachers with degrees, Bridge contracts experts to develop scripted lessons that instructors follow on computer tablets. Lessons are identical for each grade, down to the words of encouragement instructors give their pupils. It's so streamlined that all the gears in the institution—lessons, attendance, time sheets, tuition payments, and teacher oversight—can be conducted with cheap mobile phones, cutting human administration to a bare minimum.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it. Not wonder Gates is enthralled.

Mike Klonskyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-71447582379989404592016-05-26T13:21:00.002-07:002016-05-26T13:21:52.063-07:00Erica Kohl-Arenas - "How Philanthropy Avoids Tackling Inequality"Mike Klonskyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-42827493198903730722016-05-13T12:05:00.002-07:002016-05-13T12:15:45.020-07:00Eye-opening interview with Arne Duncan at school privatizers summit.

Former Ed Sec. Arne Duncan and his former assistant James Shelton at NewSchools Venture Fund Summit. Now both work for billionaire Mark Zuckerberg at the Emerson Collective.

It's that time of year again, when the hedge-funders, corporate reformers and power philanthropists gather at the NewSchools Venture Summit to strategize about school privatization, charters schools and how to get the biggest bang for their edu-investment dollars.
Among the regulars at NSVF is former Ed Sec. Arne Duncan, who is now working for billionaire philanthropists Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan at the Emerson Collective.

Duncan's interview with EdWeek's Alyson Klein regarding his legacy, is an eye-opener. Duncan's either self-delusional or skillfully trying to reinvent himself as if the last two decades of corporate-style school reform and testing madness hadn't happened on his watch (including his time as Chicago's schools CEO).

As you might expect from EdWeek, Klein's interview questions are pretty softball; i.e., "What are you most proud of over your seven-year tenure as Secretary of Ed?" and "What do you see as your three biggest failures?" I guess she forgot to ask about his favorite color or his pick in the NBA finals.

To the first question:

Duncan ticked off three things: pouring $1 billion into early childhood education, an all-time high graduation rate (fact check on administration's role in making that happen here), and increasing Pell Grants.

Not on the list: The two K-12 initiatives he's best known for, the $4 billion into Race to the Top initiative and the $3 billion School Improvement Grant, both of which have yielded mixed results so far.
To the second:

Duncan ticked off one he's mentioned a number of times before—not being able to get Congress to go along with an even bigger investment on early childhood education. The fact that so many of our children enter kindergarten behind means "we're just setting our kids up for failure from the start," he said.

He also mentioned that the Obama administration failed to get immigration overhaul done and, therefore, didn't give immigrant kids a path to citizenship. "We could not get our Republican friends to back that," he said.

And he brought up another missed opportunity, the failure to get meaningful gun control legislation done: "In our worst nightmare we never imagined we'd have 20 babies killed and five teachers and a principal."
You see what he does here? It's an old politician's trick. Like when they're asked about their biggest weakness, they usually reply: "I'm much too sensitive to the needs of others" or "I work too many hours and neglect my own health."

With Duncan, it's more like, "I failed to get everyone else to do all the great things I wanted them to do." He's got a point. Even though he snuggled up to the Republican Congress, the racist and anti-union governors and the hedge-fund reformers, neither he nor his boss, President Obama, were able to reauthorize the national education law for seven years. And the Republicans refused to allocate the needed $75 billion for Obama's proposed universal pre-school program.

But, as Klein points out, Duncan is hush-hush when it comes to Race To The Top, his disastrous, autocratic move to force school districts into closing thousands of schools and replacing them with privately-run charters. Duncan also doesn't mention his role in doubling down on the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind testing/teacher evaluation mayhem, from which the nation's schools may never fully recover.

Or as Klein notices:

Not on Duncan's list of failures? Two things that many other folks would probably cite: requiring states that wanted flexibility from the mandates of No Child Left Behind to tie teacher evaluations to test scores at the same time that assessments and standards were changing, and hugging the Common Core State Standards so tight that they became politicized.
She might have also mentioned his failure to act on the widespread corruption among charter school operators. Or his abandonment of the fight against racial school re-segregation.

Klein must not have done her homework or maybe just forgot to ask Duncan about mayoral control of the schools. She should have remembered that when Duncan was first appointed, he made the expansion of mayoral control his number-one priority. He even threatened to withhold stimulus dollars from school districts that don't implement top-down mayoral control of the schools.

He went so far as to say:

"At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed," Duncan said. He offered to do whatever he can to make the case. "I'll come to your cities," Duncan said. "I'll meet with your editorial boards. I'll talk with your business communities. I will be there."
Well, he's at the end of his tenure. The number of mayors in control has certainly not increased. Why not ask him straight-up? Arne Duncan, by your own standards, have you failed?

Mike Klonskyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-45715304267527114742016-05-05T04:47:00.001-07:002016-05-05T04:49:01.464-07:00Power philanthropy rules the schools. Shelton moves to Z'berg.

From left, James H. Shelton III, a former deputy secretary of the United States Department of Education; Priscilla Chan; and Mark Zuckerberg. (N.Y. Times)

Power philanthropists like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Waltons, and Mark Zuckerberg aren't content to offer funding to worthwhile education projects. For them, it's more a matter of leveraging their unparalleled wealth, through their tax-exempt foundations, to exercise direct power of public institutions like the nation's schools with little or no public accountability.

In the last 20 years, the U.S. Dept of Education has become little more than a conduit for power philanthropy with top bureaucrats moving freely between the DOE, the top ed-tech and testing corporations, ed-reform think-tanks, and the mega-foundations. Some, like Diane Ravitch, have called this growing mutualism the edu-industrial complex.

James H. Shelton III, a former deputy secretary of the DOE, is the prototypical edu-industrial manager. On Wednesday, Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced that they had hired Shelton to oversee their efforts in education, in the latest example of former federal officials who are taking up jobs in Silicon Valley.

The New York Times reports:

Mr. Shelton's hiring is part of a stream of Washington officials going to work for tech titans. Among them are Jay Carney, a former White House press secretary, who is now senior vice president for corporate affairs at Amazon, and David Plouffe, a former senior adviser to President Obama who is chief adviser and a board member at Uber.

The trend is more recent in education. Former federal education officials often used to enter politics or take up positions at universities and research groups.

But in March, the Emerson Collective, an organization set up by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple's co-founder, Steve Jobs, said it had tapped Arne Duncan, the former education secretary, to lead an effort focused on young people in Chicago.

The advent of nontraditional philanthropic vehicles seems to be drawing new interest from veteran education officials. Both the Emerson Collective and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are limited liability companies, an organizational structure that enables investing and advocacy, as well as philanthropy.
In the past, I have referred to Shelton as "the man from Gates" because he was a key player in Bill Gates' successful push to drive Common Core as federal policy. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan hired Shelton, a program officer at the Gates Foundation, to serve first as his head of innovation and then as the deputy secretary, responsible for a wide array of federal policy decisions. Shelton helped engineer Duncan's disastrous Race To The Top. He also led the Investing in Innovation Fund

Gov. Christie, Oprah Winfrey, Sen. Booker and Zuckerberg.

Shelton has previously worked for the NewSchools Venture Fund and co-founded LearnNow, a school management company that later was acquired by Edison Schools. Before entering the education world, he worked at McKinsey & Company advising corporate CEOs.

Investigations are still ongoing around Zuckerberg's previous "investments" in urban school reform. Nobody seems to know what happened to the $100 million Zuckerberg and Chan put into Newark in 2010.

Despite a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, we still don't even know exactly how that money was spent except that it was used to create a couple of new privately-run charter schools and that about a third of it was used to pay crony political and educational consultants and contractors through a slush fund set up by former mayor (now U.S. Senator) Corey Booker and Gov. Christie. We also know that it provided a nice tax break for Zuckerberg who has also pledged $120 million to schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.

For more on the Newark mystery, read Dale Russakoff's book, "The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools?"

Mike Klonskyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-81484158455007117042016-04-25T09:44:00.000-07:002016-04-25T09:44:37.365-07:00Elizabeth Warren calls SEC's approval of Cohen's firm 'a mockery'. Corrupt hedge-funder, charter supporter.

Hedge-funder Steve Cohen

"The commission has permitted a recidivist hedge fund manager, well-known for his former company's willingness to evade and ignore federal law, to once again profit from – and potentially exploit – investors." -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Whenever I read about some crooked hedge-fund billionaire mired in scandal, I always check to see if and how they're involved with charter schools. I rarely come up empty.

Billionaire hedge-funder Steve Cohen is one of the major underwriters of privately-run charter schools. The couple's Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation is a top donor to the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN), Achievement First, Families for Excellent Schools Cohen, whose SAC Capital paid $1.2 billion in a security fraud case last year.

The Guardian reports:

On Thursday, [Sen. Elizabeth Warren] sent a missive to Mary Jo White, SEC chair, telling her she was making "a mockery" of the regulator's core mission.

Warren, a scourge of Wall Street, is disappointed with the agency's decision to approve Stamford Harbor Capital to act as investment adviser to outside clients. The reason? The firm is associated with Steven Cohen, former manager of SAC Capital Advisors, who pleaded guilty to insider trading in 2013 and paid a record $1.8bn fine.

Turns out, Cohen indirectly owns Stamford Harbor Capital. He is to receive as much as 50% of client profits, but won't have any supervisory role, according to Bloomberg.
"Steve Cohen owns the entity, but consistent with his January agreement with the SEC he will not supervise the activities of anyone working on its behalf," Jonathan Gasthalter, a Stamford Harbor spokesman, told Bloomberg.

 "The commission has permitted a recidivist hedge fund manager, well-known for his former company's willingness to evade and ignore federal law, to once again profit from – and potentially exploit – investors," Warren wrote in her letter on Thursday. "This is an unacceptable outcome from the nation's primary enforcer of securities laws, and it is the latest example of an SEC action that fails to appropriately punish guilty parties, deter future wrongdoings and protect investors."
Why is the White House covering for Cohen? While he has been a big contributor to conservative super PACs like Chris Christie's America Leads, he's also a big backer of Dem. candidates, including Connecticut Gov. Malloy.

The Hartford Courant's Jenny Wilson reports:

Wall Street billionaires who have invested heavily in the expansion of charter schools contributed more than $200,000 to Democrats in the 2013-14 election cycle, helping Gov. Dannel P. Malloy secure re-election.

The campaign contributors earned their fortunes as hedge fund managers and private equity investors before earning reputations as "education philanthropists." They have helped bankroll charter school movements throughout the country, spending to influence elections and to support advocacy movements.
Major U.S. hedge fund managers are on pace this year to more than double the amount they gave in the 2012 election campaign, with independent fundraising groups backing Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and Republican rival Ted Cruz receiving the most so far.

Bernie Sanders has eschewed donations from Wall Street. He has racked up a string of wins in early state nominating contests with attacks on Wall Street and calls for a more equitable distribution of the country's wealth.Mike Klonskyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-45721565208770730252016-04-12T09:37:00.003-07:002016-04-12T09:37:45.395-07:00Power Philanthropy -- The NRA of WA charter schools

Billionaire charter school power-philanthropists Bill Gates, Reed Hastings (left), Alice Walton, Paul Allen.

Joanne Barkan's power-structure research has been cited on the pages of this blog on several occasions. Now she's written another scathing expose of power philanthropy, "Charitable Plutocracy: Bill Gates, Washington State, and the Nuisance of Democracy" in NPQ,

Barkan takes a deeper look in how Gates and fellow philanthro-billionaires leveraged their tax-exempt foundation money to force privately-run charters down the throats of Washingtonians after the leadership of both houses of the WA legislature opposed the 2012 charter bill. When it died in committee, the activist billionaires stepped in, with Gates in the lead, to finance yet another charter school ballot initiative—the state's fourth.

According to the Washington Times, their lobbying campaign to save Washington's charters spent nearly $1.9 million to influence the public and state lawmakers.

Writes Barkan:

Call it charitable plutocracy—a peculiarly American phenomenon, increasingly problematic and in need of greater scrutiny. Like all forms of plutocracy, this one conflicts with democracy, and exactly how these philanthropists coordinate tax-exempt grantmaking with political funding for maximum effect remains largely obscure.

The Washington charter saga highlights the workings of charitable plutocracy. Multibillionaire philanthropists use their personal wealth, their tax-exempt private foundations, and their high-profile identities as philanthropists to mold public policy to a degree not possible for other citizens.
Among the biggest funders of the WA charter school push were, Gates ($1 million), Alice Walton (from Arkansas, $600,000), Mike and Jackie Bezos (parents of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, $500,000), venture capitalist Nicolas Hanauer ($450,000), Katherine Binder (chair of EMFCO Holdings, $200,000), Paul Allen's Vulcan, Inc. ($100,000), and Reed Hastings, from California (Netflix cofounder and KIPP charter schools board member, $100,000).

These guys are not "do-gooders".

Mike Klonskyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-4372898215239357072016-02-27T04:46:00.001-08:002016-02-27T04:47:07.914-08:00Sleazeball U

"I really felt stupid that I was scammed by Trump," Guillo said. "I thought that he was really legit."

Don't feel so bad, Bob. The whole Republican Party is being scammed by The Donald.
Students borrowed $36,000 to attend Trump University and all they got, according to Rubio, was a "picture with a cardboard cutout of Donald Trump."

In three pending lawsuits, including one in which the New York attorney general is seeking $40 million in restitution, former students allege that the enterprise bilked them out of their money with misleading advertisements. their lawsuits, former students say they were given lessons that were useless or even illegal and that they were badgered into taking course after expensive course.

Trump University launched in the mid-2000s as an Internet venture owned by Trump. For several years, it also offered weekend classes in hotel ballrooms across the country to teach financial tips. Some students paid more than $30,000 for a chance to learn Trump's investment magic and participate in mentorship programs, court records show. (Trump also sold Trump University merchandise, according to an archived website, including hats.)

It's not that Trump never had anything of value to offer. In a blog associated with his sleazy "university", he complained about Judith Miller's reporting in The New York Times ahead of the 2003 Iraq invasion.

But students shouldn't have had to pay big bucks for that. They could have got that on my blog for free.

Mike Klonskyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-71996447389127387322016-01-27T13:39:00.003-08:002016-01-27T13:39:45.668-08:00Who's behind National School Choice Week?

Launched five years ago by the Gleason Family Foundation—which spent more than $4.3 million on the project in 2014, Nat'l School Choice Week has grown rapidly through the backing of advocacy groups and deep pockets of funders focused on promoting charters, vouchers, and tax credits that aid private schools, including religious and for-profit ventures. -- Dustin Beilke at PR Watch

According to the Center for Media and Democracy:

"The National School Choice Week website's Partners page provides a who's-who gallery of Koch network groups, corporations, and billionaires promoting privatization," said Lisa Graves, CMD's Executive Director, adding: "although the week features many local events, it is backed by national entities, some of which are hostile to the idea of public schools and whose goals have included full privatization. No story about National School Choice Week is complete if it does not mention the special interests behind the choice agenda."
NCSW's website lists numerous partners, including the Walton Family Fund, ALEC, SPN, the Freedom Foundation, FreedomWorks, Cato Institute, Reason Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the James Madison Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—many of which have ties to the Koch brothers' political network. David Koch ran for Vice President in 1980 on a platform that included privatizing public schools, and his brother Charles started pushing school choice in the 1960s. Together they have funded an array of groups that spread that agenda.

As CMD has documented, the charter school industry has been fueled by more than $3.6 billion from the federal government over the past two decades in addition to billions from states and from wealthy choice advocates like the billionaire Walton and DeVos families. This surge in cash has created a league of lobbyists urging legislators to send more tax dollars to this industry.

Mike Klonskyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-27404162615495792962016-01-19T01:18:00.000-08:002016-01-19T01:18:52.957-08:00Davos Blues

 Davos: 'This week, some of the richest people on Earth will gather high up a snowy mountain in the world's biggest tax haven.' Photograph: Ruben Sprich/Reuters

"We've been conned by the rich predators of Davos", writes Aditya Chakrabortty in today's Guardian:

The great mistake made by the mainstream left and right, even by NGOs such as Oxfam, is in imagining that the super-rich, now enjoying such massive riches, are somehow playing by the same rules as the rest of us. That they are "wealth creators" providing jobs and investment for the rest of us, or that they might give up their tax havens. If that ever were the case, it isn't now. A tiny minority has gained from massive tax cuts and legislative leniency about where they shove their money. They have siphoned off gains in salaries and profits wherever possible and enjoyed hundreds of billions flowing into their asset markets. Meanwhile, the rest of us who provide the feedstock for their revenues see our welfare states hollowed out, our wages frozen and our employers failing to invest. But none of that matters very much in Davos.
Mike Klonskyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-41087854331738455242016-01-15T13:49:00.000-08:002016-01-15T13:49:00.559-08:00How Koch Bros. use their millions to buy influence over southern schools.

Charles Koch

A recent Facing South investigation revealed that right-wing industrialist Charles Koch gave more than $108 million to 366 colleges and universities between 2005 and 2014, with 85 percent of that money going to schools in the South.

The Koch money has funded academic programs, scholarships, professorships, conferences, lecture series, and economics centers, all for the purpose of promoting the free-market agenda embraced by Koch and his brother David, owners of the Koch Industries oil and chemical conglomerate. While other wealthy Americans, such as conservative businessman and Houston Texans owner Robert McNair and liberal financier George Soros, have donated big sums to universities, none match Charles Koch's sharp focus on promoting a particular ideology within the academy.

Read the entire Facing South report, here.

The Koch's come by their power-grabbing piggery honestly. It seems that daddy was a German industrialist who helped the nazis on a giant oil refinery project. In the letter to company employees, David Robertson, president and COO of Koch Industries, said Fred Koch's work for the Nazi regime was one of many international projects and predated World War II, according to Fortune Magazine.Mike Klonskyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-48565700664077509492016-01-12T04:25:00.000-08:002016-01-12T04:25:16.727-08:00What happened to the feds' probe of Chicago Public Ed Fund? Where'd everybody go?

Rahm and Griffin.

Back in April, 2015, we heard that the feds were in town, supposedly looking into the Chicago Public Education Fund (CPEF) and its involvement in the Barbara Byrd-Bennett/SUPES no-bid contract scandal. Remember? Subpoenas were flying and the names of some of the biggest players in corporate school reform were being dropped to the press. Among those names were CPEF's billionaire board members, Bruce Rauner, Penny Pritzker, Susan Crown, Mellody Hobson (wife of George Lucas), and the state's richest man, Ken Griffin.

While the Fund wasn't the target of the investigation, and no-bid contracts with kickbacks are usually no big deal in Rahmville, it was reported that its board had given SUPES a $380,000 contract to train area network chiefs and their deputies. But when things started getting hot, they quietly discontinued their funding.

Ace Catalyst reporter Sarah Karp, now with the BGA, made the point then, that if the Fund had been more transparent about its de-funding of SUPES, "taxpayers might have saved the $12 million of the more than $20 million SUPES was paid before its contract was cancelled". But transparency is a no-no around CPEF's fancy downtown headquarters (nice view of the lake).

As Karp puts it:

No one outside The Fund's staff and board of directors knows how it decides which programs to support, what the results have been and how or whether the results are communicated to CPS.

 So since April, there's not been a word in the media about CPEF or the investigation. Where'd everyone go?

Griffin just sold his condo for $16M.

Rauner, now the governor, was at one time the CPEF board president. He denied any culpability in the SUPES affair, telling the feds that it was his pal Rahm Emanuel and not him, who brought SUPES, Gary Solomon, and Byrd-Bennett into town.

Pritzker's off playing Obama's Sec. of Commerce, leaving Rahm holding the bag on school closings. She was a member of the school board that approved them along with the SUPES deal.

And hedge-funder Griffin? (among Rahm/Rauner's largest campaign contributors). He took a bit of a hit when wife Ann divorced him. But he's still in the game, bigger than ever.

His most recent deal... Crain's reports that Griffin just sold his Chicago condo at the Waldorf Astoria for a mere $16M, the same price he bought it for 17 months earlier. The sale was the second-highest home sale in the Chicago area during 2015, after an $18.75M purchase at the Park Tower by an associate of Lucas and Hobson.

I'm sure this is all on the up-and-up, but it turns out that Griffin originally bought the place from ("an entity connected with") himself and then sold it to ("an entity connected with") himself.

Sounds like a win-win. It always is for these guys.

Mike Klonskyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-76128678364667503052015-12-31T09:37:00.000-08:002015-12-31T09:49:23.925-08:00Educator tells climate criminal Exxon: 'Hands off our kids and our schools'
"I'm not sure public schools understand that we're their customer—that we, the business community, are your customer," said Tillerson during the panel discussion. "What they don't understand is they are producing a product at the end of that high school graduation." -- Fortune Magazine

Rex Tillerson is chief executive of ExxonMobil, possibly the world's worst climate criminal and catalyst for war and social/economic instability in the Middle East and around the globe. It's a corporation that spends millions each year to run climate denial campaigns.

New York State's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is currently investigating Exxon to determine whether the corporation lied to the public about climate change, or to investors about the risks to the oil industry.

Yet somehow, Tillerson and Exxon still feel qualified and on moral enough ground to bash public schools and debase students as a way of promoting corporate-style reform, and particularly, Common Core and its testing regimen.

To Tillerson and several other of the wealthiest corporate execs including Bill Gates, public schools are little more than a publicly-financed training ground for the corporate labor pool. Putting schools at the service of the global corporate race to the top, has also been the mantra of Arne Duncan and the D.O.E. for the past seven years. To them, schools are a business, preparing and marketing students to the corporations -- and, according to Tillerson, turning out an inferior product. This, even though Exxon and the 12 other giant petro-corps contribute little in the way of taxes to support public ed.

Exxon gets $600 million in annual federal tax breaks. Every effort to eliminate these breaks—recently pushed by Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Robert Menendez of New Jersey—can't get through Congress. Surprise, surprise. Exxon pays an effective corporate income tax rate of about 13 percent, just over a third of the nominal rate of 35 percent. (Daily Kos)
Tillerson's remarks have drawn a sharp rebuke from parents and educators. Ed activists are joining environmentalists in calling for a boycott of Exxon products. They make the point that the job of public schools is not to supply a workforce for Big Business, but rather to educate young people to participate fully in American democratic society.

Effects from 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill still being felt.

Leading the counter-attack and defending public education is veteran educator and director of the Network for Public Education, Carol Burris.

In a sharply-worded letter to Tillerson, Burris writes:

Please leave our children alone. We do not need you to develop them as products. They are neither kerogen nor shale.

Your Dickensian thinking has been "outed" and this holiday season, you are as welcome as the ghost of Christmas past. The common-folk for whom the Core you adore was designed, do not like it—only 24 percent of public school parents want it used in their school. And they certainly do not like to hear their children referred to as "defective products." Mr. Tillerson, you have made the mommies and daddies mad.

I understand their reaction must confound you. In a world in which your corporation has been declared a person, one might mistake human children for products to consume.

When we humanize the inanimate, it is easy for the humanity of the animate to slip away.
But let me make this clear — our children are not products for your purchase. You, and the captains of industry (or whatever you call yourselves this century), are not "the customers." School is not a training camp to work on oilrigs, to pump gas or design lubricants. There is just enough democracy left to make students know they have choices, and more than enough parental commonsense left to know that community control of schools is slipping away.

We are so sorry to disappoint.

The story line is not as simple as the one told by Peter Elkind. The resistance against the Common Core is far more than a push from the right. Come visit New York. Parents don't like it because their kids are frustrated and confused—it has been, from start to finish, a mess. Business and colleges cannot define their own desired academic outcome and then use it to map learning backwards. Kids do not grow backwards; they grow forwards. Learning progress is uneven. It intersects with social, developmental and biological factors, none of which can be ignored. Those who don't know sludge from shinola when it comes to teaching kids sold you junk science.

I do thank you for your candid remarks, however. The curtain has once again been pulled back to expose Oz, and the resistance to the corporate reform agenda will grow. Like Arne Duncan's awful "white suburban mom" comment, your reasoning on why we need the Common Core will surely be repeated again, and again, and again.

Mommies and daddies don't forget.
You can read Peter Elkind's Fortune Magazine piece in its entirety here.
Mike Klonskyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-72481959753432195912015-12-13T10:50:00.000-08:002015-12-13T10:53:10.296-08:00The real force behind D.C. school 'reform'

She's the wife of a media mogul, a friend of the Washington Post's Graham family. She's a philanthropist, adviser to public officials, and conduit to private foundations and investors in what has become her life's work. In D.C., likely no private citizen is more involved in public education than Katherine Bradley.

City Paper's Jeffrey Anderson has written a feature story on D.C. socialite Bradley, calling her a "force multiplier" when it comes to the district's corporate-style school reform.

To me, she sounds a lot like D.C.'s version of New York's charter maven Eva Moskowitz who uses her clout to build her personal charter school empire and assail public schools and teacher unions.

Bradley's primary advocacy vehicle is CityBridge Foundation, a nonprofit that distributed nearly $25 million in grants, scholarships, and donations from 2004 to 2013—mostly to charter schools and groups like Teach for America, which received $2.5 million according to tax filings.

Writes Anderson:

Like Bradley herself, the foundation is at the center of a constellation of private interests that are promoting charter schools in D.C. and around the country. The organization partners with TFA, Friends of Choice in Urban Education, and Charter Board Partners, and counts among its "Thought Partners" the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.
Two of the most politically challenging education initiatives in recent years have been public school closures and the effort to secure chartering authority for Supt. Kaya Henderson (Michelle Rhee's former deputy).

Rhee's departure in 2011 did not faze Bradley. She embraced Rhee's protege Kaya Henderson and co-chaired the education committee of the transition team for Fenty's successor, Vincent Gray, who embraced Henderson as well. Bradley's alliance with Graham, a fellow philanthropist and low-key civic force, provided a sounding board in the Post, which has heavily endorsed gains in math, reading, and science through charter schools such as KIPP D.C. Graham and Bradley sit on the KIPP board.
GREAT QUOTE... Former Wilson High School teacher and activist Erich Martel says such coziness among philanthropists, the private sector, and public officials reminds him of Plato's "Cave," an allegory in which captives view shadows on a wall as reality, because it's all they see. For your average parent, Martel says, in an interview last year for this story, it's often impossible to tell how change comes about: "How does one determine who influences whom? It's the same people talking to each other."

Mike Klonskyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-18064617908801292802015-11-30T04:10:00.005-08:002015-11-30T04:10:55.687-08:00Harvard News: 'Veritas'

Dean Minow

In the face of student protest following an outbreak of racist vandalism on campus, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow has appointed a committee to consider "whether or not to continue" —the crest of the former slave-holding Royall family that endowed Harvard's first law professorship in the 19th century.

The school's seal, which features three sheaves of wheat under an emblem of "Veritas," came under attack earlier this year when a group of students, calling themselves "Royall Must Fall," demanded its removal in light of its connection to slavery.

There is no truth to the rumor that the racist seal will be replaced by one featuring three dollar signs.

Mike Klonskyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-78184440178421589962015-11-15T17:26:00.001-08:002015-11-16T06:50:02.579-08:00My 'plan' for funding CPS sports programs. So crazy it just might work.

Lease back the Skyway.

I just heard the news that CPS claims to be so broke that they're cutting elementary school sports programs out of the budget. As a former CPS coach, I'm horrified at the prospect. So I've come up with a funding plan that's so crazy, it just might work.

It came to me after reading about the Canadian consortium that just purchased the lease to the Chicago Skyway from the Spanish/Australian consortium which had originally leased it from us for 75 years, via former Mayor Daley. The original deal was all part of Daley's plan to solve the city's debt problem. It didn't. But it sure made a bundle in profits for the consortium.

That original Skyway concession company was a partnership of Cintra Infraestructuras of Spain and Australia's Macquarie Group. Their $1.83 billion payment in January 2005 was nearly $1 billion more than the next highest bid, which prompted speculation that the investors had overpaid.

But this week, the Canadians agreed to fork over $2.8 billion to Cintra and Macquarie to acquire the company that holds the deal to run the Skyway until 2104. Do the math. The Spaniards and Australians walk away with a cool billion return on their investment.

Oriole Park's 6th grade volleyball team facing cuts.

Side note -- Nearly a billion of that money came from the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. So, in a weird way, Canadian teachers are maintaining their pensions with profits from their investment in a scheme that's bankrupting Chicago and its schools.

So here's my plan. Rahm puts together a $3-billion package of loans from his Infrastructure Trust pals and Billy Daley over at Morgan Stanley and we buy back the lease to our own Skyway. If the profit margins from Skyway traffic could enrich the Canadians, Spaniards and Australians, why not Chicago? A billion or two in profits should even cover the high cost of the loans due to Chicago's lousy credit rating. A win-win for the banksters and the schools.

And we can even set aside a tiny chunk of those super-profits to pay for the 5th and 6th grade girls' volleyball team from Oriole Park Elementary School to get to the conference championship game next year.

You're welcome.
Mike Klonskyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-75650485742969381772015-11-07T03:52:00.001-08:002015-11-07T03:54:20.214-08:00UNO corruption just the 'tip of the iceberg'. Billions lost to waste, fraud and corruption annually in privately-run charters

UNO boss Juan Rangel was Rahm Emanuel's campaign chairman in 2011.

Chicago's $80-million/year UNO charter scandal, adds significantly to the estimated $200 million which will be lost this year alone to charter school waste, fraud, and corruption. That estimate is only "the tip of the iceberg" according to a report issued last April, by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools. It based on a study of only about one-third of the states with charter schools.

According to the report:

The number of instances of serious fraud uncovered by whistleblowers, reporters, and investigations suggests that the fraud problem extends well beyond the cases we know about. According to standard forensic auditing methodologies, the deficiencies in charter oversight throughout the country suggest that federal, state, and local governments stand to lose more than $1.4 billion in 2015.
In 2014, the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged UNO Charter School Network with defrauding investors in a $37.5 million bond offering for school construction by making materially misleading statements about transactions that presented a conflict of interest. According to the SEC's complaint, UNO failed to notify the state of two construction contracts totaling $12.9 million with the brothers of one of UNO's top executives. Additionally, the charter school operator failed to notify bond investors that the state could take the loan that the bond was assured with back for the non-disclosure of the contracts.

Call it the charter corruption tax. We all pay it every year and it's money taken right out of our public school classrooms.

President Obama's proposed budget for fiscal year 2016 includes $375 million specifically for charter schools (a 48% increase over last year's actual budget).Mike Klonskyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-130506172029529422015-11-03T10:37:00.000-08:002015-11-04T04:34:11.618-08:00Byrd-Bennett, SUPES & Harcourt's goal in Detroit: Loot and then burn.

Byrd-Bennett's inner circle, Tracy Martin, Sherry Ulery and Rosemary Herpel, followed her from Cleveland and Detroit.

I'm glad that Chicago reporters are finally uncovering the depth and breadth of the SUPES scandal. Today, the trail leads them back to Detroit where Barbara Byrd-Bennett was brought in to run the district as a high-paid consultant after leaving Cleveland. In the end, I predict the trail will extend even farther and higher up, as the edu-criminals begin rolling over to save their own skins.
According to today's Sun-Times:

An FBI agent believed corrupt former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett worked to "fraudulently steer" a $40 million contract to one of the country's biggest educational publishers while she worked for the Detroit schools.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who's been following the case or to those of us who have been writing about the takeover of Detroit's public school system, which smelled of corruption and mismanagement from day one.

With the help of three accomplices brought over from Cleveland, including Tracy Martin and Sherry Ulery, to rig the bidding process, BBB funneled big contracts to testing/textbook giant Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Turns out, she was on Houghton's payroll before and after Detroit. Martin, Herpel and Ulery then became part of BBB's inner circle at CPS and have now been named in the SUPES indictment.

Here's the FBI warrant on BBB from Detroit.

More from S-T:

The feds told the judge an "unusual financial transaction" took place about three weeks before the contracting process for the Detroit deal began. Records show the FBI's "analysis of bank account belonging to Barbara Byrd-Bennett shows a deposit into her Money Market account on July 20, 2009 in the amount of $26,530.26 from 'Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.'"

Before arriving in Detroit in May 2009, Byrd-Bennett had worked for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for three years for an annual salary of more than $155,000, according to court records.

 A couple of months after leaving the Detroit schools — where she was an independent contractor with the title of chief academic and accountability officer — Byrd-Bennett returned to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The company offered her $182,000 a year to work 21 hours each week, the FBI said.
The whole purpose of the Detroit takeover, as later admitted by BBB's successor Roy Roberts, in May 2011, was to, "blow up the district and dismantle it." But to BBB and her SUPES friends, the goal was to loot first and then burn.

Before the succession of state interventions started in 1999, DPS had a $93 million dollar operating surplus, enrollment over 173,000, and academic gains. Six years of emergency management from Lansing since 2009 has widened the performance gap between Detroit's students and their Michigan counterparts; enrollment has plummeted; and the district's operating deficit and long-term debt have smashed all previous records.

Over the ensuing years, the Detroit Public Schools has been run into ruin, with over 200 schools closed, and many of the district's buildings turned over to charter operators.

Note to Chicagoans: The BBB-HMH deal likely wouldn't have happened without the dismantling of the district's elected school board. That board regularly reported contract irregularities, but, stripped of their powers of oversight, they were neutered in the face of corporate "reform."

They call themselves a "global learning company."

As for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, I have been writing about them for years. HMH is now one of the biggest text/testing publishers, right up there with Pearson and McGraw-Hill.

They have been among the most aggressive companies bellying up to the Common Core feeding trough. They have been buying up everything  even vaguely associated with Common Core. In April, they purchased Scholastic Corp.'s educational technology and services business for $575M. They've already acquired Channel One and Curiosityville. Last month they launched Netflix for Learning. They plan on launching HMH Marketplace, online tools and games for educators to use in the classroom, in 2016.

HMH was even intent on purchasing SUPES from BBB's indicted co-conspirators Gary Solomon and Tom Vranas.

Besides the Detroit deal, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt was mentioned in September 2014 court records regarding the alleged kickback scheme at CPS. According to those records, there was a 2012 email in which SUPES co-owner Thomas Vranas told Byrd-Bennett: "If we are purchased by HMH [Houghton Mifflin Harcourt], we will give you 5 percent of total amount we are purchased for."
Nobody has been charged criminally in connection with the investigation of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Detroit deal. Why not?Mike Klonskyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-72084896648408317992015-10-30T04:29:00.000-07:002015-10-30T15:47:20.302-07:00Making 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.Mike Klonskyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-40898715019409213082015-10-20T04:49:00.002-07:002015-11-02T08:39:51.986-08:00Camp Philos at the Vineyard. My invite must have gotten lost in the mail.

Walton/Broad took their whole crew to Martha's Vineyard over the weekend to bone-up on marketing tactics for charter/privatization brand. How nice for them. What about me? I like the Vineyard.

Topics included: Doubling Down on Success or Losing It All: What's At Stake in 2016;

How We Win: Strategies and Tactics to Combat an Organized and Vocal Opposition;

What's Next in the Edu Political Funding World?; and How to Tell the Pro-Reform Story Successfully.

The Philos "reform" crowd, mostly Clinton Democrats I'm told, includes the likes of -- Rahm Emanuel, Howard Fuller, Peter Cunningham, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Senator Mary Landrieu, Eva Moskowitz, Charles Barone (DFER), Ben Austin (Parent Revolution), and so on.

Last year, Edushyster tried to go, but they wouldn't let her in. She obviously didn't have the proper security clearance.

We hear a bunch of Chi electeds went to Martha's Vineyard this past wknd with @DFER_News. Check out their camp.... https://t.co/U3BmJxZcnO
— Raise Your Hand (@ILRaiseYourHand) October 20, 2015
Mike Klonskyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-33601360002565919702015-10-15T04:11:00.003-07:002015-10-15T04:18:06.500-07:00Byrd-Bennett, 'a foot soldier in the march towards privatization'
Ian Belknap is a writer and performer living in Chicago. He hits the nail on the head with this opinion piece in Crain's, "Framing education as a business attracts the wrong people".

While the leading candidates in both parties spend their valuable debate time extolling the virtues of capitalism (...what built the greatest middle class in the history of the world." -- Hillary Clinton), Belknap points out what should be obvious by now. The push towards privatization of public education has been a disaster.

What got him going was the indictment of Chicago schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett.

Byrd-Bennett's woes are rooted in her greed, yes (and her tone deafness to irony—"tuition to pay and casinos to visit?"... But she has also acted as a foot soldier in the decades-long march toward privatization and misapplying the precepts of business to the complex (and in many cases generations-long) problems facing our schools.
Her downfall, writes Belknap, "may be read as the logical extension, and, one hopes, the last gasp, of a badly flawed and shortsighted approach: namely the fallacy that business principles are well suited for every aspect of society".

It is past time we abandon the demonstrated failings of such an approach. It is past time we reconceive of jobs like Byrd-Bennett's as "CEO"—doing so focuses wrongly on the "outputs" of the system they're meant to preside over, rather than the contribution they may make to it during the time it is entrusted to them. In short, it is past time we as a society stop misapplying a business-style conception of risk and reward to education.
Mike Klonskyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-68011943285215308182015-10-08T10:49:00.001-07:002015-10-08T11:01:41.857-07:00J.B. Pritzker and Goldman Sachs doing the special ed hustle

J.B. Pritzker

Goldman Sachs and J.B. Pritzker may call it "philanthropy" but it's a profitable brand that includes their benefiting financially from cuts in special ed and from every child who's dropped from or pushed out of a SpEd program.

It's all because of the latest corporate scheme in which private firms foot the initial bill for public services and then are repaid with interest if those services reduce the number of kids in special ed. They call it "social impact" investing.

In Utah for example, GS and J.B. have committed $7 million to area pay-for-success programs through the United Way, which will fund preschool services for five cohorts of children. Even at a 5% rate of return, they still receive 95% of any special-education savings to the state until the investments are repaid with interest. After that, the firms will receive 40% of ongoing cost savings until the participating students complete sixth grade.

If only companies like Goldman Sachs didn't operate virtually fax-free, there would likely be adequate public funding for special ed and all other education funding. Instead schools are forced to operate on the largess of private investment firms who not only operate at a profit, but also influence important public ed policy issues -- like which child should be in SpEd and which one needn't be?

According to Crain's,

United Way of Salt Lake is betting that the savings from keeping kids out of special-education, which is much more expensive than providing standard instruction, will provide the repayment to the investors.
About 600 students enrolled in public and private preschool programs in 2013. Of those students, 110 4-year-olds were expected to need special education during their kindergarten year. But only one of the students — who are now in the first grade — has required special education, which translates to about $281,000 in cost avoidance for Utah's public education system with 95% kicking back to the investors.

What these type of private funding schemes do is create pressures on school districts to remove students with special needs out of individually designed learning programs.

Pritzer says:

"Im not in the business of investing for 5 percent returns" but, "there are portions of people's portfolios invested in low-return opportunities, like treasuries. If you can prove this out, Goldman, Fidelity and other investors who put large amounts of capital into bonds, they could put them into social-impact bonds."
While social impact bonds pay out a relatively healthy interest rate when they succeed — between 5 and 7 percent a year in the Utah program — the investors lose all the money when they fail.

According to Huffington Post:

The success of the program is Salt Lake is intended to provide a more replicable template for funding and implementing preschool programs.
Chicago operates in early childhood Head Start programs in much the same way. Instead of relying on public funds to expand the programs and keep the benefits for itself, Rahm Emanuel has turned to lenders such as Goldman Sachs, Northern Trust and the Pritzker Family Foundation to provide the upfront money, with promises of substantial profits for the lenders down the road if the program goes as planned.

Great hustle, J.B.Mike Klonskyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-19958071046212860672015-10-03T22:13:00.001-07:002015-10-04T07:46:18.556-07:00SUPES IS BACK -- New names on the letterhead. Looking for more no-bid contracts from CPS

Joseph "Joey" Wise

"The primary leaders [Solomon & Vranas] of the former SUPES Academy have begun new endeavors and will not be joining us in this work ahead." -- Joseph Wise
The federal investigation in Chicago of SUPES has obviously been sandbagged. Federal investigators have refused to comment on the investigation. Now even with Barbara Byrd-Bennett fleeing the scene and a grand jury supposedly in session, SUPES is trying to make a comeback.

After all, UNO did it with the feds on their trail, simply by shifting a few culpable leaders into different positions, changing the names on company letterhead, and relying on political powerhouses like Mike Madigan, Eddie Burke, and Rahm Emanuel to provide cover. So reported new SUPES owner, Joseph Wise figures he can pull it off as well, cashing in on the next round of no-bid deals CPS regularly hands out to connected consulting firms. Wise, whose companies have received at least $5 million in recent business from CPS, claims to have acquired "the best parts of the SUPES Academy."

Wise, who formerly worked for scandalized SUPES leaders Gary Solomon and Thomas Vranas, also wants to get more business from CPS by opening alternative schools under contract with the city school system. He runs a company called Acceleration Academies which hopes to open open eight campuses in Chicago, four of them starting next fall in Belmont-Cragin, Washington Heights, West Englewood and Bronzeville. Acceleration Academies describes itself as being run by Wise and partner David Sundstrom with two investors, Bryan Daniels and Steve King, who "have a deep interest in providing quality educational communities for underserved populations in Chicago."

Obviously, deep pockets as well.

Wait, things get better. Wise is also "looking at the possibility" of Acceleration Academies working with Distinctive Schools, a Chicago charter school management company that he started with Sundstrom in 2011. Distinctive oversees the operation of four CPS-approved Chicago International Charter Schools campuses.

Actually, Wise is chairman of the board of Distinctive. He was the chief education officer for the company as of June 2014, tax records the company filed show. So I don't think he will have any problem "working with" them.

According to the Sun-Times, Distinctive Schools already gets about $18 million a year in taxpayers' money to run the four charter schools as part of CICS. The charter network was headed until recently by Beth Purvis, who left after eight years to take a $250,000-a-year job as Gov. Bruce Rauner's education secretary.

SUPES will now be called the National Superintendent Academy which is "wholly owned" by Atlantic Research Partners, a Florida company founded in 2007 by Wise and David Sundstrom.

According to the Sun-Times:

Wise said he first encountered Solomon in the late 2000s while working for what was then known as Edison Schools, a national operator of private schools that hired PROACT Search to help with hiring. Wise said they spoke by phone and met when he moved to Chicago...

...Solomon mentioned Wise in an August 2009 email to Byrd-Bennett when she was running Detroit's public school system, where he was then trying to get business."Joey Wise suggested to try again to connect with you"... Asked about that, Wise said, "I don't remember that at all.
Wise likes to talk to the press a lot about "transparency". He tells S-T reporter Lauren Fitzpatrick, "You have to be really careful to make sure you're transparent enough about what you're doing. And we worked really hard to have that transparency and not misuse that relationship."

But when asked, he won't say how much his company paid in the deal with Solomon and Vranas. He said the deal included a "confidentiality clause".Mike Klonskyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-27848953159212670952015-09-21T14:55:00.003-07:002015-09-21T14:56:34.025-07:00Mayoral control of schools? Consider Kevin Johnson.

K.J. with pals Arne Duncan and Arnold Schwarzenegger at a 2009 rally in Sacramento. Photo via AP

The rising star, it seems, set up a fake government—and some people are starting to notice.
If any city is still contemplating turning their schools over to mayoral one-man rule, this portrait of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson should provide the cure.

Dave McKenna writes in Deadspin about K.J.'s attempt to set up "a fake government".

According to McKenna, the mayor is replacing civil servants with cronies funded by the Wal-Mart empire and tasked with "the twin purposes of working to abolish public education and bring in piles of cash for Kevin Johnson".

McKenna writes:

Johnson is husband to Michelle Rhee, the controversial school-privatization activist, and there is considerable evidence that their shared desire to turn public schools into engines of profit for private actors is what has driven much, if not most, of Johnson's more recent wrongdoing. Despite, or perhaps because of, this, he's enjoyed the profile and appointments of a national figure on the make: public appearances with President Barack Obama, portrayal as a latter-day Metternich by The New York Times, and the patronage of serious players like Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates.
 McKenna has been on the trail of K.J. and Rhee for a while. Here's his piece from a year ago.
Kevin Johnson's Grifter Wife Returns To The Scene Of A Scandal

Rhee left her Stand For Children organization a year ago to go to work for a fertilizer company. No Shit!

Mike Klonskyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4420106493084207435.post-12423099200031819492015-09-16T10:28:00.002-07:002015-09-16T11:01:11.826-07:00Wizzards owner Leonsis underwrites D.C. charters. Then gets a new practice arena from taxpayers.

"...we in here talking about practice. I mean, listen, we're talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, we talking about practice." -- Alan Iverson
D.C. billionaire venture capitalist/philanthropist Ted Leonsis helps bankroll all of the district's privately-run charter schools through his Venture Philanthropy Partners. That includes more than $5.5 million to KIPP DC. But there's a catch to his generosity.

You see, Leonsis has an interesting philosophy. He believes that instead of paying taxes on his investment profits, taxpayers ought to pay him. This year the payment comes in the form of a new $55 million basketball practice arena for his Washington Wizzards. Taxpayers are picking up most of the cost.

According to CSN:

The project will cost an estimated $55 million... The Wizards' lease with the city is for 19 years and involves a $23 million investment from the government... Events D.C. [the city's official convention and sports authority] is contributing about half of the total cost for construction.
The latest on D.C. charters... The attorney general has filed two lawsuits alleging that D.C. charter school leaders used for-profit companies to divert millions of taxpayer dollars into their own pockets. The D.C. Public Charter School Board, which oversees all city charter schools, has no legal right to examine the books and records of those private companies, and says it therefore has little ability to monitor how those dollars are spent. -- Washington Post

As if KIPP DC needed the $$$... They just received another $4.2 million gift this week, from Joel Smilow, the president and chief executive of Playtex Products. Obvious connection there.

Bye bye low-income housing! https://t.co/vVgIXF6ljl
— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) September 16, 2015
Mike Klonskyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
Winter sports roundup: Park City's Ted Ligety wins final GS World Cup before Olympics
Pier Marco Tacca, Associated Press
ST. MORITZ, Switzerland — Ted Ligety navigated thick fog and a chewed-up mountainside Sunday to win the final World Cup giant slalom race before the Olympic Games.
"That was a bumpy ride," said the Park City native. "It's so tough when you can't see anything; it just makes it that much more tiring. That was a hackfest battle for sure, so I'm glad that I was actually able to make it to the finish line, let alone win."
When Ligety crossed the finish line, he felt more relief than elation at his 21st World Cup win.
"Generally the way I ski is a little bit rounder than everybody else," Ligety said. "I try to make smoother, cleaner turns and not worry about the distance so much. I think when it's like this and it's so hacked up, that plays well for me because I kind of avoid some of those bigger holes. So, yeah, I was just lucky that I was able to make it down though too."
Ligety's combined time was 2:38.75, while Austria's Marcel Hirscher took second with a combined time of 2:40.26. Alexis Pinturault of France earned bronze with a time of 2:40.44.
Ligety, the four-time FIS Alpine World Cup giant slalom champion, heads into the Olympics with tremendous momentum.
"It's nice to get another good race in and confirm where I am in GS on an actual race, not just having training," he said. "And then hopefully I can carry that confidence over the next couple weeks."
Ligety's first competition will likely be the super combined on Feb. 14.
RANDALL FINISHES FIFTH: Reigning World Cup sprint champion Kikkan Randall finished fifth in Toblach, Italy, in freestyle sprints. It's the final World Cup competition before the Winter Games for cross-country athletes.
"Today was another solid day," Randall said. "My performance was strong through all the rounds; I just didn't employ the right tactics in the final. ... While I'm definitely bummed not to have been in the fight for the win in the final stretch, I am happy with the way I felt today and I probably learned more from the way the race played out. With such a long, straight downhill before the finish, this was a very tactical course and a very different course from Sochi."
Twitter: adonsports
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
- Cubs get closer Aroldis Chapman in trade with...
- Roger Federer says he is out for Olympics,...
- Mickelson not close to being over runner-up...
- College Football Playoff moves most future...
- Olympic organizers suspect 'isolated'...
- Cavaliers re-sign veteran forward Richard...
- Jimmy Walker opens with 65 at stifling PGA;...
- Akpom scores deciding goal as Arsenal tops...
- Morning links: BYU's Emery called one... 62
- Big 12 watch: Is BYU the long-term... 58
- Big 12 watch: BYU praised for 'excited'... 57
- Doug Robinson: It's still Hill's time... 51
- Morning links: Utah Jazz on the rise;... 37
- Big 12 watch: BYU's success in football... 34
- Former BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall says... 26
- Former Utah punter Tom Hackett waived... 20


text:
16:17 Several antique religious vestments have been stolen from a display cabinet at St Peter's Anglican Church in central Wellington.
16:15 The engineering specialists investigating the collapse of the Christchurch CTV building will be examining foundations and soil next week.
16:14 Four men have been charged over allegedly attempting to hurl contraband, including tobacco, marijuana and meth, into Hawke's Bay prison.
15:06 Hauraki District Mayor John Tregidga says a Waihi gold mine where a worker died last night has an excellent safety record.
14:45 Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has confirmed his Government will not support Kevin Rudd's bid for the UN's top job.
Sat, 18 Feb 2012
...makes a comeback in a relatively modern bad movie.
Become a fan of RadioLIVE on Facebook
on Twitter.
NZIFF Le Ride, Trailer
NZIFF Doglegs, Trailer
Albatross Eaten Alive By Mice
Richard Feynman. The Train Problem
The Gun Club. House On Highland Ave


text:
I am very new to Python programming, so please bear with me.
I have an HTML file with several div layers. This file is opened in a webkit.WebView object. Each div layer saves a value in a global variable (JavaScript) when clicked upon.
How can I read the value of that global JavaScript variable from my Python script?
I found some answers but they don't seem to fit my situation (but I can be wrong, of course):
Passing JavaScript variable to Python
Parse JavaScript variable with Python
I'm using webkit.WebView because I have to show this in an existing glade (libglade) application.


text:
Congress Will Finally Outlaw Seafood Caught by Slaves
Obama is expected to sign a bill that closes an 85-year-old loophole on forced labor.
Obama is expected to sign a bill that closes an 85-year-old loophole on forced labor.
Fruits of the AP's labor in its ongoing exposé.
A California resident's class-action lawsuit alleges the grocery chain misled consumers.
Like working 24-hour shifts, sleeping on beds of dead fish, and watching others jump overboard.
100% of happy hour and small plates proceeds will go to international aid efforts.
Grant Achatz just released the full menu for Next.
The adjacent Thai restaurant plans communal tables, craft beer, and pig's collar.
The first in an international series finds the Thai beer company highlighting a phenomenal L.A. artist.
A one night stand in L.A. may have lead to a baby for a soccer superstar, while Baltic divers unearth 200 year-old bubbly.
A new food truck is coming to L.A. with a name found in other countries.
A preview, plus a look at a new show featuring some Finnish culinary daredevils.


text:
"Attended talk sponsored by Humanist Society of the Suncoast on the approaching 'Singularity', given by David Docherty on Saturday July 9."
26 members5 Comments 6 Likes
701 members401 Comments 181 Likes
376 members34 Comments 37 Likes
4192 members1760 Comments 266 Likes
1578 members744 Comments 41 Likes
Robert Byrch has not received any gifts yet
© 2016 Atheist Nexus. All rights reserved. Admin: Richard Haynes. Powered by


text:
- Sign in
- Join
- Find a rental
- Manage your booking
- How to book
- Traveler Help Center
- Write a review
Rockcliffe Farm Retreat and Lodge, LLC
From $350 / night
Payment Protection
balance of due
Description from the owner
Description from the owner
Bedrooms: 4/
Bathrooms: 4/
Sleeps: 24/
Type: House
Book this 4 bedroom, 4 bathroom house in Appomattox today! A total of 24 people can sleep here comfortably.
Guests can enjoy a hot tub, deck, and outdoor grill among other amenities offered by this rental.
Travelers are sharing their opinions on this property. It has an overall rating of 5/5 thanks to an average of 17 reviews.
Costs vary, with the average weekly rate as low as $1,800.00, depending on travel dates.
The owner responds to 100% of inquiries and last updated the property's calendar today.


text:
- Anonymous
- USA, Female, 31-40
- Novice Nomad
- 8 reviews
What a special location you have selected for this hostel! The view and exact address are perfect for visitors to Busan.
- Anonymous
- Indonesia, Female, 25-30
- Novice Nomad
- 3 reviews
Awesome view from the patio, awesome location. I love every single thing about this place except the bathroom. It's clean, but the woman's can fit 3 people in one place and it only separate with a very short curtain. Not really used to it. Maybe can consider to improve on that. Overall : still awesome!
- Anonymous
- Switzerland, Male, 31-40
- Novice Nomad
- 4 reviews
Great location with a great view!
- Anonymous
- Canada, Female, 25-30
- Novice Nomad
- 2 reviews
Felt very comfortable staying here. Good for a solo traveller. The view is great, especially in the morning over breakfast. Was greeted by nice staff and let me leave my bag in storage before check in time.
Hostelworld Mobile Apps
Book on the go with the new Hostelworld mobile apps.