StickWithANose

The push to dismantle the great public institutions of the American republic continue apace, and the usual suspects are driving both the nature and language of the debate. From the on-going war being waged against the social safety net to the destruction of public education as a democratic institution, the Masters of the Universe are the driving forces behind policies that lack empirical justification but create opportunities for Wall Street and the Business Roundtable participants to reap huge profits at the expense of tax payers and school children. The insidiousness of this political movement is the way in which the looters are able to present themselves as the great champions of public education whose only concern is the plight of students in failing schools, and the truest testament to their disproportionate influence over policy making in the republic is the way in which they can generate sycophantic news pieces that reinforce the corporate line as being “common sense.” Always willing to do the bidding of their masters, the New York Times offers up yet another piece of cheer-leading for the Wall Street vampire squid wrapping themselves around the face of public education.

Wall Street has always put its money where its interests and beliefs lie. But it is far less common that so many financial heavyweights would adopt a social cause like charter schools and advance it with a laserlike focus in the political realm.

Hedge fund executives are thus emerging as perhaps the first significant political counterweight to the powerful teachers unions, which strongly oppose expanding charter schools in their current form…

They have been contributing generously to lawmakers in hopes of creating a friendlier climate for charter schools. More immediately, they have raised a multimillion-dollar war chest to lobby this month for a bill to raise the maximum number of charter schools statewide to 460 from 200.

The money has paid for television and radio advertisements, phone banks and some 40 neighborhood canvassers in New York City and Buffalo — all urging voters to put pressure on their lawmakers…

Much of the policy around reforms that charter schools embody — rewarding teachers based on student gains; having longer academic years; emphasizing discipline — has been promoted by conservative research groups like the Hoover Institution and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Former President George W. Bush supported charter schools, but so does President Obama — which has given political cover to many Democratic supporters to be more outspoken.