Friday, August 08, 2014

K12NN Wire: Is there any billionaire, charter profiteer, poverty pimp, or right-wing ideologue that Alex Johnson won’t take money from?

First published on K12NN Wire on August 8, 2014

In calling for a special election, what Mark Ridley-Thomas, Alex Johnson, Rev. Tulloss, Corri Revere, and the charter schools along with their billionaire puppet masters are really saying is we have to hurt the children to protect the children.—Celes King IV

Poverty pimp Alex Johnson puts profits before pupilsWe've looked at some of Alex "ALEC" Johnson's funders during the primary election in The case against Alex Johnson. We looked at one of his prominent Independent Expenditures (IE) in Alex Johnson's corporate SuperPAC run by Eli Broad's Dan "students must pledge to capitalism" Chang. The latter article is even more important when we read that reactionary anti-public school operative Michelle Rhee and her right-wing funded "Students First" political organization donated dark money directly to Chang's SuperPAC for Johnson:

We've also collected together a compendium of articles about Johnson vicious smear campaign of lies against the distinguished Dr. George McKenna.

Here we will look at a few of his financial contributors in this round of fundraising.

This was the Caprice Young contribution. While she herself is extremely problematic, the fact that she's working for the right-wing Laura and John Arnold Foundation was even more tantalizing. Arnold was the hedge fund manager who walked away with billions during the Enron scandal. The reactionary couple use the money to forward their extremist policies of union busting, pension looting, and school privatization. The Arnolds were exposed by journalist David Sirota. Their foundation has made direct contributions to the Independent Expenditures (IE) supporting Johnson.

Megan Chernin works as the President/Chair of John Deasy's LA Fund 501c3 NPIC, and is a board member on the beleaguered LA's Promise EMO. That her and four other family members were each in for $1,100 contours the class issues of fundraising for LAUSD elections. There's also persistent rumors that she is a high-ranking Scientologist (OT7), which (if true) would explain why she's able to land Tom Cruise every year for her EMO's gala fundraiser.

People forget that Eli Broad got tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of dollars in Troubled Asset Relief Funds (TARP) during the 2008 bank bailouts for his preferred stock in AIG. The exact figure is unknown since TARP accounting was kept secret from the public. Nevertheless, he's been able to use taxpayer money to fund his efforts to privatize and corporatize schools.

Paying herself a whopping $270K in taxpayer money a year, Vielka Macfarlane is the vile woman who, in collaboration with Ben Austin, made a failed attempt to pull the so-called "Parent Trigger" on McKinley Elementary School in order to increase her charter chain's market share. Moreover, she's the monster who fired teachers for reading a poem about the death of Emmett Till—she and her administrators claimed that Till deserved it. "We don't want to focus on how the history of the country has been checkered but on how do we dress for success..." — historical revisionist and Celerity CEO Vielka McFarlane on why she insists on hiding the history of Emmett Till's brutal murder at the hands of white supremacists.

I was sent this list of folks headlining Johnson's next two fundraisers. Aside from the fact that most are well heeled oligarchs, it's amazing how the executives of the lucrative charter school industry will go to any length to try and secure a board member who will keep the revenues flowing. The late Celes King IV's observation that "Not even before Marguerite’s body was cold, the California Charter School Association was busy lobbying for a special election" was sadly just a precursor to the astonishing greed the corporate charter school sector has shown throughout this election.

Allison Bajracharya California Charter Schools Association
Andrew Bogen Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, firm that does pro-bono for much corporate edrefom
Judy Burton CEO of Alliance Charter Corporation
Danny / Zoe Corwin California Charter Schools Association / USC Rossier edreform
James Dwyer
Philip Farha
Glenn Gritzner Anti-public school activist with direct ties to school privatizer Fabian Núñez
Samantha Martinez
Marco Petruzzi CEO of Green Dot Charter Corporation
Ref Rodriguez Charter school developer with PUC Corporation
Rich and Rachel Rogers
Lindsay Sturman and Ben Paul
Ron Stone
Gene Straub
Irene Sumida Fenton Avenue Corporate Charter School
Ann Wexler
Caprice Young CORO, corporate reformer, former LAUSD Board member, currently with the Laura and John Arnold Foundation
Megan and Peter Chernin President/Chair of Deasy's LA Fund and also on LA's Promise board
Virginia and Austin Beutner Billionaire who ran for mayor, anti-public school activists
Carol and Frank Biondi
Rebecca and Troy Carter
Leah and Sam Fischer Financial supporters of the Gabriella Charter Corporation
Areva Martin Charter school industry

We need a board member who will represent everyone, not just the financial interests of the charter school sector and the ideology of the 1%. We need Dr. George McKenna!

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