Walmart puts big money into education so the poor can have high paying jobs with benefits

[geefloyd46]

The faces that dominate the education reform debate today—where "education reform" means increased reliance on standardized tests, the results of which are then used to determine the fates of teachers whose job security has been weakened—are people like former Washington, D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and Harlem Children's Zone CEO Geoffrey Canada. They are, or can be packaged as, dynamic and visionary, educators who are passionate about kids. But lots of teachers could fit that bill, so why is someone like Michelle Rhee, who has spent very little time in the classroom, so prominent while the average teacher faces cutbacks and scapegoating? The answer, as in so many things, involves money. Not just any money. Billionaire money. Hedge fund money. Goldman Sachs money. Bill Gates money and Walton money. Michelle Rhee and Geoffrey Canada are prominent because they embody a set of ideas attractive to major philanthropists working to remake public education into their own vision of how the world works.


[link:http://laborspains.blogspot.com/2012/05/you-can-certainly-tell-when-walmart.html|

[xchrom]

1. Du rec. Nt

[JDPriestly]

2. Fact is, and I can speak on this because I worked in fundraising and especially

grant-writing and management for some years.

The wealthy not only manage the financial, industrial, retail. communications (TV and radio) and healthcare sectors of the economy, but they manage the charitable giving sector too. That means that wealthy people manage the non-profits, sometimes directly through board memberships, and sometimes indirectly through "gifts" and foundation grants and endowments.

Of course, they have neatly tied up their control and ownership of the government too.

Basically, our entire culture, our entire nation is pretty much run by the rich for the rich.

The only exception is the internet, maybe. And if you are really, really poor, and not just formerly middle-class now impoverished, you can't afford a computer or internet access, so you are pretty much reduced to no social power at all.
And if you want to volunteer for some great sounding cause, you will probably be asked to give a donation or buy tickets for something and your status with the organization for which you are volunteering will be determined by how much money, not how much time you give. There are exceptions, but you are lucky if you can find them.

I am cynical about charitable giving and non-profits as you can tell.

We really have to change this, and the only way I know to do it is to raise the marginal tax rate on the wealthy and fund a lot more of the charitable projects with that tax money.

For those of you who think that Occupy is purposeless and that the Occupiers should be working through the established political process, please keep what I have said in mind.

I am speaking from experience. This is not a conspiracy theory or conjecture.

I took courses on non-profit management and have broad experience in the working world. The more I learned, the more cynical I became.

[Fumesucker]

3. "The more I learned, the more cynical I became."

That's been my path through life also, the more I learn the more cynical I become.

[JDPriestly]

4. It is sad. I am not proud of that fact.

It has been my lot in life to be present at a number of historically important moments -- just through chance, to have seen the slums of an Northern city in the 1950s, segregation in the South around that time, the Kennedy assassination, the Viet Nam years, the Nixon lies and abuses of power, the oil crises of the 1970s, the Reagan recession, the Bush riots (in Los Angeles after Rodney King), the excessive and unwarranted hypocrisy of the Republicans during the Clinton years, the Bush II years (too much awful stuff to even mention), Obama's abysmal human rights record, internet snooping and abuses of police power against Occupiers, attacks on Social Security and Medicare, a lack of concern for the environment beginning in my early childhood, homelessness, selfishness on the part of the very rich -- how could I be anything but cynical?

I was in Munich when the Russians marched into Czechoslovakia -- also in Paris in 1968 when cars were burning in the streets. And then of course all the misdeeds that have followed.

The only hope I see is for people to acknowledge that fact that we cannot rely on leaders to set policy. We have to push them to set good policy.

Many people say that we should move away from our computers and get out in the world if we want change.

But since the advent of the computer and sites like DU, I have seen consciousness change and grow. People, even those duped by the right-wing propaganda, are beginning to see the world with enlightened, questioning eyes. So in spite of my cynicism, I hope that we can learn from each other and think more clearly as we communicate more often and with more people.

I also derive hope in the fact that various religions in the world, which have often been the locus of both social change and stagnation are becoming more aware of what each of them has to offer, what they need to learn from each other and how they need to change.

The authorities feel threatened by the challenges to the superficial aspects of their belief systems. The anger of the Catholic hierarchy in the face of changing sexual mores is a good example of how rigid people fight change.

There is a tremendous movement and shaking of consciousness going on, and I hope that it ends in peace and not in war.