Doug Martin and Hoosier School Heist at Purdue University

by Doug Martin

Doug Martin speaks on his book Hoosier School Heist at the Purdue Social Justice Coalition's November 12, 2015 event entitled “Exposé: The Profit Motive Behind Public Education Reform in Indiana.”   Introduction by Dr. Bill Mullen, a Purdue professor and writer for the Socialist Worker.  Plus, the Purdue Social Justice Coalition's Tiffany Montoya gives an update on the many protests going on at Purdue.

Matt Ubelhor, the Walmart/Amway Family Greeder

by Doug Martin

With $106,000 of in-kind contributions from Mitch Daniels’ school privatizing Aiming Higher PAC (page 7), $13,000 of in-kind contributions (page 11) from Brian Bosma,  a $1,500 direct deposit from Mike Pence’s committee (page 10),  and $53,000 (page 8) in hard cash from the anti-critical thinking Indiana Chamber’s Indiana Business for Responsible Government PAC, Matt Ubelhor, Indiana's state rep. from district 62, in 2010 fed his pockets and his ego with $61,000 of the Walton/DeVos/hedge fund Hoosiers for Economic Growth PAC money (page 7) and officially became a Walmart/Amway politician.

It was a good year for the Hoosiers for Economic Growth PAC, with mega-bucks pouring in from Overstock.com's Patrick Byrne, defrauder Jerry Slusser (both mentioned in Hoosier School Heist), and others.

And Ubelhor's cozy relationship with the chief funders of the corporate school movement in Indiana has not ended.  In December 2013, the Hoosiers for Economic Growth PAC handed Ubelhor $500 (page 9) more.

Mitch, Mike, Brian, the Chamber, and others adore the handsome Republican from Bristow, Indiana, but Ubelhor is a true Walmart/Amway Republican, first and foremost. 

Look for more dough coming to Ubelhor from this group soon.  But beware.  They have changed the PAC’s name to the Hoosiers for Quality Education Political Action Committee in an attempt to throw muckslingers like me off track, but it won’t work. 
 

I know whose bed Matt Ubelhor sleeps in every single night and what corporate privatizers he welcomes at his door.  

The Daniels-Lumina-ALEC-Sallie Mae-Purdue-Gallup Index: What Everyone Needs to Know

by Doug Martin

As a means to hold Purdue and other universities “accountable,” Mitch Daniels, in late December, announced the Purdue-Gallup Index which will track how well students in higher education fit into the US workforce.  Anyone who followed Daniels' corporate school agenda while he was governor (or anyone following the corporate school leaders anywhere, for that matter) understands that using false measurements is a way to slash art teachers’ jobs and classes, fire teachers to create a temporary teaching workforce, turn schools completely over to private companies, and train workers for an imaginary workforce so that those who do land jobs will be paid pennies because of a flooded market. Now Daniels, Barack Obama, and others are starting to use the same disaster capitalism tactics on higher-education.  One only needs to look at the Lumina Foundation for Education, the main group funding the Purdue-Gallup Index to get a clue what this is all about.  

The Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation for Education has $1.4 billion in assets and is a major player in the quest to completely privatize higher education across the country. A private outfit, Lumina promotes the skills-gap myth nonstop so that the public schools at all levels can be turned into workforce training grounds so corporations don’t have to pay their own money to train workers. 

But the group has even more sinister motives. Lumina was founded when the USA Group sold one billion dollars of student loan debt to Sallie Mae.  Lumina's board chair is John Lintzenich, USA Group's former CEO and former CEO of Sallie Mae. Part of Lumina’s Goals 2025 plan is to have 60 percent of Americans acquire college degrees, which will no doubt increase the profit of student loan lenders like Sallie Mae, which is still a funder of Lumina (watch at 13:46 here).

And Mitch Daniels, Purdue's president, has many ties to Lumina.

MITCH, MUTZ, AND THE INDIANA CORPORATE SCHOOL COMPLEX

From 2002-2010, John Mutz chaired the Lumina Foundation, now still sits on its board, directs the for-profit Clarian Health Ventures, and is on CID Equity Partners’ advisory board in Indiana. Mutz has spent over $100,000 funding the campaigns of Mitch Daniels, Daniels' Aiming Higher PAC, Tony Bennett, Todd Rokita, and Indiana Republicans, and in 2011 handed $5,000 to Mike Pence.

A past trustee for the Friedmanite and former-Indianapolis-based Hudson Institute, former lieutenant governor of Indiana, previous Conseco official (Conseco has had its fair-share of corruption, as I point out in Hoosier School Heist), and one-time president of PSI Energy, Mutz was Lilly Endowment’s president from 1989-1993. He was also a director at the rightwing GEO Foundation’s 21^st Century Charter School (tons of good dirt in my book on GEO), an Indianapolis Charter Schools Board member, and co-chair and funder of the billionaire Betsy DeVos-run front-group, All Children Matter, in Indiana. In 2006, All Children Matter was fined $5.2 million for funneling corporate school reform cash into Ohio, but that didn’t stop them from using Citizens United and Terre Haute lawyer James Bopp, Jr. to do the same dirty work to buy out legislators in Indiana and several other states a few years ago. 

And that was when the attack on Indiana schools truly began.

Alongside hedge fund managers calling themselves Democrats and Daniels and Bush family operative and current Lumina board member Al Hubbard (who used Jeb Bush and Betsy DeVos to write the corporate school agenda in Indiana before even Tony Bennett was aware of it), John Mutz helped buy out the Indianapolis Public School board race, so that the rich could carry on their school privatization in Indianapolis, regardless.
 
In October 2012, along with Eli Lilly, the Joyce Foundation (the school privatization outfit where Obama used to work), and Enron’s Arnold family, the Lumina Foundation financed Indy Mayor Ballard’s corporate school blueprint What’s Possible. 

Lumina Foundation and Eli Lilly both have operatives at Indiana University’s Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence, named after our good buddy Randall.  Randall Tobias, a big Mitch Daniels funder and one-time Eli Lilly chairman emeritus, is best known for his role in George W. Bush’s administration promoting a religious right anti-AIDS and anti-prostitution public policy while he himself was sleeping with prostitutes.  Tobias is a dear friend of multi-millionaire Christel DeHaan and helped raise money for her charter school franchise.  One of DeHaan’s charter schools recently received an “F” grade even though Tony Bennett rigged it the year before to make DeHaan, his campaign lady, happy. 

LUMINA AND ALEC; THE FUNDING, THE PROPAGANDA, THE PLAN 

Recently, the Lumina Foundation gave $150,000 to the Aspen Institute, which has Koch Brothers’ David Koch and Condi Rice, among others, on its board.  The Aspen Institute made its name as an anti-public school mega-rich outfit when Stand for Children’s Jonah Edelman bragged at an Aspen event about using hedge fund managers to buy out Democrats in Illinois to throw teachers and students under the bus.

This year, Lumina slid $75,000 to Mitch Daniels Leadership Foundation’s Arc Leadership Award, too, and Lumina has  funded the Bill Clinton-privatization spin-off think tank the New American Foundation and dozens of shady groups involved in higher education. 

In order to land a seat on its Education Task Force in 2008, Lumina gave $300,000 to the American Legislative Exchange Council, better known as ALEC, to kick in gear the complete privatization of state universities across America.  The Badger Democracy Blog (in an article worth reading in its entirety) points out that Lumina’s talking points of making it possible for every American to get a good college education is just a smokescreen.  Lumina’s “Four Steps to Finishing First” is a scheme to tie university performance to state funding, run universities like businesses, make faculty and staff pay more for their health plans, and spread online learning onto campuses.

Recently, Governor Scott Walker used Lumina to map the University of Wisconsin System's new online learning program, among other things, to beef up the “ALEC and neo-con, corporatic agenda to create a crisis" and "defund public education.”  

By founding and funding the Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy (IHELP) located at Sacramento State University in order to disseminate negative and false data and reports to the media, Lumina was also behind the corporate-driven California Community College Board of Governors task force on Student Success report, which led to a bill signed into law by Governor Brown recently.

Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education in July 2012, Eric Kelderman says that

“Lumina's change in focus doesn't mean that the organization will be spending less money, he [Lumina’s leader Jamie P. Merisotis] said. In fact, the foundation will expand its efforts by convening business leaders, lawmakers, higher-education groups, and faculty members to build consensus on specific policy measures.

In addition, he [Lumina’s leader Jamie P. Merisotis] said, Lumina will draft model policies for states, including legislation. The group is already working with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative-leaning organization, to write and introduce bills in statehouses.”

We all know how the ALEC-corporate party went down in Indiana's public schools, and now it's time for the universities to be dismantled.

Sarah Blaskey and Steve Horn sum up best the Lumina plan for Purdue and other universities:

NCSL [National Conference of State Legislatures} has received over $1 million since 2007 from the Lumina Foundation to push the higher education privatization effort in the states. By contrast, ALEC has received $595,000 since 2008 from Lumina, all according to Lumina's web site's section on grants.

The funding stream behind Lumina's existence speaks volumes about the higher education agenda it is pushing. "Lumina Foundation is a conversion foundation created in mid-2000 as USA Group, Inc., the nation's largest private guarantor and administrator of education loans, sold most of its operating assets to Sallie Mae," explains Lumina on its web site.

Sallie Mae, lo and behold, gave nearly $21 billion dollars in student loans in fiscal year 2009, feasting on skyrocketing student tuition fees, which are directly linked to the "flexibility" efforts the foundation Sallie Mae bankrolls is pushing through NCSL (and ALEC).

In the meantime, scores of students are defaulting on these student loans.

PREORDER DOUG MARTIN'S HOOSIER SCHOOL HEIST HERE

   

 

 

 

United Way of Central Indiana to Start the Mitch Daniels/Dennis Bakke/Bart Peterson Handouts to the Corporate School Wealthy

by Doug Martin

While some United Way branches across the Hoosier state are investing in early learning initiatives like Success by Six, the United Way of Central Indiana, now run by former Mitch Daniels, Dennis Bakke, and Bart Peterson operative Ann Murtlow, is planning on handing out cash  to charter schools in Boone, Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks, Marion ,and Morgan counties.  In a press release to Inside Indiana Business and other outlets, United Way of Central Indiana officials write that “Grants for one to three years can range from $50,000 to $750,000” and will target poverty-stricken schools not doing well on standardized tests.

Even though the United Way of Central Indiana says it plans to also set aside money for traditional public schools, the history of its new CEO raises serious questions.  First off, Ann Murtlow has worked with the fake liberals at the Mind Trust who claim they are out to benefit poor kids and teachers as they connive to funnel money to blended learning schools run by their friends like Earl Martin Phalen (who was just rewarded the Mitch Daniels Leadership Foundation Award) and replace real teachers with boot-camp trained corporate teachers at Teach for America and the New Teachers Project.  Among other things, the Mind Trust plan is actually the pseudo-liberal Center for American Progress and rightwing Fordham Foundation  plan:  eliminate local school boards so that mayors can replace them with people who will hand more taxpayer money to wealthy charter school operators. 

Murtlow used to be the senior vice chair of the Mind Trust, and the United Way of Central Indiana was funding the school privatizing group even before Murtlow was hired to run it.  From 2011 to 2012, the United Way of Central Indiana handed $25,000 to the Mind Trust (page 111 in PDF) and another $25,000 (page 46 in PDF) from 2010-2011.  This is sure to escalate now that Murtlow is in charge.

But United Way of Central Indiana’s CEO Ann Murtlow has ties to other shady characters in the Indiana corporate school complex, specifically Mitch Daniels and Dennis Bakke.  Murtlow is a former bigwig at the Indianapolis Power and Light Company (IPALCO) and previously worked as an AES Corporation liaison at the same time Mitch Daniels was an IPALCO board member, then joined IPALCO in 2002.

AES, IPALCO, Mitch Daniels, and Dennis Bakke—who now steals taxpayer money through his for-profit charter school outfit Imagine Schools—were up to serious monkey business a few years back.  As Ifirst noted in the Indianapolis Star  in November 2010 and later at Bloomington’s Common Errant,  in 2001 Mitch Daniels was on the board of the Indianapolis Power and Light Company, which merged with Bakke’s then-company AES, a monster utility corporation.  Daniels and others on the IPALCO board dumped their own stock before the merger took place. Afterwards, IPALCO stockholders and workers lost millions, including their 401k packages.  In fact, as a result of this merger, both Daniels and Bakke were sued for insider trading together in 2003.  While IPALCO board members and officials went home, “according to the lawsuit filings, with an estimated $43.6 million in profits and golden-parachute benefits,” retirees and IPALCO workers lost $95 million, says a Republican lawyer who represented the workers and shareholders in an insider trading lawsuit against Daniels, Bakke, and others in 2003.  Dan Coats, now an Indiana U.S. senator, and Barry Sharp, who works for Bakke’s Imagine Schools, were also involved.  No criminal charges were ever filed, and the courts, quite conveniently, dismissed the civil lawsuits.

Dennis Bakke is also the billionaire member of the Fellowship, better known as the Family, a Christian Right biblical capitalism secretive group in DC.  His Imagine Schools is one of the most corrupt for-profit charter school outfits in the nation and in Indiana, known for its rent schemes which funnel millions to him and leave kids without textbooks.  Bakke’s outfit runs the Imagine Indiana Life Sciences Academy West in Murtlow’s United Way of Central Indiana’s backyard. The United Way of Central Indiana, headquartered in Indianapolis, has plenty of shady for-profit charter schools in the city to choose from, many of them failing and not being held to accountability, and Imagine Schools is a perfect candidate for a bailout.  

Dennis Bakke knows a lot about government bailouts.  Besides getting $11 million from Obama’s Recovery Act (to supposedly put people back to work after the Dennis Bakke’s of the world crashed the economy), Bakke’s Imagine Schools was allowed to keep millions in Indiana taxpayer money when Ball State (after years of playing dumb so they could get the sponsorship fee) closed Imagine’s Fort Wayne school.  To solve that problem and rake in a few more millions, Bakke and crew merged with the Horizon Christian Academy and will now collect state money through vouchers.  In fact, its $3.6 million charter school taxpayer loans were forgiven by the state and details of the merger with the private Christian school were not released to the public.

Some of the United Way of Central Indiana’s money may indeed go to worthy traditional schools for well-needed programs, but Murtlow’s history with those out to privatize Indiana schools tells me something else is going to happen here and it’s not going to be pretty.  Neither does its board of directors which includes Mitch Daniels sister, Deborah J. and a whole slew of school privatizers and behind-the-scene players: hedge fund Democrat for Education reform lawmaker Mary Ann Sullivan, Mind Trust donor Beverley Pitts, Tindley charter school's John Neighbors, IPS corporate school board member Sam Odle, and Mark Miles.  Miles, if we remember, was crafting the corporate school overhaul in Indiana before even Tony Bennett knew what was going on.  Speaking of hedge funds, the United Way of Central Indiana has $5.2 million invested in them (see page 27 in PDF). In fact, if you turn to page 29 of the group’s tax forms, you see these hedge funds are operated in Central America and the Caribbean.  And let’s not forget this board gave $9,000 to the Mitch Daniels-founded Oaks Academy private school (see page 145 in PDF) between 2011 and 2012 and $10,000 in (page 50 in PDF) from 2010 to 2011.

It’s not known yet how much money Murtlow is raking in by running the United Way of Central Indiana, but the past CEO made over $250,000 in total compensation in 2012 (see page 18 in PDF) And let’s not forget, college-drop out and school privatizer Bill Gates is a major funder of the United Way across the U.S.  I am sure Murtlow would like some of that Gates money to increase her take-home pay.  

 

 

 

 

Guest Post: Fight Club Fantasies of the Corporate Education Deformers

By John Thompson

Political scientist Patrick McGuinn wrote a sympathetic account of education reform advocacy organizations (ERAOs) that gather in Washington, D.C. The ERAOs, "compare notes and plot strategy in what is (half in jest) referred to as 'fight club.'" I wonder if they would be so enthusiastic about political bloodletting if more of their members had been covered in the blood of actual students.

Viewing schools from 30,000 feet, it is easy for "reformers" to simply blame the teachers unions that they "derisively called the 'blob.'" Glorying in rhetorical violence, accountability hawks seek to destroy the members of the educational "status quo," under the assumption that disruptive innovation will somehow create better alternatives. It is easier to kick down a barn, however, than to build one. And anyone who has labored to turnaround a school that accepts every child who walks through the door knows that it is harder to improve the toughest neighborhood schools than it is to start a charter that can kick out the most challenging kids.

McGuinn is one of many political scientists who are intrigued by the "brass knuckle" school of reform that has been funded by corporate reformers and edu-philanthropists. He identifies two strands of reform, "system refiners," who embrace accountability, and "system disrupters." He then documents how "it is clear that a new club of reform organizations is itching for a fight and that politicians in both parties are increasingly willing to join them in the ring."

What McGuinn does not mention, however, is evidence that this political combat can benefit kids. McGuinn cites another political scientist, E. E. Schattschneider, who observed that "new policies create new politics." He does not mention the large body of social and cognitive science which explains why test-driven policies have largely failed. Neither does he cite the educational research which explains why it is unlikely that such testing will improve schools that serve intense concentrations of trauma and generational poverty.

For non-educators and non-students, a coalition that unites (former?) Democrats like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee with Republicans like Jeb Bush and Mitch Daniels is an object of fascination. In a man-bites-dog twist, the Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), for instance, has taken the lead in attacking teachers unions and firing teachers based on primitive metrics that may or may not say anything about their actual performance. For scholars who do not have any skin in the schooling game, it must be fun to listen to the ERAO's trash talk, and how they want a "Republican counterpart to DFER--mdash;which insiders jokingly refer to as ReeFER."

This social engineering experiment known as "reform" took off in the early 1990s, as "New Democrats" sought replacements for the old New Deal/Fair Deal safety nets. Presumably these bright and good-hearted reformers would have been equally happy to fix welfare or health care for the old fogies in those fields, but they ended up setting education practitioners straight. The era's reform de jour was the "instructional triangle" where "teachers engage with students on subject matter." So, "reformers" leaped to a quick and cheap solution. Teachers were "deputized" as the point of the spear in a battle against poverty.

Nearly a generation of new research, however, has confirmed decades of previous social science which explains why the instructional triangle is inherently incapable of turning around our toughest schools, and why socio-emotional interventions and trusting relationships are needed. We now have even more evidence how and why test-driven accountability leads to gimmicks that encourage educational malpractice, while undermining the trust and the teamwork necessary for overcoming the legacy of poverty. In fact, many or most reformers who teach in charter schools could explain the same thing. Something tells me, though, that few classroom teachers of any type make their soirees.

When I was an academic, I loved to study grand and dramatic concepts like "creative destruction." So, I see the allure of big ideas like "disruptive innovation," and I see why new activists want to show that the scholarly canon is wrong. Political tsunamis are much more thrilling to witness, even if failed cataclysms are not so enjoyable for those on the ground.

My views changed as I came to know and love students. So, I wonder about the total number of hospital visits that have been made by the attendees of ERAO get-togethers, or how many students' funerals they have attended. I wonder how many unconscious kids they have held after students were assaulted at school or succumbed to an untreated chronic condition. Similarly, if "reformers" believe that their primitive bubble-in tests are a valid measure of students' learning, I doubt they have had much experience sharing the joys of teaching and learning. Had ERAO members shared enough deep relationships with students, they would show more respect to poor kids' minds. If they are still willing to use standardized testing to defeat their adult enemies, I question whether they grasp the insults their metrics are imposing on the children who they want to help.

I suspect that most of these "reformers" are oblivious to out-of-school factors that hinder classroom performance because they have little concrete understanding of communities suffering from extreme poverty. They would have to be supermen to expend so much effort defeating their adult enemies and to still be able to produce good for schools. I also find it hard to believe that the ERAOs would revel in the "Fight Club" imagery if they had spent much time in the ring fighting the real fight.

Dr. John Thompson was an award-winning historian, lobbyist, and guerilla-gardener who became an award-winning inner city teacher after crack and gangs hit his neighborhood. He blogs at thisweekineducation.com, and huffingtonpost.com, and is writing a book on 18 years of idealistic politics in the classroom and realistic politics outside.

"Red Menace" Daniels Signs Bill Maim Collective Bargaining of Indiana Teachers

The whitest and shortest Tea Party governor of the U. S. has signed legislation to silence any voice that teachers have at the bargaining table regarding teaching conditions, curriculum, class size, evaluation procedures, field trips, or any other education issue outside of salary or working hours.  This new big government takeover of local issues is just the latest example of how Koch-inspired ideology has made it necessary for local control Republicans to be replaced by corporate oligarchs who know best what is needed at the local level.

With these new restrictions to union participation in place, we will see very soon now the same corporate education agenda that the U. S. Chamber of Horrors is sending out to every state that will take their dirty money or that will be intimidated by their lies. Story appears below this letter by an Indiana teacher:

You may not have heard yet, but we educators in Indiana are about to lose nearly all of our current collective bargaining rights. A bill is now headed to Governor Daniels signed yesterday] that will cut those rights back to almost nothing.

 

The current law says they MUST bargain on salary, wages & hours only, with a list of subjects such as working conditions, curriculum, etc. that CAN be bargained on.

 

But this was too much for the ruling class to handle and bargaining will now only be on salary & benefits. I now feel like we are on the road to serfdom & I am a simple wage slave under the boot of the oligarchy.

 

And the ISTA never even called for a statewide strike. (I am seriously considering leaving the union next year) And most teachers in the state were ambivalent at best and did nothing serious to fight it.

 

Our evaluation system is also about to be dramatically changed, and not in a good way.

 

This is a catastrophe........

 

Brent Holt
Jeffersonville, IN

From the Tribune-Star:

TERRE HAUTE — Teachers’ unions in Indiana will no longer be able to negotiate such items as school calendars, class size or teacher evaluation procedures under a new law that restricts collective bargaining rights.

“It limits local control on what we can and cannot bargain,” said Shane Grimes, area Uniserv director with the Indiana State Teachers Association.

On Wednesday, Gov. Mitch Daniels signed Senate Bill 575 into law. It prohibits contracts between school districts and teachers unions from including anything other than wages and wage-related benefits. The GOP-led Indiana Senate voted 30-19 Tuesday for the bill, which had previously been approved by the Republican-ruled House.

The teacher collective bargaining law has been in place since 1973, Grimes said.

He doesn’t understand how dismantling that law, and taking away most items that are negotiated, helps local people have more control, he said.

Vigo County Schools Superintendent Dan Tanoos said he does not agree with the changes to the collective bargaining law. “We bargain very cooperatively with our teachers association,” he said. The new law “is a step backwards.”

The Legislature is using a “broad brush” approach that affects all school districts because of problems with collective bargaining agreements in some school systems. “It takes the administration to accept those agreements,” he said, and those superintendents should share in the blame where problems exist.

In some districts, SB 575 may mean “wholesale changes” in teacher working conditions, Tanoos said.

In Vigo County, “We have a great relationship and we want to maintain that working relationship,” Tanoos said. Even though the law has changed, “I still think we would want to have meaningful discussion” on issues affecting teachers.

The Vigo County Teachers Association and administration have begun contract talks early this year, and Tanoos hopes an agreement can be reached in about a month. The new legislation, which takes effect July 1, is a factor in the early negotiations this year, he said.

Dan Vukovits, co-president of the Rockville teachers association, said he wasn’t familiar with all the details, but he believes SB 575 does represent a loss of local control as far as school communities, boards, administrators and teachers “working through issues that happen locally.”

SB 575 “will turn things upside down” in public education, Vukovits said.

 Two provisions of the law take effect immediately:

• Current teacher contracts may not extend past the budget biennium.

• Districts may not collectively bargain teacher evaluation procedures or criteria. According to the state Department of Education, teachers will still be involved in evaluation procedures and criteria through “required discussions with school leadership.”

One teacher concerned about the changes affecting public education is Dan Wunderlich, a chemistry teacher at Terre Haute South Vigo High School who has taught for 39 years.

“The entire atmosphere that’s been established in the state and nationally is concerning to a lot of people,” Wunderlich said. Many educators worry that talented people who are considering going into the profession will decide otherwise “because of all the negatives being thrown out.”

He believes SB 575 will take away the team approach that now exists between teachers and school officials. “I’ve always felt that we had moved away from the ‘us and them’ situation and we were really approaching our profession as a team,” Wunderlich said. He believes SB 575 “is going to move us away from the team approach and back to a situation that could evolve to ‘us and them’.”

What’s happening at the Statehouse “is disheartening,” and the changes have occurred very quickly, Wunderlich said. “I can feel the difference when I talk to my colleagues. There is a real feeling of uneasiness.”

Mitch "Red Menace" Daniels Going for the Public Jugular

With the reckless urgency that marks a desperate cynical scrambling to sustain a corporate welfare education scheme that is doomed by its own greedy overreaching and fraudulent machinations , the Koch Industry governors have gone All In to dismantle public schools and to crush teachers and staff.  From Nick Anderson at WaPo:

INDIANAPOLIS - The Republican faceoff with labor unions in the Midwest and elsewhere marks not just a fight over money and collective bargaining, but also a test of wills over how to improve the nation's schools.


GOP governors are pushing to limit teacher bargaining rights, dismantle teacher tenure and channel public money toward private schools. All are direct challenges to the teachers unions and their mostly Democratic political allies in Congress and in statehouses across the nation.

This approach to school reform is far more confrontational than President Obama's and threatens to polarize what has been a largely bipartisan movement to overhaul education. Analysts say teachers might grow leery of signing onto a school improvement agenda if they believe it will trample their rights.

"This is big," Rick Muir, president of the Indiana Federation of Teachers, said of the Republican agenda. "It's not one item. It's not two. They've seized the opportunity to go on the attack. They're going for the jugular."

Here in Indiana, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R), a possible 2012 presidential contender, and several of his Republican peers are pushing a bill to connect teacher evaluations with test scores, launch a system of performance-based pay and make it easier to dismiss teachers repeatedly rated ineffective or in need of improvement. Other Daniels-backed bills would offer publicly funded vouchers to help children of low to moderate means attend private school and narrow the scope of collective bargaining to wages and benefits.. . .

Three Koch Bros. Governors Back Off Union Eradication Plan

Mitch "Red Menace" Daniels' announcement yesterday that he and his legislative goon squad would ease back is a sign that the wingnuts have overplayed their hand--or that Daniels and Co. can now proceed with the public school eradication plan while appearing as compromising moderates.  I suspect the latter.

From FireDogLake:

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, responding to the flight of Democratic lawmakers from the state House, denying Republicans a quorum to pass union-busting bills, asked Republicans in his party to stop work on the bill, allowing the Democrats to return and operations in the legislature to continue.

Daniels told reporters this afternoon that he expects House Democrats will return to work if the bill dies. It would be unfortunate if other bills are caught up in the turmoil, he said.

He will not send out state police to corral the Democrats, the Republican governor said.

The Democrat (sic) minority has right to express its views, he added.

The governor clung to his view that this is not the year to tackle right to work.

Daniels has basically held this position for a while, that he didn’t want to bring up the “right-to-work” bill this year. He would rather see Republicans in the legislature work on his education reform and criminal justice reform proposals.

That doesn’t mean Daniels is some big union supporter, however. He has said he supports the policy, but he just doesn’t want it to go forward at this time. In 2005, Daniels de-certified all public employee unions in Indiana, so he’s well ahead of Scott Walker in terms of union-busting. He has, in fact, called public employee unions the most powerful special interests in America today. So let’s not be fooled by this kinder, gentler approach from a potential Presidential candidate.

But it’s significant to see Daniels pull back so quickly from the fight. Rick Snyder in Michigan and Rick Scott in Florida are two other Republican Governors who backed away from any Walker-style plan to take away public employee collective bargaining rights. The polling shows antipathy toward these kinds of plans. And even Republicans follow the polls sometimes. . .  .

An Indiana Teacher's Close Encounter with "Red Menace" Daniels

Last Tuesday over a thousand teachers and parents showed up to lobby at the Indiana State House in Indianapolis.  Below is a news clip of the event and below that is a testimonial from a 38 year veteran art teacher who had a close encounter with what turned into a bulging-eyed and red-faced menace--Governor Mitch Daniels.



TESTIMONIAL FROM A MEMBER AT WESTERN (HOWARD COUNTY) WHO LOBBIED TUESDAY

On Tues. Jan. 25th, 2011, I went to Indianapolis to help lobby for public schools, their students, and teachers. You see I graduated from public schools, as did my husband, and our 3 children. ( Katie, a public school teacher, Jonathan a lawyer, and Molly a medical doctor, where did I go wrong?)  I have taught art in public schools since 1973. I love my students, my job, and my school.

Enough about me.... as I am walking through the halls of our state capital I see a small group of teachers talking to the governor of Indiana and I join them to hear him speak. One of the first things I heard our Governor say was "You teachers are all making to much money. You are all making 22% more than the taxpayers who are paying your salaries." A lady said her children are on free and reduced lunches and she was a teacher. One teacher did speak up in her defense and said she had 6 years of college. The Governor asked her what kind of a teacher she was and she replied a "very good teacher."

The Governor then said "well the rest of the teachers at her school must not be very good then because not everyone can be a very good teacher." He went on to say that 90% of the teacher evaluations in our state say that the teachers are excellent. And our education is horrible. "One half of our state budget goes to education and that is ridiculous! Our state has the highest amount being paid out to fund education.... and our education is terrible!" the Governor replied.

One teacher said it is not terrible and we are talking about our future, our children. She was ignored. "We have 300 school districts in Indiana and that is ridiculous. We need to cut that in 1/2" the Governor said. A senior student from Taylor High School stepped in. "Sir, I am a 21st Century scholar and I am concerned about the $3500 you want to give to seniors to leave school after their Jr. year. They need that year to figure out what they want to  do and the schools can use that money . You will be hurting the school budgets." The Governor pointed at her and accused her of taking money away from the poor students. She tried to get him to see her side. She was ignored. "Other states are watching us to see what we do with our education programs. I get calls every day" the Governor said.  A very soft spoken teacher replied "Sir, I would like very much to discuss some of these issues with you, how do I go about this?" The Gov. said "You just did!" and walked away.

I stood within 2 feet of our Governor and watched as his eyes bulged as he attacked everything said. I felt his disdain and contempt for public schools and teachers. And I felt the respect that should have been given to these public school teachers and students was non-existent. Several teachers have stopped and asked did I have fun in Indy on Tuesday. We left at 8:00 and returned a little after 5:00. The whole time we were at the statehouse or with ISTA.  None of the other statesman would see us after sending countless notes to them for a few minutes of their time.

I returned to Kokomo tired, more knowledgeable, and feeling very sad about what could happen to our school. But I can't stand by and watch without knowing I could have done something more. I plan on writing another letter, making another call, trying to find a way to let people know what is happening, not only for myself, (I will retire soon) but for my daughter who is only in her 7th year, and for my students, but also for all of you of whom I respect and care for. I encourage you all to do the same or go to the statehouse and see for yourself what we are up against.

Jeanette Sundheimer
Western High School

Mitch Daniels' Red Menace: Public Education

You can tell when the Presidential political season is starting to warm up when the demagoguery contests set in, and this past weekend at CPAC, the would-be Napoleon from Indiana was strutting his stuff and wearing his poker face.  In fact, he'll see Obama a Sputnik Moment and raise him a Red Menace.  Whereas Obama exploits America's golden age of fear to direct a cram-down ed policy, Mitch Daniels uses it to stage an extermination campaign against public services and employees. 

Don't know if Little Mitch has Rove and Luntz on his payroll yet, but this use of metaphor in his CPAC speech is real political genius that goes to the heart of this Koch Brothers Era of American Corporate Politics: the real Enemy, as evil as any dirty Commie Atheist, morphs, as fast as you can say Bolshevik conspiracy, into the myriad incarnations of public spending.  The elimination of the Red Menace requires a war, cold and otherwise, on public spending and those who make their living from it--public employees.  And if we cannot entirely eliminate this class of lice that depend upon free individual citizens to pay their salaries, then we are at least obligated to make them as poor and miserable as the rest of America's workers, whose jobs have been exported along with the American Dream. 

And because public sector employees offer a tangible and, thereby, kickable manifestation of the Red Menace, Daniels declaration has officially opened the hunting season for all the hungry and hate-filled Indiana hillbillies who get lathered up daily watching Fox and listening to Clear Channel hate radio instruct them on whom to resent for their poverty and third world status.

And, thus, as a staging area for a national campaign, the Napoleon from Indiana has declared war on teachers and public schools as a way to focus the hate and to rally the white poor of his State and the Nation who would have signed up with the Klan in earlier days of the other Red Menace. 

It never ceases to amaze how fast the political landscape changes, but even more amazing is how the true political chameleons like Daniels don't miss a beat.  In 2003 when Daniels, as W's Budget Director, was overseeing a $236 billion surplus turn into a $400 billion deficit before his eyes in less than 3 years, he had other fish to fry--or gooses to cook.  This is what he said then about a problem that is now the Red Menace: "a balanced budget is a high priority for this administration; it is not the top or the only priority.”

But as chameleon or plain old political whore, Daniels is going to be hard to match for his slick, pale ferocity that is particularly popular among Yalies with a weakness for well-scrubbed Koch corporate collaborators.  If Daniels and his henchman, Tony Bennett, get their way, public education will become corporate property and teachers will become Walmart-ized like the rest of the Hoosier State.  Bennett has been assigned to keep the NEA bottled up in its spider hole, and so far he's doing a heckuva job.  As if they wanted to come out.

It is obviously going to take some of that Spirit of Cairo to remind this little dictator that there are people out here, rather than speechless pawns he can move around his political chessboard.  I'd say that Indiana parents and teachers need to get with it.

From the AP via Courier-Journal:

By Deanna Martin, Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels' sweeping education agenda has spurred angry protests, hours-long legislative hearings and some of the harshest rhetoric the Statehouse has heard in years.

 

An Indianapolis newspaper headline proclaimed a "war" over Daniels' idea to expand charter schools. Teachers say they are "under attack" from the Republican administration. And House Minority Leader Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, caused some jaws to drop when he said on the House floor last month that teachers are being "Mitch-slapped" by the governor's aggressive agenda.

The language surrounding the fight over Daniels' proposals — including teacher merit pay, limited collective bargaining and vouchers that send taxpayer money to private schools — reflects how passionately both sides feel about the major changes on the horizon. . . .