ALEC AND ELI LILLY: MUCH MORE THAN SCHOOL REFORM

By Doug Martin

When  the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) arrives at the J.W. Marriott in Indianapolis at the end of this month for its annual conference, speakers will include Governor Mike Pence (who headlined ALEC’s 2013 event), Indiana’s U.S. Representative Todd Rokita (not a fan of free or reduced school lunches), online-school K12’s founder William Bennett,  and the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice’s Robert Enlow. 

Indiana is a good fit for ALEC, a “bill mill” organization which works with corporate lawyers and lawmakers to write and pass anti-public legislation across the country.  Up to 29 Hoosier state lawmakers (some Democrats, too) have had ties with ALEC at any given time.  

And then there’s Eli Lilly, the Indianapolis-based global drug maker and longtime ALEC member. 

CORPORATE SCHOOLING

Eli Lilly, ALEC, and Mitch Daniels all played a significant part in school privatization in Indiana, as I detail in my book Hoosier School Heist. 

The former Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy at Eli Lilly and past Indiana governor, Mitch Daniels has schmoozed with ALEC, and his budget director, Chris Atkins, once directed ALEC’s tax and fiscal policy unit. 

 

When Daniels helped launch Purdue’s Polytechnic Indianapolis High School recently, Julie K. Griffith—once the Private Sector Co-Chair for ALEC in Indiana (see pages 168- 170) and Purdue University’s current Vice President for Public Affairs— became a member of the charter school’s board of directors. 

 

A while back, Greenpeace had this to say about Griffith, who was employed by Duke Energy Indiana from 1997-2011 and was the chair of the board of directors for the American Lung Association in Indiana, at one point, too (page 170):

Working alongside ALEC's State Chairmen in Indiana (Rep. David Wolkins and Sen. Jim Buck) is Duke's Vice President of Government Affairs, Julie Griffith. Beyond the numerous contradictions detailed in this blog, perhaps Ms. Griffith would like to explain her role in ALEC, a notable front for the tobacco industry, and her position as chair of the executive leadership team of the American Lung Association. That and her political work for a company that causes lung damage from coal pollution. Just as in South Carolina, Rep. Wolkins and Sen. Buck chose Duke's Julie Griffith to help them oversee ALEC's operations in Indiana, primarily fundraising.

As for the Polytechnic Indianapolis High School, Eli Lilly and the Eli Lilly Foundation’s Robert Smith was happy to write a letter of approval for its application to Indianapolis mayor Greg Ballard’s Office of Education Innovation.

TORT REFORM 

Some of ALEC’s bills presented in statehouses across the U.S. are worked over by lawyers from the defense firm Shook Hardy & Bacon. The firm’s Mark Behrens aided ALEC with the Trespasser Responsibility Act  in 2010 (page 9).  He also has advised ALEC’s Civil Justice Task Force (page 37), alongside the firm’s Phil Goldberg (page 40), Cary Silverman (page 47), and Victor Schwartz, once ALEC’s tort reform lawyer and  another Shook Hardy & Bacon star attorney (page 9). 

A Big Tobacco defender, Shook Hardy & Bacon also has represented Eli Lilly, as has Victor Schwartz and others.  In 2003 alone, Lilly paid Shook Hardy & Bacon $100,000 for lobbying. 

Shook Hardy & Bacon’s Mark C. Hegarty represented “Eli Lilly and Company on a nationwide basis in cases involving Prozac® and diethylstilbestrol.”  

Books like Let Them Eat Prozac, a shocking account written by psychopharmacologist David Healy, devote a good portion of their content to Lilly drug trials. 

When Lilly was caught marketing Zyprexa for off-label use, it was fined $1.415 billion in 2009, which included a “a criminal fine of $515 million, the largest ever in a health care case, and the largest criminal fine for an individual corporation ever imposed in a United States criminal prosecution of any kind.” Some of this money was used for states to resolve civil allegations.  

Tort reform, nationwide, would truly benefit Lilly’s bottom-line.

TASK FORCES

Eli Lilly pays $3000 yearly to be a member of ALEC’s Health and Human Services Task Force, as its own internal documents show, and the drug company funds the campaigns of Indiana legislators who also are members of this task force. 

Rep. Timothy Brown (R-41), who sits on the ALEC Health and Human Services Task Force, has received $13,900.00 total in campaign financing from Eli Lilly and the Eli Lilly PAC. 

ALEC State Legislator of the Year in 2014, Rep. David Frizzell (R-93), who has also been an ALEC board member and member of its Health and Human Services Task Force, has been handed $7,050.00 from the mega-drug company/PAC.

What is the role of ALEC’s Health and Human Services Task Force?  For one, it seeks to deregulate an already overly industry-friendly and incestuous FDA in an attempt to weaken the review of medical therapies and new drugs.  The task force also opposes any cost control on prescription drugs and seeks to let drug makers self-regulate and “opposes binding regulations on sales incentives for doctors to prescribe certain drugs.” 

Rep. Bill Friend (R-23),  a member of ALEC’s  Civil Justice Task Force, has received $6,700.00 from Lilly and its PAC for his campaigns.  Eli Lilly’s lobbyist Shook Hardy & Bacon is a member of ALEC’s Civil Justice Task Force, which deals with tort reform.

LILLY’S ALEC FUNDING 

ALEC operates a “scholarship fund” which pays for lawmakers to travel across the country to its conferences and meetings.  Alongside PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America), which has given $356,075 to the scholarship fund, as Common Cause points out, Eli Lilly has donated at least $70,750.00. 

In 2011, Lilly was a $5,000 sponsor of ALEC’s annual conference and again in 2013.  In 2014, Lilly moved up a notch to a “Director” level donor, alongside Big Oil and Big Coal.

For creating Improving Outcomes or Undermining Quality? A Look at "Comparative Effectiveness Research" in Medicine, Lilly handed ALEC a $20,000 grant in 2008 (page 2).

LILLY’S FOUNDATION AND ALEC

The Eli Lilly Foundation, funded by Lilly, is also connected to ALEC via the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), a think-tank started by former Republican and Tea Party leader Dick Armey. 

Lilly’s Foundation gave the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) $10,000 in 2008 (see page 33). 

As the Center for Public Integrity’s Alex Cohen has written, “IPI has published reports opposing drug re-importation and price controls and defending the industry's lavish spending on advertising, especially the kind of direct-to-consumer advertising also touted by the American Foundation for Urologic Disease. Dr. Merrill Matthews Jr., the IPI expert who authored the drug advertising report, also works as an advisor for the American Legislative Exchange Council,” which has “taken stands against importation and legislative price controls.”

The Lilly Foundation, too, has funded the Galen Institute (a free-market healthcare policy group supported by the pharmaceutical and medical industries), whose CEO, Grace-Marie Turner, spoke at ALEC’s 2004 Seattle conference about the benefits of the Medicare Drug Card Program. 

First offered in 2004, the drug card discount program appears to have been partially a ruse.

Joseph Antos—the American Enterprise Institute’s healthcare guru who also presented at ALEC’s 2004 meeting—said that if the drug discount program was a public relations success, the reimportation issue, which infuriates seniors who want to purchase cheaper medicine from other countries, "loses its steam," so then "Republicans can say 'look what we did, it worked.'" 

The Eli Lilly and Company Foundation handed the Galen Institute $30,000 in 2008 for a “Prescription Drug Education Project” (see page 29) and another $10,000 in 2007 for “Health Care Policy Research” (see page 39)

Galen’s CEO Turner in 2011, pulled in over $241,000 (page 7).

THE INDY RALLY AGAINST ALEC

The movie The United States of ALEC will be shown on July 10, 2016 at 6:00pm at the Center for Inquiry. 

On July 11, 2016, a panel discussion on ALEC will take place at 6:00pm at the Central Library. 

Also, there will be a protest against ALEC in Indianapolis on July 27, 2016 from 3:30-6:30pm at the Indiana State House. 

As the author of  Hoosier School Heist,  Doug Martin’s research has been used by or referenced in Salon, Alternet, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, PBS, and newspapers and radio shows across Indiana and America.  His newest book project deals with Big Pharma, Big Medicine, the Cancer Industry, hospital fraud, and nursing home and health care corruption in Indiana.

A Few “Facts” and Questions for Indiana Democrat Justin Moed

by Doug Martin

Straight off the heels of meeting private and charter school students at the statehouse rally for school privatization (sponsored by Hoosiers for Quality Education, Charter Schools USA, K-12 online learning, and many other groups detailed in my book Hoosier School Heist,) Indianapolis Democrat representative Justin Moed, who I am told is a supporter of supt. Glenda Ritz, was retweeting posts by the Hoosiers for Quality Education PAC, H4QED, yesterday.

Hoosiers for Quality Education, formerly known as the Hoosiers for Economic Growth PAC, is the single most dangerous school privatizing group in Indiana.  It is the Amway/Walmart/hedge fund PAC which has funded Republicans in this state from day one to buy school privatization. 

Moed, in a response to me, the Muncie Voice and Hoosier Voices PE on Twitter, said we should “check” our “facts before we tweet,” so here are some facts that I hope Moed responds to.

So far Moed has been on the side of public education and state supt. Glenda Ritz, but his past is worth noting.  Moed, undoubtedly, is not raking in the campaign money from school privatizers that many Republicans in Indiana are, but he is getting money from those behind school privatization. 

Moed has taken money from Eli Lilly and Stand for Children, supporters of the Teach for America-Teach Plus temporary teacher and charter school agenda in Indiana.  In 2013, Eli Lilly handed Moed’s campaign $500 (page 26) and $500 more in 2014 (page 17).  Stand for Children gave Moed $750 in May of 2013 (page 18).  Stand for Children also dished out $500 for Moed’s campaign in 2012 (page 5).

In November 2013, hedge fund Democrat for Education Reform politician Mary Ann Sullivan herself gave Moed $100 (page 10).

In 2012, Andre Carson’s campaign gave Moed $500 (page 8).  Andre Carson’s campaign also handed Moed $150 in 2013 (page 23) and $250 last year (page 11).  Carson is a Wall Street Democrat (also funded by Gulen charter school people) whose wife will soon launch a charter school with money from the Mind  Trust.

And Zink Properties, a funder of Mike Pence (at least $30,000, according to state campaign finance records), Brian Bosman, and Tony Bennett, gave Moed $1,000 (page 28) in 2013 and even handed out golf prizes at some Moed event (see page 29 and page 39). Last year, Zink Properties slid another $1,000 Moed’s way (page 19).

JP Morgan Chase, the too-big to fail bank which crashed the economy in 2008 and lends millions to charter schools, slipped Moed $250 in 2014 (page 14).  The Indy Chamber gave the Democrat $500 last year, too (page 16). 

I think it best that the politicians who support public education start educating themselves a bit about the players in Hoosier School Heist.  I also think it best that supporters of public schools not forget that we must, from time to time, put pressure on Indiana Democrats, too, for there’ s a lot of money available for them to sell out.

TNTP and Indiana SBOE’s Crony Corporate Teacher Evaluation Agenda

by Doug Martin

Funded by Bill Gates and started by corporate school darling Michelle Rhee, The New Teachers Project  has a big role in my  book Hoosier School Heist.  And this corporate consulting/temporary teacher group is at it again, this time with help from the Indiana State Board of Education.

On Wednesday, February 4, the state board will meet to determine whether or not it will take TNTP’s recommendations from the group's report done over the last two months on Indiana teacher evaluations for the state board, and there’s a very good chance it will, since TNTP has been a part of the school privatization movement in Indiana for years now.  

Since TNTP has partnered with SBOE board member Dan Elsener’s Marian University, so we know he's onboard with the agenda.  And just a few days ago, Eli Lilly agreed to hand out $3.4 million to the Mind Trust to expand TNTP and Teach for America in Indiana.

TNTP’s CEO, Ariela Rozman, is a Mind-Trust board member.  In 2013, Rozman made over $300,000 in total compensation (page 7).  That same year, TNTP made almost $4.8 million in government grants (page 9).  TNTP, then, was active in 30 cities and created 1652 teachers  for its organization (page 30). 

As noted in TNTP report to the Indiana SBOE, The New Teacher Project doesn't like local control and finds it a problem that 90 percent of the teachers in Indiana have been rated good, which makes firing them and hiring temporary recruits from TNTP and Teach for America more difficult and slows down school privatization.

Reporter Megan Trent summarizes TNTP’s recommendations, one of them being test scores:

The New Teacher Project recommendations include setting a range for teacher evaluations. For teachers specializing in an area covered on ISTEP tests, 33% to 55% of the teachers’ evaluations would be based on student test scores. Educators that teach subjects not covered on ISTEP would have a range of 25% to 40% of their evaluations based on test scores.

Praising the evaluation system set up four years ago and criticizing the “obstacles” (like Glenda Ritz?) to implementation that have occurred (see page 8-9), TNTP, of course, wants the SBOE (minus Glenda Ritz as its chairperson, no doubt) to have a major role in the new plan, and this may require new laws (see page 26).  If adopted, TNTP's teacher evaluation plan for Indiana will begin in 2016.

Filled full of corporate language like “stakeholders,” the plan, no doubt, seeks to further dismantle teachers in Indiana.  Hoosiers need to find out how much TNTP was paid to do the SBOE report and if any taxpayer money was used and how much.

For TNTP’s recent and secret school privatization teacher preparation goals at the University of Memphis (which was hidden from department of education professors), read Jim Horn’s piece here.

The Truth About the T3/Teach Plus IPS Contract

by Doug Martin

Thankfully, the IPS school board recently voted against a contract with T3/Teach Plus.  Supported by Stand for Children and funded in part by $1 million of Eli Lilly Foundation money, the Teach Plus Turnaround Teacher Teams or T3 program contract would not have done much for teachers.  Note this from the IPS school board press release:

During the course of our special meeting attention was drawn to the fact that one of our board members, Caitlin Hannon, is the Executive Director for Teach Plus, the education company which is spearheading the effort to implement this initiative into three of our schools. Ms. Hannon recused herself from the vote, however,  ethical questions have been raised regarding a $2 million dollar contract for T3 and its parent company Teach Plus over a period of four years.  Of the $2.2 million, 24 teachers in 3 schools would receive a total of $432,000.  Each teacher would receive $6000 per year for their leadership service.

The T3 program had already been implemented without board approval.  So board president Annie Roof recently called a special session, where board members voted against approving the contract.

Ironically, corporate school reformers now are calling this vote political, but the real politics rest with Caitlin Hannon.  Teach Plus’ tax records don’t tell how much local executive directors like Hannon make, but Hannon’s relationship with Teach Plus as a member of the IPS school board is a major conflict of interest, as I even noted in my book Hoosier School Heist.  Hannon has been funded by the hedge-fund front group Democrats for Education Reform, Al Hubbard, the Bush family friend and chief operative of corporate school reform in Indiana, and even Greg Penner, who is married to Walmart’s Carrie Walton. 

The vote was a win for the students, teachers, and citizens of Indianapolis and Indiana. Here is the entire press release from a few members of the IPS school board on the T3/Teach Plus contract vote:

Indianapolis – Last night’s IPS School Board vote regarding the T3 Initiative program merits explanation.

At the IPS board action session on October 21, 2014, the T3 Initiative was presented for action.  After some discussion, the board was advised (incorrectly) that this item had been approved previously.  Upon discovering the fact that it was never approved, but nonetheless implemented without board approval approximately six months ago, a special meeting was called to address the misinformation and lack of initial board ratification.
At the special meeting on October 29, 2014 the majority of the board members present took action to rescind the original vote which was made based on incorrect information.  This action drew sharp reactions from the community.

Some media outlets used the word “dumping” to describe our actions.  The board felt it necessary to rescind the original vote, but also noted in our public meeting that the issue would be brought back before the board with complete transparency. We are open to revisiting the terms of the agreement to find a solution that works best for our schools, and for the teacher leaders who have already begun assuming a leadership role (although it was unbeknownst to them, without board approval).

During the course of our special meeting attention was drawn to the fact that one of our board members, Caitlin Hannon, is the Executive Director for Teach Plus, the education company which is spearheading the effort to implement this initiative into three of our schools. Ms. Hannon recused herself from the vote, however,  ethical questions have been raised regarding a $2 million dollar contract for T3 and its parent company Teach Plus over a period of four years.  Of the $2.2 million, 24 teachers in 3 schools would receive a total of $432,000.  Each teacher would receive $6000 per year for their leadership service.

Media sources report Mr. Ohlemiller of Stand for Children suggests that this vote sends a message to philanthropic organizations that their funding support is not welcome in IPS. What this vote actually represents is that IPS will not see the charitable contributions intended to help our struggling schools, being made to expensive consultant organizations, their employees and overhead costs. One has to wonder if these philanthropic organizations know that only a fraction of their charitable dollars are being directed to the Teacher Leaders charged with executing this program.

We will never build our own capacity within Indianapolis Public Schools if the bulk of our dollars are spent to engage outside organizations.

The empowerment of teachers is something this entire board agrees on. This contract, as it is currently constituted, is not fair, nor is it equitable for IPS. All we ask is for the time to review a deal that will cost IPS $750,000 to implement so that we can make sure our dollars are being directed to the classrooms, students and teachers, rather than the pockets of Teach Plus and T3 executives. If we are being asked to vote in a program that will cost the district a significant amount of money, the least that could be done is to provide us with enough time and information to make an informed decision. The constituents of Indianapolis elected this body to be a representative vote for the people of our districts, our city, our schools, our teachers and our children. We were not elected to be a rubber stamp for companies to reap wild profit margins from our Indianapolis’ taxpayer-funded public schools.

We are thankful that Stand For Children, Teach Plus and other organizations want to help ensure a high quality education for the children of Indianapolis. However, each time anybody disagrees with one of these entities, they use their significant funds and resources to silence our concerns. In turn, we are then accused of playing politics. Don’t be fooled by who is politicizing the IPS School Board.

Sincerely,

Gayle Cosby, Samantha Adair-White, Michael Brown and Board President Annie Roof