"I'm not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote"

From the WSJ:

A Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor, on Wal-Mart mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors to warn that if Democrats win the election, it will be easier for workers to unionize companies.

As we point out in our latest book, Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society, the Walton Family Fund is now the single largest source of funding for privately-managed charter schools and for groups promoting private school vouchers.

Sign her up...

Bush’s former assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, Susan B. Neuman, has endorsed the new Bolder, Broader ed policy coalition.

I've now joined with a group of national experts, from diverse backgrounds, areas of expertise and political beliefs, calling for a "broader, bolder approach" to education. Our proposals (www.boldapproach.org) certainly include improving schools, but tie changes in classrooms to changes in the world outside.

Neuman, who was at the DOE back when No Child was passed, is now an ed professor at the U. of Michigan.

BS-nomics

Tip of the hat to Russo (I’m not like that ingrate, Liam Julian) for getting me to read the Freakonomics review of Good to Great by Jim Collins, one of the dozens of inane, but best-selling Ownership Society manifestos that have flooded the market during the Bush years.

Says reviewer Steven Leavitt:

Ironically, I began reading the book on the very same day that one of the eleven “good to great” companies, Fannie Mae, made the headlines of the business pages. It looks like Fannie Mae is going to need to be bailed out by the federal government. If you had bought Fannie Mae stock around the time Good to Great was published, you would have lost over 80 percent of your initial investment… Overall, a portfolio of the “good to great” companies looks like it would have underperformed the S&P 500… it calls into question the basic premise of these books, doesn’t it?

Gee, if we can’t believe in the miracle corporations any more, what about miracle corporate-type school district CEOs and super-star principals?

Needed--“Creative capitalism”

Here’s Chairman Bill’s thoughts on all of this, in the latest Time Magazine:

…we need a more creative capitalism: an attempt to stretch the reach of market forces so that more companies can benefit from doing work that makes more people better off. We need new ways to bring far more people into the system — capitalism — that has done so much good in the world.

Bono showed him the way…

Bono, and frankly, I thought he was a little nuts. It was late, we'd had a few drinks, and Bono was all fired up over a scheme to get companies to help tackle global poverty and disease. He kept dialing the private numbers of top executives and thrusting his cell phone at me to hear their sleepy yet enthusiastic replies. As crazy as it seemed that night, Bono's persistence soon gave birth to the (RED) campaign.

OK, I’m sold. Hey Bono. Next time we go out drinking, could you pass along those phone numbers to me?