Billionaire Bloomberg says he's running. But why?

The prototype for the Rahm Emanuel mayoralty was Michael Bloomberg's New York. -- Crain's

The oddsmakers in Vegas put the odds on Michael Bloomberg winning the presidency at 14/1. That puts him even in their minds with Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg and trailing only Donald Trump 7/5, Elizabeth Warren 3/1, and Joe Biden 8/1 in the eyes of bookies.

I follow this stuff only because the bookies usually have a better handle on things than do the pollsters. That's why the house always wins.

Why is this billionaire Republicrat media tycoon and former New York mayor even considering jumping into a crowded Democratic primary as a 14-to-1 longshot? He knows the odds as well as anyone. One, because he can afford to, and two, he wants to be a hedge against the progressive insurgents like Warren and Sanders.

If either of them won the primary, I could even imagine Bloomberg running as an independent or third-party candidate in key battleground or swing states to draw away votes. Bloomberg is worried much more about the progressive ascendency than about his off-and-on frenemy Trump (who calls Bloomberg "Little Michael").

Known as the stop-and-frisk mayor in New York, Bloomberg once claimed that the biggest problem was his cops "over-stopping whites", and that he was just evening the score.

During his time in office, Bloomberg wielded his personal power against New York's communities of color and their public schools. He imposed a tidal wave of privatization on the city, including a big swing towards privately-run charter schools. What pissed me off most was how he used our "small schools" rhetoric to promote charters.

He was an advocate of using standardized testing results as the main vehicle for evaluating school and teacher performance.

He thought poor and especially immigrant parents were too ignorant to have much to say about their children's education.

Bloomberg once claimed:

“Unfortunately there are some parents who just come from — they never had a formal education, and they don’t understand the value of education...The old Norman Rockwell family is gone.”

That last part is true, and good riddance.

All this reminded me of this great quote from NYT's Michael Powell back in 2011:

"There is an 'autumn of the patriarch' feel to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg these days."

He's an outspoken enemy of organized labor and even compared the teacher unions to the NRA and used the big-lie technique to charge the unions with protecting child molesters.

Bloomberg's charter school cronies, Eva Moskowitz and Joel Klein. 

He hired corporate-style reformers like of Joel Klein and the totally incompetent (thank goodness) Cathie Black to replace public schools with charters and erode public space and public decision-making. Among his partners in crime was the city's supreme charter hustler, Eva Moskowitz, who enriched herself running the so-called Success Academies.

Bloomberg is a horrible politician who was only elected because of his bottomless war chest. You need only go back to his paper-thin 2009 victory in the NY mayor's race over relative political unknown Bill Thompson. Bloomberg poured $90 million of his own fortune into the race, a sum unequaled in the history of municipal politics, that gave him a 14-to-1 advantage in campaign spending. Yet he won by only 5%.

So, is Bloomberg's announced candidacy a bluff, a real threat to anti-Trump forces, or neither? One thing is for sure: Michael Bloomberg offers no positive alternative to Trump or to the current field of candidates in the Democratic primary.

Protests greet Ryan at charter school photo-op in Harlem

Ryan comes to Harlem

It looks like Eva Moskowitz's Success Charter Academy has become the photo-op, stop-off point favorite for Republican pols anxious to demonstrate their fealty to so-called "school choice".

Latest to duck in and out of Harlem under heavy security was House Speaker Paul Ryan, fresh from his initial triumph over millions of people's health care coverage. What Ryan, Moskowitz and the charter network's publicity department probably didn't count on, was the large gathering of protesters, organized by the Working Families Party, that turned out to greet him with chants of "shame! shame! shame!".

His hourlong visit on National Teachers Day also included a brief meeting with special-needs students at P.S. 149, a public school that shares a building with the charter school. These are the very same students whose programs are being gutted by Trump's Sec. of Ed, Betsy DeVos as her budget shifts about $20 billion from public schools to charters and vouchers.

Ryan, who banned the press from covering his visit,  described the tour as “special.”

Ryan came at the invitation of Moskowitz who pulls down about $500K/year as the charter network's director. A faux-Democrat, Moskowitz was a runner-up to DeVos as Trump's choice to run his DOE. Previous photo-op invitees include Ivanka Trump and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

According to Newsday, 

...protesters, including New York City Public Advocate Letitia James, rallied across the street from the school, on West 118th Street. They waved cardboard cutouts of tombstones bearing messages that denounced Ryan’s push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. They chanted “health care for all, not just for Paul.”

As Ryan exited the building after his visit, protesters chanted, "health care is a human right, how can you sleep at night?"

.@SpeakerRyan .@SpeakerRyan ends his visit in Harlem to a chorus of boos. pic.twitter.com/6ic2icAzsB

— Vocativ (@vocativ) May 9, 2017

Was Moskowitz running to Trump for cover?

Last month, charter schools' biggest hustler, Eva Moskowitz, who pulls down a half-million/year as the operator of N.Y. Success Academies, was in the running for Trump's Sec. of Ed post. She didn't get the job. Trump gave it to fellow plutocrat and religious zealot Betsy DeVos instead.

The Trump transition team may have been frightened off by the spate of negative press about her schools' discipline practices and internal workings and the ongoing federal investigation conducted by the Office of Civil Rights, as well as mounting criticism from local elected officials. It is unclear whether Moskowitz could have even been confirmed as a cabinet official of an agency that is investigating her schools.

But that didn't stop Mokcowitz, a Clinton supporter, from swearing loyalty to Trump and his plan for market-driven public schools.

Moscowitz bought the ground floor for $68M

Then, no sooner had she plopped down $68M in school money for the purchase of ground-floor classroom space in a glitzy Midtown tower, when the auditors caught up with her.

Today she is under fire for financial mismanagement and allegedly ripping off the taxpayers and even her own Success Academy schools for millions of dollars, including thousands that were supposed to have been spent on services that were never delivered to students with special needs.

The Observer reports: 

An audit  by city Comptroller Scott Stringer discovered rampant inaccuracies in the financial reports of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter school chain—including internal assessments that created the appearance of lower administrative costs, bills to the city for special education services the company could not prove it ever provided and duplicative payments that the chain’s management arm collected from its schools.

 The audit found that in fiscal year 2015, Success Academy schools paid the Success Academy Network an extra $624,342 for services that the Network should have provided in exchange for its $18.3 million management fee. Those services include staff training and professional development, printing, copying and student assessments.

All this has me wondering if this was the real purpose of the Moskowitz's flirtation with Trump. Was she running to him for cover, offering fealty and rendering unto Caesar in exchange for protection? Was she looking at a possible job in the Trump administration as an escape route from the arms of city prosecutors?

We'll soon find out if her gambit worked.

Cross-posted at Schooling in the Ownership Society blog.

Thanksgiving a good day to resist Trumpism

Standing Rock

On this Thanksgiving Day, I'm thankful to be standing among so many good people willing to resist the wave of Trumpism sweeping over the land. First and foremost, the Standing Rock water protectors who are baring the brunt of it with power and dignity. We have to continue to stand with them, especially through this difficult winter.

I'm anxious to see what happens when they are joined by hundreds of veterans on Dec. 4th. Wish I could be there for that.

Pres. Obama still has the power to stop DAPL in the last weeks of his term. I hope he finds the courage. But not holding my breath.

I'm still surprised at how many liberal Clinton supporters still believe that Trump is "moderating" and are willing to "give him a chance". I don't know what else he has to do to them to show he's a for-real neo-fascist.

Trump lunches with NYTers. 

Case in point... NYT execs and staff held a lunch meeting with Trump in an attempt to find "common ground". The Times has been a favorite target of Trump, a 1st-Amendment denier.

Thomas ("Earth is flat") Friedman left the meeting somewhat assured that Trump was "rethinking" his extreme positions. Ie. on torture, not prosecuting Hillary Clinton,  and on environmental issues.

Not having any of it was NYT columnist Charles Blow who didn't attend the meeting but was overwhelmed by the "slime factor" as he read the transcript.

Writes Blow:

I will say proudly and happily that I was not present at this meeting. The very idea of sitting across the table from a demagogue who preyed on racial, ethnic and religious hostilities and treating him with decorum and social grace fills me with disgust, to the point of overflowing. Let me tell you here where I stand on your “I hope we can all get along” plea: Never.

DRESSED TO OPPRESS... Michelle Rhee and husband, Kevin Johnson leave Trump's golf club after being turned down for the Sec. of Ed job in favor of Betsy DeVos. Rhee assured Trump she's still on board with his program. 

On the eve of Trump's appointment of anti-"government school" extremist Betsy DeVos to the post of Ed Secretary, N.Y. charter bigwig Eva Moskowitz was still assuring us that, “There are many positive signs that President Trump will be different from candidate Trump.” Of course a positive sign to Moskowitz is Trump assuring her in a private meeting, that millions of dollars will continue to flow away from public schools and into the pockets of private charter operators like her.

And then, there are those corp-style school reformers like Peter Cunningham, who look at Trump purely from charter school perspective and wonder aloud, "is he really for "choice" or not? If he shows that he is -- and he will -- they will likely get on board the Trump train, even though he didn't hire their choice, Michelle Rhee as Ed Sec, and even while thousands of students (including their own charter school students) are being rounded up and deported.

I've also noted some cracks in their wall. First with a critical, but nebulous statement from the corporate-reform group Teach For America, following the DeVos appointment. Then from DFER Pres. Shavar Jefferies, calling on his people not to work for Trump.

But I wonder what TFAers and Jefferies will say and do when Trump and DeVos are pushing the very same legislation on charters and vouchers that they have supported all along. Tough choices ahead for them of they want to keep their base.

Corporate ed reformers throw in with Trump

Ivanka Trump visits Eva Moskowitz' Success Academy Charter School. 

It looks like they've dropped their phony rhetoric about charter schools being "the civil rights issue of our time." Following the Democrat's devastating loss to Trump, one by one, the corporate reformers and champions of privately-run charters are jumping the Dems' ship and throwing in behind the racist, anti-immigrant Trump education movement.

For some, the move is nothing new. Former D.C. chancellor, Arne Duncan fave, and Waiting for Superman star Michelle Rhee for example, turned to selling her talents to the far right as soon as voters ran her and Mayor Fenty out of town. She went to work advising FL Gov. Rick Scott on school privatization and union-busting matters.

Now that she's stepped down from leadership of her anti-union ed group, Students First,  she's considering leaving her new position with a national fertilizer company if Trump offers her the job as his secretary of education. Her problem is that she's a proponent of Common Core. Trump isn't. But either of them can easily accommodate the other's position since Rhee sees Common Core's value mainly in its testing provisions, enabling teachers to be evaluated, hired and fired on the basis of student test scores. There should be a basis for unity with Trump there somewhere.

And her scandal-ridden past, including her connection with D.C. test-cheating scandal shouldn't bother the Trump transition team too much considering the rest of his recent scandalized appointees and advisers. Not to mention, Trump's own $25M pay-off to make the Trump Univ. suit go away.

But Trump also has to placate his base. Upon hearing about his possible choice of Rhee, the right-wing group, Parents Against the Common Core, wrote Trump and open letter calling on him to cut federal funding of public schools, dismantle the D.O.E. and appoint someone like former Bush aide Williamson Evers to the top post.

BTW, Trump also met with Rhee's husband KJ, the disgraced mayor of Sacramento. They have some legal problems in common. Something about teenage girls. But let's not even go there right now. I just ate.

Then there's New York's own charter-hustler supreme, Eva Moskowitz who is now pulling down nearly a half-million a year for managing the city's Success Academy Charters. EM met with Trump last week, but reportedly turned down the Ed Sec job. Some NY friends told me she couldn't afford the pay cut. The Secretary of Education's salary is a measly $186,600. Others say, she has her eyes on the NY mayor's office. But she left the meeting on good terms, promising Trump that she would get behind his school reform plan.

So far, Arne Duncan has carefully avoided any mention of Trump. His successor, John King has  mainly followed suit, advising the nation's teachers simply to keep their heads down and "focused on the students." Duncan's former assistant Peter Cunningham, who now runs Eli Broad's Education Post blog, says he "skeptical" about Trump, but seems to be keeping his option open.

Can Joel Klein be far behind?

Asked to name women or people of color considered for Trump cabinet, Jason Miller on MSNBC gives 2: Michelle Rhee and Eva Moskowitz for Ed.

— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) November 16, 2016

Thursday Questions

What is Eva Moskowitz afraid parents, media and visitors will see inside of her Success Academies?

CPS teacher asks: Why is it wrong for Chicago teachers to shut it down on April 1st to demand school funding, but OK for Rahm/Claypool to use furlough day to close schools?

How did Sac's school privatization mayor, Kevin Johnson (husband of Michelle Rhee), ever get away with this?

Was Trump's speech at AIPAC really worse than Hillary Clinton's?

How did Arizona get away with calling this an "election"?

Pres. Obama says Ted Cruz' plan to "secure" Muslim neighborhoods is downright un-American. I agree. But then how does he explain this on his watch?

Moskowitz tells her charter students, 'No more foreign languages'

”We can’t do everything... And by the way, Americans don’t tend to do foreign languages very well.”​ -- Eva Moskowitz  

One can only imagine who Moskowitz is referring to as "Americans". 

Moskowitz, speaking in 2014 at a forum sponsored by the right-wing American Enterprise Institute (AEI) told the audience, ”Something had to go,” Turns out that “something” was foreign language classes. She just doesn't believe that her students, mostly African-American and Latino, are capable of reading and speaking more than one tongue. 

She's most likely the world's greatest --certainly the highest paid-- charter school hustler. She pulls down a cool half-million yearly, running the so-called Success Academy network of charters in New York City. Using her hedge-fund money connections, her political clout and relationship with former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Moskowitz' charter operation grew to the point where she now operates 34 charters with 11,000 students in them.

Unfortunately for those kids, they will no longer be able to learn a language other than English. The Success Academies have dropped foreign language education from their curriculum. This despite the fact that the state of N.Y. (and most states) requires it for graduation and many selective colleges and universities require it as a pre-req for admission. More importantly, the world today, and certainly the city in which her students are growing up, is increasingly multi-lingual and multi-cultural

And as Leslie Salzillo writes in Wednesday's Daily Koz,

.... Many employers see a foreign language background as a plus.  Given the Hispanic/Latino growth in America today, high school and college graduates who can speak Spanish as a second language have a substantial advantage over others jumping into the job market. 

Moskowitz has switched public relations companies several times over the last year in an attempt to tamp down critical coverage of her network. She's fond of calling her critics "haters". So be it.

And here I thought Cuomo and Duncan were already Success Academy lobbyists

prof·it·eer

ˌpräfəˈtir/

noun

a person who profiteers.
"a war profiteer"
synonyms: racketeer, exploiter, black marketeer

Joy Resmovitz at Huffington reports that charter profiteer Eva Moskowitz has hired a team of lobbyists in D.C. to pump up her Success Academy chain. Moskowitz currently pulls down a seven-figure salary for managing the chain.

Now, reports show that Success is being represented on Capitol Hill. According to lobbying disclosures posted this summer but not previously reported, the schools hired two affiliated Washington-based firms, EdNexus Advisors and Thompson Coburn, LLP.

The EdNexus lobbyist listed, Christina Culver, was an adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign. 

What's that you say? Charters are truly public schools? You couldn't prove it by me. 

Moskowitz with former NYC Chancellor Joel Klein

And here I thought Moskowitz already had lobbyists in D.C. and Albany -- Arne Duncan and Gov. Cuomo.  And her lobbying effort seems to be working. Gov. Cuomo, has been the recipient of nearly $1 million in campaign contributions from backers of Moskowitz’s charters. Duncan just gave her another federal grant of $750,000 and part of an overall $39.7 million grant to privately-run charters nationally. 

Since 2006, Moskowitz has been running a small charter empire that has at least $50 million in government per-pupil funding, at least $30.9 million in total, end-of-year assets, and the support of hedge fund millionaires.

This week, the state approved 17 new charter schools for New York City,  substantially increasing the size of the city’s largest and most polarizing charter network and setting up a battle over where the schools will be located. The state’s charter schools committee, part of the State University of New York’s board of trustees, approved 14 new Success Academy schools, which will bring the network to a total of 50 schools serving 16,300 students by 2016.