Walmart is the biggest donor to "Parent Revolution" (Parent Trigger Laws) = 43% of funding.

[HiPointDem]

At first glance, it is one of the nation’s hottest new education-reform movements, a seemingly populist crusade to empower poor parents and fix failing public schools. But a closer examination reveals that the “parent-trigger” movement is being heavily financed by the conservative Walton Family Foundation, one of the nation’s largest and most strident anti-union organizations, a Frying Pan News investigation has shown.

Since 2009, the foundation has poured more than $6.3 million into Parent Revolution, a Los Angeles advocacy group that is in the forefront of the parent-trigger campaign in California and the nation. Its heavy reliance on Walton money, critics say, raises questions about the independence of Parent Revolution and the intentions of the Walton Family Foundation.

While Parent Revolution identifies the Walton Family Foundation as one of several donors on its website, the full extent of contributions from the Walton foundation and other donors hasn’t been publicly known until now...Other multimillion-dollar contributors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ($1.6 million); the Laura and John Arnold Foundation ($1.5 million); the Wasserman Foundation ($1.5 million); the Broad Foundations ($1.45 million); and the Emerson Collective Education Fund ($1.2 million), founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

But the Walton Family Foundation is by far Parent Revolution’s largest benefactor, contributing 43 percent of the $14.9 million total. Diane Ravitch, an education historian and former assistant secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush, tells Frying Pan News:

Everything the Walton foundation has done over the years is to support privatization and anti-union policies. They want privatization and Parent Revolution promotes their goals.

“Why is all this money coming in?” asks John Rogers, director of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access, who has studied the parent-trigger movement.

It doesn’t seem to be about educational improvements....It seems to be about creating greater pressure to challenge teachers’ unions rather than an authentic way to improve education opportunities.

http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/Walmart-s-Waltons-Foundation-Biggest-Donor-to-Parent-Revolution

[hobbit709]

1. They have a vested interest in keeping their customers and employees ignorant.

[HiPointDem]

3. and union-free. it really astonishes me when DU posters promote Parent Revolution/Trigger. You

may as well say, "Yes, I'm an anti-labor winger".

and they are.

[hobbit709]

4. That's part of the ignorance.

[HiPointDem]

5. it may be ignorance in some cases. In others, it's quite deliberate shilling.

[hobbit709]

6. I'm talking about the average bozo, not the ones that know what's going on.

Like the 40% in a recent National Geographic survey that couldn't locate the U.S. on the proper continent on an outline map of the world.
the ones that need to take their shoes off to count past 10.
The ones that think most science is a form of magic.

[HiPointDem]

7. I was talking about DUers. I doubt the average person even knows what parent trigger is.

[hobbit709]

8. There's a few here I'm not too sure about myself.

But I started out cynical and it's gotten worse over the years.

My theory is that "Idiocracy" was a documentary ahead of its time.

[HiPointDem]

9. more than a few. and none of them are stupid.

[ctsnowman]

12. Given the chance most

would vote for Saint Reagan all over again.

[Lunacee_2013]

32. Yep.

I was just wondering about something like ths in another thread.

[xchrom]

2. du rec.

[Smarmie Doofus]

10. K and R. And... in the immortal words of Tom Cruise.... "Walmart SUCKS!"

Or was that KMART? ( Is there a difference?)

BTW... I'm getting a little muddled at this point ( which I guess is the point, at least partially): President ( "I was a community activist while you were sitting on the board of Walmart, Hillary) Obama very recently appointed the former CEO of Walmart to .... *what* executive branch position.... exactly?

Yes, there's google, but it ain't as fast ( or merciless) as some of the hotshots here.

[HiPointDem]

11. i had to google it so i guess i'm not one of the hotshots.

Here in a city where politicians fight new businesses that want to come to town, it’s no secret that Walmart remains unwelcome. But the retail giant has just landed a friend in a high place: the White House.

His name is Jason Furman, President Obama’s new pick to chair the Council of Economic Advisers. This should be of particular interest to New Yorkers: As a visiting professor at NYU in 2005, Furman authored a study heralding Walmart as “A Progressive Success Story.”

In his paper, Furman addressed the debilitating impact on the poor of this misguided, left-wing opposition:

“[To] the degree the anti-Walmart campaign slows or halts the spread of Walmart to new areas, it will lead to higher prices that disproportionately harm lower-income families.”

And he’s not the only pro-Walmart voice in the administration: Earlier this year, Obama named Sylvia Mathews Burwell, former head of the Walmart Foundation, as his budget director.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/attention_walmart_shoppers_lvwfDZ5oThfeiy4oc0Ri7L


well, that's of a kind with his nomination of ms hotel queen pritzker.

why don't we just have the leaders of the 10 largest corporations rule as a kind of decumvirate, and skip the theater?

at least we'd know what's what.

[Smarmie Doofus]

14. "You're more than modest." (All About Eve) And surely the very hottest of shots.

Shucks... I was thinking of you all along.

Somehow I got the head of the foundation mixed up w. the head of the corporation itself. A thousand lashes w. a wet noodle.

So much Walmart-Obama related activity in such a short period of time. Hard to keep track of... for someone born in Eisenhower's first term. (That's the way it was and we LIKED it.)


So... back to our story. What in blazes ( that's what my grandpa woulda' said) bugged candidate Obama so much about candidate Clinton "sitting on the board of Walmart" when as president he seems perfectly content w. letting them/it corporatize public education in the USA and turning over the budget office to what certainly sounds like a revolving-door Walmart retread?

[HiPointDem]

21. good question.

[Smarmie Doofus]

15. Make that *two* Walmart retreads. I forgot about Furman.

Council of Economic Advisors, eh?

How nice for Walmart.

How nice for Obama.

How nice for Furman.




How nice for EVERYBODY.

[HiPointDem]

31. +1

[KamaAina]

26. It was Kmart

and it was Dustin Hoffman, who should have been given a solid gold Oscar. Portraying an Autistic person must be the hardest thing for a neurotypical actor to do.

[ctsnowman]

13. Coming soon to your local superstore

Pre K through 12 while you get your tires changed and the 4th tire is free!

Limit one child per vehicle.

[kirby]

16. What is parent-trigger law?

There is no context in this post so I have no idea what in the world it is referring to, only that Walmart is a major supporter of it.

[HiPointDem]

25. .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parent_trigger

[matt819]

17. The problem with billionaires

Money really is no object. In fact, the amounts mentioned in this post are little more than pocket change. If you're a billionaire - let's just say $1 billion in investments returning 3%. That's additional income of $30 million a year. Heck, if you just leave that $30 million alone at the same return, just that amount will return an additional $900,000. Hell, you can take that entire $30 in income and put it to whatever use you want, and you'll still have another $30 million next year. And that's in you're only a $1 billionaire. If you're a Koch or a Walton, it really is funny money. Just imagine the damage they could do if they *really* set their minds to it.

[BrotherIvan]

20. See post #19 - Spot On

These foundations are all about sheltering their money from taxes so they can do whatever they want and not pay for social welfare. It's only the little people who need to pay for things like roads and schools and their endless wars.

I saw an ad for this parent trigger and I believe it had Maggie Gyllenhaal and some other actresses that I know are liberal-leaning. I remember thinking, Honey, you got played. I don't doubt that they were sold a bill of goods that teachers are the real problem with education.

And here is an article that shows it was worse than I thought. The guy who made Waiting for Superman, that propaganda documentary for charter schools, has made a film starring Maggie, Viola Davis and Holly Hunter. So we'll have a feel good movie that shows how parents need to blame teachers and kick them out. How special.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/movies/viola-davis-and-maggie-gyllenhaal-in-parent-trigger-film.html?_r=0

All of this is financed by the Gates Foundation. I got suckered when he first announced he was "giving away all his money" and thought maybe that monopolizing bastard had changed his spots. I guess the admonition to beware false prophets should be "beware false liberals" because they're so easy to fake.

[Hydra]

22. I'm always wary where the Gates foundation is involved

He and his wife seem to be doing things that reinforce the problems we're having rather than finding solutions to them...but why not, right? You can "save the world" and convert it to your point of view so your friends can continue to rob the people you are supposedly saving.

Weird world we build.

[BrotherIvan]

29. i believe this is what happens when we deify money

It used to be "blue bloods" to whom we were supposed to kneel because they were born our betters, now it's anyone who lies, cheats, steals and kills to get as much green as they can. I honestly don't know which is better.

[Hydra]

30. 6's

The blue bloods got where they were by stealing too. I agree with your assessment- deifying the worst of us.

[Doctor_J]

18. Pretty soon every service in the US will be like our Health Care

Highest cost, worst results

[mountain grammy]

19. Like "No Child Left Behind" parent trigger laws are corporate tools to funnel money to private hands

The TAX EXEMPT money the 1% is pouring into changing our public education system has little to do with what's good for public education. As if the very wealthy aren't benefitting enough from the lowest tax rates in history, now they can effectively spread their propaganda to privatize our publicly funded institutions with TAX EXEMPT money to further add to their immense fortunes.
The super rich get a big bang for their buck.. public money funding private institutions (many religious,) and a poorly educated "working class" who become teabaggers, another TAX EXEMPT scam.

[Hydra]

23. They don't even need people to be tea baggers

They just have to be ill-informed.

I've told this story on DU before, but it still applies- when I was in grade school, they taught us about the bill of right and such since we were still deep in red scare territory.

One of my teachers told us that the 1st amendment didn't really says what we think it said- that only "special" people, like the press, were allowed to use it. It didn't apply to us little people.

Factually wrong, but fits the meme they were and are pushing- you HAVE no rights! The rights are only for the "important" people.

[HiPointDem]

27. maybe s/he was saying as a matter of fact rather than ideals. because as a matter of *fact,*

e.g. the 14th amendment was used more often to protect corporate interests than the slaves/black americans it was supposedly designed to protect.

iow, maybe your teacher was just telling you the harsh facts of life rather than supporting them.

[Hydra]

28. I could have accepted that

But it was more like the Orwellian kind of "You're reading it wrong...it doesn't mean you have those rights, only the people we approve of have them."

It was a funny moment for me because I was forced to decide if I accept the authority figure's interpretation vs. what I was reading from the document.

I decided that I did, indeed, see "4 lights."

[HiPointDem]

24. +1