by Jay P. Greene and Frederick M. Hess Mr. Greene is Distinguished Professor of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas. Mr. Hess is Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Their report examining the political preferences of people working in education reform organizations will be released Monday in Education Next.
March 8, 2019
The K-12 education-reform movement was once led primarily by conservatives and libertarians with centrist Democrats as junior partners. But over the past decade, education reform has taken a hard left turn. Republicans are now almost entirely invisible within the ranks of its activists. This progressive capture of education reform—like the capture of much of the media and academia—will undermine the quality and effectiveness of the movement’s work.
We’ve seen this trend firsthand over two decades of work in education reform, so we decided to quantify it. In a new study, the first of its kind, we examined the political preferences of people working in education-reform groups. To identify these groups we focused on those receiving support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. These are the two leading backers of school reform. Almost all major education-reform groups receive funding from one or both foundations (as have we). We then searched OpenSecrets.org for all political campaign contributions made by the staff of these groups to gauge their political leanings.
We tracked staff contributions to political campaigns in a sample of 73 education-reform organizations funded by the Gates Foundation, including Achieve, Teach For America, the New Schools Venture Fund, Alliance for Excellent Education, Jobs for the Future, Turnaround for Children, and Bellwether Education Partners. In total, we found 2,625 political campaign contributions from the staff of Gates grantees. Of those contributions, more than 99% supported Democratic candidates or the Democratic Party. Only eight (that’s eight, not 8%) of the 2,625 campaign contributions went to Republicans.
Trevor Loudon speaks of the Far Left in our government and how they work with the Marxists and the Islamists. He names influential members of congress and those running for congressional seats in last weeks election. Absolutely frightening. Please share with your email lists. Nancy
Liberal groups sponsor a documentary faulting conservative groups that sponsor political advocacy.
By Scott Walter Mr. Walter is president of the Capital Research Center
October 17, 2018
Left-wing interests are raving about the documentary “Dark Money.” Airing this month on PBS, “Dark Money” purports to expose the effects of right-wing political spending in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The Los Angeles Times calls the film a “political thriller.” NPR lauds it for revealing the “assault on the American electoral and judicial process by corporations whose agenda is nothing less than the dismantling of government itself.”
There’s one problem: This attack on conservative-funded political advocacy is itself liberal-funded political advocacy. The proof? The end credits listing the film’s funders.
Top billing goes to the Ford Foundation, the third-largest private political-advocacy philanthropy in the U.S. Its sheer size—$12.4 billion in assets—isn’t unique on the left. Even before hedge-fund billionaire George Soros injected $18 billion into his Open Society Foundations, eight of America’s 10 largest private foundations (ranked by giving as of 2013) were aligned with the political left.
Nominally nonpartisan but actually liberal foundations and nonprofits spend three or four times as much as their conservative peers on “education” and advocacy, as the Capital Research Center documents.
Trump’s civil-service orders address all too common abuses.
By the Editorial Board
June 1, 2018
You wouldn’t know it from the media coverage, but only a few thousand government workers are political appointees. The rest are civil servants with nearly lifetime job security, which invites abuse that President Trump began to address last week with three new executive orders.
Their common theme is accountability for a federal civilian workforce of nearly 2.1 million. Most are honest professionals, but the civil-service system hasn’t been updated in 40 years and in many ways has been hijacked by unions. The result is often an entrenched federal elite that is judged by tenure more than performance.
The first Trump order goes directly at competence, streamlining procedures to remove poor workers. Under current law, employees flagged for removal have 30 days to shape up. Yet unions have forced additional regulatory hoops, and the average “Performance Improvement Plan” now stretches for months. The Government Accountability Office finds it can take an average of six months to a year to remove a poor performer, and another eight to resolve appeals.
The Trump order directs agencies to meet the law’s 30-day deadline, which is more than enough time to make a decision. The order also reaffirms the authority of agencies to make disciplinary decisions based on individual cases—rather than by one-size-fits-all union protections. Managers will be able to penalize misconduct based on the gravity of a specific infraction, rather than follow a proscribed course of “progressive discipline.”
The party’s environmental extremism puts it at odds with working people whose aspiration is prosperity.
Protesting a planned Scott Pruitt speech at New York’s Harvard Club, June 20.PHOTO:GETTY IMAGES
By
George Melloan
Mr. Melloan is a former deputy editor of the Journal editorial page and author of “Free People, Free Markets: How the Wall Street Journal Opinion Pages Shaped America” (Encounter, 2017).
September 7, 2017
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: To demonstrate how Green the Democrats have become, one need go no further than President Obama’s statement last year that climate change (the new code word for global warming) is the nation’s No. 1 problem. He also claimed 97% of scientists agree that “climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” But actual scientists don’t agree 97% on much of anything.
The modern Green movement got traction from the 1968 founding of the Club of Rome at that city’s Accademia dei Lincei. Describing itself as a global think tank concerned with the “future of humanity,” it produced a global best seller called “The Limits to Growth,” predicting, inaccurately, that at the then-current rate of development mankind would soon exhaust the Earth’s natural resources. Maurice Strong, a self-described socialist and former oil tycoon, imported the Club of Rome’s philosophy into the United Nations, launching the U.N.’s propagation of the global warming theory. (AGENDA 21)
The political commentariat has unleashed a torrent of words since the 2016 election analyzing what befell the Democrats. Donald Trump won because of his TV fame; he tweeted his way into the White House; the Russians did it; etc.
Why not spend a few more words on the current demeanor of the Democratic Party? It was losing badly in elections at all levels as early as 2010, well before Mr. Trump came along. Despite its deeply flawed candidate, Hillary of the indiscreet emails, it won the popular vote for the presidency and therefore still has to be taken seriously.
Its members and backers, particularly at influential media organizations like theNew York Times,the Washington Post and MSNBC, have been heaping abuse on the new president, suggesting Mr. Trump’s victory was illegitimate. When they hurl the words “fascist” and “plutocrat” wildly, their anger begins to sound pathological.
ByStephen Moore– – Stephen Moore is an economist with Freedom Works and a senior economic adviser to the Trump campaign.
Sunday, December 4, 2016
People are leaving the Hillary-supporting states in droves
When I say the blue states are in a depression, I don’t mean the collective funk they are in because they lost the election to Donald Trump.
I’m talking about an economic depression in the blue states that went for Hillary. Here is an amazing statistic. Of the 10 blue states that Hillary Clinton won by the largest percentage margins — California, Massachusetts, Vermont, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, Illinois, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut — every single one of them lost domestic migration (excluding immigration) over the last 10 years (2004-14). Nearly 2.75 million more Americans left California and New York than entered these states.
They are the loser states. They are all progressive. High taxes rates. High welfare benefits. Heavy regulation. Environmental extremism. Super minimum wages. Most outlaw energy drilling. The whole left-wing playbook is on display in the Hillary states. And people are leaving in droves. Day after day, they are being bled to death. So much for liberalism creating a worker’s paradise.(more…)
The Justice dances on the conservative Court’s political grave.
ENLARGE
Ruth Bader Ginsberg in Washington in 2014.PHOTO:ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 12, 2016
Liberals fond of griping that the Supreme Court’s conservative Justices are too political should check in withRuth Bader Ginsburg.The Supreme Court’s oldest Justice sat down with theNew York Timeson Friday to deplore Republicans and predict a coming liberal ascendancy. “I can’t imagine what the country would be—withDonald Trumpas our President,” the Justice averred, adding that the possibility brought to mind her late husband’s advice: “Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand.”
Justice Ginsburg also ran a victory lap at the results of the Court’s recent term after the death of JusticeAntonin Scalia.Among the highlights, she noted, last month the Court upheld racial preferences inFisher v. University of Texasin a 4-3 vote with JusticeElena Kaganrecused. JusticeAnthony Kennedywrote the opinion, which gutted an earlier opinion he wrote in the same case.
“I don’t expect that we’re going to see another affirmative action case,” Justice Ginsburg said. “I think [Justice Kennedy] comes out as the great hero of this term.” We wonder if Justice Kennedy appreciates the political shout-out.
Asked which precedents she’d overturn, Justice Ginsburg pointed to 2008’sHellerruling that upheld the right to bear arms, calling it “a very bad decision” that could be overruled. Justice Ginsburg has previously said that without the need for a militia, the Second Amendment is “outdated” because “its function has become obsolete.”
Her other goal is overturningCitizens United v. FEC, which in 2010 restored First Amendment rights for businesses and unions. “It would be an impossible dream. But I’d love to seeCitizens Unitedoverruled,” she said, thus signaling she’ll do everything she can to see that happen. She also boasted that she expected to be back in the five-vote majority soon.
We don’t recall another Supreme Court Justice so publicly telegraphing, outside a written opinion, a vote in a future case. No wonder so many Americans think the Supreme Court has become merely another political branch. Justice Ginsburg has confirmed it.
Remember the Left’s outrage over the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United Ruling that corporations have the same Free Speech rights as do unions? The article below gives you an idea of how deeply unions are involved in politics. Nancy
Labor Fears Partisan Defections Toward Donald Trump
Union leaders mobilize to try to counteract the Republican’s appeal to the white working class
ENLARGE
Donald Trump speaks during a rally May 5 in West Virginia.PHOTO:BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By
MELANIE TROTTMANand
BRODY MULLINS
Labor leaders are nervous about Donald Trump’s appeal to unions’ many white, working-class members, and they are working to head off partisan defections.
Unions spend heavily to support Democrats in elections and wield great influence over whether their members support those candidates. But labor leaders fear many of their members could be drawn to Mr. Trump. Merged Wall Street Journal/NBC News polling data from the first four months of the year show that among white union households, support is split evenly between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton, at 44% each, in a potential general-election matchup.
“Everybody recognizes the enormous threat Trump poses” whether their unions have backed either Democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders or Mrs. Clinton, said Robert Master, the Eastern region political director for the Communications Workers of America, which has endorsed Mr. Sanders. “There’s an element in that right-wing populism that is appealing to some of our members, there’s no question about that,” Mr. Master said.
The AFL-CIO is preparing an education campaign to highlight some of Mr. Trump’s statements—such as that wages are too high—and lesser-known things about how he has run his businesses and treated employees, said Mike Podhorzer, political director of the nation’s largest federation of labor unions.
Last week, the AFL-CIO began its on-the-ground program in battleground states including Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Nevada. It is distributing fliers at members’ workplaces and homes and is making them available to its affiliate unions and local chapters in every state.
