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Fear and loathing in Athens: the rise of Golden Dawn and the far right
by Maria Margaronis
The Guardian
In austerity-ravaged Greece, neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn is on the rise. Their MPs give fascist salutes, while on the streets black-shirted vigilantes beat up immigrants. And some of their most enthusiastic supporters are in the police
...
Golden Dawn is many things: a party, a movement, a subculture; a vigilante force; a network inside the police and the judiciary. Vasilis Mastrogiannis of the Democratic Left, a former senior police officer turned politician, describes it frankly as "a criminal organisation". New Democracy MP Dimitrios Kyriazidis, who founded the Greek police union, calls it a "political excrescence". "Because of my past in the police, I know very well where these people come from," Kyriazidis says. "Most declare their profession as 'businessman'. But one has to pause at that."
The party's founder and leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, served time in the late 1970s for assault and illegal possession of guns and explosives. While inside, he met members of the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974, but his political views, as expressed in Golden Dawn, the magazine he started when he was released, were well to the right of theirs. Breaking the boundaries of "acceptable" rightwing nationalism, Michaloliakos published paeans to Adolf Hitler, arguing that Greece should have been at the side of the Axis in the second world war. The magazine, its covers periodically adorned with portraits of the Führer and his acolytes, served up a weird amalgam of Nazi propaganda, antisemitism, traditional nationalism and pagan fantasy. The party that now courts and counts on the Orthodox church once advocated a return to "the faith of the Aryans" – the Olympian gods – claiming that Christianity had "grafted Jewish obscurantism on to the trunk of European civilisation". In the one interview I was allowed with a Golden Dawn official, MP Panagiotis Iliopoulos told me that, as a young man, the magazine expressed his ideas completely. Have the party's views changed since then? "Not at all," he said. "There are no neo-Nazi articles in the magazine. Only historical ones."
Golden Dawn first drew attention in the early 1990s, when the dispute over the name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia fuelled an upsurge of Greek nationalism. It found fertile ground in the anti-immigrant sentiment that spread through Greece with the first wave of migrants from Albania and eastern Europe; it gathered strength as the failures of Greek and European policy turned Greece into a lobster trap for refugees and migrants coming from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. As thousands struggled to survive beside impoverished Greeks in neighbourhoods shattered by the economic crisis, Golden Dawn vigilantes began to "clear" Athenian squares with fists and clubs and knives; to storm unofficial mosques; to sell protection to shopkeepers; to escort old ladies to the supermarket. In 2009 the party polled a mere 0.29% in the national election. In 2010, Michaloliakos was elected to the Athens city council; he celebrated his arrival with a fascist salute.
As the crisis deepens – 25% unemployment, and 54% among the young; a third of the businesses in central Athens closed; savings gone and faith in the two old mainstream parties lost; violent scenes erupting even in parliament – there is a smell of fear in Athens, as well as one of numb depression. In June, many voted for Golden Dawn as a protest against the parties that brought the country down: "I want them in parliament to beat the others up." Now they are turning to it because hope is exhausted; because things are out of control and they want someone to take charge; because it's "doing something". "It's not that Greece is going to be saved," one voter said to me. "Greece can't be saved." What, then?
The Golden Dawn office in downtown Athens is open three evenings a week. Most of the visitors are middle-aged women with dull eyes and sunken cheeks, faces too old for their bodies, hardened, tired expressions. More than 50 come in an hour. Quietly, they ask the bouncers, "Are they giving out food inside?" "Third floor," the bouncers say; but most of the women come out empty-handed save for a mauve piece of paper with the Golden Dawn logo on it. There's only enough today for voters from this ward; they'll announce the next distribution on a poster, in the papers, if you phone.
Away from the door, Maria Kirimi tells me she's been locked out of her flat with all her things inside since 29 July; the family are crowded at her mother's now, seven people surviving on €400 a month. "We're the living dead," she says. Isn't she troubled by Golden Dawn's violence? "The boys in the black shirts are the only ones I'm not scared of. I feel they'll protect me." I ask her mother, old enough to remember the junta, what she thinks of their far-right views. "I heard Michaloliakos say on TV that their sign isn't Hitler's sign but a patriotic one," she says, and then looks down at her feet. "It does upset me a bit. But I haven't heard of anyone else giving out food."
For the young people drawn into its inner circle, Golden Dawn means much more. Vetta has Celtic crosses on her collar points, a pack of Stuyvesants and a can of Red Bull clutched in her left hand. Her kohl-rimmed eyes dart back and forth as she speaks, but she is open, friendly. The 33-year-old says she helped to "clear" Aghios Panteleimon square three years ago and was stunned by people's gratitude. She's a member now, one of 20 chosen each year for their contribution to the cause and given lessons in ideology and behaviour: "We have to welcome everybody, to be polite but serious." There's a dress code for women – no heels, low-cut tops or bare backs – and a growing Women's Front, which offers training in self-defence. "But there's no difference between men and women here. We all sweep and mop. And, yes, the men make coffee."
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Aris Chatzistefanou: Golden Dawn has infiltrated Greek police, claims officer -- Officer says government has turned blind eye to fascists and far right may be being used to provoke clashes with demonstrators
4 Kasım 2012 Pazar
Benjamin Ginsberg: The Fall Of The Faculty
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The Fall of the Faculty
by Benjamin Ginsberg
Here and Now
College students generally view professors as individuals who exercise a good deal of power. Members of the faculty, after all, direct the lectures, labs, studios and discussions around which academic life is organized. Professors also control the grades and recommendations that help to determine students’ graduate school and career prospects.
Students are often aware, too, that some of their professors are movers and shakers beyond the walls of the campus. Academics are visible in the worlds of science, literature, the arts, finance and, especially, politics where they serve as analysts, commentators, advisors and high-level policy makers.
But, whatever standing they may have in the eyes of undergraduates or even in the corridors of national power, most professors possess surprisingly little influence in their own schools’ decision-making processes. At most, though perhaps not all of America’s thousands of colleges and universities, the faculty has been shunted to the sidelines. Faculty members will learn about major new programs and initiatives from official announcements or from the campus newspaper. Power on campus is wielded mainly by administrators whose names and faces are seldom even recognized by students or recalled by alumni.
At most schools to be sure, faculty members control the content of their own classes and, for the most part, their own research agendas. The faculty, collectively, plays a recognized though not exclusive role in the hiring and promotion of its members. Outside these two areas, though, administrators seldom bother to consult the faculty. And, should faculty members have the temerity to offer unsolicited views, these will be more or less politely ignored. Thus, there are few schools whose faculty members have a voice in business or investment decisions. Hardly any faculties are consulted about the renovation or construction of buildings and other aspects of the school’s physical plant. Virtually everywhere, student issues, including the size of the student body, tuition, financial aid and admissions policies are controlled by administrators. At most schools, fund raising and alumni relations are administrative matters, though faculty members are often asked to entertain alumni gatherings by giving talks and presentations.
Most professors, perhaps, have only a passing interest in the university’s physical plant or its investment strategies. Particularly at research universities many faculty members normally pay little attention to their school’s undergraduate admissions policies. But, professors lack much power even in areas in which they have a strong interest, such as the appointment of senior administrators, the development of new programs and curricula, and the definition of budgetary priorities.
As to appointments, on most campuses, presidential searches are controlled by the trustees or regents, while provosts, deans and other senior administrators are appointed by the president with varying degrees of faculty input. Professors, to be sure, often do serve on administrative or presidential search committees, alongside administrators, students and college staffers. These searches, however, are usually organized and overseen by corporate search firms employed by trustees, in the case of presidential searches, or the school’s administration for other searches. Before the 1960s, such firms were seldom retained by universities. Today, however, as college administrators imitate the practices of their corporate counterparts, search firms are a fixture of academic life. In recent years, two-thirds of the presidential searches conducted by large universities have been directed by professional head hunters.
In consultation with their employers, these firms identify most of the candidates whom the committee will be able to meet and consider. Generally speaking, search firms rule out candidates about whom anything at all negative is said when they investigate candidates’ backgrounds. This practice introduces a marked bias in favor of the most boring and conventional candidates. And, even the constrained choice given the committee is seldom final. Search committees are generally empowered only to recommend two or three candidates for review by the president or trustees who actually make the final decision. Many schools, of course, do not bother with even the pretense of faculty participation in administrative searches. The faculty learns the name of a new president or provost when the trustees issue a press release.
Once appointed, presidents serve at the pleasure of the trustees and can only be removed by them. Other administrators serve at the pleasure of the president. Every school employs a great many administrators whom the faculty regard as foolish or incompetent. But, so long as these individuals retain the support of their administrative superiors, the faculty is usually powerless to remove them. At one school, Pennsylvania’s Albright College, the faculty were dismayed to learn in 1999 that the resume’ of their newly appointed president was filled with fraudulent claims–books never published, positions never held and so on. Yet, while the facts of the matter could not be disputed, most trustees continued to support the president for nearly five years before he finally agreed to step down. Much of the Boston University faculty loathed and feared dictatorial President John Silber during his twenty-five years in office but, given Silber’s solid base of support among powerful members of the board of trustees, faculty opposition came to naught. In a similar vein, the trustees stood by the president of West Virginia University in the face of a faculty no-confidence vote when it was revealed that the university had awarded the daughter of the state’s governor an MBA degree she had not actually earned. Conversely, faculty support will certainly not protect an administrator’s job if she or he runs afoul of the Board. In 2005, for example, Cornell’s Jeffrey Lehman, a president whose work was generally approved by the faculty, was summarily fired by the Board, apparently in the wake of a personnel dispute. The Board neither consulted with nor informed the faculty before determining that Lehman should go.
To Read the Rest of the Excerpt
by Benjamin Ginsberg
Here and Now
College students generally view professors as individuals who exercise a good deal of power. Members of the faculty, after all, direct the lectures, labs, studios and discussions around which academic life is organized. Professors also control the grades and recommendations that help to determine students’ graduate school and career prospects.
Students are often aware, too, that some of their professors are movers and shakers beyond the walls of the campus. Academics are visible in the worlds of science, literature, the arts, finance and, especially, politics where they serve as analysts, commentators, advisors and high-level policy makers.
But, whatever standing they may have in the eyes of undergraduates or even in the corridors of national power, most professors possess surprisingly little influence in their own schools’ decision-making processes. At most, though perhaps not all of America’s thousands of colleges and universities, the faculty has been shunted to the sidelines. Faculty members will learn about major new programs and initiatives from official announcements or from the campus newspaper. Power on campus is wielded mainly by administrators whose names and faces are seldom even recognized by students or recalled by alumni.
At most schools to be sure, faculty members control the content of their own classes and, for the most part, their own research agendas. The faculty, collectively, plays a recognized though not exclusive role in the hiring and promotion of its members. Outside these two areas, though, administrators seldom bother to consult the faculty. And, should faculty members have the temerity to offer unsolicited views, these will be more or less politely ignored. Thus, there are few schools whose faculty members have a voice in business or investment decisions. Hardly any faculties are consulted about the renovation or construction of buildings and other aspects of the school’s physical plant. Virtually everywhere, student issues, including the size of the student body, tuition, financial aid and admissions policies are controlled by administrators. At most schools, fund raising and alumni relations are administrative matters, though faculty members are often asked to entertain alumni gatherings by giving talks and presentations.
Most professors, perhaps, have only a passing interest in the university’s physical plant or its investment strategies. Particularly at research universities many faculty members normally pay little attention to their school’s undergraduate admissions policies. But, professors lack much power even in areas in which they have a strong interest, such as the appointment of senior administrators, the development of new programs and curricula, and the definition of budgetary priorities.
As to appointments, on most campuses, presidential searches are controlled by the trustees or regents, while provosts, deans and other senior administrators are appointed by the president with varying degrees of faculty input. Professors, to be sure, often do serve on administrative or presidential search committees, alongside administrators, students and college staffers. These searches, however, are usually organized and overseen by corporate search firms employed by trustees, in the case of presidential searches, or the school’s administration for other searches. Before the 1960s, such firms were seldom retained by universities. Today, however, as college administrators imitate the practices of their corporate counterparts, search firms are a fixture of academic life. In recent years, two-thirds of the presidential searches conducted by large universities have been directed by professional head hunters.
In consultation with their employers, these firms identify most of the candidates whom the committee will be able to meet and consider. Generally speaking, search firms rule out candidates about whom anything at all negative is said when they investigate candidates’ backgrounds. This practice introduces a marked bias in favor of the most boring and conventional candidates. And, even the constrained choice given the committee is seldom final. Search committees are generally empowered only to recommend two or three candidates for review by the president or trustees who actually make the final decision. Many schools, of course, do not bother with even the pretense of faculty participation in administrative searches. The faculty learns the name of a new president or provost when the trustees issue a press release.
Once appointed, presidents serve at the pleasure of the trustees and can only be removed by them. Other administrators serve at the pleasure of the president. Every school employs a great many administrators whom the faculty regard as foolish or incompetent. But, so long as these individuals retain the support of their administrative superiors, the faculty is usually powerless to remove them. At one school, Pennsylvania’s Albright College, the faculty were dismayed to learn in 1999 that the resume’ of their newly appointed president was filled with fraudulent claims–books never published, positions never held and so on. Yet, while the facts of the matter could not be disputed, most trustees continued to support the president for nearly five years before he finally agreed to step down. Much of the Boston University faculty loathed and feared dictatorial President John Silber during his twenty-five years in office but, given Silber’s solid base of support among powerful members of the board of trustees, faculty opposition came to naught. In a similar vein, the trustees stood by the president of West Virginia University in the face of a faculty no-confidence vote when it was revealed that the university had awarded the daughter of the state’s governor an MBA degree she had not actually earned. Conversely, faculty support will certainly not protect an administrator’s job if she or he runs afoul of the Board. In 2005, for example, Cornell’s Jeffrey Lehman, a president whose work was generally approved by the faculty, was summarily fired by the Board, apparently in the wake of a personnel dispute. The Board neither consulted with nor informed the faculty before determining that Lehman should go.
To Read the Rest of the Excerpt
Unwelcome Guests #618 - The Consolidation of Police State USA (The Ongoing American Military Coup)
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Episode #618 - The Consolidation of Police State USA (The Ongoing American Military Coup)
Unwelcome Guests
We start the show this week with an interview of two regular contributors to the show, Peter Dale Scott and Peter Phillips, who each highlight different aspects of Police State USA. The interviewer is Gary Null from the Progressive Commentary Hour, who begins with a 20 minute summary of his objections to the present state of the US nation, with an emphasis on the shrinking Civil Rights and the countervailing unaccountable (and increasingly violent) corporate hierarchy. Peter Dale Scott highlights the importance of the Sep 11thactivation of COG in the effective repeal of the Posse Commitatus Act of 1878 and the steady removal of the US Constitution. Projected Censored's Peter Phillips emphasizes the symbiotic relationship between big media and the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex in keep the typical US citizen spellbound in front of a screen, in unthinking obedience to the same system which is stocking up on ammo and preparing huge detention facilities for imprisoning Americans. Gary Null's angle is continued exasperation at the failure of anyone to challenge the ongoing descent into fascism.
In our second hour, we hear an disturbing interview with Frank Morales on the bigger picture of the ongoing militarization of USA. He begins by describing an essay on "The American Military Coup of 2012", a fictional essay written 20 years ago which describes the coup as "the outgrowth of trends already visible as far back as 1992" such as "the massive diversion of military forces to civilian uses, particularly law enforcement".
As domestic dissent is becoming more widespread, more violence is needed by the US government and its legal maneuvering become ever more ridiculous. Morales talks about the Military-Media complex, since perpetual reinforcement by the media is required to keep people confused, afraid and submissive to the iron fist which is ever more clearly visible below the velvet glove of 'democracy'.
To Listen to the Episode
Unwelcome Guests
We start the show this week with an interview of two regular contributors to the show, Peter Dale Scott and Peter Phillips, who each highlight different aspects of Police State USA. The interviewer is Gary Null from the Progressive Commentary Hour, who begins with a 20 minute summary of his objections to the present state of the US nation, with an emphasis on the shrinking Civil Rights and the countervailing unaccountable (and increasingly violent) corporate hierarchy. Peter Dale Scott highlights the importance of the Sep 11thactivation of COG in the effective repeal of the Posse Commitatus Act of 1878 and the steady removal of the US Constitution. Projected Censored's Peter Phillips emphasizes the symbiotic relationship between big media and the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex in keep the typical US citizen spellbound in front of a screen, in unthinking obedience to the same system which is stocking up on ammo and preparing huge detention facilities for imprisoning Americans. Gary Null's angle is continued exasperation at the failure of anyone to challenge the ongoing descent into fascism.
In our second hour, we hear an disturbing interview with Frank Morales on the bigger picture of the ongoing militarization of USA. He begins by describing an essay on "The American Military Coup of 2012", a fictional essay written 20 years ago which describes the coup as "the outgrowth of trends already visible as far back as 1992" such as "the massive diversion of military forces to civilian uses, particularly law enforcement".
As domestic dissent is becoming more widespread, more violence is needed by the US government and its legal maneuvering become ever more ridiculous. Morales talks about the Military-Media complex, since perpetual reinforcement by the media is required to keep people confused, afraid and submissive to the iron fist which is ever more clearly visible below the velvet glove of 'democracy'.
To Listen to the Episode
Unwelcome Guests #6 - Created Unequal (Law, Money and Mumia Abu-Jamal)
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Episode #6 - Created Unequal (Law, Money and Mumia Abu-Jamal)
Unwelcome Guests
The first hour continues [the] lecture series with Michael Parenti. First, some real history on the Founding Fathers - how they created a Constitution designed to protect the rich while appearing offering sufficient concessions to the poor to secure their support. Then "Justice for Sale", which explains how slanted the US legal process is against blacks and the poor.
In the second hour, ... focus on the case of longtime inmate of death row, political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal. After the background to his arrest, we listen to some of his commentaries, and play a documentary from Bruderhof Radio.
To Listen to the Episode
Unwelcome Guests
The first hour continues [the] lecture series with Michael Parenti. First, some real history on the Founding Fathers - how they created a Constitution designed to protect the rich while appearing offering sufficient concessions to the poor to secure their support. Then "Justice for Sale", which explains how slanted the US legal process is against blacks and the poor.
In the second hour, ... focus on the case of longtime inmate of death row, political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal. After the background to his arrest, we listen to some of his commentaries, and play a documentary from Bruderhof Radio.
To Listen to the Episode
Unwelcome Guests #619 - The Financialization of Nature (And the Nature of Financialization)
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Episode #619 - The Financialization of Nature (And the Nature of Financialization)
Unwelcome Guests
... the show [starts] with a 2011 interview of Joan Baxter on the pattern of land grabbing that is ongoing in the developing world, especially in Africa, which rich foreign investors are increasingly carrying out, increasing landlessness and poverty amongst the local population. Arable land especially, she notes, is appealing to those with capital who are looking for an investment or a source of income. As we hear, this often involves uprooting communities and converting what was previously jointly held, sustainably farmed land into commercially managed energy intensive monocultures for export. Those who carry this [out] rely not only on bribery to ensure the support of key government officials, they are also supported by the whole ideology of foreign investment and economic development; sometimes locals fail to distinguish between NGOs with ostensibly altruistic motives and multi-national corporations who don't even bother to make such claims.
... [the] first hour [finishes] with the soundtrack of a short video on the Financialization of Nature, which summarizes the ongoing switch from an economy centered on the real world to one centered on the fictional needs of capital, looking at topics such as emission trading schemes.
In our second hour ... William Black [speaks] from the same conference ... featured in episode 611. He recalls the lessons learned from the savings and loan crisis:
Black notes that far from being prosecuted for their criminality, many of the individuals who profited massively from the S&L crisis went on to leading positions in the US political system, where they could use their experience to repeat the phenomenon on an even larger scale. Although he remains more or less committed to the modern financial system, Black's insider's view provides more evidence that the financial 'crisis' was anything but a surprise, and was in fact widely predicted by those regulators with enough integrity to follow their conscience rather than the sociopathic culture of those in charge of financial markets. In spite of volumes of compelling evidence, minimal effort has been expended to bring charges against those who committed fraud. Black reflects on the corruption of the legal system in US, noting that the US supreme court ruled that only government could bring civil suits against fraudulent banks - something they have shown no interest in doing.
[The episode concludes] with another short reading from the final chapter of David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years.
To Listen to the Episode
Unwelcome Guests
... the show [starts] with a 2011 interview of Joan Baxter on the pattern of land grabbing that is ongoing in the developing world, especially in Africa, which rich foreign investors are increasingly carrying out, increasing landlessness and poverty amongst the local population. Arable land especially, she notes, is appealing to those with capital who are looking for an investment or a source of income. As we hear, this often involves uprooting communities and converting what was previously jointly held, sustainably farmed land into commercially managed energy intensive monocultures for export. Those who carry this [out] rely not only on bribery to ensure the support of key government officials, they are also supported by the whole ideology of foreign investment and economic development; sometimes locals fail to distinguish between NGOs with ostensibly altruistic motives and multi-national corporations who don't even bother to make such claims.
... [the] first hour [finishes] with the soundtrack of a short video on the Financialization of Nature, which summarizes the ongoing switch from an economy centered on the real world to one centered on the fictional needs of capital, looking at topics such as emission trading schemes.
In our second hour ... William Black [speaks] from the same conference ... featured in episode 611. He recalls the lessons learned from the savings and loan crisis:
Accounting abuses also provided the ultimate perverse incentive. It paid to seek out bad loans, because only those who had no intention of repaying would be willing to offer the high loan fees and interest required for the best looting. It was rational for operators — that's CEOs — to drive their banks ever deeper into insolvency, as they looted them.
— James Pierce, leader of the national investigation into the Savings and Loan Crisis
Black notes that far from being prosecuted for their criminality, many of the individuals who profited massively from the S&L crisis went on to leading positions in the US political system, where they could use their experience to repeat the phenomenon on an even larger scale. Although he remains more or less committed to the modern financial system, Black's insider's view provides more evidence that the financial 'crisis' was anything but a surprise, and was in fact widely predicted by those regulators with enough integrity to follow their conscience rather than the sociopathic culture of those in charge of financial markets. In spite of volumes of compelling evidence, minimal effort has been expended to bring charges against those who committed fraud. Black reflects on the corruption of the legal system in US, noting that the US supreme court ruled that only government could bring civil suits against fraudulent banks - something they have shown no interest in doing.
[The episode concludes] with another short reading from the final chapter of David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years.
To Listen to the Episode
13 Ekim 2012 Cumartesi
On the Media: Errol Morris -- A Wilderness of Error
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"A Wilderness of Error"
On the Media
In 1970, the wife and daughters of a Green Beret doctor named Jeffrey MacDonald were stabbed to death, and MacDonald himself was found guilty of the crime. In his new book A Wilderness of Error, Errol Morris writes a revisionist history of the case, suggesting that MacDonald may actually be innocent. Brooke speaks to Morris about why, for him, the facts of the original case just didn't add up.
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On the Media
In 1970, the wife and daughters of a Green Beret doctor named Jeffrey MacDonald were stabbed to death, and MacDonald himself was found guilty of the crime. In his new book A Wilderness of Error, Errol Morris writes a revisionist history of the case, suggesting that MacDonald may actually be innocent. Brooke speaks to Morris about why, for him, the facts of the original case just didn't add up.
To Listen to the Episode
Jeff Faux: Education Profiteering -- Wall Street's Next Big Thing?
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Education Profiteering; Wall Street's Next Big Thing?
by Jeff Faux
The Real News Network
The end of the Chicago teachers' strike was but a temporary regional truce in the civil war that plagues the nation's public schools. There is no end in sight, in part because -- as often happens in wartime -- the conflict is increasingly being driven by profiteers.
The familiar media narrative tells us that this is a fight over how to improve our schools. On the one side are the self-styled reformers, who argue that the central problem with American K-12 education is low-quality teachers protected by their unions. Their solution is privatization, with its most common form being the privately run but publicly financed charter school. Because charter schools are mostly unregulated, nonunion and compete for students, their promoters claim they will, ipso facto, perform better than public schools.
On the other side are teachers and their unions who are cast as villains. The conventional plot line is that they resist change, blame poverty for their schools' failings and protect their jobs and turf.
It is well known, although rarely acknowledged in the press, that the reform movement has been financed and led by the corporate class. For over twenty years large business oriented foundations, such as Gates (Microsoft), Walton (Wal-Mart) and Broad (Sun Life) have poured billions into charter school start-ups, sympathetic academics and pundits, media campaigns (including Hollywood movies) and sophisticated nurturing of the careers of privatization promoters who now dominate the education policy debate from local school boards to the US Department of Education.
In recent years, hedge fund operators, leverage-buy-out artists and investment bankers have joined the crusade. They finance schools, sit on the boards of their associations and the management companies that run them, and -- most important -- have made support of charter schools one of the criteria for campaign giving in the post- Citizens United era. Since most Republicans are already on board for privatization, the political pressure has been mostly directed at Democrats.
Thus, for example, when Andrew Cuomo wanted to get the support of hedge fund managers for his run for governor of New York, he was told to talk to Joe Williams, director of Democrats for Education Reform, a group set up to lobby liberals on privatization. Cuomo is now a champion of charter schools. As Joanne Barkan noted in a Dissent Magazine report, privatizers are even targeting school board elections, in one case spending over $630,000 to elect two members in a local school board race last year in Colorado.
Wall Street's involvement in the charter school movement -- when the media acknowledges it -- is presented as an act of philanthropy. Perhaps, as critics claim, hedge funders are meddling in an area they know nothing about. But their motives are worthy. Indeed, since they send their own children to the best private schools, their concern for other people's children seems remarkably altruistic. "Wall Street has always put its money where its interests of beliefs lie," observed this New York Times article, "But it is far less common that so many financial heavyweights would adopt a social cause like charter schools and advance it with a laser like focus in the political realm."
Yet, with the wide variety of social causes and charitable needs -- poverty, health, housing, global warming, the arts, etc. -- why would so many Wall Streeters focus laser-like on this particular issue? The Times suggest two answers. One is that the money managers are hard-nosed, data-driven investors "drawn to the business-like way in which many charter schools are run; their focus on results primarily measured by test scores."
Twenty years ago, one might have reasonably believed that the private charter schools, which are managed to produce the numbers, would produce better outcomes -- as measured by the numbers. But the overwhelming evidence is that they do not. The single most comprehensive study, by researchers at Stanford University, found that 17 percent of charter school students performed better than their public school counterparts, 46 percent no better and 37 percent worse. Stanford's conclusions have been reinforced by virtually all of the serious research, including those at the University of California, the Economic Policy Institute and the policy research firm Mathematica.
Nor do charter schools seem more efficient. Those promoted as the most successful examples have been heavily subsidized by foundations and Wall Street donors. The film, Waiting for Superman that portrays a heroic charter school organizer fighting a selfish teachers union was widely hyped in the media -- including popular TV shows like Oprah Winfrey's. Yet, as Diane Ravitch, an assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush and a former charter school supporter turned critic, noted, the film neglected to report that the hero educator kicked out the entire first class of the school because their test scores were too low, that the school was heavily subsidized by the pro-reform foundations and that the hero took an annual salary of four hundred thousand dollars.
Neither do the data on international comparisons support either privatization in general or charter schools in particular. The foreign education systems that out score America's are government-run, unionized, monopolies. Ravitch asks: "I look around the world and I don't see any country doing this but us. Why is that?"
Good question. Although the data do not support the supposedly data-driven privatizers' claims, their enthusiasm is undiminished. In response to an op-ed by Bill Gates that crudely misrepresented the statistics on school performance, education policy analyst Richard Rothstein observed: "It is remarkable that someone associated with technology and progress should have such a careless disregard for accuracy when it comes to the education policy in which he is now so deeply involved."
The Times' other guess about Wall Street's motives was that hedge funders are attracted to the anti-union character of the charter schools. This is undoubtedly true; the attack on the pubic schools is clearly a part of the broad conservative campaign to discredit government.
Wall Street has always loathed the labor movement. And in the last decade it has had even more of a reason since corporate profits now depend more on cost cutting and less on the creation of new products. The Chief Finance Officer of JP Morgan reports that some 75% of the net increase in corporate profits between 2000 and 2007 -- before the financial crash -- was a result of cuts in workers' wages and benefits. Given that unions are the only serious vehicles for resistance to the corporate low-wage strategy, Wall Street's antipathy has become even stronger.
But today unions represent less than seven percent of private sector workers. And the influence of public sector unions on the bargaining position of workers in profit-making corporations is, certainly in the short run, negligible. So while hostility to unions plays a role, is it is not quite credible to believe that Wall Street profit maximizers would be spending so much of their time and money simply to beat up on a proxy for the private sector unions that they have already so beaten back.
As usual, when looking for what motivates capitalists in a market system, the answer is likely to have something to do with making money.
Having been rescued from the consequences of its own folly by the Bush/Obama bailouts with its de-regulated privileges intact, Wall Street is once more on the prowl for the new "big thing" -- a new source of potential profits upon which to build the next lucrative asset bubble.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Jeff Faux
The Real News Network
The end of the Chicago teachers' strike was but a temporary regional truce in the civil war that plagues the nation's public schools. There is no end in sight, in part because -- as often happens in wartime -- the conflict is increasingly being driven by profiteers.
The familiar media narrative tells us that this is a fight over how to improve our schools. On the one side are the self-styled reformers, who argue that the central problem with American K-12 education is low-quality teachers protected by their unions. Their solution is privatization, with its most common form being the privately run but publicly financed charter school. Because charter schools are mostly unregulated, nonunion and compete for students, their promoters claim they will, ipso facto, perform better than public schools.
On the other side are teachers and their unions who are cast as villains. The conventional plot line is that they resist change, blame poverty for their schools' failings and protect their jobs and turf.
It is well known, although rarely acknowledged in the press, that the reform movement has been financed and led by the corporate class. For over twenty years large business oriented foundations, such as Gates (Microsoft), Walton (Wal-Mart) and Broad (Sun Life) have poured billions into charter school start-ups, sympathetic academics and pundits, media campaigns (including Hollywood movies) and sophisticated nurturing of the careers of privatization promoters who now dominate the education policy debate from local school boards to the US Department of Education.
In recent years, hedge fund operators, leverage-buy-out artists and investment bankers have joined the crusade. They finance schools, sit on the boards of their associations and the management companies that run them, and -- most important -- have made support of charter schools one of the criteria for campaign giving in the post- Citizens United era. Since most Republicans are already on board for privatization, the political pressure has been mostly directed at Democrats.
Thus, for example, when Andrew Cuomo wanted to get the support of hedge fund managers for his run for governor of New York, he was told to talk to Joe Williams, director of Democrats for Education Reform, a group set up to lobby liberals on privatization. Cuomo is now a champion of charter schools. As Joanne Barkan noted in a Dissent Magazine report, privatizers are even targeting school board elections, in one case spending over $630,000 to elect two members in a local school board race last year in Colorado.
Wall Street's involvement in the charter school movement -- when the media acknowledges it -- is presented as an act of philanthropy. Perhaps, as critics claim, hedge funders are meddling in an area they know nothing about. But their motives are worthy. Indeed, since they send their own children to the best private schools, their concern for other people's children seems remarkably altruistic. "Wall Street has always put its money where its interests of beliefs lie," observed this New York Times article, "But it is far less common that so many financial heavyweights would adopt a social cause like charter schools and advance it with a laser like focus in the political realm."
Yet, with the wide variety of social causes and charitable needs -- poverty, health, housing, global warming, the arts, etc. -- why would so many Wall Streeters focus laser-like on this particular issue? The Times suggest two answers. One is that the money managers are hard-nosed, data-driven investors "drawn to the business-like way in which many charter schools are run; their focus on results primarily measured by test scores."
Twenty years ago, one might have reasonably believed that the private charter schools, which are managed to produce the numbers, would produce better outcomes -- as measured by the numbers. But the overwhelming evidence is that they do not. The single most comprehensive study, by researchers at Stanford University, found that 17 percent of charter school students performed better than their public school counterparts, 46 percent no better and 37 percent worse. Stanford's conclusions have been reinforced by virtually all of the serious research, including those at the University of California, the Economic Policy Institute and the policy research firm Mathematica.
Nor do charter schools seem more efficient. Those promoted as the most successful examples have been heavily subsidized by foundations and Wall Street donors. The film, Waiting for Superman that portrays a heroic charter school organizer fighting a selfish teachers union was widely hyped in the media -- including popular TV shows like Oprah Winfrey's. Yet, as Diane Ravitch, an assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush and a former charter school supporter turned critic, noted, the film neglected to report that the hero educator kicked out the entire first class of the school because their test scores were too low, that the school was heavily subsidized by the pro-reform foundations and that the hero took an annual salary of four hundred thousand dollars.
Neither do the data on international comparisons support either privatization in general or charter schools in particular. The foreign education systems that out score America's are government-run, unionized, monopolies. Ravitch asks: "I look around the world and I don't see any country doing this but us. Why is that?"
Good question. Although the data do not support the supposedly data-driven privatizers' claims, their enthusiasm is undiminished. In response to an op-ed by Bill Gates that crudely misrepresented the statistics on school performance, education policy analyst Richard Rothstein observed: "It is remarkable that someone associated with technology and progress should have such a careless disregard for accuracy when it comes to the education policy in which he is now so deeply involved."
The Times' other guess about Wall Street's motives was that hedge funders are attracted to the anti-union character of the charter schools. This is undoubtedly true; the attack on the pubic schools is clearly a part of the broad conservative campaign to discredit government.
Wall Street has always loathed the labor movement. And in the last decade it has had even more of a reason since corporate profits now depend more on cost cutting and less on the creation of new products. The Chief Finance Officer of JP Morgan reports that some 75% of the net increase in corporate profits between 2000 and 2007 -- before the financial crash -- was a result of cuts in workers' wages and benefits. Given that unions are the only serious vehicles for resistance to the corporate low-wage strategy, Wall Street's antipathy has become even stronger.
But today unions represent less than seven percent of private sector workers. And the influence of public sector unions on the bargaining position of workers in profit-making corporations is, certainly in the short run, negligible. So while hostility to unions plays a role, is it is not quite credible to believe that Wall Street profit maximizers would be spending so much of their time and money simply to beat up on a proxy for the private sector unions that they have already so beaten back.
As usual, when looking for what motivates capitalists in a market system, the answer is likely to have something to do with making money.
Having been rescued from the consequences of its own folly by the Bush/Obama bailouts with its de-regulated privileges intact, Wall Street is once more on the prowl for the new "big thing" -- a new source of potential profits upon which to build the next lucrative asset bubble.
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