[lbo-talk] follow the money

Lance Murdoch lancemurdoch at gmail.com
Thu Dec 9 06:37:58 PST 2004


I have been researching where American conservative billionaires and multi-millionaires have been putting their non-capital money recently, and the major effort seems to be in privatizing education. They are spending hundreds of millions, perhaps billions a year in this effort.

Last year, the Walton Family Foundation gave over $10 million to just one privatize schools effort, CEO America. It seems clear to me that this is their next big push, privatizing social security and that sort of thing is more of a long-term plan. Interestingly enough, they seem to be trying to push for charter schools in places like New York City, Chicago, Michigan - very "blue" areas or at least purple ones. They're spending next to nothing on doing this in Southern and non-coastal Western states. It's just become apparent to me how massive this effort is and how many capitalists and top managers (Jack Welch etc.) are involved in this. It seems to me what they ideally want is a school that teaches "Christian moral values" and that also turns a profit. Turning a profit is one of the benefits of all of this - the movement eventually can fund itself, or get the government to fund it rather.



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