Friday, December 16, 2011

Charter School Operators Think Christine Quinn's Their Best Bet - For Now

Charter school operators and some of their hedge fund and technology backers met with Christine Quinn this week and offered her a bag full of $15,000 in cash as a little taste of what's to come if she gives them what they want on the charter school issue.

The NY Times reports that charter operators and their backers are worried about what's going to happen to their movement after Mayor Moneybags leaves office.

They are most concerned that Bloomberg's policy of co-locating charter schools in public school buildings will end after Bloomberg goes.

If charter schools were forced to pay for space as opposed to receiving it for free, charter operators fear they would have less money to operate their schools, spend money on public relations and purchase legislators in Albany.

As they look at the current crop of potential mayoral candidates with name recognition - Quinn, De Blasio, Stringer - they worry that they will not have the kind of education reform advocate they have had in Bloomberg (and Cuomo up in Albany for that matter, though that's not mentioned in the article.)

Luckily for them, they're heavily funded by a bunch of hedge fund criminals and Wall Street crooks, so they've got endless amounts of cash to buy off pols at will.

Witness how they bought off Andrew Cuomo with DFER money and Cuomo issued a very charter-friendly, pro-reform education agenda that read like DFER pamphlet within the week.

And all it took was one suitcase full of cash and the promise of more where that came from.

So getting Quinn on board with their agenda should be no problem.

Sure she has some loose (very loose, IMO) ties to the UFT, but the DFER's and the charter operators have the cash and in the political world, that's all that matters.

If they can't get some charter-friendly candidate to jump into the race, they'll buy off whoever does become the mayor and get what they want anyway.

And Christine Quinn has already shown herself willing to shed any and all ideological positions for power and campaign cash.

Frankly, she should come much cheaper than Cuomo came.

They're both political whores, but Quinn is a cut-rate one.

One last point on this: With all the stolen Wall Street and hedge fund-cash the charter operators and their backers have, I don't see why they don't just pay for their own damned school buildings themselves.

But then again, that would leave less money to pay charter CEO's and spend on political bribes, powerful lobbyists, and public relations, so it makes complete sense they continue to want the free real estate ride from the city.

9 comments:

  1. Helping Quinn get elected are Bloomberg, Koch, the billionaire real estate developers, and organizations who have received money from her discretionary funds and are under the (false)impression that she's progressive. She also has millions of dollars in the City budget that she can use to make deals. The burden is on grass-roots New Yorkers who know her record to educate the public about why she should be voted out of public office. If she hadn't overturned term limits for Bloomberg, she'd probably be in jail now for the slush fund scandal. And we wouldn't be faced with the possibility that this crook could be the next Mayor of New York: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXoANkQh93I

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  2. If New Yorkers have half a brain they will not vote for Quinn especially those in education.
    The fact that she helped to orchestrate the lifting of term limits and the damage that this mayor has done to public schools there should be a large and vocal outcry against her candidacy. As for the UFT, with Randi still very much dictating legislative policy, who knows what deals she might agree to with Quinn. The problem once again is a potentially weak field of democratic nominees. Boy they sure pulled the plug on John Liu, who has continued to attack the mayors policies. DeBlasio, Stringer, Thompson, not to mention who the republicans may pull out of their hat. Remember, who knew the name Mike Bloom,berg back in 2001?

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  3. There's something suspicious about the recent accusations against Liu,including the fund-raising improprieties. Bloombucks hates Liu and I just know there has to be a connection.

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  4. Teachers: Keep an eye on the UFT connection to Quinn. Don't be surprised to see Quinn be endorsed by Bloomberg, charter school shills and the UFT. Can you spell C-o-l-l-b-o-r-a-t-i-o-n?
    But then again I have viewed the UFT/AFT leadeship on the other side of the line along with the ed deformers. Did you see the item posted on NYC Parent blog - note who is on the board.

    Regents agree to give NY student and teacher data to limited corporation run by Gates and operated by Murdoch's Wireless Gen

    This work will be guided by participating states and informed by input from a panel of expert advisors, including Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers;

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  5. Yeah, I totally agree, Norm. I was going to put that into the post, but decided to leave it out for now. I suspect that Quinn WILL be backed by the UFT - they will claim some jive (need to back a winner, want to have a seat at the table, paying her back for past support, blah, blah, blah...) even as the charter people will be handing her suitcases full of cash to continue the EXACT same policies Bloomberg has promoted.

    And yes, I did see that the Regents gave the data work to Murdoch and Randi signed off on it. I wonder how much she got paid?

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  6. Just think...after three terms of Quinn, we'll have a mayor the spitting image of Rosie...

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  7. Also, look at the hatchet job being done now on Liu...even though it was printed that Liu and Bloomberg made "nice-nice" with each other 6 months ago...Hmmm....something foul in the state of Bloomberg here...like they are destroying Liu's mayoral chances through yellow journalism...

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