Broad's LAUSD WMDs 

by Geronimo, NBCT, Honorary BAT

The forces that Eil Broad represents are relentless. Their money buys them access and political clout. We are engaged in an endless war with the privatizers.

Eli Broad’s methodology is much like TFA’s. You work and groom your people and offer them to the system so that they can implement their corporate ed reform policies from the inside. 

John Deasy’s tenure at LAUSD is the perfect example. Groomed in the Gates/Broad laboratory, he was offered to former Mayor Villaraigosa who stashed him in LAUSD for detonation within the school system to cause massive disruption and casualties.

Deasy performed his destructive function brilliantly and the collateral damage from his tenure still roils the district. 

After LAUSD was battered by his reckless and arrogant tenure, Deasy escaped the district without answering publicly for his crimes to education. He found cushy asylum with Broad who currently harbors him in the inner sanctum of his foundation. Deasy remains a Napoleon in his luxury skybox Elba but still manages to dictate policy.

The intense bond between him and Arne Duncan is legendary and both advise each other on policy matters. 

When Broad’s 50% plan to charterize LAUSD was reported, it was as unsurprising as learning Dick Cheney wanting to go topple Iraq. The writing had been on the wall for years and Broad’s Foundation has the cash and resources to bulldoze his way to that end.

Broadism is all about the ENDS. Deasyism is about the MEANS.

These two cowards will not come out to debate their positions in anything but a FOX NEWS friendly audience. They are much like the Koch Brothers in this way and use their money and connections to bypass the public and go right to the politicians who will make the rules.

Broad and Deasy are shrewd at the political game. Their entire careers are testaments to how well they have courted the rich and powerful.

Engaged citizen activists are the ONLY thing standing in their way from the control they have mapped out from Day One.

For Cheney it was Baghdad.

For Broad it is Beaudry.

  

Broad Trumps Trump

 
by Geronimo, NBCT

We all may think Donald Trump is a buffoon and a bizarre spectacle for our insatiable Ringling Brothers' amusement, but we all owe him a debt of gratitude for ripping the charade off how “business” is done in America.

In Thursday’s GOP debate, Trump quite honestly stated that he buys politicians and expects favors in return. He calls everyone else naive and idiots if they don’t know how the system works.

John Deasy was the Trojan Horse in the world of LA’s public education.

After he was installed in LAUSD, Deasy proceeded to implement the business model he was weaned on all his life over the city's education system.

This grotesque Trump-style "economic" pedagogy was enacted by Deasy throughout his tenure at LAUSD. Deasy's entire career was sponsored by a financial system that rewarded the likes of Bill Gates or Eli Broad and NEVER the working class students of color to whom Deasy should have tended. Instead, Deasy played the obsequious toady to America's wealthiest royalty.

It is helpful to remember the name Robert Felner whose guidance and tutelage would be instrumental in Deasy’s life. Felner was Deasy’s loving University of Louisville mentor who would teach him everything that Deasy would later apply throughout his career.

I won’t even go into how the ethically vile Deasy played ignorant in how he was allowed to receive a 9 credit PhD in such a short span. Felner chose Deasy as his ONLY doctoral candidate in his six years at Louisville. These two men worked intimately with each other and Deasy learned much from this man. Deasy’s dedication in his PhD reads: “I would like to thank my major professor. Dr. Robert Felner, for his guidance and encouragement. His help goes beyond this work and to the real work of leadership in our public schools.”
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What became of Robert Felner?

He was sentenced to 63 months in prison for his role in defrauding U of L and the University of Rhode Island of $2.3 million for his contracts with school systems across the country, including the Santa Monica school district that John Deasy, "coincidentally" enough, led.

While hopscotching from district to district on his way “up” (all the while being groomed by the richest people on the planet), Deasy became enthusiastically championed by former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other corporate reformers. Deasy found an ally with the neo-liberal education policies of the LA TIMES who salivated over his brash business style as the savior of LAUSD. He was going to shut up the children-hating union once and for all.

Disturbingly, the supposedly “liberal” school board members failed their duties time and time again in reining in Deasy. The current board president Steve Zimmer was compulsive in his fawning public flattery of this man and his methods.

Eli Broad paved the way for Deasy by the standard business practice of “buying” his way into LAUSD and offering to “pay” for some positions. The BOE had ZERO problem with this. The Charters gained tremendous footholds in Deasy’s years, but it was never a secret to what Deasy’s goals were.

Anyone who pretends otherwise would rightly get called out as idiots by Donald Trump.

Donald Trump completely understands how the system works and so does Eli Broad. In fact, their paths to their own personal fortunes have a remarkably similar trajectory with their own strategic use of laws favoring the insanely rich to help build their treasures to stratospheric heights.

John Deasy has always been enthralled by these titans of capital. He has been their powerful champion, pushing through their privatization/technological/charter agendas from Day One.

It should be noted that LAUSD’s General Consul David Holmquist has used his position to approve every one of Deasy’s and Eli Broad’s initiatives. He has been instrumental in Deasy’s reign and has provided “legal” cover for almost every disaster that has befallen the district. Holmquist's first priority has always been the leadership of Beaudry.

It is ESSENTIAL to remember that NO ONE at LAUSD’s TOP has ever been held responsible for anything. They simply move on to better paying gigs in the private sector. While they are in power, their methods are to be hyper-aggressive (like our friend Donald) in asserting everyone else’s culpability while never once accepting responsibility for the follies that has made LAUSD a laughing stock across the nation.

Fast forwarding to the iPad and MISIS catastrophes and up until the very end of his "service", John Deasy patted himself on the back for his genius and methodology. John Deasy would contend that if there were any faults at all it’s because he cared too much for the kids of LA (unlike all those others who hated Civil Rights for children of color). Every time Deasy had a chance to paint himself like MLK, he would quote the "Letter from Birmingham Jail" as if King himself would sing his praises.

And Eli Broad claimed to be Gandhi by extension.

These people are awful as moral human beings but when they are put in the education arena and one sees how the interests they champion are EXACTLY the same as Donald Trump’s, then it is beyond the pale of decency.

John Deasy left LAUSD and its children in a much more weakened position. Although he desperately wanted a job in Washington with Arne Duncan whose man crush on Deasy is legendary, even Deasy stunk too much to go to work for him. Well, as Casablanca ended up, Deasy had to go somewhere and the usual suspects came through for Deasy as they reciprocated Deasy's fealty. Eli Broad's generous bosom took him in with a phenomenal paycheck and the zero public accountability which has been his hallmark.

And now, as one reads the heart wilting Howard Blume piece on the goals of Deasy, Broad and the Waltons... to have 50% of all LA’s children in a charter in eight years, we can clearly see Deasyism's political and economic pedagogy in the full light of day.

What America has to decide is who they think really has their children’s best interest at heart (Wait…I mean to say EVERYONE’S children–not just the rich and most able).

Is it Eli Broad and John Deasy?

Donald Trump surely would back these guys’ proposal a thousand percent, recognizing it is a fantastic investment for his portfolio.

And to his credit, Trump would at least be honest about his motives.