Today: Press Conf Demands Eva Return $8 Million as Hedge Hogs Rape Puerto Rico and Attack Public Schools for More profit - And give to Eva

PR crisis, like Katrina in New Orleans, is another disaster capitalism opportunity to destroy public education. When will Arne Duncan say: The Puerto Rico default is the best thing to happen to PR?

[Major Success Academy supporter] Paulson & Co. was one buyers of Puerto Rico's record $3.5 billion sale in March 2014. 
of the largest

Hedge Fund Economists Want Puerto Rico to Lay Off Teachers to Fix Debt Crisis... Time

Puerto Rico can avoid a costly default by upping taxes, cutting teacher jobs and closing schools, a group of hedge fund economists proposed in a report released on Monday, offering a controversial solution to the island’s “unpayable” $72 billion debt crisis. The report, commissioned by hedge funds holding several billion dollars of Puerto Rico’s bonds, highlights the island’s rising education expenditures against the backdrop of countless school closings and waves of poor families fleeing to mainland America.

Gee, hedge hogs killing an economy and targeting public schools and teachers. Can someone connect the dots for us?

It would, in particular, be a terrible idea to give the hedge funds that have scooped up much of Puerto Rico’s debt what they want — basically to destroy the island’s education system in the name of fiscal responsibility... Paul Krugman, NY Times

I saw this little tidbit in the Krugman piece on Monday on the Puerto Rico debt crisis. But Krugman, as usual when it comes to education, doesn't connect the dots -- that the PR crisis, like Katrina in New Orleans, is another disaster capitalism opportunity.

This morning at 10AM some dots will be connected.

Success Academy Pressured to Return $8.5 Million Hedge Fund (Dirty Money) Donation

PRESS ADVISORY

Success Academy Pressured to Return $8.5 Million Hedge Fund Donation
The charter school chain in New York City should not accept any money tied to the suffering of Puerto Rican children and families, many of whom already live in poverty

WHAT: Advocates will call on Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy to return an $8.5 million donation of “tainted money” from controversial hedge fund manager John Paulson. In Puerto Rico, where many New Yorkers and Success Academy families have roots, Paulson is profiting from the debt crisis. He is linked to austerity measures that may lead to deeper cuts in school funding and wages for workers that will harm Puerto Ricans. Success Academy’s expansion should not benefit in any way from the suffering of Puerto Rican children and families.

Fifty-six percent of Puerto Rican children already live in poverty, and now hedge fund managers like Paulson want to threaten access to educational opportunity just to make bigger profits.

WHO: Education advocates, parents, community leaders, and concerned residents of New York. Leaders and members of the Hedge Clippers, Alliance for Quality Education, New York Communities for Change, Make the Road New York, Strong Economy for All, Citizen Action New York.

WHERE: Steps of City Hall, Lower Manhattan, NYC.

WHEN: Today, August 5, 10 a.m.

MORE BACKGROUND: Paulson has focused on transforming Puerto Rico into a low-tax, high-luxury playground for the wealthy. As a Bloomberg News headline put it, “Paulson’s Paradise Lures Rich Fleeing Taxes.” He has purchased $120 million of Puerto Rico’s debt. Like other hedge fund managers, he is looking to collect massive profits from his investments – even if it means drastic austerity measures like cuts to public education funding and wages that will destroy the lives of families and children. Paulson’s paradise is a nightmare for Puerto Ricans.

Charter School Hedge Hog Backer of PAVE, Julian Robertson: Hedge Funds Close Doors, Facing Low Returns and Investor Scrutiny

There is joy in Mudville. I love the smell of bad news for hedge funds in the morning. Robertson's son Spencer Robertson heads PAVE Academy, which is the school that invaded the space of Julie Cavanagh's PS 15 in Red Hook. The good thing that came out of it was how it mobilized the community to fight back.

Julian Robertson, founder of Tiger Management. This year, three funds it spun out have closed. Credit Vaughan Leighton Brookfield for The New York Times

For decades, nearly everything that the billionaire Julian Robertson touched turned to gold. Mr. Robertson, founder of the hedge fund Tiger Management, seeded a network of hugely successful “Tiger Cubs” — companies that in turn seeded more talent. It became the closest thing the hedge fund industry had to a dynasty.

Since the start of this year, however, the managers of three firms spun out of that gilded empire have called it quits after volatile performances and sometimes steep losses. They will return money to investors and focus on managing their own wealth.

TigerShark, Tiger Consumer and JAT Capital Management are just three examples among a recent wave of hedge funds that have closed their doors to investors in the face of choppy markets. They are a reminder that the hedge fund industry is not all spectacular returns... NY Times, May 16, 2015

Hedge Funds Close Doors, Facing Low Returns and Investor Scrutiny

New York Times‎ - 1 day ago

 

Hedge Hogs and Evil Moskowitz

Almost five years ago, a fateful agreement was reached. An ambitious then–attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, walked into New York's "power breakfast" hub, the Regency Hotel, and shook hands with Education Reform Now's Joe Williams, the man who could help him secure the hedge-fund community's blessing. Williams told Cuomo that they "were looking for a leader on our particular issue," and according to Williams the attorney general's response was a good one. Since that breakfast, millions of hedge-fund dollars have poured into the governor's coffers, and education-reform stalwart Andrew Cuomo has never looked back.
Thus, over a breakfast .... one man's ambition and a few other men's power overrode the decades-long demands of millions of New Yorkers for fully funded public schools. But what does such a profoundly anti-democratic approach mean for the state's public school system? In less than two weeks, when the state legislature votes on Cuomo's proposals, New York's public-school students will find out.... The Nation, March 2015

And so it shall come to pass.

despite New York's progressive reputation, its school-district funding-distribution system is actually one of the most regressive nationwide, similar to that of states like Texas, North Carolina and Missouri...

Phew! At least Cuomo hasn't turned us into Mississippi --- yet.

The Times put the Success Academy horror chambers story we reported on yesterday (Video of Eva Bund Rally, NY Times Piece on Eva and Success)
on the front page. That story doesn't even scratch the surface. Apparently the reporter didn't talk to people who are forced to share space with the avaricious Eva -- people who observe evidence of brutality all the time. We'll comment more on the Eva piece -- what scares me is how many public school teachers want this system for their kids.

The Nation had a good piece on the hedge hog billionaires with this graphic:

Why Do Hedge Fund Executives Suddenly Care About Poor Kids?

Why the New York hedge fund community has rallied around the issue of education reform, specifically in support of charter schools and against teacher tenure, is more complicated. Their policy prescriptions—basing 50 percent of teacher evaluations on student test scores, for instance—are not in any way grounded in mainstream education research.
"The problem is that Cuomo's backers aren't paying much attention to the people who actually understand how Value-Added Modeling works," explains Professor Julian Vasquez Heilig, an education policy researcher at California State University. "Education statisticians have come out many times saying these models are being used inappropriately and are unstable because other things happen in students' lives outside of the teachers they encounter. When a kids' parents in a high needs district are deported, and their achievement plummets, this actually has nothing to do with the teacher."
Vasquez Heilig added that the reform proposals seem founded on a desire to destroy the development of long-term professional educators, rather than any empirical analysis: "We know 70 percent of teachers will bounce between high performing and low performing from year to year. So this is creating an impossible high stakes testing gauntlet between a young excited teacher and their path to quality, veteran expertise. If you're looking for a cheap churn-and-burn teaching force, this is your policy, but if you want experienced, qualified teachers, committed to a schools' long-term success, this is a disaster."

From a purely business standpoint, however, such cost-effective education reform proposals do make sense for the hedge-fund community, especially given the alternative education reform option: the legally required equitable funding of New York public schools, as mandated by the state's highest court in 2007. Low-income New York school districts haven't received their legally mandated funding since 2009 and the state owes its schools a whopping $5.9 billion, according to a recent study by the labor-backed group Alliance for Quality Education. Yet somehow in this prolonged period of economic necessity, billionaire hedge-fund managers continue to enjoy lower tax rates than the bottom 20 percent of taxpayers.
As a recent Hedge Clippers report pointed out, the hedge-fund community has achieved these gains over the last decade and a half by buying political influence and carving out absurd breaks and loopholes in the New York state tax code. Since 2000, 570 hedge fund managers and top executives have poured $39.6 million into the campaign coffers of New York state politicians. Thus, despite New York's progressive reputation, its school-district funding-distribution system is actually one of the most regressive nationwide, similar to that of states like Texas, North Carolina and Missouri.

Read it all:
http://m.thenation.com/article/201881-9-billionaires-are-about-remake-new-yorks-public-schools-heres-their-story