The Rich And Powerful Are Getting Into Your Head.

The Guardian

Are Gates and Rockefeller using their influence to set agenda in poor states?

Philanthropists have evolved from unconditional giving to conditional giving.

Tech Times

Philanthropy Impacted Education Policy In New York City, Says Book Author

Professor wrote a book about philanthropic influence on education

Pando.com (02/2014)

The Wolf of Sesame Street: Revealing the secret corruption inside PBS's news division

The demise of PBS was well underway long ago as underwriting congealed to only a few very large influential donors.

AAUP (2012)

When Billionaires Become Educational Experts

Did you notice more outspoken conservative professors at your college lately?

Crooked Timber

Universities are highly responsive to very rich people

When looking at collges and universities, get a list of the members of the board of trustees, and ask who the big donors are.

In These Times

Dumbing America Down

As long as Progressive professors still remain on campuses across America, the oligarchs must settle for disparaging education and intellectual achievement.

The rich and powerful may be spending a lot on politics to make the world a better place for themselves, but politics is not the only means to their end.

As the middle class alumni of colleges and universities are too far in debt to support their alma maters', colleges are relying on ever-more wealthy "philanthropists" for support.

It seems the common assumption about philanthropy is that donors find a worthy cause to support, and that's it. But it's not it. There are strings attached. More now than ever before.

Institutions of education such as museums, public television, colleges, universities are falling under increasing pressure by rich donors to modify themselves to influence their agenda. Under threat of withholding donations and grants, they influence the makeup of board members, deciding who gets hired and fired, and which professors get tenure, and which professors are relegated to part-time Adjunct work so minimal they are forced to resign.

How does one cut off such tentacles of influence? Literally?

Angus Deaton: Winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economics

Angus Deaton
2015 Economics Nobel Laureate
Confirms what Bernie Sanders has been saying for years and years!

The New York Times

Why Angus Deaton Deserved the Economics Nobel Prize

NobelPrize.org

Consumption, great and small

The Washington Post

Princeton professor Angus Deaton wins Nobel Prize in economics

Princeton.edu

Angus Deaton

The New York Times

Paul Krugman: Explaining US Inequality Exceptionalism

Robert Reich

How to Shrink Inequality

NJToday.net

Bernie Sanders has spent decades attacking inequality. Now the country is listening.

Princeton Professor Angus Deaton won the Nobel Prize in Economics.

A large portion of Bernie Sanders run for the White House in 2015 has been Economic Inequality. Economists Paul Krugman and Robert Reich have been writing about it for years too.

It looks like there is a growing consensus that income inequality is reaching the same ratio that predated the French Revolution that ended the reign of King Louis XVI, and later the Russian Communist Revolution that ended the reign of Tsar Nicholas II.

What's the difference between then and now? The proliferation of firearms among the American people. What's Bernie's position on guns?

So, which way do you want America to go, left or down in flames?

Empire's End Begins

Are you in the Democracy Club?

Edie Miller’s letter Wednesday in the Illinois State Journal Register about the ERC (Evening Republican Club) is perfectly, horribly typical of most organizations.

Let’s say that you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat, Green, or Whatever. You join a local club because the other members most likely will understand you. You discover, quite by accident because someone slipped their tongue, that your club has a secret board of directors with special privileges.

Members of this mysterious board of directors often talk about their extravagant vacations, dress better than other members, have more expensive cars, or other things that the rest of the club members can only dream about.

No one else is allowed to join the Board of Directors, but the club members continue to pay their dues. They can’t stop paying their dues because they would be accused of being disloyal or “unpatriotic.”

Most of the club members either don’t realize or don’t care that they are being deliberately excluded from the luxurious benefits of the dues and profits from fundraiser for the very club to which they belong.

If you complain to the board, they would probably look askance at you and say “So start your own club. Pull yourself up by your own boot-straps.”

It fits into the definition of Fiefdom, but we’ve been pretending for the last two centuries or so that it’s a Democracy. Dream the American Dream!