Classic Eli Broad: "Never let a crisis go to waste"
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| Katrina aftermath |
"Never let a serious crisis go to waste." -- White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Nov. 2008.
In a recent Edweek piece by a similar title, billionaire power-philanthropist Eli Broad resurrects this quote made infamous by Chicago's now autocratic mayor. It's become an operational phrase for "getting things done" by skirting the public will and abandoning democratic decision-making. For Broad and other disaster capitalists, as Naomi Klein calls them, it's all about taking advantage of real disasters, like Hurricane Katrina. Or if a crisis doesn't exist -- manufacture it.
The manufactured "crisis" to which Broad refers is the fact that U.S. students, taken as a whole, don't test as high on the NAEP as students from several other countries. Writes Broad:
American students today rank 31st in the world in mathematics and 23rd in science. If the
