Powerful Pro-School-Voucher Group May Have Violated State Law [Updated]
PAC with ties to Jeffrey Yass connected to John McDaniel’s case.
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Students First PAC, a pro-school-voucher group backed by three managers of Bala Cynwyd-based Susquehanna International Group, may have violated state election law. Susquehanna’s Jeffrey Yass, an ardent charter and voucher advocate, and two like-minded associates, first got into the political game in 2010, pouring an unprecedented $5 million from Students First into State Senator Anthony Williams’ campaign for governor. Yass and his family have continued to push for vouchers since then. The possible violation is related to a Students First* campaign donation funneled to a Philadelphia state senate candidate last spring with the help of embattled former city employee John McDaniel.
On Monday, the city reached a settlement with McDaniel, who recentlypleaded guilty to ethics violations committed while he was Blondell Reynolds Brown’s campaign manager. Amid his accepted penalties: a $300 fine for using his Progressive Agenda PAC as a conduit for Students First. From the settlement:
According to McDaniel, Students First made the contribution to Progressive Agenda with the understanding that Progressive Agenda would make a contribution to Friends of Fatimah, the
Michelle Rhee: Wrong again
Her education "reform" movement sends the lovely message that communities should stay out of their schools
BY DAVID SIROTA
TOPICS: EDUCATION, EDUCATION REFORM, MICHELLE RHEE, CORRUPTION, CORPORATE AMERICA,CHARTER SCHOOLS, BUSINESS NEWS, POLITICS NEWS
Former DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee
Most who are reading these words will probably agree that our country is facing a democracy crisis, thanks, in part, to the dominance of money in our political process. Many who read these words will also probably insist that our country is facing an education crisis (though many try to deny the actual cause of that crisis).
Getting past the denial stage and acknowledging both of these problems is certainly a step toward one day fixing them. However, there’s another more subtle and self-reinforcing form of denial that makes getting to those solutions more difficult. That denial — or perhaps cognitive dissonance — evinces itself in an American psyche that tends to perceive the democracy and education emergencies as separate and distinct.
Essentially, we see the cause of voting-rights activists, get-out-the-vote pushes and same-day registration crusades (among others) as divorced from the concurrent education policy fight between public school advocates, teachers’ unions and corporate education “reformers.” We see them as disconnected from one another even though the two battles are fundamentally fused by a simple truism: Basically, you can never hope to have a functioning democracy over the long