AS WE gradually return to covering the Gates Foundation, we look backwards at around March of this year and we find that the Big Pharmaceutical (Glaxo Smith Kline) person who has been using the Foundation to serve his former employer where he bullied researchers sceptical of the products (see previous posts such as this or that) is leaving the Gates Foundation. Last year and in 2009 we gave names of people from the Gates Foundation who were put in positions of power to lobby for Gates' interests, including his pharmaceutical patents (that he invests in for profit) and US education, which has half a trillion dollars per year at stake.
Phyllis Fletcher of KUOW (94.9 FM) has been on the story for the past few days. Today, for the first time that I can recall, KUOW openly acknowledged Goodloe-Johnson’s backing from billionaire ed reformers, the Broad and Gates Foundations, and local business interests, and how those interests are at odds with those of the parents and community who have been on the receiving end of Goodloe-Johnson’s reform agenda and reject it.
It is also time for you to begin listening to us, the parents, teachers and concerned members of the community and stop listening to corporate and business interests as represented by Stand for Children, the League of Education Voters, the Seattle Foundation, the Alliance for Education and other organizations that have been funded primarily by Bill Gates and the Broad Foundation. These corporate entities do not understand education, know our community or what we value. We’re the ones with skin in the game. All they want is to have their ego’s massaged, establish a legacy or make a profit off of the small amount of funding that our educational system receives.