06.30.13
How Bill Gates Got Taxpayers to Bankroll His Own For-Profit AstroTurf Groups
Tax-funded, tax-evading billionaire
Photo credit: The Hindu Business Line
Summary: How Bill Gates’ lobbying and AstroTurf groups have been warped to extract money from the public in order to hurt that public (for Gates profit)
IN recent years it has been getting rather easy to see that using the Gates Foundation Bill Gates has been getting other people to pay companies that he invests in. This is not an unusual practice and Gates is not unique in employing this profiteering strategy. A lot of politicians do it all the time.
“There is public uproar when the Koch brothers do it, but not when Gates does it, as it’s a recursive trap of silencing the media (no decent media left to cover abduction of the media).”Bill Gates has been quietly funding corporate lobbies including ALEC [1, 2] to help privatise what’s public. Gates also silences investigative journalism in areas he wants to dominate, usually by paying key newspapers and blogs, pretending the bribe is some kind of goodwill or charity. There is public uproar when the Koch brothers do it, but not when Gates does it, as it’s a recursive trap of silencing the media (no decent media left to cover abduction of the media). Gates’ AstroTurf in education using obedience Seattle press was covered here before (some news sites in Seattle are funded by Gates) and this new example is no exception. The Seattle Education blog, a remaining critic of Bill Gates and its insidious agenda against teachers, wrote about “Stand for Children” and the “League of Education Voters” the other day, reminding teachers who read the blog that these are front groups for Gates’ agenda. To quote part of this post, “DeBell also didn’t get the superintendent he wanted when his favorite, Interim Superintendent Susan Enfield, left after realizing that she would have to compete to be the superintendent of Seattle Public Schools. Instead, DeBell had to settle for Banda after his next favorite, Dr. Brenda Husk, chose not to continue the interview process. Banda doesn’t seem to be bending under pressure from Gates and Nielson and their backed faux roots organizations Stand for Children and the League of Education Voters as well as the Alliance for Education.”
It has been getting hard to tell apart AstroTurf from grassroots. The AstroTurf groups are deceptively named. TFA was one of the most insidious ones a few years back and this report says that it now preys on taxpayers’ money to promote Gates’ agenda. That’s like asking citizens to subsidise people who rob their houses, as here too there is robbery and looting but the white-collar type by Gates and his friends. To quote:
Wisconsin Budget Includes $1 Million Taxpayer Giveaway for Well-Funded Teach for America
[...]
“Teach for America is a wealthy organization that sends ill-trained recruits to teach in under-resourced districts,” explains Diane Ravitch, a prominent education policy analyst, who wrote about the Wisconsin budget provision on her blog. “These poorly trained young people, with no experience as teachers and no commitment to stay beyond two years, are expected to work wonders. They don’t.”
Teach for America Bankrolled by Foundations Pushing Anti-Union, For-Profit Education Model
They should name the main original funder, Bill Gates. Now he has his victims subsiside his lobby, for his profit at their expense. Shrewd scam and one of the reasons this man continues to get much richer. Where is the outrage? Those who are not outraged by Gates simply do not grasp what he is up to and the extent to which the public gets manipulated by him.
Meanwhile in the news we find that growing opposition forms to denounce Gates for investing in thugs (for profit), namely G4S. “The Gates Foundation and its unethical investments in G4S “ is one decent article about it, but it is mostly marginalised by shallow PR praise for Gates and his wife, the world’s richest woman. Did you know that stealing the voice of poor people is “Helping the voiceless”? Yes, Orwell would have loved that newspeak. The Jakarta Post is plutocratic propaganda, showing part of the problem with corporate/government media. █
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