Bonum Certa Men Certa

How Bill Gates Got Control of a Budget of $500 Billion Per Year (Taxpayers' Money)

Globe



Summary: The Gates Foundation helps us understand why children are brought up to accept those who rob them and why certain "foundation"-named umbrellas increasingly become a burden to society

PUBLIC education is big business and private education can substitute public education, too. The Gates Foundation is the vehicle Bill Gates uses to influence this big business and even buy publications that cover the subject of education. He pays them millions (i.e. slush funds) to deceive the public and expand coverage of his paid-for 'studies' whose purpose is to tilt the education agenda. Not just the United States is affected by this anymore and our last comprehensive coverage of this was centered on Teach for America (TFA), which is one of Gates' many lobbying groups that he keeps at his disposal (not lobbying per se, but a vehicle of influence nonetheless). If Gates can control how money is spent on education in the United States alone, then he has in his hands a budget of $500 billion per year (yes, that's half a trillion, nearly the cost of the big bank bailout). A reader has just told us that PR Watch (an excellent Web site by the way) is addressing the subject right now. The headline is telling. It is "How Billionaires Rule Our Schools", but the pluralism is perhaps an attempt not to criticise Mr. PR Love directly (although his photo is right there). To quote the opening:



The cost of K–12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. So, how much influence could anyone in the private sector exert by controlling just a few billion dollars of that immense sum? Decisive influence, it turns out. A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year for a decade, has sufficed to define the national debate on education; sustain a crusade for a set of mostly ill-conceived reforms; and determine public policy at the local, state, and national levels. In the domain of venture philanthropy -- where donors decide what social transformation they want to engineer and then design and fund projects to implement their vision -- investing in education yields great bang for the buck.

Hundreds of private philanthropies together spend almost $4 billion annually to support or transform K–12 education, most of it directed to schools that serve low-income children (only religious organizations receive more money). But three funders -- the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad (rhymes with road) Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation -- working in sync, command the field. Whatever nuances differentiate the motivations of the Big Three, their market-based goals for overhauling public education coincide: choice, competition, deregulation, accountability, and data-based decision-making. And they fund the same vehicles to achieve their goals: charter schools, high-stakes standardized testing for students, merit pay for teachers whose students improve their test scores, firing teachers and closing schools when scores don't rise adequately, and longitudinal data collection on the performance of every student and teacher. Other foundations -- Ford, Hewlett, Annenberg, Milken, to name just a few -- often join in funding one project or another, but the education reform movement's success so far has depended on the size and clout of the Gates-Broad-Walton triumvirate.


Gates' subversion of US education for his selfish purposes is similar to his lobbying for visas*. Nobody should assume that Gates is interested in improving education. It's about money and power. This subject is to be covered properly at a later date and that's a promise. Maybe it will take until March. In the mean time, we wish to share the words of a a reader who mailed us yesterday. In her message she wrote about what Microsoft calls "the slog" [PDF] (or sloggers), stating: "speaking of slogging and Microsoft spin...after the Google accusations about Bing cheating, and after the ghost data problem on the Win7 phone, as well as the lack of sales, and all the Patch-Tuesday news...oh yes, and the Quarterly Reports news...

"It seems that Bill (Senior Slogger in Chief) felt the need to do some damage control. The Slashdot headline regarding Bill's talk about vaccinations (and the B&G Foundations vaccination goals), came at the perfect time to help defuse all the bad Microsoft news.

"It seems that whatever damage Steve causes, Bill just has to fire up the PR machine and swoop down like the Pope waving his saintly halo, and proclaim His Goodness throughout the land.

“In the end, it will be much harder to undermine the Foundation than it's been to undermine Microsoft.”
      --Anonymous reader
"Since most people in the world still connect Bill Gates with Microsoft, they couldn't possibly dislike a guy who gives his billions away just to keep children healthy. Therefore, continuing to buy Microsoft's products will help Bill to support children's health.

"It just seemed to me that the timing was interesting. The "good works" by the Foundation (children's health, etc) obviously trumps any sleazy behavior by the company.

"You've likely already noticed this, but the waning power of Microsoft seems to be equal to the growing power of B&M Gates Foundation (and its investment arm). In the end, it will be much harder to undermine the Foundation than it's been to undermine Microsoft. People tend to be less sympathetic to a giant corporation, when it comes to bad behavior. But pointing out bad behavior of a saintly foundation that "helps" children will be viewed as baseless criticism."

As we pointed out before, the tactic of Gates right now is to buy the media and then harm society enormously behind closed doors while every critics who stands in his way will be discouraged with a statement like, "by criticising Gates you are killing hungry African children." For what it's worth, Gates is not the only person using this tactic as it has been done many times before. It's a form of sentimental blackmail. _____ * As we've explained in separate posts, Gates also drains the coffers of taxpayers' money all around the world by lobbying politicians to license patents and solicit purchases from the likes of Monsanto and the Pharmaceutical Cartel (incidentally, they have staff inside the Gates Foundation which they use as a lobbying vehicle for their former employers).

Recent Techrights' Posts

[Video] Richard Stallman's Talk in Sweden, Attended by Nearly 700 People, is Now Online
The Web page is in Swedish, but the talk is in English
 
Confirmed: Very Close Friend of Bill Gates and Microsoft's Biggest Patent Troll Nathan Myhrvold Flew the Lolita Express (a Gateway to Pedophilia), According to Bill Gates-Sponsored Seattle Times
There is no speculation or any "conspiracy theories" here;' those are verified facts
Gemini Links 25/10/2025: "The Highest Leader of The Global Civil Society Community", SSL Certificates Causing Bitrot
Links for the day
Links 25/10/2025: Target Layoffs and "Shutdown Sparks 85% Increase in US Government Cyberattacks"
Links for the day
"Big Data" Was a Big Lie
Remember "Big Data"? Remember "Data Scientists"...?
statCounter Has Been Broken for a Long Time
Considering the huge proportion of Web requests that come from LLM bots (more so this past year or two), statCounter may struggle to justify the operating costs
Techrights Anniversary Party on November 7th
Let us know if you need any accommodation-related arrangements
Trends That Must Alarm Microsoft and Mozilla
Expect Firefox to no longer be supported by various sites in the US
Why Microsoft Became the Layoffs Leader
The corporate media is projecting or signalling its own dishonesty when it tells us that Microsoft is a very "valuable" company while the data shows Microsoft is also a "market leader" in layoffs
Speaking for Ourselves and Letting the Facts Speak for Themselves
we've already published over 50,000 pages
For Second Time in a Day The Register MS Takes Money From Private Companies to Sell a Ponzi Scheme
Do not have empathy for those who have zero empathy towards you
IBM is Misleading IBM Shareholders
IBM is still all about vapourware and buzzwords
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 24, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 24, 2025
The Serial Slopper Starts Up - or Restarts - His Plagiarism Machine (LLMs)
Serial Sloppers like these don't belong in news sites. That's why he got sacked by BetaNews.
Links 24/10/2025: Esperanto Music History, Anxiety, and New Portals
Links for the day
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity.com, Linux Journal, and Pet Slopfarms of Google News
Why does Google News still advance these fake sites to the top of search results?
Links 24/10/2025: Inequality Grows, Billion-Dollar Scam Center Industry
Links for the day
Links 24/10/2025: "Independent Media in Cambodia is Collapsing" and Serious F5 Breach
Links for the day
Coping With the Site Going More Mainstream
Fame is no laughing matter
They Never 'Put Down' Corporations
There are "pests" that are traded in Wall Street
21 Pages in Less Than 7 Hours is No Joking Matter
We've become a lot more effective and efficient
Correct Information is a Valued Asset in the Age of Slopfarms and Public Relations (PR) or Spin
Publishing suppressed facts is never easy
The Register MS Continues to Bag Money to Promote a Ponzi Scheme, Even Money From China
Today in the front page
analytics.usa.gov: The Only Supported Version of Windows (This Past Week) is Only Used by About 13.9% of People in the US, the Home Base of Windows
Even Vista 7 is still used more
Rust is Very Secure
If only Rust itself is secure
Who Will be Held Accountable for Breaking Ubuntu by Imposing Rust on Otherwise-Functional Programs, in Effect Replacing GNU With Proprietary Microsoft (GitHub)?
they're practical people who merely point out that a bunch of buffoons not only ruin Ubuntu but also every future distro based on Ubuntu
Generation Chaff - Phase VIII: In Summary
Like "Science" with a capital "S", what we see here commercial interests usurping everything
Generation Chaff - Phase VII: Curtailing Alternative Media
There was always an obligation - a collective duty of sorts - to uphold independent journalism
Generation Chaff - Phase VI: Centralisation of Information (X, Cheetok/Fentanylware)
Would you trust information when controlled by such people?
Generation Chaff - Phase V: Censorship of Dissent (Painted as Harassment or Terrorism)
Censorship is all around us now
Generation Chaff - Phase IV: Apps Only Few Companies Decide On
Tools are being collectively confiscated, under the premise or false prospect of "security"
Generation Chaff - Phase III: Slop and Plagiarism
A lot of the current so-called 'economy' is built upon false valuations
Generation Chaff - Phase II: "Cloud", Blockchains and Other Hype
For those of us who turned down those propositions there was a struggle; we needed to justify not having skinnerboxes or "social" accounts in some site run by a private company
Generation Chaff - Phase I: Social Control Media
IRC predates the Web
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 23, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 23, 2025
More Clues Shed on Collapse of Microsoft XBox
XBox is basically circling down the drain as Microsoft implements 2-3 waves of layoffs each month
'Vibe Coding' Doesn't Work
In a lot of ways, so-called 'Vibe Coding' is already considered vapourware or a passing fad promoted in the media by managers who try to justify mass layoffs, especially ridding companies of "very expensive" software engineers
Links 24/10/2025: Microsoft's Killing of XBox Connected to Revenue/Profit Problems, "How Elon Musk Ruined Twitter"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/10/2025: 86,400 Seconds and "Society's Task"
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Google News and Slopfarms That Relay Nonsense From LLMs
Google News, which once prioritised or used to care about provenance and quality, is feeding slopfarms
Links 23/10/2025: More Health Concerns Over Dumb Chatbots (LLMs) and "Talking Cars" as Latest Buzz
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/10/2025: Daylight Savings Time and Duration Shorthand
Links for the day
Links 23/10/2025: LLM 'Hallucinations' (Defects) in Practical Code 'Generation', China Becomes More Economically and Technologically Independent
Links for the day
Why We Support Richard Stallman and You Probably Should Too
It's not about being "Richard Stallman fan", it is about maintaining the right to hold positions (on technology) like his
Linux Foundation Uses LLM Slop to Promote Microsoft in Linux.com (Again), Rendering It a Linux-Hostile Slopfarm
Openwashing with slop by "Linux.com Editorial Staff", which basically seems to be a bot
Some Large German Media Covers Richard Stallman's Talks in Germany Earlier This Week
LLM-based chatbots are just "bullshit generators" (as he has long called them)
Links 23/10/2025: Windows TCO Galore and "The Internet Is Going to Break Again"
Links for the day
Trouble in Red Hat/IBM and a Retreat to Ponzi Economics in Search of Wall Street Market Heist
Would you invest your life savings in this kind of crap?
Who Asked Software in the Public Interest (SPI) for a Refund? ($100,000, Resulting in Losses of $267,201 in 12 Months, Highest-Ever Losses)
The IRS does not reveal who or what's tied to this refund (or the cause/reason)
Social engineering attack: Debian voted to trick you on binary blobs
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Techrights Will Always Stand for Women's Rights
We even invest money - personal savings that it - in our principles
Certified Lawyers Should Know Better (Than to Intimidate Us With Man Who Drives on Motorcycle Through a Really Bad Storm Between Distant Cities, Then Collects Photos of Our Home)
Mentioning someone was in prison for bad things isn't a crime, it's a public service
The "AI" (Slop) Bubble is Already Imploding
"ChatGPT Usage Has Peaked and Is Now Declining, New Data Finds"
The So-called "Sexy" Buckets (AI, Quantum) Cannot Save IBM From Reality, Shares Tank
"No matter how much financial hocus-pocus they use to reclassify revenues to land in the "sexy" buckets (AI, Quantum), it still smells old and musty - just like this company."
Paul Krugman is Wrong About the Scope of Mass Layoffs in the United States
A few years ago society was accelerating its journey towards feudalism, boosted by COVID-19
Links 23/10/2025: Proprietary Blunders and CISA's Latest Disclosure of Holes
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/10/2025: Fast Past (F1), 99.9% Uptime
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 22, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 22, 2025