Luddy to build more (private) schools
Submitted by scharrison on Thu, 09/09/2010 - 5:45am
Choosy parents choose Luddy(TM) brand schools:
At an event today in Apex, Luddy will offer details of a technology and science concentration - to be called the Luddy Institute of Technology - to be featured at his planned high schools. Land has already been purchased in Apex and Rolesville for the new schools, which will serve grades 6-12, and the existing schools will educate children from kindergarten through fifth grade, Luddy said.
Um, didn't Wake County just purchase land in Rolesville for a new high school? Future breaking story: "School board votes to suspend plans for new school in Rolesville, citing lack of demand."
Some very telling comments:
Luddy has been portrayed, along with longtime Republican leader Art Pope, as a behind-the-scenes mover and shaker bent on destroying public schools.
Explaining his stance on public schools, Luddy said parental choice should be the most important consideration in how schools are set up. And if no one chooses public schools, the institution could disappear, he said, adding one condition.
"As long as there was an opportunity for all students to go to school," he qualified. "There has to be a mechanism for all children to be educated."
That's simple! In addition to the premium edufactories, you throw up a few quonset huts here and there and call them Luddy(TM) brand discount schools! Same great value as the regular brand, but modestly priced for parents on a budget!
Luddites
They'll be cranking them out like robots on the assembly line.
That said, I'm all for this, as long as no taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize it (vouchers).
In fact, it is the answer to teh Baggers' wet dreams. It keeps the white people separated from the black people ... and the poor people in their place. It's the American way.
Do good. Be nice. Have fun.
If it wasn't for
the whole Wake School Board fiasco, I wouldn't give it a second thought. But when you've got a guy sitting on a public school board while also sitting on a private school board competing in the same market, it raises an eyebrow. And when that public school system all of a sudden starts losing support funding, the other eyebrow goes up.
They happily spell it out ...
I'll just leave this here:
http://www.jwpcivitasinstitute.org/media/publication-archive/policy-brie...
Please read, and pay special attention to the comment section. It has just one comment, but Kent Misegades is as loquacious as ever. Even if you don't know him, he clearly identifies his relationship to the principles in his comment. It's an oldie but a goodie. What exactly happens to those that drop out before 9th grade under his plan? I'm curious.
Luddy has strong ties to the Mises Institute and eagerly touts receiving their award. Here are their views on the subject:
http://mises.org/daily/2216
The Koch Family Foundations (see New Yorker article) fund this institute heavily.
Murray Rothbard is one of the luminaries (of Luddy and the Koch's too btw.) quoted in the Mises article. Here is his wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard
He was indirectly referenced in the New Yorker article on the Kochs.
If you are as familiar with them as I am, you would be raising more eyebrows than you own. ;) Personally, I'm out of eyebrows myself.
If I were a betting person, I'd think they hope to draw a law suit like Charlotte's. Then they can get a ruling making busing for income diversity as newly unconstitutional as busing for racial diversity. Then many dominoes fall. They did beef up the lawyers, get the firm they want and have Civitas ready with legal ties now for funds to help.
Yeah, it's not hard
to trace their connections. And speaking of the Koch brothers, Rachel Maddow had a great finish to her show tonight about how clumsy they are with their astroturfing and how easy it is to expose them.
Right
But I give then a better chance of a successful astoturfing here. Pope & Luddy are local, and Pope has think tanks and foundations already set up and recognized. Pope's JWP Foundation has been donating for a while to the right and has plenty of chips to cash in with Republican's now not just the small Libertarian community. That's the money side. Plenty local, access to more nationally as needed.
The ideological side is what bugs me more. There is no daylight between Luddy & his Thales chairman Misegades' positions and the Mises Institute positions on education. If you aren't upset that the Wake County Education system has been chosen to implement the education policies of people that describe themselves as "anarcho-capitalist Libertarians" in private, you should be. The official positions on Civitas are the very white-washed publicly acceptable listing of the positions. The local John Locke Foundation doesn't bother with that, they just reprint Ludwig von Mises Institute papers in their entirety.
I know this branch of Libertarians (I consider myself to have some Libertarian leanings), they are the fire-breathing crazies. Really. A few have lots of money and want to try politics again. Two are local and well known. Be upset. One part of the ideology is those that can not afford an education do not deserve it, and that allowing them to be ignorant/uneducated/exploitable is allowing the hand of the free markets to properly calculate their value to society. It is America, they have the right to their views, but I want my kids far, far away.
We're definitely upset
Frequent readers here will tell you we devote quite a bit of time and (virtual) ink to exploring and exposing Pope's network. If you look over there on the right -->, you'll see a diagram James has been working on for years depicting the various actors in this (for want of a better word) conspiracy to erode government and promote a market-driven society.
Sometimes I worry we devote too much effort to this, hammering the subject to the point readers may become impervious to the message. But we also have no way of gauging how much we've contributed to the media's understanding and portrayal of Pope etal, especially recent coverage.
Thumbs Up, but ...
I mainly showed up here since you were covering it (big thumbs up). Other than a few of articles in the N&O and one in the Independent, I've not seen it in media. And even those articles are along the lines of "Oh look! It's Pope & Luddy! (again)". I think most of the general non-policy wonk members of Wake County respond to those articles with "So?".
Most people aren't either politically aware or in my case specifically Luddy/Libertarian aware. As far as the message getting out, I don't see it from where I sit in the non-political independent moderate land. So for people that know what their ideology is they get engaged/informed. The rest of us aren't sure why we should care.
It may even be backfiring. The message that is getting read is the left is upset that some on the right with money are involved. That could even be read as a plus for the victimization defense Pope likes. Since the links to the Mises Institute and Murray Rothbard and the ideology behind the local organizations is not offered, the fact these guys aren't garden variety people on the right but part of some loony anarchist fringe is not getting out there. I wish I knew how to get it out myself.
For more hypocrisy on steroids
...check out the Pope-based reflections on STEM (https://www.ncstem.org) and Luddy's new "Institute for Technology"
Foolish taxpayers, don't buy your education from the competition you already pay for and that I'm dismantling, buy it from ME!!!
It's time for Dolly Parton's wise words again:
It's a rich man's game
No matter what they call it.
And you spend your life
Putting money in his wallet.
Luddy's Real Estate
I was looking at houses recently, including one that was owned by a Luddy company (Chalk Properties, I think). The MLS sheet bragged about the "Great schools!" associated with the location. No mention of Thales or the Luddy Institute -- just Wiley, Daniels & Enloe.
Imagine if somebody screwed up
and put a John Tedesco quote like this Tweet in the listing:
Um, "it self" is actually just the one word, John. Smeesh. ;)
Well
Well, I can say that most private schools offer scholarships for those who cannot afford it. I am all for choice but I am not for private schools discriminating. I am also not for indoctrination of our children of any kind.
I love playing these casino games at this awesome online casino and the best games are the slot machines with the progressive casino payouts.
No indoctrination
I'm with you on that.
No praying, no pledging of allegiance, right?
Do good. Be nice. Have fun.
it's easy to be a "top school" when you can
discriminate openly. If you only allow children with high scores to attend it's so easy to appear to be a "top school." I'm all for anyone who wants to send their kids to private schools, but no tax dollars ought to subsidize those schools in any way.
Syd