Hastings’ preferred school reforms, such as heavy use of streaming technologies and data collection, resemble the way he built Netflix. And his critics say that could be part of the problem.
Bill Bloomfield has become one of the charter movement’s biggest supporters and has also played a pivotal role in the rise of a new breed of California Democrats who frequently align themselves with big business.
Doris Fisher and her family have quietly become among the largest political funders of charter school efforts in the country. Much of her money goes to promoting pro-charter school candidates and organizations.
Gubernatorial candidate Antonio Villaraigosa and state superintendent candidate Marshall Tuck are raking in donations from charter school supporters.
I’m not much of a fashionista. But I do pay attention to which recycled grocery bags I carry. And the one recently passed out to the voters on my block won’t be carrying my TJ’s groceries home. This capacious, green tote is promoting four Santa Monica City Council candidates and is paid for by a coalition of developers calling themselves “Santa Monicans United for a Responsible Future” – SMURF. If only they were those tiny blue trolls of cartoon yore. Instead the group is an association of those LLCs – limited liability companies – that Mitt Romney feels have human powers.
These particular LLCs are involved in numerous large development projects around Santa Monica and are facing a competing political independent expenditure campaign calling itself “Santa Monicans for Responsible Growth” (SMRG), which also is funded, but more modestly, by business interests. These two campaigns combined have raised nearly $450,000,
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