Linbeck: renaissance man
Now, of course I don't think that being a right-wing eccentric should disqualify someone from participating in civic life, engaging in philanthropy, attempting to reshape public education, criticizing the president, or other types of political or community engagement.
But it's interesting to see who's deeply involved in building an empire of KIPP schools. One of KIPP's financial and business angels is a titan named Leo Linbeck III, whose biography describes him as "CEO of Aquinas Corporation, a company that controls eight values-driven enterprises: construction management, stone and masonry construction, concrete structure construction, strategy consulting, patented products for the construction industry, medical products manufacturing, real estate development, and life science preventure technology development. "
In his spare time, Linbeck is an adjunct business prof at Stanford and Rice universities, along with his activities building the KIPP empire. From his bio: "Leo is also very involved with KIPP, one of the most successful public charter school programs in the U.S. He has been the "Chief Growth Architect" at KIPP:Houston, leading the development of a plan to grow to 42 KIPP:Houston schools in the next 8 years."
Jesse Alred, a veteran Houston teacher whose questions about Teach for America I posted a few days ago, told me about some of Linbeck's interesting nuggets of political wisdom.
"Mr. Linbeck co-founded the Free Enterprise Institute," Alred told me by e-mail. "This group holds well-funded conferences trying to bringing high school teachers together with conservative scholars. I attended one my second year of teaching for the free food, and they were promoting the idea that government intervention contributed to and prolonged the Great Depression."
Alred shared some Linbeck wit and wisdom with me -- commentary Linbeck has posted on the Belmont Club, an online discussion group of Houston conservatives. It's political commentary, it's free speech and I respect that. Some of it is eye-catching, though.
Should Obama win and enter Washington as Napoleon entered Moscow, the question is how our nation will respond. If we leave our nation to the conquering hero, it will most assuredly burn - figuratively, and perhaps literally as well. ...Most of us still believe that America truly is a shining city on a hill, and we work hard to preserve this vision in our hearts, our families, our local communities, and our nation.Admittedly, Obama and his Democrat allies in the Congress can encourage us to abandon our dreams. They can attempt to tax, regulate, and muzzle dissent, hoping to gain more control over us. They can loosen the bindings that tie our fates together, hoping that when left to our own devices we will be too weak to respond to their challenges. They can divide us into castes, and pit one group against another, hoping that our energies will be expended upon each other instead of true reform.Speaking only for myself, I am preparing not for abandonment, but for a siege. It is inevitable that Democrats, once in total control, will overreach and awaken the spirit of our Founders that lives within the hearts of all true conservatives. At that point, the pushback will come.But this time, rather than pushing for a takeover of Washington to get our share of the spoils, we must use our power to eliminate the spoils.
The people of the British Isle,
Were known for their wit and guile,
But in a twist tragicomic,
It morphed to Islamic
While its leaders remained in denial."
(worse, the second line above has one too few feet)
The Taliban certainly know
That Obama would sure like to go
So to give him a push
Off the ol’ Hindu Kush
They promise to send him some blow.
Here we have a commentary that may hint at Linbeck's passion for reshaping K-12 education:
While it may appear now that the forces of liberty are in retreat, I believe we will see a resergence of true conservative values among the one group that can still learn, and that is large enough to make a difference: the young....So talk to the young. Tell them what you believe. Speak truth to power. Fight the zeitgeist!"
If the President gets his way, it will take a decade to undo the damage. And the ultimate irony is that the people who will suffer most through the period are the very people who put him in office: the poor, the young, and the clueless."
But the impact is coming. Rest assured. If Obama's budget passes, he nationalizes health care, raises taxes on investments, and imposes his environmental religion on the nation, these things will have a massive, long-term effect. Then it will certainly be appropriate to call it the "Obama Economy." Or "Europe" for short. Cheers"
When Obama was feeling the heat
He commanded his fellow elite
To follow his plan
But depression began
‘Cause they’re dupes of his fatal conceit.
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/02/24/avoiding-the-end-of-the-world/?email=1
There once was a sheikh named Osama
Whose bombs were a source of high drama
When Bush was the chief
He encountered much grief
But he’s hoping for change with Obama."http://pajamasmedia.com/
richardfernandez/2008/10/01/ is-americas-day-over/
But what Ayers saw in Obama was simple: a young man of color who was articulate, ambitious, and dedicated to reform. Ayers - the rich, white, unrepentant terrorist - was limited in what he could do. But Obama, well he could go places Ayers couldn’t go, win over people Ayers couldn’t work with, champion issues Ayers couldn’t champion. He was a tool.
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Comments
I would be a little harder than Ms. Grannan on this issue. Certainly, this millionaire son of a bullionaire is eccentric, but he has power--the power to field 40 schools drawing off the best from our neighborhoods--and then his KIPP people will yell about how well their students did on standardized test scores. Given that Mr. Linbeck swings towards free-market utopianism in economics, this clever fellow will suck us dry of dedicated students while our public sector leaders are playing nice.
Are you going to do a similar profile of KIPP's liberal supporters?
Socrates,
This is my opinion only, but Mr. Linbeck does not appear to be a traditional conservative, or if he is, he is a distinctive type of conservative: a free-market utopian. He seems to believe markets nearly always produces good and governments produce bad.
In one of his posts, he expressed fear that government might step in and block the charter school movement. He wrote
"The biggest threat to both is that our betters in government will use this opportunity to return to a monopolized system, controlled by them. And here’s what we know about monopolies in the long run:
1. They produce crap.
2. They exploit their workers, thus necessitating a union.
3. They develop a symbiotic relationship with the union, thus driving up prices and restricting supply, with the union and the monopoly protecting and enriching each other at the expense of the consumer.
4. They co-opt the government (aka regulatory capture).
5. They stifle innovation."
Some of this may be true some of the time, but it is equally true that corporations do these things also, including exploiting workers. It's just that public employees hava a right to unionize in this country, and regulators have permitted private employers to harrass and scare workers in industry.
Mr. Linbeck is proudly Catholic, and hosted a pre-screening in Houston of The Passion of the Christ for 100 persons of diverse religious faiths attended by Mel Gibson himself. But he argues in one post that Catholic Schools, like newspapers, are doomed.
"One big difference, however, is what comes after their demise. In the case of Catholic schools, we know the answer: public schools, particularly charter schools. But in the case of newspapers, who knows?"
His answer to the problems of newspapers and Catholic schools: "One thing is certain: there will still be a demand for both high-quality news and schools. Left to its own devices, entrepreneurs will find a solution - where there is demand, supply is soon created."
Sources are posts from the Belmont Club
Socrates, Linbeck is not just a "supporter" but a key player in building KIPP. If I get intriguing information about a key player in any education issue that strikes me as newsworthy, I am interested in posting it.
By the way, Jesse, who did this research, sent some other Linbeck quotes and I winnowed them. In one case I fully agreed with Linbeck -- the gist being lack of sympathy for Madoff victims for being willing dupes.
Mr. Alred, you are obviously a very articulate gentleman, however, it sounds as though you are "demonizing" Mr. Linbeck, i.e., "this millionaire son of a bullionaire (sic) is eccentric, but he has power--the power to field 40 schools drawing off the best from our neighborhoods." You demonize him because he is wealthy and powerful, yet he is helping the poor. And, you would demonize him because he is wealthy and did not help the poor. Bottom line is you apparently demonize him BECAUSE HE IS WEALTHY AND USES THAT WEALTH IN WAYS THAT YOU DISAPPROVE OF. You can't have it both ways. Your comment "Mr. Linbeck ...this clever fellow will suck us dry of dedicated students...." What does that mean? That he should assist in making a difference in their lives and enabling them to better themselves and their economic conditions, you would look upon THAT negatively. Maybe we should look at this as Americans trying to assist each other for a better life regardless of race, gender or beliefs, rather than some narrow minded cultural or political ideology. As a former teacher and a former union member, I happen to agree with Mr. Linbeck's statements concerning the government stepping in. I'll take my chances with the private sector anyday.
What's the matter Ms. Grannan? Do you always remove dissenting opinions so that you might keep it one sided?
Well...there is my post again. My apologies and many thanks.
Why would Mr. Linbeck's KIPP schools "suck (public schools) dry of dedicated students"?
Blondie,
I am not a gentlemen. And Mr. Linbeck is a frequent contributor to the Republican Party and opposes national health care, which would help working people, and opposes unions, which defend workers from indigity on the job, and opposes progressive taxation in favor of a consumption tax, which would be regressive. As for schools, why is he not organizing multi-million dollar projects for public schools, or even Catholic schools, which have served the working-class well and are part of the American tradition and are closing by the hundreds? He views public schools as a monopoly--they are not, since we have always had public and private and parochial schools--and he is giving his money and organizing the money of like-minded free-market corporate conservatives to build schools that will draw and keep on the best students from working-class neightborhods. His own words imply that he wants to use charter schools to pose a "mortal threat' to public schools, which is very much opposite of Mike Feinberg's normal talking points, when this KIPP founder says his schools will not hurt the public schools.
Blondie,
One issue that kept bugging me during this research was why Mr. Linbeck, a Catholic who cried at the end of The Passion of the Christ, and who hosted Mel Gibson in Houston, did not spend his energies on saving the Catholic schools, which are retrenching here as elsewhere. In his posts, he said they have a bad business plan, but the Church has been no friend of the free market, and has been pro-union and critical of rampant capitalism, so I wonder if that had something to do with it? The charter school promoters and TFA leaders all now say, almost using the same words, how vouchers are not the answer, while promoting their own charters, which are in every sense but funding private institutions. Charter schools are merely private contractors for the government. The idiotic notion they are "public charters" is sold to the gullible.
No, I never remove dissenting opinions or even flames directed at me(look at some of the things charter folks have said about me in some of the comments section and you'll see what I mean). I remove spam and would remove libel against a party other than myself if I detected it, which hasn't happened -- or flames directed at a party other than myself.
Having read through the whole article and comments (that I can see), you misread L3. He is not a conservative utopianist, he is a conservative realist. There are a whole lot of us of the conservative bent who are not necessarily members of the GoP or fringe parties. More like libertarian independents. We have dreaded the coming of Obama into the public life of the country for very solid reasons. I won't bother enumerating them for your enlightenment, do your own homework. You know what they are.
Caroline - You immediately buttonhole L3 by saying he is a "right-wing eccentric". Betrays your own bias. Therefore discounts that you may have anything to say that is valid to a discerning mind.
Cheers...
Belmont Club sailed along for years without the doggerel.
I'm afraid the recent spate may be my fault --sometime back in an effort to quicken the political downbeat, i began posting dumb limericks.
Soon L3 and several others were contributing same. It's sort of a joke, you see, the limericks are chatter, filler, little scherzos within the thread, and --like puns, they are better if they're bad.
Presenting them as the article does, as if they are the painstaking efforts of some cloistered tongue-between-teeth 'eccentric" scrawling them by candlelight below his Hoover altar, is to totally mislead your readers. Look at the threads --they're topical and rapid fire --just banter.
You folks should find another attack line; one that needs no propagandized implied wrong context.
I'd concentrate on attacking his business success, that's ALWAYs a crowd-pleaser!
Regards,
Buddy Larsen
Dripping Springs, TX
PS, re the 'missing foot', wrongo, one extends on the word 'known'. Also, re verse, catch, oh, say, ten of "Walt"'s efforts, and tell me you've seen, in your entire life, anywhere, better rapid-fire verse-writing.
Jesse Alred
socialistworker.org
The problem with Teach for America
April 22, 2009
"Our society has failed our schools by permitting the middle class to shrink. It's not the other way around."
"Blaming teachers, public schools and our unions feeds corporate ideology and their power."
Now, of course I don't think that being a right-wing eccentric should disqualify someone from participating in civic life, engaging in philanthropy, attempting to reshape public education, criticizing the president, or other types of political or community engagement.
But.....!
I tried to link to your article that researched and documented the writings and associates of noted education reformer Bill Ayers but I was unable to locate it. Any help with a link would helpful in understanding your views on education.
Keep up the OUTSTANDING work.
I can only hope that my comments don't "disqualify someone from participating in civic life, engaging in philanthropy, attempting to reshape public education, criticizing the president, or other types of political or community engagement".
I like the doggerel, and not only that, I don't view "eccentric" as a disparaging term at all. I'm sure it can be applied to me, along with "contrarian" and other such epithets.
Some of these comments are incomprehensible, though, at least to me.
Thanks for the reply, Ms Grannan. I'm confused tho by your "Some of these comments are incomprehensible, though, at least to me" --do you mean that such opinions are incomprehensible, or that the fact someone can hold them is so, or that you don't follow their expressions on the page?
Also, wanted to mention that search terms
[ teach for america ] at least in Google News will produce a variety of lively & current reports & essays from a wide variety of viewpoints --including the WSJ, which leads an April 25th "Review & Outlook" column thus:
(open quote)
Here's a quiz: Which of the following rejected more than 30,000 of the nation's top college seniors this month and put hundreds more on a waitlist? a) Harvard Law School; b) Goldman Sachs; or c) Teach for America.
If you've spent time on university campuses lately, you probably know the answer. Teach for America -- the privately funded program that sends college grads into America's poorest school districts for two years -- received 35,000 applications this year, up 42% from 2008. More than 11% of Ivy League seniors applied, including 35% of African-American seniors at Harvard. Teach for America has been gaining applicants since it was founded in 1990, but its popularity has exploded this year amid a tight job market.
So poor urban and rural school districts must be rejoicing, right? Hardly. Union and bureaucratic opposition is so strong that Teach for America is allotted a mere 3,800 teaching slots nationwide, or a little more than one in 10 of this year's applicants. Districts place a cap on the number of Teach for America teachers they will accept, typically between 10% and 30% of new hires. In the Washington area, that number is about 25% to 30%, but in Chicago, former home of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, it is an embarrassing 10%.
This is a tragic lost opportunity. Teach for America picks up the $20,000 tab for the recruitment and training of each teacher, which saves public money. More important, the program feeds high-energy, high-IQ talent into a teaching profession that desperately needs it. Unions claim the recent grads lack the proper experience and commitment to a teaching career. But the Urban Institute has studied the program and found that "TFA status more than offsets any experience effects. Disadvantaged secondary students would be better off with TFA teachers, especially in math and science, than with fully licensed in-field teachers with three or more years of experience."
(close quote)
That's just the lead-in, please read the whole thing. That's a lot of eager talent being turned away from the children, whose interests -- tho un-unionized --should, one would presume, be 'top, front, and center'.
As a matter of fact, what appears to be happening re the 90% turn-away, could be seen as frankly tantamount to a form of child abuse.
Well, thanks for the space, Ms Grannan.
best regards,
Buddy Larsen
So, who is Jesse Alred and why are you relying on him/her to do your research? He/she is overrated as a researcher because you are confusing Leo 3 with his father in some of your "facts/statements". Perhaps you should have spoken to someone who actually knows 3. I'm just saying...being all about education & such.
No, Mr. Larsen, it's not that I don't understand how people could hold certain opinions; what I mean is that in some of these comments I honestly can't figure out what they're saying.
Twiceshy, this is a blog and it allows for flexibility; it doesn't have to stick to traditional journalistic conventions. A parallel benefit is that errors can be corrected on the spot, so please let us know where the post has cited the wrong Linbeck -- you may correct it in the comment and I'll correct it in the original too.
The dialogue here, to the extent there is one, is getting lost in minutia. I remember a Saturday Night Live episode years ago, showing an actor playing the role of Ross Perot, who was giving people money to get down on hands and knees and bark like a dog. Would you bark like a dog for $5000, or $50,000 or $500,000? What we have now in the charter school movement are a few extremely rich men, most conservative, a couple neoliberal, reshaping our urban educational landscape outside the democratic proces. These people have already reshaped our political parties: many Democrats being unwilling to support unions or raise taxes on the wealthy any more than conservatives. The moderate Democrats hold sophisticated positions on abortion and gay rights, but they run from anythng that might anger their funders.
I can think of five policy changes that would improve the lives of many more poor and working people than charter schools: 1. universal health coverage, 2. legally forbidding companies from firing workers without just cause, 3. means-testing and funding Social Security with a progressive tax system, 4. placing severe tax penalties on companies that export work overseas; and 5. immediately granting legal status for immigrants who are gainlfully employed.
Any of these policies would have an immediate positive impact on large numbers of working families, and probably every one would be opposed by the rich funders of charter schools: Donald Fisher, chair of the KIPP Foundation, the Walton Family and Eli Broad, not to mention Mr. Linbeck.
Why are these conservatives, who show so little interest in working-class uplift on these issues, so concerned about the "new civil right" of education? The comments provided from Mr. Linbeck do not answer this question but they have implications, particularly considering how the charter schools they have endorsed take students from the most committed Hispanic and African-American families.
What message does this separation in the community send to the kids who attend the charters and then are sponsored to go to elite private high schools or Ivy League schools?
What effect will the creation of an elite derived from these neighborhoods have on their political views and leadership positions in their adult lives? I am not sure, maybe it will have little effect, maybea lot.
I have to be influenced by how these billionaire conservatives do not seem to be trying to improve public schools generally; they are putting all their eggs in one guilded basket.
One issues comes up over and over again in Mr. Linbeck's posts: the notion that the United States has a very different economic system than Europe. We all know this--Eurpean taxation is more progressive and government there provides more services to the people and the income gap is significanly smaller than here in our country.
But demographic trends are going against the Reaganite Republicans. Our society is becoming more minority. Most minorities in this country come from poor, working or middle class familes and their political attudes, like mine, are shaped by those experiences of struggle.
It's not only the color of the American people that is likely to change with demographics, it is political attitudes as well, and I think conservatives know this.
Jesse,
I completely agree that Linbeck is crazy if these quotes are indeed his; and I have no reason to believe they're not. My point was that there are also liberals, and possibly even fringe liberals such as yourself, who support KIPP as much as the fringe conservatives like Linbeck do. We know that mainstream liberals (like Obama) support KIPP, and Teach For America, for that matter. The only people who don't support those two organizations are unionized teachers who see their guaranteed meal ticket disappearing.
I wonder, Mr. Alred, at which number one's bank account disqualifies one from any right to be interested in the welfare of the younger generation.
Would it be, say, 100K?
Where if one has 100K plus a dollar one's opinions on education are ipso facto immorally justified?
If so, what if one then goes to the Quickie Mart and spends two bucks --does one then walk out of the store fully justified in having an interest in the education of the next generation?
(BTW, i ignore typos, but for the sake of the kids & your pedagogical imparts, it's "gilded", not "guilded"; the former is about gold, the latter about medieval trade process protection)
best regards,
Buddy Larsen
Mr Socrates,
If i may, the limericks are <i>jokes</i> --see the Belmont blog archives --the convention is, they're made up fast, off the previous comment(s), and are *supposed* to excruciatingly bad --any stretch to make a rhyme.
The truth is, Ms Grannan has committed what you, Mr Alred, she, and I all recognize immediately, whether we are politically honest about saying so or not, as the common and oft-seen "mugging by missing-context".
best regards,
Buddy Larsen
Buddy Larson is quite correct. Leo's limericks have been taken out of context.
Contrary to many of the comments here, if one had read Leo's full comments at the Belmont Club over the years as I have, and not cherry picked limericks done in jest, that person would not have come to the conclusion that Leo Linbeck is a right wing fringe extremist. Leo has posted often an depth analysis on many of the more critical yet arcane financial issues that have led to our recent economic collapse. His opinions, while decidedly taken from a free market perspective, generally take the side of the established order of things, and often try to debunk very plausible conspiratorial theories . His views are more of a moderate conservative than anything else.
What Mr. Alfred's article smacks of is yet another thuggish attempt by an angry leftwing radical to demonize a thoughtful, productive conservative and stifle dissent. It is straight out of the Saul Alinsky handbook, Rules for Radicals.
"Trying to bringing..."
Was this what the Houston teacher actually wrote or a mistake by the author? If the former, what a perfect example of why we need alternatives to government schools.
"But this time, rather than pushing for a takeover of Washington to get our share of the spoils, we must use our power to eliminate the spoils."
Exactly right. As Bastiat knew two centuries ago:
'Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws...these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.
Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails among the mass victims of lawful plunder when they, in turn, seize the power to make laws! Until that happens, the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a f
... few persons. But then, participation in the making of law becomes universal. And then, men seek to balance their conflicting interests by universal plunder. Instead of rooting out the injustices found
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