BATON ROUGE (CNS)—One of the primary forces behind the systematic elimination of public schools, the privatization of government, and the widespread implementation of the Milton Friedman school of economic principles is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
The organization, founded in 1973 by conservative activists, ALEC has drafted a list of radical legislation it plans to propose in Republican-controlled states in an apparent effort to duplicate the so-called “shock doctrine” forced on countries in South and Central America in the 1980s and 1990s with disastrous results.
Louisiana Legislator Rep. Noble Ellington (R-Winnsboro) last December said, “Never has the time been so right” to plan the radical reshaping of policies in the states. His remarks were made at a gathering of conservative legislators in Washington on the heels of the midterm elections that saw Republicans seize majorities in both legislative chambers and governorships in 21 states.
The event was the “States and Nation Policy Summit” and it featured such heavy hitters as Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
Calling itself “the nation’s largest non-partisan, individual public-private membership association of state legislators, ALEC will hold its 2011 annual meeting, “Solutions for the States,” in New Orleans for six days, beginning Monday at the Marriott.
Charter schools are one of the organization’s main showcases, so the timing of the annual meeting couldn’t be worse, given the ongoing investigations of two charter schools in New Orleans and Baton Rouge into allegations of abuse, mistreatment, neglect, and cheating.
The highlight for attendees, of course, will be the appearance of free market wunderkind Gov. Bobby Jindal who will be the featured speaker at the organization’s plenary lunch on Wednesday at 11:30 a.m.
ALEC’s proposed legislation must first meet the approval of corporate donors who have veto power over language contained in the legislation which in turn, is developed by secretive task forces out of the view and scrutiny of the public.
The task forces cover every imaginable issue from education to health policy, from union-busting to privatization of schools and government, from global warming to industry deregulation.
ALEC’s agenda tracks the agenda of the late economist Milton Friedman who sent his disciples into Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Poland, Russia, China, Indonesia, and several other countries in the wake of natural or man-made disasters to institute privatization of government programs and industries before the citizens could recoup their senses.
Friedman specialized in earthquakes, revolutions, and tsunamis, moving in and instituting radical change in economic and political policies. That pattern was followed with the public school system in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans with many formerly public schools now being operated by corporate-run charters.
Invariably, when Friedman’s economists moved in, the chasm between the super rich and the super poor grew ever wider as unemployment soared when jobs disappeared, people lost their homes, and inflation made local currency worthless. It was then that U.S. corporations moved in and purchased state-owned mines and manufacturing plants for pennies on the dollar.
In 2007, ALEC made its most ambitious and strategic push for privatization of education with its publication, School Choice and State Constitutions, which proposed a list of programs tailored to each state.
ALEC’s 2010 Report Card on American Education challenged members to “transform the system, don’t tweak it.”
After what has occurred with the Abramson Science and Technology Charter School in New Orleans earlier this month and now the ongoing revelations at Kenilworth Science and Technology School in Baton Rouge, someone needs to tweak something. The State Department of Education has already pulled Abramson’s charter and now Kenilworth is under investigation.
Both schools are operated by Pelican Educational Foundation which has ties to a Turkish-run, Houston-based firm, Atlas Texas Construction and Trading and Atlas vice president Inci Akpinar.
Louisiana Department of Education investigator Folwell Dunbar, who investigated complaints against Abramson last year, reported that Akpinar attempted to bribe him in an effort to smooth over problems at the school but nothing was done until a year later when the state auditor began an investigation.
Only then did the Department of Education take decisive action by revoking Abramson’s charter—and firing both Dunbar and his supervisor, Jacob Landry.
Apparently ALEC’s 2010 Report Card on American Education has its own definition of transformation: shoot the messenger.
Louisiana Voice 
You mean Bobby actually told the general public ahead of time where he will be. That’s a first. All teachers and state workers should be there to greet him and let him know we are watching and don’t like the deals he is making with big business.
Actually, Jindal’s office did not announce his scheduled appearance; the information was obtained from the agenda for the ALEC annual conference.
—Editor
Maybe a better time to confront Jindal would be the morning before his luncheon address. He will be holding court in an even more exclusive private meeting at the Mariott. Likely he will be shaking the can for tithings from his fellow Koolaid drinkers with vested interests in providing even more license to K-12, Inc., and the other profiteers on education and prisions.
Milton Friedman was a world-renowned economist and was awarded the Nobel prize in Economics. He emerged as the chief critic of the Keynesian model. He influenced the thinking of such policy makers as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Mikhail Gorbachev. To associate him with ALEC is a stretch at best. The “Shock Doctrine” mentioned in this article is a fiction invented by a left-wing hack named Naomi Klein. Her book was a smear job intended to discredit Friedman. The book is filled with half truths, twisting of facts, and outright lies. The book has since been widely discredited. And let me also point out that the Recovery School District was created during the Blanco administration. Blanco, a Democrat, was certainly no accolyte of Friedman, and the establishment of the RSD was certainly not part of some secret plot by Friedman to destroy the world. At the time Katrina hit in August 2005, Friedman was over 90 years old, retired, and a few months away from death.
if you believe in your heart of hearts the schock doctrine is full of lies and half truths you’ve already given yourself away as a person who has no understanding for the history of economic policy.
Its obvious that John B has not noticed the major shift between the Blanco RSD and the Act 35 RS as it was changed by Paul Pastorek during Jindal’s watch. Friedman lives on as is best evidenced in the representations of the American Federation for Children web site promotion of his concepts. One doesn’t have to search Google far to find that Klein’s observations of both the RSD and Chile are spot on. It is not unusual to find that supporters of Friedman’s no-government is good government movement refuse to accept on going findings: Voucher educated kids don’t keep up with even the RSD’s poor performing schools (Source: Leslie Jacobs) You can find the same sort of things elsewhere in the nation.
And of course Bobby Jindal will be there in open arms to greet his corporate masters–as the good little ALEC employee that he is. Jindal’s scheme to privatize, give away state contracts, sell prisons, ect. in the name of cutting the budget was all a ruse to enrich his corporate buddies. Jindal is nothing but an empty-headed puppet doing the bidding of his handlers from ALEC!
Mr. Whittinghill, since you choose to make an ass out of yourself by making assumptions about what I notice or do not notice, I can assure you that I have already forgotten more about the RSD than you will ever know. I am aware that you are a shill for the school board association and therefore none of your comments about schools or education are to be taken with more than a grain of salt. With regard to Friedman, you are of course entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts. The book by Naomi Klein has, in fact, been discredited by numerous scholars and is not generally accepted as a serious work or study of Friedman or his work. Of course, it is used as a tool by those shills for whose purpose it serves, regardless of the facts.
And what exactly is Act 35 RS? Regular Session of what year? I am not aware of any Act 35 of any Regular Session that affects RSD. Please educate me. Also, just for the record, I am not in favor of the RSD and believe it should be abolished. However, I realize that the Orleans Parish School Board certainly is not capable of running schools, which was why RSD was created in the first place. What is the solution? I don’t know, but I do know that RSD is not the answer, nor is the answer being provided by the entrenched bureaucracies and bottomless pits of money called local school boards.
Act 35 of the Special Session 2005 extended the authority of the RSD beyond the schools taken over pre Katrina. What you say you know simply represents an opinion. That opinion probably is not sufficiently informed to withstand much evaluation. It ignores the fact that the “bottomless pits” are underfunded to meet the highly charged goals that are foisted upon local systems. For the record, the US Digest of Education Statistics contains data revealing that Louisiana schools are near the bottom of another list: They use fewer dollars for central office and school administration than all save about a dozen others. They use far fewer for administration that the RSD. They used even less (ranking 47th) before Pastorek inflated the DOE and RSD budgets for administration.
Those “bottomless pits” also started charters, magnets, theme schools, and Pre-K well before there was a “reform” movement, and have largely been making more progress than has been recognized. Try to calculate how Louisiana education ranking would be if there were not 30+ failing RSD schools in the mix.