New York (HedgeCo.Net) – School teachers in New York are up in arms about ‘The Washington Park Project.’ They are fighting back against millionaires and hedge fund managers who they say are damaging the public school system in their state.

“A small cadre of men, including Carl Icahn, Paul Tudor Jones, and Dan Loeb, poured more than $10 million into state lobbying and election campaigns since the beginning of 2014, with electrifying results.” The whitepaper ‘Corruption in Education: Hedge Funds and the Takeover of New York’s Schools‘ reports. “Like the Koch brothers, these hedge fund managers are openly seeking to influence policy in a massive and comprehensive way.”

First, in a span of 10 weeks they spent $6 million on lobbying that won unprecedented public funding to pay for charter school rent, the activists explain. This was done as part of a campaign orchestrated with Governor Cuomo, designed to frustrate Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to win universal full-day pre-K, paid for entirely through expanded taxation of New York City millionaires.

Then, in the fall elections, twelve individuals spent $4.3 million on a PAC apparently designed to purchase control of State Senate education policy.

“We must make a stand for democracy. Hedge fund pluralism is not democracy. America, and New York, should be governed through a representative electoral process based on the hard-fought principle of one-person, one-vote – not ‘he who has the most gold rules.’In 2014, a tiny group of powerful hedge fund executives, representing an extreme version of this corruption, spent historic amounts of money in order to take over education policy.” The paper concluded.

Alex Akesson
Editor for HedgeCo.net
alex@hedgeco.net
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