The New Iron Triangle of the Information Sector, Education Reform and the Democrats

This quintessential blogpost by Paul Horton, "Will the Media Help Destroy Public Education?," at Anthony Cody's Living in Dialog blog lays out with great precision the dynamic nature of the forces at play with the war on public education.

The corporate media, the metrics-focused ideologues, and the education reformers more acutely, are aligned against the teachers. In the Republican-Democratic battle for money in the Citizens United era, the media / information technology sector of business are aligned more closely with the Democrats. This has profound significance for the direction of our country's education and for our political options. [graphics added]

Will the Media Help Destroy Public Education?

By Paul Horton.

Why have those defending public education had such an uphill fight in crafting a compelling counter to the mainstream message that “public education is broken”? How can we break through this monotonous monopoly of thinking with an alternative message?

As Noam Chomsky points out, the mainstream political discourse in America is largely shaped by media outlets under complete corporate control.

Who are the players here? Over the past two decades, as the internet has transformed communication, a circle of Silicon Valley billionaires have achieved great influence. Their outlook tends to be Libertarian, and finds much in common with neoliberals when it comes to education policy. These nouveau tech billionaires have found common cause with hedge fund managers and banking industry insiders, who also hold tremendous power.

According to Robert McChesney,

…much of the wealth generated by the Internet has been funneled into a small number of hands….[T]he Internet has produced monopolistic titans like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, e-Bay, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Oracle, and Qualcomm….In combination, these firms have almost unlimited power in Washington, and the only time they face any regulatory threat is when the giants find themselves on opposite sides of an issue….Academics trip over one another as they sing the praises of digital titans,

…but [T]he Internet brings one of the core contradictions of capitalism to the fore—what is good and rational for those who control the economy is bad and irrational for society as a whole. (Blowing the Roof Off the Twenty-First Century, 228-9)

The most important fact in American politics today is the Citizens United decision. With this, the hand of the Democratic Party was forced: in order to win major elections the party must accept major campaign funding from the Silicon Valley right libertarians, neoliberals and their financiers on Wall Street. For neoliberal Democrats who are forced to lick the Nikes of their major funders, the privatization of education has become the price they pay to get the dollars needed to win elections.

The Obama Administration’s education policies are the equivalent of doing dog tricks or “dancing” for someone who is holding a gun.

So what role does the media play in this dance?

Although things have improved slightly in the print media in 2014, almost all major print editorial pages are controlled by publishers who are whole hog on privatization and charters: NYT and Chicago Tribune and the Tribune network are leading the bandwagon and heavily influenced by Bloomberg, Broad, and Murdoch. The Chicago Sun-Times editorial page is completely compromised by the political pressure exerted by publishers friendly to governor-elect Bruce Rauner who supports privatization of education. The New Republic is dead, succumbing to Silicon Valley neoliberal libertarianism.

The Progressive, The Nation (the country’s oldest journal of political and cultural opinion), Salon, Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post most often include stories and voices of teachers in print; while Politico, The Huffington Post, Alternet, Truthout, and Common Dreams are open to teacher voices that call attention to a counter narrative.

Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, Jon Pelto’s Education Blogger’s Network, Cynthia Liu’s K12 News Network,Tim Slekar’s Busted Pencils site, Dr. James Miller’s War Report, and the Network for Public Education, an organization formed to counter the neoliberal Democrats for Education Reform, have all worked to build online grassroots communities opposed to right libertarian and neoliberal public education disruption-destruction. Peter Greene has been relentlessly spot-on, taking Mr. Gates-Duncan-Petrilli on every day. The work of blogger-authors Mercedes Schneider and Jeff Bryant has been exemplary in reaching a broader audience at Huffington Post and Salon. Edushyster (Jennifer Berkshire) brings a deft humorous touch to her articles and interviews. Dozens of local bloggers around the country like Mike and Fred Klonsky in Chicago, The Jose Vilson in New York, and Julian Vasquez-Heilig’s Cloaking Inequity blog have been relentless, but don’t always get the attention they deserve.

Rethinking Schools is perhaps the longest standing alternative educational media outlet, and this organization has produced outstanding curriculum and analysis for more than twenty years.

Bill Moyers remained a stalwart presence on the air and online, and remains an inspiration to all of us who cherish his native Texas progressive populism that refuses to dismiss the moral dimensions of political economy in the face of an all out assault on public discourse maintained by the right libertarians of the Chicago School of economics who have come to dominate Obama Education policy. Democracy Now likewise produces news coverage that challenges the corporate narrative in education. The LA Progressivegives prominent space for teacher voices.  Travis Smiley is also worth noting, along with his sometime co-host, Dr. Cornel West, for their attention to the issues of poverty, and willingness to challenge the Obama administration’s policies.

MSNBC should be a progressive voice on education, and to an extent, Chris Hayes is open to teacher voices. Melissa Harris-Perry has sometimes also featured guests that question the reform narrative, such as Julian Vasquez-Heilig. However Rachel Maddow is reputed to be a friend of Eva Moskowitz and appears to supports the charter movement. Democrats are heavily influenced by NPR and PBS coverage that virtually excludes teacher voices except for a recent NPR series on the “Secret lives of teachers” that reifies the political, social, and economic contexts of educational issues. NPR and PBS both receive very generous support from the Gates and Walton foundations and Students First, which is heavily subsidized by many individuals and foundations hostile to public education. Among centrist Democrats heavily influenced by the Wall Street investors who support privatization of schools, NPR, PBS, and the New York Times remain the three most influential institutions that most directly shape mainstream public opinion on education issues.

These three major media outlets are in turn heavily influenced by studies coming from policy think tanks that receive generous contributions from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Broad Foundation, and The Bloomberg Fund. The Fordham Institute, AEI, the Joyce Foundation, and the Brookings Institute (turned neoliberal) and a spate of conservative think tanks have all produced non-peer reviewed papers to support the privatization of education. They have all received heavy subsidies from the above foundations, and education beat reporters and editorial pages routinely use talking points from these and other think tanks to write stories about education issues.

GMMB, a think-tank and PR firm located in Washington DC and heavily subsidized by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has also had a big impact on the shaping negative opinion of public schools and public school teachers. GMMB carefully prepared the media packets and campaign in support of the Common Core Standards and has worked very closely with the Fordham Institute to supply talking points and interviews to virtually every major media outlet. GMMB has hired media insiders who have worked in most major cable news and print media institutions, opening easy access to editorial boards and the country’s major education reporters. Mr. Duncan’s former PR officer, a former reporter for the LA Times, revolved into a GMMB job one year ago. It is not a stretch to say that there is virtually no institutional membrane existing between GMMB, the Fordham Institute, and the Department of Education under Secretary Duncan. Indeed, presidential appointments of top assistant secretaries that are closely connected with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are the norm within the Obama Department of Education. Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Institute was called by virtually every major print, cable, and digital reporter from 2012-14 for talking points in defense of the Common Core Curriculum which, like the Fordham Institute, is heavily funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Department of Education, for its part, promotes the agenda of Mr. Gates at every turn. Like a general threatening to bomb a noncompliant subaltern population, Mr. Duncan routinely disparages the teaching profession and public schools. Ignoring the validity decades of NAEP assessments, Mr. Duncan has turned Pearson Education loose on all American educators, students, and teachers by publicallly funding his own version of Operation Phoenix: the PARCC assessments that will not only hold all students to a higher standard, but will rid the country of “bad teachers.” This campaign intentionally ignores mountains of peer reviewed studies that indicate that ineffective teachers make up no more than 3% of the current teaching force in virtually every state.

Perhaps the most telling fact of the success of the GMMB-Fordham Institute-DoEd manufactured consent for the disruption and destruction of public schools is the virtual absence from major national print, digital, and cable public discourse of any discussion of what can only be called the Corvair-Edsel of the Education Industry complex: Pearson Education. I know of no corporation that consistently produces such shoddy products as Pearson Education. The public, especially parents, are learning about the lack of quality of Pearson software and sample questions when they consult online sample questions. Teachers have known about the shoddy quality of Pearson test generators for some time. This educational equivalent of Halliburton, Pearson has benefitted from greasing the wheels of the Obama campaign, and has enjoyed a very cozy relationship with Mr. Duncan’s Education Department from day one.

Pearson has not only profited from developing PARCC at warp speed on the federal dime to please Mr. Gates-Duncan-Petrilli, it has also obtained no bid contracts in many states that were greased by free trips given to state education superintendents. The Pearson Foundation has since been disbanded and fined by the New York State’s Attorney for such shady quid pro quo-reeking interactions. The fact that Pearson has not been taken to court in many states attests to the lack of effective ethics codes in the states and a lack of DOJ and FTC oversight. Such oversight is sorely lacking within an administration that serves Wall Street and Silicon Valley when it comes to education policy.

Because Pearson and PARCC are the centerpieces of Mr. Duncan’s policy agenda, and Chicago School ideas about building unfettered and more “efficient” economies of scale championed by Henry C. Simons, Milton Friedman and their students Gary Becker, Judge Richard Posner, and Richard Epstein; have heavily influenced the Chicago “clique” surrounding the president (Valerie Jarrett, Martin Nesbitt, Penny Pritzker, the board of the Commercial Club of Chicago who were essential to funding Obama’s first campaign) and the antitrust enforcement in the form of requiring Pearson Education to write competitive impact statements when it gobbles up more and more market share like an educational version of the movie “The Blob” is entirely moot at DOJ.

This story is the biggest story of the last several years that has not been touched by education reporters, especially local reporters who are assigned and held to deadlines.

Our biggest challenge to date is this: How can classroom teachers penetrate the corporate media apparatus? Can we cultivate enough relationships with the few reporters who have the courage to find stories that are critical of the dominant disruption-destruction ideology that can see through non peer reviewed and corporate foundation supported “studies”-propaganda.

Another question to examine is: can grassroots media marshal enough support to build coalitions in support of public education among fellow progressive populists?

We need senators Brown, Sanders and Warren to be more vocal in their support of public education. We need them on CNN and NBC. We need more sympathetic talking heads to speak out more forcefully and more often.

We must energize the congressional progressive caucus to work for public education by blasting away at the Gates supported, astro-turf funded, propagation of “’education reform’ as the Civil Rights issue of out time.”

We need Matt Damon to produce a feature film about teachers that are at war with disrupters and who are doing brilliant work in the classroom.

Most of all, we need to come together and act politically and fight. We need to learn more from Ras Baraka and Karen Lewis and join together with as many allies as possible to take neoliberal lies head-on.

Finally, we need to take heart from the people of Latin America and Greece who have defeated or are struggling with the neoliberal cultural apparatus. According to Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa, “Lies destroyed Latin America. People lie too much, from the press, the politicians, and on the street….I think one of the main problems around the world is that there are private networks in the communication business, for profit business providing public information, which is important for society. It is a fundamental contradiction.” “I think there should be more public and community media, organizations that don’t have that conflict between profits and social communication.” (quoted in McChesney, Blowing the Roof Off, 218).

Public Education Bloggers are actively pushing forward to create what Myles Horton called “islands of decency” within a neoliberal hurricane that seeks to monetize every human relationship, that destroys human relationships and potential within a digitalized “Glass Cage” filled with punitive test scores and VAM calculations. The fight requires us to break through the “Glass Cage” and join hands in one big progressive populist union.

As Graham Nash is fond of singing, ”Won’t you please come to Chicago.”

Paul Horton has taught for thirty years in virtually every kind of school. He began his teaching career in a recently integrated rural Texas middle school. He then taught for five years in a large urban high school in San Antonio’s West side where the majority of young people were ESL. He has been teaching at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, the country’s most diverse independent school founded by John Dewey, for fourteen years.

Teacher Sounds Off vs. Campbell Brown "No, I Am Not Going to Destroy Society"; Brown's Caginess on her "Education Reform" Funders & Obama Associates' Vergara Links

UPDATE: The big money behind Vergara suit: David Welch & his Students Matters connections with Obama administration associates and Pearson
*Teacher sounds off on Campbell Brown *Cites Brown's disaster appearance on Colbert's show *Picks up and lambastes media's meme with title, "Yes, I am a teacher. No, I am not going to destroy society and your children." Subtitle: "The anti-union celebrities (and their secret backers) have taken the war on teachers public. But educators shouldn’t have to defend doing our jobs" /// *Writers are asking why won't Brown divulge her funders? /// Michelle Rhee leaves StudentsFirst to perform miracles at Miracle-Gro

AQE & NYCC revealed Brown to be a Republican,
and that she was "caught in a lie" in her Twitter denials of being a Republican

The Alliance for Quality Education and New York Communities for Change said that the New York City Board of Elections reported that Campbell Brown is indeed a Republican, in spite of her denials on Twitter and her spokesperson's claim that she is a “lifelong independent” who has registered as a Democrat and a Republican. But as we see below, she has plenty of help from Democrats.

Teacher Valerie Braman told off Campbell Brown and perennially warrior against public school teachers in a piece published in the UK Guardian.

Valerie Braman, English teacher and 

AFT staff rep

Key excerpts of Braman's opinion piece:

In the “real world”, I’ve been informed, the singular solution to the problems with education in America is to get rid of the teachers’ unions and even to just fire and replace all teachers, which would magically transport us all to this vaunted real world in which no educator should be entitled to pensions, affordable health benefits or due process. (In it, I’m certain I’d be wealthy enough to start using phrases like “job creators” and attending Chamber of Commerce events, instead of just standing outside of them to protest corporate tax breaks and cuts in education funding.) 

Take journalist-cum-teachers’-union-warmonger Campbell Brown, who has been busy on the talk-show circuit this summer ["Who the f*** is Campbell Brown," in "Esquire"] spewing false research about “bad teachers” and bemoaning how impossible it is to fire them while refusing to disclose her funders or links to special interest groups hell-bent on privatizing public education and de-professionalizing educators [a Buzzfeed contributor laid out all the ways that Brown dodged all the questions on the Stephen Colbert show]. 

Or there’s Whoopi Goldberg feeding into misconceptions about teacher tenure, telling us she is all about teachers – but only the great ones [LA Progressive]

And let us not neglect Alec, the group that with backing from the omnipresent Koch Brothers creates model legislation that’s serving as a how-to manual for dismantling and privatizing public school districts by using school closures, mass firings and vouchers – all in the name of “accountability” [See expose "Educational Accountability Act" at "ALEC exposed"]. 

Closer to home (for me), the governor of Pennsylvania cut over $1bn in education funding
[Axis Philly] – then watched as districts crumbled, schools closed, budgets got slashed, staff got laid off, and woefully inadequate educational programs popped up in their place ...  and then Governor Tom Corbett dared to tell Philadelphia educators that by not taking pay cuts we haven’t “stepped up” to solve the crisis he created [Philadelphia Inquirer].

          . . . .

She closed, advising educators to counter the media-propagating of myths, the scape-goating of teachers. Once that is done, we can get back to discussions of what works and what doesn't in teaching.

When Brown went on Colbert the other day [video archive at Colbert], they saw her evasions and realized that her inability to cite accurate research was less because she’s bad at her job and more because such research simply does not exist [Answer Sheet at Washington Post].
When Whoopi talked about tenure and bad teachers having the gift of a job for life, we got this gem of a video breaking down the truth about tenure and why it is crucial for educators and students [at Daniel Katz, Ph.D. blog].
When Corbett took direction from a secret poll suggesting the path to re-election lies in attacking the teachers’ union and using the school crisis in Philadelphia for political leverage, the electorate saw behind the curtain – and he made it easier for people to cast their votes for his opponent ["Secret poll: Corbett should exploit Philly school crisis, attack teachers union for political gain" in Philadelphia City Paper]. 

The more these myths – and the people paying to propagate them – are exposed, the more professional educators and our unions can do the real work of having tough conversations about what works and what doesn’t (rather than who shouldn’t) in education. We can stop defending our right to have jobs at all, and get back to partnering with families and communities to ensure equal, excellent educational opportunities to all children. There’s no spin in the world that can touch that.

                                                                        * * *
Campbell Brown’s transparency problem: Why won’t she say who funds her “ed. reform” group?

Negative attention to ex-journalist Campbell Brown has grown against Brown: Salon.com ran two negative stories on her in the  last month. Yet, her front profile position in her suits against teacher tenure in New York State, comes right as her mentor is moving on (to help the image-beleaguered Scotts Miracle-Gro fertilizer company -thanks to NYC Educator for breaking this one). First came, "Tenure haters’ big delusion: Why Campbell Brown and co. are wrong about teaching."
This article made several cogent points.

It noted the argument that teachers can only contribute so much to a child's education: Audrey Beardsley, an associate professor at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, started her career as a teacher. “I fell into such a utopian ideology, believing that schools and teachers can change and inspire everything,” Beardsley says. “But current research suggests, unfortunately, that teachers only truly impact about 10-20 percent of student achievement.” Other factors with a larger impact include parental income and education, which account for about 60 percent of the variation in student outcomes.

But we must ask, as the second article in Salon asks, if Brown is so confident in her arguments, why is she needing to hire a public relations firm to help her in her lawsuit? The firm, Incite Agency, indicates one more expression on how Democrats have joined in the war on teachers. It is headed, as Salon's Gabriel Arana notes, by former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and former Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt. "Robert Gibbs will lead the national public relations campaign along with Ben LaBolt" is the caption in Politico's story on Gibbs' and LaBolt's role in assisting Brown's suit against teacher tenure.

Andy Kroll in Mother Jones reported last year in "Who's Really Behind Campbell Brown's Sneaky Education Outfit?" that in the 2012 election cycle, Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst, a "'bipartisan grassroots organization' backed 105 candidates in state races, 88 percent of them Republicans."

{POSTSCRIPT: Why won't Brown say who funds her? After all, Silicon Valley multi-millionaire David Welch (Co-Founder, President, Director and Member of Technology & Acquisition Committee, Infinera Corporation) let it be known that he was the Astroturf benefactor behind Strudents Matter which brought the anti-teacher tenure Vergara suit in California. Read "The Big Money Behind California's Tenure Lawsuit" at Truth-Out.org. It tells of Welch's active role in negative "reform" groups. The millionaire, whose $10 million-dollar home, on a 1.53 acre lot, sits in Atherton, one of Silicon Valley's most expensive zip codes, is an investment partner with the NewSchools Venture Fund. Futhermore, the NSVF funds several charter schools and charter school management organizations. So, the more public district schools he disrupts and replaces with charter schools, the more he financially benefits.
The article goes on to connect Welch's creation, Students Matter with StudentsFirst, Michelle Rhee's organization (until this week). Students Matter files its IRS statements under the name of the StudentsFirst Foundation. Welch's philanthropic operation, the David and Heidi Welch Foundation also gave $550,000 to Rhee's StudentsFirst lobby.

For more on Welch and Students Matter's spending, see the excellent article, "A Silicon Valley Entrepreneur, A Billionaire And A USDOE Assistant Secretary Walk Into A Courtroom...," by the blogger, New Jersey mother and public school supporter at the blog, "Mother Crusader." She points out that money for Vergara poured in not only from Welch, but from other wealthy opponents of public schools-- the Broad Foundation, William H. Crown, one to the heirs to the fortune of billionaire Lester Crown and from Students Matter CFO Ted Schlein, #67 on Fortune's list of Top 100 Venture Capitalists.

Democratic connections to Welch's Students Matters board
The Students Matter board has had people associated with the Obama administration, including Russlynn Ali and Ted Mitchell; also, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) were early supporters of Students Matter.

[Russlynn Ali (left, at the USDOE, with Duncan), who began her government work with the Gov. Schwarzenegger administration, a member of the advisory board of Students Matter. According to Inside Philanthropy,  she has researched for the Broad Foundation, and more recently had been the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in Arne Duncan's Education Department. She is the Managing Director of the Education Fund at the Emerson Collective LLC, a project started a decade ago by Steve Jobs' widow Laurene Powell Jobs. Frying Pan News reports that the Emerson Collective gave $1.2 million to Parent Revolution (Remember the Parent Trigger "movement"?)  Emerson Collective has given at least $240,000 to other California pro-charter school organizations.
To be fair, heading the legal team at Students Matter is Republican Theodore "Ted" Olsen, George W. Bush's first solictor general, and assistant attorney general at the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice during president Ronald Reagan's first term.  He argued on the Republican side in the pivotal Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case that decided the 2000 presidential election.
The ed entrepreneur that heads U.S. higher education policy: Back to the Democrat-connected: The Nation magazine revealed in an article, "Oppose the Nomination of Ted Mitchell to the Department of Education," noted that the Obama administration nominated him for Education Secretary in October. Mitchell, until recently, sat on the advisory board of Welch's Students Matter. The magazine contended that his nomination represented the further privatization of education in the United States. Mitchell has connections with for-profit colleges and until May was the chief executive of the NewSchools Venture Fund. Mitchell is also connected with Pearson PLC (NSVF is a "limited partner" with Pearson) and with the venture capital Salmon River Fund, which launched the for-profit Capella University. The Nation's valiant opposition did not succeed: the Senate confirmed Mitchell as under secretary, on post-secondary issues, for USDOE secretary Arne Duncan.
"Who's Investing in Ed-Tech?: Tech Investors and Their Education Portfolios" in EdTech is valuable for understanding the ramifications of education entrepreneurs' investments. EdTech cross-references: For more information on education technology investments (plug their name into the database) at Crunchbase.]

The Truth-Out article notes that Students Matter is looking into launching anti-tenure campaigns, not only in New York, but also Connecticut, Idaho, Kansas, Maryland, New Mexico and Oregon. It also cites George Washington University Law School professor Eric Kerr, who, though supporting the Vergara decision, conceded in a Washington Post op-ed piece, "I Like the Result, But the Opinion Has Problems," that there is no evidence that tenure laws create bad teachers.

Big money ramifications for ed entrepreneurship
An article in TheDeal.com, giddy over venture capital opportunities in education, notes, (emphasis below, mine)

... VC investors continue to pour money into the education space at an ever-increasing clip, and have nearly tripled the amount over the past decade. Investments in edtech companies nationwide rose to $429 million in 2011, the latest year with available data, from $146 million in 2002, according to statistics from the National Venture Capital Association.

TheDeal then asked,

Why the rush? And why now? Education industry banker Peter Yoon, managing director at New York's Berkery, Noyes & Co., rattles off a few reasons. "First, the size of the sector. In terms of percentage of [gross domestic product], it's No. 2 behind healthcare," he said. "In the K-12 space alone it's about $700 billion. I think investors at venture capital firms have seen that education and training has outperformed other sectors and GDP in general during the Great Recession."
Students in the U.S. educational system are increasingly acclimated to digital communication and content delivery in several other aspects of their lives, and technology proponents believe the school system must adapt both to more effectively disseminate information and cut costs, particularly when the value of a traditional education program is being seriously questioned.
"Education is going through a period of tremendous transition, transformation, disruption," said Yoon, adding that entrepreneurs and investors in edtech see opportunity amid all the technological dislocation.

So, there you have it, the education reformers/entrepreneurs are aggressively challenging the traditional institutional format of education (public schools with a competitive market-place for school products, and a low level of commercialization to increasingly privatized schools, with a market dominated by limited players, notably Pearson PLC, all amidst an environment that is increasingly commercialized). They seek to disrupt. In the chaos, they seek to transform education according to the prerogatives of the privatizers.

Back to the interesting Truth-Out article, for followers of Alex Caputo-Pearl, the new progressive caucus president of the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), it tells of some of his travails, including how he was forcibly transferred from Crenshaw High School to a middle school after he lobbied for more resources for his students. We wish him well in this increasingly hostile environment that he and other California union activists are working in.}

Meanwhile: Michelle Rhee, founder of the Sacramento-based StudentsFirst (Brown's husband, Dan Senor, sits on the board of StudentsFirstNY), is now leaving her CEO post there, moving over to Scotts Miracle-Gro. She'll remain on the board.
Her StudentsFirst success was "underwhelming," in the words of one blogger. She raised  a tenth of the $ billion that she pledged to raise. Staff turnover was high, and StudentsFirst closed five of their eighteen state franchises.
The fertilizer company needs help for their sheen, as they have been hit by a suit over birdseed that appears to have been toxic to birds, killing them. Two chemicals, Storcide II and Actellic 5E, have been added to Miracle-Gro's products, even though the company's own doctors warned them over the danger they posed to birds. Finally, the U.S. Justice Department hit Miracle-Gro with a $12.5 fine. An EPA press release stated,

The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, a producer of pesticides for commercial and consumer lawn and garden uses, was sentenced today in federal district court in Columbus, Ohio, to pay a $4 million fine and perform community service for eleven criminal violations of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), which governs the manufacture, distribution, and sale of pesticides. Scotts pleaded guilty in February 2012 to illegally applying insecticides to its wild bird food products that are toxic to birds, falsifying pesticide registration documents, distributing pesticides with misleading and unapproved labels, and distributing unregistered pesticides. This is the largest criminal penalty under FIFRA to date.
In a separate civil agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scotts agreed to pay more than $6 million in penalties and spend $2 million on environmental projects to resolves additional civil pesticide violations. The violations include distributing or selling unregistered, canceled, or misbranded pesticides, including products with inadequate warnings or cautions. This is the largest civil settlement under FIFRA to date.

Will Rhee be a drag on Scotts Miracle-Gro? Already three days ago there was this report that some teachers will boycott Scotts Miracle-Gro. Teachers have been leaving comments to this sentiment on Columbus Business First's news page on Rhee's move to Scotts' board of directors, and will serve on the innovation/marketing and the compensation/organization committees. But the company won't stand down their decision. But, hey, she had no school administrative experience before becoming Washington, D.C. schools chancellor, so why not hire someone with no agricultural or chemical background to be a leader at Scotts Miracle-Gro?

Well, Michelle Rhee performed Miracles in Baltimore, Miracles in Washington, D.C., and Miracles across the media, dodging negative news about her true track education track record (except on PBS' Frontline). Surely, her miracles performance record can help Miracle-Gro.
The Sacarmento Bee is reporting that her husband, Sacramento mayor, Kevin Johnson (Dem.), is setting his sights on higher office. This could be a problem if the press gives attention to his penchant for his using the mayor's office and the St. HOPE charter schools (which he founded) as patronage mills, as the Sacramento News and Review reports. Last month, the charter chain's board so happened to appoint her to be board chairwoman.