Quote:
Originally Posted by Inso0
Good for Waukesha for nipping that in the bud. They already have some ground to make up on education without wasting class time appeasing political activists.
It's funny that cuepee thinks this is some insidious plan for GOP takeover, given that the historical nature of school boards has been domination by progressive/liberal types, even in otherwise strong conservative areas. At least, that's been the case for as long as I can remember here in Southeast Wisconsin.
I think I posted a link upthread but go listen to the free The Daily podcast that discusses this growing issue and speaks to Billionaire Republican donor who speaks very candidly about this and his role, and the organization he created to do this all across the country.
He talks about how he came to it earnestly, as just a parent who felt he needed to be involved in his kids schooling. And then he realized what a powerful tool controlling the School board and other historically overlooked areas of small town politics could be at then controlling the State and Federal voting infrastructure.
He speaks quite candidly about how this power dynamic just appeared and he could not, 'NOT' capitalize on it as an entrepreneur and as such creating this national infrastructure to take in donations Nation wide to over run these Boards now with social conservatives, with culture war biases.
They cite lots of examples now where there supported candidates in School Board campaigns are utilizing large budgets for advertising in the ways you never saw in any of these elections prior, which were often fought only reputationally, and door to door and thru exposure to the community at meetings. They talk to him about how that is now forcing many on the left out, with only those who can raise lots of money (usually reaching out to small donors through activists on the left) to counter.
So congrat's if that is what you see as a good thing Inso, with now the most local levels of community politics being taken over by monied interests.
It seems as always you miss the forest for the trees and don't understand why this should be a problem for all sides.
if "progressive types' were hijacking the Boards in pre monied interest days that just means they were more active in the community and got more votes via that the old fashioned way and the way to counter that is simply to get conservatives more active and to garner more votes. No one has an issue with that. And that, is not what 'this' is. This change you applaud is quite insidious.