Professor Lynne Weikart, PhD

  Recently, I came across one more way investors are making large profits through charter schools. New York State passed a law requiring charter schools to be nonprofit. Although that is certainly making policy in the right direction, when it comes to real estate, don't ever underestimate how real estate interests can rip off the taxpayer. The NYC school system is required by state law to reimburse charter schools for the cost of its leases if the Department of Education cannot house the charter school in a DOE facility.  No other school district in the state is required to house or reimburse charter schools, just the city. Garvin Healy, a CEC2 member, has written an expose of these leases. Per NYS law, 30 percent of a charter school's per pupil funding can be spent on real estate and facility needs. This amounts to almost $5,500. The more students, the higher the real estate budget and the amount per pupil has more than doubled since 2014. So an LLC buys a building, leases it

In this article, a corporation is defined as a legal entity describing the large " Anglo-American publicly traded business corporation as opposed to small, incorporated businesses...." Over time the Supreme Court legitimated this type of capitalist institution. In Dodge v. Ford  (1919), the Supreme Court created the principle, "the best interests of the corporation; that is, the managers and directors of the corporation must put the interests of the shareholders above all other interests. This means that if a CEO or board wished to give donations to a charity, other shareholders can sue and claim that such an action is not in "the best interests of the corporation." The Supreme Court opened the door to a very greedy corporate culture. Over time, corporations grew into large monopolies sometimes gaining 90 percent of an industry's market. Part of their success relates to our federalist system in which every corporation chooses in which state it wishes to i

 November 5, 2022 "When her husband was taken hostage, she found her voice." PBS has released a story about the wife of one of the Americans taken hostage during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1980-81, and it was titled - " When her husband was taken hostage, she found her voice."  There is an implied assumption that she was quiet before this. I wonder if any journalist would have written that statement about a husband whose wife had been taken hostage. I don't think so.  Our culture still makes the assumption that somehow a woman in marriage loses something. That somehow she is passive. This woman was a wife, a mother and a teacher. She has always had a voice. She may not have been active in the public arena but most people, male or female, are not. She clearly led a very active life before the horror of the hostage situation.  What if the opening had said, "When her husband was taken hostage, she used the media to fight for her husband's freedom."

 August 17, 2022 Austerity Politics: The Difference in Mayoral Leadership Lynne A. Weikart, PhD Introduction This book is a book about leadership. It is the story of how each of six New York City mayors since the 1975 fiscal crisis coped with state and financial interference. New York State government in close cooperation with the major banking institutions strongly asserted their power over New York City during the city’s 1975 fiscal crisis. Both state government officials and bankers created strong institutional structures that prevented the City from investing in its citizens in a myriad of ways – City officials no longer had control of its resources – institutions created by these two external powers did. By the summer of 1975, City officials could no longer sell its bonds in the bond market. Because the city had accumulated billions of dollars in short-term debt, it faced bankruptcy unless it could borrow the money in the bond market to meet payroll. Bankruptcy was not an o

I want to share Bloomberg's article about free speech in the Wall Street Journal.  Republican Censorship Goes for Woke Ron DeSantis’s efforts to control educational and corporate speech are no better than the left’s. By  Michael R. Bloomberg Aug. 15, 2022 in Wall Street Journal Republicans often rightly complain that college campuses are hostile to the free exchange of ideas. Speakers over the past decade have regularly been disinvited, shouted down and even physically attacked by student activists unwilling to entertain different ideas and perspectives. This behavior is anathema to a university’s mission and deeply damaging to our nation. Unfortunately, instead of taking a principled stand for free speech, many Republicans are now saying: “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” Consider Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed a bill that as of July 1 bars professors from expressing any view in a classroom that “espouses, promotes, [or] advances” anything that could make

 Voting is a form of speech . And this country has had trouble with free speech since its inception. America was split ideologically at its beginning. When John Adams won the presidency in 1797 following eight years of George Washington's two terms of office, he demonstrated the split in our countrty., He proceeded to weaken the First Amendment - freedom of speech and press - by jailing those who criticized his administration. Since his party, the Federalist Pary, had taken the legislature and the presidency, he had the legislative support to get the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1797 passed by Congress to charge all those who opposed him with sedition. It was an ugly time. Fortunately, the Alien and Sedition Acts had a sunset provision so that those legislative acts evaported at the end of his one presidential term in office. But it set the precedent for the First Admendment to be under attack and not so sacroscant as you might have been taught in your education   Since that time th