April 29, 2014

Show Me the Money: Meet the Multimillionaire Squeezing Missouri's Schools

Show Me the Money: Meet the Multimillionaire Squeezing Missouri's Schools

"You've probably heard of the billionaire Koch Brothers by now, and their sinister push to distort our democracy. But you may not have heard of Rex Sinquefield.
Unlike the Koch Brothers, who made their money the old-fashioned way, by inheriting it, Sinquefield is a self-made man, who earned a fortune in the stock market by investing in index funds.
He's a major funder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and he has also bankrolled the Club for Growth.
Though he was born in Missouri, he didn't move back there until 2005, after being away nearly four decades.
Now he claims to know how to "fix" the state. To an astonishing degree, over the last few years, Missouri's political landscape has been dominated by the wish list of just this one man.
Sinquefield is doing to Missouri what the Koch Brothers are doing to the entire country. For the Koch Brothers and Sinquefield, a lot of the action these days is not at the national but at the state level.
By examining what Sinquefield is up to in Missouri, you get a sobering glimpse of how the wealthiest conservatives are conducting a low-profile campaign to destroy civil society."