beaming Bloomberg, Gates, & Schmidt walk into a bar…

…and the bartender throws his hands in the air and hollers: “Hands Up; Don’t Shoot!  I know a stick-up when I see one!”

‘Government by billionaires? Cuomo names former Google CEO to join Gates & Bloomberg in drafting post-pandemic ‘reforms’, 6 May, 2020, RT.com

“New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has appointed ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt to lead a panel on post-pandemic “reform” of health and education systems, despite criticism for taking other billionaires with conflicts of interest on board.

Schmidt will head a ‘Blue Ribbon Commission’ tasked with “reimagining” New York’s existing systems of healthcare and education, Cuomo announced on Wednesday during his daily coronavirus briefing. The decision to place such power in the hands of another unelected billionaire has riled critics already uneasy about the governor’s post-Covid-19 plans.”

Today @NYGovCuomo named x Google CEO Eric Schmidt to lead commission on post-pandemic tech solutions, the man who grew rich&famous presiding over the largest expansion of private surveillance in history. Cuomo’s done thisbefore:https://t.co/OR2xiBVEfo

— Shoshana Zuboff (@shoshanazuboff) May 6, 2020

“Cuomo was previously deluged by criticism after announcing on Tuesday that he would place the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in charge of developing a “blueprint to reimagine education in the new normal,” praising former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates as a “visionary” and calling for state schools to be “revolutionized.” Public schooling groups slammed the billionaire, accusing him of promoting “one failed educational initiative after another, causing huge disaffection in districts throughout the state.”

Now I’d call Gates a Galloping Grifter who’s never let his ‘philanthropic endeavors’ fail to earn him further billions, whether as a neo-Malthusian, backing Green Capitalism’s rush to ‘feed the world’ by genetically-engineered ‘crops’, while holding planetary heirloom seeds post-apocalypse hostage in the Svalbard Vault near the North Pole.

I’ve been watching Billy’s visionary reimagining on Twitter for a couple days now, and it is simply gobsmackingly dastardly, as were his ‘Waiting for Superman’ Common Core privatized charter schools earlier in the decade to the tune of $14 trillion in taxpayer bucks, which the RT piece explores, as it does Cuomo’s abject failures to put money into dilapidated public schools, and instead “In 2015, he was accused of “unconstitutional interference in education policy” by New York State Allies for Public Education, which highlighted his “cozy relationships” with charter school advocates and education technology businesses. One of those education technology businesses was [Smart School Schmidt] Google.”

The the piece closes with Cuomo’s cuts to health care, hospital consolidations, and so on; then mocks his choice of private equity crony bigs to advise him on how to open the state for bidness again.  Hint: they may actually profit from business bankruptcies.

On to the my favorite New Yawk tankie on Twitter:

@cordeliers  Cuomo intends to give Bill Gates free rein to destroy public education in New York. https://usnews.com/news/education  (it’s a long paean to Gates and ‘further revolutionizing NY education…(permanently?) but includes this bit of push-back:

“At least three organizations – New York State Allies for Public Education, Class Size Matters and the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy – have already written to Cuomo and state education officials opposing the partnership.

“We were appalled to hear that you will be working with the Gates Foundation on ‘reimagining’ our schools following the Covid crisis,” they wrote. “Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation have promoted one failed educational initiative after another, causing huge disaffection in districts throughout the state.”

“The education of our children has been repeatedly put at risk by their non-evidence based ‘solutions,’ which were implemented without parent input and despite significant public opposition,” they wrote.

Instead of expanding the use of education technology, the groups urged Cuomo to increase funding for schools to allow for smaller classes and more school counselors.”

Oopsie: ‘Cuomo says it’s ‘shocking’ most new coronavirus hospitalizations are people who had been staying home’, May 6 2020, cnbc.com

• “Early look at data from 100 New York hospitals shows that 66% of new admissions related to the virus are people who were at home, Cuomo said.
• He also said a majority of the cases in New York City are minorities, with nearly half being African American or Hispanic.

(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)