Austin Beutner’s No Superintendent; He’s An Agent Of Austerity And Deception
16 Wednesday Jan 2019
Written by redqueeninla in LAUSD
Tags
Austin Beutner, Bargaining, Charter school board members, charter schools, Collective Bargaining, education funding, Gavin Newsom, Tony Thurmond, UTLA, UTLA Strike
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For a financial whiz-kid, Austin Beutner seems strangely uncomprehending of numbers and inordinately fond of trumped-up figures.
Monday morning last he floated the patently absurd hypothesis that “…3,500 people were taking part in pickets at the schools”. Considering that UTLA is 34,000 strong (in LAUSD; that figure seems a little hard to pin down though so call it 32K +/- 2K), and 98% of the 81% voting members elected to strike, that makes for approximately 25K (+/- 2K – see above) union members alone as a base for Monday’s strike, and that number’s only risen since then. Beyond that minimum is a small army of ancillary supporters– students, families, numerous allied local unions, even charter school union members. They’ve all been pounding the pavement in “support” of our teachers. Which in itself is a bizarre concept considering there ought to be no antagonists at the table here.
So who’s this money maven helming LAUSD’s ship as it has careened toward calamitous closure?
He’s exactly the sort of guy feared when the term “Wall Street” is invoked. An “econ” major from Dartmouth’s class of 1982, he’s one of those “Smartest Guys In The Room”, a financial “whiz-kid”, a “vulture capitalist” and venture philanthropist who essentially swings from one corporate liana to the next, leveraging buyouts into IPOs and sticking the rest of us with his hundred-million-dollar landings.
Beutner’s resume is not an educator’s, it’s a Wall Street Wolf’s. From Dartmouth he graduated to Smith Barney and by age 29 became the Blackstone Groups’ youngest partner. Blackstone Group is known recently for engineering the largest leveraged buyout in history. Founded by a pair of Lehman Brothers alumni, it has always been heavily involved with Real Estate, profiting massively from the foreclosure crisis of 2007 and sinking millions of dollars last fall into the defeat of Prop 10, California’s recent rent control initiative.
From Blackstone Beutner co-founded an investment bank named Evercore. One of his partners was Roger Altman, a Deputy Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton associated with some of his higher-profile doings (NAFTA, Whitewater). Like this mentor, Beutner has periodically augmented his own investment career with “public service”.
Austin Beutner has fashioned a career of availability effecting the neoliberal dream. He is a gun for hire executing an agenda of austerity for politicos and plutocrats. His specialty is to take a corporate entity, parse it into constituent components, and then “leverage” these, one against another, to benefit some bits at the expense of others, lose the losers and sell off the winners at a fabulous profit. That’s the game plan and he’s done it over and over. That’s the “service” he offers his public. When he engages in “public service” it’s this private leveraging game-plan that he’s offering up among the public sector, for the expense of the private. It’s a fail for the public, like his performance in that sector has been.
Three years into the Clinton administration Beutner leveraged his Wall Street credentials into an appointment with the State Department running a USAID-funded gig privatizing the Soviet Union breakup. Beutner was intentionally and disruptively entrusted with “the attempt to bring the Russian economy out from the ruins of communism into the promise of Western-style capitalism”. While his predecessor proved too preoccupied with deliberative risk-management, it fell then to Beutner as ‘Best And Brightest’, to preside over the austerity playbook of neoliberal privatization.
Swinging out from underneath this international financial swashbuckling, the millennium found Austin Beutner opening up Evercore’s new branch office in Los Angeles. After netting multi-millions on its IPO, reverse-profiteering in the private-public interface, a serious mountain-bike accident in 2007 spurred another round of public service and public policy philanthropomorphizing.
His first huddle was with Mayor Villaraigosa who hired Mr. Beutner in 2010 for $1/annum to be his “jobs czar”. Asserting immunity from “adult supervision”, Beutner’s task was to oversee and facilitate (read: deregulate) Big Business opportunities in LA during the Great Recessionary slump. One of the prodigal venture capitalist’s reflexive suggestions was to sell off bits and pieces of the public’s water utility, LADWP, just as any Acquisitions & Mergers manager would propose for his portfolio.
The subsequent rounds of serial leveraging public off private and vice-versa all include similar components. Beutner’s the guy who “gets the job done”, gets brought in to impose a sweeping new agenda, with brash proceeds for him and his friends. This financial reboot was coincident with a new thinking about money, giving and philanthropy. And while his pivot to public service was actually very haute, still the overlap of Big Money with political influence is fundamentally troubling. Mr. Beutner is nothing if not about influence via money. Failing to attract enough of it for a mayorality bid in 2013, he dropped out of that running and went back to financing. But not before huddling with another former politico, Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor. Co-chairing the 12-member “LA2020 Commission”, the pair sounded a clarion call of distress, chaos and disruption the better to inveigle austerity measures. Its Olympics prospectus may still be kicking but the rest is DOA, successful only at leveraging personal influence and association.
His next huddle leveraged association with Los Angeles’ master Corporate Puppeteer, Eli Broad. After the failures downtown, Beutner made public a joint venture with pal Eli Broad to purchase the Los Angeles Times. A week later the Tribune Company appointed “well-associated” Austin Beutner the LA Times’ publisher, a job seemingly unrelated to his expertise. Beutner defended his suitability as “…a logical extension of his civic undertakings…”. And two months later the historically Republican San Diego Union-Tribune was spun into his group. But a logical extension of publishing to the greater world of politics, may well have caused his next failure, the loss of that job. For example Broad’s wife Edythe is reportedly close friends with the now-ex-wife of Villaraigosa, whose mentor is the former Mayor Riordan. Those pools of politics, power sharing and also, apparently, publishing are seemingly interconnected, and all quite shallow. When Austin Beutner and Eli Broad partnered to purchase the LA Times-San Diego Union-Tribune group, Mr. Beutner was unceremoniously escorted from his place of employment as befitting any corporate double agent. His tenure as publisher was unqualified, unsuccessful and angling always for privatization.
And then the pattern continues with his next unqualified job: as LAUSD Superintendent. Once again through close association with the Villaraigosa/Riordan-Broad axis of power and money, Mr. Beutner was vaulted into office this time as LAUSD Superintendent, and without public hearing. Mr Beutner was brought on by those who contend a narrative of failure and crisis in LAUSD, as excuse to run the script of his expertise, that hybrid of “vulture”/venture capitalism: buy -> load (or manufacture) debt -> offload at high profit.
Do not look to Austin Beutner’s LAUSD to negotiate any sort of fair settlement with the defenders and practitioners of public education. Our City’s establishment did not elevate him to this position to manifest a lifetime’s achievement of good educational practice. He is installed to play out his life’s work of financial chicanery. That’s the basis of his own education, it’s what got him his fortune and it’s what will be the demise of ours.
Now is the time to demand Austin Beutner’s resignation. He’s not here to fix what’s broken in public education. He’s here to profit from turning public education private. We the public need to fund our children’s education properly, collectively and equitably, and we need to vote in accountable public officials (Jackie Goldberg 4 LAUSD5!) to do so. Call your schoolboard member and tell them like it is: 1-213-241-1000 .
17 Comments
January 19, 2019 at 8:48 am
A Letter in Support of the UTLA Strike from a Former LAUSD Student, Current LAUSD Employee and Future Superintendent
https://sites.google.com/u/0/s/1TwpB5BtjdHA1jAuyHGm2T09SjMSWNBFZ/edit?pli=1&authuser=0
January 18, 2019 at 9:57 pm
Redqueen, why do you think they are poised to dump him?
January 19, 2019 at 12:30 am
See the response above – were you intending it not to be subsetted like that perhaps?
They’re poised to dump him if he becomes a liability due to extreme public disfavor. The board would want to retain its favor with the public.
Dumping him would make pretty close to zero difference regarding the threat to public education, they’ll just stuff a new puppet in place if not immediately, then soon enough. But it would at least give us a break. And you do have to stay on top of the incursions, one by one.
January 17, 2019 at 10:35 am
Add me to the Beutner-bashing squad. I was the cartoonist for the LA Times from 2009 until 2015 when Beutner fired me because I made fun of the LAPD and criticized LAPD chief Charlie Beck for abusing people of color. I am currently suing him and the Times because firing me wasn’t good enough for him—he and the police wanted me ruined. Beutner is scum.
January 17, 2019 at 11:48 am
Oh yes your story is wild. Read it here: http://anewdomain.net/ted-rall-lapd-la-times-second-enhanced-tape-reveals-all/
It is, if you’ll forgive my saying so, a little odd that one random person should take such a directed dislike of another random individual reporter/cartoonist. Perhaps a picture is worth a thousand words? The response seems mismatched to the transgression. It is a weird thing…. But as Harry Shearer likes to point out: “Nice People Doing Nice Things” is a phenomenon to pay attention to. I think Mr. Beutner is perhaps not a very nice person. The bread crumbs of his Russia activities suggest not. And that there is so little money associated with his name in American accounts at least suggests other suss elements.
A pig in a poke is one thing, but a reprobate in there is something altogether different.
January 17, 2019 at 2:24 am
I only know that Austin Beutner doesn’t serve the needs of LAUSD families. He only serves the needs of Eli Broad and the “Education Reformers” of CCSA who are the most evil criminals on earth. They support bad charter schools even when they break the law and steal millions from the community.
Austin was appointed by the board members who are part of the CCSA circle, it was all done illegally and without input from the community. Austin is no leader, no one respects him. He is on the wrong track and will destroy public education instead of making it strong.
If I was UTLA I would have their attorney’s file an injunctive relief stopping him from causing further financial disaster to LAUSD and harm to the children of LAUSD. If something isn’t done now more schools like Celerity will be allowed to flourish despite embezzling millions from the children of LAUSD.
January 17, 2019 at 2:27 am
I think the way to stop the Charter shenanigans he’s making it all safer for, is to call your board member and express no confidence in him. They’re poised to oust him but need to hear this is the will of their voters.
January 18, 2019 at 9:29 pm
Redqueen, you say they are poised to oust this snake? What leads you to this musing? It would seem that they, the Melvoin/Garcia axis, must have hired him because of his finacial chicanery skillset. What are your thoughts?
January 18, 2019 at 9:39 pm
I agree his skill set would seem valuable for executing the neoliberal austerity (“Austinerity”?) play book.
But I retain some hope that this remains a democracy, if weakened by malaise and apathy amongst us.
It’s my opinion that these shows of overwhelming support – 60K at today’s rally, and, say, 200K on this petition — http://tinyurl.com/ResignBeutner — would force the board to release the venture capitalist from its helm and force emplacement of an actual educator there.
You may not like the wording of that petition, or the online signing of petitions at all. But if our elected officials were faced with that hard numeric metric of displeasure, they would be hard-pressed to insist on their present course.
Democracy works on the basis of participation. They may have all the money but we still have all the votes.
January 17, 2019 at 12:57 am
Good gawd almighty, you should have a tv show for education like Rachel Maddox. Fantastic research and writing. Woof!i am going to have to reread this a few times to get all the links and fully absorb it all. Thanks. My daughter told me tonight that good friend Scott Folsom would be proud of me for what I am doing with the union side and standing up for our members. So I pass that on, Scott would be proud of YOU. Onward and in solidarity.
January 17, 2019 at 2:28 am
Wow, that is SUCH a sweet thing to say. Please give your daughter a great big hug for that. I was _just_ thinking about Scott this morning. He must be high-fiving us all from the beyond. Breeze fluttering through hair. I really miss him. Thank you for the beautiful package of memories and support, which is pretty much exactly reminiscent of that which is Scott.
January 17, 2019 at 9:40 am
Back at ya’ Sara.
January 17, 2019 at 7:26 pm
How does his time with Dwp fit in with this?
January 17, 2019 at 8:47 pm
Well, Mostly what I gleaned from his experience at DWP was pushing a button and regurgitating the same Acquisitions/Mergers-type suggestions: parse, leverage and sell. He suggested that in a strategic plan from 2010 that’s linked in the article above and for your convenience here: http://www.scpr.org/news/2010/06/15/16187/new-ladwp-head-beutner-wants-sell-natural-gas-rese/
The Department seems actually to have removed the plan itself from their website; I may be wrong about that or it may be available elsewhere.
Clearly Beutner irritated the City Council (Chair: Garcetti) some-bad; they were furious. It seems he was pretty snarky and acerbic. Here’s some fun stuff on it: http://beverlypress.com/2010/05/questions-remain-in-beutner%e2%80%99s-plan-for-dwp/
They were having none of it, really didn’t like his suggestions to parse and sell and lease-back. Just tricky-wacky stuff. That’s what they do, those investment managers. But the rest of us’ eyes just cross with all that trickery.
Here’s some sense of the chaos and trickery: http://soapboxla.blogspot.com/2010/11/citywatchla-lancc-defends-dwp-reform.html
Anyway, Beutner’s game plan is the same: same paradigm. That’s the point. Acquire a big, bruising entity, split it into teeny parts, squeeze the value from the least profitable bits and then dump them. Then sell off the whole for a profit.
And what wasn’t mentioned in this article, is the articulation with Eli Broad’s (and A Beutner’s) master strategic plan to do precisely this via its “portfolio” plan, and dumping of schools in favor of privatized charters.
SSDD