The real reason Paul Martino is pumping money into school board races

His buddies the Koch brothers want to defund public schools

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Paul Martino isn’t running for school board in Central Bucks where he lives, or anywhere else. But he’s paying out a boatload of money to candidates who are. At this point, his tab is reaching nearly $600K.

The question is WHY? Martino claims that his original motivation was to keep schools open so kids could get a quality, in-person education. Well, schools are open. And they have been. So what’s his real motivation?

Martino is far more than just an “angry dad” with deep pockets. He moves in circles with the super-rich and super-powerful. And Martino has an agenda.

Martino is laying the groundwork for schools to fail

Does that sound extreme? Well, follow along as we build this out.

Check out this quote from Martino from a report on WHYY this morning.
“What we found time and time again is most of the schools were closed at the beginning of the last calendar year, not actually because of COVID — indirectly because of COVID, of course — but because of administrative errors,” said Martino, who lives in the Central Bucks School District. “You didn’t hire enough teachers. You weren’t prepared for this contingency. You didn’t insert the new air filter … The eight-time company founder, CEO, coach, in me was like, ‘Wow, this is my kids at stake here. Like, that’s not good enough for my kids.’”

What’s he saying? Schools did a bad job. Administrators are incompetent. Only innovators like me know how to fix this.

Keep that in mind as you read on.

There’s a trail of breadcrumbs from Martino to the Koch brothers and the controversial tech investor Peter Thiel. And they want to do away with public education.

Here’s what we know about Martino:

• He spoke at a Koch event in 2016.

• He has strong links to Project Veritas, an organization that attempted to delegitimize the 2020 election. Martino told Vice that he considers himself a “mentor” to Veritas cofounder James O’Keefe.

• He is a donor to The Federalist Society, the lobbying organization that has appointed itself the Republican “gatekeeper” for judicial appointees who will be more likely to align big-money donors’ interests.

• Last month, Martino was a featured speaker at the Culture, Religion, and Technology conference in Miami, where he shared the stage with controversial Libertarian and tech investor Peter Thiel. Thiel is widely seen as the heir to the Koch brothers’ circle of influence in conservative politics. Thiel has publicly stated, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
  

  

Here’s what we know about the Koch brothers:

• Charles and David Koch, generally referred to as “the Koch brothers,” were/are the heads of multinational conglomerate company Koch Industries. David Koch died in 2019. Charles Koch retains his position as CEO.

• They have a long history of pumping money into political causes that align with their business interests. Remember the Tea Party? They were behind that whole mess.

• A charity they fund has donated at least $1.7 million to Project Veritas.

• They are top donors to The Federalist Society.

• They have donated $708,500 to Electoral College objectors.

• They have created a playbook for grassroots activists to sow political division in school boards using masking as a wedge issue. See excellent reporting out of Kansas (where Koch Industries is headquartered) and from The Washington Post.
  

  

  
  

The Kochs want to privatize education for their own gain

Do the Kochs care about masks? No. They also don’t care about Critical Race Theory (which isn’t taught in K-12 anyway) or diversity and inclusion or any of the other wedge issues for which they are fanning the flames. They just want to create crises in public education so they can use those crises as evidence that public schools are failing and should be privatized.

Hey, wait! That seems kind of like what Martino was saying!

Privatizing public education not only provides new business opportunities for the Kochs and their business cronies, it also allows them to own a larger mindshare of the population. That’s important, because that allows them to help drive the conversations and ideologies that will govern how businesses can operate.

In other words, it’s all about money

A report from UnKoch My Campus, a nonprofit that is trying to rid higher education of undue corporate-donor influence, includes these alarming details (as reported by Common Dreams):

"The Koch network has made no secret about the critical role that public education plays as an ideal arena for influencing U.S. policy and culture," the group says in an introduction to the report. "Through a variety of tactics—charter schools, vouchers, curriculum, textbooks, trainings, using state politicians to engage in culture war against progressive ideas, and more—the Koch network is able to ensure the spread of their ideas, including climate disinformation and free market-favoring economics philosophy."

According to the report, the Koch network's tactics include:

• Supporting the seating of state legislators who intentionally defund public education;

• Destabilizing state funding in schools to promote policies that divert funds away from traditional public schools to charter schools, private schools, and online education under the guise of "school choice"; 

• Funding higher education centers that create the curriculum and textbooks being used in some K-12 programs; and

• Astroturfing moral panic about ideologies that critique their idea production and theory of change as regressive and racist (Critical Race Theory, or CRT).

Sure seems like Martino and the Kochs could have the same objectives, doesn’t it?

Let’s stop Martino before he gains too much influence in Bucks County. In CBSD, Martino’s PAC is backing these candidates:

James Bender in Region 5 — To vote AGAINST him, vote for Dr. Mariam Mahmud.

Jim Pepper (the bully candidate we featured in our last newsletter) in Region 9 — To vote AGAINST him, vote for public-school educator Diana Leygerman.

Lisa Sciscio (who is good buddies with kooky Debra Cannon) for Region 4 — To vote AGAINST her, vote for public-school volunteer Jenine Zdanowicz.

See our voter’s guide to learn more about how to vote and who to vote for.