William Cooper is the chairman (and Spottie thinks principal stockholder, too) of TCF Bank, a bigwig and former chair of the Republican Party in Minnesota, and an early and influential backer of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota. The Taxpayers League is of course, the originator of the No New Taxes Ever, I Really Mean It, Cross My Heart and Hope to Die pledge signed by, inter alia, the guv and Spottie's own senator, Geoff Michel.
For a guy so @#$%^&* sanctimonious in opposition to the collection of taxes, he sure isn't reluctant to belly up to the public trough and spend other people's tax money. Spottie was aware that Cooper was a mover in the private and charter school movement, but Nick Coleman lays it out pretty well in a column on Sunday, July 3rd. In his column, Nick describes how Cooper and "Friends of Ascention" have formed a number of charter schools in the state and are trying for more.
Charter schools being funded with tax money, take money away from the public schools. In the Coop's case, it looks like he is trying to establish private, parochial schools with public money, which as Spottie has said before, is specifically against the Minnesota Constitution. Cooper's latest school endeavor was Veritas school in the western suburbs, an effort that apparently isn't meeting with much success. As Coleman points out, Veritas is the name of a lot of Catholic schools, providing a code for parents interested in a tuition-free parochial school education.
Spottie says that there are people out there who want to wreck public education, the backbone of prosperity in this state, and William Cooper is one of them.
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