Koch Brothers try to destroy education/Rick Perry and Dead Peasants life insurance.

http://kochbrothersexposed.com/education/
Excerpt:

1. 1. After the November 2009 elections, the Wake County school board dismantled socio-economic diverse schools and began to implement a neighborhood schools plan that would resegregate schools.
2. 2. Resegregation in schools would be a disaster. It would turn back the clock fifty years with the creation of high poverty, racially isolated schools. The integration plan destroyed by Koch-supported board of education members was used as a model for high achieving, diverse schools throughout the country.
3. 3. This October 2011, Wake Country elections will decide if schools become resegregated. Koch-supported candidates are still pushing for neighborhood schools and to end diversity.
4. 4. The Koch brothers free market, libertarian ideology rests on privatization in society, especially the privatization of education.
5. 5. The Kochs founded Americans for Prosperity in 2004, and AFP indirectly poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Wake County school board elections and helped jeopardize the diversity policy.

Rick Perry Sought State Profits Selling Death
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rick-perry-sought-state-profits-selling-de
Excerpt:
As Digby noted, this is the same scheme we saw from Walmart that Michael Moore featured in his movie, Capitalism: A Love Story. Apparently Texas Gov. Rick Perry thought selling "dead peasants insurance" was something he could con the states retired teachers into as well so Wall Street could profit from their deaths.
Here's more from the HuffPo -- Rick Perry Sought State Profits From Teacher Life Insurance Scheme:

Two weeks before Thanksgiving in 2003, top officials from Texas Governor Rick Perry's office pitched an unusual offer to the state's retired teachers: Let's get into the death business.
Perry's budget director, Mike Morrissey, laid out a pitch that was both ambitious and risky, according to notes summarizing the meeting provided to The Huffington Post.
According to the notes, which were authenticated by a meeting participant, the Perry administration wanted to help Wall Street investors gamble on how long retired Texas teachers would live. Perry was promising the state big money in exchange for helping Swiss banking giant UBS set up a business of teacher death speculation.

http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jan/25/nation/na-teachers25
Excerpt:

Retired Teachers Get an Education in Life Insurance

THE NATION

In Texas, a firm would profit off the policies, and a state retirement plan, not families, would be the beneficiary.

January 25, 2004|Scott Gold | Times Staff Writer

Outraging the education community, Texas is considering allowing a large financial firm to take out life insurance on retired teachers, cafeteria workers and bus drivers. A state retirement plan would be the beneficiary of the policies, the financial firm would make millions on the transaction, and families of the retirees would get nothing.
Former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, now an executive at UBS Investment Bank of New York, is promoting the proposal. State officials stressed that they are only considering the idea. But they pointed out that the plan could raise millions of dollars for the financially strapped Texas Teacher Retirement System, one of the largest public pensions in the nation, while the state would assume little risk.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Wendy_Gramm
Excerpt:

Wendy Gramm

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Wendy Lee Gramm is chairman of the "regulatory studies program" at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, generally calling for deregulation of the energy industry. She was on Enron's board of directors before its collapse. Enron had been a financial backer of the Mercatus Center.

Mercatus Center
Excerpt:
The Mercatus Center was founded and is funded by the Koch Family Foundations. According to financial records, the Koch family has contributed more than thirty million dollars to George Mason, much of which has gone to the Mercatus Center, a nonprofit organization. Democratic strategist Rob Stein described the Mercatus Center as "ground zero for deregulation policy in Washington.”
The Mercatus Center has engaged in campaigns involving deregulation, especially environmental deregulation. It now fills the role once played by the economics department at Chicago University as the originator of extreme neoliberal ideas. Fourteen of the 23 regulations that George W Bush put on his hitlist were, according to the Wall Street Journal, first suggested by academics working at the Mercatus Centre.^[1]
The Wall Street Journal has called the Mercatus Center “the most important think tank you’ve never heard of,” [[3]]

Video Dead Peasants Insurance
http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=8227

http://wfsu.org/gavel2gavel/archives/flash/09-1956.php
Excerpt:
Wayne Atkinson v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.   SC09-1956
Mr. Atkinson and others sued Wal-Mart, seeking to recover life insurance benefits Wal-Mart was paid after the deaths of their relatives, who had worked for Wal-Mart as rank-and-file employees. The company had received $66,048 after the death of Rita Atkinson and $72,820 after the death of Karen Armatrout. A federal judge ruled the women's families did not have the right to sue under Florida law. The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has asked this Court whether state law allows such a lawsuit.