Doug Ducey, the ice cream man hired by Koch Industries to run their Southwest subsidiary formerly known as the State of Arizona, is a practitioner of propaganda over policy. He rolls out a glossy media P.R. campaign and gets his corporate benefactors to pay for advertising praising him for his P.R. campaign. The substance of the actual policy gets lost.
Ducey did this for his #ClassroomsFirst initiative in which he declared himself to be the “education governor,” he did this to sell his unconstitutional Prop. 123 to settle the education inflation adjustment lawsuit against the state so that the state would not have to pay restitution for funds stolen by our GOP-controlled legislature, and he is doing it yet again with his #20by2020 teacher pay proposal.
Ducey’s dark money “Kochtopus” allies in the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry started a new group called the “Arizona Education Project” and fielded a $1 million soft-sell TV ad blitz to say “Arizona schools are making progress.” Arizona “Ground Zero” for Koch Attack on Public Education. As the Arizona Daily Star editorialized, “no number of feel-good TV spots will change the fact that Arizona comes in last, or almost last, in numerous rankings of per-pupil state spending in the nation.” Education ad campaign doesn’t change the facts.
