Principles for sale: ACU-FedEx, WIL-K12 Inc?

The American Conservative Union (ACU) was put on the defensive this week after POLITICO revealed it attempted netting $3 million from FedEx in exchange for executing a huge campaign to support FedEx-friendly legislation. This makes me wonder: was Brian Fraley’€™s Wisconsin Institute for Leadership (WIL) playing the same pay to promote game when it took $50,000 from a for-profit pro-virtual school corporation as it condemned our public schools and touted virtual schools?The POLITICO story has all the juice on ACU’€™s pay to promote scandal.

But the glaring fact in the WIL-K12, Inc case is that the sole contribution to the 527 arm of Fraley’€™s WIL came from K12, Inc. That’€™s one $50,000 contribution to WIL from a for-profit corporate enterprise that makes profit from selling its products to virtual schools.  The same Virginia-based corporation, by the by, that sought to yank $5 million from the pockets of Wisconsin taxpayers to run their operation.

Fraley of course used WIL to lambast public schools and promoting the virtual school agenda.

But alas, the burning question of whether WIL was peddling K12, Inc’€™s agenda will go unanswered, as it appears WIL is no more. After leaving WIL in April to run the campaign of virtual school advocate Rose Fernandez, Fraley is now the director of communications at the MacIver Institute, which devotes much of its time condemning public schools and promoting the conservative, pro-corporate agenda.