All sorts of random notes in this blog…In case you missed it, local right-winger David Blaska has a new blogging gig after not being renewed at the DailyPage. He’s over at InBusiness Madison.

I’m actually glad to see Mr. Blaska back blogging, he is entertaining at least. When it comes to picking what I read, I can pretty much forgive anything except for being boring, which is why I don’t read Citizen Dave’s blog very often. And boring, Mr. Blaska is not.

If you will, here an excerpt from one of David Blaska’s latests: School choice opponents suggest Kaleem Caire is a long-lost Koch Brother

So, let’s examine some of Allen’s rough stuff. Ruff breathlessly reports that Kaleem Caire participated in a discussion panel at the Philanthropy Roundtable‘s 2004 annual meeting where he spoke on “breakthroughs in education …, as well as the challenges that lay ahead. The Roundtable is funded by an array of conservative foundations, including the notorious Charles G. Koch Foundation.”

Get that? It’s the “notorious” Koch Foundation.

Joining Caire in this nest of vipers were James Shelton, program director for education at the Gates Foundation[that being the charity of Microsoft Founder Bill and Melinda Gates], and Phoebe Boyer, executive director of New York City’s Tiger Foundation (“Breaking the Cycle of Poverty in New York City”) and head of the board of the NYC Charter Center.

Can I say something? The Gates Foundation has funded ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), one of the right-wing drivers behind Governor Scott Walker’s agenda. The Gates Foundation shouldn’t be taken as a sign of a charitable endeavor. They fund a lot of stuff, some of it just good non-political stuff but not all of their funding goes to charitable endeavors.

Or what about the donation by Microsoft (not the Gates Foundation but still obviously linked to Bill Gates) to the climate denying Heartland Institute:

Some of the companies included on Heartland’s list of donors were surprising. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft Corporation, has vigorously promoted clean energy in a number of speeches, and his charitable foundation works on helping farmers in the developing world, who will be badly affected by climate change.

But Heartland claims in a fundraising document to have received $59,908 from Microsoft in 2011.

See here’s the thing, I think that the Madison Prep proposal should be rejected based on merits, but sometimes in a political argument you need more than evidence. A lot of Madison Prep supporters say things like this:

@forwardourmotto @wiartteacher I’m no expert myself, but I see experts on both sides of the Mad Prep debate.

And this:

@forwardourmotto @wiartteacher Given that and given how serious the problem is, I say take a chance with the experts who support it.

A lot of the Madison Prep arguments boil down to this: We have to try something. So how do you counteract that only using hard evidence? The situation requires something else. And since people are pointing to experts and supporters of Madison Prep, it makes a lot of sense to find out just who those people are. So I’m glad that Allen Ruff brought it up and I’d expect nothing less than for David Blaska to leap to the defense of Madison Prep.