Sunday, January 29, 2006

Livingston and JRL

more on Livingston, viget sent this through via email (thnx!):
" Something else apropos of Livingston I found, was that one of his clients, JRL Enterpirses (website www.icanlearn.com) was under a bit of heat for making educational software that didn't seem to perform very well in the Fort Worth School District. In May, the board vote to freeze their contract with JRL. JRL is also accused of inserting earmarks into funding bills that directly stipulate that some Southern Louisiana schools receive funding for buying I Can Learn products (which is usually not how things are done). Not surpringly, the president of JRL, John R Lee is based in New Orleans and is a buddy of Livingston's. Livinsgton's group was paid $0.9 mil over the 1999-2004 time period to lobby for JRL, second only to the massive receipts from Oracle ($1.7 mil)."
for more on this story, see here, here, here and here. lawsuits, corporate coups and the usual shenanigans. aka Standard Operating Procedure.

Viget adds:
"Oh, and both Livingston and the former president of Tulane University were once board members at JRL, but scrambled after financial problems beset the company due to lack of sales (guess the federal funds weren't coming through at the time)."
incidentally, JRL became a client of Livinsgton within weeks of DeLay showing him the Congressional exit door - apparently Livingstone's best career move.

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