Mercedes Schneider reports that Jerry Falwell Jr. was offered the job as Secretary of Education before Betsy DeVos.
Trump, never known in the past to be a man of religious faith, shows how little importance he attaches to education.
First, the unqualified Falwell, then the unqualified DeVos.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So funny that none of the politicians congratulating DeVos mention the words “charters” or ‘vouchers”:
If privatization is so popular, why do they so consistently mislead the public on it?
One would think they’d be proud of privatizing public schools. Why hide behind these meaningless slogans?
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And now reports of David Clarke as Sec of DHS. Let the Nazi analogies resume.
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The news gets worse, if you can believe it. Politico and the Atlanta Journal Constitution both report that Rep. Tom Price is set to be named Sec. of HHS. I wrote before the election that a Trump victory would open a Pandora’s Box of unimaginable horrors. Now we see that it will be likely worse than what we couldn’t imagine.
Price will be more than the architect of destroying the Affordable Care Act. He will now put Medicare and Medicaid squarely in the cross hairs. And he will have an ally in the Speaker of the House to rush through a legislative wish list that insurance lobbyists and pharma companies–who have, until now, been adversaries on many issues–will write. Now they will be partners and individuals who do not get insurance through their employers will bear the brunt of the costs–or neglect. Emergency rooms will soon become our official national healthcare safety net.
Where are those so-called tea party activists who wanted to keep government’s hands off of Medicare now? They’ve been so busy celebrating putting minorities back in their places that they haven’t noticed–as if they were even capable of doing so–they are being sold down the river as well.
Those vouchers that medical free marketers so love will soon look pretty meager to cancer patients and their families who medications cost between $100-350,000 per year. It’s not getting to look a lot like Christmas anymore. The medical bankruptcies that are coming will make the one’s of the past seem like the good old days. DeVos and Price will lead a fundamental restructuring the likes of which we thought were relics of an ancient age.
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Brings new meaning to the term “death panels,” doesn’t it?
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Donald said he would hire only the best so Falwell and DeVos must be the best. No worries Eh?
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May the Lord protect the United States from this incompetent person who will be our next President. Praying seems to be the only thing left to do now. God help us all.
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Remember that it is an entire team of incompetents and all of them bought and paid for by the Mercer, DeVos and Koch families.
I certainly think we should pray and then I think we should continue to take action in behalf of our public schools and our democracy.
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To hell with pray. Action is what is needed.
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A big shift away from funding public schools is unlikely says Mike Petrilli. The president of the Thomas B Fordham Institute, a charter school sponsor, notes that education funding is largely spelled out by Congress.
“You know, Republicans may like school choice, but they’re not suicidal. They are going to hear from their own constituents and their own superintendents and local school boards about that,” says Petrilli.
Yeah, right. Because everyone knows ordinary people have such a HUGE influence on Congress.
No one outside of 150 high profile ed reformers will even be heard from.
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Petrilli, of Fordham? Same accuracy as the foreword that was attached to Dr. Figlio’s research?
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I read he didn’t take it because he can’t afford the pay cut. Ministers must make a lot these days. Wow. No vow of poverty there I guess.
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The missing link
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Jerry Falwell Jr.’s net worth is estimated to be in the range of approximately $53,228,759 in 2016, according to the users of vipfaq.
The estimated net worth includes stocks, properties, and luxury goods such as yachts and private airplanes.
Liberty University, a massive and influential Christian university with 14,000 on-campus students and 66,000 enrolled online, has net assets worth more than $1 billion.
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Oh well, too bad, JFJ kind of has a ring to it.
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A golden ring through his belly button kind of ring.
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To go with the silver spoon bought with daddies ill gotten gains from being a silver tongued xtian shyster.
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🙂
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Makes me wonder the kind of mentality keeps enriching these charlatans. And who would go to their schools and colleges? Oh, forgot, Trump voters.
Seriously, years ago I was supervising a group of educational researchers, 6 teams looking into reading programs in Georgia, and I had to hire a local supervisor in Georgia to oversee our program. This was a study for a respected NGO housed in LA. I used the Airport in Athens, since some flew in from nearby states, for the interviews.
I met a young man from Bob Jones University, similar to Liberty, who kept quoting bible verses, but could not discuss the 5 year longitudinal study we were doing. I could not keep him focused on education, particularly reading programs, and had to give up on him in short order…he was clearly ONLY a religious fanatic and expected to be handed the job due to his belief system. He made that very clear to me, and also surprised me with his audacity, when he said he had never worked for a woman before and he expected to be rapidly promoted to be head of all the woman on the teams. I am still traumatized at the attitudes of this ignoramus.
The Kochs, DeVos Family, and others, pour money into these pseudo-colleges..but they seem to all be similar to Trump University, in that the religious money factories prepare students to be nothing more than Elmer Gantry. And since they are all 501c3 non-profits, the graft just keeps on flowing tax free.
Why does the IRS allow this? How can Falwell, and others, have such enormous personal wealth from ‘working’ a lifetime for non-profits?
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I thought that DeVos was the absolute worst choice for the job. I was wrong.
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TW…every candidate Trump has interviewed has been the worst, each in their own way. I guess i worry most about the religious fanatics for they who yearn for their own Crusades would use the mercenaries to wipe out all in their way…so at the this point, DeVos takes the lead as WORST. Not a valid educator in Trump’s bunch.
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Stay away from Rhee as well
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The power of the president, his ability to choose his whole cabinet needs to be curbed.
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Just because Falwell said Trump offered him the education job doesn’t make it true.
Falwell has s aid an awful lot about the Bible and The Gospels that isn’t true either.
One truth is that both he and Trump and are charlatans.
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In a U.S. oligarchy like Princeton Prof. Gilens describes, the difference between creationism taught in schools (DeVos) vs. the for-profit, schools-in-a-box of Gates, all things equal, what are the relevant criteria for the decision between the two? Both lead to the on-doing of the world. The first, through ignorance. The second, through concentrated wealth.
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