Why would anyone say that “government sucks”?
A billionaire might say that because all their needs are amply provided for. They can hire private security guards, use helicopters, avoid public parks and beaches and buy their own. Perhaps she can manufacture her own clean water and air. To billionaires, government is an unneeded obtrusion into their ample lives.
Betsy DeVos explains on video that “government sucks.”
We can’t let the holidays launch without having a billionaire explain why government is useless (to her and her family).
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This view of the “government” is free of any serious thinking about the degree to which governmnet policies can be said to make Betsy DeVos a welfare queen…tax breaks galore for starters.
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I may have moved that post
Which one was it?
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Diane–I missed it too. It’s this one:
[New post] Why Does the White Working Class Vote Against Its Own Interests? DB
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The post is restored
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Idea for reality TV show: A bunch of billionaires on three islands, one run by a whacky banana republic, one run by its own invasive and insane secret police under a heavy-handed dictator and the third, total anarchy. Let’s see what happens when billionaires stop being pampered, and start getting real.
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There is very little that money can’t buy. For instance, the top-3 whole House Water Filtration systems. The best one costs several thousand. For someone living on poverty wages or no wages, a $3k water filtration system is almost a quarter (or more) of annual earnings before taxes. And before anyone says the poor don’t pay tax, even if they rent, they are contributing to the property tax payment for their landlord, pay tax on purchases when shopping, etc. Income tax isn’t the only tax out there.
http://www.myhomewaterfilter.com/
The United States must have a minimum livable wage based on cost of living for every region in the country. And health care for everyone protects everyone because when everyone has health care, then almost everyone sees a doctor when they get sick and that reduces the risk of a contagious virus becoming an epidemic that kills millions.
Leaving people without health care creates a risk for everyone that has health care. To control a viral diseases from becoming a contagion, everyone must have affordable health care. Even the billionaires with all of that money are at risk of a viral disease that can easily wipe out a large segment of the planet’s population, because most of the wealthy have servants and guards who come in contact with other working people on a regular basis.
What will happen if the Trump administration cuts funding for the CDC (or gets rid of the CDC) and there is no govenrment agency to step in when an infectious disease rips through the population without safeguards in place?
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But Betsy DeVos and the “rich” DO depend on the infrastructure in this country that is vastly supported by governmental services and that support civil society: besides the general rule of law, habeas corpus, and all of the benefits and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, she is dependent on police presence and fire services where she can drive around or walk in her city in relative safety; the roads, bridges, and airways she travels on; the food she eats and doctors she uses (up-the-line health and medical regulations), the Press who keeps her informed; the clean air and water she uses; the military who watch over us, quite literally; and the future well-being of her and our children.
Save the following video for after Christmas–but it depicts how China, by contrast a dictatorial government, treats its people, the planet, and the rest of us who live on it. Merry Christmas!
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By the way China is only half the story of currency manipulation that has hurt American manufacturing. The Federal Reserves refusal to allow the labor market to heat up to the point that demand causes inflation has kept a strong dollar making foreign goods cheap and American goods expensive.
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BTW, the clip on China and trade (for some reason) starts off in the middle of the video–use the red slide bar at the bottom to back it up to the beginning.
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Thank you for posting this, as depressing as this news is.
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I was eating pizza last night with family and friends. The food was good, the restaurant warm and cozy. It was nice to hang out with people who are like-minded about this debacle named S.S. Trump, our version of the 1970s Poseidon Adventure. (Recall the cruise ship flipping upside down….:”Will There Be a Morning After”…Shelly Winters swimming to save the day!) A fitting movie metaphor for our Republic being upended on Nov. 8.
We ended up talking on and on about Trumpism and then it struck me that perhaps this crapstorm was bound to happen. And by exposing the wacky and dangerous ideas of nincompoops like DeVos, Flynn, Pence and Trump, the sunlight of rationality, the better angels of our nature, will finally put this nonsense to rest in our country. Maybe. We can hope.
A friend of mine who is a very smart guy was predicting the end of life as we know it, as we were sitting there eating pizza..
But I’m a big believer in the “wild card” theory of history. There are always these unexpected events that come out of the blue to flip everything upside down. They can be bad…they can be good.
Let’s hope it’s something really good this holiday season. A cure for a major disease, a new, cheap and clean energy source, perhaps someone, somewhere emerging from obscurity to become a inspirational, transformative leader who can take us in a new and positive direction.
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I keep hoping that the extremism of the next four years will create a backlash that will put the Tea Party and Libertarians on the defensive and out of Congress. It would be a strange type of victory for those with progressive minds including most of the young people in this country. We have to wait for some of these old entrenched policymakers to die off or get voted out.
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I said that about Reagan than about Shrubs but It hasn’t worked quite that way has it. Oops 2008 with the end of capitalism as we knew it was as close a moment as we have seen. It would not have been another great depression. But it could have tamed the finance sector. Oops that was “hope and spare change” for the banking sector
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John,
Trump is what economists call a “black swan,” totally unexpected, unpredicted. A wild card. I think he ran for the fun of competing. Now he is bored. Doesn’t want to live in White House or D.C. Wants to go back to TV and his penthouse.
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And has appointed the extreme Republican right to run the show, while he continues to tweet and rally.
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At this point I am so sick unto death of the rightwing/libertarian/Randian philosophy and world view. It’s really just greed and selfishness with a fake phony baloney facade of rationality and respectability. If not for this tea party nonsense, we would have true universal health care in this country and we would have had it years ago. Instead we will be heading in the exact opposite direction with the dismantling of the ACA, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. As Paul Krugman has recently pointed out, the right wing take overs in Poland and Hungary did not entail the undoing of the social safety net or unions. This is not to condone the European right wingers but they are not against universal health care (for their ethnic group) or unions. But in the US, the tea party types are against universal health care, the social safety net and they HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE unions. They HATE unions in the morning, in the afternoon, at night and into infinity in every possible galaxy of the universe and beyond.
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The European right wing is replete with fascist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant sentiment. It is not to be recommended.
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From Paul Krugman: Start quote – Still, the European members of this emerging alliance — an axis of evil? — have offered some real benefits to workers. Hungary’s Fidesz party has provided mortgage relief and pushed down utility prices. Poland’s Law and Justice party has increased child benefits, raised the minimum wage and reduced the retirement age. France’s National Front is running as a defender of that nation’s extensive welfare state — but only for the right people.
Trumpism is, however, different. The campaign rhetoric may have included promises to keep Medicare and Social Security intact and replace Obamacare with something “terrific.” But the emerging policy agenda is anything but populist.
All indications are that we’re looking at huge windfalls for billionaires combined with savage cuts in programs that serve not just the poor but also the middle class. And the white working class, which provided much of the 46 percent Trump vote share, is shaping up as the biggest loser.
True, we don’t yet have detailed policy proposals. But Mr. Trump’s cabinet choices show which way the wind is blowing.
Both his pick as budget director and his choice to head Health and Human Services want to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and privatize Medicare. His choice as labor secretary is a fast-food tycoon who has been a vociferous opponent both of Obamacare and of minimum wage hikes. And House Republicans have already submitted plans for drastic cuts in Social Security, including a sharp rise in the retirement age. End quote
Neither PK nor I are recommending any kind of fascism just pointing up the differences between Trumpian and European fascism.
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Joe–fascism usually comes dressed either in a mirror or in a beautiful coat.
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oh, nicely said.
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To be clear, I hate fascism. period. I am NOT recommending fascism in any way, shape, form, iteration or variety. I am not now nor have I ever been a fascist. I voted for Bernie first. Trump called him a maniac and a communist.
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I was struck by DeVos’ Convenient Untruth Number 1, comparing children to automobiles, and schools to manufacturing assembly lines. I grow tired of repeating it, but human children are not machines. Schools are not factories. What I do as a teacher is a great deal more complex than assembling a fuel injection system.
But let’s pretend for a moment that a child’s brain is as simple as an ignition chip waiting to be programmed. If Detroit had not relied on automation and outsourcing all these years, American cars would be like Ferraris: more expensive and fewer in number, hand-crafted and higher in quality — a downside and an upside. It is competition that causes management to turn to automation and outsourcing, which drive down the cost and quality of the automobile. Mass market competition inhibits rather than fostering quality. Detroit doesn’t make Ferraris. Actually, Detroit doesn’t make much of anything anymore.
In DeVos’ parable, she sets up her desire to automate with cheaper devices, outsource to cheaper labor, and thereby drive down the cost — and the quality. Charter schools with untrained, inexperienced, sort of teachers, private schools with untrained, oft uneducated, sort of teachers, and lots of scripting on tablets are the tools of her assembly line. She is going to take the little Lamborghinis in my classes and turn them into Pintos. Let’s hope she fails.
…Happy Latke Eating, Diane. Merrymaking, everyone. And most importantly as we finally reach the end of 2016,
Peace.
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Peace and joy to you, LCT.
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IF the money that would follow the child were sufficient to meet the needs of that child, you might have the beginning of a reasonable conversation. But we know that is not what DeVos is talking about. Rather, as we all know, school systems in high income areas spend way more per student than school systems in low income areas.
We need to adequately fund our public schools and train our teachers to meet the educational and emotional needs of our students.
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I was stuck by inconvenient truth #5. I agree with her. We do have a school system that fails to treat all kids equally. Public schools in affluent neighborhoods offer more opportunities to their children than do public schools in deprived neighborhoods. Her solution is not a good one, in my mind. However, I do agree with her that this inequality exists and deserves our attention.
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Has there ever been an education system in any country in the world throughout history that treats every child equal based on the needs of every individual child?
How do you treat every child equal when they are not born equal?
For instance. When Donald Trump or Bill Gates was born were they equal to a child born into a homeless family that lives in extreme poverty?
Lakeside tuition for the 2016 – 2017 school year is $32,000. That is the private school that Bill Gates attended and where he sends his children.
Average tuition for Washington state’s public schools is $9,460.
At 13, Little Fingers Donald Trump was sent to New York Military Academy in Cornwall New York (current tuition almost $40k annually). Before that he attended the Kew-Forest School (tuition currently ranges from $13,545 to $36,390 per year).
Average tuition for New York states public schools is $15,117
If we provide equal dollars for each child, then the child that had the most needs will not have those needs met.
Did Donald Trump or Bill Gates ever go to school hungry and worry about their next meal?
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Our government is useless to billionaires because it’s the only force big enough to protect We the Little People from corporate pirates and billionaire exploiters. What belies what DeVos says is the fact that corporations and billionaires have spent so much money to buy what they can of our representatives in government in order to weaken our protection.
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A fascist and a socialist were talking. One of them said “What is fascism all about”? the fascist answered, “We have man exploiting his fellow man”. Then the fascist asked the socialist. “What is socialism all about”? and the socialist answered “We have the exact opposite”.
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