Senators Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray announced that the hearing on Betsy DeVos nomination for Secretary of Education has been postponed from January 11 to January 17.
Democrats were concerned that she had not been fully vetted by the government ethics office for conflicts of interest.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
She should be vetted out because she has NO interest in public schools.
MK
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Joy Behar agrees. Today, she told the audience of the View to contact their senators to oppose Betsy DeVos.
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That’s a start.
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You read my mind
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Keep those calls and letters (and office visits if possible) coming. Odd, though, that a hearing would be scheduled at 5 pm.
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Right. It’s the Mitch McConnell rule (from Ravitch’s WaPo link above):
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Now how about delaying the other confirmation hearings until the ethics paper work is finished. Mitch McConnell made the same requests for Obama’s nominees. Why should trumpist nominations be any different?
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2old2teach: Of course they shouldn’t be different. Oh, I forgot. They are just pretending because THEY are above the law–they just don’t want us to know about it yet. .
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How about delaying the hearings indefinitely?
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How about pulling a Cheney on her nomination?
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This is good. Wednesday is still going to be a sickening day of right wing-o-rama, though. Stay strapped in, squad.
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DeVos is a political donor and conservative activist. It’s her one and only are of expertise:
“Through their contributions to think tanks like the Mackinac Center, as well as Mr. DeVos’s direct prodding of Republican legislators, the family played a key role in helping pass Michigan’s so-called right-to-work legislation in 2012. The legislation largely ended the requirement that workers pay fees to unions as a condition of employment.
Unions in the state bled members in 2014, the first full year the measure was in effect.
Allies say the DeVoses fight for their beliefs. “Betsy and Dick see themselves as principled conservatives,” said Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute. “It kind of seems healthy and admirable to give resources to folks who are going to fight for causes you believe in.”
But the fights can appear to be as much about consolidating power as ideology. Unions were arguably the family’s most formidable political opponent in Michigan, one of labor’s traditional strongholds.”
The US Department of Education won’t have any time for education. They’ll be busy lobbying for tax cuts and attacking organized labor. It’s what she’s done her entire adult life and it’s the ONLY work she’s ever done.
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Is DeVos proud of this work?
“But the DeVoses’ lobbyists and operatives also discovered less messy ways to advance legislation.
Late one night of their last workweek in 2015, the Michigan House and Senate were about to approve some uncontroversial changes to campaign finance law, when the bill abruptly grew by more than 40 pages.
After the legislators discovered what they had voted for, many said they were horrified.
Tucked away in the new pages was a provision that would have made it much harder for local bodies like school boards to raise money through property tax increases.
“Michigan schools will likely suffer the brunt of the impact because the vast majority rely on periodic voter approval of local operating levy renewals for property taxes,” the ratings agency Moody’s wrote of the measure the following month.
“I was fooled into voting for something I opposed,” said Dave Pagel, a Republican representative. “I consider it the worst vote I’ve made.”
Boy, the public better read every word of anything that comes out of the US Department of Ed. If we’re not careful DeVos’ lobbyists will pull this trick on the whole country.
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This debacle reminds me of James Watt, Ronnie Raygun’s choice for Secretary of Interior…an utterly bad choice. I looked up Watt out of curiosity and found a Time article entitled “10 Worst Cabinet Members”. http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1858691_1858690_1858648,00.html
Is it possible that Trump’s in-your-face cabinet choices are about to blow the TIme “worst” list completely out of the water? Looks like we’re redefining how bad the concept of a bad presidential decision can be.
Creepy cabinet members, tax cuts for the rich, building a bigger navy…..what? It’s like 1981 all over again. Have these people no new ideas?
Watt’s still out there, I guess. Would you be surprised if Trump brought him back?
Maybe Watt’s musical favorite, Wayne Newton, is available for the inauguration?
I guess justice caught up with Watt in the end. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/13/us/james-watt-draws-a-fine-but-not-jail.html Busted but without jail time.
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A small, temporary victory on DeVos ….
But regarding the “RTW for Less” legislation barreling across the Red States, how can it be constitutional to force a dues-paying organization to represent freeloaders?
Federal law is clear, unions must represent everyone – I’d like to see the RTWFL model applied to corporations, so that ground level employees have the same amount of power as CEOs …..
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She is going to be confirmed.
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Yup. I also think vouchers are a done deal. They’ll fool with the language and put them in thru the tax code- call them some ridiculous thing like “scholar credits” or something- but my sense is the voucher capitulation has already happened.
Look at the bright side. If ed reform goes ga-ga for vouchers for the next four years maybe they won’t have time to deal with public schools at all.
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Yeah. There probably won’t be too much overt frontal attacks on public school. Just the usual play book: give public schools cancer (vouchers, charters, tech) and then say that it’s terminal and we should let the patient pass peacefully.
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Seems CONFLICT of INTEREST = the entire cabinet appintees, and DeVos definitely has a conflict of interest. Egads, congress and the cabinets have become a HUGE mess of deformers in all areas. SICK and SAD.
BTW, as an aside, minority pres.-elect t—- reminds me of Snow in the Hunger Games.
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For 15 years, people who opposed the privatization of public schools by both Parties were told they were over-reacting and that would “never happen”.
But of course that’s exactly what’s happening, and it was inevitable. It was just a matter of time before a far Right ideologue was appointed and all the solemn vows that ed reform was NOT intent on privatization would mean nothing.
They really owe people an apology. This was absolutely foreseeable. Bush to Obama to Trump and every year DC moved further in this direction, all the while denying it was happening. Public school advocates were right. The intent WAS privatization and everyone who wasn’t wearing blinders or working for these people could see it clear as day.
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Early in his term Arne Duncan dismissed the concerns of public school supporters by saying “10%” of schools would be charters. I have no idea how he came up with this number, but that’s what he said. It was an assurance that contrary to what many people were saying, ed reformers were NOT planning to replace public systems with privatized systems.
So much for the promises of The Agnostics, huh? Not worth much.
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Occam’s razor…it’s really simple. Betsy DeVos was never a school teacher or school administrator. Her education was in private schools. Her college degrees were not in education. She did not send her children to public schools. She has no qualifications. Therefore, she should not lead the nation’s public schools and children.
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Devos will not last the term if she is confirmed. This labor adversary is a shameful human being in that what the hell is her goal in life to destroy working people and their lives for what??
Why are the Devos clowns so interested in a right to work for less state?? Really its their mission to destroy unions and decent pay wages?? Well, lets look at the city of Detroit or nearby the city of Dearborn, MI. These two cities were once a great place to live with union workers earning a decent salary to keep the economy vibrant there.
However, today as a right to work for less state, the Devos have single handily destroyed the great cities there. Dearborn a once classic American city is now ruled by muslims walking around in robes and slippers and people earning 12 bucks an hour doing crap and Detroit is a hell hole filled with useless low paying jobs, poverty everywhere, public schools falling apart all while the betsy devos es of the world belong to 7 country clubs and yacht clubs…..as they say you cannot make this sht up but this reminds me of Iraq when Saddam Hussein lived in gold and marble everywhere and the rest of the people of Iraq lived in mud.
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Occam’s razor does not fall within the realm of possibilities of the chest-thumping Wharton graduate named Drumpf. We are instead being confronted with Occam’s $h*t $tick…
It is defined in the Urban Dictionary as, “…the opposite of Occam’s razor. Occam’s $h*t Stick is when a conventional explanation of something seems complicated and to explain away perceived inconsistencies one come’s up with an even more complicated explanation which is filled with even more (usually profound) inconsistencies. ”
As Roger Waters’ so eloquently put it in the song, Perfect Sense Parts i & ii:
“Can’t you see
It all makes perfect sense
Expressed in dollars and cents,
Pounds, shillings and pence
Can’t you see
It all makes perfect sense”
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Nice quote. You could also apply “The Bravery of Being Out of Range” and “What God Wants”…actually the whole album.
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It’s so sad that so few are aware of Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan. Waters’ using Postman’s concept of “Amusing Ourselves To Death” was very prophetic. In a dismal example of life imitating art, we have truly reached the bottom of the “swamp.” Where we are right now, and where we are headed is frightening and is going to prove to be most chaotic. I hope that it doesn’t become violent.
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