Stuart Egan is a high school teacher in North Carolina. When he read Mitt Romney’s endorsement of Betsy DeVos, he was enraged. In this post, he reviews Romney’s ignorant, out-of-touch claims on behalf of DeVos. Detroit as a model? Charters in Michigan as a success story? DeVos as a successful businesswoman, when she was born to billionaires and married a billionaire?
Facts matter. History matters. Evidence matters. Not to Romney.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Trending News with Attitude – 1/11/17 Confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos was postponed? Why? http://bustedpencils.com/trending/trending-news-attitude-11117/
When Romney looks at DeVos, he sees himself.
What’s there not to like?
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829
“Pink slips and sunk ships”
Pink slips for thee
And yacht slips for me
Sunk ships for fee
Is all that you’ll see
These reptilian school destroyers all read from the same tired, lame, nauseating script. Here’s Romney: “Essentially, it’s a debate between those in the education establishment who support the status quo because they have a financial stake in the system and those who seek to challenge the status quo because it’s not serving kids well.”
“Education establishment” and “status quo” are bumper sticker terms repeated over and over and over and over and over by these school deformers and all their clones, parrots and two-legged echo chambers. Truly disgusting, duplicitous, disingenuous and Orwellian. It’s propaganda, pure and simple. The deformers are the ones who have the financial interest and they represent the oligarchical status quo.
Why would anyone listen to Holy Britches Romney?
Oh because he has a buttload of money. It’s the American Way. If one has more money than one could use in a hundred lifetimes one must be extremely avaricious, oops I mean smart.
For the love of Mammon goes Holy Britches Romney.
Romney is a typical Jack Mormon*
Do as I say, not as I do.
some might say Jack-something-else
That something else certainly not being -in the box as a clown is too dignified to describe Romney.
Romney wrote a book called Turnaround.
He was talking about businesses, but that is also (not coincidentally) how deformers refer to their policies for schools.
These people are great at using other people’s money to benefit themselves.
“The heat is already intense not just because it involves the future of our children but also because a lot of money is at stake. Essentially, it’s a debate between those in the education establishment who support the status quo because they have a financial stake in the system and those who seek to challenge the status quo because it’s not serving kids well.”
This is a standard paragraph in the echo chamber- they all repeat it- so I have a question:
Why doesn’t this apply to the people who work for charter schools?
Charter school employees are all paid – they have a ‘financial stake” in charter schools.
Why are public school employees ‘self-interested’ when they get paid but charter school employees are not?
Nothing better than two private school billionaires opining on the education of the lower classes.
I refuse to be scolded by the two leading families of Michigan Royalty
If Betsy DeVos has ever had a job with a record maybe people wouldn’t have all this trepidation about her ideological zealotry. It’s not my fault she has no resume and track record. The only thing the public has to go on is what she’s told members of The Movement at Movement events. This applicant has a very thin resume. The burden isn’t on the public to fill it in- it’s on her to explain her plans for OUR schools.
Romney distilled: “We’re in it for the children, they’re in for the money.” Projection, thy name is Mitt.
A lot of words spilled over something that is not a thing. Mitt Romney, worth perhaps more than a quarter of a billion dollars, deep corporate guy, deep private equity guy, the face of the corporate side of the Republican Party, former presidential candidate of said party, and lifelong member of a religious group whose origins revolve around a founder who, in a likely alcoholic or syphilatic vision saw “god” in the woods of western New York and advocated plural marriage and owning slaves, is backing a religio-maniac who wants to privatize public education??? Say it ain’t so!
It would be weird if Romney did not support DeVos.
Come on folks. We live in a time of daily travesties and horrors, all of which are Orwellian. We have absolutely no need to gin up shock and horror over things that are super predictable and given.
PLEASE do not bash a religious group on this blog. Just because you do not agree with Mormons doesn’t mean you should be offensive to those who do. PLUS, as lot of your contentions are WRONG.
John Smith, a noted alcoholic, did indeed, by his own admission, see “god” in the woods of western New York. Beyond that, in the days before penicillin, syphilis in its tertiary stage did invoke hallucinations and dementia as the brain tissue was attacked. Many men in the first half of the 19th century who were alcoholic were also plagued with syphilis, a “social” disease. Big numbers here.
None of this is invented. It is historical fact.
Now, all religions have….well….problems when seen through the lens of history and reason. That the history of the LDS is much more recent in time, the details are easier to examine due to written evidence.
This is a forum of and by reason and rational thought, so religion is treated, I hope, as an anthropological, sociological, and historical curiosity, not a protected space free from reasonable discussion.
Joseph Smith…sorry.
…and so things are clear, the whole slavery thing and plural marriage thing are also part of the historical record as well.
I refrained from judgement or mudslinging outside of general context.
No thanks needed, Threatened. If we want to be principled Americans, there are some lines that can never be crossed. Just keep doing what you’re doing and speak up here where you’ll never be threatened. But remember to forgive or tolerate me when I disagree with you!
Your information is just as bigoted (Mormons were kicked out of Missouri BECAUSE they were non-slave owners). Would you say this to someone who was Jewish? Hindu? Muslim?
And what do you say to your Mormon students? Or have you ever known a Mormon?
I was speaking about Joseph Smith specifically, not the rest of the faith…..which was clear.
Known plenty of Mormons, and had plenty of Mormon students.
I didnt say this to them, but would have of Joseph Smith came up as a topic. It’s history. I would respond similarly to any Catholic, Muslim, or Jewish student asking about the historical origins of their faith, namely….historically, with reason, and emotionally detached.
Sorry that you are taking this all so personally.
Just so it is abundantly clear: I am a history teacher at the high school and college levels. I am distinctly NOT in the business of faith propogation or feel-good-narratives that feed into whatever socially-derived identity is at stake, whether religious or national. Not my job.
I do this with an ingrained hostility to racism, sexism, and homophobia.
Questioning religious and national narratives and mythologies is what I traffic in.
I hope that gives you some background into how I would handle a Mormon student.
You handle religious beliefs with a holier-than-thou bigotry. That’s how you do it. I am a Mormon, and I DO take this personally.
Apparently on this blog, religious bigotry is allowed. If that’s the case, I guess I”m off this blog.
Threatened Out West,
Please stay with us. We need your insights.
You should not leave the blog. Your voice, I am sure, is welcome, important, and necessary.
This blog, from my experience with it, is intolerant of bigotry, as it should be.
Though I am sure you disagree, I am no bigot, nor I have shown the qualities of one. I am not intolerant of yours or others beliefs in any way. I articulated some known historical points about Joseph Smith, and did so plainly. Never once did I suggest your beliefs were somehow different from those of other faiths etc. I did not suggest in any way that you dispose of your faith. I made comments of a historical nature, that is all.
Inevitably, in our fight against education privatizers and reformers, we are on the same side, and I would not, in any way, want you to leave this blog. Your voice is needed.
I’m sorry if I have come across as holier (I really hope not!) than thou.
Stick around.
Why should I???? You feel free to keep quoting “history” about Joseph Smith, and I don’t even know where you get it.
Joseph Smith was 14 when he claims to have seen God the Father and Jesus Christ. How on earth would he have been a syphilitic alcoholic at that point? I have read numerous histories of the LDS church (including from those who are not Mormon) and NONE of them spout the crud you’re pronouncing.
YES, this blog fights bigotry. BUT you are espousing it. I am LDS, and I am NOT intolerant, and neither are many Mormons. Just because Romney is a Mormon doesn’t mean Mormons agree with him.
And just because one is religious does NOT mean that one is bigoted. Neither does one being not religious mean that one is not bigoted, as you have shown.
Attacking someone’s faith is also bigoted, and Diane won’t even speak out against that.
Nor has anyone else spoken out against the bigotry shown here. I speak out against racism, antisemitism, and other bigotry on this blog all the time, but no one will back me up?
I will absolutely back you up! If we don’t stand up for religious freedom and against religious bigotry, then there’s no reason to continue any of our discussions. NYSTeacher, you should know better than to sling dirt to create “guilt by association” straw men to impugn those who have religious convictions. Please reread (and read again) the First Amendment.
Feel free to impugn Romney for his political views and public actions. But once you cross the line to attack his faith and, by extension, everyone else of that (or any other, for that matter) faith, you’ve entered a dangerous and disturbing territory. It has no place in this forum.
One more point for NYS: Recently on this blog there were very detailed discussions about the electoral college and what the value of one vote should be and is. There were some, in agreement with millions throughout the nation, who argued the votes of those in New York and California were somehow less “American” than in those less populated “glowing red” areas on the electoral map. By extension, this argument means that you, as a resident of New York state, are of lesser value; that you represent what is wrong with the electoral system and this country; that you are not a “real American.” (I would guess that a lot of Threatened’s neighbors might believe that and I’m sure that Threatened would stand up for you.) I’m confident that you must be greatly offended by such reasoning.
How is this argument any different than what you write above? One denigrates geography and culture while you denigrate deeply held religious beliefs. Is this really where you want to go? Right into the gutter as you try to drag the rest of us along?
Thank you for standing up for me, Greg. It means a lot.
And YES, I would back up New York and California for their votes counting as much. They do.
Whoops, see my comment above.
At the ALEC website, there is a full page bio. for the domestic policy director, of Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. This week, PR Watch reported (written by Steve Arnold, Mayor of Fitchburg, Wis.) that McGraw Hill sponsored ALEC’s winter meeting, at the highest level of support-“Chair’s”. The report says McGraw Hill presented a breakfast program which described Waterford Upstart. It’s a product that is an in-home, technology- delivered, kindergarten readiness program. Utah taxpayers absorb the program’s cost.
Goldman Sachs’ social impact bonds, which enable Wall Street to take tax money intended for economically deprived pre-schoolers, also found a home in Utah.
The Bushes and the McGraws have been partners in business ventures since the founding of the resort town of Jupiter, Florida back in the ’30’s. The ALEC connection is unsurprising in this context. Remember that the whole NCLB testing our way to success for publishers came out of Texas and the discredited Reading First.
America’s richest 400 families run America like a fiefdom. In the inevitable, forthcoming, revolution, their families will be shown the same mercy that was shown to aristocratic families of the past.
Betsy’s rich, Mitt’s rich. That’s all he needs to know.
Plutocracy, oligarchy. That’s where we are headed, and in fact, we are most of the way there. 😦
Citizens United has dominated the decade. Unions are nearly obliterated. Oligarchy? We’re there. We’re all the way there.