Huffington Post published an article listing the names of Republican Senators who are funded directly by Betsy DeVos. There are many DeVos family donors, and other political action committees, so this list may not be complete. I wonder if they will vote to confirm her.
Open the link to see if your senator got a big check from DeVos.
“Big donors often get positions in government, ambassadorships or ceremonial titles, but rarely do they come as big as DeVos. Sitting Republican senators have received $115,000 from Betsy DeVos herself, and more than $950,000 from the full DeVos clan since 1980. In the past two election cycles alone, her family has donated $8.3 million to Republican Party super PACs.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The hyperlink doesn’t work 😦
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Try this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/betsy-devos-donations_us_5893bd80e4b0c1284f251c5f
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In addition to the money the DeVos familyi contributed to Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, Betsy DeVos’ organization All Children Matter contributed nearly $200,000 for a negative advertising blitz in late October 2004 that enabled Blunt’s son, Matt Blunt, to defeat Claire McCaskill and become governor. Matt Blunt immediately began appointing voucher proponents to the State Board of Education and hired All Children Matter’s lawyer, Ed Martin, as his chief of staff. I have more information at this link: https://rturner229.blogspot.com/2017/01/betsy-devos-and-blunt-connection.html
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Painful…and she brags about her money buying her access, and the legislators she controls. “Stealing America” is an appropriate title for the book she or, like Drumpf, her ghost writer wrote. She is so vapid.
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Take nothing for granted–do NOT think (as they would like us to think–that’s why they are “allowing” Murkowski & Collins to vote no) that because Murkowski & Collins are voting no, there won’t be some Demoncrats (or Demorepubs–or -pugs?–as Duane calls them) who will screw this up–CALL, E-MAIL, VISIT the OFFICES, bug the HECK out of these 4 “Dems” (& one calls himself “Independent”)–Sen. Angus King (the “Independent,” who caucuses e/the Dems), ME; Sen. Joe Manchin, W.VA.; Sen.Mark Warner, VA & last, but not least, Sen. Heitkamp, ND (I say this because she has not lifted a finger to help the Standing Rock Water Protectors to help save the Mo. River from certain, irreversible pollution).
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Without the tireless work of Diane Ravitch, the list of Dems., at this time, supporting the DeVos/Gates/Walton/Trump ed. agenda, would be much longer.
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It’s long past time that, for any important issue, the public gets a list of Senators/Congressmen and women who have been “bought” via campaign contributions. Whoever sent this list should be thanked. This “pay to play” phenomena might well be the most important issue in the 2018 election. “Citizens United” has had a corrosive effect on our Democracy and those 5 Supreme Court proponents (one is now undoubtedly roasting in Hades) ought to hang their heads in shame (but of course they won’t). JVK
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http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/317675-senate-schedules-630-am-vote-on-devos
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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Portman will vote yes, Betsy says she owes Ohio nothing: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/02/senate_phone_lines_are_jammed.html#incart_river_home_pop
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There is a reason why Jane Mayer titled her book about DeVos, the Kochs, and their ilk’s political giving “Dark Money.” These people hide behind so many fronts it’s difficult to figure out just where all their cash ends up.
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Good book. I just finished it.
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Yes. “Nation on the Take”, Wendell Potter & Nick Penniman, excellent too. (Bloomsbury Press, 2016)
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Reblogged this on Mark's Text Terminal.
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‘Betsy DeVos, a Michigan businesswoman and philanthropist who faces a full Senate vote as soon as this week, wrote in a letter received by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, on Wednesday that she is not responsible for the $5.3 million in fees assessed on her political action committee by the Ohio Elections Commission.
“Your assertions that I should personally pay the fine or that I am using a ‘legal loophole’ to avoid personally paying the fine are both incorrect and unfair,” she wrote. “As you know, I was never a party to the lawsuit, and the trial court judge expressly ruled an ACM officer could not be held personally liable for the fine. A court’s ruling is not a loophole.”
A court’s ruling is not a loophole, she’s right there, but I can tell you if an ordinary person owed the State of Ohio 5.3 million in fees the state would collect.
They’d auction property, seize wages, suspend any license or authority to operate until the fees were paid, and on and on. They do it every day. The fact is this ed reform organization was set up deliberately and carefully to avoid accountability, just like charter schools in Ohio. These legal entities they create aren’t accidents. This is sophisticated stuff.
Charter schools in Ohio have layers of contracts and 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 separate entities within each school or chain of schools because that structure makes it impossible to regulate them. To add icing to the cake they set up “governance” systems that are state-level, because they know if the schools were regulated locally there would be much more scrutiny.
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The politics WITHIN the ed reform echo chamber on DeVos is fascinating.
If you compare Obama to Trump, Obama appointed Arne Duncan who is exactly in line with Jeb Bush except for vouchers. Duncan showed so much deference to conservative ed reformers that he was confirmed by voice vote.
Now that conservative ed reformers are in power they show no respect at all for the liberal side. DeVos is far Right. She’s always been far Right. She poured money into defeating even moderate Republicans in Michigan.
Basically, liberal ed reformers got played. They went along and went along until it became easy to roll right over them. They now find themselves backing policy that would make Barry Goldwater blush, policy that alienates and excludes the schools 90% of children attend. This is now a much narrower “movement”. It’s a charter and voucher movement. They’re an active detriment to kids in public schools and kids in public schools have parents who can vote 🙂
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Makes you wonder whether the ed reformers were ever “liberal.” Look at how many took millions from Waltons, who are no different from DeVos.
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Ed. reformers were/are liberal, if the definition expands to include the goal of exploitation of the 99%, by the richest 0.1%, in pursuit of monetary gain in every facet of American life.
Corey Booker, who never saw a hedge fund he didn’t like, was CAP’s keynote speaker for its “Progress Party”, last year.
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This is just political Kabuki. No one was going to stop Devos despite all the teeth gnashing. The moneyed interests wanted their hands on education tax dollars and by golly they are going to get it.
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Kurtis, I used the term kabuki last night. The Republicans pretend to have an internal battle. Murkowski and Collins vote in favor of her in committee, where one of their votes would have killed her nomination. Then they announce they won’t vote to confirm, so she can be confirmed and the long list of Republicans who have taken DeVos money will have done their duty. I wonder if she is allowed to give them more money after confirmation?
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No one would vote for DeVos based on her competence. She knows nothing about education except charters and vouchers. The only reasons for anyone to vote for her are
1) campaign gifts
2) ditto
3) ditto
4) ditto
5) a desire to defund public schools
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Letting Senators vote on the nomination of someone who donated to their campaign is wrong and should not be allowed. The reason that this is not being brought up by a lot of the Democrats and being pushed as a way to block the train that is rolling down the tracks is that the Republicans will argue that Democratic Senators voting on her have received donations from teacher unions. This is not the same thing as accepting donations from a specific person and then voting on her. It is so frustrating that she is buying a cabinet seat and is getting away with it. I gave a donation yesterday to the campaign to buy Toomey’s vote that was established by a Philadelphia teacher. This will help underline the point that DeVos has bought a cabinet seat The money will go to a good democratic cause. I hope that Toomey, Heller, and Fischer go down in their next elections. There is no excuse for what they are doing to our public schools with their support of DeVos.
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Reblogged this on rjknudsen and commented:
DeVos owes Ohio 5.3 Million dollars in ELECTION cOMMITTEE FINES
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Reprehensible DeVos.
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I see the Alaska senator got $43,000 that gave a speech endorsing her. And there is No law on the books about conflict of interest on matters like this? This is just out and out corruption.
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