James Warren wonders why Betsy DeVos is steering clear of the media.
Typically, the Secretary of Education speaks to the annual meeting of the Education Writers Association. But she declined.
She had something better to do, something more important than meeting with education writers.
“Instead, she surfaced at a session of National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence.
“A long way from home in Holland, Michigan, maybe she needed her carburetor checked and an oil change. It was simpler than talking to journalists.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The other day, Secretary DeVos seemed to compare herself to Margaret Thatcher. Does she have any illusions that she’s a future presidential contender?
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BD lives in a billionaires’ bubble. She probably thinks she will one day lead the world.
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I think she prolly thinks she will be a leader in the world of the afterlife — marketing Amway products to everyone in Heaven.
But I’m pretty sure if there is a God, he has instructed St. Peter to bar the door to Betsy and her ilk.
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I have been waiting for someone to say, “It’s Betsy, bar the door.”
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What level of Dante’s hell will she reside in? I suspect she and her ilk will be sliced up and divided between at least three of the nine levels.
#FakePresident Donald Trump will be sliced up and sent to 8 of the 9.
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I suspect that Satan will dig a new, even deeper level of the Inferno, just for DeVos, Trump, amd the rest of the Trump minions.
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“What level of Dante’s hell will she reside in?”
The 21st level.
Well, been using this for years now to describe those who harm children with educational malpracties:
Going Along to Get Along (GAGA): Nefarious practice of most educators who implement the edudeformer agenda even though the educators know that those educational malpractices will cause harm to the students and defile the teaching and learning process. The members of the GAGA gang are destined to be greeted by the Karmic Gods of Retribution* upon their passing from this realm.
*Karmic Gods of Retribution: Those ethereal beings specifically evolved to construct the 21st level in Dante’s Hell. The 21st level signifies the combination of the 4th (greed), 8th (fraud) and 9th (treachery) levels into one mega level reserved especially for the edudeformers and those, who, knowing the negative consequences of the edudeformer agenda, willingly implemented it so as to Go Along to Get Along. The Karmic Gods of Retribution also personally escort these poor souls, upon their physical death, to the 21st level unless they enlighten themselves, a la one D. Ravitch, to the evil and harm they have caused so many innocent children, and repent and fight against their former fellow deformers. There in the 21st level the edudeformers and GAGAers will lie down on a floor of smashed and broken ipads and ebooks curled in a fetal position alternately sucking their thumbs to the bones while listening to two words-Educational Excellence-repeated without pause for eternity.
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I want this 21st level of hell built 2,000 feet under the center of the ice pack in Antartica.
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DeVos seems to have more trouble with public relations than Sean Spicer. Her resignation is only a matter of time.
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Why would DeVos resign? She is implementing her agenda.
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Not as overpoweringly as Arne Duncan implemented her agenda.
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nice roundabout way to speak truth
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DeVos can’t stand the heat. She should stay out of the kitchen of policy making. If she can’t explain herself to the public, what is her purpose?
She should never have been confirmed. The fact that the Senators ignored the HUGE amount of backlash from the public to confirm this idiot makes me furious.
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BVD is to BDV what Fruit of the Loom is to Fruit of the Loon.
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Okay, Fred, you win the Internet today. 😀
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Me gusta mucho.
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DeVos is hiding from the press because inquiring reporters are likely to ask her why she wants more private charter schools in spite of fact that the non-political watchdog Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a report warning that so much taxpayer money is being skimmed away by charter school operators and the investigation finds that: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting goals” because of financial fraud and their hidden ways for skimming of tax money into private pockets.
Charter schools bill themselves as “public schools”, but Supreme Courts in states like New York, Washington and elsewhere are catching on to the scam and have ruled that charter schools are really private schools because they aren’t accountable to the public because they are run by private boards that aren’t elected by voters and don’t even have to file detailed reports to the public about what they’re doing with the public’s tax money.
Charter schools should at the very least be required to file the same annual public domain financial reports that genuine public schools file to detail how the public’s tax money is being spent. But the private charter school industry is bitterly opposing that financial accountability.
In addition to siphoning the public’s tax money away from the education of children and into private pockets, non-political researcher organizations, such as UCLA’s Center for Civil Rights Remedies, have thoroughly documented the many ways in which charter schools discriminate against children of color and are, in actual fact, in the process of resegregating our nation’s schools.
Charter schools are the lucrative profit-making part of the “education reform/choice/voucher” movement that has from its very beginnings has been rooted in racism. The movement has always had resegregation of America’s schools as its core agenda: The deceptive call for vouchers and “choice” was the first racist response to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education in which the Court declared that “separate but equal” public schools are inherently unequal and ordered racial integration of the public schools. That ruling triggered “white flight” from public schools to private schools — but parents quickly realized that the tuition cost of private schools was more than they wanted to pay out-of-pocket. That realization led political and private resegregationists to the concoct the “reform” of vouchers, and to sell it to eager parents by deceptively marketing it then —and still today — as merely giving parents a “choice.”
The segregationists’ 1950’s voucher crusade faded away when it became clear that, because of school attendance boundaries and racially segregated neighborhoods, no more than a few token blacks would be attending formerly all-white public schools. In 1972 when the Supreme Court finally ordered busing to end this ongoing de facto segregation, the segregationist “reform” movement rose from its grave and has been alive ever since been trying new tactics to restore racial segregation. That’s why the ACLU has called for a total moratorium on charter schools.
To date, the most successful resegregation scheme is charter schools because charter schools are profit centers to unscrupulous profiteers who recognized charter schools as a way to divert vast amounts of tax money into their own pockets and into the pockets of supportive politicians at every level of government.
An essential part of the strategy to mask their underlying motives has been for segregationists to sell the public on the necessity for charter schools because public schools are allegedly “failing” (Read this book: “The Manufactured Crisis”). With all manner of “research” that essentially compares apples to oranges against foreign nations’ students, and with the self-fulfilling prophecy of dismal public school performance generated by drastic underfunding of public schools, and with condemnation of public school teachers based on statistically invalid student test scores, the segregationists are succeeding in resegregating education in America via what are basically private charter schools that are funded with public money.
No charter school should receive public tax money unless if files the same public domain financial reports that genuine public schools file to be accountable to the taxpayer about what’s happening to taxpayer money.
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When I was looking through primary source material for my world history class today, I came across a selection wherein Fredrick Engels was describing Manchester, England. He noted that the working class was so divided from the middle class that the latter need not ever even see the former.
It used to be that public schools mixed some poor kids and some wealthy ones in schools that served American small cities. As American cities reached the size of Manchester (around 400,000 was Engel’s estimate), the same began to be true here too. Middle class working families did not have to send their children to the same schools as kids from the rough parts of town.
While I accept that segregation was the historical genesis of the charter movement, I feel it has become more related to class than to race. I am not saying that race has ceased to be in the public mentality, only that class is a bigger piece of the pie that is the public attitude. As if to accentuate the growing class divide, we just got done listening to Bernie Sanders claim socialism as a part of his idea set in the last election cycle without substantial reduction in his support. We live in fascinating times.
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Your are the history teacher ,but I would think that Engels definition of middle class was far narrower than the term as we use it today. Probably more in line with Thomas Franks description of the elite professional or managerial class that the the Democrats have been chasing. Today’s Teachers or Construction workers some with incomes over 100k need not apply to Engels middle class. Which makes me laugh when I hear writers claim that the Trump base is not working class when the cutoff in their numbers is based on figures that would be poverty level in many parts of the country. Nobody in NYC or its burbs is able to buy a house on the often touted 50G .
So then we have to ask if their interests should be more in line with the interests of the working poor. As many in this group would be one unforeseen event away from personal economic Armageddon. Why are these interests not aligned? Racism has been used as a diversion for a century. Did the middle class historically object to sending their children to school in a district with poor white children? Much like now that addiction has invaded rural America and the burbs we have changed its definition to a disease. When it was in minority communities it was a personal failure and a crime.
There should be little surprise that Sanders has an appeal . He while not having an awkward message on identity politics, brought it home to a large group of voters, even some that voted for Trump, that the system was rigged against their working class interests .
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He while having an awkward… …
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Wake up Maggie I think I got something to say to you
It’s late September and I really should be back at school
I know I keep you amused but I feel I’m being used
Oh Maggie I couldn’t have tried any more
You lured me away from home just to save you from being alone
You stole my heart and that’s what really hurt
The morning sun when it’s in your face really shows your age
But that don’t worry me none in my eyes you’re everything
I laughed at all of your jokes my love you didn’t need to coax
Oh, Maggie I couldn’t have tried any more
You lured me away from home, just to save you from being alone
You stole my soul and that’s a pain I can do without
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She’s hiding for Jesus.
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To answer the question: Because she is a lily-livered, one sixteenth brain capacity moron.
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