Jeff Bryant warns journalists and the public to look behind Betsy DeVos’s words and watch her deeds.
She lauds the importance of supporting teachers at the same time that she endorses Trump’s proposed $2.4 billion cuts for teacher training. She speaks honeyed words about STEM education as that same proposal slashes funding for STEM. And bear in mind, when hearing her praise for science, that she works in the most anti-science administration in history. Besides, her family foundations have supported creationist and other religion-based curricula.
Bryant reviews her recent visit to Michigan, her home state, and notes that she showered attention on private institutions, including one directly connected to the DeVos family.
She may be the only Secretary of Education in memory who was allowed to hold investments that directly conflict with her official duties and is allowed to continue to make new investments as she serves. She recently increased her holding in Neurocore, a quack corporation that claims to cure autism and other disabilities with biofeedback. She and her husband are the company’s biggest stakeholders. When I worked st the U.S. Department of Education, even the appearance of conflict of interest was strictly prohibited. The ethics officer must be asleep or reassigned to other duties.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks Diane!
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This sentence shows what a hypocrite DeVos is.”DeVos claims that her proposals are intended to provide more “choice” in the education system, but if that were true, she would be proposing to raise funding levels for all options.” Devos’ main goal is to put public funds into private pockets, the very essence of crony capitalism. “Choice” is a smokescreen for her true pursuit. She wants to shift resources from the middle class to the wealthy stomping on democratic principles in her path so that all the cronies can feed on the public dollar.
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I don’t think that for DeVos it is a question of shifting resources to the wealthy. It is a question of her believing that we need to have all xtian schools and an xtian society in which the wealthy deserve so much because they are in “god’s graces”. Her whole approach reeks of xtian fundie capitalist domination in order to praise her god (and justify her having so much more than one needs in order to live and survive.)
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Diane Yes, all true about Betsy, choice, and cronyism; but don’t forget: Betsy is doing God’s will (er . . . her version of it). And that “trumps” all.
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Bingo. DeVos, the Trump administration & the Republican party have deep ties to extremists in the religious right. In many ways these evangelicals are as dangerous as Trump.
In what the NYTimes calls a shot across the bow, The Vatican recognizes the seriousness of Catholics who have aligned themselves with these groups. They’ve sent out a warning of the consequences:
“Two close associates of Pope Francis have accused American Catholic ultraconservatives of making an alliance of “hate” with evangelical Christians to back President Trump, further alienating a group already out of the Vatican’s good graces.
The authors, writing in a Vatican-vetted journal, singled out Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, as a “supporter of an apocalyptic geopolitics” that has stymied action against climate change and exploited fears of migrants and Muslims with calls for “walls and purifying deportations.
The article warns that conservative American Catholics have strayed dangerously into the deepening political polarization in the United States. The writers even declare that the worldview of American evangelical and hard-line Catholics, which is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, is “not too far apart’’ from jihadists.”
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jcgrim Thank you for the update on Pope Francis and our Catholics. Here is a related article about “Alternative Christianity” in opinion pages of the LA Times from yesterday:
ALL QUOTED BELOW (my emphases):
Alternative Christianity: Their agenda is contradictory
BY PHIL ZUCKERMAN
Evangelicals have never had it so good, politically speaking.
Since President Trump took office in January, the White House has become a Christian roundtable, with just about every top-tier seat filled by a faithful member of the fold or someone who is happy to further the fold’s agenda.
The lineup of believers who are in positions of power is dizzying. Betsy DeVos, who leads the Department of Education, has said her goal as a public servant is to “advance God’s kingdom.” Secretary of Energy Rick Perry used mass prayer as a means of addressing social problems when he was governor of Texas. Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, believes the theory of evolution was encouraged by the devil.
It doesn’t stop there. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions has said that people who don’t believe in God can’t be truthful. Mike Pompeo, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is an evangelical who opposes abortion even in cases of rape. The president’s attorney, Jay Sekulow, another evangelical, has defended school prayer at the Supreme Court, and Trump’s spiritual advisor, Paula White, is a Pentecostal televangelist who teaches that if people give her church thousands of dollars, God will reward them with favors. Vice President Mike Pence might be the most piously anti-gay politician in America.
What’s really remarkable about this group, however, is not that so many ardent worshippers of Jesus are running the country, but how non-Christian this ostensibly Christian government is proving to be. The Trump administration’s Bible devotees are pushing an agenda that flies in the face of their own savior’s message.
Jesus taught that wealth was deeply problematic, if not inimical to spiritual health, for instance. He preached that a person cannot serve both God and money (Luke 16), that it is nearly impossible for the rich to get into heaven (Matthew 19) and that if you want to be in good graces with the Lord, you ought to support the poor (Matthew 19). It’s those living in poverty, Jesus said, who are truly blessed (Luke 6).
And yet Trump’s appointees are doing all they can to increase the wealth of the wealthy and cut funds and services for the poor. Some of the most supposedly Christian members of the administration have worked the hardest to take away healthcare from millions of poor Americans.
Jesus was big on mercy (Luke 6) and forgiveness (Colossians 3), and was himself tortured and murdered by a brutal regime. Trump and his administration have called for harsh penalties for nonviolent drug offenders and draconian sentencing in general.
Consider what Jesus taught about violence and weapons: They’re bad. “He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword,” he said (Matthew 26). The White House embraces America’s powerful gun lobby and does so despite terrible mass shootings that have become routine.
Jesus loved and protected those who were targeted and deemed outcasts by society’s reactionaries. But it’s Trump’s associates and other Christian politicians who show the least empathy for gay people, transgender people, Muslims and other vulnerable groups.
Oh, and how about that inn? The one where poor Joseph and pregnant, unmarried Mary, who had left home for Bethlehem, couldn’t get a room (Luke 2)? Surely Jesus would welcome the refugees of the world to the most wealthy of nations. Yet his most zealous followers in the White House want to keep the poor and persecuted out. No room at this inn, they say. You have to wonder: Do they make such decisions before or after Bible study?
Millions of Christians across the world take the teachings of Jesus seriously, of course. They work in soup kitchens, homeless shelters and orphanages. They help people overcome addiction. They support the most vulnerable, advocate nonviolence and compassion, fight for human rights. They care about the pain climate change will cause. Unfortunately, they are not the Christians running this country.
Many Americans shuddered when Kellyanne Conway used the phrase “alternative facts” to defend White House claims about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration. But the administration’s alternative Christianity may prove just as detrimental as its loose grasp on truth. While these men and women profess love for Jesus, they create suffering and misery in his name.
Phil Zuckerman is a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College and the author of “Living the Secular Life.” END QUOTED MATERIAL
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Save this country from those ultra conservative religious nuts. They are no better than the Extremists in the Middle East who kill others for their “INVISIBLE” friend. There’s a reason for the separation of church and state.
And DeVoodoo is evil just like Dump.
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Well said, Catherine. It’s just greed, not belief. I hope this pic of Jimmy Swaggart crying posts:
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Catherine, “Alternative Christianity” and its influence on political leaders keeps me up at night. Thank-you for the article in the LA times.
Chris Hedges, Harvard Divinity School grad. & Pulitzer prize winning journalist predicted much of this in his 2007 book “Christian Fascists”. He articulates how these so-called christian demagogues rise in times of despair & the deconstruction of the working class.
https://www.democracynow.org/2007/2/19/chris_hedges_on_american_fascists_the
“CHRIS HEDGES: These are — you know, they’re not — we use terms like “evangelical” and “fundamentalist” to describe them, and I think that those are incorrect terms. Traditional fundamentalists always called on believers to remove themselves from the contaminants of secular society, shun involvement in politics. Evangelical leaders like Billy Grahams always warned followers to keep their distance from political power. He, of course, was burned by Richard Nixon, came to Nixon’s defense, and then when it publicly came out that Nixon lied, it taught a lesson to Graham.
This is a new movement, as embodied by people like James Dobson or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, who call for the creation of a Christian state, who talk about attaining secular power. And they are more properly called dominionists or Christian reconstructionists, although it’s not a widespread term, but they’re certainly not traditional fundamentalists and not traditional evangelicals. They fused the language and iconography of the Christian religion with the worst forms of American nationalism and then created this sort of radical mutation, which has built alliances with powerful right-wing interests, including corporate interests, and made tremendous inroads over the last two decades into the corridors of power.”
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Correction: Hedges book is “American Fascists”
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jcgrim I don’t know when they’ll realize it but, in their own language, they are making a deal with the devil.
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Beat me to the punch, Catherine. I hadn’t gotten as far as your post when I posted mine above. You are quite correct!
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She may be the only Secretary of Education in memory who was allowed to hold investments that directly conflict with her official duties and is allowed to continue to make new investments as she serves.
But not the only member of the Trump cabinet with this problems. Include Trump and his family and White House advisors.
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Laura,
Right. Trump sets the model for self-enrichment. Ivanka, Jared, Eric, Don Jr, all making money. Expanding the brand and the franchises. Selling access to the name.
I hope the day comes when the brand is loathsome. Trump’s neo-Nazi fans can’t afford a room in his hotels.
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Trump’s Washington hotel, with a 44% occupancy rate, is making a profit. People that curry favor from Trump stay in the hotel at about $700 per night to demonstrate they are serious about a “pay to play” relationship with the Trumps.
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Right, Laura.
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Diane We can hope. But the deeper problem is the **disregard, even contempt, shown for the U.S. Constitution itself*** by our oath-taking leaders; in this case, for the emoluments clause. Nothing really happens (we think); and so we just shake our heads and go on with our lives. But insofar as fascism and dictatorship are in some minds as we speak, they won’t happen all at once. Congress rolls over and so we have begun with increments of such disregard and contempt; and, in the case of Charlottesville yesterday, of “small” incidents of violence. We are getting used to such contempt. Now the violence is smoothed over and folded in to our national psyche.
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Behind the buzzword “choice” there are multiple scams used by many charter school operators to reap profit from their schools — even the so-called “non-profits” — such as by private charter school boards paying exorbitant sums to lease building space for their school in buildings that are owned by corporations that are in turn owned or controlled by the charter school board members or are REIT investments that are part of a Wall Street hedge fund’s portfolio. There are many, many other avenues of making a huge hidden profit by operating private charter schools with public tax money.
At the very least, taxpayers should insist that charter schools must file the same available-to-the-public detailed financial reports that genuine public school boards file under penalty of perjury, and no public tax money should be handed over to any charter school operators who don’t file these reports. Of course, if charter school operators had to file such report, charter schools would dry up and blow away because the gravy train would be stopped.
“Free market” charter schools collecting public taxpayer voucher money are proving to be a disaster for taxpayers, both financially and educationally, and such vast amounts of public tax money have already being skimmed away by charter schools and funneled into corporate and the private pockets of politicians’ cronies that the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a report that, because of their lack of accountability to the public, charter schools pose a risk to the Department of Education’s goals. The report finds that “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals” because of financial fraud and the artful skimming of tax money into private pockets.
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Scisne Yes–charters call for a further level of “financial policing,” another level of “cops,” to watch the the octopus arms of the “shadow government” that is the natural offspring of the so called “libertarian” right.
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ALL Below is a talk by author Nancy MacLean, about her book: “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.”
She is a social historian who followed a train of power movements, including during the Virginia civil rights and school closings during the 1950’s. She talks about the “Koch donor network” that is developing pockets (pun intended) all over the US, the movement of power away from national government to the states so that they can control and rewrite the rules, and about how they are making inroads into education and judge-ships. She also talks about the libertarian “turn” away from telling the truth about their agenda to what she refers to as a crab-walk–where they realize that they must lie-to and manipulate the American public in the name of their agenda–which is to destroy democratic government and all social programs, including social security and public education. Eye-opening, even for us on this site.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?430379-2/democracy-chains
Democracy Chains, Jul 19 2017 | Video | C-SPAN.org
http://www.c-span.org
Nancy MacLean, history and public policy professor at Duke University, examines the work of the late Nobel Prize-winning economist James McGill Buchanan…
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