This post is a real tour de force. That means that Mercedes Schneider has managed to say something truly original, which I hope you will read in full.

Betsy DeVos is constantly saying how much she wants the best for every child, how urgent it is to let parents have charter schools, voucher schools, for-profit schools, cybercharters, almost anything but public schools. Despite her protestations, she is contemptuous of public schools and has spent many millions through her American Federation for Children to advance privatization.

So zmercedes uses her post to tell you what Betsy would say if she spoke her mind, without covering up any of her thoughts.

She begins like this.

“First of all, I’d like to thank all of you for coming because I appreciate yet another opportunity to campaign in a manner that ultimately promotes my favorite minority, the one to which I belong: America’s elite among elite, those possessing the top .1% in American net worth.

“One way to understand my elitist motivations is to study the history and positions of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Of course, I would have preferred that ALEC be kept from public awareness, which it was for almost four decades. However, the unfortunate truth is that those without the interests of corporate America in mind destroyed that beautiful ALEC secrecy in 2012.

“The ALEC end game is to supplant federal control over states with corporate control. We prefer to promote this idea as federalism, or state control. The reality is states are ripe for control, and that control might as well come from moneyed interests– the .1%– rather than the federal government.

“The beauty in promoting “state control” is that those outside of the top .1% (or, let’s be generous, outside of the top 1%) hear the term “state control” and equate it with “local control.” Though I occasionally mention local control, I do not ultimately advocate for local control. You will not hear me give a speech in which I advocate replacing state control with local control. Local control is too close to you people, and, as such, corporate interests become more difficult to serve because it is the state legislators (and therefore, statehouses) that ALEC corporations control, not usually the local politicians.

“Besides, we lose the ability to hide our ALEC intentions behind federal scapegoating if we do not center our pseudo-local arguments on state control, and the best way to fool the public is to divert attention from the corporate control we desire by actively campaigning for federal control over states as the ultimate problem.”

Keep reading.

Meet the real Betsy.

Unvarnished.