This 6-Minute video is worth your time. Watch frustrated Members of the House Appropriations Committee (not the Senate) try to get Betsy DeVos to answer questions with a “yes” or “no.”
She tries to snow them with long-winded, evasive answers. They ask again and again. She smiles as she bobs and weaves. She is neither stupid nor incompetent. She is evasive. She is evasive because she doesn’t want to admit her real intentions.
The first questioner, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, is the Democratic leader of the Committee. When Democrats were in control, she was chair of the committee. She wants to know why DeVos is pre-emptying states that are trying to protect their college students from predatory debt collectors. She has DeVos over a barrel. Does DeVos support the right of states to write stronger consumer protections than the federal government, which under a DeVos is eliminating those protections? DeLauro demands a yes or no.
This battle of wills is fierce.
When you see how haughty and arrogant DeVos is in responding to the Committee that oversees appropriations for her Department, you will understand why 99% of the DeVos budget was rejected by Congress.
Another member of the Committee wanted to know whether private schools receiving federal dollars would be required to respect the rights of LGBT students. That’s another tug of war. Getting zdeVos to answer a straightforward question with a one word answer is like pulling teeth. The DeVos Family foundations support anti-gay organizations, and her mother and brother Erik Prince were founders and major donors to the Family Research Council. No doubt she has thought of a way to weasel out of that commitment. The last thing she would ever do is tell an evangelical school that to remove its ban on LGBT students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
She is not qualified and this interview just confirms that!
LikeLike
I don’t want to lose DeVos! She can’t get anything through Congress! She is the gift that keeps on giving! Except for charters, she lost on everything she asked for.
LikeLike
Good one, Diane!
LikeLike
Betsy is to D of Education what James Watt was to D of Interior under Ronald Reagan.
They have a great deal in common.
LikeLike
Incredible! Does she not understand how incompetent she sounds?!
LikeLike
Honest to God, when I watch her speak in any capacity I can’t help but be reminded of a Stepford Wife who is incapable of going off-script. And that eerie, far-off smirk she displays only amplifies the image…
LikeLike
The more DeVos loses to congress on trying to pass her drain the public school funding for her sickening voucher agenda the better for the public school system to serve our children.
LikeLike
This woman is scary to the point of wanting to jump at the tv screen and scream in her face to shut the heck up and go back to Michigan and start to support public schools in Detroit because now Detroit is the laughing stock of this country and we can all thank dick (no pun intended its his name) and betsy devos!
I was wondering if betsy calls her husband dick or Richard.
LikeLike
Simply infuriating.
LikeLike
Here’s another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9450Rg2eBL8
And another: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNRvHd17UdU
Appreciate these legislators.
LikeLike
I am Betsy. I am perfect.
That which is imperfect must be sterilized.
https://youtu.be/G6o881n35GU
LikeLike
It is frustrating to see Betsy DeVos never, and I mean NEVER answer a question straight from Congress. I do not see how she was ever qualified in the first place. She does not care for public students or education, has never stepped in one and when she did, she was dismissed and did not answer a single question once more. Her agenda is never clear. There is no future in education in America as long as she in office.
LikeLike
It’s actually very ironic (and more than a bit hypocritical) that DeLauro criticizes DeVos for trying to “pre-empt” the states when she voted for Bush’s No Child Left Behind and supported Race to the Top (which effectively means she also supported Common Core and the mandated student testing and teacher evaluation based on testing that accompanied it)
As early as 2004, she was informed by school district administrators of the fact that NCLB was effectively an underfunded mandate that required states to spend scarce resources on testing.
https://www.middletownpress.com/news/article/School-chiefs-hit-DeLauro-with-NCLB-concerns-11909080.php
While she now is quick to point out her vote for ESSA, which reigned in some of the worst abuses of No Child Left Behind and by Obama’s DOE secretary, ESSA also left in the Federal mandate for testing of states. In fact, the Democrats were the ones who insisted on that.
DeLauros opponent in the last election was a high school math teacher who, among other things called for the end of Common Core and the USDOE
From The Stratford Star
https://www.stratfordstar.com/17137/bunnell-coach-aims-to-take-on-delauro-and-national-debt/
“Brown said that when the Common Core curriculum came down from the federal government and new mandates for teacher evaluations came down from the state, he said to himself, Something’s got to change.
He said he does not like to see the federal government getting so big and powerful and local voters losing power. “Education is not best effected top down; it be is best effected bottom up,” Brown said. Discussion about education at the federal level is not about education in the classroom, he said. It is about money and measuring rates of so-called success.”
// End of quotes
LikeLike
SDP, I got your point, but it doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of the video. Is that bad?
LikeLike
No, its not bad.
I just think it is important to point out that some of the people now criticizing DeVos for Federal rule over states have done the same thing in the past.
And because DeLauro recently voted for ESSA, which mandates continued State testing of all students, she is STILL effectively doing what she is criticizing DeVos for doing: stepping on state toes.
But I understand why DeLauro is doing it because Republicans are supposed to be strong supporters of states’ rights, so it makes Betsy look bad even in Republican eyes that she is attempting to pre-empt the states on control over their own matters.
LikeLike
Makes for good political theater, but the acting gets old after awhile.
LikeLike
Of course, in CT, any “outside” Democrat (like Ned Lamont or Jonathan Pelto,) who dares to challenge an annointed Democrat (like Joe Lieberman or Dannel Malloy) by running against them in the primary encounters stiff opposition from day one from the official apparatchiks who do not want outsiders entering their Club of the Annointed (especially if they don’t know the secret handshake and password)
Democratic party “leaders” in CT have an entitlement complex.
DeLauro actually had the chutspah to tell Pelto that ” He should not be running for governor” (against Malloy in the primary) while Pelto was still collecting the necessary signatures to be on the primary ballot.
As if she , Her Highness Rosa DeLauro (not the voters) were the “decider” of who should run and who should not. If it had been up to her, she undoubtedly would have declared Malloy the winner before the race had even begun. Why even have a vote when “Rosa knows best”? (Maybe Hollywood should start a series with that title)
How very “democratic”.
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-pelto-delauro-clash-0809-20140808-story.html
LikeLike
Rosa apparently is something else. That she is also a reformer just improves the video watching experience. I think there is a special value in seeing eduquackers spank each other.
LikeLike
I will defend Rosa DeLauro. Nobody is above criticism or without fault.
When my 2010 book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education” was published, Rosa invited me to her DC home to present my views to the Democratic members of the House Education Committee. I delivered a stinging critique of NCLB, RTTT, testing and choice, as she knew I would.
The chair of the House Education Committee, George Miller, sat in stony silence, arms folded across his chest. Rosa had to cajole him to join the conversation, and when he did, he insisted that NCLB was necessary to assure that black and Hispanic students were not overlooked. I disagree and said that they were the likeliest to be stigmatized and their schools closed. Of course, I had a dispute with Jared Polis about charters (he loves them). But Rosa made them hear me out. Count me an admirer. Members of Congress are surrounded by lobbyists and Gates-funded think tanks. It’s rare they hear the likes of me.
LikeLike
So the world is not black and white but colorful like Rosa’s hair.
LikeLike
“So the world is not black and white but colorful like Rosa’s hair.” It is so much harder to think in color.
LikeLike
The irony is several layers deep:
you have DeLauro (who has supported strong Federal control over states) criticizing DeVos for trying to exert Federal control over states (and attempting to short circuit the Democratic process) when DeVos, in turn is a member of the party that is supposed to be all about states’ rights
It’s enough to make Linda Blair’s head spin.
LikeLike