Late night talk show host Seth Meyers Reviews Betsy DeVos on civil rights enforcement.
She promises to adhere to the letter of the law but makes clear that her goal is to guy civil rights enforcement.
Since the protection of LGBT students is not written into law, she will deep-six it.
As Meyers shows, she is very concerned about discrimination against white men. An overlooked and much abused minority.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think of DeVos as Besty the Beast.
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She is Betsy wetsy for me… Can’t help it, A brand of doll from a very long time ago. Feed her and she pees.
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How about Betsy Wetsy the Beast that wears Pampers?
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Lloyd: You are proving that us old-timers who went to public schools are creative. Good description.
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Yes, Lloyd!
Devos Pampers the rich and pees on the rest of us . . .
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tRump once again proves that he picks the best!! Betsy is one of the most lame-brained, ignorant, self-absorbed, idiotic, bigoted, wealthy person alive. She hates public schools and hates teachers and hates students who don’t have wealthy parents.
How sad that this person has no qualifications for the job except for donating money to the GOP. She is a disgrace to this country. I can see why her security is costing taxpayers $1 million a month. She isn’t worth two cents and certainly isn’t showing any intelligent answers to intelligent questions. Evade and evade and evade is her motto.
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Kudos to Seth Meyers & Stephen Colbert for nightly doing the job of journalists, and reporting, most likely, to a vastly larger audience. Also, probably have huge numbers of millenials watching their shows, so are enlightening many, especially needed in the education arena. Thank you guys (& writers–esp. love Meyers’ show Amber Ruffins {who could have her own show–& should!}) for waking up the public…even as they are going to bed!
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I appreciated that when Colbert simply brought up the name DeVos, it felt as if the entire audience started to boo loudly before he even began telling them about her latest ‘problem’ with losing one of her multiple yachts.
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Oh, & meant to say, as I’d stated before, when Colbert was interviewing Bill Clinton & Jas. Patterson & wondering if he would “go there?” Yes, he DID, & both he & Seth always DO
(unlike others on news channels).
BTW, Anderson Cooper did great w/Helsinki comments.
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“The destruction of the distinction between truth and falsehood is the foundation of dictatorship.”
DeVos is an example of Meddling Through Disinformation: Weaponizing LIES to undo everything. Disinformation is being ‘weaponized as a disruptive force — the underlying tactic is to foster lies to erode TRUST and undermine truth! The disrupters create so much false information that people do not grasp when they are hearing lies.
She is shamefulll and too rich to care.
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Michigan’s 3 Democratic candidates for governor include Whitmer- an establishment Democrat with the corporate-funded CAP view of education, Bernie’s pick, El-Sayed, who is a little better on public schools and the 3rd, who has posted the best policy position on public schools, Shri Thanedar. He says, “ban for-profit charter schools and preserve teachers’ pensions”. He is highly critical of DeVos, who is from Michigan.
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One of the first Democratic candidates to announce his run in 2020 and who has set up a website is Andrew Yang. Tell him you won’t vote for him as long as he supports the privatization of public education. His e-mail is info@yang2020.com
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I sent him a letter.
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Thanks. The clamor against privatization will be too loud to ignore, if we keep pushing..
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Linda
“The reason Donald Trump was elected was that we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin,” Yang said
Another not ready for prime time Billionaire. Who is totally clueless.
I would like to think that he was elected due to the lost jobs in trade.
Except that few of his voters were factory workers who lost Jobs.
We have all these lost jobs to Robots except the miracle is we did it without capital investment in Robots. And of course, Germany and Japan invested heavily in Robots and did not suffer the same fate. Perhaps we have to turn to popular culture to figure this one out. Refresh my memory when Allentown, when My Home Town and Roger and Me entered the culture. I knew I should have stuck with Anthropology. The Robots came in the late 70s. By the 80s the industrial Midwest was pretty much devastated.
Like Gates, Musk, and Zuckerberg, we confuse their financial success with general expertise. The letter would fall on deaf ears.
Then of course my favorite MSM meme. last week it was 6.6 million open jobs because of skills shortages. Yet this week it was because of low wage undocumented labor not being available. It’s neither all but a few 100k are filled within a month.
Perhaps if expect to beat Trumpism we have to have honest discussions with the People.
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Joel
A citizen’s “honest discussion” in the oligarchy of the USA is the vandalism of DeVos’ boat.
With the NYT and WaPo quoting Republicans twice as often as Dems, Dems echoing the corporate-funded CAP talking points and with FOX – what’s the answer to inform the public?
CAP’s latest policy recommendation (and, Weingartner is very thick with CAP) is for high teacher salaries. It is reflected in Yang’s platform.
It is a disingenuous recommendation and they should be called out for it. In the same document that makes the pay recommendation, the TFA’ers at CAP suggested money for schools should come from advertising on buses. They rejected taxes as a means to refund prior cuts to school revenue. The duplicitous CAP knows two things- higher teacher salaries will antagonize communities where pay has not risen and, without funding, it can’t happen.
CAP’s hollow talk about the advancement of women is completely undercut when they take away the profession that created the most opportunities for women- teaching.
We will have to agree to disagree about the cause of job loses. Like most developed economies, the US transitioned from manufacturing to services. The lack of money in the pockets of the middle class makes them unable to buy goods and services. Consumers, particularly the growing older population want personal service but, automation is being rammed down the throats of the population because it makes money for the tech tyrants.
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Linda
Actually, I don’t think we disagree all that much.
“With the NYT and WaPo quoting Republicans twice as often as Dems, Dems echoing the corporate-funded CAP talking points and with FOX – what’s the answer to inform the public?”
And that is my point. Trumpism Authoritarian Demagogues win when the discussions are not honest. And our corporate owned supposedly “liberal media” is neither liberal nor honest.
But you are correct about transitioning to a lower wage service economy. My point is that the transition had been accomplished before the collapse of manufacturing in the late 90s. If you look at long-term employment in manufacturing(50 yr) we see a steady increase in population. Tremendous jobs losses in the late seventies and early eighties and then as the population grows the number of people employed in manufacturing remains stable even as the percentage of manufacturing jobs in the population shrinks. Till the period between 92 and 2007 when there is another collapse in manufacturing employment.
So back to the media. The dominant narrative is “who can we blame for this? The Robots have taken the jobs and you have to get new skills for the new economy. 6.6 million open jobs if you only had the skills”.
Skills to be a waitress a store clerk and a bedpan changer. The Job Openings Loses and Transitions number out of BLS represents Job churn, not persistent openings. Every month millions of Americans leave employment and every month they are replaced. As the economy improves the number goes up as more workers look for better employment. We even have a shortage of teachers. Except here on Long Island where teachers are actually paid.
If anyone is going to make the argument that Robots are taking the Jobs. They have to be able to show one: the investment in Robotics and two: the increase in Productivity. Something that the data does not show. This is not to say that Robotics is not on the way. For certain any manufacturing that returns to the country will be far more automated then it has been. Computer programs will impact many white collar jobs. But the fall off the cliff in manufacturing employment between 92 and 2007 is not Robotiotics. Unless the Foxconn workers were Robots jumping into nets.
There have been rare moments where sunlight breaks through. The other day Ali Velshi was interviewing a deputy minister from the European Commision. He makes the statement that aggregates do not reflect the fact that people are not aggregates. The implication was that decisions were made, winners and losers were picked. And it has caused upheaval in the EU and the USA. Of course, Velshi responds “skills”
It is not skills, auto workers were not paid well for their skills. A Long Island teacher is not more skilled than his or her counterpart in West Virginia.It is the ability to secure a share of productivity. And if the Robots increase productivity that is a good thing as long as we share those increases. Something we have not done for fifty years. Those
were political decisions as well. Decisions that crippled unions and worker power. Decisions that saw corporate profits returned to shareholders go from 50% to 94%. Taxes that would redistribute the gains more fairly through investment in public goods from infrastructure to education and healthcare; have been cut and made more regressive…….
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Joel
I know a union plumber, who after reading unidentified, Russian anti-Hillary propaganda on Facebook, voted for Stein. The statistical significance of his and similar votes, in Hillary’s loss, has not been determined.
We agree that the “automation” excuse is a false flag. It is used to create defeatism about job opportunity and pay.
And, we agree that the examples of (1) nations deciding that all work has value and legislating livable wages (Iceland) and (2)
Henry Ford raising pay for his workers with the intent that they could then afford cars which would improve his bottom line, work(ed) well?There is ample evidence that the “invisible” hand can be manipulated to adversely affect labor. The cautionary lessons of the the Irish potato famine have not been learned.
As you suggest, the amount of national income going to labor vs. capital is at the lowest point in recorded US history. National policy decisions influenced by oligarchs and decisions by trade group and individual business owners caused the imbalance.
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Betsy DeVos’ private yacht was vandalized. see
http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2018/07/25/DeVos-40-million-yacht-vandalized-at-Huron-dock-npr.html
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No problem. She has other yachts.
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Nine. Nine other yachts.
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Yes, folks.
I just HATE when that happens. I HATE when one of my 10 yachts or even on my 15 Lear just gets damaged and has to go back into the repair shop. It’s oppressive and limiting! What’s a public servant to do?
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Robert: Can I teach where you work? [I’ve commented about my $45 million dollar yacht but I really was kidding.]
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Charles: The poor dear. I’m sure she has insurance on it. It will get fixed.
Did you read about my concern over my $45 million dollar yacht? It’s difficult to maintain on my retired teachers’ salary.
She doesn’t have a clue about what normal people experience. She has never had to work for a living and can fly away to any place on the globe anytime she gets ‘overworked’ from her current job.
Poor Betsy.
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I think Betsy DeVos could be the new Aunt Lydia in the patriarchal Gilead in the Handmaid’s Tale! She seems to be totally against women which I might remind her she is a woman.
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Betsy DeVos is an autocratic, racist billionaire first and a racist woman second.
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It’s honestly hard for me to watch her humiliate herself….but I did and loved it.
Heard a singer on NPR today….Madison Cunningham. Do you or Joie know of her? I never heard of her before today. I would catagorize her genre as Folksy-Blues-ish. She sang a song she wrote called John Wayne. She prefaced the song by saying it was not about John Wayne. She grew up in Orange County Calif. whose airport is called John Wayne. When she was a kid she would go there to relax and watch the planes takeoff and land and found that very enjoyable. The song was sort of an adult lament of sadness but each verse ended with the line…”I took my sorrows to John Wayne and watched them fly away”…GREAT line. Damn, why didn’t I think of that!!
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