Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/12/betsy-devos-tries-to-explain-w.html
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Ugh, I hate that weird way she smiles at the end of every sentence. Is that a nervous twitch? Is it some part of her conscience clawing its way to the surface to acknowledge that she’s full of shit AND dumb AND an awful person? I choose to believe yes.
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I just read that Ms.DeVos will chair a commission on minimum age requirements, among other gun laws.
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Hey, don’t knock it, I hear that the best defence against a bad man with a wand is a young man with a wand.
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It’s the same smile she used during her qualifications deposition. It’s a weapon. You don’t want to see her face doing those …things, so you wrap up as quick as you can.
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I mean, the real answer to these questions is usually that someone sees the public treasury as a juicy target for looting.
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Odds are she views government as theft from rich people like her, so she’s justified in stealing it back.
After all:
Communal good
Communism
See the connection?
(That’s from that Colorado loon, but she’s probably thinks like that too, and never mind common law or commonwealth.)
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Like the vast majority of Trump appointees, she’s ignorant about the actual problems her department faces on a daily basis and could not care less. She has a religious agenda that drives her and she won’t be swayed. She’s basically a polite moron with power.
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Exactly. Plus, to a Christian zealot like her, public schools are the devil’s playground.
Edit: @michaeljtobias beat me to it. By about ten seconds!
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The basis for her argument is this:
Public schools=unwashed rabble (and mainly “urban” ones at that)
Private and charter schools=elites (selectively white)
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I’d say that the majority of Trump appointees were clearly specifically chosen to disrupt, upend, and harm the departments they were chosen for. A Secretary of Education who has been upfront about her desire to do away with public schools; a Secretary of the EPA who has repeatedly sued the EPA; a Secretary of HUD who’s quite upfront about having zero ability or desire to run his department.
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(obligatory) Christ, what an asshole.
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I have little doubt that she thinks (but is just smart enough not to say) that black and brown urban youth can never do well – they’re accursed, inferior sons and daughters of Ham.
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Nope. I’m a Christian zealot and I firmly support public education. What DeVos is peddling is nothing new, it’s old-fashioned lazzes faire capitalism applied to an endeavor where it makes absolutely no sense.
Why do we educate children? To a conservative, education is a commodity that children and parents buy with tax dollars, to maximize their workplace utility. If you just have enough manufacturers, the market would find the best product at the best price. Presto!
On the other hand, to an old-fashioned liberal like me, we educate children because we want to live in a nation of educated people. Taxation, as they say, is the price we pay for civilization.
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that’s pretty much spot on, plus they serve the larger republican agenda of creating so much malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance that they can then easily demonstrate that “government is the problem, not the solution.”
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OK, I move that in future “right wing” a/o “conservative” and “thinking” shall not be used together in any sense implying that the former persons take part in the latter activity.
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Nope. That’s only half our so of the big picture.
Do all Christians think and act alike? (No.)
DeVos is clearly determined to ignore the ideal of separation of church and state.
in a 2001 interview for The Gathering, a group focused on advancing Christian faith through philanthropy, she and her husband offered a rare public glimpse of their views. Asked whether Christian schools should continue to rely on giving—rather than pushing for taxpayer money through vouchers—Betsy DeVos replied, “There are not enough philanthropic dollars in America to fund what is currently the need in education…Our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God’s kingdom.”
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Don’t forget a Secretary of Energy who declared if he were president he’d abolish the whole Department …
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