First let’s note that the Republican Party divides into three main factions:
[ul][li] The moderate right wing. There are only two right-wingers in the Senate, both women: Murkowski of Alaska and Collins of Maine.[/li][li] The batshit crazy. This faction includes TeaBaggers, Hyperlibertarians, and the mentally infirm. Their common goal is the complete destruction of the federal government.[/li][li] Those in the middle, whose brain cells sometimes wake-up enough to make them want to embrace right-wing ideals, but mostly just go with the flow and vote with the batshit faction. Although he’s not a Senator, Paul Ryan is the model for this faction. He’s a liar and a hater, admires Ayn Rand, but is not actually demented in a clinical sense.[/li][/ul]
I think my lead paragraph answers this pretty well. The two right-wingers did vote against DeVos, but we’ve now reached a point where 50 Senators (51 counting Pence) are literally seeking to destroy the government. They are succeeding at doing what the left-wing terrorists in the 1960’s and 70’s wanted to do.
What’s ironic is that if the GOP President were an extremist like Ryan, or even one of the batshit crazies, they would have felt a need to restrain their mischief a bit. Paradoxically, Trump — who historically was rather moderate :smack: — has no such qualms. He’s dancing with the Bannons and Draculas that brought him to the party, too dumb and self-absorbed to realize he’s being led around like the organ-grinder’s monkey. Ryan et al are delighted! They’d never have dared to do such blatant sabotage themselves, but they can eventually blame the worst damage on Trump, proud in the knowledge that America’s social contract will be devastated for decades.
As for DeVos’ qualifications: Her father was an unscrupulous businessman who became very wealthy and active for homophobic and anti-women causes. Her husband and father-in-law ran Amway, the notorious pyramid-scheme marketing organization. The billionaire husband is very active politically, supporting vouchers as a way to degrade inner city schools further, and right-to-work laws as a way to further reduce the power of impoverished Michigan workers. Ms. DeVos’ brother was the founder of Blackwater USA, the company that was able to skim huge sums from its friends who were burning through taxpayer money insanely for their insane war against Iraq. Ms. DeVos herself has been a consistent advocate of defunding public schools, and giving subsidies to the middle class to increase flight from the public schools. She has made huge campaign contributions to Republicans to advance her anti-school agenda. Some private and charter schools are major scams, totally unregulated and with great scope for skimming (consider “Trump University”) — profit opportunities are huge if the dismantling of public schools continues and, despite the votes of the two GOP Senators who love America, now it certainly will.
:dubious: This, of course, is pretty much the opposite of a “local” solution to education problems. In the sense that it’s not a “solution” at all, in any policy sense of the term.
It does jack-shit to actually fix the problems in a local educational system: it merely allows the minority of people who can afford it to evade the problems by abandoning that local system entirely, and leaving the problems for the poorer, less mobile members of the community to deal with unaided.
Which in itself is an excellent argument for less decentralized control of education policy. If the responsibility for maintaining education systems is devolved down as far as it can go, then whenever a problem develops in a school system, you get the classic “rats leaving a sinking ship” syndrome: i.e., people who can afford to will just abandon it for a better system somewhere else.
Once the rats have scuttled, then the problems end up dumped on a depleted community made up of the people least able to cope with them. Not very efficient if our real goal is to provide quality education for all kids.
But even he’s not unqualified. Whatever one thinks of his priorities in law enforcement, or how he will likely use his office to further the conservative agenda, he does have a law degree and years of experience as a prosecutor.
If you are looking for an architect or a builder or a contractor, maybe you want one that is qualified, so they don’t build you something that falls apart.
If you just want to burn it all down, it does not require much qualifications to be an arsonist.
Crap, and I just sent in my resume and a picture of my personal globe flattener.
Because she is horrible at interpreting research. She basically compared charter schools against the worst of public schools - schools that literally had the lights turned of because they can’t pay the electricity bill; schools where they cannot find enough teachers to fill the classrooms. And based on that has concluded charters are better than public schools.
Because the DoE is in charge of protecting students with disabilities’ rights and she is on record believing that
a) States should be allowed to opt out of IDEA
b) Students that want to attend charter schools can be required to waive all legal rights under IDEA.
The DoE controls $70B in discretionary funding. The Secretary influence where that goes.
The DoE is facing a student loan crisis that she would have to address. Maybe we should have vouchers for colleges to benefit the rich.
And we all know how accurate pollsters are, don’t we? Trump’s ratings are much higher according to Rassmussen who don’t use the notoriously innacurate telephone polling used by other pollsters.
I’m not responsible for the Democrat Party’s inability to retain seats in Congress. DeVos is under attack because the Democrat collective is still hurt, and embarrassed, about Hillary’s losing the WH. Sux to be them. DeVos is under attack because she was nominated by a Republican President. A Republican President who happens to be Trump, but the same thing would occur regardless of which Republican kicked Hillary’s ass.
This is the standard operating procedure for the foreseeable future. The Republican administration will do something, the Democrats will whine that they don’t understand, life will go on.
As you’ve probably noticed, this thread was started after DeVos’s confirmation. After. When it was too late to do anything but whine about sour grapes. *How-oh-how did we lose again? What is wrong with us/U.S.? SSDD.
You don’t know if DeVos’s service will be a failure or not. You assume she will fail. Or maybe you just hope she will fail. Either way, regardless of the nominee, the Democrat collective will drag their feet, suck their collective thumb, and beg the voters to return the Democrat Party to power.
I think in this particular case, it is a valid thing to do. You are crowing about the superiority of state run education, and what a great education “anyone” could get if they just uproot their families and move somewhere, without a job and precious little money - and relatives who will bail you out. (from your narrative).
Then you follow up with a poorly constructed sentence, which indicates that your own education is lacking.