We’ve seen no end of sleaze and outright blatant corruption from Trump and a number of his top Cabinet cronies, such as Barr, Pompeii, Mnuchin, Ross, Perry, etc.
But Betsy De Vos?
Her politics are atrocious; her educational attitudes are atavistic and barbaric; she is deeply in the pockets of Big Ed and she panders massively.
But beyond the standard vanilla corruption and pandering, has she engaged in the kind of outright criminality like those others? For such an awful cabinet member (from the more liberal point-of-view of course), she seems not to be neck-deep in the kinds of scandals like the others.
Aside from her politics, is she relatively honest (comparatively speaking)?
DeVos is rich* in her own right, so is less likely to be grafting than some of the other scum that trump surrounds himself with. She bought her job via family donations. She has a passion for injecting Christian dogma into primary education.
The DeVos family money comes largely via the Amway scam her dad started, with her brother Erik Prince getting more rich off of the middle east quagmire via his Acadami/Xe/Blackwater mercenary operation, that is so upstanding it has to keep changing it’s name.
Given that she is paying for her own private jet travel and security detail, the job is probably costing her money. And will probably cost her more as she fights the contempt charge over ignoring court orders to stop demanding students of fake colleges keep paying on their loans.
*Multiple homes, multiple yachts. private jets kinda rich, She is an actual billionaire, unlike her boss.
Due to the ability politicians have to write laws, a certain level of bribery is legal. Politicians can accept money as long as everyone involved calls it campaign contributions or charitable donations or employment offers or product purchases.
As far as I know, De Vos has stayed inside the legal limits.
Wait… there’s a lot that’s not accurate in that paragraph.
Betsy DeVos née Prince is indeed Erik Prince’s sister. Her father (and Erik’s) was Edgar Prince, who founded Prince Corporation, a die-cast manufacturing company. He died in 1995 and Erik ran the company for a short time before their mother, Elsa, sold the company to Johnson Controls for $1.35B in 1996 or 1997.
Betsy married Dick DeVos; it was his father Richard that co-founded Amway.
I see her as a bog standard rich Republican. She’s not corrupt per se, just pushing her agenda to try to influence the government in ways that would make her richer.
Now, what I perceive as her agenda is not something I agree with, and would like to see her ilk deeply marginalized in serious discussions about education policy, but I don’t think she has it in her to really flout the law, ala the current occupant. Her contempt of court? Well, that’s just political, donchaknow.
BTW, there’s a thread in the Pit on substantially the same subject, Is Betsy DeVos a criminal? started by septimus just a couple of hours after this one.
Seems like there’s bog standard Republican corruption, and then there’s Trump 'n Friends corruption which goes orders of magnitude beyond mere bog standard Repub corruption. De Vos, ISTM, is a few levels beyond bog standard, but not (at least, not real obviously) in the same league with the rest of them. In that sense, she almost stands out like a sore thumb.