Profiles in Delusion - Betsy DeVos

WAKE UP AMERICANS* - If you care about public education you'd better get informed, up to speed and engaged.  No one else is going to do it for you ! 

The Faith-shackled crowd certainly know what they want to do with rational observation and fact-based learning, destroy it.  Replacing it with their favorite so-so tribal story telling, ...  self-certain, uncritical yarn spinning - that does nothing for preparing us to live with the future world we are ignorantly creating for ourselves.

Can someone say Critical Thinking Skills?

Democracy, live it or lose it.  America, it's your move.

For a more complete introduction see here.

* I apologize. I know current sensibilities demand everyone be coddled nonstop or I risk losing their attention.  But, I'm over thinking anyone deserves coddling anymore.  Let's get real,

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How Trump Could Gut Public Education

By Dana Goldstein

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Trump hires Christian Fundamentalist who doesn’t believe in Public Education as Secretary of Education.

By Jameson Parker 

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What you should know about Betsy DeVos
Philissa Cramer.
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Trump Names Anti-Gay Marriage Activist And Amway Billionaire Betsy DeVos To Be Education Secretary

Joemygod.com

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Strategy for Privatizing Public Schools Spelled out by Dick DeVos in 2002 Heritage Foundation Speech

Rachel Tabachnick

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Secretary of Education Pick Betsy DeVos May Be a Disaster for Church/State Separation

November 23, 2016 by Hemant Mehta 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2016/11/23/secretary-of-education-pick-betsy-devos-may-be-a-disaster-for-churchstate-separation/

Donald Trump has selected Michigan Republican Betsy DeVos as his Secretary of Education. While that may sound like a relief when you consider the others who were in the running, DeVos’ appointment should frighten anyone who cares about church/state separation.

DeVos has been a longtime supporter of school voucher programs, which use the pleasant-sounding phrase “school choice” to take money away from public schools and leave them in the dust. (Trump elaborated on his vision of dismantling our public education system while on the campaign trail.)

More pressing on this website is the question of whether parents who want to send their kids to a private religious school would be given taxpayer dollars to do so.

There’s reason to believe she’ll want to make that an option, laws be damned. DeVos grew up in a Religious Right-loving home and gave money to organizations working to push Christian beliefs through the government. As Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s Rob Boston wrote in a 2010 profile of her:

Growing up in the strict Calvinist Christian Reformed Church, Betsy DeVos’ antipathy toward public education may run in her blood. She comes from a politically active, socially conservative family. Her parents are Elsa Prince Broekhuizen and the late Edgar Prince, a Michigan couple that has funded the Religious Right for years.

The Princes have provided huge sums to both Focus on the Family and its quasi-affiliate, the Family Research Council (FRC). Even today, the FRC maintains a fulfillment center in Grand Rapids, where the Princes and the DeVoses are based. (Betsy DeVos’ brother, Erik, is notorious in his own right: He founded the controversial international security company Blackwater.)

WAKE UP AMERICA - CARE ABOUT EDUCATION ?

While the Alt-Right and Republicans and our media and even our Democratic Party 'leaders' are putting a nice face on it, our government is transitioning into what promises to be the most Wild Wild West destructive one ever in the White House.  

The bottom-line (that everyone seems to be avoiding with determination) is that this Republican campaign has been dominated by a dialogue where truth and honesty are treated as dispensable jokes.  Facade, fabricating alt-facts, bullying opponents, bluster are all used in what's become a generally accepted amoral exercise of avoiding objective reality.  To me it seems, another example of "Seepage" in action, although this time in politics rather than science.  Though the same cynical PR machine has driven that seepage.  (FYI - http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyseepage.html). 

This election 2016 should make clear to all concerned thinking citizens out there that no body has our back, not our political leaders, not the pundits of our liking, not the news media, certainly not those egomaniacal oligarchs who are today's masters of the universe and are busy with their own disconnected agenda.   They are going to obliterate We The Proud American People and our achievements and future goals in direct proportion to how many millions of Americans get off the sidelines and take on some responsible for turning around the national degeneration we have been witnessing.  A million conversations across the left and right fences of our respective backyards.  Don't need to go far, your family, friends, co-workers, etc.

And now we come to Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, someone who hates our public education system.  Someone who is so damned full of herself, that she believes she has a personal relationship with the God of space and time, life and love.  Heck this petty, self-centered human has so little self-recognition that she believes her personal god has sent her on a national mission to rescue American education from multi-culturalism and science based learning.  God told her to do it!  Her god has also told her that this planet I inhabit is 6,000 years old and if I don't agree with her personal belief, well, that makes me an enemy - that's it.  Nothing to talk about.  Objective down to Earth evidence means nothing when confronting the self-certainty of DeVos brand of religious zealotry.  

Americans, it's your move.  Got it in ya?  Can ya stand up to their dogma based bullying?  Better do something, or get steamrollered.  Democracy, live it or lose it!

DeVos Devoted Career To Dismantling Public Education

Nov 23, 2016 by Maggie Garrett in Wall of Separation

Today, president-elect Donald Trump tapped Betsy DeVos to serve as Secretary of Education in his administration.

DeVos, though, has all the wrong credentials to serve as Education Secretary.  An Education Secretary should be devoted to promoting and improving public education, but she has devoted her career to dismantling it.  Indeed, she’s the leader of the crusade to create private school vouchers, heading up American Federation for Children and giving huge sums of money to enact voucher programs across the country.

Knowing the troubling stance Trump has taken on education, this is no real surprise.  Trump has said he wants to create an expensive, nationwide school voucher program at a staggering price tag of $20 billion.  His plan would divert that money from existing federal programs for new “choice” block grants to states, which will fund private, charter, and home schools. That means there will be $20 billion taken away from existing programs that often serve our neighborhood public schools. DeVos, no doubt, will lead the charge.