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Betsy DeVos Confirmed as Education Secretary

36 points| dzlobin | 9 years ago |nytimes.com

28 comments

order

llamataboot|9 years ago

Well, education as a public good had a nice run. Not that it has been in particularly good shape in this country, but we have blueprints from other countries on how to improve it.

Instead we have a completely inexperienced person in control of $60bil+ because she paid off Congress. Seems par for the course these days.

ComradeTaco|9 years ago

Fortunately, most public school policy funding occurs at the state and local levels as compared to the federal level.

DeVos is and remains exceedingly unqualified for the position. She's literally never been taught or been taught in a public school in the entirety of her life. Her B.S. is in poly sci.

Her brother founded what was once known as Blackwater, the same Blackwater that murdered civilians in Iraq. Her husband is heir to the Amway fortune, a name quite prominent in the multi-level marketing community. They also donated 200 million USD to Republican campaigns and causes.

Absolutely absurd.

danielvf|9 years ago

Source on paying off congress?

ethanpil|9 years ago

I think the public school system in this country is terrible. Personally excited to see some radical changes and ready to give this a chance.

Too much bureaucracy, institutionalization, unionization and inertia going on. Extremely strange and inconsistent funding/taxation patterns and complete lack of oversight or accountability has been the norm for 30+ years.

Magicstatic|9 years ago

As with most events that have occurred since Trump took the presidency, I am concerned, but optimistic. She has my full support, I hope she makes great changes to a system that desperately needs it.

Flammy|9 years ago

So there was some press this morning on the democratic filibuster... It is not clear to me why it didn't last longer. Can anyone shed some light?

vanattab|9 years ago

The Democrats removed the 60 vote requirement to break all filibusters for all appointments excluding SCOTUS appointments. It is turning around to bite them in the butt.

jkimmel|9 years ago

Harry Reed reduced the threshold for confirming non-Supreme Court nominees to a simple majority, preventing a filibuster.

The Senate was locked 50-50, in which case the Vice President becomes the deciding vote.

compuguy|9 years ago

It wasn't a filibuster. The Senate got rid of that for everything except Supreme Court nominations.

swang|9 years ago

It's good to be rich. Donate to a whole bunch of Senators, win a job despite having no qualifications for that role.

jrnichols|9 years ago

I've also noticed that most of my Facebook friends quickly forget that the guy their hero Obama appointed did a terrible job and the teachers unions demanded he resign, which he later did.

They won't even give DeVos a chance, and most of them, it's because Obama didn't pick her.

joshmn|9 years ago

Bad news for grizzly bears across America.

mark_sz|9 years ago

devOS?

singularity2001|9 years ago

Good humor seems to be counterproductive to the majority

maverick_iceman|9 years ago

Glad to see this happening. The federal government needs to completely get out of education. A good first step would be to dismantle the Department of Education.

xemoka|9 years ago

Further inequality between states in the union will only continue to benefit the current ruling bodies, unless the states can come up with some way to shelter their populations (shrink the federal government someway/how). Unfortunately, not all the states see it yet.

Eventually it will come to the point where some of them will question the union at all—as an outsider I look forward to the independent states movements gaining stronger footholds.