2016 Nov 23^rd

Betsy DeVos is now Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education. It figures; Trump has never been elected to anything before and Betsy DeVos has never spent a day in a classroom teaching anything. Even so, she knows the answer to America’s education problems: privatize, privatize, privatize! This is the Republican solution to all our problems. (Yes, even the military was privatized by Betsy DeVos’ brother, Eric Prince, in the infamous “Blackwater” scandal, where private security guards started killing people unnecessarily in Iraq.)

Eric, Betsy and the whole DeVos clan are very rich and they are devoted to the associated Republican principles. Their money came from the Amway Company. Some had called the ideas presented by Amway a pyramid scheme because the individual entrepreneur could recruit others who could recruit still others, and so on getting a portion of the profits from each person in the chain. Perfectly legal and it kept lots of middle class housewives out of the local bars…and it made the DeVos family a ton of money.

The DeVos folks are staunch Republicans and so were not jumping up and down with delight when Trump won the nomination. Their education has been, for the most part, in religiously themed colleges. Betsy DeVos has never attended a public school of any kind. I would guess that they were not amused by Trump’s tape of him bragging about what he could do with women because he was rich and famous. Well, that was then, now when offered a cabinet appointment Betsy DeVos is right there willing to sacrifice most anything to serve her country and be called Madame Secretary.

She might have a rude awakening. Much educational policy is determined by the states themselves and  Republicans they are very resistant to intrusion into their state’s educational system by the heavy hand of the federal government. DeVos attempting to throw her billions around in this theater might get her some “butt out” advice. In any event, she will be much more limited in what she can do in a government employee, even a cabinet member, than as a super-rich civilian. She will find out.

Then there is her rejection of gay marriage. Trump in an interview with Lesley Stahl says that the SCOTUS has spoken and gay marriage is the law of the land. So what will DeVos have to say about school bathrooms  sorted by birth certificate gender?  Are we having fun yet?