Betsy DeVos Confirmed as Education Secretary

Betsy DeVos Confirmed as Education Secretary(nytimes.com)

36 points by dzlobin 9 years ago | 28 comments

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.

dragonwriter 9 years ago | | |

> Fortunately, most public school policy is determined at the state and local levels as compared to the federal level.

Quite a lot of it is influenced by incentives and conditions attached to federal funds, both those explicit in law and those resulting from the Department of Education's particular choices in applying the law.

DeVos will control the latter and (presumably, via influence within the Administration and controlling the DoE's interactions with Congress) substantially influence the former.

danielvf 9 years ago | |

Source on paying off congress?

swang 9 years ago | | |

https://twitter.com/xdelmar59/status/829026587437780992

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/trumps-educat...

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.

ComradeTaco 9 years ago | | |

Is there anything that she has accomplished or done in her life that indicates that she will improve things? She had a lot of trouble answering absurdly basic questions during her confirmation hearing.

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.

bb88 9 years ago | | |

Not sure about that. At some point government has to work in spite of a reluctant congress. The rules should be about making governance better, not just helping our side to win the battle.

dcre 9 years ago | |

"Back in 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid changed the Senate’s filibuster rules so presidential Cabinet nominees only required 51 votes, rather than 60, to be confirmed."

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/17/14251600/tr...

ikeyany 9 years ago | | |

> Republicans warned that it would not only tear apart cross-party relationships in the Senate, but it will come back to haunt Democrats if they return to the minority. "You will no doubt come to regret this, and you may regret it a lot sooner than you think," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., warned Democrats.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/11/21/harry...

ComradeTaco 9 years ago | | |

Tragically, the Democrats believed that the Republicans would nominate people who were at least tangentially qualified for the position. Took 'em only one election to screw it up.

1wheel 9 years ago | |

There's no longer a filibuster for cabinet nominees:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/4/donald-trumps...

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.

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.

kapauldo 9 years ago |

Let us pray.

mark_sz 9 years ago |

devOS?

singularity2001 9 years ago | |

Good humor seems to be counterproductive to the majority

shenanigoat 9 years ago | | |

Succinct and accurate.

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.