Ungoverning: Betsy DeVos and Privatizing Public Education

In late November, President Elect Trump picked Betsy DeVos to head the Department of Education as Education Secretary.

From Democracy Now a 3 person panel on Betsy DeVos:

If confirmed by the Senate, DeVos could become the most anti-public school Education Secretary since the Office of Education was established in 1867.

Diane Ravitch: (Yes, if you haven’t been paying attention for about 10 years, yes, that Diane Ravitch)

• “She (Ms. DeVos) is a member of the Religious Right with billions of dollars behind her so her America Foundation for Children has used its strategic giving to promote vouchers all over the country.  … The important thing to note about vouchers and charters is that neither of them has every been approved by popular vote.”
• “Her main focus is school privatization.  School privatization has been tried in Chile and in Sweeden and the results have been very clear.  The first and most important product is hyper-segregation because everybody goes off to be with people just like themselves.”

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More here at Think Progress…

How much could Trump’s education secretary damage public schools? Just look at Detroit.

• “Throughout DeVos’ career as a school choice advocate, she has aggressively pushed for the expansion of charter schools. Although many charter schools across the country benefit low-income families seeking an alternative to public schools, educational equity advocates often raise concerns that a lack of accountability allows less effective charter schools to thrive. And DeVos has been at the forefront of efforts to push against this accountability.”
• “Now, for-profit companies operate 80 percent of charters in Michigan, according to The New York Times.”
• “DeVos has pushed for less regulation and oversight of charter schools and stated that public schools are failing children — all without advocating for better state funding of public schools.”

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And in case you missed it here is a NSFW review from John Oliver and HBO on Charter Schools from August 21st.

One of many low-lights, from David Brennan of White Hat Management:  “Education is first, last, and always, a business.  If it is run like a business, it can be done profitably.”

Ugh.

Celebrating Landing on a Comet, Part II

In case you missed it, here’s day two of home page NYT.com news from Rosetta and it’s lander Philae.

And here is a fun diversion based on the landing.  Half the fun was figuring out how it works, so I’ll leave it to you and if anyone is frustrated and can’t figure it out, I’ll tell you how to work it in the comment section later.

Philae, harpoons, whales and comets

Shame On Whom Again? ….

…. Resources for a discussion on the ethics of money in politics with a focus on CA Senate Districts 14 and 34.

CA District 14 and 34 are the two races the HCDCC has chosen to contribute to (so far) heavily after having received large union donations.  A1 and John Fullerton have asked some pointed questions or have some made sharp accusations regarding HCDCC spending.  Here is the context before addressing their concerns.

First a basic primer about the California State Senate.  Here is a map of the Senate districts.  You will find in a little blurb in the legend of the map the fact that 2014 will be the first election post redistricting for the red or even districts.  This includes District 2, even though the election is all but certainly more of a ceremony rather than an election for Sonoma Supervisor Mike McGuire.

The races the HCDCC has contributed to are:

a)  Chavez (D) vs. Vidak (R) in Fresno’s California Senate District 14 .  In the last election in 2010 which was pre-redistricting there was a 47% Republican and 34% Democratic population.  This time District 14, which has moved significantly has 49% Democratic registration to 29% Republican as of 9/5/14.

and b) Solorio (D) vs. Nguyen (R) in Orange County’s District 34.  Pre and Post -re-districting took the voter registration in this district from 44% (D) to 33% (R) to 39% (D) to 34% (R) as of early September.

Below are the contributions as of early yesterday morning including all contributions above $1,000 after 9/30 and all contributions from 7/1/14 to 9/30/14.  As we know from our local election news, all contributions over $100 are itemized.  I’ve included excel spread sheets with all the reported contributions, and for those without access to a spreadsheet, this post ends with screen shots of the candidate’s top donors.

a) CA Sentate District 14:

Vidak for Senate 101514

$1,213,391.49 from 762 contributors.

Chavez for Senate 101614

$1,415,199.28 from 211 contributors.

b) CA Senate District 34

Solorio for Senate 101514

$1,445,804.48 in contributions from 539 contributors.

Nguyen for Senate 101514

$1,498,404 in contributions from 974 contributors.

John and A1, I’ve done most of the hard work for you, all you have to do is click the links so we can have an informed discussion about the ethics of money in politics and who should be pointing and crying “for shame” to whom.

I’d also like to frame the issue with this graph of income inequality (as always) and this graph below of declining worker compensation for increased productivity over the past 30 years (From the working class oriented Economic Policy Institute).  You of course are welcome to link or reference your own charts.

For those readers without a spreadsheet program (one of the major disadvantages of our push to mobile computing) here are screen shots of the top donors for each of the candidates mentioned above.

District 14:

Vidak (R)

Chavez (D)

District 34:

Nguyen (R)

Solorio (D)

Freedom, Tyranny, and Oppression

I wanted to thank reader and commenter John Vigil for his contributions.  John is a self-described Non Partisan which sounds from his posts absolutely right.  He is fair minded and willing to have a conversation which is to be applauded imho.

But his posts do have that fundamentally conservative vein of cynicism directed toward government.  Dissent and protest is of course bi-partisan and John is right to watch over, criticize and work to improve government, but we shouldn’t work to weaken it just…. because.  I see and understand the arguments behind ideas like term limits and voting to balance the partisanship of the different branches of government, but I find that they are used by conservatives to fundamentally transform our society to this libertarian utopia where private concerns rule.

2010 National Spending per GDP Comparison

Above is a chart from Wikipedia on 2010 Governmental Spending as a percentage of GDP.  Most people are not chart people I realize, but charts are such an effective means of conveying information.  What this chart shows is the US economy is like other countries including Russia, China and Mexico is heavily weighed toward private industry.  The heart of this difference of course is health care, all other wealthy industrialized countries have decided that universal health care should be an essential part of civilization.  We’ve bucked that trend.  But it isn’t just health care, it’s a national argument that conservatives and Republicans are winning that the private sector runs most everything better than government.  They contend government, bureaucrats, politicians, etc are bad words because they are inherently inefficient and usually corrupt.

The truth is government can run many institutions of our society much more equitably and efficiently and these organizations and institutions and individuals are no more corrupt that those in the private sector.  In fact I would argue that we tend to focus on the corruption of government and politicians largely because they are accountable to us and their misdeeds get attention.  A recent TS article quoted a HumCo Sheriff saying we are probably only enforcing 2% of the local illegal marijuana trade, and that is the illegal private sector, think about how much nonsense goes on in the legal private sector that we never hear about.

But any conversation critical of the private sector is difficult to have when framed by terms like Socialism, Communism, and the latest addition,  Tyranny.

So when John says Freedom, Oppression and Tyranny I think we tend to think about Government’s tyranny over us.  My thoughts based on a lifetime’s worth of experience of the more subtle tyranny of the private sector.  Here is a visual representation of one type of tyranny that no one is mentioning.  It is from only very indirectly related story in the New York Times a couple of days ago.

The Tyranny of Sprawl (imho)

John, I hope that was fair.  I really appreciate you contributions and hope we can continue the conversation.  It’s not fair that I get to posts the posts with all the pictures and charts, but I’m happy to continue the conversation on your blog too or whatever.

Public v Private: The Affordable Care Act

Two landmarks in politics happen today – one from each governing philosophy.  I’m actually not sure if it’s a coincidence or not that they both happen on the same day.  On the one hand the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace opens today.  On the other hand the government is shut down, again.

In the end, after all the hot air and legalese, this is about one thing.  Should government be empowered to act in society?  The Right might frame the question like this, does government have the constitutional right to act in society?

What’s happening today, on both fronts the ACA and the impasse between the House and Executive is ultimately about this question, should government be empowered to act on universal health care?

Democrats say yes, Republicans say no.  The current debate on a national health care plan goes back to the early 1990’s*.  At the time the Right deemed the Left’s attempts to solve our national disgrace Hillarycare today it’s Obamacare.  Back in the 1990’s in response to Hillarycare the Right got behind The Heritage Foundation’s plan which actually is the heart of Obama Care today.  So in a real sense the Right has won this argument, at least so far.

Of course you will never, ever hear them say that.  To jibe with their narrative where the Democrats have rammed the ACA through the process in a strictly partisan manner, they have to completely forgotten that a) the framework for this plan started as their approach to a public response to our national health care crises and b) that the first largely successful and popular experiment with this approach in Massachusetts was passed with a Republican Governor, one who was the Republican’s standard bearer during the last election, btw.

In order to win his party’s nomination, Mitt Romney had to run as far away from his plan as possible.  Ultimately the conflict over the ACA is not about the ACA itself, it’s about how far right the Republicans have shifted.  The ideology that the free market will solve all problems is as much a crazy Utopian dream as the far left’s defunct dreams of a purely socialist state.  Unfortunately the right wing/libertarian free-market fantasy is an ideology that wins hearts, minds and votes because it has an unbelievable amount of money behind it.  With that money the ideology can buy a narrative that turns truth on it’s head.

It’s a narrative you are going to hear a great deal about until this impasse is over.  You can hear it anytime you like before or after the government reopens and the ACA is up and running on Rush, Glenn or Fox.  Please don’t buy it.  In the end it’s a lie – a golden lie that is making a lot of people a lot of money all the while destroying the fabric of our country.

And, btw, it was fun to take the Right’s challenge to call the ACA Obamacare.  Well, we won the last election largely on Obamacare despite the Right’s attempt to tarnish the ACA by attaching the President’s name to it.  We  owned it for the election, now it’s time to call it by it’s proper name.  It’s not the Democrat’s law or Obama’s law.  Despite the Right’s tantrum, it’s the law of the land and we will be better for it.

Related articles

• Bernie Sanders: Obamacare is a ‘good Republican program’ (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)
• GOP lawmakers bridle at calling Affordable Care Act the law (thehill.com)
• ObamaCare: The Latest and Greatest Bastardization of the Constitution (americanthinker.com)
• ObamaCare and the “let it burn” theory of socialist collapse (humanevents.com)

Blog note:  the articles above are a selection I made from several offered by WordPress for each post based on the text of what I have written.  I don’t get a thorough preview, but often I’ll choose articles that look good and come from different perspectives.  It’s fun and easy and interesting to see how effective text-based searches can be.