Trump Administration Plays Havoc with Education–and your tax dollars
by Linda Beale
Trump Administration Plays Havoc with Education–and your tax dollars
Betsy DeVos was confirmed as Secretary of Education in a Senate vote that had every Democratic Senator voting against her, along with two brave Republican Senators (Lisa Murkowski, Alaska; and Susan Collins, Maine). Thanks to those no-voters who showed integrity. Regrettably, the vote created a tie, broken in DeVos’s favor by Trump’s Veep, Mike Pence. Note that the result is that Senators representing by far the vast majority of the American people voted AGAINST DeVos.
As a Michigander, I can tell you firsthand that this is a disastrous choice for the head of the most important Education agency in the country. Betsy DeVos is just another one of Trump’s billionaire crony capitalists who are using service in the government–which is supposed to be about service on behalf of We the People–as a way to funnel more money to their fellow crony capitalists through elimination of protective regulations, open exploitation of federal lands, and willful ignorance about the harm that their crony capitalist policies have done and will do to the economy.
ASIDE: Check out, for example, Melania Trump’s new lawsuit claiming $150 million in damages from The Daily Mail because it’s article on the company she modeled nude for suggesting that the company was an ‘escort service’ cost her the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to get rich off of her “multi-term” exposure to being the most photographed woman in the world–i.e., (not explicitly stated but clearly implied) her status as First Lady.
Betsy DeVos is an heiress with billions who married into another crony capitalist family with billions. The DeVos family has used its wealth to curry favor and influence in state and federal government. IN particular, Betsy DeVos has been busy using her wealth to remake public education in Michigan in line with her own particular religious and crony-capitalist views on Michigan’s education. She supports junk science including “intelligent design“, the pseudo-science replacement term for religious “creationism”, in an attempt to undo scientific support for evolution. She has pushed charter schools on Detroit–blaming any education shortcomings on dedicated teachers and disadvantaged students in public schools that have been deprived of hundreds of millions of state dollars owed them while turning a blind eye to the abject failures of for-profit charter schools in which ‘management companies’ rip off taxpayer dollars to overpay executives without having to comply with any of the accountability measures that are pressed on public schools that are underfunded.
Betsy DeVos knows nothing about public education, knows very little about the privatized charter schools she pushes, knows nothing about education law, and knows nothing about improving education in inner cities or poor rural areas. What she does know is that she supports any way possible to take taxpayer money and give it to religious and other private schools to use without accountability to the public.
I predict that the result of her term as Secretary of Education will bring further devastation of public schools, more funneling of taxpayer money to line the pockets of private school managers and even less requirements of assessment and accountability from those very managers, a dearth of fact-based evidence for anything in education, more and more rip-offs of ordinary Americans by for-profit purported schools like the fraudulent so-called “university” that was “Trump University“–i.e., a precipitous slide in American education caused by the crony capitalist privatization impulse and real harm to the children and grandchildren of that minority of the American population that voted Trump and his ilk into office.
The result is that tax dollars that public education so desperately needs will be sent instead to the pockets of the already rich. Public education will continue to struggle to innovate and expand programs that can reach underprivileged children who don’t have enough food, shelter or home stability to learn well. MOre and more children will be subject to religious indoctrination rather than education, and be less prepared to deal with the global world we all live in and to take the kinds of jobs–like renewable energy, and engineering and medical research–that provide the basis for a broad-based, stable, productive economy that makes life better for all of us.
Trump voters, beware. You thought Trump’s promise to ‘restore energy jobs’ was one devoted to helping you. Look, there are already more jobs in electric power generation from renewable energy in this country than in coal. See, e.g., US solar power employs more people than oil, coal and gas combined, report shows (Independent.co.UK, Jan 23, 1017); There are now twice as many solar jobs as coal jobs in the US (Vox Feb. 2, 2017). The way to ‘restore jobs’ (whether energy or otherwise) isn’t to try to drive the country back to the 1950s when white men were almost the only workers at any decent paying jobs and the multinational corporations had not yet taken over U.S. businesses and moved much manufacturing to other countries. The way to create jobs in the United States is to embrace the creativity and ingenuity of the American people, build an environmentally better world with clean water, clean air, clean food, regulating the companies to protect the people, and teach our children facts rather than “alternative facts” about the world we live in. Climate change denialism, continuation of the hundred-year-old giveaways to oil and gas and coal industry polluters while squelching assistance to the new renewable energy industries; privatizing education and health care (including moving Medicare to the States in a way that would allow them to make serious cutbacks in health care for those on Medicare)–these things that the Republicans stand for will ultimately leave America the Great more of a third-world country and seriously hurt that group of rural and suburban ordinary Americans that voted for Trump more than anyone else.
Betsy DeVos is the most obvious example of a Trump crony money-bags who has no business in government, but there are plenty of others that Trump has put forward, such as the EPA director nominee (a person who has filed numerous lawsuits intent on destroying the EPA and doesn’t want the government to act to protect Americans from rich polluters), the Labor Secretary nominee (a person whose company has frequently violated worker protection laws and who wants businesses able to make profits by exploiting (and harming) their workers), and the Attorney General nominee (Jeff Sessions, a person who in his career made a point of trying to squelch black vote organization drives).
The Trump administration is engaged in class warfare in its most heinous form–using the agencies of the federal government that are designed to protect ordinary American people to roll back those protections and give away federal resources to crony capitalists. And the Republican party leaders, after their obstructionism of health care and environmental protection for working class folk during the last 8 years, are now rolling over backward in spineless obedience to the Trump machine steamrolling over ordinary Americans’ needs.
The U.S. government has no business in K-12 education in the first place.
I am beginning to believe that Warren is a fake name being used by 45.
Their ignorance of the Constitution seems to be exactly equal.
Linda Beale
let me emphasize that i agree with you entirely about DeVos and privatization generally. my objection below is about practical politics.
there is no danger of “undoing scientific support for evolution.” “intelligent design” is purely a religious issue (on both sides of the argument.”
attacking “intelligent design” merely costs the left the votes of people who would otherwise support the economic and environmental policies of the left.
you have plenty of ammunition to attack DeVos (and Trump) without getting into an issue you cannot win and has nothing to do with what is important for Americans.
By all means, EMichael, show us where in the Constitution the States gave power over their school system to the U.S. government.
Intelligent design becomes a problem in the event vouchers are allowed for religious schools and it is used in science classes to the exclusion of actual science which can definitely happen. Public money should not be allowed to finance that.
@Warren,
The Constitution means exactly what the Supreme Court says it means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education
For anyone who follows this blog and might be interested, I just posted a series of tweets to a Greg Sargent tweet re the 9th Cir. panel’s opinion in which I respond to Ben Wittes’s and Trump’s tweet complaining that the 9th Cir. panel didn’t “bother to” mention INA (f):
I suggest that the reason is that the Trump administration’s interpretation of Section (f) would render it a violation of the separation of powers between the executive brand AND CONGRESS, under the Constitution’s Art. 1 and 2.
The doctrine of separation of powers bars Congress from delegating to the executive branch unfettered powers and powers that the Constitution gives to Congress or to the judicial branch. That’s why the line-item-veto statute was held unconstitutional.
I also say in my tweet series that I was surprised that Washington State’s lawyer didn’t argue this at the oral argument, although he guessed correctly that relying only on the issue of judicial reviewability on the equal protection and due process issues, coupled with the federal government’s burden of persuasion at the interlocutory-appeal stage of showing a likelihood of victory in the full appeal, would suffice.
But I say that I do expect that the issue of the breadth of Congressional authority to delegate to the executive branch unfettered lawmaking powers, re immigration and national security or anything else, to be a key issue at the Supreme Court. And I’m betting that the Court will rule, with dissents only by Alito and Thomas, that the 9th Cir. panel was spot-on.
This is a repost of a comment I just posted in today’s Open Thread.
Joel, what does the Brown decision have to do with creating the Department of Education and spending U.S. government money on K-12 education?
Beverly, what does Trump’s executive order have to do with DeVos and the Department of Education?
Jack D
probably not. scientific understanding of evolution will not be affected by anything taught in religious schools.
probably state support of private schools is a very bad idea, and the people of the states should reject spending public money that way. but the people are not aware enough to actually do anything to stop it.
nor are they aware enough to actually do anything about the understanding of evolution.
meanwhile it’s stupid politics for the left to pick a fight over a religious issue.
you seem to think the purpose of schools is to indoctrinate children with correct political or religious ideas. that of course is exactly what they attempt to do, but ti’s not very attractive in us to embrace the idea.
Nothing, Warren. Just sayin’, you know.
Warren asks “Joel, what does the Brown decision have to do with creating the Department of Education and spending U.S. government money on K-12 education?”
Nothing. Why do you ask?
I was responding to your question “show us where in the Constitution the States gave power over their school system to the U.S. government.”
Brown vs Board was an example of the federal government exercising federal power over states. The Supreme Court thereby found Constitutional justification for the states to give power over their school system to the U.S. Government.
Hope that helps.
I can show you, Warren. Or at tell you where to look: Amendment Fourteen, Section 1, which includes the Due Process, Equal Protection, and Privileges and Immunities clauses.
I recognize that wingers never acknowledge the Fourteenth Amendment when they’re babbling about Originalism and Textualism. Except, of course, when they’re invoking the Equal Protection clause to challenge the constitutionality of affirmative action, or some such.
But the Fourteenth Amendment is in the Constitution. Trust me. And while you’re verifying that, check out its Section 5 as well as its Section 1. Section 5 expressly authorizes Congress to enact legislation to enforce Section 1.
Which brings me to the apparent fact that you think federal funds for state and local school districts can’t, constitutionally, be tied to acceptance by the states or school districts of certain conditions. but you are wrong.
And Betsy DeVos well knows that. It’s how she plans to try to force states to pay for religious indoctrination of K-12 kids.
Coberly, I certainly do not believe the public schools should have anything to do with indoctrinating children with “correct” or otherwise religious ideas. I have no idea where you came up with that. My only fight with religious schools would be their asking for public money.
JackD
I guess I got the idea from your comment that “intelligent design becomes a problem if vouchers are used for religious schools that teach it…”[paraphrase]
i admit that this does not necessarily fit my counter that you appear to believe that schools exist to teach religious and political ideas.
but since i agreed with you that using state money to fund private school is a bad idea, let me contradict myself about that as well.
some public schools are so bad (i know from experience) that it is quite understandable that people who can afford it would want to send their kids to better private schools. then it might be easy to understand why people who can’t afford private schools would think it reasonable to ask for the state to “refund” the taxes they pay for public schools to them to so they could apply the money to a private school tuition.
i don’t know where honest, informed, and sane people would come down on this question if they had a chance to discuss it face to face. but i suspect they would just shout at each other and then have it out at the polls with all the chicanery that involves.
meanwhile i guess that i at least am not worried about the future of science if private schools teach creative design. you’d be surprised what kids learn out of school. and don’t learn in it.
I hope you’re right about what kids learn out of school re science. I am aware of religious schools in my region that apologize to parents for using text books required by the state that assert the earth is more than 5,000 years old. They have the books but don’t use that part of them. These are not schools that are relief from bad city schools. No thanks. I don’t want public money going there.
“I can… tell you where to look: Amendment Fourteen, Section 1, which includes the Due Process, Equal Protection, and Privileges and Immunities clauses.”
None of those authorize Congress to spend money on K-12 schools.
“We the people. . . to promote the general welfare, . . . ” Could that apply to public education? Nah!
Gosh, Warren, both Joel and I thought your request to be pointed to where in the Constitution the States gave power over their school system to the U.S. government. We didn’t understand that that you meant only “where in the Constitution the States gave power to Congress to spend money on K-12 schools.”
Nor did we recognize that you’re claiming that when the original colonies ratified the Constitution, and when each of the other 37 territories that became states, and when each Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, the states were opting out of Article 1, Section 8, a.k.a., the Taxing and Spending Clause. Or at least the General Welfare clause in it.
But I do think you have a point that unless the Constitution identifies a particular, precise type of spending for the general welfare, those federal budgets that Congress passes each year and the president signs—including, surely, those that President Washington signed—are entirely unconstitutional, with the exception of the military budget and, soon, a wall along the Mexican border unless Mexico pays buys enough goods produced there and imported to the U.S. to pay for it through a tariff. These qualify as providing for the common defense, er, defence. But nothing else does.
Which brings me to President Eisenhower, who was obligated once he signed that interstate-highway act was obligated to pay for it out of his military pension, and Teddy Roosevelt, who once he signed the statute creating the National Parks and the National Parks Service was required to buy that land from the States using his inheritance and creating a private REIT to maintain the parks.
Both of those presidents should have been impeached and removed from office, but Congress never does what it’s supposed to.
Land Ordinance of 1785 – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Ordinance_of_1785
The Land Ordinance of 1785 was adopted by the United States Congress of the Confederation … In later States, section 36 of each township was also designated as a “school section”. The Point of Beginning for the 1785 survey was where Ohio (as the easternmost part of the Northwest Territory), Pennsylvania and Virginia …
JackD
Science will survive.
meanwhile, some of those people don’t want to pay taxes for schools where their kids don’t get any education at all.
i don’t agree with them, but i do think the government needs to do a better job of working with the parents to provide a meaningful education for all the kids.
just can’t get excited about “religious” issues.
JackD
no kid who disbelieves in Darwin because of what he was taught in a religious school was ever going to believe in it if he was taught it in a public school. Nor is he going to have any effect on science whatsoever. Unless he is motivated by, say, “Darwin’s Black Box” to study biology in order to refute Darwin and ends up discovering some missing links in the problem of complexity.
you have a lower opinion of human intelligence than i do if you believe that kids don’t outgrow what they are taught in school.
there are some who comment on this very blog who undoubtedly went to public school and learned nothing at all.
it is bad politics and somewhat unseemly for liberals to get excited about religious brainwashing in private schools while ignoring the horrible conditions in at leas some public schools. including the systematic brainwashing that every public school engages in from the first grade through at least sophomore economics.
I plead not guilty to ignoring the horrible conditions in some public schools. I don’t support poor economics education in public schools either but don’t consider that to constitute unconstitutional behavior as is the case with religious indoctrination in public schools. Providing public money for private schools will simply make public schools worse.
“you have a lower opinion of human intelligence than i do ”
The traits of high intelligence and good judgement are unlinked in H. sapiens.
Regardless of how you feel about the intelligence of your fellow voter, it remains unconstitutional for public schools to fund religious teaching. Creationism as an explanation for life on earth is religious doctrine. Taxpayer money should not be used to fund Christianist Creationism, or any other form of creationism, in public school science classes.
The allegedly “horrible” conditions of certain public schools will not be improved by using taxpayer dollars to fund Christianist indoctrination.
joel and jack D
as usual, my simple idea that it is not smart politics to fight “religous” people on what is to them the foundation of all their hopes, and to us is nothing… has no effect on anything we care about… except of course to lose us elections by taking the bait..
has turned into some kind of argument that seems to suggest that you believe that it is viatlly important no taxes get spent on something you don’t believe in.
how do you suppose the other side feels?
let me repeat in case it has been forgotten… i am against school privatization and really really against Trump and his appointees (deVos). i’m trying to talk about how not to lose elections because of issues that have no importance whatsoever to us.
Coberly, you are, of course, free to ignore violations of the constitution that you do not care about. Likewise, we are free to resist those that we do care about. Peace.
Typo correction: First sentence in my last comment to Warren should say: “…. both Joel and I thought your request was to be pointed to where in the Constitution the States gave power over their school system to the U.S. government.”
I won’t bother with the other typos in that comment, since y’all can figure out what those sentences mean.
Wow, Dale, you don’t recognize a difference between kids being taught grammar, history, science, math and kids being taught creationism not as a part of religion but instead actual fact? Being taught creationism not as actual fact has no effect on anything we care about? Kids who are taught this as fact and are not taught actual fact—i.e., evolution—outgrow the belief that creationism is fact and learn about evolution through their Facebook feeds?
If creationism is part of what to religious voters is the foundation of all their hopes, then they haven’t outgrown it and learned about evolution.
I care enough about kids’ having to go to awful schools that I used to be a supporter of vouchers, albeit not for religious schools. But the fact is that private non-religion-affiliated schools are not exactly plentiful in most neighborhoods and small towns, and permitting vouchers for religious schools would result in a sudden sprouting of religious schools, especially evangelical Christian ones. If the interest is in enabling kids to get a decent education, then vouchers are far more likely to accomplish it if religious schools are not included in the voucher program.
Anyone who’s not from the Bible Belt and suddenly spends some time there (e.g., me) is likely to be dumbfounded at the level and sheer breadth of profound ignorance of so, so many small-town Belters and people who are originally from small towns or rural counties, especially non-millennials. God. (Pun intended.) It’s just … it’s just ….
I myself wouldn’t object so much to vouchers being used for religious schools if there were some enforceable—and enforced—curriculum requirements, including educating about evolution AND the Constitution’s establishment clause. It might be the only way to get kids from these backgrounds informed about these and other things that amount objectively to an education.
But your claim that denying public funds for religious schools would suddenly start trumping the type of economic and power issues, like strong labor unions, vigorous antitrust enforcement, and free or very low public college and university tuition (all three of these were big Sanders issues), of the sort that used to draw people to the Dem Party, strikes me a ridiculous.
Beverly
always glad to be ridiculous for your benefit.
JackD
I went to public schools. i must have missed that bit where it was unconstitutional to teach special creation.
or to use tax money to help “religious” schools. in fact i got a national defense loan to go to a “religious” college. it turned out to be a lousy college. but then so did the state university i went to after that.
but one more time: letting religious schools teach special creation will not impede the march of science one iota. maybe there are more important things we could find to agree with those people about.
(or not… certainly there is a lot of wicked…evil… nonsense promulgated by people who call themselves religious.
on the other hand it was people who called themselves religious who got the anti slavery movement going…. and were called evil by some folks who thought states rights was in the constitution.
you never can tell.
‘“We the people. . . to promote the general welfare, . . . ” Could that apply to public education? Nah!’
Hmm — hadn’t really thought of it, since the States seem quite capable of managing their public schools far better than does Congress, which is responsible for the District of Columbia public schools.
Perhaps when the DC public schools are a shining example for the country, then we can consider that Congress’ legislating for the State school systems could provide for the States’ general welfare.
Loans and grants for college are not the same as vouchers for K-12 education. I suppose there wouldn’t be any problem with discussing creation theory in public schools. Calling it science, however, won’t and shouldn’t fly. Religion, or comparative religion, can also be a legitimate subject for study in public schools but not proselytizing for any particular religion. This is really pretty basic stuff.
“Loans and grants for college are not the same as vouchers for K-12 education.”
Seems to me that a voucher is exactly like a grant, except that everyone would get them.
“Religion, or comparative religion, can also be a legitimate subject for study in public schools but not proselytizing for any particular religion.”
And yet in no voucher program is there the proselytizing of any particular religion. The parents would choose. If they choose a Catholic school, or a Muslim school, or a Hindu school, or a non-religious school, what is that to you?
Yes, everyone would get them. That’s why they are different. College grants and loans are granted for reasons unrelated to education of the general public. Particularly in the case of grants.
Voucher programs, financing private schools, religious or not, use public money in the case of religious schools to advance religion, both general and specific, which is a no no under the first amendment. I’m sorry you don’t approve but that’s the law. Want to change the law? Have at it.
JackD
pretty basic. why not move up a level? or are you saying i’m too dumb to get basic.
NDEA loans were considered related to education of the general public when i was getting them.
at least try to understand the other guys point of view.
Not too dumb; too stubborn.
“Voucher programs, financing private schools, religious or not, use public money in the case of religious schools to advance religion, both general and specific, which is a no no under the first amendment.”
Nonsense. Such a voucher program would not “[respect] an establishment of religion” at all. It would treat those establishments as it would any other. In that respect, a voucher program would be no different than Medicare money’s going to a Catholic or Muslim hospital, if the patient chooses such over a secular hospital.
JackD
probably at least one of us is being stubborn. for my part i think i am not being “stubborn” so much as “patient.”
Religious hospitals don’t teach or proselytize religion; religious schools do.
It is my understanding that federal student loans, and certainly grants, are not available to attend religious-training schools or programs such as seminaries or rabbinical colleges. Hmm; I wonder why.
I’m confused here about your last comment to me, Warren. The issue is federal funding of public K-12 general education, specifically federal funds for K-12 schools. Is that what you’re objecting to?
The federal statutes that provide funds to local public schools, through state governments, do come with strings attached, but states have the option of declining the funds and avoiding the strings.
Seriously; what is it that you’re complaining about?
“Religious hospitals don’t teach or proselytize religion; religious schools do.”
Not the ones I am familiar with. I taught Math and Computer Science in Catholic High School, and I’m not Catholic. The Islamic Saudi Academy also brought me in for an interview, and I’m not a Muslim, either. At the Catholic school, they had short services for the Catholics, but the non-Catholics (students and faculty) were not required to attend.
Mostly, they do not need to proselytize, since the vast majority of the students are already of that faith. It is a way for the church to serve the community.
Many churches, particularly the Methodists and LDS, sponsor Boy Scout troops. Our Methodist chartering organization actually helped with the establishment of a troop and a pack by the Muslim-American Association, and the Muslim Pack just had its Pinewood Derby in our church using our track.
It is serving — “Let your light so shine…” — not proselytizing.
“It is my understanding that federal student loans, and certainly grants, are not available to attend religious-training schools or programs such as seminaries or rabbinical colleges.”
Wrong.
http://www.pts.edu/UserFiles/File/Masters%20%20Loan%20Policies%20and%20Guidelines.pdf
“The issue is federal funding of public K-12 general education, specifically federal funds for K-12 schools. Is that what you’re objecting to?”
Yes. The States did not give the U.S. government that authority.
“The federal statutes that provide funds to local public schools, through state governments, do come with strings attached, but states have the option of declining the funds and avoiding the strings.”
Can they then keep the taxes that their State put into those programs?
“Seriously; what is it that you’re complaining about?”
Yes. The U.S. government is taking tax money from the people of a State, and “giving” some of it back — with strings attached, of course.
That is wrong.