Draining the Swamp

[seemslikeadream]

what is left?

This thread will document the swamp people left after Trump drains the swamp

First on the list Elaine Chao

Mitch McConnell’s Freighted Ties to a Shadowy Shipping Company
After drugs were found aboard the Ping May, a vessel owned by his wife’s family’s company, Colombian authorities are investigating.
By Lee FangTwitterOCTOBER 30, 2014

Mitch-McConnell’s-Freighted-Ties-to-a-Shadowy-Shipping-Company
Mitch McConnell’s father-in-law, James Chao (second from right), at the christening of the Ping May in Shanghai (Image: Shanghai Mulan Education Foundation)

Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ship’s chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about ninety pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.

The seizure of the narcotics shipment in the Caribbean port occurred far away from Kentucky, the state in which Senator Mitch McConnell is now facing a career-defining election. But the Republican Senate minority leader has the closest of ties to the owner of the Ping May, the vessel containing the illicit materials: the Foremost Maritime Corporation, a firm founded and owned by McConnell’s in-laws, the Chao family.

Though Foremost has played a pivotal role in McConnell’s life, bestowing the senator with most of his personal wealth and generating thousands in donations to his campaign committees, the drug bust went unnoticed in Kentucky, where every bit of McConnell-related news has generated fodder for the campaign trail. That’s because, like many international shipping companies, Chao’s firm is shrouded from public view, concealing its identity and limiting its legal liability through an array of tax shelters and foreign registrations. Registered through a limited liability company in the Marshall Islands, the Ping May flies the Liberian flag.


Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao with James Chao (image: ElaineLChao.com)

McConnell’s ties to the Chaos go back to the late 1980s, when James Chao began donating to the senator. In 1993, McConnell married James’s daughter, Elaine Chao, a Republican activist and former Reagan administration official who would later serve as secretary of labor in the George W. Bush cabinet. James Chao emigrated to the United States from Taiwan, and founded the Foremost Maritime Corporation upon settling in New York. The company has grown significantly over the years, from acting as maritime agent during the Vietnam War to controlling a fleet of approximately sixteen dry-bulk cargo ships in operation today.

Foremost acts as a shipping agent, purchasing vessels made primarily in China and coordinating shipment of commodities. Records reviewed by The Nation reveal that Foremost transports corn, chemicals and other goods to cities throughout the world. The company has offices in New York and Hong Kong.

Some of the goods shipped by Foremost echo themes of the McConnell campaign. At a Young Professionals Association of Louisville event this month, McConnell stressed his opposition to carbon dioxide limits imposed by the federal government that would impact the domestic coal market. He argued that such efforts would be fruitless given the role of coal in developing countries and the rising coal trade. Foremost ships routinely transport coal from ports in Australia and Colombia, countries with cheap coal, for export to Asia and Europe.

The firm, however, leaves a faint online trace. Foremost’s website FMCNY.com is blank. Records and court documents obtained by The Nation show that the ownership of the company’s vessels—with names such as Ping May, Soya May, Fu May and Grain May—is obscured through a byzantine structure of tax entities. Most of Foremost’s vessels are flagged in Liberia, which ensures that crew members of Foremost’s ships work under Liberia’s maritime labor laws, which critics note allow for intimidation in the workplace and few protections for labor unions. In addition, a Liberian “flag of convenience” allows ship owners to pay lower tonnage taxes than ships that fly the US flag. Maritime companies have increasingly used the Marshall Islands to register their vessels. The jurisdiction boasts of “no taxation, lax regulation, and no requirements for disclosure of many corporate details—even to the United States government,” according to a report in World Policy Journal.

The recent seizure of cocaine on a Foremost coal ship came as authorities in Colombia have stepped up anti-drug trafficking enforcement in the region. The Nation spoke to Luis Gonzales, an official with the Colombian Coast Guard in Santa Marta, who told us that the Ping May’s crew were questioned as part of an ongoing investigation, but that no charges have yet been filed. His team found the cocaine in forty separate packages.


Picture provided by the Colombian Navy after the cocaine seizure (image: armada.mil.co)

Contacted by telephone, a representative of Foremost said he is “obviously going to have no comment on this one.”

McConnell has benefitted in many ways from his relationship with his in-laws.

The Republican Senate minority leader’s personal wealth grew seven-fold over the last ten years thanks in large part to a gift given to him and his wife in 2008 from James Chao worth between $5 million and $25 million (Senate ethics forms require personal finance disclosures in ranges of amounts, rather than specific figures). The gift helped the McConnells after their stock portfolio dipped in the wake of the financial crisis that year, and ensured they could pay off more than $100,000 in mortgage debt on their Washington home.

The generous gift made McConnell one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, with a net worth averaging around $22.8 million, according to The Washington Post’s review of his financial disclosures.

Following the gift, McConnell sent a letter of congratulations to an auditorium of Chinese officials in Shanghai who were gathered for an event honoring James Chao’s wife (McConnell’s mother-in-law, Ruth Mulan Chu Chao, who passed away in 2007). The Shanghai Mulan Education Foundation, created in her honor, regularly hosts students from the University of Louisville, where McConnell has a leadership academy bearing his name that sends students on trips to China.


The ties between McConnell and his in-laws have come under scrutiny before. In 2001, they were probed in depth by The New Republic in an article that charged that McConnell led an effort to soften his party’s criticism of China. Through James Chao, who was a classmate of Jiang Zemin, the president of China in the ’90s, McConnell and his wife met with Jiang several times, both in Beijing and in Washington. McConnell subsequently tempered his criticism of Chinese human rights abuses, and broke with hawks like Senator Jesse Helms to support Most Favored Nation trading status with China. As Foremost established closer ties with mainland China, McConnell endorsed the position that the United States should remain “ambiguous” about coming to the defense of Taiwan. In 1999, McConnell and his wife appeared at the University of Louisville with Chinese Ambassador Li Zhaoxing. Li used the opportunity to bash congressional leaders for rebuking China over its repression of the Falun Gong religious sect. “Any responsible government will not foster evil propensities of cults by being over-lenient,” Li reportedly said at the event with McConnell and Chao. Rather than distance himself from the remarks, McConnell reportedly spoke about his “good working relationship” with Li.

Last Friday, McConnell dipped into his personal fortune to lend his own campaign $1.8 million for the final week before the election. Members of the Chao family and employees of Foremost have also given over $90,000 in contributions to McConnell over the years.

Requests for comment to the McConnell team about the Ping May cocaine incident have gone unanswered.

McConnell has positioned himself over the years as a tough on drugs politician. In 1996, McConnell was the sole sponsor of the Enhanced Marijuana Penalties Act, a bill to increase the mandatory minimum sentencing for those caught with certain amounts of marijuana. A press release noted that his bill would make “penalties for selling marijuana comparable to those for selling heroin and cocaine.”

In recent weeks, McConnell has touted his role in calling for more federal money to be used for drug enforcement.
https://www.thenation.com/article/mitch ... g-company/

Trump's Latest Cabinet Pick Sets Up a Conflict-of-Interest Extraordinaire
Elaine Chao's family runs a global shipping business and she is also Mitch McConnell's wife. How cozy is that!
By Michael Arria / AlterNet November 29, 2016
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16 COMMENTS

Photo Credit: Patrick Delahanty, Flickr

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Elaine Chao as his transportation secretary. Chao served as secretary of labor, from 2001 to 2009, under President George W. Bush. She's also the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The appointment of Chao to this position is striking for at least one major reason: her family owns a major international shipping company. Chao's father, Dr. James Chao, is the chairman of The Foremost Group which he founded in 1964. Elaine Chao's sister Angela, is currently the deputy chairman of the company. Chao's father began donating to McConnell in the eighties. In 2008 he gave Chao and McConnell between $5 million and $25 million, giving a huge boost to McConnell's personal worth.

Foremost purchases vessels and coordinates the shipment of commodities throughout the globe. In 2014 The Nation's Lee Fang reported that 90 pounds of cocaine was seized by the Colombian Coast Guard from a vessel owned by Foremost. Fang reported that: 

The firm..leaves a faint online trace. Foremost’s website FMCNY.com is blank. Records and court documents obtained by The Nation show that the ownership of the company’s vessels—with names such as Ping May, Soya May, Fu May and Grain May—is obscured through a byzantine structure of tax entities.

A 2014 report from the Louisville Courant revealed that Chao registers his ships in Liberia to avoid paying taxes in the United States.

One of the agencies under control of the Transportation Department is the United States Maritime Administration.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politi ... s-shipping

[norton ash]

If only our real wetlands could be re-stocked so well with swampy creatures.

[seemslikeadream]

so Clinton made a Wall Street speech.....bad very very bad...huuuugely bad....OK then......we have this swampy man

Ex-Goldman Sachs exec Steven Mnuchin for Treasury secretary?

BIG SHORT II
Trump Picks Foreclosure King Mnuchin for Treasury Secretary
Five years ago, foreclosed homeowners protested on the lawn of Steve Mnuchin’s Bel-Air mansion for his company’s ‘repulsive’ practices. Now he’ll be Trump’s secretary of the Treasury.
Gideon Resnick


11.29.16 8:30 PM ET
After an effort to purge lobbyists from his quickly arranged transition team, President-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on a “drain the swamp” message, is set to promote another swamp-dweller to a high-ranking position in his administration.
Trump is set to announce that Steven Mnuchin will be his Treasury secretary, per a recommendation from his own transition team, the Associated Press reports.
Mnuchin served as Trump’s national finance chairman during the campaign after a long history in private investment banking and on Wall Street. Like Trump himself, Mnuchin was a donor to Hillary Clinton in prior campaigns. According to filings from the Federal Election Commission, he has contributed more than $8,000 to Clinton since 2000.
Prior to joining the team, Mnuchin worked at Goldman Sachs for 17 years and OneWest Bank, which got into hot water for a series of attempted home foreclosures after the 2008 housing bubble burst. He also founded RatPac-Dune Entertainment, a movie-production company that bankrolled Avatar, as well as other films. After OneWest was sold to CIT Group in 2015, Mnuchin went on to serve on its board and became the chairman and chief executive of the private investment firm Dune Capital Management.
During his tenure at OneWest, the bank was responsible for attempting to remove families from their homes against the families’ wills.
A New York judge erased $525,000 in mortgage debt owed by a Long Island couple to OneWest Bank in 2009 because the institution was harassing them. Suffolk County Judge Jeffrey Spinner blasted the bank’s “harsh, repugnant and repulsive” acts as they attempted to toss the family out on the street around Thanksgiving.
Spinner wrote that the bank refused to work out a deal with the couple to help make mortgage payments they owed and called the bank’s conduct “inequitable, unconscionable, vexatious, and opprobrious,” according to a report by the New York Post.
Around the same time, Mnuchin’s bank was hounding an 89-year-old widow, attempting to foreclose on her home in California. Irene Jones, the woman in question, is reported to have said in court that the stress of repeated foreclosure threats from OneWest Bank and its predecessor IndyMac Bank made her husband depressed and contributed to his death.
That same year, the bank changed the locks on Minnesota woman Leslie Park’s home. She discovered that she had been locked out when she returned home in a blizzard. The bank later acknowledged that the incident was a mistake.
OneWest Bank also disproportionately foreclosed on senior citizens. Using a Freedom of Information Act request, the California Reinvestment Coalition determined that OneWest’s reverse-mortgage servicing subsidiary Financial Freedom was responsible for 39 percent of reverse-mortgage foreclosures nationwide, typically something that goes to senior citizens. But Financial Freedom only serves 17 percent of the market, so OneWest was foreclosing at twice the rate one would expect.
Upon learning that Mnuchin was likely to earn the administration spot, Paulina Gonzalez, executive director at the California Reinvestment Coalition, released a scathing statement.
“If Mr. Mnuchin is nominated to the position of secretary of the Treasury by President-elect Trump, it will continue an alarming trend of a series of appointments by Mr. Trump that signals a coming attack on civil rights, working families, and consumer protections by the administration,” she wrote.
“We expect that the Senate will dig into Mr. Mnuchin’s track record, and we imagine the many families who lost their homes at the hands of OneWest will be watching closely and will also want to share their experiences as part of any confirmation hearings.”
One-hundred-and-three-year-old Myrtle Lewis ran into such issues with OneWest in 2014. She accidentally allowed her insurance to lapse, which prompted the bank to attempt to foreclose on her property. Lewis reinstated her insurance and the bank still didn’t back off. It is unclear what happened to the property.
Similarly, OneWest Bank foreclosed on more communities of color than white communities, according to the California Reinvestment Coalition. Of the 35,877 foreclosures the bank conducted in California from April 2009 to April 2015, 68 percent occurred in areas where the non-white population was 50 percent or higher.

The next Treasury secretary is far from a beloved figure.
In 2011, Bloomberg News reports, the “notoriously press-shy” Mnuchin endured “protests on the lawn of his Bel Air mansion by foreclosed homeowners angered at his lender’s handling of soured mortgages.”
In terms of policy, it is unclear what Mnuchin would prioritize in a Trump administration, but it appears that they are relatively on the same page with a primary issue.
In a July interview with CNBC, Mnuchin said that Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act “needs to be looked at,” and said there were good and bad parts of the law that regulates the finance industry. Trump has expressed interest in dismantling Dodd-Frank.
During his presidential campaign, Trump made an issue of his opponents’ Wall Street ties, first criticizing Ted Cruz’s wife for her job at the financial titan Goldman Sachs and then skewering Hillary Clinton for her paid speeches to the firm.
“I know the guys at Goldman Sachs,” Trump said last February. “They have total, total control over [Cruz]. Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton.”
Yet Mnuchin, and his father, worked for Goldman—as did Steve Bannon, Trump’s White House strategist who also served as Trump’s campaign CEO and ran the far-right media outlet Breitbart.
Mnuchin explained away his ties to a campaign that was widely hated by generally more liberal Hollywood executives by suggesting it would all be worth it if he landed an administration job.
“Nobody’s going to be like, ‘Well, why did he do this?’ if I end up in the administration,” he told Bloomberg in August.
Looks like everything went according to plan.



Just a few weeks ago, the GOP celebrated a clean sweep of the House, Senate, and the presidency and began planning all the things they could do with their new found power.
But that power has come with a price: because while Republicans may control Congress, they are quickly realizing they don’t have control of the message. And while it’s not unusual for a president-elect to direct the conversation, it’s never been quite like this.
Many of them realize that Trump’s tweets will punctuate the Washington landscape sporadically and without warning. On any given day, they fret, their plans could be upended because their president doesn’t have the discipline not to tweet about a tangential issue.
Their palpable irritation with the various tweet storms that the president-elect creates on a whim was on full display as they returned to Washington on Tuesday.
“Let me make it perfectly clear: I’m not commenting on Donald Trump’s daily comments. I’m not going to do it,” said Sen. John McCain, a senior statesman of the Republican Senate caucus and himself formerly a presidential contender. “I have said, and continue to say, that I am not commenting on Mr. Trump’s comments. I have too much other work to do.”
“When you say things, you’re no longer Donald Trump. You’re Donald Trump… soon-to-be-president of the United States,” Sen. Lindsey Graham lectured the incoming administration.
In the last few days, the controversial tweets have piled up. What do lawmakers think about Trump’s suggestion that millions of fraudulent votes were cast, costing him the popular vote?
“I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump said Sunday afternoon, without any evidence—a claim Politifact immediately rates as untrue, or “Pants on Fire!”
Or what about his remarks Tuesday morning, seemingly out of nowhere (or possibly prompted by a story earlier this month about students burning a flag in Massachusetts), that burning the flag should be criminalized?
“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag—if they do, there must be consequences—perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!” Trump wrote.
“We just wake up and find out what we have to do every morning,” a senior Republican Senate aide told The Daily Beast, perplexed that the Capitol was abuzz with chatter about the constitutionality of flag burning, which was decided in the Supreme Court in landmark decisions back in 1989 and 1990—over a quarter century ago.
So instead of discussing national security issues on Tuesday, as is his expertise and preferred topic, Graham began mulling over how to address Trump’s latest tweet-induced carnival.
“If you’ve got any suggestions that there is a real problem with the way the votes are tallied, put it on the table,” Graham scolded the president-elect. “You’re now the President-elect of the United States. If you really believe that millions of people voted illegally you should show some proof… No one has suggested to me that there’s evidence of what he said. And if there’s no evidence, please stop saying that.”
In a sign of the times, Graham said he was looking into introducing a congressional resolution saying that Congress viewed the elections as accurate, free, and fair—because Trump’s suggestions of fraud “does create uncertainty in the minds of some.” Just one problem, though, Graham told the Beast—he’s still trying to find a Democratic co-sponsor.
Asked if the president-elect should even have a Twitter account, the South Carolina senator quipped, “That’s up to him. He’s over 21 years old.”
Trump’s unpredictable and undisciplined Twitter activity is already deeply alienating to his fellow Republicans—even before he’s taken office. His talk about voter fraud is especially off-putting to his GOP cohorts, both because he won the election and because it undercuts the spirit of American democracy.
“Those that cast aspersions on our election process shouldn’t—we have a good process. I feel that way. When Donald Trump said during the campaign he might not accept the results, I condemned that,” said GOP Sen. Jeff Flake, who frequently criticized Trump during the presidential campaign.
Even Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who has something of an incentive to question the results, declined to do so. She lost her re-election bid to Democrat Maggie Hassan by 743 votes.
“That’s already been addressed by our secretary of state, so I have nothing further to say.
“I could have asked for a recount,” Ayotte said. “I did not.”
Republicans were clearly uncomfortable with the latest wave of Trump-related controversies and questions. Most walked away from the press without answering questions.
Sen. Jim Inhofe, chairman of the environment and public works committee, allowed that Twitter “could be” a distraction from the Senate’s day-to-day duties. He didn’t have any additional thoughts to add—until a reporter asked about WRDA, the Water Resources Development Act.
“WRDA! Now you’re talking about something important, instead of voter fraud!” Inhofe said.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... etary.html

[Blue]

Darn. I thought this was going to be about RI. Amazing how much absolute garbage is cluttering up this place. Clearly an infestation and it's eye-opening to see some really longtime RIers in those threads.

[82_28]

Well, it takes an idiotic assertion or two or three to do it, clearly. Plus a "win" by a fascist president is on our minds. I know of no one emotionally unscathed to some degree.

[Blue]

I admire your patience, 82, Dr. Evil and others.

[Nordic]

Wait aren't these people "seriously dangerous"? Do we really need a new thread for this?

[seemslikeadream]

why should this thread annoy you...I thought you had me on ignore....you should have the courage of your convictions

[Searcher08]

"Six Degrees of Donald Trump's Granny...is seriously dangerous" has become the "Who are we in relation to Patriarchy, Whiteness and Cat Theory?" of 2016.

[seemslikeadream]

Trump's education secretary Betsy DeVos is an advocate for conversion therapy
http://www.dailydot.com/irl/betsy-devos ... n-therapy/

Worse Than Madoff: Amway Launches Domestic Revival
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=22850&p=424332&hilit=devos#p424332

Trump's Billionaire Education Secretary Has Been Trying to Gut Public Schools for Years
Meet Betsy DeVos, the anti-union, pro-voucher surprise nominee.

KRISTINA RIZGANOV. 29, 2016 6:00 AM


President-elect Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos in Bedminster, New Jersey, on November 19 Andy Katz/AP
Last Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he would nominate billionaire activist and Republican fundraiser Betsy DeVos as his education secretary. The news came as a shock to the education world—DeVos' ideas for school reforms are even more radical than what Trump proposed on the campaign trail.

Trump's signature education proposal calls for dedicating $20 billion in federal money to promote "school choice": market-driven education reforms that help families move away from what Trump has called "failing government schools" and instead choose private, religious, or charter schools. The movement for charter schools is bipartisan: Republicans and many centrist Democrats support it. But the DeVos family has been promoting a much more radical idea of choice—one that favors moving public funding to private and religious schools over charters.

Education historian Diane Ravitch believes that—if confirmed by the Senate—DeVos will become the most radical, anti-public-school education secretary since the Office of Education was established in 1867. "Never has anyone been appointed to lead in the past 150 years who was hostile to public education," Ravitch told Mother Jones.

Here are the three most important things to know about Trump's education nominee:

The DeVos family is among America's most wealthy, conservative clans

A daughter of privilege, DeVos is married to Richard (Dick) DeVos Jr., whose father, Richard Sr., co-founded the multilevel-marketing empire Amway and was worth an estimated $5.1 billion. In 1992, Dick DeVos succeeded his father as the president and CEO of Amway and has been the face of the DeVos political dynasty. While the DeVoses aren't as well known as conservative philanthropists like the Koch brothers, they played a key role in building the modern conservative movement and pushing the Republican Party further to the right.

Since 1970, the DeVoses have invested at least $200 million in various right-wing causes—think thanks, media outlets, political committees, and advocacy groups—as a 2014 Mother Jones investigation revealed. "There's not a Republican president or presidential candidate in the last 50 years who hasn't known the DeVoses," Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, told my former colleague Andy Kroll.

As Kroll wrote in that 2014 piece:

Ahead of the 1980 elections, Ronald Reagan personally asked [Richard DeVos Sr.] to lead the GOP's national fundraising efforts. Short on cash and reeling from Jimmy Carter's election and the aftershocks of the Watergate scandal, the party needed all the help it could get. As the Republican National Committee's finance chairman, DeVos raised $46.5 million ($132 million in today's dollars). At a party meeting in 1982, he called the recession that was spiking inflation and unemployment "beneficial" and "a cleansing tonic" for society.

In the '80s and '90s, Betsy climbed the party ranks to become a Republican National Committeewoman, chair numerous US House and Senate campaigns in Michigan, lead statewide party fundraising, and serve two terms as chair of the Michigan Republican Party. In 2003, she returned at the request of the Bush White House to dig the party out of $1.2 million in debt.

As The New Yorker's Jane Mayer pointed out, the selection of DeVos as education secretary flies in the face of Trump's campaign promises to get rid of the Washington "donor class" that he's argued is rigging the American system.

And here's a look at the DeVos family's giving tree:


The DeVoses created a road map for conservatives on how to bring down labor, including teachers unions

In 2007, coming off Dick's unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in their home state of Michigan, the DeVoses focused their advocacy and philanthropy on controversial legislation known as "right to work." These laws outlaw contracts that require all employees in unionized workplaces to pay dues for union representation. Back in 2007, such a proposal in a union-heavy state of Michigan was considered a "right-wing fantasy," but thanks to the DeVoses' aggressive strategy and funding, the bill became law by 2012.

Right-to-work laws, now on the books in 26 states, have been a major blow to the labor movement—including teachers unions. Teachers in Michigan are no longer allowed to strike; when educators in Detroit protested earlier this year against growing class sizes, pay cuts, mold, roaches, and rodents in their classrooms, they had to use their sick days to make their point. (A month after the strike, Betsy DeVos wrote an op-ed in the Detroit News arguing that teachers shouldn't be allowed to stage sick-outs either.)

Given her track record, there is very good reason to believe that DeVos would push to further erode the power of the teachers unions as education secretary. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers—the nation's second-largest teachers union—called DeVos "the most ideological, anti-public education nominee" in the past four decades.

For decades, DeVos pushed to gut public schools

Michigan serves as one of the most prominent examples of what aggressive DeVos-style school choice policies look like on the ground, especially when it comes to the expansion of charter schools. About 80 percent of state charter schools are run by for-profit management companies, a much higher share than anywhere else in the country, and with very little oversight from the state. And this year, the DeVoses were the biggest financial backers of the effort to oppose any new state oversight of charters.

Detroit, in particular, provides a cautionary tale of how the proliferation of charter schools without sufficient regulations hurts student achievement. Detroit's public school test scores in math and reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have remained the worst among large cities since 2009. In June, the New York Times published a scathing investigation of the city's school district, which has the second-biggest share of students in charters in America. (New Orleans is No. 1.) Reporter Kate Zernike concluded that insufficiently regulated growth—including too many agencies that are allowed to open new charter schools—contributed to a system with "lots of choice, with no good choice":

The unchecked growth of charters has created a glut of schools competing for some of the nation's poorest students, enticing them to enroll with cash bonuses, laptops, raffle tickets for iPads and bicycles. Leaders of charter and traditional schools alike say they are being cannibalized, fighting so hard over students and the limited public dollars that follow them that no one thrives. Michigan leapt at the promise of charter schools 23 years ago, betting big that choice and competition would improve public schools. It got competition, and chaos.

Perhaps even more than her push for charter schools, Betsy DeVos is known as a fierce advocate for the expansion of vouchers. Until about 2000, using public funding to pay for private and religious schools was a fringe idea, but the DeVos family worked diligently to push it to the center of the Republican Party. Today, 13 states have active voucher programs, in addition to the District of Columbia. DeVos serves on the board of the American Federation for Children, a national group that has pushed for school vouchers even as their record for improving student achievement is mixed, at best. As Douglas Harris, an economist at Tulane University and director of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, wrote in a New York Times op-ed, "Students who participated in [Louisiana's] voucher program had declines in achievement tests scores of eight to 16 percentile points. In Ohio, the results were also negative (though less so)."

If Trump's voucher agenda moves forward, it is also possible that the federal government could send some Title 1 funding, a $15 billion program that exclusively funds low-income public schools, to high-income private and religious schools. If that becomes policy, DeVos—a billionaire who never sent her children to public schools—could oversee the erosion of one of the most important federal school programs created to serve America's most vulnerable kids.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... igan-trump

Here’s a New Trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Also Dick DeVos Declaring War on Public Education

By Matthew Dessem

Lucasfilm released a new trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story on Friday, providing audiences a new look at Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen), and the evil Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) as the latest Star Wars film approaches its Dec. 16 release date. Also, in 2002, Dick DeVos, the husband of Betsy DeVos, who President-elect Donald Trump has chosen to dismantle the public education system, spoke frankly at the Heritage Foundation about the best way to achieve their family’s unpopular, disastrous goals.


“The Empire’s building a weapon capable of destroying an entire planet,” says Erso in the new trailer, referring to the Death Star battle station that was destroyed at the end of the original Star Wars film in 1977. “We happen to live in a great school district,” says Dick DeVos, a billionaire Amway heir whose children did not attend public schools.

The new trailer features thrilling footage of X-Wings in a ground battle against Imperial AT-AT walkers, to say nothing of the space dogfighting! Meanwhile, the footage of Dick DeVos is incredibly dull: He simply stands in front of the camera while describing the cheap messaging tricks he and his wife use to discredit the public school system:

I’ve used the word public schools a fair bit, and I’m beginning to change my own terminology, I would encourage you to either improve on mine or adopt it. “Public schools” is such a misnomer today that I really hate to use it. I’ve begun to use the word “government schools” or “government-run schools” to describe what we used to call public schools because it’s a better descriptor of what they are, because a public school creates this aura that if anyone walks in off the street into a quote-unquote “public school” they would be welcome. And you and I both know that in America today, unfortunately, if you don’t live in the appropriate school district, you are about as welcome at a particular public school as a virus is welcome on a cruise ship.
Will the Rebel Alliance successfully steal the plans to the Death Star, paving the way for victory at the Battle of Yavin? Will Betsy DeVos successfully implement a school voucher program, looting the public coffers to benefit Bible academies and for-profit education hucksters? I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/201 ... itage.html

Betsy DeVos’ Plan to Destroy Public Education

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Betsy DeVos, Present-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Education, has, as Douglas N. Harris recently wrote in an Op-Ed in The New York Times, “sent shock waves through the educational establishment.” And that is probably what Team Trump hoped would happen and continues to happen when DeVos takes office. Several years before being tapped by Trump, Americans United’s Rob Boston observed, “DeVos’ goal is nothing short of a radical re-creation of education in the United States, with tax-supported religious and other private schools replacing the traditional public school system.”

Betsy DeVos is a billionaire philanthropist, a longtime funder of multiple right-wing causes and candidates, and an ardent supporter of school vouchers/charter schools/privatization of public schools.

DeVos, and her brother, Erik Prince – the founder of Blackwater, the private military force that received contract worth billions of dollars from the U.S. government -- are two of the four children of Elsa Prince Broekhuizen and the late Edgar Prince.

Edgar Prince made his fortune in Prince Automotive, and became one of the primary supporters of numerous Religious Right organizations and causes. Betsy DeVos is married to Dick DeVos, former CEO of Amway/Alticor and Republican candidate for governor of Michigan in a failed bid in 2006.

As Rachel Tabachnik, an extraordinary researcher and writer on the conservative movement, has pointed out, “The Prince and DeVos families are at the intersection of radical free market privatization and the Religious Right, and have made an enormous impact on the current political atmosphere.”

In a recent piece for The Heritage Foundation’s The Daily Signal, Kelsey Harkness, a senior news producer at The Daily Signal, listed seven things the Heritage Foundation wants its supporters to know about DeVos:

* “She does not support Common Core ‘period.’”

* “She strongly supports school vouchers.”

* “She also supports charter schools.”

* “She’s an outsider in Washington, but an insider in Michigan.”

* “She supports homeschooling.”

* “She funds a variety of nonprofits.”

* “She chose to send her children to private Christian schools.”

What Heritage is less likely to be talking about is DeVos’ work designing the charter school system of Detroit, arguably “the biggest school reform disaster in the country,” Harris, a professor of economics at Tulane University, and the founding director of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, pointed out. “One well-regarded study found that Detroit’s charter schools performed at about the same dismal level as its traditional public schools. The situation is so bad that national philanthropists interested in school reform refuse to work in Detroit.”

In a 2010 Church & State piece titled “Michigan Multi-Millionaire Betsy DeVos Is A Four-Star General In A Deceptive Behind-The-Scenes War On Public Schools And Church-State Separation” Rob Boston wrote: “Political gamesmanship and special interests should never stand in the way of providing children with access to great schools,” DeVos fulminated in a press release announcing the creation of the American Federation for Children. “We know that it takes smart public policy – and political backbone – to bring about the types of school choice programs that provide families with better educational opportunities. That is why we have created the American Federation for Children.”

Here are a few more things to keep in mind about DeVos. According to a 2014 profile of DeVos by former Mother Jones reporter Andy Kroll, “The Devoses sit alongside the Kochs, the Bradleys, and the Coorses as founding families of the modern conservative movement. Since 1970, DeVos family members have invested at least $200 million in a host of right-wing causes — think tanks, media outlets, political committees, evangelical outfits, and a string of advocacy groups. They have helped fund nearly every prominent Republican running for national office and underwritten a laundry list of conservative campaigns on issues ranging from charter schools and vouchers to anti-gay-marriage and anti-tax ballot measures.”

“The problem with DeVos is that she simply does not support public education,” Rob Boston, Director of Communications Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told me in a email. “She has devoted her entire career to finding ways to divert taxpayer money away from public schools and toward private ones, most often by pushing voucher plans. This means that for the next four years at least we’re going to have a Secretary of Private Education. It will be like Bill Bennett under Reagan.

“Ninety percent of our young people attend public schools. Given the importance of these schools to our country, that’s where the emphasis needs to be. Yet I expect DeVos to spend most of her time pursuing the right wing’s long-sought goal of privatizing secondary education, what I call the “Walmartization” of schooling.”

Boston pointed out that both DeVos and her husband are known for their anti-LGBTQ activism. “Under President Obama, efforts were made to protect the rights of LGBTQ students in public schools. Those initiatives will probably be rolled back,” Boston said..

“The DeVos nomination fits a pattern for Trump. He seems determined to put people in charge of federal departments who are either woefully under qualified or who don’t support the central mission of the agency. It’s going to be a long four years.”
http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commenta ... -education

[Nordic]

why should this thread annoy you...I thought you had me on ignore....you should have the courage of your convictions

I actually do have you on ignore although I occasionally check some of your responses.

But a new thread by someone you have on ignore shows up just like any other thread. It seems we have plenty of "Trump is the worst thing ever/racist/fascism"" threads.

[seemslikeadream]

right now there is two fucking Trump threads on GD front page..and this is one of them......the other one was started by 82_28.....so sue me

I don't know what the fuck you are talking about

why don't you go bother the Alex Jones flat earth pizza crowd

[brekin]

The reality is Trump is going to be the subject of many threads from here on out.
The "Trump is Seriously Dangerous" thread would become a twitter feed if all content about him was now posted there.
It would be nice if this thread was called "Draining the Swamp: Trump's Cabinet" or something, just to differentiate from other threads though.

His cabinet is scary as hell.
Basically people that use to get money from the government to do evil things, were run out of the government, or were anti-government, are now the government.

Yeah, Clinton/Trump = no difference.
Nope, you done made RI the new CNN.

[seemslikeadream]

and the Alex Jones flat earth pizza threads have made this place Info Wars.com


go for it bre...start your own thread ...make this place what you want it to be



POST SOMETHING INTERESTING AND STOP COMPLAINING

I'm serious...I would love to read something of interest here...please don't complain about what I post ...post an OP yourself so others can complain about what you think is of value

[brekin]

and the Alex Jones flat earth pizza threads have made this place Info Wars.com

go for it bre...start your own thread ...make this place what you want it to be
POST SOMETHING INTERESTING AND STOP COMPLAINING
I'm serious...I would love to read something of interest here...please don't complain about what I post ...post an OP yourself so others can complain about what you think is of value

slad, I was actually agreeing with you, and was just suggesting a clarifier in the thread title.
I think it might be time to step away for 5 minutes and go take a walk.
The decline of western civilization will be here when you get back.