The Body Count -- Two Trump Cabinet Secretaries

 

A Reoccurring Feature on Who's Jumping Off Luxury Liner Trump

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao (and wife of Mitch McConnell) and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos are resigning over the Trump-inspired insurrection Wednesday at the US Capitol.

Chao wrote that she will resign effective Monday and was "deeply troubled" by the "entirely avoidable" events at the Capitol building.

DeVos submitted a letter of resignation to Trump on Thursday, calling Wednesday's events "unconscionable for our country."

"There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me," she wrote. "Impressionable children are watching all of this, and they are learning from us. I believe we each have a moral obligation to exercise good judgement and model the behavior we hope they would emulate. They must know from us that America is greater than what transpired yesterday."

Goodbye, DeVos. Miguel Cardona Will Be Education Secretary

 

Miguel Cardona, to lead the Department of Education

Cardona's parents are from Puerto Rico. He grew up in public housing and attended public schools throughout his life, a decided contrast to outgoing education secretary Betsy DeVos, a billionaire champion of private schools which both she and her children attended.

Cardona, 45, was appointed Connecticut’s first Latino commissioner of education in 2019 after two decades of experience as a public school educator, starting in a Meriden, Conn., elementary school classroom. He also served as a principal for a decade, among the youngest in the state, and as an assistant superintendent in Meriden. He was also an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut, where he received his doctorate.

As Connecticut's top education official, Cardona has leaned in on the side of reopening schools during the COVID crisis, leaned in without ordering it after the Connecticut state school board voted to keep schools closed and go to virtual teaching only. Cardona worried about the poorest and most vulnerable students who either did not have all the infrastructure for vitual learning or who needed more one-on-one instruction.

According to the NYTimes, "If confirmed, Dr. Cardona would face the most urgent education crisis in decades, and whether he can press schools to reopen without turning the issue into a partisan matter, as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos did, could have major repercussions for the young Biden administration."

NCGOP Signals Again That It's Hostile to Public Education

It didn't take a minute after Betsy DeVos, the billionaire Trump appointee, achieved her historically narrow victory for confirmation as the head of the Department of Education -- it took less than a minute for Robin Hayes, head of the NCGOP, to ostentatiously invite DeVos down to North Carolina to teach us all how we can abandon our public schools for publicly funded private schools and religious academies.

Apparently, the invitation was done quickly because Chair Hayes didn't want any North Carolina voters to forget how arduously the Republicans in the General Assembly have worked to abandon good public education for everybody in favor of private and for-profit education for special interests.

Never fear, Mr. Hayes. We remember.

Betsy All-Wetsy

Betsy DeVos had her confirmation hearing last night to become Trump's education secretary, and it was conducted by the Republican chair of the committee like tiptoeing past a cave full of dozing  vampires as the sun goes down. Chair Lamar Alexander limited the questioning to one 5-minute round per senator. Yeah, that's a thorough vetting.

DeVos has no experience with public schools, never attended them herself, and she never sent her own children to public schools.

A super-rich former chair of the Michigan Republican Party and no friend of public education, DeVos has not yet completed her paperwork for the Office of Government Ethics, which is responsible for vetting presidential nominees for potential conflicts of interest.

She declined to take a position on whether guns belong in schools, and she said that if President Trump wanted to end gun-free zones around schools, she would go along with him. She wouldn't commit to aggressive anti-rape policies on college campuses.

She seemed completely misinformed about federal law which requires states that take federal funding to provide children with disabilities the services they need to benefit from a public education. Not just misinformed. She expressed actual hostility toward that idea, saying the individual states should decide what they're willing to do for disabled students. “So some states might be good to kids with disabilities, and other states might not be so good, and then what? People can just move around the country if they don’t like how their kids are being treated?” Sen. Tim Kaine asked her.

A Watauga County school counselor posted this on Facebook last night: 

This is unbelievable. I am sitting watching the hearing of DeVos and crying. I'm crying for my autistic students, for my learning disabled students, for my students with all disabilities. If you are a parent of a student with a disability you MUST, for your child, call and demand that Sen. Burr not confirm her even though she was one of his largest donors.

No Hiding Trump's Hostility Toward Government

Okay, we get it, Mr. Trump. You're expressing your perfect contempt for the various departments of government to which you're appointing people with either (a) no qualifications for managing those departments or (b) open hostility toward the departments they are being appointed to manage.

Like this fool.

That's really a funny joke. Hahahahaha. Can't wait to see how it all turns out, if the good people who voted for you will be laughing too.

The scorecard, so far:

Steven Mnuchin at Treasury wants to do away with Dodd-Frank

Andrew Puzder at Labor is a vocal critic of increasing the minimum wage and an opponent of rules that would make more workers eligible for overtime pay

Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency is a primary architect of legal challenges on President Barack Obama’s environmental regulations

Tom Price at the Department of Health and Human Services wants to phase out Medicare

Ben Carson at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, who believes that the pyramids were grain storage bins

Jeff Sessions at Justice is no friend of either civil rights or voting rights

Betsy DeVos at the Education Department who intends to cut "the public" out of public education

This bunch has tilted radically to the 1% and decidedly away from "those forgotten people" Trump said he wanted to help. Yeah, these guys are really gonna help!

Trump's Team of Oligarchs

Trump promised to remember "the forgotten men and women."

He vowed to "drain the swamp."

Trump's closing campaign ad prior to the election blasted "the global power elite" and singled out Goldman Sachs as a pillar of the corrupt establishment ... which, Trump claimed, was rigging the election against him.

Presto change-o!

Trump's inaugural is shaping up to set a new standard for "pay-to-play" politics:

⭑ Those giving $1 million or more toward the inaugural party weekend will get perks including an “intimate dinner” with Vice President-elect Mike Pence and his wife and a candlelight dinner with an appearance by Trump, Pence, and their wives. 

⭑ Those who can only afford $250,000 get an “intimate policy discussion and dinner with select Cabinet officials.”

Global elite?

✤ Would-be Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos -- family worth is $5.1 billion. 

✤ Commerce secretary pick Wilbur Ross -- he's worth $2.9 billion.

✤ Deputy commerce secretary choice Todd Ricketts -- his family fortune is also in the billions.

✤ Harold Hamm, paraded at Trump Tower as a possible energy secretary -- worth $15 billion.

✤ Former Goldman Sachs partner (and Hollywood executive) Steven Mnuchin has been named as Trump's treasury secretary. (Mnuchin is worth only about $40 million.)

✤ Trump's reportedly in talks to hire Goldman Sach’s No. 2 executive, Gary Cohn, to be his budget director.