An aside: 5 Points On The GOP Megadonor Trump Picked For Education Secretary
-- i had this article to post after reading just enough to see deVos and was going to post it to one re vouchers .. then on reading
"The pressure came largely from one man present at that fundraiser: Richard "Dick" DeVos Jr. The 58-year -old scion of the Amway Corporation, DeVos had arm-twisted Richardville repeatedly to support right-to-work."
in yours i thought .. Hey Betsy and Dick gotta be connected! .. well, turns out they, as you might guess, are man and wife .. lol, anyway just now read a bit more of yours and would you believe the first link in this one is in fact your post .. could be still sorta OT re your post .. not sure as i haven't read much of yours yet .. --
AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster
Tierney Sneed November 23, 2016, 3:56 PM EST 5052 views
President-elect Donald Trump's announcement Wednesday that he would nominate GOP megadonor Betsy DeVos to be secretary of education was welcomed by Republicans, particularly those passionate about charter schools and school vouchers, which DeVos has championed.
Progressives, meanwhile, warned that her selection was dangerous for public education and pointed to other controversial causes, including anti-LGBT initiatives and anti-abortion measures, that DeVos and her family have supported.
Here's what you need to know about Trump's pick to lead the Department of Education.
1. DeVos comes from a GOP mega-donor family based in Michigan
DeVos' father-in-law, Richard DeVos, co-founded Amway and owns the NBA team the Orlando Magic. The DeVos family’s business ventures and political beliefs often work in tandem, Mother Jones reported, noting that a free market think-tank is run out of the Amway headquarters. Dick DeVos, meanwhile, ran unsuccessfully for Michigan governor in 2006, a campaign on which the couple spent $35.4 million, according to the Washington Post .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/03/25/meet-the-family-thats-dropped-45-million-on-michigan-campaigns-since-2000/ .
Betsy DeVos herself has worked for a number of GOP campaign outfits, and now runs a political action committee along with her husband that has supported numerous Republican politicians.
“I know a little something about soft money, as my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party,” DeVos wrote in a 1997 Roll Call guest column .. http://tinyurl.com/hy8bqtb , according to Jane Mayer’s book "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right."
“I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point," DeVos wrote.
[headings only outed from here]
2. She is an ardent supporter of school vouchers and charter school expansion
3. She has family ties to the Family Research Council and Blackwater
4. Mainstream Republicans are welcoming her nomination
5. To the left, her nomination is a bellwether for privatization of public schools under Trump
Victory for Unions as Supreme Court, Scalia Gone, Ties 4-4
By ADAM LIPTAKMARCH 29, 2016
Demonstrators supporting Rebecca Friedrichs, a plaintiff in the case, outside the Supreme Court in January. Credit Mark Wilson/Getty Images
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court handed organized labor a major victory on Tuesday, deadlocking 4 to 4 in a case that had threatened to cripple the ability of public-sector unions to collect fees from workers who chose not to join and did not want to pay for the unions’ collective bargaining activities.
Damn Trump could do real damage some damage with even his first SCOTUS appointee .. yet, maybe with Cruz or other it could have been worse in that one respect .. this article is related to yours, which i'll eventually get through.
Excerpt: "He is a lifelong Christian conservative and crusader for free markets and small government, values he passed down to his four children.
Many buildings in Grand Rapids, like the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, bear the name of Richard DeVos Sr. or his company. Rex Larsen/Grand Rapids Press/AP Photo
Today, his eldest son, Dick .. http://dickdevos.com/ , is the face of the DeVos political dynasty. Like his father, Dick sees organized labor as an enemy of freedom and union leaders as violent thugs who have "an almost pathological obsession with power." But while DeVos Sr. simply inveighed against unions, Dick took the fight to them directly, orchestrating a major defeat for the unions in the cradle of the modern labor movement."
Sheesh, which surely puts the 'Dumpf Duped You' case beyond any doubt. Trump's claim to not be part of the establishment was always a blatant lie. As we knew.
All gives more credence to the evidence that Trump's will be as close to a fascist administration as the American system and people allow it to be.
Edit; As deVos is in favor of free trade no doubt he would have been in favor of NAFTA. No doubt in my mind that all presently ratified free trade pacts will stand. He could make a show of renegotiating the TTP, or if he can't then that could just mean he will have more trade pacts with individual countries. Duped? Yup.
The deVos bullies have their bully boy where they want him now .. Mike Pumford's story in yours says it all ..
"Mike Pumford knows what it's like to be on the wrong side of the DeVoses. A former high school teacher and public school administrator, he was elected to the state House in 1998 as a moderate Republican, and he publicly opposed Dick and Betsy's push to expand charter schools and introduce school vouchers. (In 2000, Dick and Betsy helped underwrite a ballot initiative to expand the use of vouchers and lost badly.)
When Pumford ran for reelection in 2002, a DeVos-funded group called the Great Lakes Education Project .. http://www.glep.org/ .. blanketed his rural district with glossy flyers calling him a puppet of the Michigan Education Association .. http://www.mea.org/ .. and a "tax-and-spend Republican" for backing an increase in cigarette taxes. "They just kicked my ass in that election," he says. And though he eked out a victory, the DeVoses got the final word. When Pumford asked for the chairmanship of the subcommittee overseeing public education funding, he says, then-House Speaker Rick Johnson told him there was "no way in hell we can give it to you." Why? It would piss off the DeVoses. (Johnson did not respond to requests for comment.)
In 2004, Pumford quit politics in disgust. "I spent a lot of time fighting bullies," he told me. "Kids tend to bully with their mouths and fists. Billionaires tend to bully with their pocketbooks.""
.. the deVos's obviously old money, and of the 0.1%ers who as the rich also feel they are the privileged ones who believe they and their kind only should run the show .. they put money and power ahead of most everything else .. what else can i think when i see them opposing increasing taxes on cigarettes? .. when all the evidence is that less smoking saves society health costs in the long run .. they hate unions and part of their strategy to gain political advantage is, as well as giving to conservatives, to attack unions as the funding base of the Democrats .. there are a few posts on the board making that point ..
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