“The sum total of individual ignorance”....This is the specter that haunted the founders and haunts us today. To guard against mob rule, the passions of the people, the founders not only set about creating a fragmented government and established a “Bill of Rights”, but went about through the passage under the Confederation of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 in which provisions were made not only for the inclusion of the territories into the union but for the education of these populations. A provision under this law set aside a square mile in each new county the proceeds from the sale of which would go to the establishment of public schools. Later, Jefferson would cite his greatest achievement not the Declaration of Independence, nor his presidency, nor his inventions, nor his authorship of the Virginia laws establishing religious liberty. No, what he wanted as his legacy was the establishment of the University of Virginia, the first public university in the United States. It would be, Jefferson and his generation held, through the establishment of sound public schools that ignorance, while always prevalent, would not always be controlling.
Today the great Vandal in Chief presides over an administration that is hollowing out not only the State Department but virtually every federal agency. He has failed to make appointments to over 600 major positions. The Justice Department is hemorrhaging, ambassadorships have gone unfilled. Currently, we face a crisis on the Korean peninsula with no ambassador in place in Seoul. With the hollowing out of the bureaucracy, institutional memory is lost, replaced by an intentional and willful ignorance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the selection of Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education.
Educated at Holland Christian High and attending Hope College in Holland, Michigan, DeVos, sister of Eric Prince—the founder of the mercenary Blackwater Corporation—and married to the son of the SCAMWAY heir, DeVos had never attended a public school. She has, using the millions available from the family fortunes, spearheaded a movement to plunder the public domain by taking taxes raised for education and funneling them to private schools—mostly religious ones. She has also been out front in the campaign to saddle the public schools with useless and damaging performance tests and to strip the teachers of union representation so as to lower teacher's pay. The result has been to materially hollow out public education and nowhere is this more evident than her home state of Michigan. Michigan in my youth ranked in the top ten states in educational performance. Today it ranks down with Alabama with Mississippi not far in the rearview mirror.
DeVos, of course, demands layers and layers of standardized tests (mostly state administered) which has caused the schools to teach not the subject but to teach to the tests. She steadfastly refuses to hold her private schools to any such standards. The result is that Michigan has the worst private school system in the country but, nevertheless, over a billion dollars of state money goes into these worthless institutions. I have one of them right across the street. A 'High School' that has no teachers, no schedule, no compulsory attendance. A 'school' where only computer's teach. It is a joke but someone is making money from it. That's the point. If those in this administration cannot get the government out of the business, they privatize it so as to plunder the public domain. This isn't new to tRUMP, but Caesar Disgustus has returned to the theme with vengeance ensuring, among other things, that ignorance reigns supreme.
This vandal destroys everything he touches. That's what joins the likes of the Mercer's, the Prince's, the DeVos', the Koch's and Putin in the enterprise. Indeed, a very useful idiot.
Impeach and Imprison.
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