Nuts!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

U. S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos (nee: Elisabeth Dee Prince) was born into one of the one hundred wealthiest families in America and went on to marry the heir to the Amway sales racket where she acquired a second butt-load of money.  Betsy was educated in private schools and has long exhibited disdain toward America’s public schools.  

She is also a major contributor to conservative, right-wing political candidates where she blatantly buys influence for cash.

DeVos, the only cabinet member in U.S. history to require a tie-breeaking vote of the Vice President in order to be confirmed by the Senate, has spent much of her time at the Education Department promoting schemes to channel government funds away from public schools and into the more exclusive private school domain through gimmicks like vouchers and school choice plans.

Earlier this year Congress, in reacting to calls from some right-wing quarters for arming teachers, passed a school safety bill which specifically prohibited funding for firearms in schools or funding to train school personnel in how to use firearms. Schools might choose to arm teachers, but they would not be doing it with federal funds.

But Betsy DeVos had other ideas.  This week she floated a plan for using a special pool of money, the Student Support and Academic Enrichment Program, to provide grants to states to arm teachers.  The program was passed by Congress a couple of years ago and was designed to “increase access to education, improve conditions for learning, and bolster digital literacy.”    Congress neglected to mention whether the money in the special program could or could not be used to arm teachers.

Betsy, one must suppose, would argue that guns in school would “improve conditions for learning.”  But others see bringing guns into schools differently.  Randi Weingarten, the President of the American Federation of Teachers, said “Betsy DeVos wants to turn schools into armed fortresses and make kids and educators less safe.”  She then added, “Betsy DeVos wants to turn the U.S. government into an arms dealer for schools.  That’s insane.”

Randi Weingarten is right. Betsy DeVos is NUTS!

Erik Prince is Betsy DeVos’s baby brother, eleven years her junior.  Erik is a businessman (of sorts) who specializes in organizing and marketing mercenaries for action on the world stage.  He was the founder of Blackwater, the “contracting” agency that carried arms while “helping” with the Bush Oil Wars in the Middle East.   For the past several months Erik has been promoting a plan to replace U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan with civilian contractors (mercenaries).  Congress has shown no interest in Erik’s initiative, and the U.S. military is openly opposed to it.  But Erik Prince is far smarter that Congress and the military, and he has taken to promoting his business venture on right-wing news programs – the type of programs that Donald Trump enjoys watching on a daily basis.

Erik Prince is promoting the old adage that says “War is good business.”  He is the Milo Minderbinder of his generation.

Erik Prince, like his free-spending older sister, is NUTS!

This week Donald Trump launched one of his big distractions by tweeting about a story that he had seen reported on Sean Hannity’s program on the Fox News channel.  Hannity had repeated a conservative meme that alleged white farmers were being murdered by black militants in South Africa.  The story said that large numbers of white farmers were being killed by blacks who wanted their land – and that the government of South Africa was turning a blind eye to the whole matter.   The story was false, but that never stops Fox.

Donald Trump tweeted that he was concerned and that he was asking Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to look into it.   One snarky national journalist commented that it looked as though Donald Trump was getting his foreign policy briefings from Fox News.

Donald Trump blatantly used a false news story from Fox News to fire up the white nationalist elements of his political base – and to distract attention from his ever-increasing legal problems.  He fanned the flames of bigotry to take the heat off of himself.

Donald John Trump is NUTS!

It’s all madness and it all must end – or soon, very soon, we will all be as nuts as they are!  Donald Trump and his followers have lead us down into America's darkest recesses, places where we historically hid our insane relatives, and they have told the world that this is now who we are - a bunch of Lovecraft mole people digging through garbage and human waste in the moldering darkness beneath what was once a great civilization.

Donald Trump is NUTS, and if we continue to stumble along behind him, blind and silent, then we are as nuts as he is.

Resist - and register - and vote.  It's the only way out of the Trump nightmare!