Saturday, November 12, 2016

Trump's New Education Secretary

Oh, I'm going to have so much fun with this, I may just have to start writing again.

Today, the New York times reported a list of leading candidates in the new Trump administration. On the list for Sec. of Education? Dr. Ben Carson, who doesn't remember running for president and Williamson M Evers (Bill for short).
Because this guy looks totally qualified

Took a quick look on Wikipedia about him (because of the Celebrity Apprentice host can become president, then surely I can now source Wikipedia without any flack) and found out that Evers is actually leading the transition team for education.

In November 2016, he was selected to lead President Elect Trump's transition team for the Department of Education.[1]

So who is this guy? He has been an active libertarian for several decades. He is associated with the Cato institute and had published a libertarian magazine, Inquiry before ending his association with that right-of-right think tank.

"What, doenuts", you may ask, "is this guy's credentials on education?". And that would be a great question! He was an angry parent in California. In 1995, upset with a new math curriculum, he:

 "...organized a publicity stunt in which a toilet was mounted on the back of a pick-up truck and driven to a protest outside the school district headquarters. There Evers ceremonially flushed the new curriculum...."

Nice! The current Ed. Sec is a Dr, the previous Ed Sec at least lead a major city's school district and the next Ed Sec? Well he mounted a toilet onto a wall and flushed it.

But wait! There's more!!!!

Williamson M Evers was also the education adviser to provisional Iraqi government after the US took it over in 2003.

And that worked out well!! The provisional government was the one that allowed the growth of Al Quadi in Iraq and sewed the seeds that lead to the Civil War that caused almost 300,000 Iraqis to die.

So our next Education Secretary may well be a man who A) Doesn't believe in public education B) Has no education experience in the places where it counts and C) Was part of the worst provisional government in modern history.

I guess that's how you make america great again!



5 comments:

  1. You might consider a more reliable source for anything connected to politics. Witness the The New York Times' most recent election coverage and/or predictions.

    It was is one thing when the Times spent a year desperately spinning their Trump=Fascism and Trump=Evil narratives - one expects that sort of biased reporting from the Times. It is quite another when they are woefully wrong in covering elections and predicting outcomes.

    Your expectation should be that they will be completely wrong in future coverage of Trump (plus, of course, the usual Trump=Fascism, Trump=Evil, etc.)

    No need to fall for the fear-mongering. No need to tantrum in the streets. We'll survive.

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    1. I completely agree. It looks more like these people are protesting the peole who voted for Trump and less like a protest against Trump. They make progressives look cold uncaring and silly (which many are). I'll wait for an actual policy debate in Congress before I do dusting off my plastic bullhorn.

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  2. Good points but, can either be any worse than the Obama choice of Arne Duncan, who came from Chicago? And with all due respect to Hillary, it was rumored she wanted Joel Klein to be Education Secretary - how'd that be?

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    1. In fact, they can't! With Arne, we all had to convince people that he was bad despite being Obama's guy. With this guy, people will be, shall we say suspicious? From the start. In terms of oppositional dissent, either of these guys are better.

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    2. And don't forget John King - Any Trump appointee will be an improvement - but in reality the DoE will be fazed out - the guy he puts in will be like a principal put in to close a school. Vouchers are coming - just give parents the money and let every tom, dick and harry open up a school.

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