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More on DeVos

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But you don’t have to be in the educational establishment to be worried about where this is going. The DeVos nomination is a triumph of ideology over evidence that should worry anyone who wants to improve results for children.

http://nyti.ms/2gs0rn0

Eric Chenoweth is co-director of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe.

In assessing Donald Trump’s presidential victory, Americans continue to look away from this election’s most alarming story: the successful effort by a hostile foreign power to manipulate public opinion before the vote.

U.S. intelligence agencies determined that the Russian government actively interfered in our elections. Russian state propaganda gave little doubt that this was done to support President-elect Trump, who repeatedly praised Vladimir Putin and excused the Russian president’s foreign aggression and domestic repression. Most significantly, U.S. intelligence agencies have affirmed that the Russian government directed the illegal hacking of private email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and prominent individuals. The emails were then released by WikiLeaks, which has benefited financially from a Russian state propaganda arm, used Russian operatives for security and made clear an intent to harm the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.

From the Russian perspective, the success of this operation can hardly be overstated...

One well-regarded study found that Detroit’s charter schools performed at about the same dismal level as its traditional public schools.

Compared to the educational gains that charter students would have had in a traditional public school (TPS), the analysis shows that, on average, students in Michigan charter schools make larger learning gains in both reading and mathematics. Thirty-five percent of the charter schools have significantly more positive learning gains than their TPS counterparts in reading, while two percent of charter schools have significantly lower learning gains. In math, forty-two percent of the charter schools studied outperform their TPS peers and six percent perform worse. These findings position Michigan among the highest performing charter school states CREDO has studied to date.

Charter students in the city of Detroit (27% of the state’s charter students), are performing even better than their peers in the rest of the state, on average gaining nearly three months achievement for each year they attend charter schools.

Civil rights groups say they're “deeply concerned" that the extension of civil rights protections to gay and transgender students by President Barack Obama’s Education Department will be dismantled by Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the department.

They note the DeVos family has a long history of supporting anti-gay causes — including donating hundreds of thousands to groups that push “conversion therapy” — raising questions about how, if at all, she would address discrimination against gay and transgender students.

“I would like to see the ideas of intelligent design that many scientists are now suggesting is a very viable alternative theory,” DeVos told the Associated Press this week during an interview on education. “That theory and others that would be considered credible would expose our students to more ideas, not less.”…

DeVos told the AP this week that allowing school districts to include intelligent design in science classes lets them to “expose students to a multitude of ideas, … to think through the challenges, to learn to discern between multiple theories.”

“From our earliest interactions, he had a very impressive command focus on communicating with and winning the support of evangelical leaders and voters,” said Ralph Reed, the chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, who called Trump a “friend” and a “man of his word.”

Pointing to exit poll data, he continued, “They were indispensable to the Trump coalition. While there are other very important members of the Trump coalition, there’s no question that the foundation is evangelicals and other voters of faith.”

All of it highlights the muddy new world that Trump’s election may usher in — a world in which his stature as the U.S. president, the status of his private ventures across the globe and his relationships with foreign business partners and the leaders of their governments could all become intertwined.

In that world, Trump could personally profit if his election gives a boost to his brand and results in its expansion overseas. His political rise could also enrich his overseas business partners — and, perhaps more significantly, enhance their statuses in their home countries and alter long-standing diplomatic traditions by establishing them as new conduits for public business.

During the campaign, he pledged to withdraw the United States from the agreement if he was elected. On Tuesday, he claimed to “have an open mind to it” and to be “looking at it very closely.” Really? Why, then, did he appoint Myron Ebell, a global-warming skeptic and longtime apologist for the fossil-fuel industry, to oversee environmental policy on his transition team? Ebell works at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank that has received funding from ExxonMobil and Donors Trust, a conservative group linked to the Koch brothers. He is a big supporter of relaxing regulations on oil drilling, including fracking, and he has called the Obama Administration’s move to place strict emissions limits on coal-fired power stations—a key part of the Administration’s effort to fulfill America’s obligations under the Paris treaty—a “disgrace.”

Coler's company, Disinfomedia, owns many faux news sites — he won't say how many. But he says his is one of the biggest fake-news businesses out there, which makes him a sort of godfather of the industry.

At any given time, Coler says, he has between 20 and 25 writers. And it was one of them who wrote the story in the Denver Guardian that an FBI agent who leaked Clinton emails was killed. Coler says that over 10 days the site got 1.6 million views. He says stories like this work because they fit into existing right-wing conspiracy theories.

"The people wanted to hear this," he says. "So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional: the town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. And then ... our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums and boy it spread like wildfire."

And as the stories spread, Coler makes money from the ads on his websites...

Josh Marshall ‏@joshtpm 7m7 minutes ago
Trump Nat Sec appointee says Hillary used secret helicopters to spy on her house >> http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/hillz-helicopters-spied-on-me … via @TPM

on FoxNews.com in Sept. 2013: “The world knows that Vladimir Putin is the one who really deserves that Nobel Peace Prize. It turns out that leading from behind left a big opening up front. Putin stepped right in. And Obama still hasn’t figured it out.” http://bloom.bg/2g35Xfr ... Her op-ed http://fxn.ws/2fki9cd

K.T. McFarland on FoxNews.com, Nov. 4: “Russia has restarted the Cold War and is pushing up against us and our allies in Northern Europe, Central Europe and the Middle East.” http://fxn.ws/2fA1S1k

Coler, a registered Democrat, says...."I've always enjoyed the ideas of propaganda and misinformation." Coler makes money from the ads on his websites. He wouldn't give exact figures, but he says stories about other fake-news proprietors making between $10,000 and $30,000 a month apply to him.

Coler says he has no regrets about his fake news empire. He doesn't think fake news swayed the election.

"There are many factors as to why Trump won that don't involve fake news," he says. "As much as I like Hillary, she was a poor candidate. She brought in a lot of baggage."

Privatization means that a public service is taken over by a for-profit business, whose highest goal is profit. Investors expect a profit when a business moves into a new venture. The new corporation operating the hospital or the prison or the fire department cuts costs by every means to increase profits. When possible it eliminates unions, raises prices to consumers (even charging homeowners for putting out fires), cuts workers’ benefits, expands working hours, and lays off veteran employees who earn the most. The consequences can be dangerous to ordinary citizens. Doctors in privatized hospitals may perform unnecessary surgeries to increase revenues or avoid treating patients whose care may be too expensive.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons recently concluded that privatized prisons were not as safe as those run by the bureau itself and were less likely to provide effective programs for education and job training to reduce recidivism. Consequently, the federal government has begun phasing out privately managed prisons, which hold about 15 percent of federal prisoners. That decision was based on an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, who cited a May 2012 riot at a Mississippi correctional center in which a score of people were injured and a correctional officer was killed. Two hundred and fifty inmates participated in the riot to protest the poor quality of the food and medical care. Since the election, the stock price of for-profit prisons has soared.

There is an ongoing debate about whether the Veterans Administration should privatize health care for military veterans. Republicans have proposed privatizing Social Security and Medicare. President George W. Bush used to point to Chile as a model nation that had successfully privatized Social Security, but The New York Times recently reported that privatization of pensions in Chile was a disaster, leaving many older people impoverished.

Recent lauding of a Justice Department move to curtail the use of private prisons — including by The Times — has failed to note both the flaws in the Office of the Inspector General report upon which this decision was predicated, and data laid out in the report that paints a clearly positive picture of private prisons. The inspector general’s office admits in the report that demographic factors play a significant role. Therefore conclusions that are drawn as to relative safety may be severely flawed.

The report indicates that private prisons are better at finding, seizing and recording contraband than their public counterparts. Furthermore, it shows that inmates in private prisons are less likely to use drugs, and less likely to be subject to or involved in sexual misconduct. It also shows that fewer inmate deaths occur in private prisons. Private prisons achieve all this at a cost of over $3,000 less per inmate, per year, according to the report.

The reality is that private companies collaborate with government to meet its most pressing needs in safe, humane, sensible ways that provide value for taxpayers every day.

It wouldn't matter if the extra cost was 150 billion instead of 150 thousand, we can't compromise on MORALITY.

Why cant there be MORALITY and we pay little to nothing by making them provide for themselves?

The constitutional provision prohibiting involuntary servitude doesn't apply to cons, so, no problem there, eh?

I was not thinking involuntary servitude but rather, give them more freedom to think for themselves, " you know let them think if they want to sleep outside under a tree or if they may want to build shelter for themselves. Let them decide what they are going to grow for dinner.

I've opened up this topic to keep track of what's going on post-election.

I would prefer to see them chained up in a sweatshop makin Air Jordans, and ****, so I can pay less at Walmart.

I don't think they would be able to compete with the existing sweatshops makin Air Jordans, and ****, for Walmart.