Betsy DeVos - An Enemy to Public Education and LGBT Americans

Many of Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Fuhrer's cabinet nominees are more than a bit frightening.  Attorney General pick Jeff Session's has a racists history and was viewed as to extreme back when I lived in Alabama.  That, of course was before the Christofascists took over the Alabama Republican Party and merged a longing for segregation with a desire to impose a Christian version of Sharia law on that state.  Vladimir Putin loving Rex Tillerson is another frightening Trump pick. But in some ways perhaps the most disturbing is Betsy DeVos, a long time opponent of both the LGBT community - she has lavishly funded a who's who of anti-LGBT hate groups - and public education itself.  On the later issue, for years she has sought ways to shift public school funds from public schools to private school, many of which are right wing religious affiliated school.  Such schools provide a backdoor approach to re-segregating schools and a vehicle to provide extremist religious indoctrination to students. A length piece in the New York Times looks at this woman whose view of the poor makes Marie Antoinette's mythical statement "let them eat cake" look kind and soft hearted. Here are article highlights:

In announcing his intention to nominate Ms. DeVos, Mr. Trump described her as “a brilliant and passionate education advocate.” Even critics characterized her as a dedicated, if misguided, activist for school reform. But that description understates both the breadth of Ms. DeVos’s political interests and the influence she wields as part of her powerful family. More than anyone else who has joined the incoming Trump administration, she represents the combination of wealth, free-market ideology and political hardball associated with a better-known family of billionaires: Charles and David Koch.

Like the Kochs, the DeVoses are generous supporters of think tanks that evangelize for unrestrained capitalism, like Michigan’s Acton Institute, and that rail against unions and back privatizing public services. . . .

DeVoses’ education activism, which favors alternatives to traditional public schools, appears to derive from the same free-market views that inform their suspicion of government. And perhaps more than other right-wing billionaires, the DeVoses couple their seeding of ideological causes with an aggressive brand of political spending. Half a dozen or more extended family members frequently coordinate contributions to maximize their impact.

In the 2016 cycle alone, according to the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, the family spent roughly $14 million on political contributions to state and national candidates, parties, PACs and super PACs.

All of this would make Ms. DeVos — whose confirmation hearing has been delayed until next week amid mounting pressure that her government ethics review be completed beforehand — very different from past education secretaries.

“She is the most emblematic kind of oligarchic figure you can put in a cabinet position,” said Jeffrey Winters, a political scientist at Northwestern University who studies economic elites. “What she and the Kochs have in common is the unbridled use of wealth power to achieve whatever political goals they have.”

Ms. DeVos, 59, grew up in Holland, Mich., the daughter of a conservative auto parts magnate who was an early funder of the Family Research Council [a certified anti-LGBT hate group], a conservative Christian group. When she married Dick DeVos in 1979, it was akin to a merger between two royal houses of western Michigan.

Her husband’s father, Richard Sr., co-founder of the multilevel marketing company Amway, was an active member of the Christian Reformed Church that preached a mix of social conservatism and self-reliance. He once told the church’s official magazine that Chicago’s poor dwelled in slums because that was “the way they choose to live,” according to a Washington Post story from the 1980s.

The flip side of the family’s proselytizing for capitalism, according to Professor Phillips-Fein, has been an effort to dismantle much “that would counterbalance the power of economic elites.”

While Dick and Betsy DeVos appear to practice a more tolerant form of Christianity than their parents — Ms. DeVos has spoken out against anti-gay bigotry — as recently as the early 2000s they funded some groups like Focus on the Family, a large ministry that helps set the political agenda for conservative evangelicals. They have also backed groups that promote conservative values to students and Christian education . . .

The family spent millions of dollars on a ballot proposal in 2000 asking if Michigan should legalize vouchers, in which students can use taxpayer money to attend private schools.

Many critics, like the education historian Diane Ravitch, argue that the point of vouchers is to destroy public education and teachers’ unions. The group Americans United for Separation of Church and State has documented how conservative Christians have long supported vouchers, which could fund religious schools.

[C]ritics see someone with an unmistakable agenda. “The signs are there that she will do something radical,” said Jack Jennings, a former general counsel for the House education committee. “Trump wouldn’t have appointed this woman for this position if he didn’t intend something radical.”

The Republican Plan to Kill Medicare

It was not only angry unemployed rural/under employed, low information whites who voted against their own economic interest when they cast their vote for Donald Trump and other Republicans. Many of the elderly did the same and will likely now face the consequences as Congressional Republicans now feel empowered to move forward on a long held dream: gutting Medicare and turning it into a limited voucher program.  The pipe dream of Republicans is that "increased competition will drive down premium costs" - something that has NOT happened in the regular heath insurance arena.  Faced with suddenly vastly increased medical care costs, many of the elderly will find their so-called golden years turning into nightmare years.  Indeed, Paul Ryan may get his wish at long last of forcing many seniors to live off inadequate resources once they must choose between eating, having heat in the winter or medical care. Meanwhile, Ryan will bloviate about his Catholic values even as he utter betrays the Church's social gospel message and cuts healthcare support in order to fund tax cuts for the very wealthy.  The man, as are his GOP allies, is evil.  As for those who voted Republican, they once again allowed Republican appeals to their racism, religious extremism and/or general bigotry to cut their own throats.  The New York Times looks at the coming GOP effort to end Medicare.  Here are excerpts:

[W]ith Election Day behind them, emboldened House Republicans say they will move forward on a years-old effort to shift Medicare away from its open-ended commitment to pay for medical services and toward a fixed government contribution for each beneficiary.

The idea rarely came up during Mr. Trump’s march toward the White House, but a battle over the future of Medicare could roil Washington during his first year in office, whether he wants it or not.

“Let me say unequivocally to you now: I have fought to protect Medicare for this generation and for future generations,” Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana, a Democrat running for re-election in 2018, said this week in a video message to constituents. “I have opposed efforts to privatize Medicare in the past, and I will oppose any effort to privatize Medicare or turn it into a voucher program in the future.”

For nearly six years, Speaker Paul D. Ryan has championed the new approach, denounced by Democrats as “voucherizing” Medicare. Representative Tom Price of Georgia, the House Budget Committee chairman and a leading candidate to be Mr. Trump’s secretary of health and human services, has also embraced the idea, known as premium support.

And Democrats are relishing the fight and preparing to defend the program, which was created in 1965 as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. They believe that if Mr. Trump chooses to do battle over Medicare, he would squander political capital, as President George W. Bush did with an effort to add private investment accounts to Social Security after his re-election in 2004.

Democrats will “stand firmly and unified” against Mr. Ryan if he tries to “shatter the sacred guarantee that has protected generations of seniors,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader.

Republicans have pressed for premium support since Mr. Ryan first included it in a budget blueprint in 2011. As he envisions it, Medicare beneficiaries would buy health insurance from one of a number of competing plans. The traditional fee-for-service Medicare program would compete directly with plans offered by private insurers like Humana, UnitedHealth Group and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Democrats say that premium support would privatize Medicare, replacing the current government guarantee with skimpy vouchers — “coupon care for seniors.” The fear is that the healthiest seniors would choose private insurance, lured by offers of free health club memberships and other wellness programs, leaving traditional Medicare with sicker, more expensive patients and higher premiums.

“Beneficiaries would have to pay much more to stay in traditional fee-for-service Medicare,” said John K. Gorman, a former Medicare official who is now a consultant to many insurers. “Regular Medicare would become the province of affluent beneficiaries who can buy their way out of” private plans.

“I am terrified of vouchers,” said Kim Ebb, 92, who lives in a retirement community in Bethesda, Md., and has diabetes, atrial fibrillation and irritable bowel syndrome. “You get a fixed amount of money to draw on for your expenses. Then you are on your own.”
Charles R. Drapeau, 64, of East Waterboro, Me., said he was rattled by the Republican plans.

“I’m scared to death,” said Mr. Drapeau, who has multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, and takes a drug that costs more than $10,000 a month. “We don’t know exactly how it will work, but just the fact that they are talking about messing with Medicare, it’s frightening to me.”

Mr. Gorman said that premium support would be “a seismic change” in Medicare and could increase costs for many people in the traditional fee-for-service program, fueling a big increase in enrollment in private Medicare Advantage plans.

The Congressional Budget Office analyzed two of the leading options and found that “most beneficiaries who wished to remain in the fee-for-service program would pay much higher premiums, on average, under either alternative.” At the same time, the budget office said the proposal could slow the growth of Medicare spending if more beneficiaries enrolled in lower-cost private plans.

Consumer advocates express several concerns about premium support. Private plans, under pressure to rein in costs, could respond by creating smaller networks of doctors and hospitals. Such plans would then be less attractive to sicker patients who need more health care services.

“What happens if the voucher doesn’t grow with the cost of health care?” asked Leslie B. Fried, a health lawyer at the National Council on Aging, a service and advocacy group. “Will people have more and more out-of-pocket costs?”

The winners?  The wealthy who receive tax cuts and the insurance companies. The losers?  The average American.  Welcome to the Trump/GOP America.