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dear-ilenas-friends-blog · 8 years

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Alright Alright Alright

Let’s unpack some shit today, shall we? Once again, a reminder that I do not care about your feelings.

Today we chat about Betsy DeVos. Oh yes, the idiot who was recently confirmed as our country’s Secretary of Education. You might be thinking to yourself, “What does the Secretary of Education do?” In layman’s terms, the S.of E. oversees the US Department of Education and also deals with education policies including discrimination in schools, loans for college (and their interest rates), Common core curriculum, testing, you kinda get the picture. Usually, the people put in charge of the Department of Education are...well...familiar with Education.

Lauro Cavazos, who was the Secretary of Education under both Reagan and H.W. Bush, received his PhD in physiology before going on to being a professor at Tufts University and the Medical College of Virginia. He served as Dean of the Tufts University School of Medicine and as the President of Texas Tech University. Yeah. Experience in education.

Moving on to the S. of E. under GW Bush, Rod Paige. HUGE SHOCKER! BIG NEWS! He was the first African American to become the Secretary of Education! He went from classroom teacher to school superintendent to college dean, all in Mississippi. He also served on the Board of Education for the Houston Independent School District, and led the district on to be the only one in the country that has ever earned accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (read: it was super safe). Oh and while he was working at the White House, he proposed several amendments for Title IX, or, you know, the thing that lets you ladies play the same sports as men. No big deal or anything. So yeah, education.

Margaret Spellings was GW Bush’s second Secretary of Education (two terms, to peeps). A lady! Astounding. Here we go. She worked on the Texas education reform commission and was the associate executive director for the Texas Association of School Boards. She oversaw the No Child Left Behind program (best name ever), and she created the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which aimed to reform post-secondary (college) education. She wanted more technical and vocational training. The commission also focused on how well high schools were preparing teenagers for college. Once again, education.

Obama’s first Secretary of Education was Arne Duncan, a product of Harvard University. He was the director of the Ariel Education Initiative, which was a program aimed at mentoring children in Chicago. He also began a charter school and later was named Deputy Chief of Staff for the Chicago Public School’s CEO. As Secretary of Education, he opposed the No Child Left Behind law and also he kinda sucked at his job. Like no joke, he had all the skill and none of the...implementation or ideas. But still, he had a background in education.

The most recent Secretary of Education (before I talk about Ms. DeVos) was John King Jr. and Oh. My. God. was he cool. He originally taught Social Studies in Boston, and he was the co-director of Roxbury Preparatory Charter School. This school, under his watchful eye, attained the highest state exam scores of any urban middle school in Massachusetts, closed the racial achievement gap, and outperformed students from both middle- and upper-class schools and suburbs. Suck it. He has just about every teacher degree you can have from Yale and Columbia, and (no big deal) is also a Truman Scholar. He was the New York Commissioner for Education before being selected by Barry O as Secretary of State. He helped teachers get more funds utilizing Title II, which also trained them to lead. He worked to get more support for teachers of color. Basically he was an all-around awesome bro, and yeah, has a shit ton of educational expertise.

And so, here we are. Three weeks into (gag) President Trump’s first term, and he has a new Secretary of Education. Betsey DeVos (Last name pronounced de-Voss - like the obnoxious water that costs you $5 in a CVS but the white people buy it anyway to look cool) ANYWAY, DeVos is a billionaire. Let’s start with that. She served as chair of the Michigan Republican Party from 1992-1997. She and her family have personally given more that $17 million to political candidates (that should ring a bell- it’s sort of bribery - but we’re getting there). She is the chairwoman of the Windquest Group, which privately invests in technology, manufacturing, and clean energy (that’s cool, I’ll give her that). She and her husband are also chief investors in and board members of Neurocore, which offers biofeedback therapy for mental disorders.Now all of this is fine and dandy. Makes Betsy sound wonderful - and maybe she is! But here’s the thing. She is currently our Secretary of Education, and we need to chat about that.

There are many issues facing our public school system. Common core, standardized testing, proficiency vs. growth, school shootings, discrimination based on sexual orientation/skin color/literally anything, bathroom rights, you know. Just the usual. So obviously the person who is going to tackle these problems needs to be experienced.

Unfortunately for Ms. DeVos, she is not. During her confirmation hearing, she (amazingly) said schools need guns for grizzly bear attacks, revealed she had never attended (and her children hadn’t either) any sort of public school, told the senate that she had never had to take out a loan, and also appeared to want to take money away from public schools and give it to charter schools. Okay, what else? Oh, she wants states to decide what is discrimination towards their students (so that bathroom thing that Obama put out? Yeah she was not a fan of treating people decently) This is the woman who would be overseeing the student loan interest rates yet she has no financial background or...loan background...or any background really. Betsy DeVos has lived comfortably because of her money, and she is about to deal with the real world.

And just to add insult to injury, today (February 10, 2017), she was physically barred from entering a public school by protesters. In the video you can clearly see how absolutely terrified she looks. Reality is setting in.

So to wrap it up. Secretary of Education needs experience. We have had experienced peeps up until now, where our cheeto-in-chief has nominated and sworn in billionaire lady DeVos.

Yep. We’re screwed.

#politics #yeah i'm angry #secretary of education #betsy devoss #VOSS water

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dear-ilenas-friends-blog · 8 years

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Dear My Sister’s Friends,

Hi! Whats up? We’ve never met, but I’m _____’s sister, Allison. I’ve heard more about you than I’d care to admit, and honestly I’ve got some issues with all of you, but that’s not what I’m writing this for. You all for the most part seem to be a very Pro-Trump group of people. I wish I felt okay brushing that off, being like “oh whatever they have their beliefs I have mine.” But the country has progressed too far into the abyss, and we are only 11 days into the presidency. So we need to talk. This is going to get rough. I don’t really care about your feelings, just FYI.

#1. The ban on citizens from muslim-majority countries is unconstitutional, as is the complete freeze on the Syrian refugee program. Allow me to remind you of WWII and the Holocaust (do not deny it happened, if you do we have a bigger problem on our hands). While the Nazis of Germany and the Fascists of Italy and the Communists of Japan slaughtered millions of people they felt were a threat to society, the United States refused to take in refugees, citing our need to stay out of the war. The US allowed MILLIONS of people to die while we sat back and watched. WE CANNOT LET THAT HAPPEN AGAIN. Oh what's up maybe you were never taught the poem on the statue of liberty? I had to sing it in third grade, and it goes like this: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”. Yeah we don’t turn people away. This whole fucking country was started by people escaping religious persecution in England. And DO NOT EVEN GET ME STARTED on the fact that we slaughtered indigenous people in order for the immigrants to live here (unnecessary).

#2. Let’s chat about women’s rights. Okay let’s assume that most of you don’t want to get pregnant at the moment, but one of you does. You don’t want that baby? TOO FUCKING BAD BECAUSE THE MEN IN THIS COUNTRY THINK YOU WANT THAT BABY. Some one them think that if you got pregnant from rape (god forbid) your body could just shut down and boom no pregnancy. Oh do you want an abortion? HAHA GOOD FUCKING LUCK. The way your precious president is going, women will not only have limited access to abortions, they may not be able to get them in time. There is a proposed ban on abortions past 6 weeks currently sitting in the senate and let me tell you something, most women do not know they’re pregnant until at least 8 weeks. THAT MEANS YOU WILL BE WAAAAYYYY MORE LIKELY TO HAVE TO CARRY THE CHILD. Oh and, on a related note, they are not children at conception. Fuck that. It’s a fucking zygote until brain waves are present at 25 weeks. And if the woman wants an abortion, her life is ALWAYS more important than the child’s. Yes, in case you forgot, zygotes are what happens when a sperm fertilizes an egg and it begins to grow into a fetus. FETUS. NOT CHILD. Mmmm want some free birth control? Of course you do! I get my pills for free, so does Ilena, so do you. Condoms are pretty free at the health center (or your RA has them - they’re always there just FYI). Bros, the new administration does not want your pills (or IUD or implant or whatever form of contraception you used) to be free. Actually, they don’t want them there at all. Besides the fact that men are running the government and are fundamentally stupid about how women’s bodies work (ask a guy what hole women pee out of- just do it), they also seem to forget about separation of church and state (you know jesus doesn’t believe in birth control blah blah blah see 19 kids and counting for more explanation). I will get more into separation of church and state later. Don’t worry. It’s coming. Anyway, birth control. Remember that. It’s a big deal.

#3. Okay. Separation of Church and State. Hotly debated. Basically it means that we are not a Theocracy, or a government governed by the rules of the bible (a la the Vatican or...Spain in the 1500s). For some unknown reason, peeps in the government (read: men) think that we aRe kind of a theocracy?!? And love to use the bible to back up research. Okay. There’s a whole lot of shit wrong with that, starting with the fact that the Bible is...kinda not real, and ending with the whole Separation of Church and State clause in our GODDAMN CONSTITUTION. I would also like to take this moment to inform you of a very interesting concept called the American Civil Religion, which is basically the overlying tone of religion that weaves its way through our principles and governmental officials. Why do we always have to say “God Bless America”? Which god? Whose god are we talking about anyway? It doesn’t matter. That’s American Civil Religion. The belief that America is bLeSsEd by God in any way (this is also American Exceptionalism, which is the thing where Americans think they’re better than everybody else and ugh). Google “white savior complex” if you really want to get more into this topic.

#4. Shall we chat about people being nominated by Trump? IDK are you familiar with your currently president’s newest pick for the Supreme Court? Gorsuch? Yeah that guy is literally the worst. He sides with corporations over workers’ unions, has fought for domestic violence to be decriminalized, and would like to appeal Roe v. Wade (that’s the abortion one, in case you didn’t know). Let’s see, who else. Oh yes, his entire cabinet is...well...a clusterfuck. He chose a former CEO of ExxonMobil (oil giant, biggest oil spill in history, ruined the environment NBD) as his Secretary of State. Do you know what the secretary of state does? They go country to country, negotiating and meeting with heads of state, furthering our relationships with allies and creating new relationships with countries. The secretary of state is the most important job in the government next to the president. The most accomplished people have held the position (Madeline Albright, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Thomas Jefferson). I just realized you probably don’t know who Madeleine Albright is. She was the first woman to be Secretary of State, and she’s a badass. Look her up. Tillerson has no governmental experience (unless you count testifying in congress to save his ass) How can he be expected to be the country’s top diplomat? Let’s see, who else? Oh, let’s hit Betsy DeVos. You’ve heard of her right? She’s just a casual multi-billionaire nominated for Secretary of Education. She’s the one who said schools need guns because of bears. She’s also the one who has no experience with public education, and would like to take funding out of public institutions (cough cough University of Massachusetts Amherst cough cough) and give it to private schools and charter schools. Most of you had to take out loans for school right? Yeah good luck paying those off with her in charge. Bernie wanted to make college free? DeVos has no idea how to set interest rates for loans, and the way she’s planning on allocating Education Department funds makes it look like those rates will only increase. So good luck getting out of debt. Department of the Treasury? Steven Mnuchin, former Goldman Sachs executive. If you spent any time being angry at Hillary for taking money from Goldman Sachs, thank you new Secretary of the Treasury, who by the way, has zero governmental experience. Secretary of Defense? General James Mattis, a retired Military commander who (thankfully) knows that torture does not work (looking at you Trump). Department of Justice? Jeff Sessions, who famously criticized the NAACP and ACLU while seemingly praising the KKK. Figure that one out. Health and Human Services? Tom Price, and ultra-conservative who has fervent opposition to Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) (aka the whole reason you can stay on your parent's health plan until you’re 26). Who else who else...oh yeah Ben Carson, Mr. “I’m not experienced enough to be in the white house bye”, or better yet, Trevor Noah’s best impression to-date. Bro has zero experience in Housing and Urban Development, minus being poor in Detroit. He’s a pediatric brain surgeon….so yeah. Housing. No. Ah the Department of Energy and Rick Perry. The guy who famously said he’d want to eliminate the...department of energy. AWKWARD. Yeah, not a scientist. Climate change denier (though he’s recanted that recently) and oh did you know that the Department of Energy is in charge of our nuclear weapons? Yeah neither did he. The Department of Labor? Andrew Puzder, the one-time chief executive of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. (fast food chains). He’s a constant critic of minimum-wage laws (aka why should we pay people a lot of money so that they can live instead of struggle - let them struggle!) aaannnnddddd shockingly he has no governing experience whatsoever. Only a few left, stay with me! Secretary of the Interior nominee Ryan Zinke was a Navy Seal (that’s cool). He firmly supports mining and drilling on federal lands - which is big no no for environmental preservation. The Department of Commerce’s nominee is Wilbur Ross (shockingly another rich white guy) who...has no experience in government and doesn’t care about workers rights. Honestly no one cares, but the Department of Agriculture’s nominee is Sonny Perdue and he’s pretty whatever, and the Department of Veteran’s Affairs pick is David Shulkin who is from the Obama Administration so...that’s cool. I know what I just laid out is a lot. If you want to know more about the good the bad and the (mostly) ugly, check out this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/trump-cabinet-tracker/510527/ - it’ll give you all the info you need. It’s important to note that there are two women vying for seat on the cabinet. Elaine Chao (who has already been confirmed as the Secretary of Transportation) and Betsy DeVos (who may not be confirmed for so so many reasons). There is one black man (Dr. Ben Carson...who’s special) and the rest of the guys are old, white, and rich #DrainTheSwamp.

#5. Presidential decorum. For those of you wondering, Trump has none. 0/10. Watch, I’ll put it on a scale against other presidents. Barack Obama was a 10. Bill Clinton was a 6. Reagan was a 7. Nixon was also a 0. See what I’m getting at here? Trump tweets. Oh does he tweet. SAD! He bullies people. He bullies DISABLED PEOPLE. He...can’t read? We don’t know. Our current presidents is...I don’t even know how to describe him. He believe Fox News. But he thinks CNN is fake news. No, wait, is all news fake news? The screenshot I took of his inauguration (which I watched on CNN.com) was that fake news? Did i imagine giant swaths of people missing? And then, after seeing that picture everywhere, why did Sean Spicer (ugh I’m not even going there) get up and lie to the entire press corp and country about it? We’re not all stupid. I have eyes. I’m college-educated. I know there were less people at Trump’s inauguration than there were at Obama’s. And both of those had less people than Reagan had! I wouldn’t really care if not for...alternative facts. Ah, alternative facts. The line spewed by the ever-terrible Kellyanne Conway. Alternative facts. Lies. They are the same thing. We cannot allow our government to dictate what is true and false. They will choose what makes them look good. And that will be detrimental for our country.

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I won’t lie to you guys. I got distracted a bunch of times while writing this. I’m at work, after all. But I got distracted because I had to stop to read articles that were coming out AS I WROTE about what’s going on. So I’d like to share what I read every day. Here are some of the things that distracted me:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/02/us/milo-yiannopoulos-ivory-tower/index.html?adkey=bn

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/30/politics/trump-travel-ban-live-blog/index.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-defends-troll-milo-yiannopoulos_us_589315e9e4b0af07cb6b992f?8mapjo6cymohia4i&

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/us/politics/donald-trump-islam.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/us/politics/trump-supreme-court-gorsuch-senate-democrats.html?ref=politics

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/02/tillerson-diplomats-must-be-team-despite-personal-beliefs.html

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TRUMP_IMMIGRATION_SANCTUARY_STATES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-02-02-10-52-37

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MOBILIZING_MUSLIMS_MAOL-?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-02-02-09-49-14

Please read these (and others) and educate yourselves. You can have an opinion if you’re not educated, but your opinion will be thin (and possibly uninformed) if you don’t back it up with FACTS. ACTUAL FUCKING FACTS. I DON’T DO THIS ALTERNATIVE FACTS BULLSHIT.

Anyway I’ll probably have to write more eventually, but I hope this at least maybe made you think? Or laugh? IDK I’m pretty funny sometimes. Or if you now hate me, well that’s fine too I guess…? Actually no it’s not. I’m pretty cool.

Oh! My next rant will be on Anti-Semitism and Racism and the intersectionality of Racism and Sexism in our country! YAAAAYYYYY

Peace out bitches

Wait no I’m not done I forgot! Going all the way back to the ban on people coming to the country, there are exactly 0 people from any of those countries who have attacked up. Peeps who have attacked us come from countries we didn’t ban (but trump has business ties to so ). ALSO. WHITE SUPREMACIST MEN DO MOST OF THE TERROR ATTACKS IN THE COUNTRY GET IT THROUGH YOUR GODDAMN THICK SKULLS. IT’S NOT MUSLIMS. IT’S THE WHITE MALE RACISTS. Okay the end.

#rant #politics #i'm with her #dear my sister's friends #here we go

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