Graduates At #BethuneCookman Boo DeVos As Dean Scolds: 'Choose Which Way You Want To Go'

Image source: CNN.com

In a sea of bad news this morning, my bright spot was video of graduates at Bethune Cookman, a historic Black college, booing and turning their backs on honorary degree recipient Betsy DeVos.

#bethunecookman grauduates turning their back during Ed. Sec #BettyDevos speech at their graduation ceremony!!!!! pic.twitter.com/NN0Dp4f0Wm

— °•° (@iainfelipe) May 10, 2017

In an ironic touch, a dean who appeared to be angered and no doubt embarrassed by the crowd's reaction to DeVos at the podium admonished graduates to "choose which way you want to go." This followed a threat that if the disturbance did not cease that diplomas would be mailed rather than handed out as they marched in caps and gowns.

Celebrating years of hard work to achieve a college degree by protesting an uneducated white representative of the openly racist regime of the demagogue with bad hair seems like making a good choice to me. 

Other notable tweets reporting the controversy:

Holy cow, #bethunecookman dean interrupts DeVos speech, threatens students "your degrees will be mailed to you!" They persist! pic.twitter.com/nkcqZrbXJ0

— Tommy Christopher (@tommyxtopher) May 10, 2017

DeVos is an heiress of the Amway fortune and sister to notorious Pentagon contractor Eric Prince. Famously uneducated herself, she was instrumental in harming public education systems in Michigan and Texas before ascending to the federal post of Secretary of Education. She is an avowed enemy of public education favoring privatization schemes and charter schools over fully funding schools that serve all children.

This generation will not turn the other cheek while you make decisions that hurt them. Thank God for that. #BetsyDeVos #bethunecookman

— Meredith (@QueenOfSangria) May 10, 2017

Respect is earned, not bought. Well done #bethunecookman graduates! #BackstoBetsy #SavePublicEdu #ilovepublicschools

— Mandy (@Naseku18) May 10, 2017

Onward, Kleptocracy: Why Your Country Can Afford WMDs But Not Health Care For Sick Kids

Here's one of the products big corporate donors to congressional and presidential campaigns sell at a profit: weapons of mass destruction. The many reasons trotted out for spending well over half the discretionary portion of the federal budget each year on the Pentagon and its contractors tend to focus on "security" in the face of threats from actors around the globe. 

What this really means is "financial security for me and my family" as aspiring millionaires like Obama -- or the once destitute Bill Clinton -- cozy up to the big dogs, exchanging representation of the interests of the already wealthy for a piece of the pie.

Here's another profitable product: financial services, such as investment banking. A groundbreaking academic study "Fifty Shades of Green" analyzed the voting of Democratic congressmen and women in relation to their acceptance of campaign donations from the private sector. From the Roosevelt Institute article about the study:

The message of [authors] Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Chen’s study is simple: Money influences key congressional floor votes on both finance and telecommunication issues. Americans may not have the “best Congress money can buy”—after all, as they note, their results could be even bleaker—but there is no point in pretending that what appears to be the voice of the people is really often the sound of money talking.

This is an inconvenient truth. Liberals in the U.S. want to pretend the influence of $$$$$$$$$ in government is a new, Republican problem. 

It was the failure of the Democratic Party to represent people rather than corporations that handed the last election to the other corporate party, the one that similarly made a lot of false promises to represent the little guy by "draining the swamp" of the lobbiest-infested federal government.

In fact, Republicans have done nothing of the kind since coming to power in 2017. The swamp is well and thriving. Evidence has emerged that selling access and influence has become even more blatant under the current regime. "Staff for Sale" reveals documents obtained by The Intercept documenting the ways in which campaign donors buy meetings with congressional staffers who are paid by me and thee.

Comic Margot Robbie channeling Ivanka Trump, whose clothing line
  profits were successfully promoted by White House staffers.

The embarrassing peddling of costume jewelery and other trinkets from the White House is more symbolic than actually dangerous. But it is the tip of an alarming iceberg, one that abandons any pretense of taxation with representation. What we have now is more on the order of exemption from taxation via purchased representation.

But make no mistake: the mob is angry. Listen to their reaction when Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador told them at the kind of town hall meeting most of his colleagues are (understandably) too frightened to hold, "Nobody dies because they don't have access to health care."





Billionaire Warren Buffet went on record this week calling the American Health Care Act just passed by Republicans in control of the House "a huge tax cut for guys like me." Not that he's in favor of it. (He likes the other corpporate party better.) He also showed some clarity by observing in the same interview, "Medical costs are the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness."

The strategy of corporate mass media shutting out and ridiculing challengers to the duopoly of corporate parties has been predictably effective in giving us the best government money can buy.

Onward, kleptocracy! Unless we go on general strike soon, we are likely to die -- uninsured -- starved by the worm at the heart of our corrupt system.