BETSY DEVOS: The Illusion of Choice by Jake Jacobs
Originally posted at: https://medium.com/@NYArteacher/betsy-devos-the-illusion-of-choice-f2a0ea0044d4#.akqx4jkyy
Since the nomination of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education, the nation has been contemplating her pet issue, school choice. School choice sounds great, like it’s giving the people back the power, for example to decide where and how your child will be learning. This idea, unfortunately, is a smokescreen for a major cash grab, introducing corporate middlemen between taxpayers and classrooms.
It’s called privatization and it devastated healthcare, leading to spiraling premiums and a crisis of millions uninsured. Look also at the military, as private contracts fabulously enriched cronies at Halliburton and Blackwater (whose CEO is Betsy DeVos’ brother — coincidence?). The privatization of the military has been expensive, opaque, and riddled with well-documented corruption costing taxpayers billions while worsening conditions on the ground.
ART OF THE BAD DEAL: Trump is also using the same trickery on unsuspecting investors — the GOP majority just rescinded the regulation that required brokerage firms must put the customers’ interest ahead of their own. The GOP justified the change by claiming investors want “better choices” of financial products.
The same goes for healthcare — they say the ACA should be repealed without any replacement, to let the marketplace offer “choice” such as unregulated low-cost insurance plans with loads of exclusions hidden in the fine print. We already tried this. Before the ACA, insurers denied care, refused to cover pre-existing conditions and imposed lifetime caps.
Republicans also tried unsuccessfully in 2001 to privatize Social Security, claiming account holders would have greater choice and control over their savings as Wall Street subsumed the nation’s piggybank. That one failed spectacularly.
So “choice” is the way corporate politicians deliver you to their Badass Teachers Association: BETSY DEVOS: The Illusion of Choice by Jake Jacobs:
