I’m taking a side trip to Iraq, 2004, to create a—Full disclosure: not entirely fair—linkage between events during the Iraq War and Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education.

I’m a few days late to the DeVos story, but there’s still lots to be said. You can sum up her philosophy of education in three words: Privatize, Privatize, Privatize. (“Do you want to supersize monetize that order of privatization, Ms. DeVos?” “Oh, absolutely!”) But first, the Iraq War, and Fallujah.

For a number of reasons, the U.S. turned the Iraq War into a highly privatized mission. We needed more boots on the ground than our armed forces could provide, and besides that, the Bush administration believed that anything a government worker or soldier can do, an employee of a for-profit private company can do better. The private forces totaled about a third of the military presence in Iraq.

In 2004, four private security contractors working for Blackwater USA were escorting a convoy of trucks near Fallujah when they were ambushed and killed. The four men’s bodies were burned, mutilated and dragged through the streets. The outrage in the U.S. over the brutal killing was partly responsible for the first Battle of Fallujah, which was the largest military operation since the U.S. took control of Iraq. It did not go well. Civilians fled the city, the U.S. attacked from the air and from the ground with little success. The battle ended with the U.S. withdrawing from the city and turning the operation over to a Sunni security force, which soon turned its weapons over to the insurgency and faded away.

So, one of the primary triggers for the Battle of Fallujah was the death of four Blackwater mercenaries, all very qualified for their jobs—three retired Navy SEALs and one retired Army Ranger. Was it just one of those things that happen in the fog of war, or was it a Blackwater blunder? Did the company scrimp on giving the men the equipment and the backup they needed in order to keep operating expenses low and profits high? The families of the men thought so, and they sued Blackwater, demanding details of the operation. The company said it didn’t have to provide any information. Governmental regulation of the company was minimal, and transparency wasn’t required. In fact, Blackwater countersued the families, saying the men’s contracts forbade them or their families from suing. In 2012, the parties reached a confidential settlement, meaning the events leading up to the killing of the four men will never be known.

The founder of Blackwater is a man named Erik Prince. He’s the brother of Betsy DeVos, born Betsy Prince, Trump’s choice for Secretary of Education.

Whether it’s in their blood or in their upbringing—whether it’s nature or nurture — we’ll never know, but the Prince siblings both appear to have a passion for privatization and profiteering. Both believe, whether it’s a publicly funded private mercenary army or publicly funded charter schools and vouchers, the private sector can get the job done better than a government army or government schools, and no evidence to the contrary will shake their beliefs.

You know, that’s enough for this post. I’ll save the story about Betsy DeVos, “education reform”/privatization and dark money for another day.

This article appears in Nov 24-30, 2016.

20 replies on “Betsy DeVos, Privatization and . . . Fallujah?”

  1. Oh don’t stop now I’m on the edge of my moms basement steps. Shouldn’t having relatives be illegal? Let’s ask the Podestas or the Emmanuels.

  3. Safier asserts that Betsy De Vos and her brother believe, “the private sector can get the job done better than a government army or government schools, and no evidence to the contrary will shake their beliefs.”

    A few questions on this:

    Do they believe that private is always better than public? Or do they believe that room should be made for private to function next to public? Could you provide citations that make it clear what their specific views actually are?

    Are you implying that any evidence there is about private / public will be evidence “to the contrary,” i.e. proving that public is always better than private?

    But it seems when it comes to education there might be evidence on both sides of this question:
    –evidence of malfunctioning public district schools, evidence of high functioning public district schools
    –evidence of high functioning charters and privates, evidence of malfunctioning charters and privates
    Most people I know would agree that charters and privates receiving public funding need to be better regulated and overseen, but surely you don’t intend to assert, David, the contrary of the absurd belief you attribute to the De Vos family: that public is ALWAYS, in every circumstance, better than private?

    One more question:
    When the US Government loses a battle and soldiers die, are relatives of the soldiers able in every case to successfully demand information about how the lead-up to the deaths was managed, and file law suits against the US military personnel who gave the commands leading to the casualties? I don’t follow military history very closely, but I’m drawing a blank on examples of this I’ve read about in the media in recent days. Could you give some examples of how things have gone differently than this sad case you describe in Fallujah, when the armed forces in question were publicly managed rather than privately managed? Perhaps there are some examples I don’t know of…and there may be standards that can be referred to…soldiers should have specifically these supplies when going into these types of battles…commanders should make specifically these kinds of decisions. Perhaps war, contrary to popular opinion, is not a violent, unpredictable endeavor, but a professionally managed enterprise where there are agreed upon standards and commanders can always be held accountable (and sued) for poor decisions. (Wonder what would happen if all the cases of mistakes made by commanders in war were settled with law suits and monetary settlements. It might bankrupt every government that engages in armed conflict. Perhaps it’s not a bad idea…)

  5. Keep the light on these privatization schemes. For-profit schools using public money is a bad model.
    I’m fine with purely private schools, and with non-profit, publicly funded charter schools. But for-profit schools sucking public money has been shown as a failure at the college level already. It begs for corruption.

  6. BSLAP:

    Is David Safier distinguishing between not-for-profit and for-profit? I though he opposed “privatization” (charters and vouchers) across the Board, both when the public money in question is used in for-profit and in not-for-profit charter schools and private schools. If I’m wrong about that, he will no doubt correct me.

    Opposing any form of what is called “privatization” in education is a lost cause; there are at this point too many people receiving better services in alternative settings than they could receive in their neighborhood public district schools and the outcry if those opportunities were eliminated across the board would be tremendous. What we should be trying to accomplish: better laws regulating the alternative sector, greater transparency, more reliable professionalization of the faculty in alternative institutions, and some labor protections that are not currently in place. Eliminating for-profit charters and privates entirely would be a good plank in that reform platform and those affiliated with most of the responsible not-for-profit charter and private operations I know locally would support it.

    At this point, the “tilting at windmills” of the hard-core “anti-privatization” crowd diverts attention and public pressure from the policy areas where it should properly be applied to improve services to students. It is utopian fantasy, not serious policy advocacy.

  7. The problem with the bromide, “everyone knows the private sector can always do it better”, is the sheer hypocrisy from the privatization crowd. They want privatization without risk, or accountability. The problem with it is public service is not their priority, profit is. Blackwater essentially wanted profit, but no one could complain when anything went wrong based on sheer stupidity, mismanagement, or profit gouging. Privately operated charter schools receiving public money want the money, but if they procure from their own family operated companies, no questions, when they exclude special needs students because of cost, no questions, when they “select out” students who may lower their test scores, no questions, when the self select their boards, no questions, when they solicit for “teacher improvement funds”, no questions, when they send unreported profits to their for profit owners, no questions allowed.

  8. Socialists like Safier and most liberals are absolutely the least qualified to speak of privatization or profits. He has no knowledge of it, no experience, has lived off the backs of taxpayers all his life, and it is him and his elk that have destroyed the public education system.

  10. “I’m taking a side trip to Iraq, 2004, “…

    How about taking another trip there in 2016? I’m sure we could easily crowdfund a one way ticket for you.

  11. Public schools are about opportunity for all. Private schools are about privilege for a few. Public schools are about inclusion and diversity. Private schools are about exclusion and homogeneity. Public schools are about public governance. Private schools are about money-based governance. Public schools are about choices. Private schools are about limiting choices. I vote for public schools. Yes, some fall through the cracks, unfortunately, in public schools. In private schools, those who do not succeed are either booted out, or covered up by influence. Anyone remember the “gentlemen’s ‘C’ grade? Excellence not required but provided by network. Public schools are where excellence is determined by individual and/or group effort.

  12. In your desire for the smear, you miss the elephant in the room. DeVos states she is opposed to Common Core standards yet the initial quotes from her appointment not only state her and Trump’s support for national standards but national standards even more dislocating than Common Core.

    In other words, she doesn’t like the poison because it is not toxic enough and not mandatory enough.

    Let’s review the results of Common Core. Math scores went down for the first time ever, ever. Reading scores previously on an upward trend, did not improve. The percentage of parents rating their child’s school an “A” (Gallup/PhiDeltaKappa) plunged from 36% in 2011 to 24% in 2015, from the highest in the Gallups 47 year history to the second lowest.

    We beat that trend in Arizona – we had the highest combined math and reading gains in the nation and parent ratings improved , but only because we understood why standards for children are so damaging and avoided those pressures for the most part.

    National standards would be much worse than common core and that’s evidently what they intend to do.

  13. Sorry gcb1 but public schools instituted social advancement over academics. That’s why colleges are trying to teach freshmen to read and add. Denying it doesn’t make it go away. And many in private schools are low income and got a second chance based on tax credits and family and friends help.

    There is no point having a discussion if we can’t be honest.

  14. De Vos has said that her children attended private schools and she wants that opportunity to be available to children from families where there may not be the means available to pay 100% of tuition out of pocket.

    What’s your opinion on that topic, David, as a private school parent?

    (I’ll tell you my personal opinion: anyone who has utilized private schools themselves for their own children does not have any ground to stand on when they oppose what is called “privatization,” which, whatever they choose to call it, is in fact a means for a broader portion of our population to utilize the kinds of institutions they themselves have used. The only people who have a right to ask that the public system retain a monopoly on the use of public funds are those who have used the public system exclusively for their own children. And when I say exclusively, I mean for K-12, for college, and for professional school. If all of those levels of institutions have been utilized, ALL of those need to have been PUBLIC, for those who expect to oppose privatization without earning an epithet that seems to be coming up frequently in comment streams on your blogs these days: HYPOCRITE.)

  15. Wow, gcb1, what a lot of PREJUDICE you have to offer when it comes to discussing public vs. private schools. Is your commentary based on direct experience of private schools, as a parent, as a teacher, as a student? Or just on hearsay and assumptions?

    I was quite surprised to see this from you — I’ve been a fan, at some points, of your commentary on TUSD, and the forum you organized at Palo Verde was by far the best of the four TUSD forums I observed this fall.

    “Some fall through the cracks, unfortunately, in public schools.” A professional educator who is willing to allow that the loss of a child’s education is an acceptable casualty is — what shall I say? — “irresponsible” is one way to put it. I know several children who failed to thrive in public schools whose educations were saved by the individualized attention they received in private schools. But evidently you feel that if a family doesn’t have sufficient $$$, the opportunity available to some in our society to learn in an environment that more suits an individual child’s needs should be blocked for them. That’s what the actual, on-the-ground consequence of opposing all forms of “privatization” means.

  18. The only person that misses Rat T is Rat T. Both of the comments above are a weak attempt by Rat T to get undue sympathy. How pathetic.

  20. If David had substituted the word “Benghazi” in just a few places, we would all know the story, but the outcome is a bit different in that the families had no place to go. That is until Donnie come on to the scene.

    In any even, Donnie has chose wisely for Education and for me, at least, the word “PROFIT” is beautiful – it makes things happen.

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