There are a couple of Cabinet nominees with ethical questions that have to be sorted out, and hopefully, they will be sorted out quickly, and but there are a couple who are unqualified for a position because they don't know anything and at least one who is severely challenged ethically.
Betsy DeVos knows nothing about education other than that she prefers charter schools and vouchers over public education. She is not an educator, has no formal training, never attended public schools and would not send her children to a public school. At her hearing, she refused (3 or 4 times) to say whether she felt that private schools and public schools should be held equally accountable, did not know the difference between growth and proficiency (a big debate in education circles), did not know that special needs children are protected by Federal law (saying it should be up to the states), said that student loan debt has increased 980% in the past 8 years (the increase is about 120%), and said that a school in Wyoming probably had a gun to protect it against attacks by grizzlies (they have a fence and a spray they can use if it was ever necessary - no gun). Her only qualifications seem to be that a) Trump thinks it's an easy job, and b) her family has donated about $200 million to Republican campaigns, including to Trump's and those of some Senators holding the confirmation hearing. Further, her ethics review is not complete because she delayed providing the required documentation. I guess the dog ate her homework...
Rick Perry did not fully understand what the Dept of Energy did when he said he wanted to abolish it 5 years ago or when he accepted the nomination to be Secretary. He thought it was all just about oil and gas, and he thought he was good at that. One of the things he did not know until he was briefed in prior to the hearings was that the DOE is responsible for many other things, including safeguarding our nuclear weapons. To quote his debate response 5 years ago, "Oops!".
Steven Mnuchin (Treasury) definitely knows what he's doing, but he failed to disclose about $100 million in assets, and more importantly, did not disclose that he is a director of an investment fund in the Cayman Islands - a place where rich people who don't want to pay taxes park their money. When challenged about this during his hearing today, he stated that he pays his taxes. The Senator who raised the issue pointed out that the question was not whether he was paying HIS taxes, but whether he was helping his clients avoid the need to pay theirs. And then there's that nasty business about his ownership of the foreclosure mill known as OneWest bank...
Neither of these three deserves to be confirmed, but sadly they probably will be. |
