Posted on 01/23/2017 2:53:32 PM PST by markomalley
The hometown newspaper for failed vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine is raising questions about his comments to Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos at her confirmation hearing last week.
In an editorial published Sunday, The Richmond Times-Dispatch accused the Senator from Virginia of sexism in his line of questioning for DeVos during the Jan. 17 confirmation hearing.
From the Times-Dispatch:
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine raked Betsy DeVos over the coals during the recent hearing over her nomination to head the Education Department. That’s fine: Asking tough questions is exactly what a good senator should do. …
But one of Kaine’s questions in particular seemed out of place:
“You and your husband spoke at a conference a number of years ago, and your husband said — this was not attributed to you, but you were together at the conference, if what I read is correct — ‘The church has been displaced by the public school as the center for activity, the center of what goes on in the community.’ Thomas Jefferson didn’t view public education as contrary to or competitive with church or religion. Do you?”
How curious.
The editorial, titled “DeVos Hearing raises question about Tim Kaine’s old-school views,” went on to explain why the comments reek of sexism.
Kaine has been in the public eye for more than two decades. His wife, Anne Holton — who has been both a judge and the head of Virginia’s Department of Education — has been in the public eye perhaps even longer, given that her father, Gov. Linwood Holton, transferred her to a public school in the wake of desegregation.
In all that time, we don’t recall a single instance in which Holton was asked to answer for her husband’s views (or vice versa). Nor should she have been.
After all, a woman does not stop being an independent person when she gets married. She still does her own thinking, and need not subordinate her opinions to those of her husband. In fact, it seems rather sexist to imply otherwise.
So why did Kaine?
Democrats in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions are now calling on chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander to convene a second hearing to grill DeVos further on her life-long advocacy work in education, though Lamar is resisting, The Washington Post reports.
Alexander’s aide told the news site Monday that DeVos, a champion of school choice, has already answered enough questions.
“Betsy DeVos has already met with each committee member in their offices, spent nearly an hour and a half longer in her Senate hearing than either of President Obama’s education secretaries, and is now answering 837 written questions — 1,397 including all the questions within a question — that Democrats have submitted for her to answer,” Alexander’s aide said. “That’s compared with the 81 questions — 109 including all questions within a question — Republicans submitted in writing to Obama’s two Secretaries of Education combined.”
The Michigan philanthropist millionaire is the chairwoman of American Federation for Children, one of the most effective school choice advocacy groups in the nation, as has helped to launch one of the most successful charter schools in Michigan – West Michigan Aviation Academy.
She’s expected to back President Donald Trump’s call to build a $20 billion block grant program to expand charter schools and other alternative educational options – such as private school vouchers.
At DeVos’ confirmation hearing last week she made it clear she plans promote school choice options, and also defended the need to do away with gun free zones that hamper efforts to protect students from intruders, animals or anything else.
This is the voice of the Teacher’s Unions.
Kaine is yesterdays news. The guy is vile, and thankfully we won’t see much of him.
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