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If you support Public Education - please vote no on Betsy Devos


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1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"She had something to say about Betsy DeVos. So she sent her senator a pizza — with a message."

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Julia Silge was desperate to reach her senator last Monday.

The 38-year-old Utah resident had strong opinions about President Trump's nominee for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, and felt she needed to air her concerns before DeVos's final Senate confirmation hearing.

For weeks, Silge had tried dialing the Salt Lake City office of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), but no one ever answered the phone. She had gotten through once, in January, and left a message, but it was never returned. After that, Hatch's voice-mail box seemed to be perpetually full.

Having exhausted her options, Silge tried the next best route she could think of: She pulled up GrubHub, a food delivery service app, and ordered a 12-inch ham-and-pineapple pizza for delivery to Hatch's office.

Under “Special Instructions,” Silge requested the following note be attached to the pizza box: “From a Salt Lake constituent in 84105: Please vote NO on Betsy DeVos. She is an inappropriate choice to lead our public schools.”

For good measure, Silge included a $10 tip “in the hopes of it actually happening.”

Then she submitted the order, and waited. For fun, Silge took a screenshot of her order and posted it on Twitter, where she continued to provide live updates about her unusual last-ditch effort to contact Hatch's office.

“I just got a phone call from the delivery person asking me where in the federal office building to go; she is actually delivering it!” Silge tweeted shortly after submitting the order.

Ten minutes later, she returned with another, less exuberant update.

“I am sad to report that my senator's office refused delivery of the pizza,” Silge tweeted, along with sad-face and pizza emoji.

Several hours later, Silge said she received a call from security at the Salt Lake City federal office building, where Hatch's office was located.

“I have gotten a call about a suspicious pizza,” she said the security person told her. Though Silge said the security person was “pretty chill with me,” it turned out Hatch's office had reported the unauthorized pizza delivery to police, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, who first reported the story.

“I definitely had like an, 'Oh, what did I do?' moment when this person was calling me,” Silge told The Washington Post on Monday. “At that time, I was feeling very frustrated and I kind of made this snap decision.”

To her relief, the security person verified key facts — including the pizza toppings on the pie that had been delivered — and told her her story checked out.

“Since it was not actually a threat of any kind and I had not actually broken any rules, there were no ramifications,” Silge said.

A call to Hatch's Salt Lake City office early Monday morning was routed to a general voice-mail box, which did accept a message. The call was not immediately returned.

A spokesman for Hatch's Washington office told The Post on Monday that they actually saw the pizza saga on social media as it was unfolding.

“We appreciate all creative efforts to reach Senator Hatch, particularly as we deal with a large volume of out-of-state callers that are preventing Utah constituents from reaching us,” Hatch's office said in an email statement. “Unfortunately, the pizza did not make it through security screening because the office had not ordered it. As a result, we did not see the message attached to the pizza.”

They have, however, since informed Hatch about Silge's concerns.

“In the future, if constituents would like to tag us with a message when they send food to their local homeless shelter, we will be certain to share those thoughts with the Senator as well,” the statement added.

A spokesman for Hatch's office said their phone lines have been tied up with an enormous volume of calls, about 80 percent of which are “robo-calls” from outside Utah. Last Thursday, he said, the Washington office received 600 calls in a four-hour period from the state of Washington, as recorded in logs that make note of callers' Zip codes.

The spokesman added that the senator does, in fact, like pizza — including of the ham-and-pineapple variety — but declined to say whether Hatch had been swayed by feedback from Silge or any other constituents regarding DeVos. Instead, the spokesman referred to an interview Hatch did with KSL Broadcasting on Friday in which the senator spoke favorably and optimistically about DeVos's nomination.

“It's easy to support Betsy DeVos,” Hatch said in the interview. “She is a crusader in education who has the same concerns that all of us have had. … Some of the criticisms of her have really been awful.”

After DeVos was announced as the nominee last November, Hatch released a statement saying he was “excited” about the pick and looked forward to working with her to preserve local control of education.

DeVos's nomination has elicited strong backlash from Democrats and other critics who say she lacks the experience for the job. Videos of DeVos at a confirmation hearing in January, in which she appeared confused about the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, were widely shared. She has also declined to take a stand on whether guns belong in schools.

The Senate is scheduled to vote Tuesday on DeVos's nomination. Two Republicans — Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) — have said they will join all 48 Democratic senators in opposing DeVos. However, Vice President Pence is expected to cast a tiebreaking vote for DeVos.

Silge said she knew Hatch was likely to vote for DeVos but that only fueled her desire to contact him. She said she has not been particularly politically engaged in the past but grew concerned after watching DeVos's confirmation hearing in January.

“I wanted to communicate that I was not in favor of this,” said Silge, a mother of three whose children attend Utah public schools. “As someone who represents me, I wanted him to know.”

Hatch's office, she said, has since reached out to her to try to arrange a lunch in Utah with the senator. (It is unclear whether they will go out for pizza, she added.)

As for the wayward pie, Silge said she didn't expect her post to go viral. And to her surprise, quite a few of the comments she's received have focused on the type of pizza she sent to Hatch's office.

“I personally am a fan,” she said of the ham-and-pineapple toppings. “It turns out this was a very controversial choice that I made. Much like Betsy DeVos is a controversial, divisive choice.”

Some of the Tweets and screenshots in the article are good -- "I would like to support a suspicious pizza."

That woman is absolutely amazing! :laughing-rolling:

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And she's confirmed with Mike Pence's tiebreaking vote.

Fucking spineless Republicans. She could have been replaced with someone of similar ideology who is not a moron.

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GRRRRRRRRRRRRR.  

Found this on twitter.  I notice that one of my Senators is on the list.  

C4EsjlqUMAAH_lB.jpg

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And I came to say, damn it, damn it, damn it!! Education in the USA just took a gut shot.

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I feel like mentally I'm standing in a field with both middle fingers in a salute right now.  (I'm at work so doing it literally would not be a wise thing)

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So my personal opinion: I knew it would happen. I knew that there are way too many spineless senators that would not vote against a donor. I honestly believe all of his cabinet picks will get chosen (ie: Session next). While I know the calls/emails/protests matter because the Dems were able to hold the floor for 24 Hours.

 

This is why it's SO important that people NEED to vote for their school board!! Instead of my first time voting being a president or senator, it was for our local school board and county because my parents instilled at a young age to vote and know who you're voting for. That's one of the only ways we will be able to stop all the shit that will be coming towards us.

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36 minutes ago, clueliss said:

GRRRRRRRRRRRRR.  

Found this on twitter.  I notice that one of my Senators is on the list.  

C4EsjlqUMAAH_lB.jpg

Oh, look at that. My hypocritical piece of shit senator is right at the top of the list. I'm SOOOOO shocked. 

Edited by bashfulpixie
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I have one on there as well.  Sadly we've got 6 more years of him since he was just re-elected.  I won't forget.  (and I didn't vote for him).  

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1 hour ago, zygote373 said:

And she's confirmed with Mike Pence's tiebreaking vote.

Fucking spineless Republicans. She could have been replaced with someone of similar ideology who is not a moron.

No, she couldn't have been. Because they want to prove that they are in power. Asswipe Hypocrite Mitch McConnell was whining about the Democrats:

Quote


“It seems this gridlock and opposition has far less to do with the nominees actually before us than the man who nominated
them,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “Enough is enough.”

Hey, asshole, you spent the last EIGHT YEARS obstructing and opposing everything just because the uppity black man proposed it.

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38 minutes ago, RoseWilder said:

 

Fischer (Nebraska) is probably not at all vulnerable. The Nebraska Democratic Party is currently chaired by a woman more concerned with her personal logo (seriously, she has one), appearance and getting her own picture disseminated as widely as possible on a regular basis. The Party's official response to the Tea Bagger governor's "State of the State" address was the Chair filming herself with a cell phone held up in one hand in what appeared to be her own living room and began, "Sooooooo, Jane Kleeb here....". 

It is narcissistic amateur hour. Republicans will never be threatened in an election again. 

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1 hour ago, clueliss said:

GRRRRRRRRRRRRR.  

Found this on twitter.  I notice that one of my Senators is on the list.  

C4EsjlqUMAAH_lB.jpg

Interesting that Lisa Murkowski accepted contributions from DeVos, yet voted against DeVos.

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Typical. Politicians have no loyalty to each other or the people who elected them... dems or repubs or whigs they look out for #1

 

 

Edited by tabitha2
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57 minutes ago, louisa05 said:

Fischer (Nebraska) is probably not at all vulnerable. The Nebraska Democratic Party is currently chaired by a woman more concerned with her personal logo (seriously, she has one), appearance and getting her own picture disseminated as widely as possible on a regular basis. The Party's official response to the Tea Bagger governor's "State of the State" address was the Chair filming herself with a cell phone held up in one hand in what appeared to be her own living room and began, "Sooooooo, Jane Kleeb here....". 

It is narcissistic amateur hour. Republicans will never be threatened in an election again. 

Democrats seem to be mobilizing all over the country, not only to vote Republicans out, but also to vote out Democrats who are doing a crappy job. So maybe there's hope. Are there any local chapters of Indivisible who might be able to work on getting ride of the current Nebraska Democratic party chair? 

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I was just thinking it would be interesting to find out how many of these idiots who voted YES have school age children AND whether or not they go to public school? 

 

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Just now, RoseWilder said:

Democrats seem to be mobilizing all over the country, not only to vote Republicans out, but also to vote out Democrats who are doing a crappy job. So maybe there's hope. Are there any local chapters of Indivisible who might be able to work on getting ride of the current Nebraska Democratic party chair? 

Basically, the party was overtaken at the State convention by a bunch of young Sanders supporters. Among other things, they banded together, as a huge group of white people, to boot out the chair of the Latino Caucus-- a Latina who didn't meet their ideological purity standards--and elect a white chair. When they were unable to overtake the chair of the women's caucus, they started a separate women's caucus. The party which has been struggling in this state since the 90s anyway is now in disarray. I was at the convention where this all happened and it was unorganized chaos. They could not even efficiently run their elections that day or even count delegates and did not have chairs set up in time to start. 

The chair, who is 43 years old, fancies herself a millennial, is not originally a Nebraskan, loves to have her picture taken (if you don't have a camera handy, she will provide a professional picture for your publication to use), appears on RT regularly now, and travels with a posse of minions who worship the ground her cowboy boots walk on (because she thinks everyone in the state is rancher, so cowboy boots are her trademark and part of her aforementioned personal logo). She believes that the key to reviving the party in this state is not candidates and elections, but rather, her own personal soapbox, opposing pipelines. Pipelines are not a good thing, but wearing cowboy boots and getting your picture taken are not likely to stop them. Electing environmentally conscious candidates to state and federal office on the other hand...

There was little hope before, after seeing the state party up close in June, I lost all hope. 

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1 hour ago, JMarie said:

Interesting that Lisa Murkowski accepted contributions from DeVos, yet voted against DeVos.

She's not my senator, but I do respect her for that. I read something recently that said her constituents were opposed to Betsy. I'm glad to see that she voted in their interest, instead of voting her pocketbook.

 

12 minutes ago, LeftCoastLurker said:

I was just thinking it would be interesting to find out how many of these idiots who voted YES have school age children AND whether or not they go to public school? 

 

I would bet they all send their children to private school. They are the elite, after all, and wouldn't want to mix with the commoners.

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So...I think we somehow need to all now insist that when DeVos guts public education that the Orange one and all those senators who voted for her, are required to send their school aged children to school using the following options/guidelines:

1. public school

2. public charter school

3. private school using vouchers BUT their share of financial output must be based on as if they were making the median salary of someone working in their home state

Bet THAT would have changed some of the votes!

Edited by LeftCoastLurker
missing comma
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Our only hope here is that when Trump is impeached (it's only a matter of time) and Pence takes over, he cleans out Trump's cabinet.  I don't think his choices will be much better ideologically, but they're likely to be smarter.

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Fuck you, Jeff Sessions! I'm ashamed to call you my Senator! You are the one who pushed for Betsy Devos. Speaking of her, she's a stupid dumb bitch!

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5 hours ago, louisa05 said:

Basically, the party was overtaken at the State convention by a bunch of young Sanders supporters. Among other things, they banded together, as a huge group of white people, to boot out the chair of the Latino Caucus-- a Latina who didn't meet their ideological purity standards--and elect a white chair. When they were unable to overtake the chair of the women's caucus, they started a separate women's caucus. The party which has been struggling in this state since the 90s anyway is now in disarray. I was at the convention where this all happened and it was unorganized chaos. They could not even efficiently run their elections that day or even count delegates and did not have chairs set up in time to start. 

The chair, who is 43 years old, fancies herself a millennial, is not originally a Nebraskan, loves to have her picture taken (if you don't have a camera handy, she will provide a professional picture for your publication to use), appears on RT regularly now, and travels with a posse of minions who worship the ground her cowboy boots walk on (because she thinks everyone in the state is rancher, so cowboy boots are her trademark and part of her aforementioned personal logo). She believes that the key to reviving the party in this state is not candidates and elections, but rather, her own personal soapbox, opposing pipelines. Pipelines are not a good thing, but wearing cowboy boots and getting your picture taken are not likely to stop them. Electing environmentally conscious candidates to state and federal office on the other hand...

There was little hope before, after seeing the state party up close in June, I lost all hope. 

I'm sorry. That must be incredibly frustrating. 

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