I kid you not.

I was in the middle of a meeting with some other folks when a random D.C. number called my cell. I usually don’t pick up, but it seemed serious. I picked up and the first words I heard on the other side were “This is the U.S. Department of Education and …”

Oh. Heeeeeeeeccckkkk. No.

It was a spam call (sorry). But it happened after The Progressive (as well as Alternet) published my piece on Secretary Betsy Devos’ privatization agenda. Observe:

DeVos’s mythological interpretation of what the founders wanted is worth noting as well. Certainly they had a lot to say about the importance of education and public schools. Thomas Jefferson also asserted that governments shouldn’t be allowed to manage schools. But there’s a difference between working with thirteen states generally struggling to stay afloat and a fifty-state country that’s one of the most powerful in the world. That’s why amendments exist. But DeVos skipped that part of civics. Just as importantly, states’ rights as the founders intended it allowed white plantation owners to keep enslaved peoples as property, whether they went to free land or not. How does one support freedom of choice by pointing at policies that literally kept entire peoples in captivity?

Make no mistake: this is no benign blueprint for public schools.

Let me know what you think!