They're In Jail. Why Shouldn't She Be There? Throw the Flag, Your Honor.

Let's see. Michael Cohen's in jail.

Paul Manifort's in jail.

Roger Stone's going to go to jail, unless I read the tea leaves wrong, and high time for that shyster.

Rudy Giuliani's hired not one, not two, but three lawyers to try to stay out of jail, complicit as he is in the grand extortion for which his boss is very likely to be impeached.

Nancy Pelosi has said long ago that 45 deserves to be in jail. Seems to be a pattern here.

So the judge takes a look at Betsy DuVos's abuse of federal court orders and says only: It's nice to know I can send her to jail. She fines the Education Department a hundred grand instead. The Magistrate Judge, Sallie Kim, said she could send DuVos to jail if she wanted to, but mused that she wasn't sure what kind of massive violation DuVos had committed. "At best it is gross negligence, at worst it's intentional flouting of my order," Kim said. "I'm not sure if this is contempt or (deserving of) sanctions." Translated: I'm not sure if your endlessly vacant grin means that you're stupid or mean, so I'm not sure how I should view this.

Is this women's equality? I think not.

Let me clear this up, Your Honor. This is cold-blooded shysterism writ large, the rich being cold and hard-assed toward those who, you know, just can't measure up.

Send. Her. To. Jail. Lock her up. She ignored court orders 16,000 times and gets to skate--why? Her smiling, phony winsomeness, clearly and unsuccessfully hiding Madame Nasty beneath? Her cookies? What?

You stuck her with a fine of a hundred grand? That's it? Well, with all due respect, Your Honor, that's just special. She didn't feel that at all. Not a penny out of her hide, to be sure. Think she'll take one for the team and have her salary reduced by that pittance? Was she in the courtroom? If so, I'll bet she magically concealed a sly little grin.

Compare that hundred grand with those of the students she shafted by demanding that they compare themselves to each other in their requests for fraud relief, so their salaries, regardless of how small, would be the measuring device to determine what percentage, if any, their fraudulent loans could be forgiven (as opposed to the 'evil' Obama, whose DOE simply forgave the debts). DuVos' response equals that of her boss', when they aren't the ones suffering and we have to put up with their whining: Life's tough, gang. Get over it. Pay at this window. Or that one.

Every time something like this happens, the total fraud that are for-profit colleges are legitimized and perpetuated. They are a pestilence upon the educational system, and they leave scars. Instead of boosting people's lives, they ruin them through the burden of endless debt from a non-existent or illegitimate institution. When you have to see if you can gain from someone's need for an education, it's not a win-win.

Education's not supposed to work that way. There's supposed to be a reckoning, an answerability, to the society and culture at large, rather than insist that it's no more and no less than a commodity to be bought and sold at a marketplace. That's why charters are running into problems: Eventually, the fraud of their "freedom" from inspection and analysis catch up with them. It takes a while, but people get wise to baloney.

Mere embarrassment won't do for DuVos and her type. They'll endure a few moments of unease, then go on and cheat whomever they can. It's no more and no less what's happened to the more media-hyped members of 45's gang of thieves.

When I officiated football, I was the lead official on a crew. There were occasional gatherings of officials who would meet and discuss situations. One of them was: When kids don't know the rules and keep violating them, should you issue a verbal warning first, and then throw flags later? I was inclined to do that when working freshman or JV games, since sometimes the coaches didn't always know all of the rules, either (and having been a coach, I couldn't blame them). But when we'd get to varsity games, when things would be serious, I would tell my crew: We're not warning anyone about anything. If you want something to stop, throw your flag. They'll figure it out. They didn't just show up. They're supposed to know by now.

Sallie Kim sent a warning to Betsy DuVos more than a year ago. DuVos wasn't listening. But Kim still hasn't thrown the flag. My advice to Your Honor: Throw the damn flag. They're supposed to be adults. They're supposed to know by now. This is too serious to simply warn them.

We'll put this the way they do today: Personal foul, targeting. Ejection.

Sending her to jail, or fining the DOE a few million (a far more appropriate chunk of dough) would have sent the best message home: Our educational system is basic, it's fundamental, and you are trying to undo and undermine it, no matter what you have to do, including defying a court order. It's wrong, it's bad, it's typical of your type of well-dressed hoodlums, and your sneaky end-runs won't go another step, lady. Your 15 minutes are up. Appeal if you wish. In the meantime, officers, take her away.

Lacking that, the next election is also a referendum on this impostor, too. At the very least, she also needs to be sent packing. The threat to our way of life is channeled right through her department.

A matter for another time, though, considering what we're about to go through. Be well, be careful, and I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark