Betsy Devos Small Senate Conformation Hearing!

The Betsy Devos's senate committee confirmation was yesterday and was she was approved 12//11. What people don't know is how idiotic the hearing was. If you have any knowledge of the general election and how ridiculous that was, this really fit right into all of that.

A little background first before I tell the story. So, Devos is the most controversial person to be nominated to this position in history. The second most controversial person to be nominated to that position, Lamar Alexander, was the chair of Devos's senate committee confirmation hearing. Devos is controversial because she has no experience in public education. She has neither taught nor
been a student of public schools and has the opinion that education should be privatized and students should get government funded vouchers and attend private schools

When it came to the voting. 22 members were present. 1 was not. So when to voting commenced, the one who was not there was declared a yes in proxy. That sparked annoyance in the opposition and after the vote was declared, Senator  Murray asked about rule 6, which you can read here.
http://www.rules.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=RuleVI
Basically it states the vote should count only those present, so it would really be 11 vs. 11. Upon her saying this, a recess was called, and when the recess was over, she asked again and was told she should have asked earlier, but it never states that you need to ask earlier in the rule. The chair made that up. The Democrats then asked to have the chair's decision overruled, and to have a discussion to overrule. The chair said "no, we are just gonna vote.", and they asked then to have a vote for the overrule discussion of the vote to overthrow the chair. Either way, it was going to be 11 vs 11, but then the chair would always count the absent person's vote in his favor.

The most annoying part of this to me was that I don't feel that the chair should get a vote in whether of not to overrule himself. I don't know if that's an actual rule or not that they get to vote, but that sounds really dumb if they are permitted to get that vote.

Lamar kept stating the Democrats asked Betsey Devos 25 times the number of questions Obama's 2 appointees were asked by republicans, and that additional questions to her were unnecessary. But there is a HUGE difference here. Obama's appointees were not controversial and actually had worked in the public education sector before. Now Lamar did say he heard some democrats had said they were gonna vote no either way even if she answered their questions which isn't smart of them to say. But I feel that if their questions were relevant, then they should have been asked, just like I think a discussion about Devos before the voting would have been beneficial, however, that was overruled too. Surprise surprise. And that's politics for ya folks!