DeVos Strikes Again

Despite the recovery, student loan debt continues to be a “drag” on the economy. As numerous economists have explained, Millennials have not been buying homes (and the furniture and appliances to fill them)at the same rates as preceding generations due to the significant student debt so many of them carry.

Repayment is burdensome enough when the student assuming the debt used it at a reputable institution of higher education, and graduated with a credential that led to employment. But that hasn’t always been the case. For-profit “colleges” making extravagant claims on which they are (knowingly) unable to deliver have ripped off thousands of low-income students–and ultimately, all of us, since those students subsequently default on their government loans.

And then there are the “private” loan servicers, who have gouged other students, and who are protected against loss by government guarantees.

The Obama administration had taken several steps to punish institutions and lenders who  engaged in these practices, and to relieve the students who had been defrauded of all or part of their repayment obligations. But of course, the sympathies of the Trump administration and Betsy DeVos lie entirely with the perpetrators, not the victims.

As the IBJ recently reported,

The nation’s consumer watchdog agency is accusing the Education Department of impeding a lawsuit that could potentially bring financial relief to millions of student loan borrowers.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is suing Navient Solutions, alleging one of the nation’s largest student loan servicers violated consumer protection laws and in some cases caused students to pay back too much on their student loans. But in court filings, the CFPB says the Education Department is refusing to authorize Navient to turn over documents. Without that authorization the federal government, as well as several state attorneys general suing Navient, could find it difficult to show what type of damage the company’s alleged misbehavior caused to borrowers….

Under the Obama Administration, the Education Department and the CFPB agreed to share records and resources in cases of potential violations of student borrowing or consumer protection laws. But after Trump-appointee Betsy DeVos took over, the Education Department rescinded that agreement, calling the CFPB “overreaching and unaccountable” and saying the bureau had no authority to oversee federal student loan servicers.

DeVos has previously acted to protect non-performing for-profit colleges, as Time Magazine reported in May.

Career Education Corporation is one of the companies no longer being investigated by the U.S. Education Department after members of an enforcement office tasked with investigating abuses by for-profit colleges were instructed to focus on other issues, the New York Times reported this week, citing current and former employees. Meanwhile, former executives and consultants from those for-profit institutions have been hired as top advisers to the Education Department under DeVos.

This isn’t a matter of being legitimately “pro-business.” A pro-business administration would help the entire business community by taking steps to reduce the excessive levels of student debt that are burdening economic activity generally, including weeding out the bad actors.

This is a “pro-crony” administration. And if the students suffer, well–they aren’t the political donors whose interests this administration serves.

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Really, NRA?

A friend recently sent me a questionnaire he’d received from the NRA, along with a fundraising appeal warning that the November elections will “threaten your gun rights,” and explaining that the organization needs your money in order to protect its “pro-freedom” agenda. (I wonder when they’ll explain why that “pro-freedom agenda” required that they collaborate with Russian operatives…but I digress.)

The letter also disses all those polls showing widespread public support for background checks and other modest gun-control measures. (“Fake news!”)

If there is one thing academic researchers and legitimate political pollsters know, it is that the way you frame survey questions is critical: if you are trying to obtain an accurate reading of the public pulse, questions cannot be suggestive or loaded.

Of course, if political candidates and advocacy organizations were interested in accurate results, they’d hire a reputable pollster. The “surveys” and “polls” we all receive from various candidates and organizations are transparent efforts to separate us from our money; they are intended to push our buttons, not inquire about our opinions.

And the NRA has mastered the art of button-pushing. A few examples:

“Do you agree with the politicians and Hollywood elites who say the NRA is a terrorist organization?”

“Do you support a sweeping ban on semi-automatic rifles, shotguns and handguns?”

“Should law-abiding Americans be forced to undergo a background check?”

“Should the federal government limit your ability to defend yourself and your family by banning magazines with more than 10 rounds?”

“Should the federal government be able to register and track all firearms in the U.S. and retain personal information about those who lawfully possess them?”

“Would you ever knowingly vote for a candidate for Congress who supports new anti-gun restrictions as part of his or her agenda?”

There’s more, of course, but these “poll questions” should give you a flavor of the rest.

Before you laugh at the transparency of these formulations or dismiss the obviousness of the propaganda, it may be worth thinking about the political psychology behind the choice of words employed in what was an expensive mailing. Remember, these “polls” go to NRA members (including the friend who shared this), not to the general public–and although reputable surveys suggest that the majority of those members are far more reasonable than the organization’s leadership, they are still likely to be favorably disposed to the NRA’s mission.

They aren’t likely to be favorably disposed to “Hollywood elites.” They are very likely to resent being called a terrorist organization.

The framing of the support/no support questions is patently dishonest, but very effective. Do you favor a “sweeping” ban? Do you want the government “forcing” “law-abiding” citizens to do anything? Surely you are already worried that the surveillance state is keeping tabs on everyone, and you don’t want them “retaining your personal information.”

I’m sure you are leery of Congressional candidates who make gun control part of an (obviously nefarious) “agenda.”

The big problem with special interest organizations like the NRA isn’t that they represent majority opinion. They don’t–not even close. They are effective because their issues are so salient to the minority of people who do agree with them. (This is also true of anti-choice  and other single-issue voters.)

Because they care deeply about their particular issue, (and generally, not about many–or any–others) they vote. Reliably. And as a result, they exercise far more influence than their numbers would otherwise entitle them to. That’s one reason why the recent arrest of a Russian operative who used the NRA as her conduit to the Trump Administration and  Republicans in Congress was so alarming.

My single issue in November is the defeat of Trump enablers. It’s pretty salient to me….

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The White Nationalist Party

America has been transfixed by Donald Trump’s very public betrayal of his oath of office–an oath which requires him to protect and defend our country. But that is hardly his only  betrayal of important American values.

As Dana Milbank reminds us, he has made bigotry politically correct again.

In a recent column, Milbank looked at the crop of Republican candidates who  surfaced after Trump’s election.

Behold, a new breed of Republican for the Trump era.

Seth Grossman won the Republican primary last month for a competitive House seat in New Jersey, running on the message “Support Trump/Make America Great Again.” The National Republican Congressional Committee endorsed him.

Then, a video surfaced, courtesy of American Bridge, a Democratic PAC, of Grossman saying “the whole idea of diversity is a bunch of crap.” Grossman then proclaimed diversity “evil.” CNN uncovered previous instances of Grossman calling Kwanzaa a “phony holiday” created by “black racists,” labeling Islam a cancer and saying faithful Muslims cannot be good Americans.

There was much more, and the GOP finally withdrew its endorsement. But Grossman is hardly an aberration.

Many such characters have crawled out from under rocks and onto Republican ballots in 2018: A candidate with ties to white nationalists is the GOP Senate nominee in Virginia (and has President Trump’s endorsement); an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier is the Republican candidate in a California House race; a prominent neo-Nazi won the GOP nomination in an Illinois House race; and overt racists are in Republican primaries across the country.

Milbank points to what has become increasingly obvious: As nice people flee the GOP, Trump’s Republican party now needs the support of people like this.

Some of these candidates go well beyond the bounds of anything Trump has said or done, but many have been inspired or emboldened by him. Corey A. Stewart, the Republican Senate nominee in Virginia, said he was “Trump before Trump.”

The party won’t back Stewart, but Republican lawmakers are tiptoeing. Rep. Scott W. Taylor (R-Va.), declining to disavow Stewart, noted to the Virginian-Pilot newspaper that people won’t see him as racist because “my son is named after a black guy.”

If there were only a few of these racists and anti-Semites, you might shrug it off. After all, both parties have had crazy or hateful people run for office (we’ve had some doozies here). They’ve usually been weeded out in party primaries, and they’ve rarely earned official support or endorsement.

In today’s GOP, however, they seem to be everywhere.

Russell Walker, Republican nominee for a North Carolina state House seat, is a white supremacist whose personal website is “littered with the n-word” and states that Jews are “satanic,” Vox reports.

Running in the Republican primary for Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s congressional seat in Wisconsin is Paul Nehlen, who calls himself “pro-white” and was booted from Twitter for racism.

Neo-NaziPatrick Little ran as a Republican in the California Senate primary, blaming his loss on fraud by “Jewish supremacists,” according to the website Right Wing Watch.

In North Carolina, nominee Mark Harris, in the NRCC’s “Young Guns” program for top recruits, has suggested that women who pursue careers and independence do not “live out and fulfill God’s design.”

Another Young Guns candidate, Wendy Rogersof Arizona (where Joe Arpaio is fighting for the Republican Senate nomination), has said the Democratic position on abortion is “very much like the Holocaust” and the Cambodian genocide.

As Milbank notes–with examples– these candidates have plenty of role models in the administration and in Congress.  Plus, of course, the role-model-in-chief.

Thanks to Trump, today’s GOP is rapidly becoming America’s White Supremicist Party.

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High Crimes and Misdemeanors–McConnell Version

In criminal law classes, lawyers-to-be learn about something called mens rea–a term that means “criminal intent.” In order to find someone guilty of a crime, it is necessary to prove that they intended to commit that crime. Otherwise, depending upon the facts involved, they may instead be guilty of gross negligence, or found not guilty by reason of incapacity.

If I had to defend Donald Trump against charges of treason, I would argue he lacked the mental capacity to understand what treason is.  After all, there’s plenty of evidence that he is seriously deranged and none-too-bright.

Mitch McConnell is another matter entirely.

NPR recently covered a speech by Joe Biden in which our former vice-President explained why the administration did not go public before the election with the information it had about Russian interference.

Former Vice President Joe Biden says he and President Barack Obama decided not to speak out publicly on Russian interference during the 2016 campaign after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to sign a bipartisan statement condemning the Kremlin’s role.

Speaking on Tuesday at the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden said the Obama administration sought a united front to dispel concerns that going public with such accusations would be seen as an effort to undermine the legitimacy of the election.

However, McConnell “wanted no part of having a bipartisan commitment saying, essentially, ‘Russia’s doing this. Stop,’ ” he said.

Essentially, McConnell blackmailed the President. If the administration accused Russia of meddling, he would accuse Obama of manufacturing the allegation in order to gain a partisan advantage.

The former vice president’s account echoes reporting that first appeared in The Washington Post in June describing a meeting that occurred the same month between Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, then-FBI Director James Comey, Homeland Security adviser Lisa Monaco and 12 key members of Congress.

I have previously shared my belief that Mitch McConnell is the most evil man in America, and that was before I knew anything about this particular despicable episode.

Politicians and scholars have various definitions of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” In my opinion, consistently advantaging the interests of your political party over your constitutional responsibilities and the welfare of the country qualifies.

I’m not talking about the various procedural games McConnell has always played; partisans in both parties engage in tactical efforts to advantage their “side” when they can. Refusing to hold hearings on a Supreme Court nominee–simply ignoring the Senate’s obligation to “advise and consent”–is another matter entirely. Not only was it a dishonorable breach of duty, McConnell had to know that he was doing long-lasting damage to the legitimacy of both the Senate and the Court–and further polarizing the country. He didn’t care; “winning” was more important.

As outrageous as that was, McConnell’s willingness to put his party’s interest above the security of the country–to ignore an attack by a foreign power on the integrity of the U.S. election, an attack that he knew had occurred and that he has subsequently confirmed that he knew had occurred–is every bit as treasonous as Trump’s slavish subservience to that foreign power.

McConnell–not Trump– is the real leader of today’s Republican Party–a party that, as a recent article in the Nation charged, has been and continues to be shamefully complicit.

Russiagate isn’t just the narrow story of a few corrupt officials. It isn’t even the story of a corrupt president. It’s the story of a corrupt political party, the one currently holding all the levers of power in Washington. After Trump groveled before Putin in Helsinki, many Republicans in Washington proclaimed their solemn concern, just as they did when the president expressed his sympathy for the white supremacists in Charlottesville last year. But all of them are fully aware that they are abetting a criminal conspiracy, and probably more than one.

Congressional Republicans have made it abundantly clear that the delivery of tax cuts and ideologically acceptable Supreme Court Justices to their patrons is far more important to them than protecting the security of the country they are pledged to serve.

Trump is stupid and insane. McConnell is smart and evil. They are both corrupt, self-serving traitors. Congressional Republican know that–and protect them anyway. What does that make them?

Despicable.

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Legacies

Scott Pruitt’s resignation prompted a number of columns devoted to the “legacy” he leaves–if legacy is the right word for “stench of corruption.” Those columns did get me thinking, however. about the “legacies” of other elected officials and political operatives.

Mitch McConnell’s legacy, for example, will include the badly tarnished and diminished legitimacy of Congress and the Court. McConnell’s willingness to ignore the Constitution’s mandate that the Senate “advise and consent” to a Presidential judicial nominee not only besmirched the reputation of the Senate, but added another blow to a series of events–beginning with Bush v. Gore— that have compromised the Court’s reputation for integrity and evenhandedness.

For his part, Trump is likely to leave several legacies–all profoundly negative–if, as we hope and pray, he does at least leave us with a recognizable country. But it is worth noting one of those legacies–the responsibility that he and McConnell share for the Supreme Court’s politicization and corresponding loss of legitimacy.

In a recent New York Times op-ed, law professors Lee Epstein and Eric Posner considered the way in which the growth of partisanship has affected the Court’s reputation, and wondered “whether a Supreme Court that has come to be rigidly divided by both ideology and party can sustain public confidence for much longer.”

It hasn’t always been this way.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the ideological biases of Republican appointees and Democratic appointees were relatively modest. The gap between them has steadily grown, but even as late as the early 1990s, it was possible for justices to vote in ideologically unpredictable ways. In the closely divided cases in the 1991 term, for example, the single Democratic appointee on the court, Byron White, voted more conservatively than all but two of the Republican appointees, Antonin Scalia and William Rehnquist. This was a time when many Republican appointees — like Sandra Day O’Connor, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens and David Souter — frequently cast liberal votes.

Today’s Justices are far more predictable, which is to say, far more ideological. And as Epstein and Posner note, it is much easier to assault judicial independence when the public sees the judiciary as just another political body.

The Court loses legitimacy when its reputation as an objective, nonpartisan arbiter of Constitutional fidelity is replaced by a belief that it is a political tool reflecting the priorities of the partisans who selected the Justices.  It’s worse when a majority of those Justices represent world-views held by only a minority of Americans.

In a recent article, Kevin McMahon considered the effect on the Court’s legitimacy.

Since Donald Trump lost the popular vote in the 2016 election, he is, by definition, a minority president, elected by a minority of the voters.

Similarly, I define a “minority justice” as a nominee who won confirmation with the support of a majority of senators, but senators who did not represent a majority of voters.

Consider Gorsuch. He was supported by a majority of senators – 51 Republicans and three Democrats. But the votes earned by those 54 senators only added up to a total of 54,098,387.

The 45 senators who opposed Gorsuch, all Democrats, collected 73,425,062 votes in their most recent elections – a nearly 20 million-vote difference.

There are now three Supreme Court justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Gorsuch – that fit the description of a “minority justice.” And they are the only three in the nation’s history.

Now, there is a possibility of a fourth “minority justice” – the second appointed by a “minority president.”

That raises a question that goes to the heart of the Supreme Court’s legitimacy in our democracy: Will this be a court out of line with America?

These are the questions that ought to keep our elected Senators and Representatives up at night–but very few of the people we have elevated to the federal legislature seem to know or care about anything other than winning and losing elections.

Their “legacies” will be the abandonment of America’s constitutional framework–and any concept of statesmanship.

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