When Jon Oberg, a Department of Education researcher, warned in 2003 that student lending companies were improperly collecting hundreds of millions in federal subsidies and suggested how to correct the problem, his supervisor told him to work on something else.
Jon Oberg, a former Department of Education researcher, warned that student loan companies were abusing a subsidy program and collecting millions in federal payments to which they were not entitled.
The department “does not have an intramural program of research on postsecondary education finance,” the supervisor, Grover Whitehurst, a political appointee, wrote in a November 2003 e-mail message to Mr. Oberg, a civil servant who was soon to retire. “In the 18 months you have remaining, I will expect your time and talents to be directed primarily to our business of conceptualizing, competing and monitoring research grants.”
For three more years, the vast overpayments continued. Education Secretary Rod Paige and his successor, Margaret Spellings, argued repeatedly that under existing law they were powerless to stop the payments and that it was Congress that needed to act. Then this past January, the department largely shut off the subsidies by sending a simple letter to lenders — the very measure Mr. Oberg had urged in 2003.
Here we get back to my Grand Unified Theory of why Republicans can’t govern – a party that doesn’t believe in government is less likely to govern well. It should go without saying that folks like Jon Oberg who make noises about inappropriate expenditures, waste, fraud and abuse of power are misguided holdouts from an earlier, liberal era. Nowadays they’re a noisy nuisance. Oversight is bad for business.
Look at this story again to illustrate my point. If nobody raised a stink at Education about inappropriate loan practices, would we even know about this story? Of course not. Now thanks to Jon Oberg Margaret Spellings has to waste time in front of Congress explaining why rules are for little people and her deputy in charge of loan oversight has to resign. No wonder they hate whistleblowers.
Zifnab
Wow. Wasn’t this the better part of the Republican platform in ’94? Remember that whole Contract with America thing? And the “privitization to reduce waste” thing? Good times, good times. Where the fuck is that now?
Seriously, it boggles the mind at how there is no one this Administration won’t turn a blind eye too. We are living in an age that redefines “irresponsible”. Nero is rolling over in his grave.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
As someone who pays $600 a month in student loans AFTER consolidation of the federal ones, on personal income that hasn’t yet exceeded $1600 a month despite my education… Nevermind, I was going to write something I’d probably regret writing later. Suffice it to say, I’m pretty unhappy about all this.
BIRDZILLA
And johnny still cant read and dont know a thing about american history but is still out there with this STOP GLOBAL WARMING,SAVE THE WHALES poppycock on his little zombie mind ITS TIME TO DISOLVE THE DEPT OF EDUCATION AND RETURN TO HOME EDUCATION
Captain Comeback
Here we get back to my Grand Unified Theory of why Republicans can’t govern – a party that doesn’t believe in government is less likely to govern well.
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That about sums it up. Wasn’t the closing of the Department of Education part of the official 1984 Republican platform?
JoeTx
Lets see if we can sum up the entire Rethuglican methodilogy.
[Insert Industry here] finds loophold or gets contract to extract our tax dollars, career employee finds waste or fraud, [Insert Republican political name here] tells appointee to shut up, and/or career employee is forced to retire or resign or is forced out.
[Insert Republican here] refuses to investigate fraud and wasted because either 1) no one could have anticipated the problem, or 2) big government is broken and we can’t fix it.
Of course what has been missing from this standard boilerplate methodilogy is Chapter 3.
[Insert Democrat here] finds out problem from whistleblower and begins investigations, [Insert Republican here] either lies to cover up problem, or resigns, or blames Clinton, or decides to fix the problem…
Jake
Fixed.
It isn’t a matter of cannot govern properly, it is a matter of will not govern properly. These creeps aren’t hapless bunglers, they know what they are doing. Their first step is always to squash oversight in the same way a practiced thief shuts off the security system before getting to work.
Equal Opportunity Cynic
Here we get back to my Grand Unified Theory of why Republicans can’t govern – a party that doesn’t believe in government is less likely to govern well
ARRRRRRRGH!!!
I’m sick of writing new rants on this topic, so I’ll just settle for linking old ones. Well, not even very old ones.
The idea that the Bush administration is somehow stealing money out of an ideological commitment to show the problems with big government is so ridiculous that I’ve already spent way too much time arguing against it. It’s just axiomatically stupid. I haven’t spent time looking for primary source material saying, “We’re helping ourselves to the coffers because we like money, not because of any ideological bias,” because I can’t imagine that any reasonable person would need such a statement (much less that any such thing exists). If you really think that Republicans steal on ideological grounds, then I’m afraid there’s no basis for good-faith discussion.
Equal Opportunity Cynic
OK, I should probably take Tim’s statement at face value and argue against that instead: “[A] party that doesn’t believe in government is less likely to govern well.”
But that isn’t true at all. A hypothetical President Ron Paul could govern well by maximizing personal freedom. That doesn’t mean he “doesn’t believe in government” in the sense of wanting to govern shoddily; he just would believe that governing well means staying out of people’s way rather than trying to micromanage them. And I agree with him.
Basically Tim’s statement coming from anyone who believes in as much government as possible is just a tautology . Another way to make the same assertion is, “Quality of government is directly proportional to its degree of intervention of our lives.” I’m sure big government advocates believe this, but it’s hardly proven or even convincing.
We come back to the point that trying to draw grand inferences about political philosophy from the Bush Administration is beyond ridiculous. Trying to paint the Republicans as some sort of libertarians is risible.
Zifnab
There’s theft and there’s incompetency. When the Bush Administration let $400 million in foreign aid for Katrina victims simply sit on the table they didn’t do it out of greed or cynicism. They did it out of sheer stupidity. Who the hell turns down free money? That’s a principle the Republicans should be particularly familiar with now.
When the administration fired the 8 USAs for failing to toe the party line, then left evidence helter-skelter and went out of their way to make a scandal into a scandaltastic phenomenon, there was no money involved. Greed didn’t make Gonzo come off as a complete retard during the Congressional Testimony. No, you have to give credit where credit is due and these guys get absolutely no credit for embarking on some of the most henious and egregious violations of ethics while attempting the lamest cover-up I have seen in my lifetime.
MNPundit
Fairly sure the DailyKos brigade was trotting this out before you.
Tim F.
Cynic,
After reflecting on your comments, I think that I overstated the direction of the Bushies’ ideology as the primary problem, rather than the intensity of it. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe that the Norquist Doctrine played a huge role in making these guys so cavalier about corrupting the normal levers of power. Still, that explanation leaves the Bushies’ glaring, astouding incompetence largely unexplained.
I might have better said that any group who believes in their ideology so reflexively and totally will always run organizations poorly. The simple reason is that if an apparatchik’s ideology supercedes every other consideration then it will automatically, by definition, supercede his qualifications to do the job capably. You see this phenomenon when Michelle Malkin defends Joe McCarthy. In her view there is simply no way that someone can share her goals and simulatenously be a bad person. To Malkin having a common purpose must automatically make someone good. Put her in charge of government hiring and you will have wall to wall Brownies.
Ideological obsessives despise oversight and the other qualities of good government because sometimes doing the job right gets in the way of doing the job Right. In-house studies prove preconceived answers wrong, fair contracting hands government money to the wrong “kind” of people, and unbiased application of the law occasionally hands your “side” a defeat. Honest administrators would just see this as a natural outgrowth of running a government, the reflexives see it as a problem to be fixed.
So relax, cynic, I’m not saying that you would wreck government because you’re a Republican. I certainly think that you’d be dangerous to the degree that you slavishly follow the Norquist line, but of course that holds for any pol in existence. On reflection I think that the anti-governmentism is more a complicating factor in a disorder that has no partisan bias whatsoever.
Rome Again
Stop giving BushCo ideas. Next thing you know, they’ll be trotting her out to choose a War Czar simply because she’s been to Iraq once. OMG, NO, please don’t let it be so!
Carl Gordon
The answer is out there amongst the zeroes and ones that are the actually building blocks and residue off our barely perceptible reality construct. It’s true; I checked it out. Hence:
When Mercury is Direct
Communicate: A good time to write important letters and death threats, sign contracts, express yourself, buy a car, get suckered into a 5 year service contract worth shite, publish and advertise your desire to counteract the steady chlorinization of all large bodies of potable water, make important phone calls, plan or take a trip.
Jeez! First the guy insults me and then he seeks advice on salesmanship!
When Mercury is Retrograde
Use an extra dose of clarity, caution and pet care pertaining to travel and toxic levels of Flexiril in the blood stream, especially when delivered by car, communications of any kind, contracts, sending letters, small bulbs, wax bonnets, and publishing.
If you can avoid the above until the retrograde period ends that’s even better.
Calculated for Eastern time zones, 5 hours and several minutes later, there was a definite effacing of the high sheen porcelain finish as most of the night’s previous bounty of chipped beef didn’t quite make it to the bowl.
A healthy dose of clarity in this consciousness journey for the young at heart and the hard of hearing. Two alternate areas of hysteria: Things I understand and Things I Do Not Understand Too Well Yet.
Captain Jutta is the navigator who charts our living miracle of beauty, love, and floppy sacks: The mind and cosmic energy on bass. The organ called the brain. The brain waves bye-bye, vapid eye movement exercises, jumper cables and spiritual Roto-Rooter.