Politico reports that the Trump administration is apologizing profusely for hounding students whose loans for attending the predatory (now closed) Corinthian Colleges should have been forgiven. The judge in the case had threatened to punish Betsy DeVos for violating her court order. This is a case of “accountability for thee, but not for me.”
MAKING THE CASE AGAINST CONTEMPT FINDING: The Trump administration, in a court filing on Tuesday night, outlined why the Education Department and DeVos shouldn’t be held in contempt or face fines for violating U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim’s May 2018 order to stop collecting the student loans of former Corinthian Colleges students.
— Justice Department attorneys wrote that the Education Department “has been working diligently and in good faith to correct the errors” that led to the agency collecting on the student loans of thousands of borrowers despite the order. Kim is now deciding whether to hold the department and DeVos in contempt and impose sanctions, including fines, against them.
— “Loan servicers made an error on a small # of loans,” DeVos tweeted last week. “We know & we’re fixing it.” She also accused Sen. Elizabeth Warren of lying about the issue.
— The Trump administration’s filing mostly strikes a conciliatory tone. The department said it appreciates the “gravity” of the situation and the effect it had on affected borrowers. The department also said it was committed to coming into full compliance with the court’s order and asked that any sanctions be “forward-looking” rather than punitive.
— The Education Department conceded, though, that it had been “negligent” in its oversight of student loan companies. The “errors at issue here were not the result of any willful or intentional conduct on the part of the Department, but, as the Court has recognized, gross negligence, including negligent oversight of the Department’s servicers,” attorneys for the department wrote.
— Education Department officials last week sent letters admonishing its loan servicers over the issue and moved to discipline two department officials.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
AGGGGH!
Senators Patty Murray and Tammy Duckworth have sent a letter to the DOE excoriating the rejection of financial information and support for students who are parenting. DeVos has also made a stab at privatizing the child care available to these parents.
Click to access ED%20Student%20Parents%20Letter%2010-10-19.pdf
OMG … DeVoodooooooooo …. she’s horrid. Bet her blood is green, not red.
DeVos typifies the disregard for the rule of law in the current administration. She is a billionaire that is used to doing as she pleases, when she pleases.
Billionaires are different from us. They are accustomed to buying their way out of trouble.
I just think it’s so bad because they have also set themselves up as the experts on student loans and debt. This is supposedly a service they provide- they present themselves as a reliable source of information for very young people who are taking on very big loans.
Whose side are they on? They have to decide. Either that or don’t represent to young people that you somehow work on their behalf. They are unsophisticated borrowers, especially the first generation college students who don’t have parents with experience in this maze to guide them.
If they’re working on behalf of the lender at least have the decency to TELL borrowers that. Give them a fighting chance. Send them elsewhere for reliable, student-centered information.
And, it has to be said, the only reason their various failures on protecting students (supposedly the people they serve) came to light at all is the students had to SUE.
USDOE had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into assisting these people.
The only reason the public service loan program failures came to light was because the victims went to media outlets, and the media outlets covered it, for weeks.
Should we be sending 17 year olds to their agency for information? Can they be trusted to work on their behalf for what may be a life altering decision on debt? They can’t discharge student debt. They take it, they are stuck with it- forever. A house or a car you can give back. Not this debt. They’ll still be carrying it when they die.
Lock her up! Lock her…
If wealthy parents can go to jail for cheating on a child’s college admissions, maybe they can find room for DeVos in one of the cushy prisons.
“The Education Department conceded, though, that it had been “negligent” in its oversight of student loan companies.”
Good to know, right, if you’re a prospective college student who relies on the information they put out to make decisions on debt?
They promote the heck out of signing up for FAFSA. Should they be doing that if their oversight is negligent?
Give them a fighting chance NOT to get ripped off, at least. Tell them it’s not regulated and it’s “let the buyer beware”. Presenting it as one thing and then doing another is just brutally unfair to some very vulnerable borrowers.
So DeVos’s lawyers at the Dept. of Education claim the Dept.’s repeated flouting of the judge’s order was not intentional, but “merely” (my quotation marks) the result of gross negligence, and for this reason they seek just “forward-looking sanctions.”
If I did something terribly wrong, over and over again, even as a result “only” of gross negligence, I wouldn’t ask the court to punish me only if I continued to do wrong, if only because I would not want the judge to laugh at me.
Got it. If you break the law, apologize and ask for a “forward” sanction. Not what you have done but what you do in the future.
Doesn’t work for all those now in jail.
Sounding a bit like — to paraphrase — “Turns out education is complicated! Who knew?”
🙂
Grovel all you want DeVos! This is on you! You have oversight on those ‘servicers’ just as Congress has oversight on your boss, it’s your fault! As misbehaving children have been told for centuries, take your medicine and stop belly-aching!
Memos: The Potential Pitfalls of Privatization
https://www.inthepublicinterest.org/memos-the-potential-pitfalls-of-privatization/
Ofc, the billionaire will get a pass. We have two separate legal systems in the United States, one for the rich and one for the poor.
Last night, several Democratic candidates defended “healthcare” programs that would leave the private “healthcare” insurance racketeering operations in existence. These RICOS have tripled premiums since the Affordable Care Act was passed, and when people get sick, they deny coverage.
And now we have a new system of debtor’s prison in the United States for people who develop health conditions. We are the only advanced industrial democracy in which there is not a national healthcare system open and free to all.
Read this. America today. Just like the freaking Middle Ages. However, those health insurers will put a lot of money into the campaigns of folks who oppose Medicare for All.
https://features.propublica.org/medical-debt/when-medical-debt-collectors-decide-who-gets-arrested-coffeyville-kansas/
The website, Unchain our Democracy, at its tab “take action” has a link to a “heat map” that shows how pervasive the billionaire influence (Koch) is on university campuses.
West of the Mississippi, Utah State University is distinctive as the largest heat circle on the map.
Unchain is a network of 72 civil rights, environmental, labor and civic organizations fighting against political inequality inflicted on the American people by billionaire usurpers of government. The barbarians and their minions are the few. We are the many.
Utah State University (reportedly 80% Mormon) makes a big mistake by welcoming billionaire authoritarian influence. The state’s citizens and the Mormon students, faculty and administrators should consider that a coalition of evangelicals and Catholics, 50% of U.S. population, may be as anxious to deny the LDS church as they are to take away the rights of non-believers, nationally.
At the Unchain Our Democracy website, there are names of billionaire-funded organizations under the heading, “Sacralizing the agenda by cultivating religious allies”.
Can you post the link to Unchain our Democracy? I can’t seem to find the right site. There are several sites that are an offshoot of Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, but none with a “take action” tab or a heat map.
jcgrim-
you’re right, it is difficult to find the right site. the map info came to me as an e-mail.
the map can be found in a Google search “heat map” Koch Influence on campus “unchain our democracy”
Just the two sets of quotation marks
At the “take action” tab, select, counter the Koch network.
BTW- UnKochMyCampus.org has added an interest in K-12 at its site.
I am an alumna of USU, and I am embarrassed and horrified by my alma mater’s connection to the Kochs.
And many of us who are active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (what Mormons want to be called) realize the problems of kowtowing to the religious right, for the very reasons you mention. It’s really a small subsidiary of “Mormons” in name only, the wealthy and powerful (and their lackeys) who really don’t practice their religion, that want the Kochs involved.
Just my opinion, but one informed with a lot of discussion with people of all stripes around here.
Thanks TOW for the clarification. Is it acceptable to refer to the church with the initials LDS?
At the University of Dayton (Catholic- Marianist), I noted a few community members who were internally willing to speak out against Koch money. And, the school, the last time I checked, wasn’t taking Koch money.
I could be wrong but, within the Catholic faith, it appears to me that it is the Jesuit contingent most aligned with social Darwinism. And, as you’ve indicated it appears money drives church conscience.
But, the church is its congregation. The hierarchy is not the church.
The priest abuse happened to the congregants’ children. The best spin is the parish community was asleep and evidently still are when the topic is democracy.
MIT is also a big Koch University.
Of course, MIT also took millions of dollars from sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, so we all know what sort of “morals” MIT and in particular, their President Rafael Reif has.
Reif knew about the Epstein donations to MIT (was present at a meeting where they were discussed) and his team of administrators worked very diligently to keep them secret from the public.
When the donations to the MIT Media Lab were outed publicly, Reif acted shocked (shocked!) that there was donating by a convicted pedophile going on at MIT.
As long as Reif remains President, MIT has zero credibility as a university. I suspect other university presidents are probably already talking about Reif behind his back — maybe even to his face. He’s too egotistical to recognize it.
In it’s obituary o David Koch, MIT did not even mention he role Koch had played in climate change denial.
MIT is a deeply dishonest university. Perhaps one of of our nation’s most dishonest. And it’s not just the administration. As we saw with the Epstein affair, many of the faculty (Ito, Stalman and others) are just as bad.
How MIT whitewashed the climate change denialism of a major donor, David Koch
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-08-26/how-mit-whitewashed-david-koch
A former MIT president was also morally bereft. Aaron Schwartz was arrested at MIT, charged with a non-theft.