Kuttner on TAP

New Hope for Student Debt Relief

With the appointment of Richard Cordray as chief of federal student loan programs, we will now see the potential of executive power to bring relief and end abuses. Cordray is a close ally of Elizabeth Warren and former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The first best policy, of course, would be outright cancellation of up to $50,000 per student, as proposed by Sens. Warren and Schumer. Cordray can’t make that call. President Biden needs to. But there are several other things he can do.

For starters, there is the appalling story of management of cancellation of debt for people who do ten years of public service. This is authorized under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. But under Trump and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, the Education Department did everything possible to deny this relief.

To date, just 1.26 percent of applicants have received debt relief. In fact, in a lawsuit brought by the American Federation of Teachers on behalf of schoolteachers who qualified for debt cancellation, the Biden administration has still not gotten around to reversing the Trump position opposing the debt discharge.

Cordray could put the government on the right side of this issue and provide cancellation for former students who earned the relief, but were disqualified by some technicality—that was often the fault of the for-profit servicer or the department itself.

In the case of student debtors who were duped by for-profit universities that shut down, such as Corinthian and ITT Tech, students can get loan cancellation only if they left the offending university within 180 days of its closure. That deadline should be extended so that more debtors can get relief.

There are also some 400,000 people who qualify for debt cancellation as totally permanently disabled, as certified by the Social Security Administration. Under DeVos, no process was put in place to get them the relief.

More broadly, Cordray needs to reverse the Education Department’s Trump-era priority—from collecting as much money as possible to serving the needs of students and former students now in debt. One way to do that is to exercise much tougher oversight of the for-profit loan servicers on contract to the department, who often give bad advice to students in order to maximize their own profits.

Navient, one of the worst, was cited in an inspector general’s report, for improperly taking over $20 million from the Education Department. It has contracts worth some $200 million a year that should not be renewed. Cordray needs to revive his office’s audits and investigations unit.

Some deeper reforms, such as reduction in the interest rate to something close to the government’s own borrowing rate, as long proposed by Warren, will take legislation (Biden should support this). Others, such as broader cancellation, will take presidential leadership.

But the other things that Cordray can and should do, to change the government from the role of ally of financial predators to ally of students and debtors, is a textbook case of the potential of executive action.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER is editor of the American Prospect.

Michael Gerson has been active in Republican politics for many years. He is appalled now that national and state leaders have created a loyalty test based on the Big Lie, the lie that Trump won the election, and Biden stole it. Liz Cheney was ousted from her senior role in the House Republican Caucus because she spoke the truth: Biden won, Trump lost, and its time to move on. Mitt Romney was booed by Utah Republicans for refusing to endorse the Big Lie. Very few Republicans, other than Cheney and Romney, have acknowledged that the election is over, following multiple recounts. Trump lost. Trump’s loss is now known as the Big Lie. However, in true Trumpian fashion, he calls Biden’s victory “the Big Lie,” once again trying to rewrite history.

Gerson wrote in the Washington Post:

For the activist base of the Republican Party, affirming that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential contest has become a qualification for membership in good standing. For the party’s elected leaders, accepting the clear result of a fair election is to be a rogue Republican like the indomitable Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) — a target for Trump’s anger, public censure and primary threats.

Nothing about this is normal. The GOP is increasingly defined not by its shared beliefs, but by its shared delusions. To be a loyal Republican, one must be either a sucker or a liar. And because this defining falsehood is so obviously and laughably false, we can safely assume that most Republican leaders who embrace it fall into the second category. Knowingly repeating a lie — an act of immorality — is now the evidence of Republican fidelity.

This kind of determined mendacity requires rolling out the big guns. Said the prophet Isaiah: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil.”

Moral clarity against lying is sometimes made harder by our loose application of the term. When public figures disagree with you in their analyses of tax policy, or welfare spending or Social Security reform, they’re generally not lying. They’re disagreeing. When it’s revealed that someone was previously wrong about an issue — even on a grave matter of national security — it doesn’t mean he or she was lying all along. It means that person was wrong.

“To preserve the meaning of words,” said Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), “is the first responsibility of liberalism.” Precisely because principled disagreement is essential in a democracy, we can’t attribute every difference to deception. This form of false witness is a tool of polarization and a method of dehumanization.
It’s important to keep perspective about the stakes of any given lie. There is reason the English language has so many words to describe the shades of culpability in a deception. You can equivocate, or dissemble, or palter, or mislead, or prevaricate, or fib, or perjure. There are mortal lies and venial lies, cruel lies and merciful lies. Context matters.

Speaking of perjury, almost any GOP response to charges of deception will eventually include the words “Bill Clinton.” In a time of rampant whataboutism, Republicans often point out that Clinton was a spectacular liar defended by his party. What they fail to acknowledge is that many elected Democrats criticized his lying under oath, even as they opposed his impeachment. Clinton was not insisting his supporters share in his immorality to show their loyalty (though that might have had some appeal when it came to other human failures).

The context for Trump’s lies has been particularly damning. When Trump falsely asserted that Barack Obama was born in Africa and thus illegitimate as president, it was permission for racism. When he claimed he saw Muslims in New Jersey celebrating on Sept. 11, 2001, it was a vicious lie to feed a prejudice.

But the lie of a stolen election is the foundational falsehood of a political worldview. Believing it requires Trump’s followers to affirm the existence of a nationwide plot against him and his supporters — a plot led by ruthless Democrats and traitorous Republicans, and ignored or endorsed by useless courts and a complicit media. The claim’s plausibility is not the point. Does it really make sense that Attorney General William P. Barr, who found no evidence of election fraud that could have changed the result, was in on the plot? Were the conservative judges Trump appointed who dismissed his rubbish lawsuits really out to get him?

Such considerations don’t seem to matter. In the 1930s and ’40s, was it plausible that the democratic leaders of Weimar Germany had stabbed their own country in the back and betrayed its people? Or that an international conspiracy of powerful Jews was controlling world events?

Trump’s lie is not the moral equivalent of fascist propaganda. But it serves the same political function. A founding lie is intended to remove followers from the messy world of facts and evidence. It is designed to replace critical judgment with personal loyalty. It is supposed to encourage distrust of every source of social authority opposed to the leader’s shifting will.
The people who accepted this political mythology and stormed the Capitol were not lying about their views. They seemed quite sincere. And who knows what Trump really thinks? When a congenital liar surrounds himself with sycophantic liars, he can easily lose radio contact with reality.

No, it is the elected Republicans who are lying with open eyes, out of fear or cynicism, who have the most to atone for. With the health of U.S. democracy at stake, their excuses are disgraceful.

Experienced education journalist Jeff Bryant is collecting stories about successful community schools and he would like to hear from you.

Jeff writes:

Education Writers, Bloggers, Podcasters, Content Sharers WantedA national network has organized a project to lift up stories from public schools about their success in using the community schools approach for transformational school improvement. There is a treasure trove of powerful stories about community schools ready to be told. There is authoritative research to validate the approach. And there are audiences eager to learn of an alternative to decades of failed education policies. But we need people – writers, podcasters, TV and print journalists, videographers and community leaders — to tell those stories to the American public. We can connect you to people in these communities so you can tell their stories through your own outlet, your social media channels, or in a regional or national media outlet to a much larger audience. if you’re interested in joining this network, contact Jeff Bryant at jeffb.cdm@gmail.com.
Jeff

Maurice Cunningham is a political science professor at U of Mass who specializes in following the money, especially Dark Money, where the donors are anonymous.

The Koch-Walton backed National Parents Union is experiencing turmoil at the top and severe mismanagement with two boards of directors featuring revolving directors and a disappeared co-founder.. 

The organization is holding a convening on May 15 and its members should demand some answers. 

Here are questions they should be asking the leadership. Any media member who would like to learn about who is pulling the strings at NPU, feel free. 

1. National Parents Union has two boards of directors, one board listed on the NPU webpage, and another on record with the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s Corporations Division. The website board members are Peter Cunningham, Dan Weisberg, Vivett Dukes, Arthur Soriano, Vincent Slaughter, Maria del Carmen Parro de Cano, and Dr. Paul Bloomberg. The directors listed on the November 2020 annual report required in Massachusetts are Keri Rodrigues and Tim Langan. There are important legal consequences involved in serving as a director. Can leadership clarify who exercise powers over the National Parents Union? This would be a good question to be asked by Mr. Cunningham, Ms. Dukes, Mr. Soriano, Mr. Slaughter, Ms. Parro de Cano, or Dr. Bloomberg. 

2. The74 identified Ms. Rodrigues as elected in January 2020 to the presidency of NPU for a period of three years.  In the annual statement required to be filed with the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office in November 2020 Ms. Rodrigues is recorded as serving a term as president that ends on December 31, 2025. How long is Ms. Rodrigues’s term and when will the next election for officers of National Parents Union occur? A good question for anyone wanting to run for the well-compensated position of president.

3. In The74, Alma Marquez was identified as a co-founder and was also recorded as elected secretary-treasurer for a three year term. By August 2020 Ms. Marquez disappeared from NPU’s website. Ms. Marquez was also recorded as a director in NPU’s Articles of Organization filed with Massachusetts Secretary of State and signed by President Rodrigues on April 4, 2019. Ms. Marquez was dropped on the November 2020 annual report and from the webpage. What has happened to Ms. Marquez? Will there be an election for her successor as secretary-treasurer? 

4. Not only Ms. Marquez has disappeared. Original website board member Gerard Robinson disappeared sometime between November 15 and December 8, 2020. Since March of this year original website board member Bibb Hubbard has disappeared meaning, that two of the four original website board members and the co-founder have been ousted in little over a year. Why are they gone and what explains the management follies? 

5. In the 2020 annual report filed with the Massachusetts Secretary of State the two directors are identified as Ms. Rodrigues and Tim Langan. Ms. Rodrigues is listed as president and clerk, Mr. Langan as treasurer. They hold the same positions with Massachusetts Parents United (with one additional director), where they are also the two highest paid employees. Does National Parents Union have a Compensation Committee to assure fair compensation and adherence to ethical guidelines over conflicts of interest?Who are the highest compensated directors and officers, and what do they make?

6. On May 8 on Fox News Ms. Rodrigues stated that “We’ve got parent organizations in all 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico.” The only independent analysis of NPU membership shows that membership is largely charter schools and chains in twenty-two states with only four parent organizations represented. Will NPU go public with a list of its parent organizations?

7. According to published reports at The74, the Vela Education Fund, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, National Parents Union has received funding from the following oligarchs through their own foundations or philanthropies they contribute to and control: the Walton family, Bill and Melinda Gates, Michael Dell, the late Eli Broad, Reed Hoffman, John Arnold, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, and Charles Koch. Are there other major donors? What is the annual budget?

8. The Vela Education Fund, a joint venture of the Walton family and Charles Koch, funds National Parents Union as well as the Home School Legal Defense Association, which has been identified as conservative Christian and anti-gay. Is the funding relationship with Vela consistent with NPU’s stated goal of honoring diversity? 

9. Charles Koch also seems to be behind a new far right operation called Parents Defending Education, which is explicitly set up to fight against diversity and to honor the country’s white heritage. Will NPU denounce Parents Defending Education?

10. On the May 8 FoxNews program Ms. Rodrigues indicated reservations about the FDA’s approval and CDC review of the Covid-19 vaccine for 12-15 year olds. Is NPU advocating that CDC guidance is unreliable and that parents should not have their 12-15 year old children vaccinated against Covid-19?

A real board and real members would want answer to all of these questions. Open the floor!

[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy.]

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, reports that the Republican Governor and Legislature are determined to stop teachers from teaching about racism, sexism, and bias because such topics Dow discord and racism. This “cancel culture” at its worst. Every sentient adult who has studied American history knows that racism runs deep and strong in our history and present culture and the best way to eliminate it to confront it honestly.

Thompson writes:

As Education Week explained, across the nation, legislators are attempting to “make it harder for teachers to talk about racism, sexism, and bias in the classroom,” and directly or indirectly ban Critical Race Theory. Oklahoma passed HR 1775 banning mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling, while implicitly threatening lessons about racism.

Oklahoma provides just one example of the way public education and civil discussions are under assault. But it allows us to take inventory of the fraught overall situation, and why the assault on anti-racism is so disturbing and divisive.

As Public Radio Tulsa reported:

HB1775 takes most of its language from an executive order then-President Donald Trump issued in 2020 to ban diversity training by federal agencies and entities receiving federal funding. Civil rights groups challenged that order in court, and a judge blocked it. President Joe Biden rescinded it after taking office.

But, according to Gov. Kevin Stitt, “House Bill 1775 codifies” the words of Martin Luther King calling for “a day when people in America would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Gov. Stitt also said, “now more than ever, we need policies that bring us closer together – not rip us apart.” But the Black Wall Street Times reports that its questions for the governor met with this response:

The spokesperson stated, “Hi Sarah, thanks for reaching out but our policy is to respond to journalists, not activists pretending to be reporters. Good luck! – Carly”.

The Oklahoma City Free Press reports that the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission protested: “the intention of the bill clearly aims to limit teaching the racial implications of America’s history. The bill serves no purpose than to fuel the racism and denial that afflicts our communities and our nation. It is a sad day and a stain on Oklahoma.”

But one of the bill’s authors said it was necessary because of the “harmful indoctrination [which] has infiltrated Oklahoma schools from as early as pre-kindergarten classrooms all the way through college courses.”

Although conservatives now claim their “cut and paste” bills are anti-racist, the Washington Post’sPaul Waldman correctly explains they want to be attacked as racist so they can claim, “We’re the real victims here.”

And a look at the rightwingers’ spin makes their mindset clear. For instance Oklahoma Sen. Shane Jett told the Washington Times that his office “is investigating a handful of K-12 schools where the left-wing philosophy is being taught or incorporated in online classroom materials.” He blames the University of Oklahoma, i.e. “the Democratic People’s Republic of Norman,” for this Marxist indoctrination.”

The Oklahoma Policy Institute’s Ahniwake Rose writes, “We don’t have to dig too deeply to see that Oklahomans still need schooling on these subjects” that HR 1775 makes more risky to teach. Rose notes:

In just the first four months of this year, we have made national news for: a lawmaker referring to “colored babies” in a floor debate, a lawmaker saying transgender people suffer from “mental illness,” another lawmaker comparing efforts to end abortion to the fight against slavery, one elected official comparing Black Lives Matter to the KKK, a state senator making a lewd oral sex reference about the nation’s first Black female vice president during a television interview, a school teacher telling his middle school class that we need a “white history month” after seeing one of his students wearing a t-shirt expressing Black pride and sports announcers caught on a hot mic referring to high school basketball players as “f—– n——.”

Digging just a little deeper, the Human Rights Campaign notes that HR 1775 “is the eighteenth anti-LGBTQ bill to be enacted this year. In addition, 8 anti-LGBTQ bills are on governors’ desks awaiting signature or veto and several more are continuing to move through state legislatures across the country, including SB2 in Oklahoma.”

Moreover, this week’s New York Times reported that, “Two brothers, 8 and 5, (who are Black) were removed from their Oklahoma elementary school classrooms this past week and made to wait out the school day in a front office for wearing T-shirts that read ‘Black Lives Matter.’” The schoolsuperintendent saw the shirts as disruptive “in this emotionally charged environment,” where politics is creating such “anxiety … that I don’t want our kids to deal with.”

This leads to the next source of anxiety for schools navigating the new law as the 100-year anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre begins on Memorial Day. And that raises the question of whether HR 1775 would also criminalize the Centennial Commission’s curriculum on the Tulsa Massacre?  (And would teachers risk their jobs by drawing upon the “Killers of the Flower Moon” and telling its story of the mass murder of Osages in order to still their oil land rights?)

So, would it be risky for a teacher to assign Tulsa, 1921: Reporting a Massacre by the Tulsa World’sRandy Krehbiel. It presents both sides of the argument whether the desire to take the land owned by black Tulsans was a cause or an effect of the burning of Greenwood. Krehbiel concludes that the prime driver of the mass murder was anger by whites prompted by blacks seeking equal social status, as he also concludes that racism was “engrained” in every aspect of the Jim Crow culture. Could a teacher include that judgment in a lesson on the Massacre? This week, however, the Oklahoma City School Board voted their unanimous opposition to HR 1775, and the Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission is being pressured to remove Gov. Stitt and others who supported that “potentially crippling legislation” from its board, as it was announced by “the New Black Panther Party and affiliated organizations that 1,000 armed Black men will march in Tulsa on the weekend of the observance.”

The passage of HR 1775 was almost certainly about sowing discord, even more than changing instruction. So, what’s next?

The Kansas City Star reported on an unprecedented injection of money into the city’s local school board races. An unknown group with unknown donors has given more than $100,000 to pro-charter candidates. This concealment is known as Dark Money.

A newly formed nonprofit has already pumped tens of thousands of dollars into two contested races for the Kansas City Public Schools board, raising suspicions about the group and the candidates vying for seats in Tuesday’s election. 

Blaque KC, short for Black Leaders Advancing Quality Urban Education, has spent more than $100,000 on political consultants, mailed advertisements, radio spots, digital advertising and newspaper ads, according to reports filed this week with the Missouri Ethics Commission. That eclipses the combined fundraising haul of about $42,400 reported by campaign committees for the four candidates — including the two candidates backed by Blaque — running for contested seats on the board. 

While campaign committees regularly report individual donors and expenses, Blaque KC is spending independently of the candidates. And its leader won’t say where the money originated — leading to questions about Blaque KC’s motives. Some believe its ultimate goal is to disrupt the district’s center of power and usher in even more charter schools in Kansas City.

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/education/article250350646.html#storylink=cpy

The race is over. The two Dark Money candidates won. The people of Kasnsaas City deserve to know who bought seats on their school board and why.

If I were betting, I’d guess The City Fund, established initially by billionaires Reed Hastings (Netflix) and John Arnold (ex-Enron) with a startup grant of $200 million. It’s purpose, apparently, is to find small and medium-size districts where a strategic contribution can give charter advocates the upper hand. District by district, they are disrupting, defunding and destroying public education.