A New U.S. Motto: Crap and Corruption
Michael’s recent musings on how the United Kingdom has lost its mojo and whether it can get it back has set me to thinking about the United States and how abjectly corrupt it has become.
There is barely a nook or cranny in the Land of the Free that hasn’t been tainted by inappropriate if not downright illegal conduct, be it influence peddling, graft, siphoning off monies for personal use, misuse of public funds or other shenanigans.
Look no further than the burgeoning scandal in the student aid industry to see the extent of the rot.
Loan officers at Johns Hopkins, Columbia University, University of Texas-Austin and the University of Southern California, among other institutions, have been implicated for having inappropriate ties to companies they designated as preferred lenders.
Translation: The companies paid the officers consulting fees and other enticements to divert students needing financial aid to them.
In the case of Johns Hopkins, lender Student Loan Xpress paid aid officer Ellen Frishberg about $42,000 for consulting and more than $21,000 in tuition reimbursement from 2002 through 2005. During that period, the company was listed as a the university’s preferred lender, and more than 40 percent of Johns Hopkins’s students took out loans through the company.
Wait, it gets worse.
According to one investigation, Student Loan Xpress also paid the financial aid director at Capella University more than $13,000 to work as a consultant and sent a company owned by Widener University’s dean of financial aid about $80,000 for fees for conferences attended by Student Loan Xpress representatives.
Financial aid officers Columbia University, the University of Texas–Austin, and the University of Southern California–held stock in Student Loan Xpress, while the U.S. Department of Education official responsible for parts of the student loan program at one point owned at least $100,000 worth of stock in Student Loan Xpress’s parent company.
Frishberg, the other aid officers as well as the federal official have all been suspended.
More here.
18 Responses to “A New U.S. Motto: Crap and Corruption”
We ought to wait until more information comes out before shipping them off to prison. For instance, your comment “the companies paid the officers consulting fees and other enticements to divert students…” is, as of now, without support, as there is no evidence, only allegations, that anybody was ‘diverted’.
I also take issue with your claim this country is corrupt. You’ve cited a few examples here and there and use them to slander America has a whole. Tell me how I’m corrupt? How is Joe G? And just how are you corrupt?
Your hatred of Bush leads you to paint as negative a picture as you possibly can – and usually with little to no justification – about what has happened to America during his time in office. I’m surprised you didn’t try to directly tie Bush to this batch of alleged corruption. Was it too hard to connect the dots between Bush and these (likely) liberal college administrators?
[...] A New U.S. Motto: Crap and Corruption [...]
“Crap and Corruption”- I agree. Our population is taught by republican neocon ideology, (on an airwave near you), that nothing is more important than money. Its capitalism gone wild. I can remember in 1969, something called “ethical profit margin”. Well that’s gone. Not only is there no ethics required for making profit, there is no longer a line between capitalism and crime. I swear I thought I saw Ken Lay in a convenience store a month ago.
SteveStrum – Why bring up BDS or Bush hatred when discussing corruption at universities. I would also include mortage lenders to the group of influence peddling and corruption. This corruption and corporate crime has a history in the US and throughout the world, remeber the “robber barrons” and Teddy Roosevelt. Like with racism, the US is a guilty party, but hardly the worse example. If we admit and discuss these faults, it isn’t BDS or America hating, it’s that old cliche airing the dirty laundery.
WA – The Democrats also feed at the corruption through, it was one of the reasons that the Democrats lost Congress in the 1980′s and 1994.
Rudi- No sorry. The democrats lost the house of Reps in 1994 because of that (then) newfangled talk radio propaganda. For the first time the republicans were say the worst kind of BS TV ads while Rush Limpballs backed them up with spewed lies. the denied it away as “entertainment”.
In 2004 for we all became Tammy Wynette and “stood by our man” during war. Dumb move, but we did it for the right reasons. Now that neocon is a houshold word, and, virtually own the word corruption,I don’t think we have to worry about that so much anymore. Besides, we have Nancy Pelosi, We are on top of it!
I find it hard to discuss money without throwing in my motto “I love money.”
Money makes the world go around. Without money you are miserable. Give me money. Here money, there money, everywhere money….money.
Money is the root of all evil. So to quench the lefts thirst we must get rid of money. Okay. No money for the left. I vote for that. That leaves me with more money.
I vote the left gets no money. all in favor say Aye. AYE!!
Coming to a theatre near you.
“The sins of the Democratic Party” or “how the left got her groove back” starring, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy and names yet to be determined.
Corruption did not begin with the right-wing Republican hegemony. It merely has reached new heights and been a model for Americans who have been tempted to put their hands in the till.
To those who are screaming foul for blaming some of the tone on this thread to BDS, well, what other reaction can there be?
This is strictly private corruption, which has nothing to do with the government, so any attempts to tie it to Bush are more than spurious.
You know, here is a radical thought for everyone on BOTH sides. Not every bad thing that happens is connected to politics. To paraphrase Groucho, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Rudi: I bring up BDS, not to deny that there is and has been corruption, but because Shaun (and others) insist on claiming that either (1) American is now corrupt, whereas under previous (Democratic) Administrations, we were pure and untainted, or (2) that things are so much worse now because of Bush (evidenced by his last comment that corruption has ‘merely reached new heights” and the Administration has ‘been a model…’.
Does Shaun, or anybody for that matter, really believe that we’ve never before had incidents where people have used their positions to direct business to those paying them on the side?
And does he really think a bunch of liberal college administrators are going to take a cue from Bush on anything, that they would never have done anything like this but they thought it was okay because the President they didn’t vote for and hate more than any other said it was okay?
I’d guess he probably doesn’t but won’t let that stop him from holding Bush out as the cause for all that (in his view) is wrong with the world.
The sad thing is that Bush has given people enough solid reasons to disprove of him that it really ought not be necessary to stretch things as much as Shaun and the other haters have done. There’s so much low hanging fruit and yet they’re off inventing storylines such as Bush somehow being responsible because some liberals took some money on the side.
stevesturm:
I probably should not dignify your angry blatherings with a response, but for the record my post did not in any way implicate the Bush administration for crap and corruption generally nor the college financial aid scandal specifically.
Have you considered changing your medication? That sometimes helps.
Nobody- Childish.
Maybe the universities need to change their rules to end this corruption. I guess higher education now means higher income for university officials.
Yes the Clintons had some corruption, so did Bush 41 and Carter, but the Congressional Republicans and Bush took it to another level, even conservative Joe Scarborough admits this. If Pelosi goes the Rostenkowski/Gingrich route, the Republicans will get another chance to rob/feed at the trough.
AustinRoth- Spurious? No. It is the neocon ideology of reduced ethics for capitalist reasons. Neocon version of capitalism is without regulation, essentially the decriminalization of theft.
BTW, the federal grant programs are not private. Managed by private firms, but public. Which is also the neocon ideology of “privatization”. Its supposed to be less expensive. Its not, however it is far more corrupt.
The “tie together” is right there before your eyes.
Yes, Shaun, I read your post twice. Nary a sign of BDS. The environment has become conducive to corruption, as we are now seeing it even in the Smithsonian, where lax oversight by Congress and the Board of Directors has resulted in numerous abuses and the resignation of its director. I think either Democrats or Republicans can become lax in this regard, which is why divided government, even with its polarized factions, works the best. One party always has to keep the other in check-otherwise we have the abuses of the ’90′s and the abuses that are being unearthed now. (I should mention that one of the members of the Smithsonian board is Dick Cheney, lol!)
Nah WA Im just trying to make you see what you look like in reverse.
Stevestrum – if 15 sailors are able to tell the story of a whole nation, than a few school administrators can tell the story of another.
Just how they ‘diverted’ students? Well, whoever the school recommends as their lender will be what most of the kids use. The lenders well know this, and this is the only reason why they give such large amounts of money to these individuals. It might or might not hold in a court of law, but I haven’t heard anything that gives me any reasonable doubt so far.
so WA, you really think the Democrats are squeaky clean on corruption? The night after they passed lobbying ‘reform’ they threw a party for lobbyists and asked them for money!
Nobody- The you have missed the point.
To blame this issue on the Bush administration or necons or the right is foolishness. This issue is about personal greed and purchased influence. Ninety- percent of people in higher education call themselves liberals and vote for Democrats. That woman at Hopkins has long bragged about being “a liberal Democrat with socialist leanings”. The real shame is that very little will happen to her. She will probably continue on paid leave for a long period as is often in higher education until things blow over and she ends up somewhere else, or still at the same institution with a different title.