Call to Action - We want YOU! Please go and post to support Dr. Oberg

A few posters who responded to the lawsuit filed by Dr. Jon Oberg are saying he's done it for his own selfish interests and referring to him derisively as a "whistleblower." He was in fact a researcher who discovered some serious loopholes that allowed lenders like Nelnet and Sallie Mae to rob the treasury of billions of dollars - OUR tax dollars!

Please, please go and post here to support Dr. Oberg. He was, and is, a courageous man - he's on our side and has always been an advocate for students.

Thanks for your help! It will only take a few minutes to set up an account and share your support!

BREAKING NEWS! Our Dept. of Ed. Gman Hero is doing something heroic for all of us!

As many of you recall, I wrote about a modern day hero, Dr. Jon Oberg, the dutiful (G-man!) researcher at the Department of Education here and here . Dr. Oberg's work - the right type of work - led him to discover that lenders were receiving millions and millions of dollars from the treasury - they slithered past all sorts of loopholes to line their pockets with money. He tried to put a stop to it, went to his superiors, and informed them of his findings. Guess what they did to him? They told him to shut up, to move on, to attend to work related to the position he held (whatever that means) at the DOE.

Well, Dr. Oberg is back, and it's good news for our movement! He has filed a lawsuit, "seeking the return of $1-billion in excess student-subsidies to the federal government."

For those who read my blog, I urge you to the following things:

a) Please, please follow me (you must sign up to follow. Scroll down the page and see my list of "followers"). I'm not asking you to do this for my own desire for fame, but to really show that my readership has spiked for the Forgive Student Loan Debt Movement.

b) Once you have signed up to follow me, circulate this news about Dr. Oberg! Tell your friends, your family, your neighbors - tell EVERYONE. This lawsuit could be of enormous help to our cause.

I will also be writing a very disturbing piece about people who are in the enrollment management industry - this story will, in my view, help those critical of Marjorie Dillon (and thousands and thousands of others in a devastating predicament like her - we're talking about 4 generations of people who might be destroyed as a result of some fishy things that may have happened at Robert Morris University) see her from a different light A very different light. Stay tuned for that story . . .

But for now, spread the word!

Thanks again for your support.

Part II of the Resurrection of the Dept. of Ed. G-man and America's Collective Trauma

The archival dust from the binary system operating behind this clean-looking computer has settled. With the dust particles settling into their cozy crevices, additional clarity about Oberg's heroism as a civil servant at the DOE emerges.

On a side note, but nevertheless important, one reader pointed out that the story I've told so far skewers Republicans, and therefore might imply that I believe the Democrats are not involved in this mess. That's far from the case. This student lending crisis is a systemic problem. Its center, sadly, reveals the darker side of politics, universities, and very powerful lobbying groups. All groups know how to mobilize with great efficiency. Operating around the vortex of money and power, their mobilization efforts have sucked in a slew of unfortunate victims: working- and middle-class students and their families. Those who graduate now know that they are a new class - the educated indentured class.

Luckily, Oberg was not sucked into the structure of misinformation. As a result of seeing things clearly, he uncovered a gaping hole that allowed lenders to take millions of dollars in subsidies and line their own pockets.

Case in point: Sallie Mae's CEO, Albert Lord, made a pretty penny. Here, for example, Jeffrey H. Birnbaum wrote an article in the Washington Post in 2007 and rhetorically asked, "How much wealth [did Lord acquire as a CEO]?"

Answer:" Lord, 61, has been building his own private 18-hole golf course on 244 acres in Anne Arundel County, an hour's drive from downtown Washington. He was well-heeled enough to spearhead a serious-but-unsuccessful bid to purchase the District's new professional baseball team, the Nationals."

(Question is: did he finish that private golf course and should he acquire more land in Anne Arundel County? 244 acres - isn't that a small spread? I worry that he might not be making enough money to survive. I also worry that Lord might be suffering from his own personal trauma, and has frantically been building things for leisure to escape the nasty skeletons in his own childhood closet).

The dutiful civil servant, Oberg, worried about the loophole(s). He couldn't stop worrying about it. The slumber induced by collective trauma did not make Oberg drowsy. There's also another issue to digest. It's related to the 9.5% return on loans. however, this type of awakening and the lessons we are all learning about this corrupted system means that I will provide this piece of the story later. If you want to read about it now and are prepared, go to the original blog I'm referencing here. Rest assured, the 9.5% issue will be covered.

Returning to the hula hoops loopholes that the lenders slithered and continue to slither through, it turns out that Nelnet benefited too. And so the treasury was feeding Nelnet and Sallie Mae with millions and millions of dollars. Indeed, these were hungry, hungry student-lending-pythons. In fact, an audit review, which was finally carried out (years after Oberg discovered the problem) showed that the department needed to recover $278 million dollars from Nelnet.
The money was not recovered. Nelnet agreed to the blockage of the subsidies. End of that leakage-story. Right? No. They continued to find loopholes and managed to slither through.

Oberg didn't like that. He was doing his job, and yet was being told not to. Congress tried to take care of the other subsidies that allowed the lenders to fatten themselves up (pythons are hungry creatures). In 1997 the Clinton Administration tried to cut off all subsidies and end this systemic problem.

At that juncture in his career, Oberg was an Educational liaison to Congress. He approached Sally Stroup about this legislation. At the time Stroup was acting as senior aide to the Republican chairman of the House education committee.

Oberg speaks of their meeting, 'Sally told me there was no way that language was coming out. . . . She didn't give me a reason -- just forget it.' Sally, who was clearly acting as an advocate for students, went onward and upward in politics. She became an assistant secretary of education in the Bush administration.

Bite that off, digest it, and come back for some more later . . .

The Resurrection of the Dept. of Ed. G-man and America's Collective Trauma

This excellent blog - History and Education: Past & Present - hasn't been updated since December 2008. It is now an electronic archive, settling itself in the binary dustbins of the internet . . . only to be resurrected by Education Matters!

It's a tale about " a modern day hero and Dept. of Ed. G-man," named Jon Oberg. Let's stir up some dust with a story that was originally a newspaper article (gasp! do those things even exist anymore? I don't like that actual dust from those worthy things are disappearing) by NYT's columnist Sam Dillon:

1) Who is Jon Oberg?

Dr. Jon Oberg is a Former Dept. of Education civil servant. He is now retired, occasionally teaches, and writes good reviews about books on Amazon.com. (Take a look at his profile here . I recommend reading his review of Alan Collinge's book entitled, The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History - and How We Can Fight Back).

2) Who cares?

Oberg was a whistle blower at the DOE. In the 1990s, Oberg uncovered something problematic. Non-profit lenders were taking advantage of an archaic lending system based upon subsidies from the 1980s student-lending structure. This "loophole" was bothersome to the diligent civil servant, so he fought to correct it for years. In 2007 it was finally sorted out by the DOE. (These stories make me understand a perspective with which I don't normally understand - conservatives ranting about the inadequacy and corrupt nature of "big government." Funny thing is: the party that puts forth those arguments were dominating almost the entire time).

3) What else did Oberg do to make himself worth of being called a modern day hero?

This takes us back again to the era of excessive deregulation. This really began with Reagan - that's a good departure point. Reagan liked monkeys and deregulation. He thought FDR had corrupted the country with lousy, big-bad-government programs.

When I think of Reagan, I just imagine him eating jelly beans and yelling, "Boo! Boo-big-government!"

When Bush Junior came onto the scene, he had a cabinet full of people who knew the ins and outs of playing dirty politics on the Hill (throwback to Reagan years and his daddy's). These wolves also did a very good job of disguising themselves as sheep when they appealed to their constituents. But Bush's folks had more than that: they possessed the power of institutional memory, the money to lube the right lobbying machines, and also the "luck" of being in office on that fated day. 9/11. That's one piece of this complicated history that must be dusted off and examined further. The trauma of 9/11 hit all of us. Hard. All the while deregulation marched onward and upward.

4) Where's Oberg in this picture?

Conspiracy theories are for the naive. All that was running afoul was in the American public's face. Smashed in its face. Crammed down its throat. At the same time, Americans were too busy enjoying the freedom of easy credit. Who WASN'T being approved for second loans on their houses, new cars, big T.V.s? From this vantage point, things weren't that bad. Right?

But now we all know the bliss of the roaring '20s. So many writers have made that allusion, so bringing Daisy and devastating car wrecks into this will only lead us further astray.

As we all know the roaring era we just saw was squelched when the very financial empires that brought it to life collapsed. For a while, however, Americans were able to sustain high levels of amnesic euphoria. That's related to trauma. But as trauma grows, shifts, it eventually moves to feelings of terror (remember all those boogeyman? Especially that one that nobody ever found. What was his name again? Oh, yes, Osama Bin Laden). The cycle of trauma undulates in frantic ways. The terror is felt one moment, only to be replaced by numbness. Even worse, trauma can lead to complete disengagement. People retreat from themselves, their families, and their communities. Trauma cast its shadow across the cultural and social landscape of this country.

Numbing and the desire to escape were part of our previous era. We numbed ourselves through buying bigger homes, re-doing our kitchens, and enjoying fluff like Sex & The City. Indeed. When the pendulum of trauma swung in such a way to induce collective numbness, things seemed to be working well for all of us. That trauma has been lifted, and now most of us are angry and sad.

Oberg wasn't asleep, however. He was wide awake. It was apparent to him that deregulation posed a disastrous threat to students, the economy, the nation's well-being. In 2003 he approached his superior and expressed concern that the student lending industry wielded too much power over their debtors. Not only that, Oberg was concerned that "student lending companies were improperly collecting hundreds of millions of federal subsidies and suggested how to correct the problem."

Oberg was ignored and assigned new tasks. He was told that postsecondary education finance was not of his concern. Who said that to him?

Let's call him out. Grover Whitehurst, a political appointee, said that to Oberg in November 2003. (Incidentally, Whitehurse still works for the DOE). Since Oberg was set to retire at that point, Whitehurst in one of those famously bureaucratic ways ever-so-politely told him to shut up.

Whitehurst, who was a Republican appointee, used bureaucratic brass to stop Oberg. That's right. A Republican appointee took advantage of the government bureaucracy to get his way. Huh. I thought that's why those people hated Democrats? But I digress.

The student lending industry profited enormously from Whitehurst's refusal to implement Oberg's plans to cut of these subsidies to them. That's right. With Bush in office and his minions pushing the American people to embrace a war against Iraq, this industry of $85 billion dollars went unchecked.

The dustbin has caused me to sneeze too much, so this will be continued soon . . .