Bush / GOP

Amit Paley at the WAPO is reporting that in 2001 the Bush Administration passed on a Clinton-era Department of Education proposal to clean up the crooked student loan industry.  They did of course find time to cut funding for financial aid at a time when less high school students are going to college.  Yet another example of conservative failures in governing.

The Bush administration killed a proposal to clamp down on the student loan industry six years ago following allegations that companies sought to shower universities with financial favors to help generate business, according to documents and interviews with government officials.

The proposed policy, which Education Department officials drafted near the end of the Clinton presidency and circulated at the start of the Bush administration, represented an early, significant but ultimately abortive government response to a problem that this year has grown into a major controversy.

Now, as the $85 billion-a-year student loan industry faces an array of investigations into questionable business practices that some officials believe could have been curtailed by the 2001 proposal, the Education Department has embarked on a new effort to set rules for the industry to prevent conflicts of interest and other abuses. If approved, the rules would be implemented in summer 2008, a few months before Bush leaves the White House.

The abandonment of the 2001 proposal underscores what some consumer advocates and Democratic lawmakers believe is lax federal oversight of the financial aid system by a department they say is too cozy with the industry. More than a dozen senior department officials either previously worked in the student loan business or found high-paying jobs in the sector after they left the agency.

"The Department of Education has been run as a wholly owned subsidiary of the loan industry under this administration," said Barmak Nassirian, a longtime advocate for industry reform at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "They are running the federal loan program for the profit of their friends and not for the benefit of students and taxpayers."

In a recent essay I wrote about the terrible moral climate of the Bush era.  But in the days since that essay, written just a few weeks ago, we've seen a torrent of new revelations, resignations and accusations.  They are coming so fast and furious now that they are often not even getting on the front page of major papers.  This age of Bush the raid of a Congressman's home by the FBI has become a regular, everyday occurance. 

Let's do a quick review of what we've learned in the last few weeks: for years dozens of senior Administration officials knowingly violated laws requiring them to keep records of their communications; millions of these emails were "lost;" it has become clear that several senior staffers of Justice perjured themselves in front of Congress earlier this year; the Attorney General himself also appeared to have lied to or purposefully misled Congress; a senior Justice staffer just resigned over ties to Abramoff; more Republican staffers were convicted in the next stages of a variety of scandals; the NYTimes has a devastating story today on how many of the completed reconstruction projects in Iraq are no longer functioning as planned; at least three new Republican Members of Congress have had public action taken against them, including two who have had their homes or offices raided by the FBI; and George Tenet's new book appears to, of course, indicate once again how much the Iraq War was a neocon big lie.

In the age of Bush we've seen just about everything.  Official corruption of every kind and at a scale perhaps not seen in US history; sexual intimidation of minors; prostitutes and limos; the big lie as common strategy; to make it complete we needed a Republican Madam.  As a the Post reports today we now have one, and she is going public on 20/20 on May 4th about her client list, which appears to include a host of conservative big wigs.  A senior Rice deputy was the first to go, earlier this week. 

It is important that we muckracking progressives make the moral climate and leadership failures of this era a major topic in the Presidential campaigns of both parties this year.  It has been a leadership failure of epic scale, and needs to be discussed publically by our Presidential aspirants.

Rudy Giuliani, being the optimistic guy that he is, made some pretty interesting remarks yesterday at the New Hampshire Republican Party's Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner. Here are some of the highlights:

“But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have?” Giuliani said. “If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer.”

“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”

He added: “The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.”

After his speech to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner, I asked him about his statements and Giuliani said flatly: “America will be safer with a Republican president.”

Perhaps Rudy should follow these words from Senator John McCain's e-mail formally announcing his candidacy for President: "This election should be about big things, not small ones. Ours are not red state or blue state problems. They are national and global."

UPDATE: Senator Barack Obama's response (via Greg from TPMCafe):

“Rudy Giuliani today has taken the politics of fear to a new low and I believe Americans are ready to reject those kind of politics. America’s mayor should know that when it comes to 9/11 and fighting terrorists, America is united. We know we can win this war based on shared purpose, not the same divisive politics that question your patriotism if you dare to question failed policies that have made us less secure. I think we should focus on strengthening our intelligence, working with local authorities and doing all the things we haven't yet done to keep Americans safe. The threat we face is real, and deserves better than to be the punchline of another political attack.”

Senator Hillary Clinton's response (via Greg from TPMCafe):

"There are people right now in the world, not just wishing us harm but actively planning and plotting to cause us harm. If the last six years of the Bush Administration have taught us anything, it's that political rhetoric won't do anything to quell those threats. And that America is ready for a change.

"One of the great tragedies of this Administration is that the President failed to keep this country unified after 9/11. We have to protect our country from terrorism – it shouldn't be a Democratic fight or a Republican fight. The plain truth is that this Administration has done too little to protect our ports, make our mass transit safer, and protect our cities. They have isolated us in the world and have let Al Qaeda regroup. The next President is going to be left with these problems and will have to do what it takes to make us safer and bring Democrats and Republicans together around this common mission of protecting our nation. That is exactly what has to be done and what I am ready to do."

Click here to see Senator John Edwards' response, as well as that of the DNC.

For more information on NDN's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election, click here.

I read this story several times, and I have to admit that I am thunderstruck.  I can't really believe it.  CNN has a good early piece with lots of video.

There's a new investigation into Karl Rove's potential abuses of power and violation of the Hatch Act.  From WAPO:

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel is expanding its investigation of a January videoconference, conducted by Karl Rove's deputy for General Services Administration appointees, to look at whether the political dealings of the White House have violated the Hatch Act, its chairman said last night.

Not long into its investigation of the presentation, Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch said, his office had collected "a sufficient amount of evidence" that merited a deeper examination of whether the White House was running afoul of the law.

J. Scott Jennings conducted the Jan. 26 videoconference in the political affairs office at the White House. His PowerPoint presentation, to as many as 40 Republican GSA political appointees, contained slides describing Democratic seats that the GOP planned to target in the next election and Republican seats that needed to be protected.

We've been talking about corruption and conservatives for years.  Make sure to read Simon's latest analysis:

Renewing Our Democracy

29%.   That is the percentage of Americans who approve of the President’s performance today.   To me it is an accurate appraisal, as it has been a disappointing time for our nation.  Despite a sustained economic recovery wages haven’t risen and jobs haven’t been created at historic norms.   Iraq has gone terribly wrong, costing American lives, respect and so much money.   Katrina showed terrifying incompetence, reminding us with Bush we are not safer.  So little has worked as advertised in this age of Bush, and critical challenges like the funding of the retirement of baby boom, really improving our schools, fixing our broken immigration system, offering all Americans access to health insurance, lessening our dependence on foreign sources of energy and global climate change have gone unmet.

Read more...

Of all the 'loyal Bushies' who are in trouble these days Paul Wolfowitz's collapse seems most likely to be turned into a made for TV movie, with corruption acusations against the anti-corruption crusader, sex, lots of blame for a war that has proven to be expensive in blood and treasure.  But the World Bank chief seems to be intent on going down fighting, meeting with the World Bank board and hiring a prominent defense attorney.  WAPO has more:

"I want to make sure his rights are fully protected," said Robert S. Bennett, whom Wolfowitz retained on Saturday. On Friday, the World Bank executive board named an ad hoc committee to consider "conflict of interest, ethical, reputational, and other relevant standards" in judging Wolfowitz's performance, including his role in setting the terms of a pay and promotion package for his girlfriend, a bank employee...

More than three dozen former senior bank officials, including a number who served with Wolfowitz, signed a letter published yesterday in the Financial Times urging that he resign so the bank can "speak with the moral authority necessary to move the poverty agenda forward."

Read more in the NYT...

The Times documents another startling Bush legacy:

HOLLANDALE, Miss. — For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But, in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states.

The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors, and, many doctors say, the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes and hypertension among potential mothers, some of whom tip the scales here at 300 to 400 pounds.

“I don’t think the rise is a fluke, and it’s a disturbing trend, not only in Mississippi but throughout the Southeast,” said Dr. Christina Glick, a neonatologist in Jackson, Miss., and past president of the National Perinatal Association.

To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005.

Whether the rises continue or not, federal officials say, rates have stagnated in the Deep South at levels well above the national average.

Most striking, here and throughout the country, is the large racial disparity. In Mississippi, infant deaths among blacks rose to 17 per thousand births in 2005 from 14.2 per thousand in 2004, while those among whites rose to 6.6 per thousand from 6.1. (The national average in 2003 was 5.7 for whites and 14.0 for blacks.)

The overall jump in Mississippi meant that 65 more babies died in 2005 than in the previous year, for a total of 481..

The Times has a very good look at what might come next for the new post-O'Connor Supreme Court.

So, right as Gonzales makes his public plea to save his job, federal prosecutors search the home of two Republican Congressman and subpoena a third.  Is this a coincidence? Perhaps.  Somehow I feel this that is an ominous sign, from the Attorney General's own department, that they are going to keep moving against the corrupt Repulbican machine that governed this town in recent years.  And of course that corrupt Republican machine had at its head the White House, led by Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales.   

I wrote an essay recently about this terrible era and some things we can do to clean it up here.