Friday, October 25, 2019

Trumpist Regime Is Riven With Corruption That Few Are Paying Attention To During The Impeachment Process

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While everyone is watching everything impeachment-related, the ordinary business of Trumpist destruction continues unabated. Let me give you two examples: air quality and education quality, although all of Trump's cabinet secretaries are working towards destruction of everything we cherish about our country. CBS reporter Kate Gibson wrote that while Obama was president air quality kept improving, But after the catastrophe in 2016, we've had two years of increases in the amount of pollutants in the air "with potentially deadly ramifications." Two analysts working for the EPA, Karen Clay and Nicholas Muller, "found that particulate matter air pollution fell 24% in the U.S. from 2009 to 2016, but it increased 5.5% the following two years. 'That increase was associated with 9,700 premature deaths in 2018'... [they wrote] in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research."
"The chemical composition of particulates point to increased use of natural gas and to vehicle miles traveled as likely contributors to the increase" in pollution, the economists wrote. "We conclude that the effect is due to diesel vehicles as well as some industrial boilers."

The findings could bolster theories advanced by experts such as Oxford University economist Kate Raworth who argue that unrestrained economic growth is contributing to climate change.

...The researchers also point to a decline in EPA enforcement of the Clean Air Act as a factor that could explain worsening air quality. The law, established in 1970, is responsible for preventing hundreds of thousands of premature deaths and hundreds of millions of cases of respiratory and heart disease, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. 


But that's not an anomaly; that's how the Trumpets Regime works. Yesterday Danielle Douglas-Gabriel wrote for the Washington Post how Betsy DeVos has been spending millions of taxpayer dollars on unaccredited for-profit fake "colleges," many of them scams like Trump "University." She reported that "A trove of documents released Tuesday by the House Education and Labor Committee shows the Education Department provided $10.7 million in federal loans and grants to students at the Illinois Institute of Art and the Art Institute of Colorado even though officials knew the for-profit colleges were not accredited and ineligible to receive such aid."


Barr, Pompeo, Trump, Pence by Nancy Ohanian


The documents build on prior reports from the committee describing efforts by Education Department officials to shield Dream Center Education Holdings, owner of the Art Institutes and Argosy University, from the consequences of lying to students about the accreditation of its since-closed schools. Now it appears the Education Department tried to shield itself from an ill-fated decision to allow millions of dollars to flow to those schools. Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-VA), chairman of the House Education Committee, is threatening to subpoena Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for more documents related to the department’s role in Dream Center’s actions. Scott says the agency has obstructed the committee’s investigation and refused to answer questions, as emails and letters paint a picture of a federal agency complicit in an effort to place profits before students.

...By law, for-profit colleges must be fully accredited to participate in federal student aid programs. Neither the Art Institute of Colorado, the Art Institute of Michigan or the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago and Schaumburg held that seal of approval from their accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, in the 2018 spring semester. In reviewing Dream Center’s 2017 acquisition of the chain, the accrediting commission raised concerns about the quality of education at the campuses and downgraded their status for up to four years.

The accreditor issued a public notice in January 2018 and instructed Dream Center to inform students, but the Los Angeles company continued to advertise that the schools were accredited. Students kept enrolling, and the Education Department kept giving them federal loans, despite the schools’ ineligibility. Dream Center, which has since folded, could not be reached for comment.

Letters from senior Education Department official Michael Frola to the presidents of the two Art Institute campuses were among the documents made public Tuesday by House Democrats. Frola acknowledges in the May 2018 letters that the schools’ accreditation status made them ineligible to receive federal loans and grants through their students.

The for-profit schools’ downgraded designation as “preaccredited” institutions prohibited the receipt of federal student aid, although nonprofit schools with the same status can receive aid. To rectify the problem, Frola said, the department would retroactively-- and temporarily-- designate the Art Institutes as nonprofits effective Jan. 20, 2018, the date they lost their accreditation.

At the time, Dream Center was seeking approval from the Education Department, the accrediting commission and the Internal Revenue Service to turn the chain of for-profit colleges it purchased in 2016 into nonprofit schools. That designation would shield the company from having to report whether graduates were earning enough to repay their student loans.


The conversion was still in the works when Frola sent the letters. The timing and scope of the temporary conversion by the Education Department are causing alarm among House Democrats.

“The grant of temporary nonprofit status was directed at what had at that time, been a five-month lapse in eligibility, and five months where Dream Center was receiving funds in violation of [the Higher Education Act] and accompanying regulations,” Scott wrote in a letter Tuesday to DeVos. “This special treatment allowed more students to become entangled in Dream Center, magnifying the abrupt closure of the schools and the displacement of thousands of students.”

Former Art Institute of Colorado and Illinois Institute of Art students are suing DeVos and the Education Department, accusing them of unlawfully issuing loans the students say they should not be forced to repay. The National Student Legal Defense Network, a legal aid group representing the students, used many of the documents unearthed by House Democrats as evidence in the complaint.

“We’ve known for a long time that the Art Institutes lied to students about losing accreditation. Now, we know that the Department of Education misled them, too,” said Eric Rothschild, an attorney at the National Student Legal Defense Network who is representing the students.

Robert J. Infusino, one of the students involved in the case, was pursuing a degree in audio production at the Illinois Institute of Art when the school announced in summer 2018 it would be closing at the end of the year. Infusino, 23, was livid when he learned during a meeting about the imminent closing that the school had lost accreditation six months earlier but had not informed students.

He was $28,000 in debt for a degree he was a few months shy of completing. But transferring his credits to another school became a nightmare because few were willing to accept classes from an unaccredited institution. When Infusino finally found an online school willing to give him a chance, he had to retake classes, spend more money and take more time to complete his education.

“Had I known what was going on, I would have had time to evaluate the situation, maybe transfer before wasting time and money,” Infusino said. “I thought the government was supposed to look out for students. I feel betrayed.”


Is there are solution-- aside from just getting rid of DeVos, something that is dependent on getting rid of Trump, of course. Well even beyond that, Bernie has a good idea. His message to young Americans and their parents: "We want you to get the best education that you can, regardless of the income of your family. Good jobs require a good education. That is why we are going to make public colleges and universities tuition free, and cancel all student debt. Just 30 years ago, tuition and fees at a public, four-year university totaled $3,360 per year in today’s dollars. That same degree today costs more than $10,000 per year in tuition and fees and more than $21,000 per year including room and board. Meanwhile, median hourly wages for college graduates have risen by less than $1 since 2001, when adjusted for inflation. The promise of higher pay has not materialized for recent college graduates, who have been taking out more and more in student loans to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of tuition. This has led to a generation of young people unable to start families, buy homes, and follow their dreams... You are not truly free when you graduate college with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt. You are not truly free when you cannot pursue your dream of becoming a teacher, environmentalist, journalist or nurse because you cannot make enough money to cover your monthly student loan payments. And you are not truly free when the vast majority of good-paying jobs require a degree that requires taking out tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to obtain. We are going to end the racial and class disparities that persist throughout higher education. We will close these gaps and ensure all Americans, no matter their race, income, zip code, or immigration status receive a high quality education. Not only will we guarantee the right to a good, public education for all-- from childcare and pre-kindergarten through college-- we will free generations of Americans from the outrageous burden of student loans by canceling all existing student debt."





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2 Comments:

At 3:33 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Let's get real here. Corruption runs rampant in BOTH parties. The difference is in who pays the bribes to avoid prosecution.

Trump and his merry thieves have been covered in much more detail than I can provide here. Let's thus stipulate the title condition of the lack of integrity in those Trump has named to his misadministration.

On the other side, which I also don't have the space to cover in much detail, you can begin with the now-"defunct" Clinton Foundation. You can look at the many instances that Joe Biden was clearly paid to work against the interests of the American people, with his son's corruption being a side show compared to that.

You have obamanation refusing to do anything about the paid lackeys of the military-industrial complex who took us to war through lies, and who committed war crimes such as torture. Domestically, he did nothing but aid and abet those who almost crashed both the domestic AND global economy, including those who generated fraudulent foreclosures (and who were rescued from prosecution in California by Kamala Harris).

Until Big Money is ousted from politics (sure I'm holding my breath! aren't you?), corruption in elected politics is a given. It's so common and widespread that few can care much about it since we all know nothing substantial will be done about it.

So watch Trump apply leverage against Biden's corruption to get the pressure off of his own. Just don't pretend to be surprised when it happens.

 
At 6:58 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

to augment the above:

the biggest reason, IMO, that Pelosi is allowing the pretense of a charade of impeachment investigation, is that it is a TOTAL distraction from all talk of MFA, GND and the rest of Bernie's (and AOC's) platform.

let's face it... I hope you can... killing kids at the border is far more despicable than attempting to prove that the bidens are a corrupt family.
Also, making this the hill to die on risks exposing for the intellectually dormant left electorate that the bidens really ARE a thoroughly corrupt family and have been for decades. The corruption might be all legal, but it's still corruption.

But Pelosi really needed the conversation on the left to be NOT about MFA and GND. you remember... those things she has been smothering for decades at the behest of her biggest donors.

trump corruption? emoluments? since day 1 in 2017. Pelosi does not feel that this is impeachable either. clearly.

 

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