Don't go hating on Tulsa just because President Trump willl speak there in a few hours

President Donald Trump will hold a rally in Tulsa this evening, his first rally since the coronavirus pandemic descended on the United States.

Trump's media critics often mention the fact that Tulsa is the site of one of America's worst race riots. Indeed, on June 1, 1921, white rioters rampaged through Tulsa's Greenwood District, an affluent African American neighborhood, and destroyed or damaged more than 1,000 homes and businesses. Between 100 and 300 people were killed, and 6,000 African Americans were interned by law enforcement authorities. The Tulsa race massacre may, in fact, have been the worst race riot in American history.

Trump's media enemies insinuate that Trump picked Tulsa for his first post-coronavirus rally because he is a racist, and he finds Tulsa's history of racist violence appealing.  But to say such a thing, or even to imply it, is a slander on Tulsa, one of MidAmerica's most charming and lovely cities.

Tulsa was transformed during eastern Oklahoma's oil boom of the 1920s and 1930s, which brought enormous wealth to the city and a construction boom. As anyone knows who has visited Tulsa, the city is the home of an extensive collection of Art Deco buildings. It is truly a museum of early twentieth-century architecture.

Oil wealth also made possible the establishment of two nationally acclaimed museums: The Philbrook and the Gilcrease. The Philbrook Museum is located in what was once the home of oil magnate Waite Phillip and his wife Genevieve and contains an impressive and eclectic collection of art.

The Gilcrease Museum houses perhaps the world's most extensive collection of western American art. Thomas Gilcrease, another oil magnate, donated his own art collection to form the foundation of the museum's treasurers. Born of a mixed-race family (Scotch-Irish, French, and Creek), Gilcrease was enrolled in the Creek tribe when he was nine years old.

And Tulsa has other cultural treasures. The Bob Dylan papers and the Woodie Guthrie papers are housed in the city.  Both collections were purchased by the George Kaiser Foundation.

Over the years, Tulsa has been the home of countless famous actors, sports figures, and musicians. Tony Randall--part of The Odd Couple, is from Tulsa, along with Time Blake Nelson, the actor, screenwriter, and movie director.

Tim Blake Nelson deserves special mention. He is best know for his role in Brother Where Art Thou, but he also directed The Grey Zone, perhaps the best movie ever made about the Holocaust.

Before closing my paean to Tulsa, I must also mention that Tulsa is the home of Cain's Ballroom, where Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys performed both live and on the radio during the 1930s. Cain's Ballroom helped popularize a new form of American music that blended classic swing with western themes and melodies. Even today, Cain's Ballroom is known as the Carnegie Hall of western swing.

Why am I going on so long about Tulsa?  Perhaps it is because I grew up in rural Oklahoma and always considered Tulsa as Oklahoma's most beautiful, gracious, and culturally rich city.  I still feel that way. So--whatever happens tonight at the Trump rally, please don't let the evening's events tarnish one of the great cities of America's flyover country.

Bob Wills and Texas Playboys performed in Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

"Impeach the mother f--ker": Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, vulgar discourse, and a personal apology

Almost everyone agrees that public discourse has become cruder, especially public discourse in the political arena. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib may have hit the low point of this trend when she called President Trump a "mother f--ker," but perhaps not. She justified her profanity by saying she was only "speaking truth to power," and Congress did not censor her for her language.

I've heard three explanations for the explosion in vulgar language in public conversations. Some people put the blame on President Trump, who often resorts to crude language and insults his adversaries by giving them demeaning nicknames. I think there is some truth to that argument.

Some commentators say we are speaking more profanely just to get people's attention. We are continuously bombarded by rude language transmitted by radio, television, and social media. Some people may think they must use profanity just to get noticed.  If Congresswoman Tlaib had simply called for impeaching President Trump, no one would have noticed. By calling the President a "mother f--ker," she grabbed worldwide attention. Even the South China Morning Post carried the story.

Finally, I've heard pundits say public figures speak profanely because they do not have the vocabulary to formulate their ideas without cursing. They simply do not have the language skills to present rational arguments.

When I was in law school many years ago, my professors insisted on students speaking civilly and respectfully. I remember a day in Professor Lino Graglia's antitrust-law course.  Professor Graglia was pacing back and forth at the front of the classroom while he asked students question after question about relevant court decisions.

One day, a law student used a mild expletive while answering one of Professor Graglia's questions. Graglia stopped in mid-step, and, in a commanding voice, thundered these exact words: "We do not use that kind of language in this classroom."

Professor Graglia then paused for a few seconds to gather his thoughts, and then he said something I will never forget. "You are all training to be officers of the courts and we must use language that shows our respect for the institutions that we serve."

I say I never forgot Professor Graglia's words, but in fact, I forgot them a few days ago. In a blog essay titled "Arrogant Bastards," I chastised our elite college presidents for doing virtually nothing about the student-loan crisis.

I regret those words, and I know why I used them. I felt like I needed to write something shocking just to get people to read my essay and I was too lazy in the moment to convey my criticism through rational language.

I apologize. I should not have called these college presidents arrogant bastards. I should have described them as arrogant and heartless. That's what I really meant to say.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib: "Impeach the mother f--ker"

Obama's Department of Education grants automatic loan relief for all students who attended the American Career Institute: A puny effort--too little, too late

Last Friday, the U.S. Department of Education granted automatic debt relief to all students who attended American Career Institute. As Inside Higher Ed pointed out, this is "the first time the department has granted automatic loan relief to all students of a college without requiring individual applications." About 650 former ACI students received closed school discharges; but the rest--about 3,900 students--are getting their loans discharged en masse. In addition, DOE also announced it will grant Borrower Defense discharges to 28,000 student who had attended Corinthian Colleges.

This is a good thing, of course; but why now? And why so small a gesture?

After all, Corinthian Colleges, which closed and filed bankruptcy under allegations of fraud, had more than 300,000 students; and ITT, which also filed bankruptcy, had 191,000 enrollees.  Yet so far, DOE has only grant Borrower Defense discharges to 28,000 former Corinthian students.

As for the small size of the gesture, I think Luke Herrine, legal director of the Debt Collective, got it right. "There's just no coherent logic whatsoever," he said. "The only thing I can think of is it would be deeply embarrassing for them to stop collecting on so much debt." It is one thing to forgive the loans of 4,000 ACI students and a small percentage of Corinthian students; it is quite another to discharge the debt of a half million people.

As for the timing, I think the Obama administration has known for quite a while that the only responsible thing to do about millions of people who took out loans to attend flaky for-profit colleges is to grant massive debt relief to nearly everyone without the necessity of reviewing each case individually. But that is a difficult thing to do politically.

I think DOE waited until a week before Obama leaves officer to offer token relief to ACI students in order to highlight the student-loan crisis when there is no time left for the Obama administration to do something substantive.

Like a retreating army that spikes its cannons before being overwhelmed by the enemy, the Obama administration may have wanted to publicize the student loan crisis to create difficulties for Trump.

Here are my thoughts on DOE's surprising but welcome action:

1) Granting debt relief to ACI students is the first small step toward doing what the federal government will inevitably be forced to do: forgive student debt to nearly all of the millions of people who attended for-profit colleges and received no economic benefit.  Billions of dollars in student loans will eventually be written off.

2) I think Obama's DOE took the action that it did for ACI students because the Obama team thinks Trump, who takes office in a few days, will try to prop up the for profits at the expense of exploited students.

But the Obamacrats may be wrong. After all, President-elect Trump knows how to read a  balance sheet, and he may quickly grasp the fact that the student loan program is a catastrophe. 

And if Mr. Trump realizes the enormity of the student loan crisis, he might actually take decisive action.  Everyone agrees that Mr. Trump understands bankruptcy and its value for distressed debtors.  President Trump might surprise everyone and ease the path to bankruptcy relief for millions of student loan debtors who will never be able to pay back their college loans.

References

Andrew Kreighbaum. Education Department announces thousands of new loan discharges. Inside Higher Ed, January 16, 2017.

The student loan crisis and the first 100 days: Please, President Trump, provide bankruptcy relief for distressed student-loan debtors

Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election, and we can throw her promise of a tuition-free college education in the ashcan. Meanwhile, the student loan crisis grows worse with each passing month.

Eleven million people have either defaulted on their loans or are delinquent in their payments. More than 5 million student-loan debtors are in long-term income based repayment plans that will never lead to loan payoffs.Several million student borrowers have loans in deferment or forbearance while interest continues to accrue on their loan balances.

Soon we will have a new president, and an exciting opportunity to look at the federal student loan program from a fresh perspective. What can President Trump do to bring relief to distressed college-loan debtors. Here are some ideas--respectfully submitted:

FIRST, TREAT THE WOUNDED.

President Trump can do several things quickly to alleviate the suffering.

Stop garnishing Social Security checks of loan defaulters. More than 150,000 elderly student-loan defaulters are seeing their Social Security checks garnished. President Trump could stop that practice on a dime. Admittedly, this would be a very small gesture; the number of garnishees is minuscule compared to the 43 million people who have outstanding student loans. But this symbolic act would signal that our government is not heartless.

Streamline the loan-forgiveness process for people who were defrauded by the for-profit colleges. DOE already has a procedure in place for forgiving student loans taken out by people who were defrauded by a for-profit college, but the administrative process is slow and cumbersome. For example, Corinthian Colleges and ITT both filed for bankruptcy, and many of their former students have valid fraud claims. So far, few of these victims have obtained relief from the Department of Education.

Why not simply forgive the student loans of everyone who took out a federal loan to attend these two institutions and others that closed while under investigation for fraudulent practices?

Force for-profit colleges to delete mandatory arbitration clauses from student enrollment documents. The Obama administration criticized mandatory arbitration clauses, but it didn't eliminate them. President Trump could sign an Executive Order banning all for-profit colleges from putting mandatory arbitration clauses in their student-enrollment documents.

Banning mandatory arbitration clauses would allow fraud victims to sue for-profit colleges and to bring class action suits. And by taking this step, President Trump would only be implementing a policy that President Obama endorsed but didn't get around to implementing.

Abolish unfair penalties and fees. Student borrowers who default on their loans are assessed enormous penalties by the debt collectors--18 percent and even more. President Trump's Department of Education could ban that practice or at least reduce the penalties to a more reasonable amount.

PLEASE PROVIDE REASONABLE BANKRUPTCY RELIEF FOR DISTRESSED STUDENT-LOAN DEBTORS.

The reforms I outlined are minor, although they could be implemented quickly through executive orders or the regulatory process. But the most important reform--reasonable access to the bankruptcy courts--will require a change in the Bankruptcy Code.

Please, President Trump, prevail on Congress to abolish 11 U.S.C. 523(a)(8) from the Bankruptcy Code--the provision that requires student-loan debtors to show undue hardship as a condition for discharging student loans in bankruptcy.

Millions of people borrowed too much money to get a college education, and they can't pay it back. Some were defrauded by for-profit colleges, some chose the wrong academic major, some did not complete their studies, and some paid far too much to get a liberal arts degree from an elite private college. More than a few fell off the economic ladder due to divorce or illness, including mental illness.

Regardless of the reason, most people took out student loans in good faith and millions of people can't pay them back. Surely a fair and humane justice system should allow these distressed debtors  reasonable access to the bankruptcy courts.

President Trump can address this problem in two ways:

• First, the President could direct the Department of Education and the loan guaranty agencies (the debt collectors) not to oppose bankruptcy relief for honest but unfortunate debtors--and that's most of the people who took out student loans and can't repay them.

• Second, the President could encourage Congress to repeal the "undue hardship" provision from the Bankruptcy Code.

Critics will say that bankruptcy relief gives deadbeat debtors a free ride, but in fact, most people who defaulted on their loans have suffered enough.from the penalties that have rained down on their heads.

More importantly, our nation's heartless attitude about student-loan default has discouraged millions of Americans and helped drive them out of the economy. President Trump has promised middle-class and working-class Americans an opportunity for a fresh start. Let's make sure that overburdened student-loan debtors get a fresh start too.

References

Natalie Kitroeff. Loan Monitor is Accused of Ruthless Tactics on Student Debt. New York Times, January 1. 2014. Accessible at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/02/us/loan-monitor-is-accused-of-ruthless-tactics-on-student-debt.html?_r=0

Stephen Burd. Signing Away Rights. Inside Higher Ed, December 17, 2013. Available at https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/12/17/essay-questions-mandatory-arbitration-clauses-students-profit-higher-education

Andrew Kreighbaum, Warren: Education Dept. Failing Corinthian Students. Inside Higher Ed, September 30, 2016. Accessible at https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/09/30/warren-education-dept-failing-corinthian-students

Senator Elizabeth Warren to Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr., letter dated September 29, 2016. Accessible at https://www.warren.senate.gov/files/documents/2016-9-29_Letter_to_ED_re_Corinthian_data.pdf

Ashley A. Smith. U.S. Urged to Deny Aid to For-Profits That Force Arbitration. Inside Higher Ed, February 24, 2016. Available at: https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/02/24/us-urged-deny-aid-profits-force-arbitration?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=183bc9e3a3-DNU20160224&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-183bc9e3a3-198565653

U.S. Department of Education. U.S. Department of Education Takes Further Steps to Protect Students from Predatory Higher Education Institutions. March 11, 2016. Accessible at http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-takes-further-steps-protect-students-predatory-higher-education-institutions?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term=

U.S. General Accounting Office. Older Americans: Inability to Repay Student Loans May Affect Financial Security of a Small Percentage of Borrowers. GAO-14-866T. Washington, DC: General Accounting Office. http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-866T