Professor Randa Jarrar, who rejoiced at the death of Barbara Bush, boasts she can't be fired

Randa Jarrar, a tenured English professor at Fresno State University, made the news this week for her tasteless tweet about the death of Barbara Bush. This is what Jarrar said:

Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal. F*** outta here with your nice words. 

PSA: either you are against these pieces of shit and their genocidal ways or you're part of the problem. that's actually how simple this is. I'm happy the witch is dead. can't wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million iraqis have. byyyeeeeeeee.

All the hate I'm getting ALMOST made me forget how happy I am that George W Bush is probably really sad right now.

Jarrar has been roundly excoriated  by conservative pundits for her crude remarks about a great American, but she is unrepentant. Here is Jarrar's response to her critics: 

sweetie i work as a tenured professor. I make 100K a year doing that. i will never be fired. i will always have people wanting to hear what i have to say. even you are one of them!

Perhaps enough has been said about Jarrar's boorish behavior, but as a tenured professor myself, I would like to add a few reflections.

First, Randa Jarrar exemplifies all that is wrong with higher education today. A tenured professor--an English professor, for God's sake--apparently saw the death of Barbara Bush as an opportunity to spew sneering profanity into the twittersphere.  There was a time when university professors were expected to be models of civility and decency. The very idea that an English professor at a public university  would cruelly mock a recently deceased First Lady even before Mrs. Bush was buried should shock us all.

Secondly, Jarrar's taunting retort to her critics presents a strong argument against tenure. Tenure's defenders say it is necessary to preserve academic freedom, but Jarrar seems to think that tenure is nothing more than a license to behave boorishly. "[I] will never be fired," she boasted; and people will always want "want to hear what [I] have to say." Really?

Isn't it outrageous that Randa Jarrar has a tenured position at a California university, which comes with excellent health insurance and a good pension? Meanwhile millions of Americans have student loans up to their eyeballs--loans taken out to take classes from buffoons like Professor Jarrar.

But this is the saddest thing of all about the Jarrar affair: Professor Jarrar is probably right. She will never be fired.

Professor Randa Jarrar: "i will never be fired"

References

Leah Barkoukis. Fresno State Has Some News For Bush-Bashing Professor Who Thinks She Can't Be Fired. Townhall.com, April 19, 2018.

Don't Go To College, Says Kurt Schlichter; And By God, He May Be Right!

Kurt Schlichter wrote a sprightly essay for Townhall last month, arguing vigorously that young people should just skip college. "What passes for 'education' today is nothing of the sort," Schlichter writes, "and what calls itself 'academia' is really just a venal trade guild packed with mediocrities desperately trying to keep fooling people into forking over $60,000 a year--usually obtained via ruinous borrowing that ties a financial anchor around the defrauded grads' necks for the rest of their lives."

Who can disagree? As Schlichter says, "much of academia's product is largely garbage," particularly in the liberal arts. People are now graduating with English degrees without having read Shakespeare, or without knowing how to spell Shakespeare, for that matter.

Of course higher education argues ad nauseam that a degree in liberal arts has some intrinsic worth. As John Kenneth Galbraith put it years ago:

Education is, most of all, for the enlargement and the enjoyment of life. It is education that opens the window for the individual on the pleasures of language, literature, art, music, the diversities and idiosyncrasies of the world scene. The well-educated over the years and centuries have never doubted their superior reward; it is greater educational opportunity that makes general and widespread this reward.

 But who believes that anymore? Administrators at small liberal arts colleges purr seductively about the value of a liberal education while they lay off history professors to beef up their MBA programs-where the real money is. And ever so earnestly, they defend inflated tuition prices even as they discount their tuition rates by half.

Really, why pay good money for a liberal arts degree? Why study American literature if professors cannot identify a canon of great American writers? Why read Faulkner, Hawthorne, Henry James, Melville, or Fitzgerald if the English faculty writes them all off as a bunch of dead, white, misogynistic and racist males?

And in truth, I would not advise a young person to invest much time in reading William Faulkner or Henry James. Or Steinbeck, for that matter, although The Grapes of Wrath speaks to me as a great book, probably because I am a descendant of Okies.  

In fact, American writers are still writing great books, maybe better books than the ones our old professors said we must read. T.C. Boyle's Tortilla Curtain is as searing a book as you will ever read about being a despised refugee in America, every bit as good as The Grapes of Wrath. And although The Great Gatsby may be the great American novel, Tom Wolf's Bonfire of the Vanities, a more contemporary tale, describes the emptiness of wealth just as movingly as Fitzgerald's classic.

Today, American society has become so diverse that it makes no sense to argue that there are great American novels that everyone should read or even an accepted narrative of American history that everyone should learn. I read Marquis James' Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Andrew Jackson and was convinced Jackson was a great American. But we may take Old Hickory off the $20 bill; and if we do, he won't be coming back.

I read Douglas Southall Freeman's multi-volume biography of Robert E. Lee and concluded that General Lee was a decent man. But New Orleans ripped Lee's statue of its pedestal at Lee's Circle, and Lee definitely won't be coming back. 

Maybe we should all construct our own personal canon of great books, our own personal narrative of history.  As a Catholic, for example, I consider the Philadelphia Bible Riots every bit as important as the so-called Boston Massacre, but few people would agree with me. And for me, the great coming-of-age novel is not Catcher in the Rye by that sleazebag J.D. Salinger, but Richard Bradford's Red Sky at Morning, a book about being young in northern New Mexico during World War II.

But if we are all free to construct our own canon of literature and our own narrative of history, which liberal arts professors are basically arguing we should do, then why the hell should we pay sixty grand a year for our kids to attend some moldy liberal arts college in the upper Midwest?

Because the colleges need your money, I suppose. And if you don't have sixty grand, don't worry. The government is quite willing to loan it to you.

References

Kurt Schlichter. Don't Go To College, Townhall, March 22, 2018.

Betsy DeVos and the Republicans wants to dump the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program: Big Mistake

Betsy DeVos and the Republicans want to dump the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF)  because the program is too expensive. According to the Department of Education's Inspector General, costs of the government's various loan forgiveness programs shot up from $1.4 billion in 2011 to $11.5 billion in 2015--about a nine-fold jump.

In fact, all the Department of Education's loan-forgiveness programs are bleeding red ink. As the Government Accounting Office reported in November 2016, the Department underestimated the cost of these programs. For one thing, DOE assumed that student-loan debtors would sign up for a repayment plan and not switch.

But that's not what happened. Many college borrowers tried to repay their loans under DOE's standard 10-year plan but couldn't find jobs that paid enough to service their monthly loan payments. Millions then switched to income-driven repayment plans (IDRs), which lowered their monthly payments, but those payments were not large enough to cover accruing interest. In my estimation, most of the people in IDRs will never pay back their loans because interest is accruing on loan balances with every passing month.

PSLFs have specific problems, which make them particularly expensive for taxpayers.  First, the PSLF program, which was approved by Congress in 2007, defined eligibility far too broadly.  Anyone working for the federal, state or local government and anyone working for a nonprofit charitable corporation is eligible. As Jason Delisle observed in a Brookings Institution report, about a quarter of America's entire workforce is eligible for a PSLF plan.

PSLF advocates sometimes say the program was designed to encourage people to enter hard-to-fill public service jobs: police officers, fire fighters, ambulance drivers, and inner-city school teachers. But that description is misleading. Accountants, lawyers, public relations people--anyone working for the government or a non-profit--is eligible. 

And there's a second problem with PSLFs: Congress put no cap on the amount a PSLF participant can borrow. DOE apparently calculated costs based on the assumption that most PSLF beneficiaries had relatively low loan balances. But a lot of people applying for the program are people who accumulated massive debt from attending graduate school. A typical lawyer, for example, graduates law school with an average of $140,000 in accumulated student loans.

PSLF participants--including lawyers, accountants and MBA graduates--will make monthly payments based on a percentage of their adjusted income for 10 years, with the unpaid balance being forgiven when their 10-year repayment plans expire.  But most PSLF participants won't come close to paying off their loan balances after 10 years, and American taxpayers will be picking up the bill.

Thus, Trump and the Republicans have valid concerns about IDRs and PSLF programs.Nevertheless, I do not think these programs should be eliminated.

Why? Because 44 million Americans have student-loan debt and about half of them will never pay it back.  Congress has blocked bankruptcy relief for most of these people, which means they have two choices: default or sign up for an income-based repayment plan.

In my view, then, DOE's income-based repayment plans and the PSLF program should be continued  because the only other option for millions of distressed college borrowers is default.

But ultimately, there is only one way out of the student-loan morass. First. we must either allow insolvent student borrowers to discharge their college loans in bankruptcy or we must forgive the debt en masse. Second, we must shut down the venal and corrupt federal student-loan program and allow all Americans to get a free undergraduate education at a public college or university.

I realize this is a hard reality, which our government is refusing to face. But face reality it must; and the longer it waits to do so, the more people will be harmed by a student-loan program that is totally out of control.

Representatives Virginia Foxx: Republican Chair of the House Education Committee

References

Douglas Belkin, Josh Mitchell, & Melissa Korn. House GOP to Propose Sweeping Changes to Higher Education. Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2017. 

Ryan Cooper. The case for erasing every last penny of student debt. The Week, February 8, 2018.

Stacy Cowley. Student Loan Forgiveness Program Approval Letters May Be Invalid. New York Times, March 30, 2017. 

Danielle Douglas-Gabriel. GOP higher ed plan would end student loan forgiveness in repayment programs, overhaul federal financial aid. Washington Post, December 1, 2017.

Scott Fullwiler, Stephanie Kelton, Catherine Ruetschlin, & Marshall Steinbaum. The Macroeconomic Effects of Student Loan Cancellation. Levy Economics Institute. Bard College, February 2018.

Jason Delisle. The Coming Public Service Loan Forgiveness Bonanza. Brookings Institution Report, Vol 2(2), September 22, 2016.

Andrew Kreigbaum. GAO Report finds costs of loan programs outpace estimates and department methodology flawed. Inside Higher Ed, December 1, 2016.

Eric Levitz. We Must Cancel Everyone's Student Debt, for the Economy's Sake. New York, February 9, 2018.

Amanda Palleschi. Student Loans Are Too Expensive To Forgive. fivethirtyeight.com, March 27, 2018.

US. Government Accounting Office. Federal Student Loans: Education Needs to Improve Its Income-Driven Repayment Plan Budget Estimates. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accounting Office, November, 2016. 

Jordan Weissmann. Betsy DeVos Wants to Kill a Major Student Loan Forgiveness Program, Slate, May 17, 2017.

Betsy DeVos is shilling for debt-collectors and for-profit colleges: The destruction of Americas's middle class

The New York Times published an editorial this week strongly criticizing Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, whom the Times accurately describe as a "shill" for the student-loan industry.

As the Times reported, DeVos' Department of Education has issued a new policy statement that says federal law can preempt state consumer-protection laws aimed at curbing abuses in the loan-servicing and debt-collection business.  DeVos' Department argues that state consumer-protection laws can undermine uniform administration of the student loan program.

The Times also criticized the Republican-sponsored bill to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. This bill, if it becomes law, will preempt the right of the states to regulate the student-loan business--including student-loan debt collectors and loan servicers.

Betsy DeVos' craven and servile pandering to the student-loan industry is a scandal; and DeVos--not the Russians--should be the focus of Democratic attacks on the Trump administration.  DeVos' behavior belies all the blather coming out of the White House about how Trump policies benefit the middle class. DeVos apparently hopes to remove all restraints on the venal and corrupt student-loan business, which is doing a pretty good job of dismantling the middle class.

In fact, the federal student-loan program is a disaster, with millions of casualties as student borrowers are pushed into default or into long-term repayment plans that never pay off borrowers' loan balances.

Here's what can be done to stop DeVos' mad-dog scheme to line the pockets of her debt-collector cronies:

1) The state attorney generals should sue Betsy DeVos and DOE every time they attempt to dismantle the states' proper role of protecting consumers from fraud.  As the Times noted, this is what the state AGs are doing.

2) Other states should follow the example of the Massachusetts Bar Association and the Massachusetts Attorney General  and organize teams of volunteer lawyers to represent distressed student-loan debtors in the bankruptcy courts.  If just a few more state AGs joined the Bay State--California, Florida, Illinois, and Texas, for example--I believe the bankruptcy courts would begin revising their harsh attitude toward college borrowers in the bankruptcy courts.

3) The Democrats should take every opportunity to question Trump administration officials under oath about the activities of the student-loan guarantee companies who act as DOE's debt collectors. Why do four of these agencies--nonprofit organizations--individually hold $1 billion in assets while they hound elderly debtors in the bankruptcy courts.  Let's see a breakdown of the attorney fees these agencies are paying to hire asshole lawyers to crush student-loan debtors.

Everyone of good will should take heart at Fed Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's candid admission that he could not explain why the Bankruptcy Code treats student-loan debtors so harshly--basically putting them in the same category as criminals.

As someone once said, when a thing can't go on forever, it won't. The abuses of the federal student loan program can't go on forever. More than 40 million borrowers collectively owe $1.5 trillion in student loans (including private loans); and about half of these borrowers will never repay their debt.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and other agencies have documented that student-loan debt is hurting the economy--preventing people from buying homes and saving for retirement.

The time has come for American society to decide: Do we want to continue enriching a bunch of crooks in the for-profit college business and the debt-collecting racket or do we want a middle class?

We know Betsy DeVos' answer: she wants to enrich her corrupt buddies even if she helps destroy the middle class.


References

The Student Loan Industry Finds Friends in Washington. New York Times, March 18, 2018.

Robert Shireman and Tariq Habash. Have Student Loan Guaranty Agencies Lost Their Way? The Century Foundation, September 29, 2016.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell says he can't explain why student loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy: An astonishing admission that the emperor wears no clothes

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell made an astonishing admission at a Senate Banking Committee hearing last month.  He said he could not explain why federal law does not allow distressed debtors to discharge their student loans in bankruptcy.

"I think alone among all kinds of debt, we don’t allow student loan debt to be discharged in bankruptcy," Powell said. "I'd be at a loss to explain why that should be the case."

Powell also acknowledged that mounting student indebtedness could injure the American economy. "It’s not something you can pick up in the data right now," Powell told the Banking Committee, "but at this goes on, and as student [debt] gets larger and larger, it absolutely could hold back growth." 

Fed Chairman Powell is not the first senior Washington official to admit that the student loan program could hurt the American economy. Former Fed Chair Janet Yellen made a similar observation in 2014. "The [student] debt loads certainly are high enough that they may play a role in, for example, making it hard for people to buy first homes, to build a down payment,” Yellen said at a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee.  

But Powell's remarks last month is the first time a senior federal official has candidly admitted that he cannot explain why the Federal Bankruptcy Code makes it very difficult for overburdened college debtors to discharge their student loans through bankruptcy.

In essence, Chairman Powell's surprisingly candid remark is very much like the children's story about the emperor who wore no clothes. Everyone knew the emperor wasn't wearing clothes, but no one was brave enough to state the obvious until a child explained: "The emperor is naked!"

I think Chairman Powell's frank observation may be just the nudge our government needs to honestly address the fact that millions of Americans who took out student loans in good faith simply can't pay them back.

How can the Chairman's remarks be exploited?

I. Alert the bankruptcy judges to the Fed Chair's remarks

First, all student debtors who attempt to their discharge student loans in bankruptcy should notify the bankruptcy judge--either in the complaint itself or in a pleading--that a top economic official in the federal government cannot explain why honest student debtors are barred from shedding their burdensome student loans through bankruptcy.

Powell's observation stands in stark contradiction to the stance taken by the Department of Education and the student-loan debt collectors that have fought bankruptcy relief for almost all student debtors.  For example, DOE opposed bankruptcy relief for a quadriplegic debtor in the Myhre case, and Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC) fought Janet Roth, an elderly woman in poor health who was living on less than $800 a month, all the way to the Ninth Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel.

How can DOE and ECMC defend their heartless behavior when the Chair of the Federal Reserve says he can't explain why our government puts onerous restrictions on bankruptcy relief  for insolvent student debtors? Powell's remark might be just the piece of evidence bankruptcy courts need to begin discharging student loans in bankruptcy under more humane standards than currently prevail.

II. Powell's statement should spur a bipartisan effort in Congress to amend the Bankruptcy Code

Second, Powell's admission should prompt Republicans and Democrats to join in a bipartisan push to amend the Bankruptcy Code to remove the "undue hardship" provision in 11 U.S.C. sec. 523 (a)(8). Representatives Katko and Delaney have filed a bill to remove the "undue hardship" clause from the Bankruptcy Code, but so far the bill has gone nowhere.  Senators Warren and McCaskill have introduced a bill to stop the federal government from garnishing Social Security payments to insolvent, elderly student debtors, but that bill too has gone nowhere.

Surely Powell's statement should be all the encouragement Republicans and Democrats need to revise the Bankruptcy Code so that student loans are dischargeable in bankruptcy like any other consumer debt.

Fed Reserve Chair Jerome Powell

References

Joseph Lawler. Federal Reserve chairman: Mounting student debt could hold back economic growth. Washington Examiner, March 1, 2018.

Joseph Lawler. Janet Yellen warns student debt may be holding back housing recovery. Washington Examiner, May 8, 2014.

Representative John Delaney press release. Delaney and Katko File Legislation to Help Americans Struggling with Student Loan Debt. May 5, 2017.

Alexander Holmes v. National Collegiate Student Loan Trust: Don't co-sign your children's student loans!

In 2006, Alexander Holmes co-signed a student loan with Charter Bank One to fund his son's education at the University of Southern Indiana. Charter Bank sold Holmes' loan in a pool of loans to National Collegiate Funding, which then sold the loan to National Collegiate Student Loan Trust (NCSLT).

Ten years later, NCSLT sued Mr. Holmes, claiming he owed more than $16,000 on the loan plus accrued interest. Holmes denied NCSLT's claim and argued that NCSLT did not have standing to sue him.

NCSLT moved for summary judgment, which an Indiana trial court granted. The court then ordered Holmes to pay NCSLT $18,183.26 plus interest and costs.

But Mr. Holmes had a good lawyer and he appealed. An Indiana appellate court reversed the lower court's order against Mr. Holmes on the grounds that NCSLT had not provided admissible evidence that it had the right to collect on the debt Holmes owed Charter Bank.

The court's reasoning is a bit technical; but this is a summary of the appellate court's decision:
In support of its motion for summary judgment against Mr. Holmes, NCSLT offered the affidavit of Jacqueline Jefferis, an employee of Transworld Systems, Inc. (TSI), which was the "loan subservicer" for U.S. Bank, National Association, which the court identified as the "Special Servicer" working for NCSLT.

In a sworn statement, Ms. Jefferis' said she was familiar with TSI's business practices regarding loan records. But, as the Indiana Court of Appeals pointed out:

[T]he Jefferis affidavit provided no testimony to support the admission of the contract between Holmes and Charter One Bank or the schedule of pooled loans sold and assigned to National Collegiate Funding, LLC, and then to NCSLT . . . . There was no testimony to indicate that Jefferis was familiar with or had knowledge of the regular business practices or record keeping of Charter One Bank, the loan originator, or that of NCSLT regarding the transfer of pooled loans . . . . [Emphasis added by me.

In other words, as far as the appellate court was concerned, Ms. Jefferis didn't know nuthin' about no loan from Charter Bank to Mr. Holmes. Consequently, the trial court's judgment against Mr. Holmes was reversed.

Why is the Holmes case, decided by an Indiana state court, important to other student-loan debtors? Three reasons:

I. The private student-loan industry is bundling student loans and selling them to investors

First, the private student-loan industry has been packaging student loans into bundles (or pools) and selling them to third parties, and these third parties often then sell these bundled loans to yet other parties. In fact, these loans can have multiple owners.

In this flurry of transactions, the paperwork often gets mislaid or lost. Sometimes the companies suing student-loan debtors for payment do not have the critical documents necessary to show that they have the legal right to collect on the debt.

This confusion sometimes occurs due to "robo-signing," the mindless signing of documents by people who are not familiar with the original transactions. This was a significant issue during the home-mortgage crisis of 2008, and judges sometimes dismissed home-foreclosure suits because the parties trying to foreclose on houses could not prove they were entitled to grab someone's home.

Thus, anyone who is sued by a company trying to collect on a private student loan should demand that the suing party show that it is the legal entity entitled to sue for the money. Fortunately for Mr. Holmes, NCSLT was unable to show that it was the party that had legal standing to sue him.

II. Student-loan debtors need good lawyers

This brings me to the second reason the Holmes case is significant for other student-loan debtors. Mr. Holmes defeated NCSLT on a technicality. Specifically, NCSLT's documentation did not pass muster with Indiana Evidence Rule 803(6). But only a competent lawyer would know how to make the technical argument that benefited Mr. Holmes.

I once thought that student-loan debtors with the right facts could go into court without lawyers and be successful. And indeed, some debtors have won their cases in federal bankruptcy courts over the ruthless opposition of the debt collectors' lawyers.

But many of these cases turn on legal technicalities that a nonlawyer could not be expected to know. The Holmes case was based on Indiana law, but federal bankruptcy law also has technicalities that nonlawyers will find very difficult to master.

That is why I was heartened by the decision of the Massachusetts Bar Association to organize teams of volunteer lawyers to represent student-loan debtors in bankruptcy courts. If student-loan debtors can get good lawyers, they will have a far better chance of winning their cases than if they go to court without legal counsel.

III. Never co-sign your children's student loans

There's a third lesson to be learned from the Holmes case. Mr. Holmes co-signed a student loan with his son Nicholas to enable Nicholas to enroll at the University of Southern Indiana. In my view, that was a mistake. If Nicholas couldn't figure out a way to attend a regional state university without having his dad co-sign a student loan, then Nicholas needed to figure out another way to go to college.

I've said this before, and I'll say it one more time. Parents should never co-sign their children's student loans. Never. Never. Never.


Note: My thanks to Steve Rhode for calling my attention to Holmes v. NCSLT.

References

Alexander Holmes v. National Collegiate Student Loan Trust (Ind. Ct. App. Feb. 27, 2018).

Steve Rhode. Perfect Example Why Most National College Student Loan Trust Lawsuits are BS. Getoutofdebtguyorg., March 1, 2018.

Lady Bird, the movie, sends an insidious message about elite East Coast colleges (Spoiler Alert)

Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig's  new coming-of-age movie, has been nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. But it is an insidious movie, which delivers a treacherous message that self-fulfillment can be found at an elite East Coast college.

Christine, who calls herself Lady Bird, is a discontented California girl who attends a Catholic high school in Sacramento. Her mother doesn't understand her, the guy she is sweet on is gay, and she cheats on her exams.

To make matters worse, Lady Bird's parents live in a tiny ranch-style home, with only one bathroom. She self-deprecatingly tells her boyfriend she lives on the wrong side of the tracks, an insult he guilelessly passes on to her mom and dad.

Sacramento bores Lady Bird, which she dismisses as "the Midwest of California." She longs to escape California to go to college on the East Coast.   Although several elite schools reject her, she finally get accepted to a fancy college in New York.

But the school is expensive. Her father, who comes across as a genuinely nice guy, recently lost his job; and at his age, he is unlikely to get another one. Lady Bird's mother, a nurse, works double shifts at a hospital to make ends meet.

But Lady Bird simply must go east to college, so her dad refinances the family home to cover the cost. The movie ends with Lady Bird in New York City, where she lies to one of the first guys she meets and tells him she is from San Francisco.

What a piece of crap! Any young woman who allows her out-of-work father to refinance the family's pathetic little house so she can attend a snooty East Coast college is a self-absorbed jerk. Although the movie is pitched as a young woman's heroic quest for self-fulfillment, it's really just a gratuitous insult to flyover country, which the filmmaker expanded to include parts of California.