The Corninthian Scam: Education For Suckers

[n2doc]

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE

There is no finer guide through the moneyed swamps of what our politics has become than Lee Fang, now writing at The Intercept. This week, Fang produced a monumental piece of reporting about the out-and-out long con that was the Corinthian Colleges system. Most interesting to me was the way Fang illustrated how the gombeen bastards running Corinthian worked all the levels of our brave new political order of legalized influence peddling in order to prevent the government from cracking down on their criminal enterprise. Break the law. Buy the cops. Cash in. I don't remember reading that in The Federalist.

Some hints emerged today in the giant chain's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware. It shows that Corinthian made secret payments to an array of political consultants, think tanks and political dark money groups. The filing doesn't list amounts, but shows that Corinthian made payments to Crossroads G.P.S., a group co-founded by Karl Rove that has raised over $300 million to elect Republican members of Congress through campaign advertising. Crossroads G.P.S., a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, does not disclose any of its donors. Crossroads G.P.S. spent over $700,000 to help elect Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., during his 2010 election. As Bloomberg News revealed, Rubio later filed a letter with the Department of Education, requesting that the agency "demonstrate leniency" with Corinthian. Corinthian registered only two lobbying firms last year — Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and Akerman LLP. But the filing shows that Corinthian also paid a myriad of other consulting firms that work to influence the political process.

ALEC is prowling to dark corners of this endless mire, and so are the "scholars" at the American Enterprise Institute who, it appears, are admirable full-service 'ho's.

AEI scholars have repeatedly attacked the rules, calling them an example of the Obama administration's "crusade against for-profit colleges." Last October, Andrew Kelly, AEI's resident scholar on higher education reform, specifically defended Corinthian and criticized the "Obama administration's bloodlust for such schools."

You can read a long way into this saga before encountering the word "education." Which I guess is the basic point. Well, that and the poor college kids who fell for the scam and who now find themselves slammed with debt-slavery for the privilege of having been defrauded. But it is a window into a dynamic that is growing into some terrifying power. The American corporate business model is fundamentally, grotesquely corrupt. It has been that way for long enough for the corrupt philosophy to leach into the political system, which was quickly followed by the same corrupt practices, ensconced and enobled now in Founders marble. And that is how everything in our politics came to rest in a fetid footlocker in the abandoned Enron company gym. The idea of a commons, or the idea of a self-governing political commonwealth dedicated to controlling all forms of corruption in the name of a greater good, is simply converted in all of its elements into commodities to be bought and sold, and based on the fundamentally grotesquely corrupt principle we have allowed to flourish in our financial and economic systems. Not that there's anything to worry about.

More

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a34894/how-college-became-another-free-market-scam/

[shenmue]

1. This needs a documentary and some indictments