Christine O’Donnell: Liar or Dolt, You Decide

Not that Christine O’Donnell needs any more publicity, or that there is any value in actually trying to dissect and discredit the things that spew from her mouth, but …

Well, I just can’t help my self. Scryyde, the Muse of Rantful Blogging, is poking me with her pitchfork again.

In a statement released today wherein Ms. O’Donnell (Republican/TP Senate Candidate in Delaware) attempted to deflect from her myriad misrepresentations of educational background, she (or her flack) said:

Perhaps a more important educational issue for Americans is the government takeover of the student loan industry, passed as part of the Obamacare law. This ill-conceived, unconstitutional government monopoly has thrown into jeopardy thousands of jobs in the private student loan industry…

I have to give Ms. O’Donnell credit: it’s difficult to conceive of a pair of sentences that would be so jam-packed with misrepresentations and/or stunning ignorance.  Let me count the ways:

1. The government did not “takeover” the student loan industry.  The student loans in question are federally funded student loans.  They belong to the government already.
2. Any financial institution who wants to offer privately funded loans from their own coffers can do so.
3. Yes, the provisions we’re talking about (below) were slipped into the Affordable Care Act. I dislike those sorts of legislative maneuvers on principle, but your particular calling out of this as “part of the Obamacare law” does a masterful, if obnoxious, job of associating the recent student loan reform with health care reform — two completely different things.  (Of course, I think the ACA is a fine thing, subject to critique only for not going far enough. I just find the demonization of it by the GOP, and student loan reform by association, really annoying.)
4. “Ill-conceived” is a great null-meaning phrase.
5. If it’s “unconstitutional” than I would certainly expect the highly profitable student loan industry to raise holy hell in court.  That they haven’t shows me that they don’t see it as something that even the corporate-friendly Supreme Court would back.
6. It’s only a “governmental monopoly” insofar as we are talking about government-funded student loans.  The reform legislation didn’t do anything regarding privately-funded student loans.
7. So the legislation said, “Rather than paying banks and other financial institutions a bunch of money to manage these governmentally-funded loans, let’s administer them ourselves and save a bunch of money.” You’d think that saving a bunch of government money would actually have budget-conscious conservatives applauding in the aisles.  Alas, because it’s jeopardizing (taxpayer-funded) profit for financial institutions, conservatives are appalled.
8. So, yes, “thousands of jobs in the private [taxpayer-funded] student loan industry” are in jeopardy, because the government is no longer paying private business to administer the disbursement of these loans.  The GOP seems constantly appalled at private individuals “sucking from the government teat” to make ends meet; that businesses are not able to seems to throw them into a frenzy of accusations and condemnation.  Ms. O’Donnell would seem perfectly willing to let unemployment insurance for “thousands” lapse; that she’ criticizing this legislation for jeopardizing “thousands” of jobs and healthy profit margins for private loan companies seems … less than admirable.
9. Unless she believes that the point of the government/taxpayer-funded student loan effort is actually to generate profit for private business (much of which is, coincidentally, incorporated in Delaware), as opposed to, oh, funding education for students.

The utter inanity of Ms. O’Donnell’s statement leads me to believe that she is either a blithering idiot or a  politically-driven liar.

Neither, I hope, will be seen as qualification for the Senate by the voters of Delaware.

(I don’t mind ideological differences.  I do mind people asserting things that aren’t true, either out of ignorance or greed.)