How and Why Regulations Are Born: An Evolution Lesson

Republicans always whine about all these laws and regulations that keep them from being able to ignore everyone but themselves. The correct response is,"Because we tried it without those regulations, and you and your friends almost killed or bankrupted us, that's why." And because they didn't live through the world as it was before those regs, and because they have the imagination God gave a salt shaker, they don't get it.

So let's watch it happen all over again, in a whole new arena, for the same damned reasons it ever happens: greed, collusion and theft. I'm talking about the widening Student Loan Financing disaster. We relied on the ethics of the financial officers and boards of the universities. We relied on the integrity of the bankers. We were fools, again. They took our trust and literally laughed all the way to the bank, leaving teenagers, teenagers!! holding the bag. One is my youngest niece, who starts college this fall.

As always, add a pinch of Bush-Crony Incompetence. Jon Oberg, a high-ranking staff researcher at the Dept of Education reported on federal subsidies supporting loan-pushing collusion back in 2003 and recommended action to stop it. Two different Secs of Education, both Bush loyalists from Texas, told him, 'Go work on getting us some grant money. We have no power to change the situation.' Then add a dash of Congressional Oversight, when, in January, faced with a suddenly-Democratic Congress, the Dept of Education ended these subsidies...with a single letter to the lenders. And began an investigation.

This is the cycle that creates regulation: a small problem becomes larger, comes to the attention of experts, who warn the players, who ignore the warnings because 'it's not illegal, so the morality is irrelevant'. When it finally comes to the attention of the general public, first they rear back in horror, then they rise up in anger, and demand that the law match their sense of fairness.

This is one way Democrats are created.