This wouldn’t be happening if Barack Obama were President

The Department of Education Inspector Generals office brings a SWAT team to crash through someone’s door at 6am, looking for his estranged wife who defaulted on some student loans. No, seriously.

A 6am SWAT* raid, crashing through someone’s door, to execute a search warrant on a defaulted student loan some sort of student-loan violation, at the address of the defaulter’s estranged husband, who was then held in handcuffs for six hours?

That’s what we get for electing Rudy Giuliani.

Of course the President can’t know what every fool in the Department of Education Inspector General’s office is up to. But equally of course the White House knows now.

On behalf of the country, the President should express his outrage. (That didn’t work out well for him in the Gates case, but the crucial difference is that these were federal agents, and therefore ultimately the President’s subordinates.) He should announce that the officials responsible for this atrocity are going to be looking for new jobs, and that the procedure that allowed it to happen is going to be changed.

He should do it right away, and loudly. This is an opportunity to exercise visible leadership.

* UPDATE The folks who crashed through the door at 6am don’t seem to have had SWAT written on their jackets, but if I didn’t use “SWAT” as shorthand for that sort of thing I’d have to say “Gestapo.”

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com

12 thoughts on “This wouldn’t be happening if Barack Obama were President”

  1. Did you read the report you cited?

    “The Office of Inspector General does not engage in the collection of student loans. Our mission is to conduct criminal investigations related to the programs and operations of the U.S. Department of Education.”

    This does not sound like a defaulted loan.

  2. Let’s say it was student loan fraud rather than default, involving hundred of thousands of dollars. Would that require a SWAT team? No, didn’t think so.

  3. “This is an opportunity to exercise visible leadership.” Hey, maybe the 187th time will be the charm!

  6. the President should express his outrage. (That didn’t work out well for him in the Gates case, but the crucial difference is that these were federal agents Skip Gates was uppity

    FTFY.

  7. So, to review:

    [1] It wasn’t a SWAT team

    [2] It wasn’t a defaulted student loan

    And those are just issues with the first sentence. Ordinarily corrections would be in order, but in this case it would be better just to retract the post.

  8. People in Stockton should be raising some hell with their local police department. They DID participate, and should not get away with washing their hands of it quite so easily.

  9. David,

    A government group busts down a guy’s door at 6am and holds him and his kids for hours while they toss his home, and because it’s not SWAT and because the reason for their action remains murky we should all just ignore it?

    If it happened to you would you want us all to ignore it?

  10. This wouldn’t be happening if Barack Obama were President

    You are right of course.
    And President Hoover’s chances of getting elected are grower dimmer by the day…

    Here’s FDR’s grandson putting out the straight dope:

    “Obama, on the other hand, is not conveying to the American people where he stands, what he is for and what he is against. Although his administration has made great strides in financial reform, his priority still seems to be to support the business community.

    His inaugural address in 2009 did include criticism. “Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age,” Obama said. However, his criticism was passive—“on the part of some”—and he immediately undercut his point (“but also”). Unlike Roosevelt, he did not specifically denunciate those who caused the crisis.

    FDR made it clear where he stood on basic issues. His attitude towards people and their communities is the root, I think, of the famed “coalition” of voting groups on which the Democratic Party prospered for a good number of years.

    The present administration in the White House seems instead to be imitating the Hoover administration in its last year. Hoover was not unaware of the deep plight of the nation, but his faith in “free enterprise” prevailed over his humanitarian experience. Capping Hoover’s final year in the White House were his last-minute efforts to intervene. He gathered Wall Street’s senior bankers in the East Room and detailed what they had to do. All nodded affirmatively and murmured agreement, and then proceeded to ignore their President, carrying on business as usual.”

  11. Pingback: Armed Department of Education Agents Raided Man’s Home, Locked Up Kids | The Lonely Conservative

  12. A government group busts down a guy’s door at 6am and holds him and his kids for hours while they toss his home, and because it’s not SWAT and because the reason for their action remains murky we should all just ignore it?

    No.

    But “large group of armed uniformed men bust down doors” is routine police work, not SWAT work.

    I want to keep in mind that over-use of SWAT tactics and teams is a problem, but routine police work is not in any sense problem-free.

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