End Two Wars with One Negotiation

June, 2025

Washington — End both the Iran-Israel and Israel-Gaza wars with one negotiation in which the Iranian clerics turn over power to a non-nuclear secular government and, in exchange, Israel halts the Gaza war and commits to new elections itself.  

Lives would be saved all around — Palestinian, Israeli, and Iranian.  Hamas, Iran's proxy, collapses. Israel gets what it wants, a non-nuclear Iran, and an off-ramp to its Gaza war.  

The Iran clerics avoid a bloody popular uprising and a likely civil war.  They are increasingly desperate for a way out, despite their bluster.     

The USA and EU have the leverage over the parties to bring such a negotiation about, along with every incentive to avoid using military force only to see it fail in the long run, a real possibility and a likely outcome.   

Update:

The above was written before the USA struck Iran militarily on 21 June.  The strike came on the day the EU (France in particular) was engaging with Iran about a diplomatic solution.  If Iran's likely counterattacks now drain American resources away from defending Ukraine, Russia will benefit. If the strike hardens Iran's resolve, at a time when the regime was about to topple, the strike could turn out to be a major strategic mistake.  

Second Update:

To no one's surprise, the USA has now advised Ukraine that more defensive missiles are needed in the Middle East, so fewer are available to help Ukraine defend against Russia's attacks. Moreover, the military strikes against Iran may not have been as effective as first claimed and the unconscionable war in Gaza goes on.  All of which means a comprehensive negotiated settlement is paramount, as outlined above.    

Collecting on Debt Unwillingly Incurred

June, 2025

Washington — Two months ago, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced that the Education Department will resume collecting on defaulted student loan debt, so it does not become a burden on taxpayers.  She wrote that willingly incurred debt must be repaid when due, or collection tools such as wage garnishments will be employed.*  

So far, so good under the law.  Also, the timing of the announcement was appropriate because Covid-related repayment pauses have expired.  This should have taken no one by surprise, as it conforms with statements from the previous administration.   

However, she did not address student loan debt unwillingly incurred through loan servicer error, abuse, or incompetence.  If your local credit union tried to over-collect on a loan balance created by its own mistakes, you would go to your county attorney or state consumer protection office to report it, perhaps even charge the financial institution with fraud, and get resolution.  But what happens if the lender is the federal government and the collection agent is a servicer that badly botched your student loan?  Is the Education Department going to collect on the amount you unwillingly incurred, with its draconian collection tools?  

Which raises the question of how much student loan debt has actually been unwillingly incurred.  For the past two years I've been trying to estimate the amount.  Inquiries to the Department have not yielded answers, even when I have suggested methods to determine at least orders of magnitude.  

Turning to AI for help, I get answers ranging from "billions" to "tens of billions" of dollars.  AI also explains how it arrives at estimates of unwillingly incurred student loan debt, which is helpful as it corroborates some of my own estimates.  AI relies on reports of multiple sources to look at issues such as outright miscalculation errors, how borrowers were systematically steered away from acting in their own best interests to reduce and cancel debt under borrower benefit programs, and schemes that advantaged servicers or lenders at the expense of borrowers.  Borrower complaints I have personally received also suggest significant amounts of debt have been incurred in the Parent PLUS program as the result of coercion, deception, and false certification of eligibility.   

Whatever the explanation, unwillingly incurred student loan debt is a remarkably large amount.  One AI description calls it "massive."  Collecting on it will needlessly ruin many people, and their families, financially.  

What is the procedure for borrowers who want to repay only debt they willingly incurred?  There seems to be none — at least none being offered — despite existing statutory authority for the Secretary to settle and compromise debt.  The current administration's Department of Government Efficiency has eliminated offices and personnel previously assigned to consumer protection and debt resolution. 

Let me again suggest a fair and efficient partial remedy, both for taxpayers and borrowers.  Borrowers who repay original principal and simple interest should have any remaining balances cancelled, inasmuch as those balances are not due taxpayers but artifacts of varying degrees of maladministration of the student loan program.  The statutory authority is 20 U.S.C. 1082. This would also significantly simplify student loan administration going forward, by closing many accounts.    

______________________________________

"Resuming collections protects taxpayers from shouldering the cost of federal student loans that borrowers willingly undertook to finance their postsecondary education."  --Secretary Linda McMahon, April 21, 2025. 

Herewith My Application, Mr. President

June, 2025

Dear Mr. President:

I am responding to your wish as U.S. president to repopulate the federal employee workforce with patriotic recruits from “...land-grant universities... 4-H youth programs, and the... veterans... communities" among others.  

Please consider this my application, as I can check those boxes and several others that you mention.  I am twice a graduate of a land-grant university, as a youth I was the initial president of the Rock Creek Ranchers 4-H Club of Lancaster County, Nebraska, and I later served as a U.S. Navy officer with officer-of-the-deck (underway) qualifications on one of the Navy's most dangerous ships, USS Rainier (AE-5).   

Your vetting process, however, will turn up other information that I hope you will not consider to disqualify my application:  

I have a reputation of working well with respectable higher education institutions, including those considered elite.  My academic credentials also include a degree from a German university, FU Berlin, and peer-reviewed publications.  Among my friends and colleagues is a longtime Harvard lobbyist in Washington and I would expect us to quickly restore good federal-university relations to keep America foremost in the world in higher education and research.   

Much of my work over the years in public finance has been devoted to fiscal responsibility at state and federal levels.  As Nebraska's chief fiscal officer several years ago, I was responsible for developing balanced budgets. As former staff to the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, I was among those whose work paid off when the federal government balanced its budget in the late 1990s, significantly reducing our crippling interest payments on the federal debt.  I would expect to continue that work with an urgency as never before, your BBB proposal notwithstanding as the debt is also a huge national security issue. 

I have been a dogged foe of waste, fraud, and abuse in government, wherever it occurs.  I have personally brought successful lawsuits against hundreds of millions of dollars of civil fraud in student loans under the federal False Claims Act and, at the state level, against illegal raids of millions from a state environmental trust fund.  I would expect to continue working to throw out the trash associated with waste, fraud, and abuse wherever it occurs, based in no small part on important Eleventh and First Amendment victories won in the litigation process.  

In recent years I have helped establish Veterans Education Success, an advocacy group for veterans that has had much success in protecting veterans' G.I. Bill benefits from fraudulent schools.  I would expect to continue to help veterans through all agencies, including the VA.

My moral and ethical views are shaped by trying to live by the Ten Commandments, by admonitions to follow the Golden Rule, and to love one's neighbor as oneself.  I would expect to live and work by those standards.  

I earnestly hope you do not consider any this vetting information disqualifying, although I fully understand that you may.  My early one-room country school teachers Mrs. Hayes, Miss Mussman, and Miss Murphy would likely consider the above activities commendable, as they hoped all of their students would go on to lives that reflect well on their teaching.  They would not look kindly on anyone who suggests, as is implicit in your announcement, that there is somewhere an "elite" that is out of reach for the aspirations of their pupils and that the way to remedy the imagined disparity is to rig federal recruitment.  They would surely not stoop to the level of disparaging anyone's patriotism as a basis for discriminating in federal employment, as is unfortunately explicit in your announcement.  

As to the position for which I would like to be considered, it is OMB director.  Your current director's record is unfathomably bad.  Many of his actions are unconstitutional and morally wretched, resulting in untold numbers of deaths from hunger and disease.  If I were appointed director, within 18 months I could return the executive branch patriotically to its rightful constitutional position and save lives.  I would agree to serve at $1 per year, costing taxpayers $1.50.  I would sleep in the office, perhaps on a Navy rack, always ready to "heave out and trice up".

This application is not written tongue-in-cheek.  Every word is true and I am ready to serve.  My cup of credentials is full and there should be no confirmation obstacles, as my work has always been non-partisan.  I can start immediately.

Yours truly,

Jon H. Oberg