Thursday, May 31, 2007
This woman deserves a Cabinet post.
Who knew that humble student loans were such a profit center? Or that they would be so deeply involved in scandal and stink, a veritable training ground for new Bushoviks? And Ellen Frishberg is the best yet to emerge.
A former financial aid director at Johns Hopkins University who cultivated a national reputation as a stickler for ethics accepted more than $130,000 from eight lending industry companies during her tenure, twice as much money as previously disclosed, according to documents and interviews.Talk about practicing what you preach! This woman could have been the new Attorney General if the stars had been right.
In 18 years at Johns Hopkins, Ellen Frishberg advised the federal government on rules for officials dealing with the student loan industry and lectured peers on the need to avoid perceived conflicts of interest. "Appearance of impropriety is as important as impropriety itself," she said in a 2000 presentation to California aid administrators.
This month, Frishberg resigned after the university concluded that she failed to comply with ethics policies by accepting $65,000 from a lending company she had urged students to use.
But her financial ties to the industry were more extensive than Hopkins or Frishberg have publicly said, amounting to at least $133,695, according to hundreds of pages of financial records, contracts and e-mails The Washington Post obtained from Senate investigators.
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