I found myself a single mother of a special needs child after a divorce in the 1980s. Although I had sights on becoming a physician I decided Nursing would be more financially attainable. I took out some student loans and worked part time jobs to support getting my degree in nursing. I miked cows, worked at a Woolworths as a cashier and whatever jobs I could do when I wasn’t in school. Some say that was admirable but I still ended up with 15,000 in loans to pay off and the worst part was the time that I didn’t spend with my daughter. I needed to find a fulfilling career to provide for us both and make sure she had everything she needed to prosper and live life to her potential, and be happy and secure. I achieved my career goals and have advanced in my nursing career. And my daughter has had challenges but overall is doing okay. However if I hadn’t had to work extra jobs while going to school full time while single parenting a special needs child, I truly believe her outcome would have been better. I remember when I was in grade school in California in the 60s it was free to go to the junior colleges and very inexpensive to go to state colleges. Then Reagan became governor and everything changed . Then living in Idaho in the 80s Reagan as President screwed up education for the whole country.
After I graduated and started working I worked as much extra that I could to pay off the student loans. That took more time away from my daughter that could have been so beneficial to her development, security and abilities.
So I applaud President Biden for taking this step that has potential to provide so much more than financial relief, but gives time and nurturing back to our children
Karen, I remember those years too. You worked hard single parenting, going to school all for a better future. School was so much more affordable. Cal Poly was $70 a quarter and yes, community college was free. And blame Reagan for raising tuitions and taxes and taking away mental health services and hospitals and the list goes on. My loan, $2500 was mostly forgiven as I taught in a low income school after graduating. Repubs have caused so much lasting economic and social damage in this country. Policies aren’t just for a term. They can last decades.
I agree Irenie. I lived in the Bay Area and Reagan started closing down the mental hospitals. Specifically I remember Agnew State Hospital in Milpitas if I remember correctly. Halfway houses were supposed to be set up. But what we saw was what seemed like the beginning of the homeless crisis. It was very sad and cruel, and so unnecessary
Yes, Karen, Reagan decided that schizophrenics and those on the spectrum no longer needed to be in a locked facility so he ordered those mental hospitals to close. That has proven disastrous and what about cutting welfare for those who really needed it?? That created the homeless situation that has not been fully addressed to this day.
But you did everything in your power to make a better life for you and your daughter. I certainly hope you are able to reap from the benefits from your profession, one so very admired by me.
Meanwhile, in NYC, the “street people” population turned the city into a mind-jarring, frightening place of blight. My parents recalled a casual walk from a theater, and seeing a large group crowding about, they assumed it was one of the many street entertainers, so they shouldered their way in to watch. To their horror, they found themselves among psychotic people carrying on to their own hallucinations. The following decade, Rudy Giuliani emerged as a “hero” for “cleaning up the streets” with ruthless efficiency.
I started working at the local jail in 1985 and saw first hand where those people who had been previously housed in state hospitals ended up when there was no "local option" for any of them.
I have a friend whose son is schizophrenic. She had to move her son to a locked facility in Florida because there were none in CA. She headed NAMI in our county and found no other alternative. She now lives in Florida with her husband who is going through early stages of dementia and her son, who she took out from the facility to save money. She regrets moving.
Marlene, you really describe so many families, hidden or hiding. People who have been “committed “ can be held for three days and then released. Supposedly for continuing care and with a continuing diagnosis. But that care is nonexistent. And worse in and since the Pandemic.
Ally, we really did not deal with these maladies at all. We allowed these people to be thrown in jail, in prison, to just be convicted for a crime they had no control over. They are still in prison and that too, is a travesty. The Innocence Project folks have continued to investigate those who are on Death Row. They are trying to transform lives everywhere and I wish them continued success. Our judicial system has to partner with mental health divisions more and more so that the innocent get help and the outright guilty, serve time in jail. Bad cops are slowly being caught and dealt with, but not quick enough. I am certain you saw plenty, Ally. Being a woman and being gay, it must’ve always been very challenging for you. I imagine you held steady because what else could you do?! We have a long ways to go but change can happen. In the words of Barack Obama “YES WE CAN!”.
I had a friend who finished his medical residency in Seattle circa 1983 & worked off his medical school loans treating inmates in the Seattle jail. Same experience but, this young Doc was fully capable of initiating a proper treatment protocol.
I worked in Chicago during that time. The hospitals were literally dumping van-loads of people directly onto the streets! Prisons have became the "mental health care" in this country.
That is what is very very sad in our country. Improving health must become our next major goal. There isn’t one person who has not been traumatized by Trump’s 4 years plus J6.
Unconscionable by any measure, and republicans have skewed the story and bragged about their evil for decades. Surely one of the reasons why Rupert Murdoch chose that time to honor us with his evil presence. From WaPo in Jan 1981 “at a dinner last month In Washington honoring Mr. Murdoch for his work on behalf of Mr. Reagan, Representative Jack Kemp, a New York Republican, Said, ‘Rupert Murdoch used the editorial page, the front page, and every other page necessary to elect Ronald Reagan President.’” And the Republican version of history began in earnest…
My recollection is that there was a general push to close down mental health facilities because conditions in them were generally very bad. The result was, indeed, that people who were in mental institutions were "dumped" without backup facilities for their care, resulting eventually in homelessness and all the associated problems. Reagan was bad news in many ways, but was not the only one to shut down mental institutions. Again, this is based on my memory. If I'm wrong about it, please post a correction.
I remember as well, Karen; "homeless" People began to appear in the SF Financial District when I was a full time law clerk & I walked to night class at 6 pm. 1983-1986.
I worked in SF off of Golden Gate and VanNess in the 70’s. When approaching city hall, the only homeless person you’d see was a guy relieving himself near the trees there. One person!
I went to Berkeley Jan '73 to June '75. I don't know who was homeless and who wasn't, but there were significant numbers with mental health problems. I do remember once, when I had a room in a fleabag hotel next to campus letting a woman who was obviously quite mixed up sleep on my floor.
There were also a lot of people there at that time who were poor, and seemed to be there for the cool of Berkeley, and probably because it never got too cold there.
“San Francisco business owners propose civil disobedience.Frustrated business owners in the Castro District have threatened to stop paying city taxes and fees if the city does not help the area’s unhoused people. “You can’t have a vibrant, successful business corridor when you have people passed out high on drugs, littering your sidewalk,” the Castro Merchants Assn.'s co-president told the San Francisco Chronicle. “These people need to get help.” San Francisco Chronicle
I am an advocate for compassion and kindness. and study the research on their benefits. Some great work on this science is happening near you. Are you familiar with the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education based at Stanford Medical school. There are many other great researchers working in California . Jeremy Lent founder of the Institute of Liology also lives in your area. I learned about the awful Mont Pellerin Society from Jeremy.
I remember too. The argument was that the mental hospitals were unduly restrictive and awful for a lot of people who would have better lives in halfway houses. True enough. But then state governments shuttered the hospitals without creating the halfway houses and related services. Lots of non-functional people were dumped on the streets.
Yes, Reagan touted “freedom” as a justification for releasing mental health patients. Sometimes. At other times he cited saving the costs incurred for treatment. Republicans have no shame. It started before Reagan but has been on a steep decline since his time.
No need to wonder. Conservatives didn’t like what college students were doing with their relative freedom, especially their political actions against the war in Viet Nam, against segregation and voter suppression, against poor treatment of factory, service, and farm workers. Saddling students with debt was meant both to control them with that burden, and to reduce the number of people getting educated.
For details, Google “Lewis Powell memo.” Greenpeace has a good article on its website.
Let’s review: Reagan’s mind was shot and absolutely nothing was in his heart. I do think that his son, Ron, Jr., became an lifelong atheist because of his dad’s lies.
And Reagan’s evil has made greedy fools of so many. Who knew that his promises of a better America would be like a piggy bank for the rich and a “bellwether” for hard times for others. And Rupert arrived on the scene just in time to make the Schitt smell like roses. Peggy Noonan was busy writing the script, Michael Deaver had the photo ops aligned with the propaganda, and the dirty tricksters were on pointe. What could go wrong, hindsight is 20/20.
When Regan was running for office there was an enormous billboard on Santa Monica blvd. in Socal that had a photo enlargement of Regan dressed as a fancy dude cowboy drawing his pearl-handled guns from his very fancy holsters with the caption coming out of his mouth in a cartoon bubble saying "Stick-Them-Up-Suckers!"
Wow! Hindsight on how he and his comrades impacted our country financially indicates a continuing ruthlessness of the "cowboy" and his monkey mentality and who had Alzheimers? How much damage did Ronnie do, or was it his "handlers" who continue to try to destroy our democracy and keep the old boy, white-privileged, non-trickle-down-system thriving, for only them? I blame the entire republican party for being so self-absorbed and immature about winning, lying and cheating our country, at all costs, for their white-privileged-male cause. We are not going backwards with your cheating and dumbing down. You need to grow up and live in this new century in America and help us solve domestic and global problems together rather than attack your own country and democracy. Republican behaviors and actions are now fully anti-democracy and anti-American. Time to leave them in the dustbin. Vote like your and our country depends upon it! And may Justice prevail for all these political criminals.
Yeah, apologies to all the good cowboys who work so hard. Difficult to be politically correct in a corrupt political world where nouns get so twisted. It reminds me of when G.W. Bush, after 9/11 spewed about "the Axis of Evil" and "you are either with us or against us." We had the support of so many of the world's countries in our grief and then he went and threw out those divisive epithets which was the old-white boy mentality that was often referred to as the "cowboy mentality." I think it is just old-white-privilege patriarchal mentality. Ronnie's good ol' cowboy and monkey routine hid the republican atrocities that were being installed with a benign symbol of America. Well, benign for some of the people.
I never learned about slaves who fought for our country, or who were the original cowboys, because you never see them in books and movies when I was growing up.
"Black cowboys have long been a part of the culture of the American West, though you wouldn't know that if your knowledge of cowboys stems mainly from movie Westerns. The real-life truth is that, after the Civil War, when the Wild West really began to flourish, somewhere around 25 percent of all cowboys were Black. Some historians claim the number is even higher than that.
But Callies, who runs The Black Cowboy Museum in Rosenberg, Texas, simply laughs.
"In 1830, 1840, the 1850s and '60s, there was nothing but Black cowboys," Callies says. "You wanna know why? In Texas, 'cowboy' was a slave name. The white man didn't want to work horses and work cows. He refused to be called a cowboy. He wanted to be a cowhand or a cow puncher.
Just fascinating historical rabbit holes I fall down when I read LFFA and comments! But I do find that the historical reference to "cowboy" has slavery/racism at its' etymological roots fascinating.
The patriarchal 'feudal' system is the foundation of our country and it does not want to die, but feels the deep fear of our Constitution almost becoming reality where equality is concerned. Money = Power over. Just ask the white boys like donnie, jared, mitch, the kochs, rupert, etc., oh and vlad and so many of their comrades we are learning about.
Again, sorry to current cowboys, and to all our early black cowboys, where this title was the horrific white man's adaptation of his power to keep them in diminutive enslavement by calling them cow "boys."
Pensa, So informative and so much we never learned in school. And this you write: “I never learned about slaves who fought for our country, or who were the original cowboys, because you never see them in books and movies when I was growing up.” That’s happening, especially in southern states. Florida and Desantis’ WOKE anti education act. Anti 1619, anti CRT which isn’t taught in lower grades. Don’t make my child feel bad about slavery or the KKK or white supremacy. Or Black or Brown or Native people. Don’t tell my children the Truth.”
Thank you for this knowledge and reference to facts. My 87 year old Texan husband (married here in my CA 60 years ago and here has remained) is now chair bound and in beginning stage of dementia and has found pure pleasure in reading every cowboy tale paperback he and our son can find. He’s said it’s because of the strong values of those on the side of what is right, and of course, the familiar settings and history.
I’m good with the family’s cowboy roots of Kentucky to Texas to Montana. We have done it from top to bottom. Hard times to good times we never bought in to anyone else’s idea of who they thought we were. We were never above anyone but damn sure not below either. If I walked by you on the street in a baseball cap and tennis shoes, you might turn your head to see what in the hell smelled like shit and sweat.
You did grab my attention with a statement that holds water. “fear of our constitution almost becoming reality.” That came home with a bang. That’s a new perspective and I am sure glad you brought that up.
I can’t speak to anything but junior college, but I lived in Cali from 1976-79 (Jerry Brown was Governor), and it was virtually free to attend junior college then. I think there was a ~$10 student fee/semester. Reagan was awful, for sure, but I don’t think he stopped the free JC in Cali.
Reagan destroyed the mental health (and so many other) system in California. They moved the patients from Agnew to the empty frat houses next to San Jose State University. I spoke with them every day leaving classes there. To this day Reagan's plan has left countless hundreds of thousands without mental health care in California.
I'm not well enough read to know to what degree Reagan was the mastermind of discrediting democracy and the common good in favor of the claimed superiority of plutocratic leadership, but the whole party seemed in cahoots. Reaganomics metastasized over the following decades into numerous crisis, including natural disasters (COVID is one) negligently prepared for or even made more damaging. Jan 6th and the corruption of SCOTUS can all trace a chain of events, at least in large part from Regan's election.
And in subsequent years, who has gained, who has lost (quality of life, such as job security and defined benefit pensions, as well as relative income) and who has been running in place? What has improved that has anything to do with Republican policies? What has been lost or has measurably declined? Or is threatened? Connecting the dots, what do we see?
Yes, state universities and community colleges were once affordable and heavily subsidized. Who benefited by changing that, individually, or as a society? And apart from the cruelty, what do we pay to keep the mentally in jail rather than in care or else equipped with adequate resources? Why are we doing this?
Think how unqualified modern day repub presidents have caused havoc and mayhem . TFG, Reagan are only two. And when they want to claim they care, like Bush, they label it. Compassionate conservatism. But that’s it. As opposed to presidents who actually care and act.
Joy, thank you for this link. So worth reading and so true. “Ronald Reagan left California public education worse than he found it. A system that had been the envy of the nation when he was elected was in decline when he left. Nevertheless, Mr. Reagan’s actions had polit- ical appeal, particularly to his core conservative constituency, many of whom had no time for public education.” Repubs have consistently dismantled and destroyed safety nets and critical services. Public education and public medical services and insurance. Why is the question. The same funds that could provide the best education, medical health services, mental healthcare and insurance and environmental protection are tax breaks for the wealthiest people on the planet. That lack of empathy and compassion is a sickness.
I’m from CA and lived through this era; my sister was at Cal during those turbulent years….not part of the Reagan fan club. And yes, many thanks for posting this; will read it when I’m less angry!
Yes and no. Yes, but with important counter-examples. For instance, Nixon's views on the environment (worth looking up) such as:
"Like those in the last century who tilled a plot of land to exhaustion and then moved on to another, we in this century have too casually and too long abused our natural environment. The time has come when we can wait no longer to repair the damage already done, and to establish new criteria to guide us in the future. "
even:
"Quite inadvertently, by ignoring environmental costs we have given an economic advantage to the careless polluter over his more conscientious rival."
And there is more. I posted it elsewhere, but Ike's approach, though politically conservative, still strongly contrasts with Reagan and since:
"This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H.L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
His ghost oversees the evil we have in Republican circles today. They are devoted to the greed, Pharisee mentality, and pseudo patriotism that rules the fools today. At least two of his children knew. That’s what alerted me.
We frequently read that the country started going off the rails when Reagan was elected POTUS. I never felt that the man was intelligent enough to have been elected, much less mastermind such draconian reversals in social programs and wealth redistribution. It all seemed too "scripted" (appropriately enough for a B grade actor): first a grooming period as governor of a major state, and then "showtime". Since Reagan, I have seen other Republicans of modest intelligence gain that high office. George "Dubya" Bush and Little Donnie Trump spring to mind. I know that conspiracy theories abound, but I have a terrible, sinking sensation that underlying the Republican Party (and perhaps the Democratic party as well) is a highly organized, sinister cabal running this puppet show. Not necessarily Smersh, or the Illuminati, but something very evil and very good at maintaining a low profile. I hope I'm just terminally paranoid.
I have always had the same feeling. Reagan and W are not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. But they had egos that could be manipulated by the people in the background you are referring to.
I believe that if there is ever a complete history of politics written about this era, it will need to include the unmentioned Oligarchs who have pulled our strings for decades. The recent revelations about Leo and his benefactors could be a chapter in the book that needs to be written. We have been had by big money.
We have been living in a fantasy democracy and our society is really more like the "Gilded Age" than we realize.
When it comes to sociopathic policy I am never sure how much is mapped out in corporate board rooms and how much is just a drift towards a Hobbesian "State of Nature" when we fail to effectively constrain our human-nature "reptile" impulses. The atrocities of war, including Abu Ghraib etc. (sufficiently terrible, that in the end, Obama decided to hide them) show that it's not just "them" with a problem, and of course collective history of abuse toward other races has been horrifying since well before independence. I think there is also plenty of evidence here and abroad of better angels, but that takes work, solidarity and ennobling humility to sustain. The “devil” enjoys the aid of the power of entropy.
Reagan certainly was authentically, narcissistically, right wing, but was celebrated as "The Great Delegator" (as well as "The Great Communicator") by the press. Yet off to the side, there was some press discussion of his some of his jaw-dropping instances of confusion and memory lapses even during his first term; mostly dismissed as quirky, never early-stage dementia. And Reagan's talent as a communicator is mostly cited as slogans; "The Effective Pitch Man" would far more accurate. Reagan was made for TV, and it was clear, just as on a Hollywood set, there was an large array of cast and crew at the backside of the camera lens, and one would suppose, a director, or perhaps a team of them, that somehow did not appear in the closing credits; just as we are discovering in examining the attempted coup on January Sixth.
Real paranoia is tragic and unhelpful, yet unregulated corporate entities have a very grim history, as the British East India Company's horrifying depredations in India instruct (as well as their role in the actual cause of the real "Boston Tea Party"); and the current era conspiracy to distract from the evidence and consequences of climate abuse is by now well documented. Sometimes they really are out to get you.
You’re not paranoid. Google Leonard Leo. I understand how most of the viewing public had not heard of him, but certainly those enmeshed in politics knew of him and his plans. How are we just now learning of him after he has already caused so much irreversible damage?
I blame St. Ray Gun for starting a lot of the problems we see today. Now two people running for gov here in Oregon do nothing but show the outcome of homelessness and blame the D's. Nearly every week we have a situation where the police kill someone having a mental health episode. People are working to change this, but progress is very slow. In the meantime the D candidate shows what she has done, is doing, what her plan is and what she has done in the legislature to help ordinary Oregonians. No ugly pictures of her opponents either. I have a Facebook friend who works extensively with the unhoused. It isn't pretty and she does amazing work, but has a high level of frustration because of all the red tape and the hospital treating, but not keeping people she brings to the ER. She has been thrown out of the hospital at least once because they won't put up with abusive language. There are some groups here in Salem who work with the unhoused and run at least one micro housing site. The city is getting more in the pipeline. The one downtown was held up because the apartment owner across the street filed a law suit. He did not prevail. In Portland the mayor had all camps along certain walking routes to schools and around schools removed. It is disconcerting to me how much one man, Ray Gun, can cause to go south and now we have the festering caner death star doing more destruction.
At my jc, it was 3$ for parking, 4$ for basic health insurance per semester. Or maybe the other way around! My nursing degree cost was books, uniforms and daycare, the last of which was in campus and relatively low cost. With two little kids, it made my career possible.
John Kenneth Galbraith said, “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfish,” Or said another way, “what’s mine is mine; what’s yours is mine also.” The Koch family and their network has been grossly detrimental to the health of our democracy.
Let's not stop at the Koch's. There are hundreds of other wealthy people who have directly impacted our health and welfare by hiring political goons to game the system for their benefit and to our detriment. These greedy, selfish and self-absorbed people have done so much damage, caused so much harm and are responsible for so many deaths. Talk about crimes against humanity.
It is a society one can join by invitation only. It was formed in 1947 by Frederick Hayek and 60 of his friends. They met in a beautiful village in Switzerland . Hayek was concerned that Hitler had lost the war. I first heard of them about 2 years ago. I consider myself fairly well read . I grew up in the Republic of Ireland. I have lived in Canada since 1985. Actually I just visited my Swiss relatives and asked them about this. They had not heard of this. I read about them in an article written by Jeremy Lent . The title is The Five Conspiracies everyone should know about. I thought it was impossible that there could be an International organization influencing public policy for 55 years that no one knew about. Please look for yourself and let me know. This article was published by a number of alternate news sources including Open Democracy. I have asked all kinds of people I know including a retired Canadian journalist and a historian. I think perhaps Nancy Mclean who wrote Democracy in chains may have mentioned this. Hayek went twice to Chili to advise Thatcher and Reagan’s nasty friend Pinochet. I view him as a total psychopath. He went on to receive the Noble prize in economics. ……..
I had to take a look. “The MPS has close ties to the network of think tanks sponsored in part by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.”
“Philadelphia Magazine described the Atlas Network as "supporting free-market approaches to eliminating poverty and noted for its refutation of climate change and defense of the tobacco industry". “ (From Wikipedia)
The tern "free market" seems almost axiomatic, but what does it mean? The definition of "freedom" I can draw from the way the phase is commonly applied is that this is specifically "freedom" for those with more than enough money to do whatever they damn well please, and to capture markets entirely through oligarchical monopolization.
That's not the same sort of "freedom" we seem to intend to mean when we talk about a "free county" or a "free society" in which the an array of widely shared choices and opportunities for all. A monopoly of political power is despotism.
I think its one of numerous examples of manipulation using compartmentalization. Republicanism started off with the goal of freeing people from the absolute rights of kings and aristocrats and was founded on ( sorority) , fraternity, equality and freedom.
Witnesses to the birth of the French Republic were horrified by the abuse and cruelty that ensued. In Ireland although women were very active and fought very bravely in the Easter Uprising, they were subsequently wiped out of the history for almost a century. I personally have an abhorrence of violence. Although there is a point where being able to defend oneself is very important. I value Primum non nocere. First do no harm. Restraint is important. Freedom for me does not include an absence of restraint. I do not believe freedom includes the right to hurt and harm carelessly and wantonly.
Please keep looking and check out the article by Jeremy Lent. I am travelling and visiting family. Otherwise I would search and send the link to the article published in Open Democracy. I have the impression that Angela Davis knew about these shenanigans. I bought and tried to read her excellent book written in the Reagan era and I was so upset that I could not read this . Her writing is clear . I just could not bear to read it. It was too upsetting. I trued to read this sometime in the past 18 months when President Trump was still President and I found it too frightening. Heather’s newsletters cheer me up a lot.
Have a similar story, though my student loans were lower because I worked for an employer with a 75 percent education reimbursement benefit. I, too, am the divorced mother of a special needs child. My child resented my absence. She's an adult whose special needs led to cognitive decline. She was placed in a nursing home to await placement in a community of care facility. Sometime after mother's day, the nursing home allowed her to discharge herself. They won't tell me where she is. She's been off social media since last September, doesn't answer the phone, email, or texts. I have no idea where she is, or how to communicate with her. This probably would have been different, if I could have raised her in Biden's version of America instead of Reagan and the Republican version of America.
Oh, Christina, what a terrible thing. Surely every mother here can only begin to imagine that kind of loss. On top of the awareness of your pain, I don't know about anyone else, but your story makes me very angry. What kind of human beings could craft a world in which this could happen? I am so sorry
Sending love and hugs your way. Can’t imagine how hard this is (I’m a single parent too so I get what you had to do and why) And yes to raising children and living in Biden’s America! Fingers crossed that your daughter contacts you soon.
Karen, thank you so much for telling your story. I became a teacher rather than a nurse, but you've made me think back to those days of single parenting, working, getting two degrees, and the absolute exhaustion at the end of the day. Even the time I had left for my son was marred by that constant push against collapse. Like you, I made it, but that most important mother-child relationship wasn't helped. I, too, paid my student loans, and I fully support President Biden's extension of loan forgiveness. For the life of me, I can't understand the Reagan-era belief that if I didn't get mine, then nobody else should get any either. There is enough pie in this nation's pantry for all of us to have a slice--if a few of us would take a little bit smaller piece. I see in Biden's approach a larger commitment to reversing the foundations of how we think about government and each other. It's a huge job and the push-back from those who have benefitted from Reagan's trickle-down economy is like a tsunami. But every single step counts.
Yes. Biden seems to me to be playing a long game. He won't be around to see the impact of this push for a more humane world. Nor will I. But I don't doubt the long-term changes his way of thinking promises. Joe Biden is far from a perfect man, not a perfect president. But at this time in our history, I continue to believe he is the right man for the job
Karen, Thank you for setting us on your difficult journey -- combining your strength and determination against the American system, which gave you and many more millions of parents less and less support. I think, too, of the Americans, through no fault of their own, who could not maintain the kind of grueling schedule you did. With all that you have accomplished Karen, you still seem to feel lacking -- and that is the fault of the wealthiest country in the world not supporting American families. I think you accomplished a great deal for yourself and your daughter -- how many of us following your story could have the conviction that we would have done as well? Good work Karen against terrible odds.
I grew up in California and attended college from 1968 to 1971, when tuition was affordable. I happened to come across this from my school newspaper as I was researching something else. This was evidently the turning point in making education out of reach for the non-elite.
1966-10-14 - Daily Sundial - CSUN University Library Digital Collections:
A. S. President John Cagle, along with 14 student leaders from Southern California have come out against gubematorial candidate Ronald Reagan's proposal to charge tuition in the State's colleges and universities.
“A. S. President John Cagle, along with 14 student leaders from Southern California have come out against gubematorial candidate Ronald Reagan's proposal to charge tuition in the State's colleges and universities.
Cagle emphasized that he was not against Reagan as a candidate, but only on his stand to charge tuition.
•That could be the final step that puts a college education beyond the reach of hundreds of young people in this state,* they charged. *I am definitely opposed to any levy of this sort for students, Cagle emphasized.“
I was in California during that odd transition as Ronald Reagan began his campaign to shift America to a nation of wealthy plutocrats and, although I witnessed many of the events everyone is recalling, there is something that almost takes my breath away to read the catalogue of all of them together. There is something nightmarish about the relentless speed and efficiency of the Republican machine. The comments here remind me of an article in TWP that outlined, in detail, the half century of planning and preparation that ended in the repeal of Roe. Chilling. We are up against a juggernaut, with a long, hard fight ahead. We need to keep on working.
So much of that tuition goes to sports and marketing. Professors' salaries have not increased significantly, and they are expected to publish and produce work that brings status to the universities.
If you want to get violently ill, take a look at how the University of Oregon spends its money, and what new buildings have been built in pursuit of athletic "excellence". To add the most insult to injury, Bob and Jane Sanders (U of O alumnae) wanted to donate 10 million dollars to the university to build an elite softball facility for the women's softball team. The university initially declined, as they were so busy building men's facilities (the UO axed their successful wrestling program after OSU won a national baseball championship, built a "state of the art" baseball stadium from a donation by another wealthy alum, Pat Kilkenny; along with the Matthew Knight Arena for basketball). Eventually, Jane Sanders Stadium was built, and the general admission area is known as "The Bob". If anyone watched the World Track Meet, you saw what they did to Hayward field. In state tuition is now $13,857 and out of state tuition is 39,309 (with a HUGE international student component.)
Professor salaries? $105 K Football coach's salary? 6 year contract at 29.1 million. Men's basketball is 3.2 million, women's is 750K. The best news? Softball coach gets $345K, basketball gets 337K.
First Reagan screwed up California then moved on to screw up the country and so many people’s future. But he was a good actor who cleverly pulled the wool over our eyes.
There are those who would dispute the "good actor" sobriquet, and I am one, but he was a decent con artist and set the stage for the Republican party as we see it now. Authoritarianism under any other name would maintain the stench.
Even as a kid in the 1950s I recall not liking his vibe, and yet he became immensely popular with the press and the public. I was never able to see what they saw in him. and in retrospect, he just seems worse. It was never big, heavy handed "government" (which Republicans blatantly love to sic on others) that Reagan famously decried and discredited, it was government of, by, and for, ALL of the people he and his party despised; and that's what is under systematic attack today.
Better actor than I ever thought, right out of central casting. Oscar-level performance at that presidential thing. But the thinnest veneer, and the greedy made it seem real. Sort of like chump but he was an abject failure, although the portrait of him spewed by Fox would make him a super hero to MAGAt fools and greedy bastards…
You are in a wonderful club, Karen, that receives little recognition but quietly does it’s damndest to provide for our kids, love them, support them by growing ourselves, and applauding their opportunities when they are grown. Our children’s success is our reward. I understand every nuance in your comment today.
Your last paragraph is my nomination today for the best closer I am sure to see all day.
Ok first, I must snicker a bit….my first job was a cashier at Woolworth’s!!! ALL if the departments were managed by older women in the neighborhood- I think we all walked to work. Store Manager was a young energetic man. I learned so much about every part of that store from those nice ladies. Then I became a single mom to 2 girls. I eeked out AA degrees in Acctg & Comp Science (BY MAIL!!) only because my employer agreed to pay for them. With 2 girls I could never have found an extra dime for education. All those seemingly minor events set me up for a 45 year career as a Contract Administrator.
Much of it available to me just because I was lucky enough to have been born an attractive white middle class girl in the USA.
If my tax dollars are spent helping others out of debt, just so they get the same opportunities I did - I’m thrilled with that!
Karen, I became a single parent in 2006 (I have one daughter). I was a college graduate with a well- established career and few financial challenges other than keeping to a strict budget (first world problem in my case). I hear stories like yours and just so admire the courage and persistence it took for you to work that hard to earn a degree while caring for a special needs child. It is physically and emotionally difficult to be a single parent. Add special needs to that and many would fold under the enormous pressure. That you were so successful is inspiring!
One of my major goal as a single parent with my daughter was to help ensure that she had “only” $20k in students loans to pay back when she graduated. I succeeded. Yes, I still have a modest amount to pay on the loans I took out for her but it is manageable. I’m proud of that in part because my ex decided he didn’t need to help our daughter after she turned 18. Meanwhile, Rian got herself into the London College of Fashion, one of the most prestigious fashion schools on the planet - with zero scholarship money available. So momma was left with the six figure bill - gulp!
What the Biden Administration has done is to truly help many families find balance - work hard, pay their bills and work towards a brighter future. Grateful for that, particularly for women like you and me; single parents, working hard, paying the bills while also raising kids. Hope this helps lots of folks reach towards their dreams. And Karen, give yourself full credit. What you did and continue to do for your kid is outstanding!! From one who knows....
Wish the government would find a way to dun the deadbeat dads who decided to just walk away. These are the same issues we are facing with forced birth. The man can, if he chooses, skate away.
I believe state legislatures have responsibility too for the escalating costs. My college education was relatively achievable in the early 70’s though I had a PT job for the university during three of those years. With the trend to Repub state houses and Repub disdain for education for all and against “elites,” state support for higher ed greatly diminished since Reagan.
Today's encore selection -- from A Brief History of Doom by Richard Vague. Ronald Reagan's campaign slogan in 1980 had been "Let's Make America Great Again." For his re-election campaign in 1984, it was "It's Morning Again in America." A series of financial crises in that decade would belie that:
"Many remember the 1980s as a renaissance in the United States. Newly elected president Ronald Reagan and Federal Reserve chair Paul Volcker were credited with defeating the inflation of the 1970s. Real GDP growth averaged 3.3 percent. Unemployment declined to less than 6 percent, and the stock and bond market ended the decade up 228 percent and 253 percent, respectively.
"Yet those memories belie stark realities of calamities and crises. The decade of the 1980s was one of the most economically turbulent and crisis laden in American history.”
Reagan marked a new acceleration in the gap between the ultra-rich and the middle class. It's why the 1% controls 80% of the nations wealth, and the middle class less than 15%.
Thank you for sharing your story, Karen. You, and others like you, are our truly greatest Americans… and always will be…. generation after generation to come.
According to Republican talking points, Karen, you’re supposed to be angry and bitter because you had to pay off your loan and now others are getting a break not available to you.
Instead, you realize that the hardships you had to face took away time and nurturing from your daughter and you don’t want others to suffer in the same way. You are an admirable human being and exemplify what is best about our country and about any member of a civilized society.
Thank you so much Gina. I can’t imagine being angry or feeling cheated like the republicans want me to be. Apparently they think everyone is as greedy and self serving as they are. Of course their goal is to put down President Biden’s successes. My goal is to contribute to a better future for our children.💖
Karen you are the selfless giving love that the United States Of America is founded upon. You are the quiet celebration of the American Patriot satisfied with all the hardship it has been required to achieve your ability to contribute making America a better place to live, to enjoy freedom and peace!
You are the dream obtained by exerting yourself beyond exhaustion beyond what you could ever imagined without quitting!
You are the true American hero recognized through outpouring of gratefulness by all those whom you daily inspire by your freely given lovingkindness for their comfort and peace!
Thank GOD for giving us the blessing of your Amazing Grace!
Kudos to you. Please focus now on self - stewardship for you and your daughter. Focus on both your health and well-being. Consider checking out the work of Riane Eisler and Dr.Gabor Maté . Also Master Mingtong Gu , founder of the Chi center and all who work in the field of healing intergenerational trauma. You are an inspiration.
Absolutely love Dr. Gabor Mate. Stumbling across a lecture on C-Span years ago, I was able to see my family trauma in a different light. Absolutely warped my brain, in a very positive way.
Thanks, I will be interested to read what you think. No rush. I am trying to learn all I can about healing individual, intergenerational, collective and planetary trauma. I have no delusions about my own very limited capacity to integrate all kinds of information and co- creating an ecological civilization. At almost 66, I am sorting through all that I have been taught, learning and unlearning with the goal of participating in respectful exchange of ideas. Currently I appreciate my Irish Catholic upbringing for focusing me on the Common Good . I am very impressed by the work of Kristin Monroe , who reports that only 3% of us are capable of true altruism. I view people who really care for those with complex needs as likely in this group. I am certain now that I am in the 97%. By this I mean that when I accept my many personal flaws and limitations rather than aiming for sainthood, I do better. For example I see many benefits to living a vegan life-style. However the effort I would need to make these changes would take from other commitments. So I try to choose and support plant based eating but I am a flexitarian. I am attempting to find common ground , common cause and decency and to discern between imperfection and true anti-social behaviours . Not sure if this makes any sense to you. People like Dr.Gabor Maté are a lot mire articulate. I am very concerned about how to transition away from fossil fuels and exploitation of nature in wise ways that cause the least harm to the most vulnerable everywhere. Thanks for your interest. My website is called BeCompassionateNLca. I love how Heather integrates so many complex ideas and shares the essence with her writing. I am not aware of any equivalent Canadian writer. I admire the writing of my Zoom course friend named Gracious Unfurling. She also writes very clearly on the wonder of nature and our Responsability to protect non human lfe.
You are an inspiration in so many ways. I am sorry you had to spend so much time away from your daughter just to pay off debt due to loans to finance your education. I too worked to pay for my masters degree as a single parent, but l did not have a special needs child nor were the costs off education so prohibitive. As a nation we need to make education more affordable and reward those who strive to improve their lives. Education benefits the nation. And, loving parents are it’s backbone.
The Ryan win is more than a bellwether. It's a map of the minefield. Look at the issues he won on, versus the issues the Republican campaigned on. And in the next two months, things are going to change in such a way that it will be harder for Republicans to run on those issues since they will not be the big issues they thought they would be.
I did some GOTV calling for Ryan, and even with a list that I’m sure was of reliable Democrats, I found the responses surprisingly positive. As to what Pat Ryan said, I’ve been arguing for months that the Democrats’ theme should be, Democracy is on the Ballot This Year. Because it is. And voters—many of them, at least—know it.
Education is one of the areas the Republican brand has chosen to control. Ron DeSantis politicized school board races. He chose which candidates to endorse, and they won.
“Florida has led with purpose and conviction that our school system is about education, not indoctrination,” Mr. DeSantis posted on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, along with an image of his slate of 30 “pro-parent” candidates. At least 20 won on Tuesday, and five went to runoffs.’ (NYTimes)
Much of the destruction of democracy is happening within the states – which ones? What do we know of the balance of power between the Biden administration and the federal government versus the conservative right-ring states such as Florida, Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Mississippi, Wyoming, West Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and the list goes on? What sort of education are the children in those states getting? Do we have a lens through which to know?
In regard to which states with destruction of democracy, the answer is Republican majority state legislatures. The best way to keep democracy is to focus on those pivotal states identified by The States Project as having Democratic majorities in state house chambers that can be saved or gained.
The States Project organizes Giving Circles to send funds to good candidates in those pivotal states, so the candidates can spend more time on meeting voters in person--the most effective way of getting votes. Here is our HCR inspired Tending to Democracy Giving Circle:
Thank you, Fern, and anyone checking out The States Project. As we are all bombarded by hyperbolic screeches for our money, it is relief to find an organization that analyzes data to determine how our precious donor dollars can be used most effectively.
Ellie, you have provided a crucial resource to the states where there's a chance for democracy to succeed, and, yet, we are still left with the dangerous divide between the red states and the rest -- a country at odds with itself.
A mental exercise here, Fern. We know that the Republicans foisted this partisan, divisive 'war' upon the country. Their attack on democracy is to divide and conquer. They created and exploited personal grievances along the lines of race, religion and ethnicity. How can Democrats win the war that Republicans started?
Ignoring this reality is not the answer. The progressives in the Democratic Party think in terms of more socialized solutions that reduce income and wealth inequality and level the playing field. All these solutions require the wealthier members of society to contribute more to the greater welfare of others. Therein lies the problem, because sharing income and wealth is verboten to the wealthy. The rich don't want to help others and in fact they would rather spend their money suppressing and repressing those who threaten to take any of their wealth and income.
Republicans use this dynamic to their advantage. So, I ask what can Democrats do to win? How do we overcome the prevailing human nature found in America and transform it to the human nature prevalent in the socialist Scandanavian countries, for example?
Every progressive effort is so watered down or compromised, first by centrist Democrats and then by Republicans, that successful outcomes are hard to achieve. If Biden could have passed the original $8-trillion Build Back Better most Americans would have experienced great personal improvement in their lives for generations to come. We know progressive policies will work but we never get the chance to prove it. Which brings me back to winning the war at the state level because it just isn't going to get done at the Federal level anymore (not that it ever did.)
At one time I supported Howard Dean's fifty-state strategy, but that opportunity has slipped by. When Democrats are in power at the Federal level should they start looking at ways they can shift the dynamics at the state level. For example, end blue states subsidizing red states. What about moving government assets out of red states and into blue states? For example, the Texas economy is highly dependent upon federally funded and operated agencies. I remember when Trump was trying to move departments out of Washington to red states. It was the Department of Interior as I recall.
I think Democrats should think more in terms a carrots and sticks approach to empowering blue states and penalizing red states. They did the carrot with Medicaid but without the stick, red states were able to do as they wish without penalty. There has to be more penalties for those states that choose non-compliance.
Democrats need a long-term vision that is uncompromising. Republicans want all or nothing; win at any cost! They assume that supreme power is theirs for the taking/stealing. Maybe it's time for Democrats to think the same way. If Democrats truly believe that their ideology is best for the country, then they should not waiver or compromise. Democrats should not surrender leadership once they have it and should do whatever it takes (legally) to achieve the greater good for all. A good start would be cutting their ties to the wealthy. Democrats are not going to be able to change minds. Their success will only come from successfully implementing programs that do the most good for the greatest number of people which is exactly what the wealthy do not want to see happen.
You know how government operates better than I do, Fern. What do you think is doable?
Hi Ellie, Your periodic bundles with links to grassroots organizations, candidates and other useful info is an outstanding extension of LFAA's people library, along with HCR's, NOTES, and subscribers' recommendations. This aspect of the forum helps keep engagement alive. So, today I joined and donated to States Project as well as to Beto's campaign. What you do serves one of the most important reasons we are here. Thank you and Cheers!
Thank you, Fern! As we inspire each other and mobilize ourselves, we exponentially build the force to save democracy and just plain goodness in a threatening time!
And also why they want to voucher-ize primary compulsory education - to allow your tax dollars to support religious education and to degrade public elementary schools and subsidize private/religious ones, the way they did with post-secondary.
The Pharisees were more the populists, while the Saducees were the ones with the money- the Hoi Poloi so to speak. Jesus was a not-so-young hand worker who had had enough of bureaucracy - an aging hippie who has my vote.
Not to undercut the point of the welling theocratic threat, but the "hoi poloi" were the common people, the masses in ancient Greece. I would guess that the Saducees were the equivalent of the "aristos."
Apparently not, JJ. And seems some of the mainstream media cannot acknowledge support of the Biden administration to clear some of the staggering debt that hamstrings our graduates of higher education. Robert Hubbell reported today in his Substack essay….
“The Editorial Board of the Washington Post seemed to take personal offense over the plan in an editorial entitled, Biden’s student loan forgiveness is an expensive, regressive mistake. The Board wrote:
‘The loan-forgiveness decision is even worse [than the four month extension of the moratorium on loan repayments]. Widely canceling student loan debt is regressive. It takes money from the broader tax base, mostly made up of workers who did not go to college, to subsidize the education debt of people with valuable degrees.’”
Great reply, Christine!!!! I'll go do the same and if a million other people do it, they'll get the message even if the comments are rejected.
I cancelled WAPO* and NYT and I suggest that if a million other progressive subscribers do the same, those "Judas" news organizations would be in a heap of trouble.
Same can be said about all the corporations that are supporting the Republican neo-fascist coup to take over America. We know who they are. Why can't people vote everyday by choosing to NOT SUPPORT these companies and the uber-wealthy who run them? Support small business even if it costs you a few dollars more. In the long run it will be for the best.
* I paid for an annual subscription that runs out at the end of the year. I'll miss a couple columnists, but I encourage them to leave WAPO and get their own Substack letter.
Vote Every Day. Make sure every $.01 of your money goes to businesses and products made or shipped by companies that support Democracy and We the People.
"Widely canceling student loan debt is regressive. It takes money from the broader tax base, mostly made up of workers who did not go to college, to subsidize the education debt of people with valuable degrees."
Not like very progressive tax cuts for the ultra-rich.
"the broader tax base, mostly made up of workers who did not go to college,"
Somehow, when the US was more up and coming, we did this on the other end, by subsidizing state college degrees for students who were not wealthy without launching their their careers with crippling debt. Which system more advantages the less wealthy and which the more; the system then or the system now? How did we get to the place of so many students needing huge loans to begin with? What is the overall effect on America's place in the world when the cost of college becomes prohibitive?
Far too often, people don’t worry about loss of a freedom until they lose it. Luckily, the voters saw through his lack of concern and voted him out.
This result, even though the turnout was less than 30%, shows that some of the voters are aware of the threats to democracy and are willing to vote to save it. With gerrymandering, we will have to get out the vote to fight back—past midterms have shown how much is needed.
Thank you for always alerting us to new threats and successes. Thank you also for adding the necessary historical perspective.
So much good news to comment on! The "Building a Better America Tour" is exactly what's needed to tout the administration's programs to the American people. I hope officials are also sharing the forecast that the deficit will decline $1.7 million and repeating — over and over — that Republicans will take away Social Security, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act if they ever gain control of Congress and the Executive Branch.
Add in the GOP's accelerating attacks on democracy and basic rights, and the message for the nation is a contrast as clear as light and darkness. It seems the people are listening.
Yes, I think we need to remind to remind the public of Republican embarrassments, failures, and crimes, and also lay out a compelling alternative vision. We've done it before, and made it at least part of the way.
A note in added proof: Federally subsidized student loans were a boondoggle for financial institutions, who administered the loans, reaped the profits, but had to assume none of the risk.
for my first 2 kids vs my last 2 kids was astronomical and geometric. Not only had interest rates skyrocketed (1% for 1st son to 8% for my daughter which was all timely paid) but the cost of college had easily doubled or tripled in those 10 years. A lucrative racket in private sticky hands.
Caste society indeed - a rigid hierarchy is the main goal of regressive reactionary conservatism. And guess who’s at the top of their pyramid? It isn’t the shrinking middle class, nor low income people, POCs or women, unless they’re the “right” kind.
You have to create a stratified society in able to rule from the "top"; dispense favors to some and terror to others. It's effective from a sociopathic viewpoint, but it's a curse on humanity. In the end it may be our own undoing.
That is so interesting. I was raised in a Jungian sense where the crone is "An archetypal figure, a Wise Woman." But the original definition is "the hag, the helltrot, the ugly and skinny witch." Geeze, I wish to be the former rather than the latter!! Except, I do cherish being part of the "helltrot" of the crone stage, for democracy these days!
Oh my, I wonder if the conservative Justices and Leonard Leo are tossing and turning? Just imagine, the future of America that they have plotted for so long just might go awry.
The fact that gas prices have dropped steadily over the past few weeks makes complaining about them moot. Though inflation remains high, it has leveled. The fearful "sky is falling" message of the Republicans cannot compete against the actual threats to freedom posed by the Republican voter restrictions, the Dobbs decision, and the fact that Biden is making good on his campaign promises. I know many who will applaud and welcome the student loan cancelation they have been awaiting.
California always pays $1 or more per gallon than the rest of the nation. I used to travel on business and was amazed to learn how consistent that is. The oil companies know Californians will pay whatever -- there is almost no public transportation that goes where the freeways (and suburbs) do.
Ca does add State tax on the federal one—a tax on a tax. But looking at the list, the states with relatively high gas taxes have snow and floods/tornados, so their road maintenance costs must be high.
Mass transportation would help so much, but Americans are extremely wedded to their vehicles preferring convenience (though stuck in traffic hardly seems convenient), privacy, comfort, etc. In the Bay area there is good mass transportation, but it is quite costly. Sadly, fossil fuels and, up to now, the auto industries keep us using the old internal combustion engine. It is a technology we should retire. EV's pose new problems, but may be a bridge to a better future vehicle.
One reason the prices are higher is because of additives/blends to reduce greenhouse emissions. Which is probably cancelled out because of minimal public transportation? I live here.
I think the pundits and you are missing the point. Pat Ryan gets it. He had the right word - the fury is "visceral." Gerrymandering doesn't matter a bit if women are voting for their freedom. Not just Democrats, but independents and sane Republican women won't care what party they belong to. They will vote D if that's the only way to preserve their freedom. Reproductive rights cut across party lines and women are ANGRY. This will be our first chance to vote since Dobbs came down. There will be hell to pay.
Gerrymandering is still something to be opposed. We can’t rely on visceral fury every election. But your point is well-taken: the Regressives will f*ck around and find out.
Although I liked Biden's reply to cries of unfair, that he doesn't see Republican and other opponents - of this moderate means tested student debt forgiveness -objecting to all the benefits the wealthy enjoy through government policies favoring them. I think anyone fulminating at the unfairness of student debt forgiveness - which because of means testing will help Black people who have suffered from economic injustice - maybe they need to reminded of some things.
Higher education boosts earning power and home ownership boosts intergenerational wealth. This is one reason why the Federal Government provided GI Bill benefits for college and home purchases. Both helped build the middle class after WW2. Another group benefitted indirectly from the GI Bill and from direct government subsidies - real estate developers who built suburban communities and sold to veterans. They argued before Congress that by subsidizing developers of these suburbs, the government would move Vets out of the big cities, where they were vulnerable to political radicalization - especially Vets returning from the European front where they'd been exposed to socialist and communist propaganda. And with homes outside the cities where many worked - Vets would be disinclined to attend evening meetings or commute back on weekends - and they'd be too busy with home maintenance and improvements anyway.
One group of Vets was written out of the GI Bill. Black WW2 Veterans were not eligible. And Black people were red-lined out of these new suburbs - where government also invested in creating excellent public schools. Oh - and for Black people who later did manage to earn and save enough money, and overcome social racism and racially discriminatory mortgaging practices - even today when they go to sell their homes they are market valued significantly lower than the same homes owned by White people. In one case, the exact same home. After their home was undervalued two professors stripped it of its Black themed possessions and had a White person pose as the owner - and presto bingo the house was valued significantly higher. Just the tip of the iceberg of economic injustice.
Opposing this act and running on opposing 'woke' in education is just more proof of Republican racism against Black people. As if we needed more. Red hats are the new White hoods. And you don't have to hide your face. You can shout your prejudice out loud in full daylight - while as DeSantis recently said 'putting on God's armor.' By which I assume he also meant the Black robes of the Leonard Leo Federalist Society Supreme Court majority bent on outlawing civil rights.
Here is a real eye opener my sister sent me, expertly done by a history teacher, on what we were NOT taught in school about Blacks and their (lack of) civil rights since the first slave ship arrived. A little long, "Neoslavery" is well worth the time.
Hi, MaryPat. Thank your for offering "Neoslavery". At first, I wondered what age group it was pegged to, but then I realized that its pace and organization wasn't to my liking, while the idea is. Too fast and too confusing as far as I am concerned. I tutored 6 to 10 year-olds for a couple of years - definitely not for them. I believe your sister's experience indicates that this works, but not for me.
Thank you, thank you, Mary Pat, for that pointer. I just finished watching "Neoslavery" and it is what you say, eye-opening. I haven't subscribed to any channel before, but I'm going to sign up for Nebula. And start exploring. There is so much to learn. Thank you.
African-Americans weren't written out of the GI Bill. Instead, African-Americans' ability to access and benefit from the GI Bill was made exceedingly difficult, though not impossible, due to discrimination in both education and low interest loans. https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/African_Americans_and_the_G.I._Bill
He was also credited with BDE…Big Dick Energy, by Kari Lake at Arizona Turning Point student summit. She is Repub candidate for guv. It was cringeworthy, it was so offensive.
Support Katie Hobbs. Dem candidate and previous Sec’y of State.
Are any repubs paying attention to the Biden administration’s policies and bills that will not only save them money now but in the future? And save our environment? Thank you, HCR for highlighting the critical legislation and bills the Dems are voting in. Chances are repub voters will like tax breaks and loan forgiveness and benefit from climate change related jobs and technology. If they want that to continue they better think what will happen if they vote Red. Do they remember TFG’s first bill practically first day to reward his millionaire and billionaire friends and corporations with tax breaks? As for me I saved $50 that year. Gratitude to President Biden and Democrats. Vote in this coming election to continue Government for the People. My postcards are ready to send in October.
I am sorry but canceling $10 thousand of Federal and up to $20 thousand of Pell loans is a joke. And why is this a joke? I think Biden is trying to get right with his god. Since the seventies he was the major, or as much of it he could be, road block to every student loan relief bill showing up in Congress. In 2005 he did a masterful move to remove the final leaf of debt relief for students. There is nothing left.
When Stabenow was running as a Senator again, I caught her in public and asked her amongst younger people when she would change her stance on student loan debt. She gave me the standard pablum answer. Even so I got her attention and put her on record in front of the younger people there. At Showdown in Chicago, I caught up with Durbin and cornered him. The only thing aggravating me more is the VA playing games with veterans who were stationed at Lejeune. The VA has a special board who are rejecting many of us who drank and showered in the Trichlorethylene (TCE), perchloroethylene (PCE), benzene and vinyl chloride in the water. I drank the water.
Rant done. Today the Gov released the PPP loans which were set at 1% interest to be paid back. That information was available since July 4th and they waited till today to release it. Why? I am guessing:
Not on this part: More than 11.8 million Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans were issued as of June 30, 2021, with 708 borrowers receiving the maximum loan amount of $10 million.
Of the total number of loans, 10.2 million have been partially or fully forgiven. The average dollar amount forgiven was $72,500. Of the borrowers receiving the maximum amount, 625 loans have been partially or fully forgiven.
I am guessing the gov did not want to release it earlier because students would then expect more. Instead, they released the info today, We are talking $739 billion in PPP loans forgiven. That is almost as much as the Defense budget and 46% of the student loan debt.
This is the Biden from the seventies to 2005. He will toss students a tidbit and mess with veterans on Camp Lejeune water contamination. So far Rituxan infusions work when I need it.
Biden should have and could have done more since he is a major instigator of student loan issues. The data is out there. I have it too.
I assume that many people receiving $10,000 or $20,000 in loan forgiveness will benefit and be able to get better control over their finances. I cannot speak to the extreme cases you mention--and I know they may be more common than extreme. Loan forgiveness has to be accompanied by tighter control of private student loan financing, preferably with loans originating from the government and not predatory lenders. Like loan forgiveness, commonsense restrictions on originators of student loans are widely opposed by Republicans in Congress. We can't even get a federal limit on usurious loans to consumers because the lobbyists for the banksters are so well entrenched.
Access to high quality education makes our nation stronger and our society more just. The solution to the student loan problem (besides freeing indentured students) is to make public education affordable to begin with, as we were doing prior to "Supply Side Economics" (AKA goverment by and for the rich).
It is very difficult to get the point across. No commercial company made these loans the way they are today. Congress, of which Biden was a part, made them this way under false pretense that students were declaring bankruptcy. These were never truly private loans. There are private college loans as of recent and they are less than 5% of the total numbers holding student loans and are not a part of the forgiveness. They were always government loans, originated by colleges and submitted, and serviced by private entities.
Even when Albert Lord at Sllie Mae took these loans over, they were still government loans. He became a multiple million rich man servicing these loans.
There is "no" commercial loan that a person can not escape through bankruptcy in entirety immediately or in a period of a few years. Prof. Heather knows this about student loans. Every college Prof. knows this issue with student loans.
Your comments of "commonsense restrictions," "preferably with loans originating from the government," "etc." Those extreme cases you mention and prefer to mitigate, were not so extreme at one time which is why I showed the origination amount too.
But while I am here, let me give you another example (s).
There are 2.4 million people 62 years or older who hold an average of $41,000 in student loans. If we set an interest rate of 2.5% and a minimum payment of $250/month (most loans are higher interest rates) The $41,000 would be paid off in 16 years. Think they will be alive then? Is 2.5 million people still an extreme example.
Lets do 51 to 61 year olds . Average of $44,000. 6.4 million of them. Lets do the same $250 and 2.5% (I wish we had 2.5% in our loans, The lowest was 3.5% for my one son [his rate]). Eighteen years for this example. That would make them 69 years old if they were 51 years old.
I paid all of my college loans, then I paid my 2 kids' undergraduate college loans. Sorry, but quit your gripping the amount of college loan forgiveness isn't bigger. It's something--and it's going to help a great many people. I'm so grateful other people won't have it quite as hard as I did.
Did you check the facts that Bill H provided? The idiom, 'The devil's in the details' makes a lot of sense to me... While often said, how carefully is it followed? It expresses the idea that whatever we do should be done thoroughly and that the details matter.
Like most people, he did not check the facts. Most do not want to know the facts.
For a decade, I have written on student loans. I have had parent plus loans and my three have had student loans. I have advised other students on the dangers and talked to parents. There is no way out of these loans which are available on commercial loans for students except through death, becoming handicapped physically or mentally, or through a program which allows forgiveness after a period of years such as teaching. And even then if you look for that forgiveness it may be denied because of errors by the government.
Looking at the numbers of upvotes tells me a lot about readership knowledge of the issue. I paid my loans too while working maintenance at an old age home in Illinois. I had my BA in Business with a minor in math at a Lasallian college in three years. My Masters is in Economics (Econometric Modeling, Advanced Finance, Capital Allocation). Three plus years going downtown Chicago to a Jesuit University.
I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. My dad never made it out of grade school. My Italian mother had a high school diploma. What she saw in him, I am not sure. When I left for USMC boot camp in 68, my dad was scared. He was a WWII vet. We had worked the scaffolds together on the building in Chicago. I was a Laborer for him and others at 16 on weekends. I can lay brick, tuckpoint. I was taught how to house frame in high school, draft my own house plans. Builders do not like me.
In the end, this old Marine Sergeant has no problem challenging Senators, Representatives in public.
I do believe in you, Bill, and I would like you to believe in me. Please read the comment that I posted today, which is based on research done by journalists and experts in communication with the New York Times. I read it carefully and think that if Biden's loan forgiveness plan gets through court challenges, perhaps, even the Supreme Court, which will doom it, is a good plan. Give it a chance!
I won't pretend to be as knowledgable about college loans in general as Bill H.
But I plowed my way through all 50+ pages of the 1965 Higher Education Act yesterday. I saw nothing that prevents the Act from being changed, except on the negotiated rates and allowances to States without other approvals. The President appoints the Commissioner, and the Commissioner seems to pretty potent. Bush the Younger made changes to the Act, although initially marked "temporary," they were later passed as an amendment to the Act. I have not read the full text of what Biden's EO. It beggars belief that the Commissioner appointed by Biden--Richard Cordrary, formerly of the Consumer Protection Agency--would not implement a what is for now another temporary, and so far 1-time, change in the program.
Bush the Younger ended college loan discharge by bankruptcy (which may have been a change to the bankruptcy laws, but I thought those were set by the States). And Bush also initiated college loan forgiveness if the kid worked in teaching (& nursing?) in underserved areas for a fixed number of years (5?) after graduation. Obama put a cap on the monthly payments relative to the kid's (not the parents) monthly income (my son's monthly payments dropped from $800/mo to $400/month), and a full discharge after 20 years. Since the payment drop went into effect--because I personally know of that one--apparently Obama's Commissioner implemented his EO (don't personally know about the implementation of the 20 year discharge).
Federally--backed college loans are discharged without being repaid all the time. They are discharged if the individual can demonstrate significant financial hardship--and the bar is very high after Bush ended discharge through bankruptcy. After working in teaching (and nursing?) for so many years after graduating. Death of the child for whom the loan was taken out. Death of the parent whose name is on the loan.
And the last for of college loan discharge I personally know of (kids' godmother after car accident) is total discharge of the loan balance due total disability resulting in the inability to work of the parent/person whose name is on the loan. The individual must be on SSDI, and the disability must be well documented by medical records and notarized affidavits from all the physicians who care for the patient and an IME (independent medical evaluation) of the medical documentation. When Pam had to do this, it took her 3 full years.
Then- because who ever said the US government doesn't have a sense of humor--the amount of the loan discharged due to full disability w/ inability to work by the Department of Education becomes taxable income to the disabled person to the IRS. Then, if necessary, the disabled person then has to file an appeal to the IRS proving they are unable to repay the taxes owed on the college loan discharge amount.
Thank you, Fern. It sounds unbelievable and yet... it's true. These outrageous situations are not just a few extreme outliers. They're quite common among student loan borrowers of all ages.
I am reading George Lakoff’s book The Political Mind. He describes repubs’ attitude toward vets (and the lack of effort to take care of them) as “you knew the risks of military service; you signed up for it anyway; quit your bitchin’ “
Hmm. Did I know that the Army Nurse Corps would harbor antisemites at Brooke Army Medical Center during the rise of Reagan? Did I know that officers weren’t necessarily honorable and that the man in charge of our Basic Training was a serial rapist? I was a new graduate without any means with a small college loan that was largely forgiven for military service.
I love George Lakoff. His books on semiotics explain how Reagan’s people began twisting the meanings of words, stigmatizing those who didn’t agree with the Repug slant on the World.
I am going to take this comment as a quote from the book and not your opinion. I did read it a few times and thought about it. Sorry, if I took your comment erroneously.
At 17, 18, and 19 (me), nobody knew what we would experience. No one knew the water was tainted in 68, 69, 70, and 71. The risks of the military do not include toxic water on the US military bases or PFAS from military fire trucks spraying down airplane fires or burn pits in Vietnam and Iraq. My nephew has issues from his USMC 10 years. We talk about it. He seems to have his head on straight.
We were fed John Wayne movies, and Leon Uris books. Hey, we would all be heroes, come home to the beautiful woman of our life, and have that family in suburbia. No issues too . . .
Here are facts about Biden's loan forgiveness and student loans in general from 'Morning', the New York Times' newsletter this morning. In sum, Biden's plan is pretty GOOD, but may wind up in the Supreme Court where good things go to die. This summary is worth the read.
'The bottom of the top'
'Fewer than 40 percent of Americans graduate from a four-year college, and these college graduates fare far better than nongraduates on a wide range of measures. College graduates earn much more on average; are less likely to endure unemployment; are more likely to marry; are healthier; live longer; and express greater satisfaction with their lives. These gaps have generally grown in recent decades'.
'As a result, many economists have expressed skepticism about the idea of universal student-loan forgiveness. It resembles a tax cut that flows mostly to the affluent: Americans who attend and graduate college tend to come from the top half of the income distribution and tend to remain there later in life. College graduates are also disproportionately white and Asian.'
“Education debt,” as Sandy Baum and Victoria Lee have written for the Urban Institute, “is disproportionately concentrated among the well-off.”
'But the idea of loan forgiveness has nonetheless taken off on the political left. As Democrats have increasingly become the party of college graduates living in expensive metropolitan areas — and as the cost of college has continued rising, while income growth for many millennials has been disappointing — loan forgiveness has obvious appeal.'
'These crosscurrents put President Biden and his aides in an awkward position. Biden fashions himself as a working-class Democrat. (He is the party’s first presidential nominee without an Ivy League degree since Walter Mondale.) He did not initially campaign on a sweeping plan of college debt relief, adding it to his agenda only after he defeated more liberal candidates in the primaries, as a way to reach out to their supporters.'
'Yesterday, after months of behind-the-scenes work and internal debate, Biden finally announced his plan for loan forgiveness. And it is an attempt to find a middle ground.'
‘The worst of both’
'By definition, the plan will not help the many Americans who do not go to college. But its benefits are targeted at lower-income college graduates and dropouts, especially those who grew up in lower-income families. Compared with other potential debt-forgiveness plans, Biden’s version is much more focused on middle-class and lower-income households.'
'It is restricted to individuals making less than $125,000 (or households making less than $250,000), which will exclude very high earners at law firms, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. For anybody under this income threshold, the plan will forgive up to $10,000 in debt. For somebody who received Pell Grants in college — a federal program focused on lower-income families — the plan may forgive an additional $10,000.'
'More broadly, Biden also said he wanted to enact a new rule to restrict future payments on college loans to no more than 5 percent of a borrower’s discretionary income, down from between 10 percent and 15 percent now.'
(My colleagues Ron Lieber and Tara Siegel Bernard have written a Q. and A. that is full of useful information about the plan.) Check The NY Times if you have a subscription.
'The emphasis of Biden’s plan partly reflects academic research that has found that the people who struggle the most to repay their loans don’t fit a common perception. They are less likely to be baristas with six figures in debt and a graduate degree than blue-collar workers who have a smaller amount of unpaid loans but never graduated college. That worker, Biden said yesterday, has the “worst of both worlds — debt and no degree.”
'A study by Judith Scott-Clayton of Columbia University found that the loan-default rate for borrowers without any degree was 40 percent. For those with a bachelor’s degree, it was less than 8 percent.'
'The details of Biden’s plan mean that it targets the people most likely to default, rather than the caricature of them. “$10k will forgive ALL the debt of many millions of borrowers,” Susan Dynarski, a Harvard University economist — and herself a first-generation college graduate — tweeted yesterday. As an example, she cited “those who went to community college for a semester or two.”
'There is still some uncertainty about whether the plan will be implemented. Biden is enacting it through executive action because it seems to lack the support to pass in Congress, and opponents may challenge it in court.'
“Let the lawsuits begin over presidential authority,” Robert Kelchen of the University of Tennessee predicted. “I wouldn’t count on forgiveness happening for a while, and it may go to the Supreme Court.”(NYTimes) Link to the newsletter is gifted.
"'The emphasis of Biden’s plan partly reflects academic research that has found that the people who struggle the most to repay their loans don’t fit a common perception. They are less likely to be baristas with six figures in debt and a graduate degree than blue-collar workers who have a smaller amount of unpaid loans but never graduated college."
It is of interest to me that, if I recall correctly, Elizabeth Warren was a Republican that believed the "GOP" saw that those who declare bankruptcy are cheats. She researched the subject expecting to confirm that prejudice and discovered that the stereotype was for the most part a lie, that most who so declared were victims of misfortune. That's not to say that there are none who are irresponsible and cynically cheat the system, but they can be found in all walks of life, even some who are very wealthy, with lawyers in tow to help them successfully perpetrate their scams.
So lets do some numbers. Baseline Distribution of Income and Federal Taxes (Tax Policy Center 2020). ~32 million (18.8%) are in the $100,000 to $200,000 tax bracket. Average Income is ~$144,000 annually. It appears income is skewed more to the $100,000 than the $200,000. ~10.3% of all tax units make greater than $200,000 annually. 70.9% of all tax units make less than $100.000 annually.
I am having a tough time understanding where the issue is. Yes there are singles making greater than $125,000 annually. And yes there are married couples making greater than $250,000 annually. The percentages are small and there are many more who are far less in income and carrying loan burdens far greater than $10,000. 8.8 million people 50 years and older are carrying student loans on average $41,000+. Those loans will not likely be paid off.
Out of curiosity, how many people were concerned about trump's 1.7 trillion tax break heavily skewed to the upper incomes. Or the PPP loans of which an average amount of $72,500 in loans to 10.2 million people were loaned out or $739,500,000,000. All of that amount was forgiven. The kicker to this being this was completed July 4th and announced on August 24th. Why the delay?
We can do much for the rich in income and small companies and little for students with bad loan in the first place? The nation is monetarily sovereign and could still absorb more debt like they did with trump's tax breaks and the PPP. The return would be just as great as the PPP with the taxes paid.
We lost each other on this one. We'll have another chance to come together. In sum, I hope Biden's plan goes through the hurdles. It will help students and families who need it the most. Cheers!
From my point of view, anything that Democrats can do for the young and for women is a major plus for the Democratic Party at election time.
Democrats will screw this up though (like they did with ACA) if they don't put the most positive spin on it at each and every opportunity. Most people have a short attention span and go with the gist or hearsay. Sad but true.
Biden is an old Congressional Warhorse. The name of the game up there is compromise. Sometimes our heroes give on something they don't want to in order to get what they want on other things. I don't criticize unless there is a life long pattern of obstruction by a particular person.
I know who "Come-On-Man" Biden is. He has been totally unforgiving with student loans.
This act is little more than a thin veneer over rough sawn lumber being passed off as something better than what it actually is. It looks good but it should not be taken as serious when he has been one of the main obstacles since 1978 to greater relief.
More cash flow to consumers (students), means they aren’t eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches 3 times a day. I think what people don’t get is that people of color suffer the most with these loans. Everyone who applies or applied has very good intentions to repay them but, to get ahead, companies require a masters degree. This is where the loans go off the deep end for individuals. The banks made and are still making, money, hand over fist, off of innocent people. It’s criminal!
Attempted like. I also wish what Biden did specifically included all trade/craft schools. Learning and apprenticing to be a plumber or electrician as important (maybe more) than college.
A bad loan is a bad loan when there is no escape even with hardship. They can also garnish a portion of already small SS payments. If you read what I said, Biden has been instrumental in closing the door on any escape from student loans since 1980, which trump did numerous times as well as other Americans. Student Loans could have been dischargeable after 7 years pre-2000.
Biden had his beliefs on student loan debt and was severe in his actions to hold people to them. They are unlike any commercial loan today.
I voted for Biden as a Democrat. I voted for other Democrats and I support my opinions with data , not supposition, conjecture, and innuendo. I spend much time studying the issues in order to support my words when going up against politicians and their learned staff. I will vote for Biden again although I would have preferred other candidates. I am in the same age group as Biden.
Fifty-four percent of student loans are held by white Americans. The balance is with minorities. Black Americans carry 12 percent more student loan debt than White Americans. The problem is with student aid and loans.
We are not Europe and we will never be like Europe as too many believe it is socialism.
“Loans may be discharged under specific circumstances: proof of undue hardship; Closure of school; a school approving a loan to someone not qualified to receive, refusal of the school to give tuition refund, total disability, death of child or death of signer of loan.
Always consult an attorney to determine if one of these reasons you may qualify for.”
I’m happy EWarren is smiling about it. As some mothers here have generously shared, supporting parents of young children to have more time and less stress to be good parents helps the whole world. And this tells me there’s plenty of good there: https://mobile.twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1562802673446883330
Thank you, Heather, for one of your more instructive letters. I've always known that we live under a lopsided system but I never appreciated how lopsided most of our systems really are. In particular, I never understood until I read today's missive how heavily higher education was funded until the 1980s when the rug was yanked out from under it.
I'm within spitting distance of my 80th birthday and rarely a day passes that I don't feel gratitude that I was educated during the 1960s. My brother recently retired from a 50 year career in medicine and he reminisced about paying $25 per semester for his medical education back in the day. When I was in the hospital for a hip replacement last year, young surgical residents were anxious to begin practice and start paying down their $300K in medical school debt. This is a key reason why we have had so much difficulty recruiting primary care physicians. Their reimbursement is structured by the insurance industry such that they cannot afford primary practice while they're trying to pay of a med school loan.
Beginning in the 1950s, we allowed MBAs to displace MDs at the top of emerging health care corporations. In my field, once technically sound petroleum companies were compromised as MBAs replaced founding geoscientist and reservoir engineer PhDs in the executive suites. Dilution of technical talent in the boardroom carries major consequences, as Boeing painfully has learned in the recent past!
Speaking of loans, would you mind rechecking your math on the PPP loans? The numbers you quoted suggest that ¾ trillion dollars remains to be paid off if they're forgiven. If this is correct, it's an astonishing figure!
I found myself a single mother of a special needs child after a divorce in the 1980s. Although I had sights on becoming a physician I decided Nursing would be more financially attainable. I took out some student loans and worked part time jobs to support getting my degree in nursing. I miked cows, worked at a Woolworths as a cashier and whatever jobs I could do when I wasn’t in school. Some say that was admirable but I still ended up with 15,000 in loans to pay off and the worst part was the time that I didn’t spend with my daughter. I needed to find a fulfilling career to provide for us both and make sure she had everything she needed to prosper and live life to her potential, and be happy and secure. I achieved my career goals and have advanced in my nursing career. And my daughter has had challenges but overall is doing okay. However if I hadn’t had to work extra jobs while going to school full time while single parenting a special needs child, I truly believe her outcome would have been better. I remember when I was in grade school in California in the 60s it was free to go to the junior colleges and very inexpensive to go to state colleges. Then Reagan became governor and everything changed . Then living in Idaho in the 80s Reagan as President screwed up education for the whole country.
After I graduated and started working I worked as much extra that I could to pay off the student loans. That took more time away from my daughter that could have been so beneficial to her development, security and abilities.
So I applaud President Biden for taking this step that has potential to provide so much more than financial relief, but gives time and nurturing back to our children
Karen, I remember those years too. You worked hard single parenting, going to school all for a better future. School was so much more affordable. Cal Poly was $70 a quarter and yes, community college was free. And blame Reagan for raising tuitions and taxes and taking away mental health services and hospitals and the list goes on. My loan, $2500 was mostly forgiven as I taught in a low income school after graduating. Repubs have caused so much lasting economic and social damage in this country. Policies aren’t just for a term. They can last decades.
I agree Irenie. I lived in the Bay Area and Reagan started closing down the mental hospitals. Specifically I remember Agnew State Hospital in Milpitas if I remember correctly. Halfway houses were supposed to be set up. But what we saw was what seemed like the beginning of the homeless crisis. It was very sad and cruel, and so unnecessary
Yes, Karen, Reagan decided that schizophrenics and those on the spectrum no longer needed to be in a locked facility so he ordered those mental hospitals to close. That has proven disastrous and what about cutting welfare for those who really needed it?? That created the homeless situation that has not been fully addressed to this day.
But you did everything in your power to make a better life for you and your daughter. I certainly hope you are able to reap from the benefits from your profession, one so very admired by me.
Who could have foreseen President Reagan being shot by a person with mental health issues, Not the President.
Oh, the irony!!
Irony, indeed!
Good point there, Patrick!
Meanwhile, in NYC, the “street people” population turned the city into a mind-jarring, frightening place of blight. My parents recalled a casual walk from a theater, and seeing a large group crowding about, they assumed it was one of the many street entertainers, so they shouldered their way in to watch. To their horror, they found themselves among psychotic people carrying on to their own hallucinations. The following decade, Rudy Giuliani emerged as a “hero” for “cleaning up the streets” with ruthless efficiency.
I started working at the local jail in 1985 and saw first hand where those people who had been previously housed in state hospitals ended up when there was no "local option" for any of them.
I have a friend whose son is schizophrenic. She had to move her son to a locked facility in Florida because there were none in CA. She headed NAMI in our county and found no other alternative. She now lives in Florida with her husband who is going through early stages of dementia and her son, who she took out from the facility to save money. She regrets moving.
I feel for her. As I've said many times before, we're the most backward of the western industrialized nations.
America is anti-American.
Marlene, you really describe so many families, hidden or hiding. People who have been “committed “ can be held for three days and then released. Supposedly for continuing care and with a continuing diagnosis. But that care is nonexistent. And worse in and since the Pandemic.
How we as a nation deal with both of these issues (well, all of them) Is a travesty.
Ally, we really did not deal with these maladies at all. We allowed these people to be thrown in jail, in prison, to just be convicted for a crime they had no control over. They are still in prison and that too, is a travesty. The Innocence Project folks have continued to investigate those who are on Death Row. They are trying to transform lives everywhere and I wish them continued success. Our judicial system has to partner with mental health divisions more and more so that the innocent get help and the outright guilty, serve time in jail. Bad cops are slowly being caught and dealt with, but not quick enough. I am certain you saw plenty, Ally. Being a woman and being gay, it must’ve always been very challenging for you. I imagine you held steady because what else could you do?! We have a long ways to go but change can happen. In the words of Barack Obama “YES WE CAN!”.
4 holding rooms in ER at local Catholic hospital for mental patients sad situation, but no where to put them
See, that is pathetic and ridiculous!!
I had a friend who finished his medical residency in Seattle circa 1983 & worked off his medical school loans treating inmates in the Seattle jail. Same experience but, this young Doc was fully capable of initiating a proper treatment protocol.
I bet you did Ally.
I worked in Chicago during that time. The hospitals were literally dumping van-loads of people directly onto the streets! Prisons have became the "mental health care" in this country.
That is what is very very sad in our country. Improving health must become our next major goal. There isn’t one person who has not been traumatized by Trump’s 4 years plus J6.
Improving healthcare AND shoring up the social safety net to Scandinavian standards.
❤️ I totally agree!
Very true.
Unconscionable by any measure, and republicans have skewed the story and bragged about their evil for decades. Surely one of the reasons why Rupert Murdoch chose that time to honor us with his evil presence. From WaPo in Jan 1981 “at a dinner last month In Washington honoring Mr. Murdoch for his work on behalf of Mr. Reagan, Representative Jack Kemp, a New York Republican, Said, ‘Rupert Murdoch used the editorial page, the front page, and every other page necessary to elect Ronald Reagan President.’” And the Republican version of history began in earnest…
🤬🤬
It’s so sad and should never have happened.
My recollection is that there was a general push to close down mental health facilities because conditions in them were generally very bad. The result was, indeed, that people who were in mental institutions were "dumped" without backup facilities for their care, resulting eventually in homelessness and all the associated problems. Reagan was bad news in many ways, but was not the only one to shut down mental institutions. Again, this is based on my memory. If I'm wrong about it, please post a correction.
Some were badly run, yes, but others were effective.
I remember as well, Karen; "homeless" People began to appear in the SF Financial District when I was a full time law clerk & I walked to night class at 6 pm. 1983-1986.
I worked in SF off of Golden Gate and VanNess in the 70’s. When approaching city hall, the only homeless person you’d see was a guy relieving himself near the trees there. One person!
I went to Berkeley Jan '73 to June '75. I don't know who was homeless and who wasn't, but there were significant numbers with mental health problems. I do remember once, when I had a room in a fleabag hotel next to campus letting a woman who was obviously quite mixed up sleep on my floor.
There were also a lot of people there at that time who were poor, and seemed to be there for the cool of Berkeley, and probably because it never got too cold there.
“San Francisco business owners propose civil disobedience.Frustrated business owners in the Castro District have threatened to stop paying city taxes and fees if the city does not help the area’s unhoused people. “You can’t have a vibrant, successful business corridor when you have people passed out high on drugs, littering your sidewalk,” the Castro Merchants Assn.'s co-president told the San Francisco Chronicle. “These people need to get help.” San Francisco Chronicle
I had a number of friends who lived in the Mission, Castro & other south of Market Districts; the issues go back decades.
I am an advocate for compassion and kindness. and study the research on their benefits. Some great work on this science is happening near you. Are you familiar with the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education based at Stanford Medical school. There are many other great researchers working in California . Jeremy Lent founder of the Institute of Liology also lives in your area. I learned about the awful Mont Pellerin Society from Jeremy.
I remember too. The argument was that the mental hospitals were unduly restrictive and awful for a lot of people who would have better lives in halfway houses. True enough. But then state governments shuttered the hospitals without creating the halfway houses and related services. Lots of non-functional people were dumped on the streets.
Yes, Reagan touted “freedom” as a justification for releasing mental health patients. Sometimes. At other times he cited saving the costs incurred for treatment. Republicans have no shame. It started before Reagan but has been on a steep decline since his time.
He was terrible for California, much less the US.
Unnecessary for certain. California had the funds so you must wonder what was in Ronald Reagan's heart and mind.
No need to wonder. Conservatives didn’t like what college students were doing with their relative freedom, especially their political actions against the war in Viet Nam, against segregation and voter suppression, against poor treatment of factory, service, and farm workers. Saddling students with debt was meant both to control them with that burden, and to reduce the number of people getting educated.
For details, Google “Lewis Powell memo.” Greenpeace has a good article on its website.
Let’s review: Reagan’s mind was shot and absolutely nothing was in his heart. I do think that his son, Ron, Jr., became an lifelong atheist because of his dad’s lies.
Fame and fortune!
And Reagan’s evil has made greedy fools of so many. Who knew that his promises of a better America would be like a piggy bank for the rich and a “bellwether” for hard times for others. And Rupert arrived on the scene just in time to make the Schitt smell like roses. Peggy Noonan was busy writing the script, Michael Deaver had the photo ops aligned with the propaganda, and the dirty tricksters were on pointe. What could go wrong, hindsight is 20/20.
When Regan was running for office there was an enormous billboard on Santa Monica blvd. in Socal that had a photo enlargement of Regan dressed as a fancy dude cowboy drawing his pearl-handled guns from his very fancy holsters with the caption coming out of his mouth in a cartoon bubble saying "Stick-Them-Up-Suckers!"
Wow! Hindsight on how he and his comrades impacted our country financially indicates a continuing ruthlessness of the "cowboy" and his monkey mentality and who had Alzheimers? How much damage did Ronnie do, or was it his "handlers" who continue to try to destroy our democracy and keep the old boy, white-privileged, non-trickle-down-system thriving, for only them? I blame the entire republican party for being so self-absorbed and immature about winning, lying and cheating our country, at all costs, for their white-privileged-male cause. We are not going backwards with your cheating and dumbing down. You need to grow up and live in this new century in America and help us solve domestic and global problems together rather than attack your own country and democracy. Republican behaviors and actions are now fully anti-democracy and anti-American. Time to leave them in the dustbin. Vote like your and our country depends upon it! And may Justice prevail for all these political criminals.
Yes and yes and yes!
❤️
Bad day for cowboys in blue denim and callouses.
Yeah, apologies to all the good cowboys who work so hard. Difficult to be politically correct in a corrupt political world where nouns get so twisted. It reminds me of when G.W. Bush, after 9/11 spewed about "the Axis of Evil" and "you are either with us or against us." We had the support of so many of the world's countries in our grief and then he went and threw out those divisive epithets which was the old-white boy mentality that was often referred to as the "cowboy mentality." I think it is just old-white-privilege patriarchal mentality. Ronnie's good ol' cowboy and monkey routine hid the republican atrocities that were being installed with a benign symbol of America. Well, benign for some of the people.
I never learned about slaves who fought for our country, or who were the original cowboys, because you never see them in books and movies when I was growing up.
"Black cowboys have long been a part of the culture of the American West, though you wouldn't know that if your knowledge of cowboys stems mainly from movie Westerns. The real-life truth is that, after the Civil War, when the Wild West really began to flourish, somewhere around 25 percent of all cowboys were Black. Some historians claim the number is even higher than that.
But Callies, who runs The Black Cowboy Museum in Rosenberg, Texas, simply laughs.
"In 1830, 1840, the 1850s and '60s, there was nothing but Black cowboys," Callies says. "You wanna know why? In Texas, 'cowboy' was a slave name. The white man didn't want to work horses and work cows. He refused to be called a cowboy. He wanted to be a cowhand or a cow puncher.
"Until people started hearing about the cowboys back East, and they didn't know they were Black. And they got famous. And then all of a sudden, the white cowboys started saying, 'Hey, I'm a cowboy.'" https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/black-cowboys.htm
Just fascinating historical rabbit holes I fall down when I read LFFA and comments! But I do find that the historical reference to "cowboy" has slavery/racism at its' etymological roots fascinating.
The patriarchal 'feudal' system is the foundation of our country and it does not want to die, but feels the deep fear of our Constitution almost becoming reality where equality is concerned. Money = Power over. Just ask the white boys like donnie, jared, mitch, the kochs, rupert, etc., oh and vlad and so many of their comrades we are learning about.
Again, sorry to current cowboys, and to all our early black cowboys, where this title was the horrific white man's adaptation of his power to keep them in diminutive enslavement by calling them cow "boys."
Pensa, So informative and so much we never learned in school. And this you write: “I never learned about slaves who fought for our country, or who were the original cowboys, because you never see them in books and movies when I was growing up.” That’s happening, especially in southern states. Florida and Desantis’ WOKE anti education act. Anti 1619, anti CRT which isn’t taught in lower grades. Don’t make my child feel bad about slavery or the KKK or white supremacy. Or Black or Brown or Native people. Don’t tell my children the Truth.”
Thank you for this knowledge and reference to facts. My 87 year old Texan husband (married here in my CA 60 years ago and here has remained) is now chair bound and in beginning stage of dementia and has found pure pleasure in reading every cowboy tale paperback he and our son can find. He’s said it’s because of the strong values of those on the side of what is right, and of course, the familiar settings and history.
I’m good with the family’s cowboy roots of Kentucky to Texas to Montana. We have done it from top to bottom. Hard times to good times we never bought in to anyone else’s idea of who they thought we were. We were never above anyone but damn sure not below either. If I walked by you on the street in a baseball cap and tennis shoes, you might turn your head to see what in the hell smelled like shit and sweat.
You did grab my attention with a statement that holds water. “fear of our constitution almost becoming reality.” That came home with a bang. That’s a new perspective and I am sure glad you brought that up.
Wow, had no idea
Oh, and there are so many still alive today!
I can’t speak to anything but junior college, but I lived in Cali from 1976-79 (Jerry Brown was Governor), and it was virtually free to attend junior college then. I think there was a ~$10 student fee/semester. Reagan was awful, for sure, but I don’t think he stopped the free JC in Cali.
Reagan destroyed the mental health (and so many other) system in California. They moved the patients from Agnew to the empty frat houses next to San Jose State University. I spoke with them every day leaving classes there. To this day Reagan's plan has left countless hundreds of thousands without mental health care in California.
I'm not well enough read to know to what degree Reagan was the mastermind of discrediting democracy and the common good in favor of the claimed superiority of plutocratic leadership, but the whole party seemed in cahoots. Reaganomics metastasized over the following decades into numerous crisis, including natural disasters (COVID is one) negligently prepared for or even made more damaging. Jan 6th and the corruption of SCOTUS can all trace a chain of events, at least in large part from Regan's election.
And in subsequent years, who has gained, who has lost (quality of life, such as job security and defined benefit pensions, as well as relative income) and who has been running in place? What has improved that has anything to do with Republican policies? What has been lost or has measurably declined? Or is threatened? Connecting the dots, what do we see?
Yes, state universities and community colleges were once affordable and heavily subsidized. Who benefited by changing that, individually, or as a society? And apart from the cruelty, what do we pay to keep the mentally in jail rather than in care or else equipped with adequate resources? Why are we doing this?
Think how unqualified modern day repub presidents have caused havoc and mayhem . TFG, Reagan are only two. And when they want to claim they care, like Bush, they label it. Compassionate conservatism. But that’s it. As opposed to presidents who actually care and act.
Actions speak louder than words.
And of course the blame for the homeless is ALWAYS put on “democrat-run” states and cities
By design, listen to five minutes of Rush and Newt for starters… and their Fox adherents carry on the work.
One take on Reagan's effect on higher education: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ684842.pdf
Joy, thank you for this link. So worth reading and so true. “Ronald Reagan left California public education worse than he found it. A system that had been the envy of the nation when he was elected was in decline when he left. Nevertheless, Mr. Reagan’s actions had polit- ical appeal, particularly to his core conservative constituency, many of whom had no time for public education.” Repubs have consistently dismantled and destroyed safety nets and critical services. Public education and public medical services and insurance. Why is the question. The same funds that could provide the best education, medical health services, mental healthcare and insurance and environmental protection are tax breaks for the wealthiest people on the planet. That lack of empathy and compassion is a sickness.
I’m from CA and lived through this era; my sister was at Cal during those turbulent years….not part of the Reagan fan club. And yes, many thanks for posting this; will read it when I’m less angry!
I think that sort of thing was common in the GOP after the New Deal.
Yes and no. Yes, but with important counter-examples. For instance, Nixon's views on the environment (worth looking up) such as:
"Like those in the last century who tilled a plot of land to exhaustion and then moved on to another, we in this century have too casually and too long abused our natural environment. The time has come when we can wait no longer to repair the damage already done, and to establish new criteria to guide us in the future. "
even:
"Quite inadvertently, by ignoring environmental costs we have given an economic advantage to the careless polluter over his more conscientious rival."
And there is more. I posted it elsewhere, but Ike's approach, though politically conservative, still strongly contrasts with Reagan and since:
"This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H.L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
His ghost oversees the evil we have in Republican circles today. They are devoted to the greed, Pharisee mentality, and pseudo patriotism that rules the fools today. At least two of his children knew. That’s what alerted me.
We frequently read that the country started going off the rails when Reagan was elected POTUS. I never felt that the man was intelligent enough to have been elected, much less mastermind such draconian reversals in social programs and wealth redistribution. It all seemed too "scripted" (appropriately enough for a B grade actor): first a grooming period as governor of a major state, and then "showtime". Since Reagan, I have seen other Republicans of modest intelligence gain that high office. George "Dubya" Bush and Little Donnie Trump spring to mind. I know that conspiracy theories abound, but I have a terrible, sinking sensation that underlying the Republican Party (and perhaps the Democratic party as well) is a highly organized, sinister cabal running this puppet show. Not necessarily Smersh, or the Illuminati, but something very evil and very good at maintaining a low profile. I hope I'm just terminally paranoid.
I have always had the same feeling. Reagan and W are not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. But they had egos that could be manipulated by the people in the background you are referring to.
I believe that if there is ever a complete history of politics written about this era, it will need to include the unmentioned Oligarchs who have pulled our strings for decades. The recent revelations about Leo and his benefactors could be a chapter in the book that needs to be written. We have been had by big money.
We have been living in a fantasy democracy and our society is really more like the "Gilded Age" than we realize.
When it comes to sociopathic policy I am never sure how much is mapped out in corporate board rooms and how much is just a drift towards a Hobbesian "State of Nature" when we fail to effectively constrain our human-nature "reptile" impulses. The atrocities of war, including Abu Ghraib etc. (sufficiently terrible, that in the end, Obama decided to hide them) show that it's not just "them" with a problem, and of course collective history of abuse toward other races has been horrifying since well before independence. I think there is also plenty of evidence here and abroad of better angels, but that takes work, solidarity and ennobling humility to sustain. The “devil” enjoys the aid of the power of entropy.
Reagan certainly was authentically, narcissistically, right wing, but was celebrated as "The Great Delegator" (as well as "The Great Communicator") by the press. Yet off to the side, there was some press discussion of his some of his jaw-dropping instances of confusion and memory lapses even during his first term; mostly dismissed as quirky, never early-stage dementia. And Reagan's talent as a communicator is mostly cited as slogans; "The Effective Pitch Man" would far more accurate. Reagan was made for TV, and it was clear, just as on a Hollywood set, there was an large array of cast and crew at the backside of the camera lens, and one would suppose, a director, or perhaps a team of them, that somehow did not appear in the closing credits; just as we are discovering in examining the attempted coup on January Sixth.
Real paranoia is tragic and unhelpful, yet unregulated corporate entities have a very grim history, as the British East India Company's horrifying depredations in India instruct (as well as their role in the actual cause of the real "Boston Tea Party"); and the current era conspiracy to distract from the evidence and consequences of climate abuse is by now well documented. Sometimes they really are out to get you.
You’re not paranoid. Google Leonard Leo. I understand how most of the viewing public had not heard of him, but certainly those enmeshed in politics knew of him and his plans. How are we just now learning of him after he has already caused so much irreversible damage?
“Rules the fools”. Love it. So Jeri why do so many bank robbers wear Reagan and Nixon masks and how soon will the Trump masks be in vogue?
I blame St. Ray Gun for starting a lot of the problems we see today. Now two people running for gov here in Oregon do nothing but show the outcome of homelessness and blame the D's. Nearly every week we have a situation where the police kill someone having a mental health episode. People are working to change this, but progress is very slow. In the meantime the D candidate shows what she has done, is doing, what her plan is and what she has done in the legislature to help ordinary Oregonians. No ugly pictures of her opponents either. I have a Facebook friend who works extensively with the unhoused. It isn't pretty and she does amazing work, but has a high level of frustration because of all the red tape and the hospital treating, but not keeping people she brings to the ER. She has been thrown out of the hospital at least once because they won't put up with abusive language. There are some groups here in Salem who work with the unhoused and run at least one micro housing site. The city is getting more in the pipeline. The one downtown was held up because the apartment owner across the street filed a law suit. He did not prevail. In Portland the mayor had all camps along certain walking routes to schools and around schools removed. It is disconcerting to me how much one man, Ray Gun, can cause to go south and now we have the festering caner death star doing more destruction.
If Oregon can succeed with the unhoused crises through people like her, the entire west coast will benefit, as will the nation.
He also locked up more people than anyone else in history all the while proclaiming “freedom”
He locked up so many people that “for profit prisons” exploded! GOP are relentless in figuring out ways to profit. https://www.criminaljusticeprograms.com/articles/private-prisons-vs-public-prisons/
At my jc, it was 3$ for parking, 4$ for basic health insurance per semester. Or maybe the other way around! My nursing degree cost was books, uniforms and daycare, the last of which was in campus and relatively low cost. With two little kids, it made my career possible.
So true. Reagan was a big supporter of the Mont Pellerin Society. The Koch brothers were major funders.
John Kenneth Galbraith said, “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfish,” Or said another way, “what’s mine is mine; what’s yours is mine also.” The Koch family and their network has been grossly detrimental to the health of our democracy.
Let's not stop at the Koch's. There are hundreds of other wealthy people who have directly impacted our health and welfare by hiring political goons to game the system for their benefit and to our detriment. These greedy, selfish and self-absorbed people have done so much damage, caused so much harm and are responsible for so many deaths. Talk about crimes against humanity.
An amazing book that shines light on one of the right's most influential (and unknown) movers is Nancy MacLaine's Democracy in Chains: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/the-architect-of-the-radical-right/528672/
Had to Google it, but there were so many who signed on to evil.
What is Mont Pellerin? I have not heard of it (though I can guess).
It is a society one can join by invitation only. It was formed in 1947 by Frederick Hayek and 60 of his friends. They met in a beautiful village in Switzerland . Hayek was concerned that Hitler had lost the war. I first heard of them about 2 years ago. I consider myself fairly well read . I grew up in the Republic of Ireland. I have lived in Canada since 1985. Actually I just visited my Swiss relatives and asked them about this. They had not heard of this. I read about them in an article written by Jeremy Lent . The title is The Five Conspiracies everyone should know about. I thought it was impossible that there could be an International organization influencing public policy for 55 years that no one knew about. Please look for yourself and let me know. This article was published by a number of alternate news sources including Open Democracy. I have asked all kinds of people I know including a retired Canadian journalist and a historian. I think perhaps Nancy Mclean who wrote Democracy in chains may have mentioned this. Hayek went twice to Chili to advise Thatcher and Reagan’s nasty friend Pinochet. I view him as a total psychopath. He went on to receive the Noble prize in economics. ……..
Thanks.
"He went on to receive the Noble prize in economics. …….."
Weird. So did Milton Friedman
I had to take a look. “The MPS has close ties to the network of think tanks sponsored in part by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.”
“Philadelphia Magazine described the Atlas Network as "supporting free-market approaches to eliminating poverty and noted for its refutation of climate change and defense of the tobacco industry". “ (From Wikipedia)
The tern "free market" seems almost axiomatic, but what does it mean? The definition of "freedom" I can draw from the way the phase is commonly applied is that this is specifically "freedom" for those with more than enough money to do whatever they damn well please, and to capture markets entirely through oligarchical monopolization.
That's not the same sort of "freedom" we seem to intend to mean when we talk about a "free county" or a "free society" in which the an array of widely shared choices and opportunities for all. A monopoly of political power is despotism.
Yes, I believe you nailed it, free of regulations. Free to lie, price gouge, monopolize, deny livable wages or benefits. The libertarian way.
Yep!
Yep,
I think its one of numerous examples of manipulation using compartmentalization. Republicanism started off with the goal of freeing people from the absolute rights of kings and aristocrats and was founded on ( sorority) , fraternity, equality and freedom.
Witnesses to the birth of the French Republic were horrified by the abuse and cruelty that ensued. In Ireland although women were very active and fought very bravely in the Easter Uprising, they were subsequently wiped out of the history for almost a century. I personally have an abhorrence of violence. Although there is a point where being able to defend oneself is very important. I value Primum non nocere. First do no harm. Restraint is important. Freedom for me does not include an absence of restraint. I do not believe freedom includes the right to hurt and harm carelessly and wantonly.
Please keep looking and check out the article by Jeremy Lent. I am travelling and visiting family. Otherwise I would search and send the link to the article published in Open Democracy. I have the impression that Angela Davis knew about these shenanigans. I bought and tried to read her excellent book written in the Reagan era and I was so upset that I could not read this . Her writing is clear . I just could not bear to read it. It was too upsetting. I trued to read this sometime in the past 18 months when President Trump was still President and I found it too frightening. Heather’s newsletters cheer me up a lot.
Have a similar story, though my student loans were lower because I worked for an employer with a 75 percent education reimbursement benefit. I, too, am the divorced mother of a special needs child. My child resented my absence. She's an adult whose special needs led to cognitive decline. She was placed in a nursing home to await placement in a community of care facility. Sometime after mother's day, the nursing home allowed her to discharge herself. They won't tell me where she is. She's been off social media since last September, doesn't answer the phone, email, or texts. I have no idea where she is, or how to communicate with her. This probably would have been different, if I could have raised her in Biden's version of America instead of Reagan and the Republican version of America.
Oh, Christina, what a terrible thing. Surely every mother here can only begin to imagine that kind of loss. On top of the awareness of your pain, I don't know about anyone else, but your story makes me very angry. What kind of human beings could craft a world in which this could happen? I am so sorry
How very sad and painful for you. Politics has a very human side, lest we forget…
Sending love and hugs your way. Can’t imagine how hard this is (I’m a single parent too so I get what you had to do and why) And yes to raising children and living in Biden’s America! Fingers crossed that your daughter contacts you soon.
O.M.G. I’m so sorry!
"hearting" this doesn't seem appropriate. This is a horrendous situation. I feel for you!
I am so sorry that you have had all this suffering. May you and your beloved daughter be reunited.
I am so sorry.
I’m so sorry Christina. That breaks my heart as I’m sure your’s is broken. My hope is the two of you will connect again soon.
So sorry that you must suffer so terribly because the unfeeling system
My heart goes out to you.
Karen, thank you so much for telling your story. I became a teacher rather than a nurse, but you've made me think back to those days of single parenting, working, getting two degrees, and the absolute exhaustion at the end of the day. Even the time I had left for my son was marred by that constant push against collapse. Like you, I made it, but that most important mother-child relationship wasn't helped. I, too, paid my student loans, and I fully support President Biden's extension of loan forgiveness. For the life of me, I can't understand the Reagan-era belief that if I didn't get mine, then nobody else should get any either. There is enough pie in this nation's pantry for all of us to have a slice--if a few of us would take a little bit smaller piece. I see in Biden's approach a larger commitment to reversing the foundations of how we think about government and each other. It's a huge job and the push-back from those who have benefitted from Reagan's trickle-down economy is like a tsunami. But every single step counts.
So well said Dean!
What too many fail to see is that sometimes you do have to take a smaller slice now, but the reward is more pie for everyone later (second helpings).
Yes. Biden seems to me to be playing a long game. He won't be around to see the impact of this push for a more humane world. Nor will I. But I don't doubt the long-term changes his way of thinking promises. Joe Biden is far from a perfect man, not a perfect president. But at this time in our history, I continue to believe he is the right man for the job
Exceptionally well said, Dean Robertson! Thank you!!
Thank you for sharing your story too Dean. It’s amazing how many of us have similar stories. And we persevere! 💖
Karen, Thank you for setting us on your difficult journey -- combining your strength and determination against the American system, which gave you and many more millions of parents less and less support. I think, too, of the Americans, through no fault of their own, who could not maintain the kind of grueling schedule you did. With all that you have accomplished Karen, you still seem to feel lacking -- and that is the fault of the wealthiest country in the world not supporting American families. I think you accomplished a great deal for yourself and your daughter -- how many of us following your story could have the conviction that we would have done as well? Good work Karen against terrible odds.
💕💕💕💕 You are an amazing, wonderful mama.
I grew up in California and attended college from 1968 to 1971, when tuition was affordable. I happened to come across this from my school newspaper as I was researching something else. This was evidently the turning point in making education out of reach for the non-elite.
1966-10-14 - Daily Sundial - CSUN University Library Digital Collections:
A. S. President John Cagle, along with 14 student leaders from Southern California have come out against gubematorial candidate Ronald Reagan's proposal to charge tuition in the State's colleges and universities.
https://digital-collections.csun.edu/digital/collection/Sundial/id/4687/rec/510
“A. S. President John Cagle, along with 14 student leaders from Southern California have come out against gubematorial candidate Ronald Reagan's proposal to charge tuition in the State's colleges and universities.
Cagle emphasized that he was not against Reagan as a candidate, but only on his stand to charge tuition.
•That could be the final step that puts a college education beyond the reach of hundreds of young people in this state,* they charged. *I am definitely opposed to any levy of this sort for students, Cagle emphasized.“
I was in California during that odd transition as Ronald Reagan began his campaign to shift America to a nation of wealthy plutocrats and, although I witnessed many of the events everyone is recalling, there is something that almost takes my breath away to read the catalogue of all of them together. There is something nightmarish about the relentless speed and efficiency of the Republican machine. The comments here remind me of an article in TWP that outlined, in detail, the half century of planning and preparation that ended in the repeal of Roe. Chilling. We are up against a juggernaut, with a long, hard fight ahead. We need to keep on working.
👍🏼
So much of that tuition goes to sports and marketing. Professors' salaries have not increased significantly, and they are expected to publish and produce work that brings status to the universities.
If you want to get violently ill, take a look at how the University of Oregon spends its money, and what new buildings have been built in pursuit of athletic "excellence". To add the most insult to injury, Bob and Jane Sanders (U of O alumnae) wanted to donate 10 million dollars to the university to build an elite softball facility for the women's softball team. The university initially declined, as they were so busy building men's facilities (the UO axed their successful wrestling program after OSU won a national baseball championship, built a "state of the art" baseball stadium from a donation by another wealthy alum, Pat Kilkenny; along with the Matthew Knight Arena for basketball). Eventually, Jane Sanders Stadium was built, and the general admission area is known as "The Bob". If anyone watched the World Track Meet, you saw what they did to Hayward field. In state tuition is now $13,857 and out of state tuition is 39,309 (with a HUGE international student component.)
Professor salaries? $105 K Football coach's salary? 6 year contract at 29.1 million. Men's basketball is 3.2 million, women's is 750K. The best news? Softball coach gets $345K, basketball gets 337K.
Those salaries are nuts! Some would say this is the price for fielding a winning team and of course in America, winning is everything.
Americans (generally) have all the wrong priorities. Instead of finding success in their own lives they vicariously enjoy other people's success.
I'm not suggesting that being the best at something is the goal; but being the best person you can be is reward enough.
Whoa!
This is an important point in Will Bunch's brilliant new book: "After the Ivory Tower Falls"
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/will-bunch/after-the-ivory-tower-falls/
Exactly!!
The football coach at UCLA, a public university, makes $4.1 million annually.
it shows where Americans put values. Always sports. Teachers? Nada.
First Reagan screwed up California then moved on to screw up the country and so many people’s future. But he was a good actor who cleverly pulled the wool over our eyes.
There are those who would dispute the "good actor" sobriquet, and I am one, but he was a decent con artist and set the stage for the Republican party as we see it now. Authoritarianism under any other name would maintain the stench.
You’re right. He was a B grade actor and a fake cowboy, not a good actor in the sense of theatrical quality.
Even as a kid in the 1950s I recall not liking his vibe, and yet he became immensely popular with the press and the public. I was never able to see what they saw in him. and in retrospect, he just seems worse. It was never big, heavy handed "government" (which Republicans blatantly love to sic on others) that Reagan famously decried and discredited, it was government of, by, and for, ALL of the people he and his party despised; and that's what is under systematic attack today.
He actually made my skin crawl, the Reagan Democrats were the vilest of all.
Ronnie worked over the General Electric ( GE) lunch circuit.
His monkey was a better actor. Now we have to contend with the orange monkey, who is a horrible actor but highly financed by his comrades and cult.
Better actor than I ever thought, right out of central casting. Oscar-level performance at that presidential thing. But the thinnest veneer, and the greedy made it seem real. Sort of like chump but he was an abject failure, although the portrait of him spewed by Fox would make him a super hero to MAGAt fools and greedy bastards…
The Great Communicator
With Noonan’s script and Nancy as executive producer…
Doesn’t take much of an actor to fool the MAGAt rabble.
You are in a wonderful club, Karen, that receives little recognition but quietly does it’s damndest to provide for our kids, love them, support them by growing ourselves, and applauding their opportunities when they are grown. Our children’s success is our reward. I understand every nuance in your comment today.
Your last paragraph is my nomination today for the best closer I am sure to see all day.
Thank you.
Salud, Sister. 🗽🥂
Yes - best closer!
Thank you Christine! I feel strongly about this and the words just flowed.💖
Ok first, I must snicker a bit….my first job was a cashier at Woolworth’s!!! ALL if the departments were managed by older women in the neighborhood- I think we all walked to work. Store Manager was a young energetic man. I learned so much about every part of that store from those nice ladies. Then I became a single mom to 2 girls. I eeked out AA degrees in Acctg & Comp Science (BY MAIL!!) only because my employer agreed to pay for them. With 2 girls I could never have found an extra dime for education. All those seemingly minor events set me up for a 45 year career as a Contract Administrator.
Much of it available to me just because I was lucky enough to have been born an attractive white middle class girl in the USA.
If my tax dollars are spent helping others out of debt, just so they get the same opportunities I did - I’m thrilled with that!
Good old Woolworth’s! What would we have done without them? 😹
Karen, I became a single parent in 2006 (I have one daughter). I was a college graduate with a well- established career and few financial challenges other than keeping to a strict budget (first world problem in my case). I hear stories like yours and just so admire the courage and persistence it took for you to work that hard to earn a degree while caring for a special needs child. It is physically and emotionally difficult to be a single parent. Add special needs to that and many would fold under the enormous pressure. That you were so successful is inspiring!
One of my major goal as a single parent with my daughter was to help ensure that she had “only” $20k in students loans to pay back when she graduated. I succeeded. Yes, I still have a modest amount to pay on the loans I took out for her but it is manageable. I’m proud of that in part because my ex decided he didn’t need to help our daughter after she turned 18. Meanwhile, Rian got herself into the London College of Fashion, one of the most prestigious fashion schools on the planet - with zero scholarship money available. So momma was left with the six figure bill - gulp!
What the Biden Administration has done is to truly help many families find balance - work hard, pay their bills and work towards a brighter future. Grateful for that, particularly for women like you and me; single parents, working hard, paying the bills while also raising kids. Hope this helps lots of folks reach towards their dreams. And Karen, give yourself full credit. What you did and continue to do for your kid is outstanding!! From one who knows....
Wish the government would find a way to dun the deadbeat dads who decided to just walk away. These are the same issues we are facing with forced birth. The man can, if he chooses, skate away.
Thank you Sheila! And you and your daughter are amazing. Congratulations to both of you💖
I believe state legislatures have responsibility too for the escalating costs. My college education was relatively achievable in the early 70’s though I had a PT job for the university during three of those years. With the trend to Repub state houses and Repub disdain for education for all and against “elites,” state support for higher ed greatly diminished since Reagan.
Here is a timely essay about the Reagan era:
Delanceyplace: eclectic excerpts by editor Richard Vague
https://www.delanceyplace.com/index.php
Today's encore selection -- from A Brief History of Doom by Richard Vague. Ronald Reagan's campaign slogan in 1980 had been "Let's Make America Great Again." For his re-election campaign in 1984, it was "It's Morning Again in America." A series of financial crises in that decade would belie that:
"Many remember the 1980s as a renaissance in the United States. Newly elected president Ronald Reagan and Federal Reserve chair Paul Volcker were credited with defeating the inflation of the 1970s. Real GDP growth averaged 3.3 percent. Unemployment declined to less than 6 percent, and the stock and bond market ended the decade up 228 percent and 253 percent, respectively.
"Yet those memories belie stark realities of calamities and crises. The decade of the 1980s was one of the most economically turbulent and crisis laden in American history.”
Reagan marked a new acceleration in the gap between the ultra-rich and the middle class. It's why the 1% controls 80% of the nations wealth, and the middle class less than 15%.
By design, deliberately and with malice
Thank you for sharing your story, Karen. You, and others like you, are our truly greatest Americans… and always will be…. generation after generation to come.
Thank you KD❤️
According to Republican talking points, Karen, you’re supposed to be angry and bitter because you had to pay off your loan and now others are getting a break not available to you.
Instead, you realize that the hardships you had to face took away time and nurturing from your daughter and you don’t want others to suffer in the same way. You are an admirable human being and exemplify what is best about our country and about any member of a civilized society.
I bet you’re a great nurse.
Thank you so much Gina. I can’t imagine being angry or feeling cheated like the republicans want me to be. Apparently they think everyone is as greedy and self serving as they are. Of course their goal is to put down President Biden’s successes. My goal is to contribute to a better future for our children.💖
Karen RN
WOW!
Karen you are the selfless giving love that the United States Of America is founded upon. You are the quiet celebration of the American Patriot satisfied with all the hardship it has been required to achieve your ability to contribute making America a better place to live, to enjoy freedom and peace!
You are the dream obtained by exerting yourself beyond exhaustion beyond what you could ever imagined without quitting!
You are the true American hero recognized through outpouring of gratefulness by all those whom you daily inspire by your freely given lovingkindness for their comfort and peace!
Thank GOD for giving us the blessing of your Amazing Grace!
Sweet Precious Angel!
Kudos to you. Please focus now on self - stewardship for you and your daughter. Focus on both your health and well-being. Consider checking out the work of Riane Eisler and Dr.Gabor Maté . Also Master Mingtong Gu , founder of the Chi center and all who work in the field of healing intergenerational trauma. You are an inspiration.
Absolutely love Dr. Gabor Mate. Stumbling across a lecture on C-Span years ago, I was able to see my family trauma in a different light. Absolutely warped my brain, in a very positive way.
Yep
Thank you Frances. I will check them out❤️
Thanks, I will be interested to read what you think. No rush. I am trying to learn all I can about healing individual, intergenerational, collective and planetary trauma. I have no delusions about my own very limited capacity to integrate all kinds of information and co- creating an ecological civilization. At almost 66, I am sorting through all that I have been taught, learning and unlearning with the goal of participating in respectful exchange of ideas. Currently I appreciate my Irish Catholic upbringing for focusing me on the Common Good . I am very impressed by the work of Kristin Monroe , who reports that only 3% of us are capable of true altruism. I view people who really care for those with complex needs as likely in this group. I am certain now that I am in the 97%. By this I mean that when I accept my many personal flaws and limitations rather than aiming for sainthood, I do better. For example I see many benefits to living a vegan life-style. However the effort I would need to make these changes would take from other commitments. So I try to choose and support plant based eating but I am a flexitarian. I am attempting to find common ground , common cause and decency and to discern between imperfection and true anti-social behaviours . Not sure if this makes any sense to you. People like Dr.Gabor Maté are a lot mire articulate. I am very concerned about how to transition away from fossil fuels and exploitation of nature in wise ways that cause the least harm to the most vulnerable everywhere. Thanks for your interest. My website is called BeCompassionateNLca. I love how Heather integrates so many complex ideas and shares the essence with her writing. I am not aware of any equivalent Canadian writer. I admire the writing of my Zoom course friend named Gracious Unfurling. She also writes very clearly on the wonder of nature and our Responsability to protect non human lfe.
You are an inspiration in so many ways. I am sorry you had to spend so much time away from your daughter just to pay off debt due to loans to finance your education. I too worked to pay for my masters degree as a single parent, but l did not have a special needs child nor were the costs off education so prohibitive. As a nation we need to make education more affordable and reward those who strive to improve their lives. Education benefits the nation. And, loving parents are it’s backbone.
Thank you Jane. You are an inspiration too. I love your last two sentences 💖
The Ryan win is more than a bellwether. It's a map of the minefield. Look at the issues he won on, versus the issues the Republican campaigned on. And in the next two months, things are going to change in such a way that it will be harder for Republicans to run on those issues since they will not be the big issues they thought they would be.
"Dewey Beats Truman!" indeed.
I did some GOTV calling for Ryan, and even with a list that I’m sure was of reliable Democrats, I found the responses surprisingly positive. As to what Pat Ryan said, I’ve been arguing for months that the Democrats’ theme should be, Democracy is on the Ballot This Year. Because it is. And voters—many of them, at least—know it.
Glad to hear your confirmation Jon.
How many ways do Republicans impede democracy? Let me count the ways.
Education is one of the areas the Republican brand has chosen to control. Ron DeSantis politicized school board races. He chose which candidates to endorse, and they won.
“Florida has led with purpose and conviction that our school system is about education, not indoctrination,” Mr. DeSantis posted on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, along with an image of his slate of 30 “pro-parent” candidates. At least 20 won on Tuesday, and five went to runoffs.’ (NYTimes)
Much of the destruction of democracy is happening within the states – which ones? What do we know of the balance of power between the Biden administration and the federal government versus the conservative right-ring states such as Florida, Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Mississippi, Wyoming, West Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and the list goes on? What sort of education are the children in those states getting? Do we have a lens through which to know?
In regard to which states with destruction of democracy, the answer is Republican majority state legislatures. The best way to keep democracy is to focus on those pivotal states identified by The States Project as having Democratic majorities in state house chambers that can be saved or gained.
https://statesproject.org/why-states-matter/
The States Project organizes Giving Circles to send funds to good candidates in those pivotal states, so the candidates can spend more time on meeting voters in person--the most effective way of getting votes. Here is our HCR inspired Tending to Democracy Giving Circle:
https://www.grapevine.org/giving-circle/1XQhnyD/Tending-to-Democracy
Thank you, Ellie. You have provided the information that many of us are looking for. The States Project will be part of my morning.
Thank you, Fern, and anyone checking out The States Project. As we are all bombarded by hyperbolic screeches for our money, it is relief to find an organization that analyzes data to determine how our precious donor dollars can be used most effectively.
Ellie, you have provided a crucial resource to the states where there's a chance for democracy to succeed, and, yet, we are still left with the dangerous divide between the red states and the rest -- a country at odds with itself.
Brother against brother, friend against friend, where have I heard that before.
Hmmm, it does sound a bit familiar, now that you mention it.
A mental exercise here, Fern. We know that the Republicans foisted this partisan, divisive 'war' upon the country. Their attack on democracy is to divide and conquer. They created and exploited personal grievances along the lines of race, religion and ethnicity. How can Democrats win the war that Republicans started?
Ignoring this reality is not the answer. The progressives in the Democratic Party think in terms of more socialized solutions that reduce income and wealth inequality and level the playing field. All these solutions require the wealthier members of society to contribute more to the greater welfare of others. Therein lies the problem, because sharing income and wealth is verboten to the wealthy. The rich don't want to help others and in fact they would rather spend their money suppressing and repressing those who threaten to take any of their wealth and income.
Republicans use this dynamic to their advantage. So, I ask what can Democrats do to win? How do we overcome the prevailing human nature found in America and transform it to the human nature prevalent in the socialist Scandanavian countries, for example?
Every progressive effort is so watered down or compromised, first by centrist Democrats and then by Republicans, that successful outcomes are hard to achieve. If Biden could have passed the original $8-trillion Build Back Better most Americans would have experienced great personal improvement in their lives for generations to come. We know progressive policies will work but we never get the chance to prove it. Which brings me back to winning the war at the state level because it just isn't going to get done at the Federal level anymore (not that it ever did.)
At one time I supported Howard Dean's fifty-state strategy, but that opportunity has slipped by. When Democrats are in power at the Federal level should they start looking at ways they can shift the dynamics at the state level. For example, end blue states subsidizing red states. What about moving government assets out of red states and into blue states? For example, the Texas economy is highly dependent upon federally funded and operated agencies. I remember when Trump was trying to move departments out of Washington to red states. It was the Department of Interior as I recall.
I think Democrats should think more in terms a carrots and sticks approach to empowering blue states and penalizing red states. They did the carrot with Medicaid but without the stick, red states were able to do as they wish without penalty. There has to be more penalties for those states that choose non-compliance.
Democrats need a long-term vision that is uncompromising. Republicans want all or nothing; win at any cost! They assume that supreme power is theirs for the taking/stealing. Maybe it's time for Democrats to think the same way. If Democrats truly believe that their ideology is best for the country, then they should not waiver or compromise. Democrats should not surrender leadership once they have it and should do whatever it takes (legally) to achieve the greater good for all. A good start would be cutting their ties to the wealthy. Democrats are not going to be able to change minds. Their success will only come from successfully implementing programs that do the most good for the greatest number of people which is exactly what the wealthy do not want to see happen.
You know how government operates better than I do, Fern. What do you think is doable?
Thank you, fellow HCR Substackers who signed up and/or donated to the cause of pushing our Blue Wave!
Here is a link to the candidates and state legislatures supported by The States Project:
https://statesproject.org/get-involved/give-smart/
Hi Ellie, Your periodic bundles with links to grassroots organizations, candidates and other useful info is an outstanding extension of LFAA's people library, along with HCR's, NOTES, and subscribers' recommendations. This aspect of the forum helps keep engagement alive. So, today I joined and donated to States Project as well as to Beto's campaign. What you do serves one of the most important reasons we are here. Thank you and Cheers!
Thank you, Fern! As we inspire each other and mobilize ourselves, we exponentially build the force to save democracy and just plain goodness in a threatening time!
That 'goodness' means so much. 🌱
Count on it being skewed to the max, DeSantis and Abbott are smart and crazy bastards. The power plays are Hitleresque
From your keyboard to God's eyes....
Is there anything the far right fears more than well-educated voters?
Well-educated unionized voters.
Well educated children who read “banned” books who grow up to be well educated voters
And that's why they've undermined public universities and increasingly discourage attendance.
And also why they want to voucher-ize primary compulsory education - to allow your tax dollars to support religious education and to degrade public elementary schools and subsidize private/religious ones, the way they did with post-secondary.
Big priority for gov of TN who wears his religiosity on his sleeve.
Fake religiosity, I recognize Pharisees when they utter a syllable
The Pharisees were more the populists, while the Saducees were the ones with the money- the Hoi Poloi so to speak. Jesus was a not-so-young hand worker who had had enough of bureaucracy - an aging hippie who has my vote.
Not to undercut the point of the welling theocratic threat, but the "hoi poloi" were the common people, the masses in ancient Greece. I would guess that the Saducees were the equivalent of the "aristos."
Like button not working, so LIKE.
I read somewhere that "ignorance is strength".
Deliberate ignorance is worse than stupidity
Indeed!
Apparently not, JJ. And seems some of the mainstream media cannot acknowledge support of the Biden administration to clear some of the staggering debt that hamstrings our graduates of higher education. Robert Hubbell reported today in his Substack essay….
“The Editorial Board of the Washington Post seemed to take personal offense over the plan in an editorial entitled, Biden’s student loan forgiveness is an expensive, regressive mistake. The Board wrote:
‘The loan-forgiveness decision is even worse [than the four month extension of the moratorium on loan repayments]. Widely canceling student loan debt is regressive. It takes money from the broader tax base, mostly made up of workers who did not go to college, to subsidize the education debt of people with valuable degrees.’”
https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/promises-kept?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share
I took that negative, whining typical opine by the WPost as personally offensive and replied this to the editorial board.
“Russian warship…..go f*ck yourself.”
I doubt it will be printed on their OpEd page.
Salud, JJ. 🗽
Morning, Christine. I too, took offense to the WaPo editorial. I LOVE your response. Kind of wish it would be posted on the OpEd page.
Great reply, Christine!!!! I'll go do the same and if a million other people do it, they'll get the message even if the comments are rejected.
I cancelled WAPO* and NYT and I suggest that if a million other progressive subscribers do the same, those "Judas" news organizations would be in a heap of trouble.
Same can be said about all the corporations that are supporting the Republican neo-fascist coup to take over America. We know who they are. Why can't people vote everyday by choosing to NOT SUPPORT these companies and the uber-wealthy who run them? Support small business even if it costs you a few dollars more. In the long run it will be for the best.
* I paid for an annual subscription that runs out at the end of the year. I'll miss a couple columnists, but I encourage them to leave WAPO and get their own Substack letter.
Vote Every Day. Make sure every $.01 of your money goes to businesses and products made or shipped by companies that support Democracy and We the People.
Love your comment Chips. That’s my kind of POV.
Salud. 🗽🥂
Hard to believe that WAPO once saliently battled Nixon's corruption.
B b b but, if they have more money in their pockets, they'll spend more, which goes into tax coffers, which - oh yeah, that's a good thing.
🗽Salud, Christine.
"Widely canceling student loan debt is regressive. It takes money from the broader tax base, mostly made up of workers who did not go to college, to subsidize the education debt of people with valuable degrees."
Not like very progressive tax cuts for the ultra-rich.
"the broader tax base, mostly made up of workers who did not go to college,"
Somehow, when the US was more up and coming, we did this on the other end, by subsidizing state college degrees for students who were not wealthy without launching their their careers with crippling debt. Which system more advantages the less wealthy and which the more; the system then or the system now? How did we get to the place of so many students needing huge loans to begin with? What is the overall effect on America's place in the world when the cost of college becomes prohibitive?
Uneducated voters without guns that would do their bidding?
No, JJ...
FAIR voting districts
They can't handle the truth (sort of like "kryptonite").
Molinaro stated that abortion was not an issue in New York because it is legal there and he’s all for states rights concerning abortion.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/08/22/politics/new-york-19th-district-special-election-abortion/index.html
Far too often, people don’t worry about loss of a freedom until they lose it. Luckily, the voters saw through his lack of concern and voted him out.
This result, even though the turnout was less than 30%, shows that some of the voters are aware of the threats to democracy and are willing to vote to save it. With gerrymandering, we will have to get out the vote to fight back—past midterms have shown how much is needed.
Thank you for always alerting us to new threats and successes. Thank you also for adding the necessary historical perspective.
So much good news to comment on! The "Building a Better America Tour" is exactly what's needed to tout the administration's programs to the American people. I hope officials are also sharing the forecast that the deficit will decline $1.7 million and repeating — over and over — that Republicans will take away Social Security, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act if they ever gain control of Congress and the Executive Branch.
Add in the GOP's accelerating attacks on democracy and basic rights, and the message for the nation is a contrast as clear as light and darkness. It seems the people are listening.
Yes, I think we need to remind to remind the public of Republican embarrassments, failures, and crimes, and also lay out a compelling alternative vision. We've done it before, and made it at least part of the way.
Maybe Mr Biden will hold rallies, a,tried and true means to besot the populace. He jest, of course.
A note in added proof: Federally subsidized student loans were a boondoggle for financial institutions, who administered the loans, reaped the profits, but had to assume none of the risk.
A crime in my book.
a technically legal crime in need of laws to prevent predatory lending! Do we have them yet?
We had the CFPB Eliz Warren championed that tfg’s administration tried to kill or at least diminish. I’ll have to research its current standing.
The difference in interest rates and penalties
for my first 2 kids vs my last 2 kids was astronomical and geometric. Not only had interest rates skyrocketed (1% for 1st son to 8% for my daughter which was all timely paid) but the cost of college had easily doubled or tripled in those 10 years. A lucrative racket in private sticky hands.
not in private hands which is how there are no consumer protections ... a lucrative racket absolutely ...
Exactly why Biden’s move was necessary
💙🇺🇸 A lot of good things happening- I believe. Thank you for the bellwether explanation- I didn’t know that- interesting.
Me neither! I tell you, sometimes it pays to stay up late! Haha.
For a good time, find a copy of Connie Willis's sci-fi novel "Bellwether"!
Education is investment in one's country.
It is putting country first.
As opposed to vampirism, putting parasites first, which creates a caste society defaced by debt slavery.
"Putting parasites first..." well put, Peter.
Caste society indeed - a rigid hierarchy is the main goal of regressive reactionary conservatism. And guess who’s at the top of their pyramid? It isn’t the shrinking middle class, nor low income people, POCs or women, unless they’re the “right” kind.
You have to create a stratified society in able to rule from the "top"; dispense favors to some and terror to others. It's effective from a sociopathic viewpoint, but it's a curse on humanity. In the end it may be our own undoing.
And what matters more about the concept of country than its people? All of them, and those to come.
And an old crone at my assisted living facility wears a tee shirt calling Biden a parasite, no mercy
That is so interesting. I was raised in a Jungian sense where the crone is "An archetypal figure, a Wise Woman." But the original definition is "the hag, the helltrot, the ugly and skinny witch." Geeze, I wish to be the former rather than the latter!! Except, I do cherish being part of the "helltrot" of the crone stage, for democracy these days!
Perhaps we need to "give 'em hell".
Oh, yes, I am ready for more of that, JL!
Ugh, Jeri! You need to spit-wad that person…relentlessly.
There’s the professorial rhetoric I love, Peter. Scholar in ‘da house.
🗽
Oh my, I wonder if the conservative Justices and Leonard Leo are tossing and turning? Just imagine, the future of America that they have plotted for so long just might go awry.
I sincerely hope so. They could do with a severe case of heartburn as well.
Never forget that money buys the evil souls. As Geo Washington said “Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.”
The fact that gas prices have dropped steadily over the past few weeks makes complaining about them moot. Though inflation remains high, it has leveled. The fearful "sky is falling" message of the Republicans cannot compete against the actual threats to freedom posed by the Republican voter restrictions, the Dobbs decision, and the fact that Biden is making good on his campaign promises. I know many who will applaud and welcome the student loan cancelation they have been awaiting.
Unfortunately, the new meme is "gas prices are going down because the November elections are getting closer." Haters just gotta hate I guess.
Well, CA is still high at $5 a gallon and more for premium. :(
California always pays $1 or more per gallon than the rest of the nation. I used to travel on business and was amazed to learn how consistent that is. The oil companies know Californians will pay whatever -- there is almost no public transportation that goes where the freeways (and suburbs) do.
As in Tex, can die of old age waiting for public transit.
I was shocked to see they don’t pay the highest gas tax. Maybe they add on additional environmental fees or such? https://igentax.com/gas-tax-state-2/
Ca does add State tax on the federal one—a tax on a tax. But looking at the list, the states with relatively high gas taxes have snow and floods/tornados, so their road maintenance costs must be high.
That’s an interesting thought. Thanks for sharing that!
Mass transportation would help so much, but Americans are extremely wedded to their vehicles preferring convenience (though stuck in traffic hardly seems convenient), privacy, comfort, etc. In the Bay area there is good mass transportation, but it is quite costly. Sadly, fossil fuels and, up to now, the auto industries keep us using the old internal combustion engine. It is a technology we should retire. EV's pose new problems, but may be a bridge to a better future vehicle.
One reason the prices are higher is because of additives/blends to reduce greenhouse emissions. Which is probably cancelled out because of minimal public transportation? I live here.
We now know most of the EV go to california too. I bet gas is lowest in texas too?
❤️
California also invests far more than other states in their communities but when big corps don’t pay their fair share guess who does?
Bummer, Marlene. Hope the needle moves (down) for you!
I think the pundits and you are missing the point. Pat Ryan gets it. He had the right word - the fury is "visceral." Gerrymandering doesn't matter a bit if women are voting for their freedom. Not just Democrats, but independents and sane Republican women won't care what party they belong to. They will vote D if that's the only way to preserve their freedom. Reproductive rights cut across party lines and women are ANGRY. This will be our first chance to vote since Dobbs came down. There will be hell to pay.
Gerrymandering is still something to be opposed. We can’t rely on visceral fury every election. But your point is well-taken: the Regressives will f*ck around and find out.
Let’s hope so!
Although I liked Biden's reply to cries of unfair, that he doesn't see Republican and other opponents - of this moderate means tested student debt forgiveness -objecting to all the benefits the wealthy enjoy through government policies favoring them. I think anyone fulminating at the unfairness of student debt forgiveness - which because of means testing will help Black people who have suffered from economic injustice - maybe they need to reminded of some things.
Higher education boosts earning power and home ownership boosts intergenerational wealth. This is one reason why the Federal Government provided GI Bill benefits for college and home purchases. Both helped build the middle class after WW2. Another group benefitted indirectly from the GI Bill and from direct government subsidies - real estate developers who built suburban communities and sold to veterans. They argued before Congress that by subsidizing developers of these suburbs, the government would move Vets out of the big cities, where they were vulnerable to political radicalization - especially Vets returning from the European front where they'd been exposed to socialist and communist propaganda. And with homes outside the cities where many worked - Vets would be disinclined to attend evening meetings or commute back on weekends - and they'd be too busy with home maintenance and improvements anyway.
One group of Vets was written out of the GI Bill. Black WW2 Veterans were not eligible. And Black people were red-lined out of these new suburbs - where government also invested in creating excellent public schools. Oh - and for Black people who later did manage to earn and save enough money, and overcome social racism and racially discriminatory mortgaging practices - even today when they go to sell their homes they are market valued significantly lower than the same homes owned by White people. In one case, the exact same home. After their home was undervalued two professors stripped it of its Black themed possessions and had a White person pose as the owner - and presto bingo the house was valued significantly higher. Just the tip of the iceberg of economic injustice.
Opposing this act and running on opposing 'woke' in education is just more proof of Republican racism against Black people. As if we needed more. Red hats are the new White hoods. And you don't have to hide your face. You can shout your prejudice out loud in full daylight - while as DeSantis recently said 'putting on God's armor.' By which I assume he also meant the Black robes of the Leonard Leo Federalist Society Supreme Court majority bent on outlawing civil rights.
I didn't know Black WWII veterans weren't eligible for the GI Bill. How truly awful of this nation to allow that to occur.
Here is a real eye opener my sister sent me, expertly done by a history teacher, on what we were NOT taught in school about Blacks and their (lack of) civil rights since the first slave ship arrived. A little long, "Neoslavery" is well worth the time.
https://youtu.be/j4kI2h3iotA
Hi, MaryPat. Thank your for offering "Neoslavery". At first, I wondered what age group it was pegged to, but then I realized that its pace and organization wasn't to my liking, while the idea is. Too fast and too confusing as far as I am concerned. I tutored 6 to 10 year-olds for a couple of years - definitely not for them. I believe your sister's experience indicates that this works, but not for me.
Thank you, thank you, Mary Pat, for that pointer. I just finished watching "Neoslavery" and it is what you say, eye-opening. I haven't subscribed to any channel before, but I'm going to sign up for Nebula. And start exploring. There is so much to learn. Thank you.
A heartbreaking, but very informative book about this and other injustices is The Color of Law, by Richard Rothschild, 2017.
Black WWII veterans were eligible but discriminatory practices and policies made it very difficult for them to access and benefit from the GI Bill. https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/African_Americans_and_the_G.I._Bill
"Red hats are the new White hoods." ✔️
Good reminders, succinctly done. Thank you.
African-Americans weren't written out of the GI Bill. Instead, African-Americans' ability to access and benefit from the GI Bill was made exceedingly difficult, though not impossible, due to discrimination in both education and low interest loans. https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/African_Americans_and_the_G.I._Bill
He was also credited with BDE…Big Dick Energy, by Kari Lake at Arizona Turning Point student summit. She is Repub candidate for guv. It was cringeworthy, it was so offensive.
Support Katie Hobbs. Dem candidate and previous Sec’y of State.
🗽
Are any repubs paying attention to the Biden administration’s policies and bills that will not only save them money now but in the future? And save our environment? Thank you, HCR for highlighting the critical legislation and bills the Dems are voting in. Chances are repub voters will like tax breaks and loan forgiveness and benefit from climate change related jobs and technology. If they want that to continue they better think what will happen if they vote Red. Do they remember TFG’s first bill practically first day to reward his millionaire and billionaire friends and corporations with tax breaks? As for me I saved $50 that year. Gratitude to President Biden and Democrats. Vote in this coming election to continue Government for the People. My postcards are ready to send in October.
So are mine!!!
Per ABC"s national 8/24 evening broadcast, NEWLY registered Women Voters in Wisconsin, Michigan & Pennsylvania outnumber Males 12 to 1.
Hoooooray!!!
Hey:
I am sorry but canceling $10 thousand of Federal and up to $20 thousand of Pell loans is a joke. And why is this a joke? I think Biden is trying to get right with his god. Since the seventies he was the major, or as much of it he could be, road block to every student loan relief bill showing up in Congress. In 2005 he did a masterful move to remove the final leaf of debt relief for students. There is nothing left.
When Stabenow was running as a Senator again, I caught her in public and asked her amongst younger people when she would change her stance on student loan debt. She gave me the standard pablum answer. Even so I got her attention and put her on record in front of the younger people there. At Showdown in Chicago, I caught up with Durbin and cornered him. The only thing aggravating me more is the VA playing games with veterans who were stationed at Lejeune. The VA has a special board who are rejecting many of us who drank and showered in the Trichlorethylene (TCE), perchloroethylene (PCE), benzene and vinyl chloride in the water. I drank the water.
When you borrowed $74,000, repaid $175,000 and still owe $235,000; how does $10,000 help? Ok something simpler in the same order . . . $26,000, 90,000, and $89,000. The link: https://angrybearblog.com/2022/06/why-10000-of-student-loan-relief-will-not-help
Rant done. Today the Gov released the PPP loans which were set at 1% interest to be paid back. That information was available since July 4th and they waited till today to release it. Why? I am guessing:
Not on this part: More than 11.8 million Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans were issued as of June 30, 2021, with 708 borrowers receiving the maximum loan amount of $10 million.
Of the total number of loans, 10.2 million have been partially or fully forgiven. The average dollar amount forgiven was $72,500. Of the borrowers receiving the maximum amount, 625 loans have been partially or fully forgiven.
I am guessing the gov did not want to release it earlier because students would then expect more. Instead, they released the info today, We are talking $739 billion in PPP loans forgiven. That is almost as much as the Defense budget and 46% of the student loan debt.
This is the Biden from the seventies to 2005. He will toss students a tidbit and mess with veterans on Camp Lejeune water contamination. So far Rituxan infusions work when I need it.
Biden should have and could have done more since he is a major instigator of student loan issues. The data is out there. I have it too.
I assume that many people receiving $10,000 or $20,000 in loan forgiveness will benefit and be able to get better control over their finances. I cannot speak to the extreme cases you mention--and I know they may be more common than extreme. Loan forgiveness has to be accompanied by tighter control of private student loan financing, preferably with loans originating from the government and not predatory lenders. Like loan forgiveness, commonsense restrictions on originators of student loans are widely opposed by Republicans in Congress. We can't even get a federal limit on usurious loans to consumers because the lobbyists for the banksters are so well entrenched.
Access to high quality education makes our nation stronger and our society more just. The solution to the student loan problem (besides freeing indentured students) is to make public education affordable to begin with, as we were doing prior to "Supply Side Economics" (AKA goverment by and for the rich).
Exactly
Nevous;
It is very difficult to get the point across. No commercial company made these loans the way they are today. Congress, of which Biden was a part, made them this way under false pretense that students were declaring bankruptcy. These were never truly private loans. There are private college loans as of recent and they are less than 5% of the total numbers holding student loans and are not a part of the forgiveness. They were always government loans, originated by colleges and submitted, and serviced by private entities.
Even when Albert Lord at Sllie Mae took these loans over, they were still government loans. He became a multiple million rich man servicing these loans.
There is "no" commercial loan that a person can not escape through bankruptcy in entirety immediately or in a period of a few years. Prof. Heather knows this about student loans. Every college Prof. knows this issue with student loans.
Your comments of "commonsense restrictions," "preferably with loans originating from the government," "etc." Those extreme cases you mention and prefer to mitigate, were not so extreme at one time which is why I showed the origination amount too.
But while I am here, let me give you another example (s).
There are 2.4 million people 62 years or older who hold an average of $41,000 in student loans. If we set an interest rate of 2.5% and a minimum payment of $250/month (most loans are higher interest rates) The $41,000 would be paid off in 16 years. Think they will be alive then? Is 2.5 million people still an extreme example.
Lets do 51 to 61 year olds . Average of $44,000. 6.4 million of them. Lets do the same $250 and 2.5% (I wish we had 2.5% in our loans, The lowest was 3.5% for my one son [his rate]). Eighteen years for this example. That would make them 69 years old if they were 51 years old.
These are Dept of Education population numbers.
I paid all of my college loans, then I paid my 2 kids' undergraduate college loans. Sorry, but quit your gripping the amount of college loan forgiveness isn't bigger. It's something--and it's going to help a great many people. I'm so grateful other people won't have it quite as hard as I did.
Did you check the facts that Bill H provided? The idiom, 'The devil's in the details' makes a lot of sense to me... While often said, how carefully is it followed? It expresses the idea that whatever we do should be done thoroughly and that the details matter.
Fern:
Like most people, he did not check the facts. Most do not want to know the facts.
For a decade, I have written on student loans. I have had parent plus loans and my three have had student loans. I have advised other students on the dangers and talked to parents. There is no way out of these loans which are available on commercial loans for students except through death, becoming handicapped physically or mentally, or through a program which allows forgiveness after a period of years such as teaching. And even then if you look for that forgiveness it may be denied because of errors by the government.
Looking at the numbers of upvotes tells me a lot about readership knowledge of the issue. I paid my loans too while working maintenance at an old age home in Illinois. I had my BA in Business with a minor in math at a Lasallian college in three years. My Masters is in Economics (Econometric Modeling, Advanced Finance, Capital Allocation). Three plus years going downtown Chicago to a Jesuit University.
I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. My dad never made it out of grade school. My Italian mother had a high school diploma. What she saw in him, I am not sure. When I left for USMC boot camp in 68, my dad was scared. He was a WWII vet. We had worked the scaffolds together on the building in Chicago. I was a Laborer for him and others at 16 on weekends. I can lay brick, tuckpoint. I was taught how to house frame in high school, draft my own house plans. Builders do not like me.
In the end, this old Marine Sergeant has no problem challenging Senators, Representatives in public.
Thanks Fern for believing in me.
Fern cites the Devil is in the Details which is so true, particularly in politics.
I'm reminded frequently that don't let the best be the enemy of the good. I hear what you are saying Bill but ......
It's a WIN if it survives.
I do believe in you, Bill, and I would like you to believe in me. Please read the comment that I posted today, which is based on research done by journalists and experts in communication with the New York Times. I read it carefully and think that if Biden's loan forgiveness plan gets through court challenges, perhaps, even the Supreme Court, which will doom it, is a good plan. Give it a chance!
I won't pretend to be as knowledgable about college loans in general as Bill H.
But I plowed my way through all 50+ pages of the 1965 Higher Education Act yesterday. I saw nothing that prevents the Act from being changed, except on the negotiated rates and allowances to States without other approvals. The President appoints the Commissioner, and the Commissioner seems to pretty potent. Bush the Younger made changes to the Act, although initially marked "temporary," they were later passed as an amendment to the Act. I have not read the full text of what Biden's EO. It beggars belief that the Commissioner appointed by Biden--Richard Cordrary, formerly of the Consumer Protection Agency--would not implement a what is for now another temporary, and so far 1-time, change in the program.
Bush the Younger ended college loan discharge by bankruptcy (which may have been a change to the bankruptcy laws, but I thought those were set by the States). And Bush also initiated college loan forgiveness if the kid worked in teaching (& nursing?) in underserved areas for a fixed number of years (5?) after graduation. Obama put a cap on the monthly payments relative to the kid's (not the parents) monthly income (my son's monthly payments dropped from $800/mo to $400/month), and a full discharge after 20 years. Since the payment drop went into effect--because I personally know of that one--apparently Obama's Commissioner implemented his EO (don't personally know about the implementation of the 20 year discharge).
Federally--backed college loans are discharged without being repaid all the time. They are discharged if the individual can demonstrate significant financial hardship--and the bar is very high after Bush ended discharge through bankruptcy. After working in teaching (and nursing?) for so many years after graduating. Death of the child for whom the loan was taken out. Death of the parent whose name is on the loan.
And the last for of college loan discharge I personally know of (kids' godmother after car accident) is total discharge of the loan balance due total disability resulting in the inability to work of the parent/person whose name is on the loan. The individual must be on SSDI, and the disability must be well documented by medical records and notarized affidavits from all the physicians who care for the patient and an IME (independent medical evaluation) of the medical documentation. When Pam had to do this, it took her 3 full years.
Then- because who ever said the US government doesn't have a sense of humor--the amount of the loan discharged due to full disability w/ inability to work by the Department of Education becomes taxable income to the disabled person to the IRS. Then, if necessary, the disabled person then has to file an appeal to the IRS proving they are unable to repay the taxes owed on the college loan discharge amount.
Fern:
We have no choice. It is met with great disappointment by those who have pushed on this for years. They hoped for more
I do believe in you and the others.
Thank you to my favorite Black Belt X-Marine.
Thank you, Fern. It sounds unbelievable and yet... it's true. These outrageous situations are not just a few extreme outliers. They're quite common among student loan borrowers of all ages.
I am reading George Lakoff’s book The Political Mind. He describes repubs’ attitude toward vets (and the lack of effort to take care of them) as “you knew the risks of military service; you signed up for it anyway; quit your bitchin’ “
Hmm. Did I know that the Army Nurse Corps would harbor antisemites at Brooke Army Medical Center during the rise of Reagan? Did I know that officers weren’t necessarily honorable and that the man in charge of our Basic Training was a serial rapist? I was a new graduate without any means with a small college loan that was largely forgiven for military service.
I love George Lakoff. His books on semiotics explain how Reagan’s people began twisting the meanings of words, stigmatizing those who didn’t agree with the Repug slant on the World.
Dawna
I am sorry for your experience. I hope you made it out of there safely.
Bill
ML;
I am going to take this comment as a quote from the book and not your opinion. I did read it a few times and thought about it. Sorry, if I took your comment erroneously.
At 17, 18, and 19 (me), nobody knew what we would experience. No one knew the water was tainted in 68, 69, 70, and 71. The risks of the military do not include toxic water on the US military bases or PFAS from military fire trucks spraying down airplane fires or burn pits in Vietnam and Iraq. My nephew has issues from his USMC 10 years. We talk about it. He seems to have his head on straight.
We were fed John Wayne movies, and Leon Uris books. Hey, we would all be heroes, come home to the beautiful woman of our life, and have that family in suburbia. No issues too . . .
Yes, I was repeating what the author said. I have nothing but respect for the military and feel this shoddy treatment is unconscionable.
I have actually heard that sentiment expressed. And isn't that what Trump told the wife of the active service personnel who died on duty?
Yes, it was. I had forgotten about that.
Don’t forget the PPP that went to companies that did not need it.
Here are facts about Biden's loan forgiveness and student loans in general from 'Morning', the New York Times' newsletter this morning. In sum, Biden's plan is pretty GOOD, but may wind up in the Supreme Court where good things go to die. This summary is worth the read.
'The bottom of the top'
'Fewer than 40 percent of Americans graduate from a four-year college, and these college graduates fare far better than nongraduates on a wide range of measures. College graduates earn much more on average; are less likely to endure unemployment; are more likely to marry; are healthier; live longer; and express greater satisfaction with their lives. These gaps have generally grown in recent decades'.
'As a result, many economists have expressed skepticism about the idea of universal student-loan forgiveness. It resembles a tax cut that flows mostly to the affluent: Americans who attend and graduate college tend to come from the top half of the income distribution and tend to remain there later in life. College graduates are also disproportionately white and Asian.'
“Education debt,” as Sandy Baum and Victoria Lee have written for the Urban Institute, “is disproportionately concentrated among the well-off.”
'But the idea of loan forgiveness has nonetheless taken off on the political left. As Democrats have increasingly become the party of college graduates living in expensive metropolitan areas — and as the cost of college has continued rising, while income growth for many millennials has been disappointing — loan forgiveness has obvious appeal.'
'These crosscurrents put President Biden and his aides in an awkward position. Biden fashions himself as a working-class Democrat. (He is the party’s first presidential nominee without an Ivy League degree since Walter Mondale.) He did not initially campaign on a sweeping plan of college debt relief, adding it to his agenda only after he defeated more liberal candidates in the primaries, as a way to reach out to their supporters.'
'Yesterday, after months of behind-the-scenes work and internal debate, Biden finally announced his plan for loan forgiveness. And it is an attempt to find a middle ground.'
‘The worst of both’
'By definition, the plan will not help the many Americans who do not go to college. But its benefits are targeted at lower-income college graduates and dropouts, especially those who grew up in lower-income families. Compared with other potential debt-forgiveness plans, Biden’s version is much more focused on middle-class and lower-income households.'
'It is restricted to individuals making less than $125,000 (or households making less than $250,000), which will exclude very high earners at law firms, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. For anybody under this income threshold, the plan will forgive up to $10,000 in debt. For somebody who received Pell Grants in college — a federal program focused on lower-income families — the plan may forgive an additional $10,000.'
'More broadly, Biden also said he wanted to enact a new rule to restrict future payments on college loans to no more than 5 percent of a borrower’s discretionary income, down from between 10 percent and 15 percent now.'
(My colleagues Ron Lieber and Tara Siegel Bernard have written a Q. and A. that is full of useful information about the plan.) Check The NY Times if you have a subscription.
'The emphasis of Biden’s plan partly reflects academic research that has found that the people who struggle the most to repay their loans don’t fit a common perception. They are less likely to be baristas with six figures in debt and a graduate degree than blue-collar workers who have a smaller amount of unpaid loans but never graduated college. That worker, Biden said yesterday, has the “worst of both worlds — debt and no degree.”
'A study by Judith Scott-Clayton of Columbia University found that the loan-default rate for borrowers without any degree was 40 percent. For those with a bachelor’s degree, it was less than 8 percent.'
'The details of Biden’s plan mean that it targets the people most likely to default, rather than the caricature of them. “$10k will forgive ALL the debt of many millions of borrowers,” Susan Dynarski, a Harvard University economist — and herself a first-generation college graduate — tweeted yesterday. As an example, she cited “those who went to community college for a semester or two.”
'There is still some uncertainty about whether the plan will be implemented. Biden is enacting it through executive action because it seems to lack the support to pass in Congress, and opponents may challenge it in court.'
“Let the lawsuits begin over presidential authority,” Robert Kelchen of the University of Tennessee predicted. “I wouldn’t count on forgiveness happening for a while, and it may go to the Supreme Court.”(NYTimes) Link to the newsletter is gifted.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/briefing/biden-debt-relief-student-loans.html?
"'The emphasis of Biden’s plan partly reflects academic research that has found that the people who struggle the most to repay their loans don’t fit a common perception. They are less likely to be baristas with six figures in debt and a graduate degree than blue-collar workers who have a smaller amount of unpaid loans but never graduated college."
It is of interest to me that, if I recall correctly, Elizabeth Warren was a Republican that believed the "GOP" saw that those who declare bankruptcy are cheats. She researched the subject expecting to confirm that prejudice and discovered that the stereotype was for the most part a lie, that most who so declared were victims of misfortune. That's not to say that there are none who are irresponsible and cynically cheat the system, but they can be found in all walks of life, even some who are very wealthy, with lawyers in tow to help them successfully perpetrate their scams.
Yes, you are correct about E. Warren. That was a political turning point for her as well.
Fern:
Ugh, deleted it.
I have a tough time with generalities.
So lets do some numbers. Baseline Distribution of Income and Federal Taxes (Tax Policy Center 2020). ~32 million (18.8%) are in the $100,000 to $200,000 tax bracket. Average Income is ~$144,000 annually. It appears income is skewed more to the $100,000 than the $200,000. ~10.3% of all tax units make greater than $200,000 annually. 70.9% of all tax units make less than $100.000 annually.
I am having a tough time understanding where the issue is. Yes there are singles making greater than $125,000 annually. And yes there are married couples making greater than $250,000 annually. The percentages are small and there are many more who are far less in income and carrying loan burdens far greater than $10,000. 8.8 million people 50 years and older are carrying student loans on average $41,000+. Those loans will not likely be paid off.
Out of curiosity, how many people were concerned about trump's 1.7 trillion tax break heavily skewed to the upper incomes. Or the PPP loans of which an average amount of $72,500 in loans to 10.2 million people were loaned out or $739,500,000,000. All of that amount was forgiven. The kicker to this being this was completed July 4th and announced on August 24th. Why the delay?
We can do much for the rich in income and small companies and little for students with bad loan in the first place? The nation is monetarily sovereign and could still absorb more debt like they did with trump's tax breaks and the PPP. The return would be just as great as the PPP with the taxes paid.
We lost each other on this one. We'll have another chance to come together. In sum, I hope Biden's plan goes through the hurdles. It will help students and families who need it the most. Cheers!
The positives outweigh the negatives.
From my point of view, anything that Democrats can do for the young and for women is a major plus for the Democratic Party at election time.
Democrats will screw this up though (like they did with ACA) if they don't put the most positive spin on it at each and every opportunity. Most people have a short attention span and go with the gist or hearsay. Sad but true.
Biden is an old Congressional Warhorse. The name of the game up there is compromise. Sometimes our heroes give on something they don't want to in order to get what they want on other things. I don't criticize unless there is a life long pattern of obstruction by a particular person.
Lucille;
I know who "Come-On-Man" Biden is. He has been totally unforgiving with student loans.
This act is little more than a thin veneer over rough sawn lumber being passed off as something better than what it actually is. It looks good but it should not be taken as serious when he has been one of the main obstacles since 1978 to greater relief.
More cash flow to consumers (students), means they aren’t eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches 3 times a day. I think what people don’t get is that people of color suffer the most with these loans. Everyone who applies or applied has very good intentions to repay them but, to get ahead, companies require a masters degree. This is where the loans go off the deep end for individuals. The banks made and are still making, money, hand over fist, off of innocent people. It’s criminal!
Attempted like. I also wish what Biden did specifically included all trade/craft schools. Learning and apprenticing to be a plumber or electrician as important (maybe more) than college.
Agree!
Systematic
A bad loan is a bad loan when there is no escape even with hardship. They can also garnish a portion of already small SS payments. If you read what I said, Biden has been instrumental in closing the door on any escape from student loans since 1980, which trump did numerous times as well as other Americans. Student Loans could have been dischargeable after 7 years pre-2000.
Biden had his beliefs on student loan debt and was severe in his actions to hold people to them. They are unlike any commercial loan today.
I voted for Biden as a Democrat. I voted for other Democrats and I support my opinions with data , not supposition, conjecture, and innuendo. I spend much time studying the issues in order to support my words when going up against politicians and their learned staff. I will vote for Biden again although I would have preferred other candidates. I am in the same age group as Biden.
Fifty-four percent of student loans are held by white Americans. The balance is with minorities. Black Americans carry 12 percent more student loan debt than White Americans. The problem is with student aid and loans.
We are not Europe and we will never be like Europe as too many believe it is socialism.
“Loans may be discharged under specific circumstances: proof of undue hardship; Closure of school; a school approving a loan to someone not qualified to receive, refusal of the school to give tuition refund, total disability, death of child or death of signer of loan.
Always consult an attorney to determine if one of these reasons you may qualify for.”
Www.studentaid.com; www.student loans.com. 2021
I’m happy EWarren is smiling about it. As some mothers here have generously shared, supporting parents of young children to have more time and less stress to be good parents helps the whole world. And this tells me there’s plenty of good there: https://mobile.twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1562802673446883330
Thank you, Heather, for one of your more instructive letters. I've always known that we live under a lopsided system but I never appreciated how lopsided most of our systems really are. In particular, I never understood until I read today's missive how heavily higher education was funded until the 1980s when the rug was yanked out from under it.
I'm within spitting distance of my 80th birthday and rarely a day passes that I don't feel gratitude that I was educated during the 1960s. My brother recently retired from a 50 year career in medicine and he reminisced about paying $25 per semester for his medical education back in the day. When I was in the hospital for a hip replacement last year, young surgical residents were anxious to begin practice and start paying down their $300K in medical school debt. This is a key reason why we have had so much difficulty recruiting primary care physicians. Their reimbursement is structured by the insurance industry such that they cannot afford primary practice while they're trying to pay of a med school loan.
Beginning in the 1950s, we allowed MBAs to displace MDs at the top of emerging health care corporations. In my field, once technically sound petroleum companies were compromised as MBAs replaced founding geoscientist and reservoir engineer PhDs in the executive suites. Dilution of technical talent in the boardroom carries major consequences, as Boeing painfully has learned in the recent past!
Speaking of loans, would you mind rechecking your math on the PPP loans? The numbers you quoted suggest that ¾ trillion dollars remains to be paid off if they're forgiven. If this is correct, it's an astonishing figure!
"This is a key reason why we have had so much difficulty recruiting primary care physicians."
"MBAs replaced founding geoscientist and reservoir engineer PhDs"
Indeed, a lopsided system, interwoven amongst itself.