stavridisj @stavridisj If Trump moves on to fire the head of the CIA and the head of the FBI, both true professionals and patriots, we are going to be in uncharted waters for the next 90 days. It all has terrible “burn it down” on the way out feeling. It is playing with fire with our nations security
stavridisj @stavridisj The ongoing churn in our national security organization is very concerning. We’ve had four national security advisors and now we’re about to have our third or fourth secretary of defense depending on how you count it. This is not the time to be changing leaders in the Pentagon
Barbara Starr @barbarastarrcnn General Mark Milley,JCS chrm, held "tank" meeting with joint chiefs and combatant commanders around the world in the wake of Esper being fired, a senior US military official said. Mil officials will now call counterparts to assure them the US military maintains its stability.
So my cousin's husband is hardcore Trumpian and a regular gambler. He goaded me into a bet on the election, I took Trump to lose for $50. So I pmed him my address to send the money this morning and he just responded:
So my cousin's husband is hardcore Trumpian and a regular gambler. He goaded me into a bet on the election, I took Trump to lose for $50. So I pmed him my address to send the money this morning and he just responded:
The election isn't over yet.
Your relative is right. The media doesn't call the winner! This is from an experinced lawyer:
November 8, 2020
Another Cliffhanger By Clarice Feldman
A Little Civics Lesson
On Saturday, when rallies were scheduled to take place in key battleground areas to demand only legal votes were counted, the major networks announced Biden-Harris were the winners. Apparently, they are under the impression that they decide election results. They don’t. On December 14, electors chosen by state legislators cast their votes. No one else but the state legislators have that right. (Article II, Sec. 1,§2 of the Constitution). Certainly not the press, nor state boards of elections, secretaries of state, governors, or courts.
If they have reason to believe the elections in their states were unlawfully conducted and the results fraudulent, they can act to override them. (You can see a detailed history of this section of the Constitution in this fine article by Daniel Horowitz.) The Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania legislatures are majority Republican. At first glance these states -- particularly the precincts in Milwaukee, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia -- are the most suspect.
Is there ample evidence of fraud sufficient to have altered the will of the legal voters in these states? It sure looks that way.
Specific Evidence of Fraud
Saturday, Rudy Giuliani conducted a press conference in Philadelphia in which he brought forward some of the 50 Republican poll watchers who will testify in a civil rights suit to be filed in federal court tomorrow that despite state law and a court order, they were deprived of a right to observe the counting of the sea of late-coming absentee ballots which turned the tide against the President who had closed Tuesday night by a huge margin. Preliminarily, those were 500,000 mail-in ballots, the most fraud-susceptible kind. He indicated similar affidavits were being collected by Republican poll watchers in Pittsburgh involving an approximate 300,000 absentee ballots. He noted there was evidence of backdating of the ballots to meet a deadline, an utter lack of security for these ballots, and there were other infirmities as well -- including votes by dead people (including Joe Frazier, who died five years ago), that the uniform votes in these batches for Biden was statistically impossible. Pennsylvania was not the only state in which the Trump team was receiving such information -- he saw the same thing in Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina and anticipated the challenge might well involve more than Pennsylvania as the evidence is coming in. Kyle Baker has tweeted a number of such anomalies:
Swing state voting irregularities:
Biden outperforms Senators in swing states, underperforms in VA, NH, RI
Biden underperforms Hillary/Obama in cities, except in MI, PA, GA, WI
Biden mail-in dumps with 100% margins
GOP lose ZERO House races
You can find more of his analysis here:
While we are not privy to what steps the FBI is taking nationwide, there is confirmation that the FBI is investigating backdating of ballots in Detroit, and Attorney General William Barr has authorized deployment of armed agents to observe recounts. (The only time in the process agents can go in is after the voting when the votes are being canvassed and tabulated.)
The Supreme Court has issued a temporary order to Pennsylvania requiring them to separate all ballots which arrived after Election Day.
In October, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted a three-day extension for mail-in ballot counting. The decision was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 4-4 ruling, a vote shy of the five votes needed to grant a stay. The split ruling came just days before Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the bench.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling in October allows ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 3 or in cases where the postmark isn't legible. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has also ruled that mail-in ballots cannot be thrown out when the signature on the ballot clearly doesn't match the signature on the voter's application.
If the Court had applied the Constitution, then we wouldn’t have this mess, for it’s clear under Article 1 Sec. 4, cl 1--that the Pennsylvania court had no constitutional power to change the “times, methods, and procedures of elections.”
(A full rundown of the already pending litigation authored by Hans von Spakovsky is valuable background for those who want an accurate state of the play as of November 6.)
The willful deprivation and defrauding of state residents of a fair and impartially conducted election constitutes a criminal offense, but should Biden be declared winner, the U.S. attorneys in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, and Milwaukee thus have only about 10 weeks in which to initiate fraud cases that the attorney general could pass on to a special counsel he designates.
Apart from federal litigation, investigations, and prosecutions, the states involved themselves can and should look into these claims of fraud and interference. In Wisconsin, the Speaker of the House has directed an investigation into mail-in ballot dumps and voter fraud. Pennsylvania has subpoenaed election officials.
In Texas, a social worker has been charged with falsifying 134 votes of people in state hospitals
I’m sure there are other cases like this pending or of which I have no knowledge at this time.
It is difficult to prove that the fraud you can find in such a short timeframe was sufficient to so substantially affect the election that it must be redone. I know, I was a member of the legal team that got the UMWA fraudulent election for Tony Boyle over Jock Yablonski thrown out and a new election ordered. It was a long battle and involved the work of countless volunteers throughout the country to document the fraud and intimidation. (All of this is well- documented in the recently released book Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America. )
So, it would be wonderful if there were a simpler way of documenting widespread fraud than these. I’ve seen two claims. The first is that the DHS printed all the ballots using a secret infrared watermark so all the manufactured ballots would be easily detected. Nonsense. This would be impossible, and DHS has already debunked it. Ballots carry not only the top of the ticket, but countless local candidates and initiatives and they are printed and distributed locally.
The second claim was made on Friday by General Michael Flynn’s lawyer Sidney Powell on Lou Dobbs’s show that there is a likelihood that
“three percent of the vote total was changed digitally, by using the “Hammer” program and the software program “Scorecard." That would have amounted to a massive change in the vote. [snip] In addition they ran an algorithm to calculate votes that they might need to come up with for Mr. Biden in specific areas.
It doesn’t seem that implausible when it was proven that a “computer glitch” in Michigan had switched thousands of Trump votes to Biden votes.
The computers need to be checked in all the other districts in Michigan and in the disputed battleground states which all use the same program from an outfit called Dominion.
Powell says this all can be documented and the case on the computer-falsifying results will be filed in federal court in multiple states to enjoin the certification of any election results. If the Trump team can prove the tallies were changed digitally, it has its easiest, fastest route to enjoin certification of the results.
What if There’s no Winner Declared by Inauguration Day?
I’ve seen lots of assertions that in such a case Nancy Pelosi will be the interim president. Nope. Should that eventuality occur, the House votes for an interim president and the Senate for an interim vice president. (The House votes are by state -- one vote each -- and the Republicans hold a majority of 26 states. Our founders were geniuses. Never forget that.)
Aftermath
Iowahawk who seemingly hates all politicians, is quite correct:
Trump loses
Pelosi & Schumer face insurrection after election disaster
The Squad is now radioactive
Polling industry is dead
Silicon Valley torches $5 billion for absolutely nothing
Fox News beheaded by their own viewers
my God, it's like the Red Wedding
Don’t give up. My friend “The Infamous Ignatz” shares my view about pessimism:
Reality exists but we prioritize what parts of it we react to. However that is more to do with our prejudices and has little bearing on their real importance. Pessimism or optimism not only illuminates what we think the future holds it animates what we do to shape and alter [or not] the future and it influences those around us in the same way.
Seems to me, in a realm with as long a time frame and as many variables and the unending tidal swings in public opinion and culture that politics feature and with as many opportunities for influence it presents, pessimism really not only makes no particular rational sense, it tends to the self-fulfilling prophecy end of things. And since it prophesies ruin, what rationale can be advanced that it presents any social utility?
Personal pessimism, to the extent it isn't "contagious" no doubt has considerably more utility, but as soon as it becomes a pathogen that infects others it has become a drag on whatever virtues and values it represents because it no longer is a private prudent guard against impending danger, but instead becomes disaster's unintentional agent.
So what is the point of it and somewhat in the manner of Pascal's wager, how does it make sense to choose it?
And I have good experience with why we have to remain optimistic. After Mr. Yablonski and his wife and daughter were murdered, we begged the FBI to come in and investigate. At the time, media outfits like Time, then a major influencer, suggested on no basis except perhaps disinformation from interested parties that the Mafia did it, while organized labor wanted this swept under the rug, as did politicians in big coal areas. Joe Rauh and I met with Attorney General John Mitchell, who told us he’d just been on a call with Secretary of Labor George Schultz who poo-pooed the idea of union involvement, saying Yablonski had lost, so the union had no motivation to kill him. I showed Mitchell our research that Boyle had lost among working coal miners and his victory had been because he’d rounded up the retired miners into separate locals and threatened them with loss of their pension and health benefits if they voted for Yablonski. I argued that Boyle couldn't continue to run a union when his only support was among retired workers. The next day the FBI was ordered in. The roundup of all who participated took place bit by bit. Tony Boyle was convicted of murder and died in jail.
The vote for Biden was made up of the dead and the nonexistent voters, so he won’t be able to do much. Only live voters count in real life.
Never give up the good fight. Never hamstring your will to fight on with pessimism.
It's a real shame, but entirely predictable. The government had 9 months of Covid to prepare for this election and get there stuff in order to conduct a safe but fair election. It was obvious from the games being played in certain states that this was going to end up in uncertainty and conflict. Now here we are...
My guess is, we won't have this all sorted out by Jan 1.
I hope he does. And for whatever reason he doesn’t win the gop nomination, I hope he runs 3rd party.
I’d actually hope he’d run Republican. There would be the whole primary process again and I would be interested to see how the rest of the Republicans would act. Would Ted Cruz about-face his previous about-face? Who would Lindsey Graham endorse? Would we see the 2016 versions of those two and Rubio or the 2020 versions. Lots of questions...
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
It will. The elections were safe and fair and there has been zero evidence presented to the courts to indicate otherwise.
Pay attention to the actual lawsuits and how the courts are tossing them out. The actual lawsuits have yet to present any evidence of voter fraud.
This is all being done to pacify a man that is not emotionally able to accept that he lost.
The interesting question to me is, will this entire effort to undermine faith in the democracy backfire and ultimately end up suppressing his hardcore base in future elections. Will they begin to believe their vote doesn't matter so what is the point of going to the polls?
So my cousin's husband is hardcore Trumpian and a regular gambler. He goaded me into a bet on the election, I took Trump to lose for $50. So I pmed him my address to send the money this morning and he just responded:
Barr Hands Prosecutors the Authority to Investigate Voter Fraud Claims
The attorney general said that he had authorized “instances” of investigative steps but that inquiries should not be based on specious claims.
WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr, wading into President Trump’s unfounded accusations of widespread election irregularities, told federal prosecutors on Monday that they were allowed to investigate “specific allegations” of voter fraud before the results of the presidential race are certified.
Mr. Barr’s authorization prompted the Justice Department official who oversees investigations of voter fraud, Richard Pilger, to step down from the post within hours, according to an email Mr. Pilger sent to colleagues that was obtained by The New York Times.
Mr. Barr said he had authorized “specific instances” of investigative steps in some cases. He made clear in a carefully worded memo that prosecutors had the authority to investigate, but he warned that “specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims should not be a basis for initiating federal inquiries.”
Mr. Barr’s directive ignored the Justice Department’s longstanding policies intended to keep law enforcement from affecting the outcome of an election. And it followed a move weeks before the election in which the department lifted a prohibition on voter fraud investigations before an election.
“Given that voting in our current elections has now concluded, I authorize you to pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certification of elections in your jurisdictions,” Mr. Barr wrote.
A Justice Department official said that Mr. Barr had authorized scrutiny of allegations about ineligible voters in Nevada and backdated mail-in ballots Pennsylvania. Republicans have circulated both claims in recent days without any evidence emerging to back them.
Mr. Barr did not write the memo at the direction of Mr. Trump, the White House or any Republican lawmakers, the official said.
Mr. Barr has privately told department officials in the days since the election that any disputes should be resolved in court by the campaigns themselves, according to three people briefed on the conversations. He has said that he did not see massive fraud, and that most of the allegations of voter fraud were related to individual instances that did not point to a larger systemic problem, the people said.
But critics of Mr. Barr immediately condemned the memo as a political act that undermined the Justice Department’s typical independence from the White House.
Editors’ Picks
Comfort Food Recipes to Help You Feel Better
Betty Dodson, Women’s Guru of Self-Pleasure, Dies at 91
At Home With Our Ancient Cousins, the Neanderthals Continue reading the main story “It would be problematic enough if Barr were reversing longstanding Justice Department guidance because of significant, substantiated claims of misconduct — that could presumably be handled at the local and state level,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
“But to do so when there is no such evidence — and when the president’s clear strategy is to delegitimize the results of a proper election — is one of the more problematic acts of any attorney general in my lifetime,” Mr. Vladeck added.
Mr. Pilger, a career prosecutor in the department’s Public Integrity Section who oversaw voting-fraud-related investigations, told colleagues he would move to a nonsupervisory role working on corruption prosecutions.
“Having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications,” he wrote, “I must regretfully resign from my role as director of the Election Crimes Branch.” A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Mr. Pilger’s message.
Justice Department policies prohibit federal prosecutors from taking overt steps, like questioning witnesses or securing subpoenas for documents, to open a criminal investigation into any election-related matter until after voting results have been certified to keep their existence from spilling into public view and influencing either voters or local election officials who ensure the integrity of the results.
“Public knowledge of a criminal investigation could impact the adjudication of election litigation and contests in state courts,” the Justice Department’s longstanding election guidelines for prosecutors say. “Accordingly, it is the general policy of the department not to conduct overt investigations.”
More covert investigative steps, like an investigator going undercover, are allowed but require the permission of a career prosecutor in the department’s Criminal Division.
Mr. Barr’s memo allows U.S. attorneys to bypass that career prosecutor and take their requests to his office for approval, effectively weakening a key safeguard that prevents political interference in an election by the party in power.
The memo is unlikely to change the outcome of the election but could damage public confidence in the results, Justice Department prosecutors warned, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. They said that the public posturing by the department also gave Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, a tool to refuse to acknowledge Mr. Biden as the president-elect.
Mr. McConnell and Mr. Barr met on Monday afternoon. Representatives from both of their offices declined to comment on what they discussed.
Mr. Trump faces a steep battle in his attempt to change the election results. Mr. Biden declared victory on Saturday after several news media organizations declared him the winner based on tabulated election returns.
“It’s not merely about showing evidence of fraud but that the malfeasance would actually affect the outcome in several states,” said Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist. “You’re talking about changing hundreds of thousands of votes.”
While Mr. Trump’s campaign lawyers have filed a dozen or so legal challenges to the results in battleground states, none appeared to be gaining traction in the courts. And none were likely to give the president an edge in the votes he would need to change the outcome of the race.
Justice Department investigators are looking into a referral from the Republican Party in Nevada, which claims over 3,000 people who live outside the state voted in its election, the department official said. The official would not say whether the department had opened a full investigation. A federal judge dismissed the claim in court last week.
The department is also reviewing a sworn affidavit written by a postal worker in Erie, Pa., alleging that post office officials devised a plan to backdate mail ballots in the state, the official said.
The local postmaster has denied the allegations and said that the accuser has been disciplined multiple times in the past. That affidavit was sent to the department by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who is a close ally of the president.
In the days after the election, Mr. Barr faced pressure from Mr. Trump and his aides to intervene to help the president. Conservative commentators have criticized Mr. Barr’s lack of action, saying that he was looking the other way.
Mr. Barr had been silent about voter fraud in recent weeks after previously issuing unsubstantiated warnings of widespread fraud because of the large number of mail-in ballots cast in this election. Voter fraud is rare, and no major instances of it have emerged in the election.
At the same time, the department has made it easier for prosecutors to pursue voter fraud cases and publicized details from the investigations that generated headlines that helped Mr. Trump, prompting sharp criticism from Democrats and civil rights advocates.
I have not heard anything about which lawsuits are thrown out and which ones are continuing forward. I assume there are quite a few lawsuits and they are going to try everything in the book to overturn the results, so some suits will be thrown out, but that is not the same as them all being thrown out.
One thing that would be helpful is if the news covered these allegations and discussed why they are baseless. It seems like everytime they interview a republican or cover a press conference, they cut it off midstream and claim that they Trump's people are making baseless accusations.
Well, it seems logical to me that if the news was certain that the Trump campaign was truly making baseless accusations, then the news organizations would present the evidence and information that supported the claim that the accusations are baseless. After all, it is their opportunity to inform and educate the public.
For example, in the lawsuit you linked to, I read just a few accusations: Allegheny and Philadelphia counties hidden from oversight, failure to provide access in defiance of a court order, pre-canvassing activities outside of the time allowed by election law. They are not going to produce physical evidence of these claims. They are going to produce witnesses and get affidavits. These things either happened or they didn't. So why can't a news organization interview a poll worker or election official at one of these locations and systematically debunk these claims? If they are going to say that these are false accusations, it seems like it would be very easy to produce information that showed that these accusations are false. Why not do that?
The fact that these news organizations are telling me that I need to trust them and not trust the claims of the Republican Party without any willingness to actually discuss all sides of the issue and present some evidence of their own, tells me that there is most likely some merit to many of these accusations.
There were GOP poll watchers in PA as admitted in court by the Trump campaign's own attorney in where a "non-zero number" was stated to the judge which drew his ire.
It's really not the press's job to disprove a claim made by the Trump campaign of baseless voter fraud. It is the courts job to rule on the merits of the claim.
Here's this past Sunday's 60 minutes segment interviewing a republican election commissioner from Philadelphia. They also interview republican attorney Ben Ginsberg. Ginsberg represented Bush in the Florida recount in 2000.
There were GOP poll watchers in PA as admitted in court by the Trump campaign's own attorney in where a "non-zero number" was stated to the judge which drew his ire.
It's really not the press's job to disprove a claim made by the Trump campaign of baseless voter fraud. It is the courts job to rule on the merits of the claim.
Here's this past Sunday's 60 minutes segment interviewing a republican election commissioner from Philadelphia. They also interview republican attorney Ben Ginsberg. Ginsberg represented Bush in the Florida recount in 2000.
So where is the disagreement stemming from then? Were observers not let into some areas but not others? Did the Republicans want to have too many people in the stations? Was there exactly equal access between both parties and was there sufficient oversight of the process allowed to ensure a fair election?
Aren't these the simple questions and clarification that any reasonably minded and curious journalist would ask?
The question of there being a non-zero number is not relevant. It's a straw man argument intended to mislead and manipulate people. Clearly a single person is not enough oversight for an entire giant counting center. This is a cleverly worded phrase that is textbook manipulation.
You are right. It is not "the job" of the press to disprove claims made by Trump. Their job is to manipulate viewers with propaganda. That is what their employees are paid to do. That has been clear for some time now. But it should be the goal of any journalist worth their salt to back up their statements with supporting information, perhaps by digging in a little and questioning things. This is why many decent journalists like Glenn Greenwald are quitting their jobs in disgust. They don't want to be tools for propaganda. Claiming that the allegation are baseless implies that there is no evidence or support for the allegations. How could journalists possible know that? They cannot, which, in my opinion, is a clear indicator that they are lying to us and trying to manipulate us. They cannot possibly know that the lawyers do not have evidence or affidavits supporting the claims in the lawsuit. It's one thing to say 'we don't have the information to verify those claims', it is a completely different thing to say 'those are baseless claims'. The latter indicates that you know that there is no validity to a claim, not that there is lack of evidence available to you. More importantly, the former is honest and the latter is a lie.
Now, I am not saying the the allegations are true or false, but I am at least willing to be open minded and see both sides of an argument and I don't like when media personalities clearly try to lie to me and manipulate the information that is available to me.
I was responsible enough to pay off my own student loans, now I get to pay off everyones student loans.
Interesting.
I can claim the exact same thing, and yet, I don't really mind dropping my few drips into the public bucket for something like this to happen.
Truth be told, I didn't really have that much to pay off. I'd worked my ass off as a kid, teenager, and young adult in a niche discipline that is one of the most demanding in the world. Stopped out at age 20. When I returned to the school scene, I earned an academic scholarship (through the University), a performance talent scholarship (through the department that sponsored my major), and had acquired a Pell grant because I was poor af at the time, and qualified (through socialism, I guess...).
That was back in 1986-7.
Since then, I've contributed to the advancement of my profession, made a case for 'personal empowerment,' worked as an advocate for Minority involvement in The Arts, paid my taxes, and steadily contributed to my local/regional/national economy.
Like you, I paid my debts back.
And I assume that unlike you, I remember thinking to myself when Obama said: "You didn't build that yourself..."
"Yeah. You're right."
I am, and have always been, a product of my upbringing- the natural extension of the efforts of those who came before me.
Mom. Pop. Family. Second Baptist Church on Spring St. My Blue Family. (POLICE, not Dems, you dolts... ) My Arts Family (who lifted me, supported me, and took me all the way to Carnegie Hall) American Strangers, whose tax contributions (to the Pell Grant Program) allowed me to become the functioning, contributing member of American Society I've been for the past 40 productive years.
____________
I have a private studio of approx 20 students. The lion's share are kids who come from the posh suburbs. They see me, because private lessons are a requisite for membership in the local Youth Orchestra System (The System is a fat, sweet plumb to place on college applications).
At present, 6 of my studio are promising inner-city kids with an abundance of raw talent, but a deficit of resources. So I have a pricing system that goes back 30 years, to my very first days as a private professional: pay me what you can afford.
Lower-rate lessons are no less thorough and comprehensive than high-dollar lessons. A kid and a teacher is a kid and and a teacher. Music and The Moment drive every effort I make. All Musicians Matter.
Drives my accountant nuts, but dude- that's just how I roll.
Lawyers' kids from Maumee and Perrysburg and Sylvania get worked for lesson fees commensurate with Daddy's billable hours. Period. I spent more years learning my craft than they ever did getting their law degrees. They started their 'earnings clock' when they entered college. I started mine when I was 9.
So then, there's Danni: Dannielle was the elder of two sisters. They were being raised by Dana- a Black single Mom working as office staff in a prestigious law firm. For a razor-thin slice above minimum wage.
At one point in the mid- 90's, I simultaneously taught two students:
1. Danni: whose Mom worked in the offices of the father of 2. Mandy: a sweet girl who only knew about the kind of Life her Law Firm CEO Dad had ever shown her.
In 1994, Dave (Mandy's Dad) paid me $75/hr. Dana (Danni's Mom) paid me $7.50/hr.
The year both girls graduated, they were stand partners in the TSYO cello section, and became bonded friends for life. Neither of them play any more, but I get to see them maintain a lively friendship on social media.
Rich Kid/Poor Kid: meeting in the middle... where only making pretty s# happen In Real Time actually means something.
__________________
You seem to resent giving/sharing. I consider it 'giving back.'
I like my version of This American Life better than yours.
I like my version of This American Life better than yours.
Nice post ... and I like your version of America too. I'm not in favor of 100% student debt forgiveness. But the cost of education has got to a ridiculous level and I have no problem with significant help for those burdened with high debt.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
I am very much a find the reasonable muddle ground guy. Student loans are outrageous but they borrowed the money, paying it back should be educational.
Rather than loan forgiveness, the government should buy those student loans and change the interest rates from 4 or 6 or whatever % to 1% (or whatever %s work)
This makes the repayment reasonable while teaching the kids that you borrowed it you pay it back is still a thing.
Am I perfect? No Am I trying to be a better person? Also no
I am very much a find the reasonable muddle ground guy. Student loans are outrageous but they borrowed the money, paying it back should be educational.
Rather than loan forgiveness, the government should buy those student loans and change the interest rates from 4 or 6 or whatever % to 1% (or whatever %s work)
This makes the repayment reasonable while teaching the kids that you borrowed it you pay it back is still a thing.
I more align with this thinking. Let the government give out student loans at 0%. But you have to still pay it back. More like a layaway plan.
I fell this partially because there are many students who, either by their parents pushing, or their own desire pick expensive colleges, but get a degree in a field making 50k a year. And other students who only went to college because they had no clue what their future held, and would have better off skipping college and going into the trades.
College is not for everyone, and they need to quit pushing like it's a requirement to adulthood, and strapping these young adults down with massive debt with no real plan.
We don't have to agree with each other, to respect each others opinion.
I HATE politics, all it does is divide Americans, but someone just sent this to me so here it is, and I won't argue with you about it, take it for what it's worth ...
I am very much a find the reasonable muddle ground guy. Student loans are outrageous but they borrowed the money, paying it back should be educational.
Rather than loan forgiveness, the government should buy those student loans and change the interest rates from 4 or 6 or whatever % to 1% (or whatever %s work)
This makes the repayment reasonable while teaching the kids that you borrowed it you pay it back is still a thing.
Just to expand off your post and Florida's below yours. I believe most loans (at least back when I was in school) were 6.8%-7.5%. There had been some movements to change those to be commensurate with inflation, but politics got in the way because of "who" proposed it, not because of why it was proposed.
The other part of the problem here is that it's often times not experienced, mature adults that are making these decisions. Like Florida referenced, it has almost become an expectation that you should go to college right after high school, or you failed. I feel like that is the social stigma. Oddly enough, I feel like more often than not, it makes more financial sense to work and develop a trade, rather than to accumulate crippling debt for the sake of getting a shot at a white collar job, with 5-6 figure loans and 7% interest.
Going back to the problem, many times there is a situation where the parents of an 18 year old high school graduate insist they go to college because "it's what you have to do" even though the parents can't afford to send them there. When it comes to taking out loans, the errant belief is "you will be able to pay them off no problem because you will get a better job." The 18 year old doesn't know any better. I sure didn't. I think/hope that this dynamic changes as millennials' kids start coming of college age.
On the flip side, we've all seen the college commercials - not so much the for-profit variety anymore - where colleges inflate or create the false impression of lucrative career success with a degree. It's because those colleges want federally backed student loans. Who cares about the students, right?
So then you have a double-whammy of kids getting pushed into college by their parents and society under the false pretenses that they will be better off financially for it. Then they graduate at 22 and are left wondering where the hell all this financial success is and how the hell they are going to pay off the loan.
The tuition bubble HAS to burst for college to make sense again. My solution is that the faucet of federally backed loan issuances has to go from fire hose to trickle. It won't be pretty because it would cause a MASSIVE bubble to burst. However, what we currently have is just plain bad.
When you I about it, it really isn't much different than the 2008 mortgage crisis IMO.
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
Just wanted to add that I don't believe in massive student loan forgiveness either. It doesn't solve the problem. It provides an immediate way to bail water out of the boat, but doesn't fix the leak.
I think we need a two-pronged approach to deal with the current debt, and that is something that should be negotiated fairly. It's all in vain, though, if we don't deal with the tuition bubble.
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
Trudeau has had the advantage of being the guy who lives in a duplex over the neighborhood rabble rouser. He does stupid things from time to time, but the HOA meetings always focus on what the guy living below him is doing.
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
Sometimes I wonder why a university education should cost so much.
Supply and demand. Everyone wants to go to college and can get the loans to do it, so the universities can charge what they want. You can tell their margins are insane, too. Colleges have basically gone from having communal bathrooms and closet-sized dorms to having individualized concierges for each student.
That's obviously exaggerated joking....I think???
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
If you make interest bearing student loans illegal and stop passing out grant money, it would starve the universities and drive down the level of greed.
I think all education should be 100% FREE, paid for by tax dollars. Education is the one thing that we can do that collectively improves almost all aspects of our lives. It brings people out of poverty, it improves the quality of our workforce, it spurs innovation, it makes us more competitive globally, it brings hope to those at the bottom and is a vehicle to the top. Not to mention the mental/physical health aspects of being educated vs being ignorant. Stress, struggle, anxiety, and feelings of hopelessness are generally more prevalent in uneducated adults. These are huge health factors.
But I understand the 'me' people don't want to hand out 'their' money for the 'other' to use... But the 'we' people get that an educated America is a stronger, safer, more prosperous America that will pay back the investment ten fold. So if nothing else happens in my lifetime, I would like to see universal healthcare and education made rights and guaranteed by the government. IMHO this would be better for America than the New Deal was during the great depression.
Sometimes I wonder why a university education should cost so much.
Supply and demand. Everyone wants to go to college and can get the loans to do it, so the universities can charge what they want. You can tell their margins are insane, too. Colleges have basically gone from having communal bathrooms and closet-sized dorms to having individualized concierges for each student.
That's obviously exaggerated joking....I think???
New luxury buildings and more middle management...
The fraction of University expenses that has gone to Faculty/Lecturers has shrunk drastically over the last 20 years.
I have a small problem with it, in that it simply covers up for the real problem that gets to go on uncorrected. The ballooning cost of college education. While it's not a simple problem, I think the difficulty in solving it pales in comparison with the other societal challenges we have.
A band-aid isn't a fix.
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
I have a small problem with it, in that it simply covers up for the real problem that gets to go on uncorrected. The ballooning cost of college education. While it's not a simple problem, I think the difficulty in solving it pales in comparison with the other societal challenges we have.
A band-aid isn't a fix.
Maybe the Billions and Billions and Billions the University Endowments should be used ? Some of these institutions are off-the-charts insanely wealthy.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
If you make interest bearing student loans illegal and stop passing out grant money, it would starve the universities and drive down the level of greed.
I think all education should be 100% FREE, paid for by tax dollars. Education is the one thing that we can do that collectively improves almost all aspects of our lives. It brings people out of poverty, it improves the quality of our workforce, it spurs innovation, it makes us more competitive globally, it brings hope to those at the bottom and is a vehicle to the top. Not to mention the mental/physical health aspects of being educated vs being ignorant. Stress, struggle, anxiety, and feelings of hopelessness are generally more prevalent in uneducated adults. These are huge health factors.
But I understand the 'me' people don't want to hand out 'their' money for the 'other' to use... But the 'we' people get that an educated America is a stronger, safer, more prosperous America that will pay back the investment ten fold. So if nothing else happens in my lifetime, I would like to see universal healthcare and education made rights and guaranteed by the government. IMHO this would be better for America than the New Deal was during the great depression.
I don't have a problem with offering free education, but those should be simple basic state/federal universities that are just about the education, stripped down, no sports and other extra curricular.
If they want to pay for a private university, that is their option.
Much like I think a federal healthcare system (IE: VA) that is ,free to all, would be easier to implement than trying to figure out how to implement and pay for healthcare, while still allowing private hospitals.
We don't have to agree with each other, to respect each others opinion.
On the Post Election topic ... anyone see that Barr is at it again? Trump's personal henchman has ordered a voter fraud inquiry despite no evidence ... and one of the Justice Lawyers has quit.
Cult of Trump railed against the Republican lead and appointed Mueller investigation claiming it was an inquiry in search of a crime - despite the mountains of unprecedented foreign contact and "interference" .... and here we most definitely do not have ANY evidence of voter fraud, yet the despicable Barr is politicizing the DoJ once again.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
![[Linked Image from i28.photobucket.com]](http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c201/shadedog/mcenroe2.jpg)
