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Monday, May 14, 2012

Truth almost always casts a light, and now students may be rilled enough to revisit sixties activism, as a part of the Occupy movement or upon thoir own great grivances. And both parties are trying to mislead them. So, how should students regard their situation?

The House Republicans have said, freeze the student debt interest rate by robbing Peter to pay Paul, i.e., taking money from healthcare and moving it, pocket to pocket. The Senate Democrats are saying freeze the student debt interest rate by taxing the rich, knowing that the Senate Republicans filibuster threat exists and there is that insane supermajority requirement for cloture. They rely upon that to posture without having to act. Beyond that, neither side is saying LOWER THE DAMNED RATE.

For interesting thoughts on student exploitation, this link explores parts of the get-them-on-payments-to-make-them-more-docile thing that I guess arose from sixties activism, as a Ford-Rockefeller era cynical (indeed evil) answer of the 1%, the ALEC-like banking-industrial monsters.

Get 'em in hock, then have your will with them.

It's not pretty. But juxtapose the at-the-top looting that Strib has exposed at our key land-grant university in the Twin Cities, the willingness of top administrators to do log-rolling for shared notions of greed-is-good compensation arrangements and shared desire for sabbaticals and such along with golden parachutes that admittedly are below Northwest Airlines looting from the top, but not different at all in kind but only amount; and then reflect upon how the universities CAN be farily characterized as a wealth extraction industry.

Again, this link.

Simply put, the politicians of both parties, and the puppet masters of each, need to change policy.

LOWER THE STUDENT LOAN RATE, STOP EXPLOITATIVE RUN-AWAY TUITION COSTS, AND AMEND THE BANKRUPTCY LAW SO THAT STUDENTS ARE NOT ALONE DENIED THE RIGHT TO A CLEAN SLATE THAT EVERY OTHER PERSON AND BUSINESS IS ALLOWED, (ASIDE FROM KNOWN SWINDLERS SUCH AS TOM PETTERS). 

AMEND THE BANKRUPTCY LAW, NOW. This is what students within and outside of the Occupy movement should be adamantly demanding, and their vote should as a bloc go to whoever moves first that way, politically. Expecting solidarity is a low-percentage gamble, but hoping for it has to continue despite likelihoods. Hope does not play the odds.

The status-quo? We see the Republicans playing their perpetual divide-and-conquer game to set one bloc of disadvantaged folks against another, illogically, when the voter direction should be to engage together the disadvantaged to gain a greater fairness and equitable distribution of the goods of life, from the undeservedly advantaged, who are the ones orchestrating all divide-and-conquer play. And we see the Democrats saying they offer an alternative, with only the Republicans standing in their way, much hypocrisy included as shown by how they diddled for months until Scott Brown was elected because they never really ever wanted to test having a filibuster-proof majority, when they did. Then once Brown upset that they were again enabled to do their finger-pointing, which they did with zeal. The Senate, and now the House too, are millionaires' clubs and have for quite some time been acting as such and it is well past time for that hijinks to be stopped.

This is not just an issue of the young. Of the educated. Every parent should want life to be better for his or her children than the life he or she has lived. That motivation existed in the parent generation when I was a child, and it seems unnatural for it to not continue. Among the wealthy that feeling probably controls, which is why they want to continue screwing everyone else so that their privilege and the privilege of their offspring continues unabridged, undiluted. What's fine motivation that way for the 1% should not be withheld from the 99%. This is entirely true, despite what sophists and hucksters may tell you in courting your vote.