President Obama goes after Republicans on micro mini-non-issues. This week, he toured college and university campuses to urge students to support his attempt to keep Stafford student loan interest rates at 3.4% rather than allowing them to rise to 6.8%. Not exactly Hope and Change, is it?
The Call to Arms
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Dude – Relax! This was only an interview with Obama on the Jimmy Fallon Show. Ted – please don’t put yourself in the same category as the other news dudes that simply bark and whine at go berserk at possible moment or comment. You have advertised yourself as a bullshit detector and much more – so act intelligent. Your use of phrases like “goes after”, “attacks”, “wages war” are not correct. It is obvious that you hate Obam for not accomplishing what he promised – but Ted – imagine yourself in a job where everyone fought against anything you tried to do just because you were the first Black president, and gosh darn, everyone blocked everything you tried to do. He does have a good singing voice, and I think that if you and Obama ever sat down and talked – he would walk all over you.
Once again, the far left demonstrates that they’d rather have the President have a miserable failure than a tiny bit of success; I suspect because actually being forced to focus on who the real enemy is doesn’t fit their ridiculous anti-Obama agenda.
Its a sickness, really.
“Hope & Change” would see a move to make higher education (obtaining a bachelor’s degree) available through grants to qualified students.
Um, rikster, you are good at excuses, but here’s the thing, everybody wasn’t against Obama his party was in control of the house and senate…. but sure blame racism, the GOP, and everybody else. 🙂 Remember Obama made the promises, not everybody else… You know what they say, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
Dear Liberals,
Pardon the rest of us for calling bullshit on this poser back at the ’04 Democratic Convention. We weren’t fooled then and still aren’t now. (By the way, how many dimensions has Obama’s chess game these days? Eight? Seventeen? Schroedinger’s Cat?)
This president miserably failed his supporters from the start, and the herd can only low and grumble at those who ably point it out? That’s not left or right, that’s Stockholm Syndrome.
If we had a real president the policy would be loan forgiveness, not tinkering with the interest rate.
Sincerely,
Reality
Okay, time for some sanity in all this.
Let’s assume someone has $50,000 in students loans. I think that’s a pretty reasonable middle-ground number. And let’s assume you take 20 years to pay the loan back.
At 3.4%, you will pay $287.42 a month.
At 6.8%, it’s 381.67 a month.
$96 a month — the price of the morning coffee you pick up at the corner Starbucks. Or the price of less than half of a sandwich at the nearby deli.
The problem isn’t coming up with $100 more a month. If you’re making $45,000 a year, you can do that pretty easily. The problem is when you’re making minimum wage because no one is hiring (because everyone should be doing everything for free) and some fool in the White House thinks that a $100 increase is the backbreaker to the deal. The backbreaker is that it’s practically impossible to find a job that pays enough to live on, let alone shell out a couple hundred bucks a month, right out of college.
Let them eat cake, I guess.
Yes Alex, compound interest adds up… But you know what, the guy making minimum wage isn’t paying $100 less a month either. In fact, in most cases if you have a four year degree, you can in fact find work making well above minimum wage, usually somewhere around 13 to 16 dollars a year depending where you live. College education does not promise you millions of dollars, it promises you about 10 cents on the dollar, even in the best of times, colleges have done a damn good job of advertising themselves as magical money makers, in real life, they don’t do that much, people should get an education for the education, but it has been so mainlined and streamlined that, of course you don’t learn much from your education anymore, so your paying for a piece of paper that puts you in front of those without an education, but promises very little in monetary reward. Always has been that way.
patron,
“In fact, in most cases if you have a four year degree, you can in fact find work making well above minimum wage, usually somewhere around 13 to 16 dollars a year depending where you live.”
I have a bachelor’s and a master’s. I have been — aside from a couple of temp assignments — completely unemployed for over three years now, and I’m not the only college graduate I know of for whom this is the case.
My point was that the difference in loan repayment of $100 a month will be an irrelevant one to many freshly minted graduates because a significant percentage of them simply will not be able to find anything even remotely close to $13 an hour. If they’re very lucky, they will find something at about $9 an hour, and will have to live at home indefinitely while they try to pay off their crushing student loans over the course of many years.
The interest rate isn’t the problem. The near-complete lack of opportunity (because all the jobs have been outsourced, because companies are sitting on bailout money, because companies have finally gotten workers so beaten down that one person now does the work of three and doesn’t dare breathe a whisper of a complaint) is the problem. That a whole generation is (again) watching its start-off period (remember the Reagan-era graduates, Ted?) begin in an economic swamp that will cripple their earning for decades is the problem. That the president cannot see that this is the problem is the problem.
Does anyone remember that student loans were nationalized with the passage of Obamacare?
So instead of banks earning 3.4% on student loans, now the government is.
My question is, why did they nationalize it at all? So the government could make money loaning money instead of banks? If the government is so altruistic, why charge interest al all? Isn’t the next step forgiving all student loans (or at least the promise of doing so).
Stop putting your masters degree on your application, problem solved. Your over qualified for most jobs with a masters. In most majors a masters makes you over qualified for entry level jobs, and under qualified to manage those entry level jobs, the masters is the worst investment one can make. Again, a bachelors will help you make above minimum wage, your still not going to be making huge money, I suspect your looking for a job specifically in your major area, try looking for a job that requires a four year degree in general and you’ll find a job, its okay to be picky, just don’t say there are no jobs, there are just no jobs that would bring you enjoyment, or any sort of pleasurable working life.
That is the true battle, choosing to work 40 hours a week i a soul crushing job that has nothing to do with you want to do, or being unemployed and getting enough money to survive, and having those 40 hours free.
How about this? Get a good education, borrowing as little as possible by means of scholarships, etc., then emigrate to a country where your education and/or training may be needed. Maybe, selecting a prospective homeland first and determining what is needed there might be a good idea. This is no longer a land of opportunity. It is an empire that wastes its resources on foreign invasions and occupations, paying off dictators who are enablers, and colonizing its own people. They are the source of the rulers’ wealth. All empires are extractive . The US empire extracts from its own people. Leave!
PS I don’t think another country would accept you if you have unpaid debts in your home country, not if the new country is aware of them.
Where’s the revolution Ted? Oh, right – I forgot. You’re taking donations to write some lame fucking book no one will read. It’s Spring now Ted, so where’s the Occupy resurgence? Wasn’t I hearing something about winter breaking things up temporarily? That Occupy would be back so strong once the snow melted that there might not even be an election this fall?
Yeah, you can just smell the revolution in the air. What a joke. The left has no fucking balls for revolution, they’re nothing but a bunch of phonies with clay feet.
Ex,
I think your post is premature. A significant march is planned for May Day (Tuesday). Although I think the march will accomplish nothing (unless something goes catastrophically wrong and the media starts covering the event at that point), I think that the May Day event is, actually, exactly the thing you’re saying hasn’t happened.
Yesterday, it was 44 degrees in New York. Tomorrow’s also predicted to get down to the 40s. Winter was quite mild in New York this year. I think we got a grand total of one storm. The traditional green explosion that happens every spring started maybe two weeks ago.
Although I am still massively disappointed with how OWS has pissed away what is probably the only chance this country’s progressive wing had to get a national discussion going, I think they do deserve their chance on May Day.
And having said that, on May 2nd, we should revisit the issue.