You've always wanted to be a school teacher, so you studied
hard and decided to go college to fulfill that dream. Wait a minute big spender,
not so fast. Can you afford that?
That’s what Dumb Ron Johnson is asking now in a
piece that defies logic:
No one told the aspiring teacher to look before borrowing: One of the worse unintended consequences of good intentions in government is the way Washington has eagerly helped young Americans accumulate huge piles of student debt. Since 2010, the federal government has simply run most student lending, so this mess is Washington’s handiwork.
It’s not a mess at all. High tuition is a result of GOP cuts
to public colleges, not student borrowing.
But here’s the most insulting part of Johnson’s twisted
thinking; he’s saying it’s harder to be a teacher now because their pay isn't
very high, making it harder to pay off your loan debt. Thank you GOP?
You can see the result in the testimony of a young woman, Brittany Jones, who wanted to be a schoolteacher. It’s honorable work that pays reasonably well, but it is not known for paying high salaries right out of college. Jones went to a four-year state college and graduated with “well over $70,000” in student debt … I asked her whether any high school or college counselors ever went through the calculation of how much debt was appropriate and whether she would be able to repay it, based on the profession she was planning.
She answered: “They did not. Actually, when we started the conversations about college, they simply, you know, let us know you can apply for millions of dollars in scholarships and grants. They're available, you just have to apply for them."
Did her conversation with that counselor ever touch upon the ability to repay?“Not in the initial stages. They simply were saying you have this much of a balance, you can pay with it using this financial-aid package of your subsidized or unsubsidized loan. And you can take them if you want, or you can borrow from your family.”
...student aid was meant to make college more affordable. It’s fair to ask whether it had the unintended and exactly opposite effect.
And our dumb senior Senator is also getting his fingers into throwing the EU under the bus as the US (NATO) expands eastward in an attempt to thwart a Russian influence and economic power. Bad enough he can't get anything right on educational policy:
ReplyDeletehttp://my.firedoglake.com/yellowsnapdragon/2014/06/10/over-easy-us-undermines-europe-while-driving-russia-east/
Astonishingly, pressure from the US has caused the shut down of another project created to transfer gas from Russia to Europe. From the AP:
Bulgaria’s prime minister has ordered on Sunday a halt to construction work on the Gazprom-led South Stream pipeline project planned to bypass Ukraine as a transit country and consolidating Russia’s energy grip in Europe.
Bulgaria shut down the South Stream project after a meeting in Sofia with Senators John McCain, Christopher Murphy, and Ron Johnson, where sanctions against Russia were presumably discussed. An action in the European Commission has accused Bulgaria of failing to respect EU contracting rules as well.
Yes disrupt Russian gas to be able to market US fracked gas and tar sands crude to the EU at prices higher than can be gotten presently in the US, Yes, the US owners don't care if US citizens have gas to heat their homes nor do they care if you have water to drink as long as they have enough water and sand they'll be happy to leave environmental "sacrificial," zones here in WI if there is money and influence to be had.
ReplyDeleteUkrainians caught in the struggle, being killed and driven out of eastern Ukraine by US backed terrorists behind the puppet government which the US installed. You won't hear about it in the MSM.