Restore Basic Consumer Protections to Student Loans!

An email I received today from MoveOn puts the case for the Student Borrowers’ Bill of Rights very well.  This is a very important piece of legislation.

Did you know that, like murder and treason, there is no statute of limitations on the collections of student loan debt?

Did you know that student loans do not enjoy bankruptcy protections just like any other type of debt in America, including gambling debts?

Did you know that defaulted borrowers face the potential of having their professional licenses suspended, as well as having their wages, Social Security benefits, tax returns and other benefits garnished, without a court order?
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It’s well past time we right these wrongs and that’s why Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) has introduced the Student Borrowers’ Bill of Rights (H.R. 3892).

Please sign the petition and share it widely!

Failure to Fulfill the Obligations of Office

Breaking Down the Sequester Pie ChartIf, and it’s hard to see how they won’t, the “sequestrations” go into effect tonight, it will be a phenomenal act of cowardice on the part of Congress, particularly the Republicans, who will be getting the painful spending cuts they wants so badly, without having to make the necessary painful decisions who will be affected by those cuts.

Let’s review how the process works.

If Congress failed to produce a deficit reduction bill with at least $1.2 trillion in cuts, then Congress could grant a $1.2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling but this would trigger across-the-board cuts (“sequestrations”), as of January 2, 2013. These cuts would apply to mandatory and discretionary spending in the years 2013 to 2021 and be in an amount equal to the difference between $1.2 trillion and the amount of deficit reduction enacted from the joint committee. There would be some exemptions: reductions would apply to Medicare providers, but not to Social Security, Medicaid, civil and military employee pay, or veterans. Medicare benefits would be limited to a 2% reduction. –“2013 Sequestration,” Wikipedia

Legislators don’t have any discretion with the across-the-board cuts: They are intended to hit all affected programs equally, though the cuts to individual areas will range from 7.6 percent to 9.6 percent (and 2 percent to Medicare providers). The indiscriminate pain is meant to pressure legislators into making a budget deal to avoid the cuts. –“The sequester explained,” The Washington Post

If you are a fiscal conservative applauding this because you say that at last government is being forced to make cuts across the board, ask yourself it standards like efficiency, return on investment and the amount of waste in a program matters? Shouldn’t we cut programs that are less efficient or have more waste more than others? Sequestration defies that logic.

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Shouldn’t criteria like that matter? Moreover, the fact is that the long term health of our economy requires additional revenue. Even most conservative economists admit this.

And so it is reasonable to suspect the refusal to compromise is largely political. Be able to claim you stood up to the president on tax increases, get your cuts, and not have to explain to constituents why the program that helps them or their loved ones was on the block! It’s politics at it’s worst because it’s not just rhetorical, constituents will actually suffer.

I, for one, am appalled!

CAIR Asks South Dakota Governor to Veto Anti-Sharia Bill

No Bigotry in Our LawsCAIR Asks South Dakota Governor to Veto Anti-Sharia Bill.

Have you heard about this bill?  Well it’s pissing me off and South Dakota isn’t the only state with one in process!  I urge you to click on the link above and read what the Council on  American-Islamic Relations has to say about it.  I’m not angry about it because  it once again demonstrates the appalling lack of understanding and intolerable amount of prejudice must be endured by Muslims in the United States. That deeply saddens me more than it pisses me off.  As an educator, I will do my best to fight against this kind of ignorance.    Americans are innately curious and open-minded, there is simply so much misinformation that has  so massively skewed perceptions.

I am annoyed, ok a little pissed off, that not only South Dakota, but approximately two dozen other state legislatures are wasting time on such frivolous bills when there are so many other pressing issues facing the states and our nation as a whole.  What’s all this talk I keep hearing about budget crunches,  fiscal austerity, and cutbacks?  Both Virginia and West Virginia have debated this kind of a law, as well.  These people, our elected representatives, don’t even understand our system of government, it seems. They pass frivolous, unnecessary legislation to prevent things that are already impossible, instead of dealing with real issues.

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Here we go again!

A new attack ad targeting three Democratic senators and one Republican criticizes “hidden taxes on … pensions and retirement accounts” in the financial regulation legislation being considered by Congress, and urges the senators to “vote against this phony financial reform.”

The ad gives a false impression. The Senate bill doesn’t contain the tax mentioned in the ad.

(It) is the work of a less-than-transparent group calling itself “Stop Too Big To Fail,” which says its $1.6 million ad buy is targeting senators in Nevada, Virginia and Missouri (Sens. Harry Reid, Mark Warner, Claire McCaskill and Kit Bond).

So begins a April 23, 2010 posting from Fact Check.org…
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OK, I changed my mind!

Before I get back to work, I feel I need to take a moment and state openly that I was wrong about the health care reform bill. It is bad, evil and scary. Had I been watching wall to wall coverage of Congress like all good Americans should, I would have know that. Fortunately, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report caught me up to speed last night.

First there was this clip:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black – Stickle Me Elmo
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political Humor Health Care Crisis

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Consumers Union Produces First TV Ad To Support Health Care Reform

A message from Consumers Union, the non-partisan, not for profit publishers of Consumer Reports.

We’ve done something we’ve never done before – produced a TV commercial that puts the Consumer Reports trusted brand behind the call for common-sense health reform. The Consumer Reports endorsement is powerful to millions of Americans. But it won’t help build support for reform if we can’t get it on TV.

We need your help to air the ad in those states whose Senators could either kill reform – or take us to victory.

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You can see the ad at this link.  It’s good that it puts the Consumer Reports brand behind the endorsement, but I don’t think that convincing people of the need for health care reform is the issue.  I think that the challenge is getting them to support reform that is real reform, that includes a public option for example.  Still, ads like this need to run.

Write you congressional representatives, too!

Respect that is due the President

It is not a secret that I supported the candidacy of Barack Obama for President, nor that I was overjoyed he won.  Overall, I am also happy with his presidency.  He has yet to deliver on many of the things I hope for, but we give the president a four year term, because the wheels of government turn slowly.  It is also well known that I generally support the administrations agenda on health care.

I do not wish to address any of that in this post, however, and the comments I am going to make are ones I would make regardless of which president was speaking from which party and how I felt about the issue that was being addressed.  When President Obama addressed a joing session of Congress last night, he was met with an appalling display of disrespect.  The most egregious example of this was the outburst by Rep. Joe Wilson (Rep. S. Carolina.  But that was only one example.  Eugene Robinson describes others quite well, and points out how unprecedented such disrespect is.

Rep. Louis Gohmert of Texas waved hand-lettered signs at the president, as if he thought he were attending one of those made-for-television town-hall meetings rather than a solemn gathering of the nation’s highest elected officials.

Throughout the speech, there was grumbling, mugging and eye-rolling on the Republican side that was not only undignified but frankly un-American…

Congress didn’t heckle Lyndon Johnson like that during the Vietnam War or Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. Congress didn’t even show that kind of bitterness and aggression toward George W. Bush, who did lie—specifically, about the intelligence that his administration relied on to justify an unnecessary war that has cost 4,300 American lives and enough money to fund Obama’s health care proposals for a decade.

via Truthdig – Reports – No Way to Treat a President.

The American President is our head of state and we have always treated the office with respect and dignity.  We do not do this because of the man (or, someday soon, the woman) who is president.  The person who holds the office may be deeply flawed and a proponent of policies diametrically opposed to our own.  We may even work hard to block his policies and against his re-election.
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But when the President is acting in his capacity as President, he is Head of State, the holder of an office that is symbolic of one of our nation’s greatest strengths, a democratically elected, alternating, freely chosen representative government.  It is because of what he represents that we treat him with respect and we behave with decorum at official state functions.  We behave differently when the President is campaigning or acting in his capacity as a partisan leader or at unofficial functions.

Soldiers salute the President.  Ambassadors and dignataries stand when he walks in the room.  Congress gathers in joint session and greets him with ceremony.  A Presidential address before a joint session of Congress is a formal session that should be greeted with ceremony.  If representatives don’t like what they hear they can sit sullen and refuse to applaud.  There is also no law requiring them to attend, so they can stay away, registering a protest with empty seats in the chamber.

But it is NOT acceptable to disrupt a speech.  It is bad manners and not behavior most of us want our children to learn.  But more than that, it is un-American.  When the President of the United States walks into the room, be he President Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon or any other president past or yet to come, we treat the President with respect!

A Historic Moment for Health Care Reform

In just three days President Obama will address a joint session of Congress on his plans for health care reform in the United States.

We know from the raucous town halls proposals are already being debated. But, we’ve had nothing really concrete, so supposition has run rampant. This has to change.

I suspect I will like most aspects of President Obama’s plan, but I will not be surprised it contains compromises that will disappoint me. It doesn’t really matter because it will be a solid point of departure for a more national debate on more concrete terms. Hopefully it will provide a chance to press the restart button.

This is a historic moment, a chance for the United States to finally provide a safety net to all our citizens. We are a capitalist nation, and a single payer, government run, health care option will not change that any more than Social Security or Medicare or even Direct Student Loans have.

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But don’t take my work for any of this. Watch the speech. Listen to the opposition. Try and understand their arguments. Most importantly, however, check the facts. Because folks are being reckless with the facts.

Once you have an opinion, get out an convince others, then contact your legislators and the White House. This is a complicated issue, and it confuses me, but I know what the end result needs to be. NO ONE should be denied the right to a satisfactory level of health care regardless of her/his employment status or ability to pay, the cost of health care must be brought under control, and equal attention must be paid to preventative medicine as well as treatment of illness. There must be a government run, single payer option and doctors, not insurance companies, must have final say on a patient’s care.

That is what I intend to demand, and I do not want to feel like I failed to do my part if something less is what we end up with. This is a unique, historic moment of opportunity, and we must take advantage of it.

Prescription for Change

The site Prescription for Change summarizes what is at stake in the health care debate pretty well.

When Congress returns in September to work on health reform, let’s remind them what’s really at stake – your health, your financial peace of mind, and your freedom.

How’s that? Without real health reform, you could lose your health insurance because of a layoff, go bankrupt due to medical bills, or be forced to give up dreams of starting a business or a better education because you have no access to affordable health insurance.

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Palin vs. Obama: Death Panels

This is another good article from FactCheck.org that traces the origins of the “death squad” term and how it has been argued between Obama and Palin.

Like many disagreements in the digital age, it all started with a post on Facebook. Last Friday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin posted a note to her Facebook page and introduced a new term to the health care debate:

Palin, Aug. 7: The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care.

Unsurprisingly, the phrase “death panel” does not appear in the health care bill that passed House committees last month. And Palin’s post did not make entirely clear what she might interpret as a “death panel.” Nonetheless, the phrase stuck…

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via Palin vs. Obama: Death Panels | FactCheck.org.

It’s amazing how blatant falsehoods are defining the terms of the debate over one of the most important issues of our time.  And virtually no one is talking substantively about the issues.  The arguments are partisan, ad hominem, purely rhetorical, and completely devoid of substance.  Check everything you hear on this issue before you decide on anything.

There are falsehoods and stretches of the truth on both sides, by the way. Check out this excellent article, “Seven Falsehoods About Health Care.” But it has to be said, that it is the opposition to health care that is making the more outrageous claims, tossing around words like “death panels” and “socialism.”