“Did you get to the part where it says science doesn’t prove anything? It’s really interesting when you look at it that way.”
This doesn’t technically count as child abuse, but the unwilling intellectual manipulation of a minor by a supposedly mature adult should definitely be more of a national concern than it is today.
Sometimes it’s just easier to say “No, we’re not actually interested in fixing anything except elections.”
The Article: Student Debt and the Crushing of the American Dream by Joseph Stiglitz in The New York Times.
The Text: A CERTAIN drama has become familiar in the United States (and some other advanced industrialized countries): Bankers encourage people to borrow beyond their means, preying especially on those who are financially unsophisticated. They use their political influence to get favorable treatment of one form or another. Debts mount. Journalists record the human toll. Then comes bewilderment: How could we let this happen again? Officials promise to fix things. Something is done about the most egregious abuses. People move on, reassured that the crisis has abated, but suspecting that it will recur soon.
The crisis that is about to break out involves student debt and how we finance higher education. Like the housing crisis that preceded it, this crisis is intimately connected to America’s soaring inequality, and how, as Americans on the bottom rungs of the ladder strive to climb up, they are inevitably pulled down — some to a point even lower than where they began.
This new crisis is emerging even before the last one has been resolved, and the two are becoming intertwined. In the decades after World War II, homeownership and higher education became signs of success in America.
Benghazi is nothing new; it’s just the latest in Rove’s strategic attack against the federal government.
It is profit, not public good, that corporations have always cared about. Nothing wrong with that, but that’s precisely why they shouldn’t hold as much sway over those whose work is to promote the public good. You know, Congress.
