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Why make government the prime source for student loans?
The Washington Post ^ | 7 MAR 10 | By Lamar Alexander

Posted on 03/07/2010 9:04:35 AM PST by DoctorBulldog

[...] Here is what they haven't told us: The Education Department will borrow money at 2.8 percent from the Treasury, lend it to you at 6.8 percent and spend the difference on new programs. So you'll work longer to pay off your student loan to help pay for someone else's education -- and to help your U.S. representative's reelection. [...]

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: government; loans; socialim; student
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Health Care Deform, Government Controlled Student Loans, and Cap&Trade are all just massive taxation schemes to bail out Obama and the Commie DemonRats.

Without these massive, not-so obvious to the casual observer tax programs, the U.S. government will collapse due to Obama's reckless Commie spending.

Obama needs to insure the government's survival as he wrecks our Captialist economy via the Cloward-Piven strategy...

1 posted on 03/07/2010 9:04:35 AM PST by DoctorBulldog
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To: All

Erratum: Captialist should be “Capitalist.”


2 posted on 03/07/2010 9:05:46 AM PST by DoctorBulldog
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To: DoctorBulldog

Because reliance on government is the goal.


3 posted on 03/07/2010 9:06:32 AM PST by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin!)
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To: DoctorBulldog

Who else would make loans to unemployed students, not knowing when/if they will get employment and pay it off?


4 posted on 03/07/2010 9:06:45 AM PST by stuartcr (Everything happens as God wants it to...otherwise, things would be different)
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To: DoctorBulldog

Obama needs to insure the government’s survival as he wrecks our Captialist economy via the Cloward-Piven strategy...
:::::::
Obama thinks he is going to beat the age-old fact that socialism cannot pay for itself. It can’t, never does and always eventually fails. His answer: MASSIVE TAXATION....which eventually destroys the sources of revenue anyway. In the long haul, he and his communist cohorts will fail leaving a crippled America in their wake.

Hey libs, elections have consequences. Get it now??


5 posted on 03/07/2010 9:08:47 AM PST by EagleUSA
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To: DoctorBulldog

Under socialized higher education, I wonder why they aren’t wanting to regulate the universities and educators in the same way they are wanting to regulate hospitals and health care providers under their government health system.


6 posted on 03/07/2010 9:09:26 AM PST by KoRn (Department of Homeland Security, Certified - "Right Wing Extremist")
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To: DoctorBulldog

The borrower is slave to the lender.


7 posted on 03/07/2010 9:11:23 AM PST by Paperdoll ( On the cutting edge)
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To: cripplecreek

Not only reliance, but the government gets to choose who goes to college. To right the wrongs of the past. So, its blacks and Latinos will get the college scholarships. Whites can go hang.

Its all about racism. Unions and racism. Obama is even twisted for a Communist. More like Patrice Lumumba.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrice_Lumumba

Typical Wikipedia. Lumumba was a hardcore Communist and racist. Wikipedia portrays him as a freedom fighter. All they say is that Lumumba denied being a Communist (sound familiar?).


8 posted on 03/07/2010 9:14:05 AM PST by whitedog57
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To: DoctorBulldog

Doing so advances BO’s/BS’s Socialist/Marxist Agenda.


9 posted on 03/07/2010 9:14:48 AM PST by Man50D (Fair Tax, you earn it, you keep it! www.FairTaxNation.com)
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To: Paperdoll; KoRn
"The borrower is slave to the lender."

Exactly right, as the Banks and Automotive industry have discovered, much to their chagrin!

Cheers

10 posted on 03/07/2010 9:18:00 AM PST by DoctorBulldog
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To: stuartcr
... not knowing when/if they will get employment and pay it off?

Remember Obama's SOTU speech? Repayment breaks for those that go into "public service." Get these hand picked affirmative action types to pack the government, and keep them on the reservation for life.

11 posted on 03/07/2010 9:20:17 AM PST by gundog (A republic...if you can keep it.)
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To: DoctorBulldog

He who eats my bread sings my song.


12 posted on 03/07/2010 9:29:31 AM PST by null and void (We are now in day 408 of our national holiday from reality. - 0bama really isn't one of US.)
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To: stuartcr
Who else would make loans to unemployed students, not knowing when/if they will get employment and pay it off?

The government plans to make the students work for the government as part of the payoff. Once there, they can brainwash and indoctrinate the students to the ways of socialism and Marxism.

13 posted on 03/07/2010 9:44:05 AM PST by TennTuxedo
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To: DoctorBulldog

Americans need to wake up and stop the enslavement of our children to the Federal government. Student loans are creating a generation of indentured servants and they are a back door entrance for a gov’t takeover of our private economy.

The government is causing the price of college to be artificially high, just like they did for houses. That causes everyone to overpay for their education, whether they take out loans or not... and it’s a bad thing.

By flooding the education market with an unlimited amount of easy-to-get funds, the GOVERNMENT has caused the cost of college to skyrocket, while the quality and value of a college degree has gone down.

Keep in mind, it’s NOT the free market at work here. Even if the loan is taken out through a private, for-profit lender, many times the student loan debt is guaranteed by the federal gov’t (through Sallie Mae)... and that gov’t guarantee is what encourages way too much lending... just like what happened with those $500K houses that were really worth $250K.

Colleges have continuously lowered the bar in order to enroll anyone and everyone who can write their own name (not really required) and who can get a student loan... that keeps the funds flowing through the doors... all of this destroys the value of a college degree.

That means that millions of students are taking out billions of dollars of loans in order to overpay for an inferior product. Like any other product, if people saw a value in it, they would be willing to pay for it. And if they demanded higher quality education for their money, the schools would have to improve their product in order to earn their business.

We have simply gotten into an entitlement mentality over the last 70 years and that is why people no longer have the will or the discipline to save up for things like college, a down payment for a house or even retirement. They expect the gov’t to give it to them or support them from cradle to grave.

Just as they facilitated the housing bubble, the gov’t is facilitating a higher-education bubble by insisting that everyone has a “right” to go to college and that students should have access to unlimited easy-to-qualify-for federally-guaranteed student loans. Sound familiar? Did we learn nothing from the housing bubble?!

Student loans can be just as toxic as any other type of debt that we are constantly vilifying these days. The student loan tab is over $730 billion and growing! These loans are basically no down payment, bad credit no credit ok, no income documentation-required loans with an unlimited credit limit. Isn’t that the definition of predatory lending?!? Except in this case, YOUR LIFE is the collateral for student loans.

If people had to save up their hard-earned money in order to pay for college (even if they only paid for half of it upfront), they would be much more careful about the price and the universities would have to raise the quality of the education in order to compete for those hard-earned dollars. The cost of education would plummet and the quality would skyrocket if the gov’t would let the free market forces work!

But no, they won’t do that. Instead, the gov’t is loaning kids and their families tens of thousands of dollars (sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars) in federally guaranteed student loans without any regard for their ability or inability to pay them back.

This easy-to-get money is driving the cost of education through the roof, while driving the quality of education into the ground (Dr. Thomas Sowell’s book, Economic Facts and Fallacies, is worth the price of the book just for the chapter on the damage that student loans are causing to our higher educational system). And universities and tenured college professors are laughing all the way to the bank.

Unlike an underwater mortgage though, you don’t get to “walk away” from student loan debt. More than any other debt, it is next to impossible to get out of re-paying federally guaranteed student loans... they practically cannot be discharged in bankruptcy and you have to be almost completely disabled to have them forgiven.

Defaulted student loans can stay on your credit report INDEFINITELY and destroy your credit scores for many years. You cannot get an FHA or VA loan if you have defaulted gov’t student loans. Most states and gov’t agencies will not allow you to get certain types of licenses if you have defaulted student loan debt. The gov’t will garnish your wages and confiscate your tax refund in order to get it’s money back for student loans. (I think people have a responsibility to re-pay loans, by the way. I am NOT for walking away from any kind of debt.)

The most evil part of all is the government’s offer to “forgive” the debt in exchange for years of “public service”.

Imagine how hard it will be for a kid who is tens of thousands of dollars in debt, who holds a worthless college degree in his hands and has very few prospects for employment to turn down a job with the Federal government, who is willing to pay him twice the private wage rate and give him unbelievably generous benefits and allow him to retire at an early age with a pension.

There is no way he will be able to turn that offer down... like an offer from the mob, it will be an offer from the gov’t that he simply can’t refuse.

There is also no way the private sector will be able to compete for the best workers against a gov’t who pays double the average wage and forgives all of that debt. So, private companies will go overseas to find workers, which will make finding a job even harder for non-government workers... what a vicious cycle!

A pure, truly free market would have never allowed the current crisis we are in to happen. It was caused by many, many years of gov’t intervention and free market manipulation, which led to an entitlement mentality.

Peter Schiff explains it better than I ever could. Forward to 6:00 minutes for his argument specifically regarding gov’t manipulation of student loans and debt forgiveness programs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7skTzAkmUE&feature=channel

(that is just one of many of his video blogs where he has talked about the negative unintended consequences of gov’t student loans and loan forgiveness programs... they are bad regardless of what the income limit is. Thomas Sowell breaks it down brilliantly in his book “Economic Facts and Fallacies”)

The recent “defend education” protests expose the real agenda behind the government’s push for “free” education for everyone. It was sponsored by practically every Socialist, Communist and Progressive group in the nation. The website looks like something straight out of Lenin’s Russia. Mind control is what this is about (and lining unions pockets in the process).

http://www.defendeducation.org/

It is much, much more than just a way to finance education... it is a way to fundamentally transform America into a Socialist/Communist nation.

We have to stand up to this and protect our children, right now, or we are going to lose the fight for America’s soul.


14 posted on 03/07/2010 9:48:35 AM PST by Painesright
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To: Painesright

“By flooding the education market with an unlimited amount of easy-to-get funds, the GOVERNMENT has caused the cost of college to skyrocket, while the quality and value of a college degree has gone down.”
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Ain’t that the truth!! The typical graduate of a public high school fifty years ago, even one who didn’t take the college prep classes, was vastly more qualified to enter the work force than most recent college graduates. We have people with master’s degrees walking around without much of the knowledge that used to be required of students in the eighth grade.


15 posted on 03/07/2010 11:32:20 AM PST by RipSawyer (Trying to reason with a leftist is like trying to catch sunshine in a fish net at midnight.)
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To: cripplecreek
Because reliance on government is the goal.

Exactly, power and control...the goal of the democrats.

16 posted on 03/07/2010 11:50:21 AM PST by highlander_UW (Obama has lost or not saved over 4 million jobs!)
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To: KoRn
I wonder why they aren’t wanting to regulate the universities and educators in the same way they are wanting to regulate hospitals and health care providers

Give it time. Nationalizing the student loan industry is a good first start. Also, watch for the developments of "standards" for schools to be "eligible" to receive student loans. That will be an easy step. Departments like Education, Social Work, Humanities, PoliSci, History etc will merely have to measure up to certain "criteria of excellence" based on the faculty's publications and the school's published curricula.

You can take it from there.

17 posted on 03/07/2010 3:23:36 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: stuartcr
Who else would make loans to unemployed students, not knowing when/if they will get employment and pay it off?

Huh? Banks all over town been doing it for years. Ever hear of a co-signor?

18 posted on 03/07/2010 3:29:08 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: DoctorBulldog

In some states, a person can “buy” a college education from the state University system at a frozen price, before the child becomes ready to attend college.

Here in Nevada, that is/was the case.

Now, because of the economy, the University of Nevada at Reno is shutting down some colleges, including the College of Agriculture!

Not like there is NO AGRICULTURE in the state of Nevada !!!!!

Anyway: What happens if a parent paid for this education in advance some years ago, and now the state shuts down the college their little darling is already enrolled in—or has yet to enroll in?

These kids have to transfer somewhere else, and then become an “out of state’ student at a higher price of education.

What payback to the parents does the state owe???


19 posted on 03/07/2010 3:58:30 PM PST by ridesthemiles
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To: RipSawyer

Ain’t that the truth!! The typical graduate of a public high school fifty years ago, even one who didn’t take the college prep classes, was vastly more qualified to enter the work force than most recent college graduates”

A friend of mine was bemoaning the fact that she cannot find a decent, honest person to handle money & bookkeeping chores in her & her husband’s auto business.

I advised her to look for someone over the age of 50.


20 posted on 03/07/2010 4:01:11 PM PST by ridesthemiles
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