Rapidly Losing Respect for Congress

An out of control banking industry is quickly bailed out with taxpayer money, no one is held accountable. The deficit is out of control and Congress passes a measure that essentially does nothing to change the situation. Social security, which millions of citizens paid into throughout their working lives, is nearing insolvency. We have lost our manufacturing base to the Chinese, which does matter; that is why their economy is growing while we are stagnating. Health care is outrageously expensive and unavailable still to many people; mandated purchase of health insurance will only work while it is affordable, which it is not; In the construction industry which I am a part of, the regulations keep piling on from above, increasing the expense of housing and building in general. Much of the new regulation is a result of pressure from special interest groups, in particular insurance companies and is implemented by bureaucrats and politicians with taxpayer funded jobs that give them health insurance, retirement benefits and paid vacations. Congress will not buck the special interest groups. There is no leadership, there is no political courage.

The Engineering of Consent

The majority of our knowledge comes from the authority of others.  In science,  we can reproduce experiments that allow us to see first hand physical realities otherwise only read about in books, but even in the natural world where we can see and verify many things for ourselves, we still accept a great deal of things on authority, not having investigated them ourselves.  It is one advantage of society that we can know something without having to see it first hand.  There is in us a powerful and necessary inclination to believe what we are told.   We also have an inclination to generally tell the truth for without a large measure of truth in what we tell each other the social order would collapse.  Even the best investigative journalist will have to rely on information that has passed through a social filter, that is never complete and in the telling and retelling is never completely objective.  One way to evaluate information contained in news stories of which we have no first hand knowledge is to look for corroboration among different sources and more importantly to give every story or factual claim a common sense test.  If even the most authoritative news story has elements of the outlandish,  evaluate it,  not on the authority of the source,  but on what is reasonable. 

       I had the opportunity to sit in on a guest lecture given by Edward Bernays who is often called the father of modern public relations.   He was ninety nine years old at the time and talked for over an hour and then autographed posters of himself and gave them out to everyone in the class.  Many students, especially the foreign students, flocked into that classroom to hear him speak.  I had never heard of him before, but in the international business environment of that school, many recognized his name and his accomplishments.  Edward Bernays perfected the art of manipulating public opinion through the placement of news stories and promotions not overtly associated with the interests involved.  He worked behind the scenes to get fashionable and popular woman to smoke cigarettes in public in the 1920s with the deliberate intention to encourage women to smoke.  Most organizations of any size employ professionals to manipulate public perceptions in a manner favorable to their interests.  This includes the military and other government bureaucracies as well as corporations, whole industries and all organized political and financial entities.

   We live under a three tiered system of control.  The first tier is the control and framing of information through the media,  the second tier is the possession of our personal information which can be used to intimidate political opposition or to attack it,  and the final tier is brute force,  the ultimate power of the state being violence.

Student Loans, Rising Tuition and a Corrupt System

In the early nineties, my business was down because of the recession that hit my industry and the state of Massachusetts more like a depression.  I needed to find a job, I had a family to support and a mortgage to pay so upon hearing that businesses liked to see you in a program to get a degree, I enrolled as a student to study for a Master's degree at Boston University.  I applied for financial aid and was able to get most of the cost of the tuition from student loans.  It was amazing to me that the money came so easily and with very few strings attached, it came directly to me and not to the school.  I also noticed by doing the math that the classes I took must have been earning the University far more than their cost.  I had been running my own business for some time so I was in the habit of calculating cost and profit on any endeavor.  There were 30 to 40 students in a class each paying tuition of about $1,200.00 apiece.  The cost to the university was to provide a classroom and a teacher for six hours each week.  Many of the teachers were from the business world and taught with a Master's degree themselves, part time at night, most of them were probably not highly paid.  It occured to me then that, as far as I was concerned, the easy availability of loan money was instrumental in determining the cost to the students.   When I signed up, my new advisor told me not to worry about finding a job after making such a serious investment in time and money.  It turns out that she meant only not to worry, not that I would find a job.  I never was able to get a job in business and the investment was largely wasted except for the piece of paper on my wall.    It took me ten years to pay off my loans, in the meantime we lost our house.  I cannot blame the student loan system for any of my  bad decisions but I do believe that the easy availability of money through government backed loans combined with the mantra that a college degree is essential to succeed have been the primary cause of excessively high tuition rates in the United States. 
     Later, I learned that student loans are not only backed by the government in the case of default, but that they cannot be discharged in bankrupty, therefore there is absolutely no risk to the banks who provide these loans in return for the interest and fees they charge.  This is not a free market system where interest rates are determined by open competition, cost of capital and associated risk.  The government has set up a system that transfers wealth  from young people at the beginning of their working lives to universities, corporations, banks and even to the Department of Education itself.   It is an $85 billion dollar a year business where most of the profit comes not from students who faithfully make their payments but from students who fall  behind.  Consumer protections for borrowers that apply to all other loan transactions have been removed by Congress.  Wages can be garnished, including social security and disability payments and tax refunds, all without a judgement in court.   Professional licenses can be cancelled, and jobs in the public sector taken away.  They have the  power to force money out of those who default, even where there is genuine hardship involved.  The interest that the lenders and agencies have in availing themselves of this power to collect not only on the balance of the debt but also the interest and the substantial penalties involved makes this a system of predatory lending unprecedented in American history.
     The fantastic amount of money that is owed in student loans will be a drag on the economy for years to come.  The next generation is saddled with debt right from the starting gate.  Young people will not be able to take out mortgages to buy homes and will not be able to buy other consumer goods the purchase of  which normally drives the growth of our economy.  Society gains nothing from this debt,  the universities are selling knowledge drawn from the work of previous generations much of which was generated in the universities themselves with government assistance.   Much of it is knowledge that could be gained elsewhere,  on the job, online, from experience and study.  In fact, in the real world, knowledge gained from experience carries more weight in finding an actual job.  It is the cachet of a college degree, artificially inflated    
in value, that costs the money.  
     In the interest of the American people, the student loan system ought to be immediately terminated.  Consumer protection rights need to be restored to student borrowers and subsidies that eliminate free market risk should end.  We need to take a hard look at what our social institutions: banks, government agencies and universities are doing for our society and not just for themselves because all are complicit in what has become an intolerable situation.

http://studentloanjustice.org/argument.htm

Introduction

I would like to set out why I might want to express an opinion, and what I believe to be true:

I want to write to inform people and to influence them for good , to urge them to take actions and make decisions that lead to justice, peace and prosperity, the things that make a good and meaningful life for all.

I believe that human societies are held together by stories which are interpretations of reality.    They are extremely functional for societies allowing them to bind together with one identity and one world view.  Because of their importance for social cohesion, societies and individuals will hold onto these myths against all reason and through them whole societies can be manipulated.  Myth fills in the blanks of history and engenders purpose and meaning to our existence but it is not absolute and it is open to analysis and to change. 

I believe there is absolute truth.  I believe it implicitly in my heart and in my mind by choice and I believe it essentially from observation of what needs to exist for us to exist and to function.   If there is no agreed upon set of principles among those who dispute the smaller facts of our existence,  if there are no absolute facts and no basis for judging right and wrong or good and bad, there will be no sensible discourse.  All arguments will be logically invalid and therefore pointless.  There are real facts attached to issues although imperfectly discerned and, based on the interpretation of what is discerned, it will be possible to judge right from wrong.  There must be a commitment to the truth even knowing we fall short of perfection, and having gathered a reasonable amount of information,  we must make a decision to stand on one side or another of important issues before the public.  In this blog, I intend to write only definite opinions and to urge definite actions. 

I believe in the ideals America has stood for of freedom, and justice,  but I will resist hypocrisy and evil.  The biblical proverb says that the father who spares the rod hates his son;  and I believe that anyone who says they love their country must hold it to its highest standards.  I hope that any writing I do will affect change for the good, that it will be clear, informed and fundamentally correct in its assertions, that it will be not too provincial,  not unreasonable, not dogmatic and not petty or gloating or mean-spirited.