FWIW: Interesting blog

[RandomGuy]

I came across this while looking up information on the possibility of going to jail over one's debts in the US.

http://mydebtorsprison.com/about/


Debtor’s Prison’s core mission is to bring to light the struggles of the Student Loan Boomerang Generation. This is for students who borrow so heavily that money that would otherwise go to rent and starting a life ends up going towards student loans. The loss of this money sends them back home to their parents, parents who expected that the sacrifices of their whole family would lead to the financial security of their children.

Debtor’s Prison addresses these struggles with a core team of six writers united in debt with different backgrounds and experiences. Their commentary focuses on 1) testimonial advice for individuals in-debt and those considering borrowing 2) commentary on policy initiatives that will hurt or benefit the generation as a whole.

This is a forum for a silent phenomenon. Inmates in Debtor’s Prison are often forced to pretend they have the generational wealth that many of the individuals who are seeking to enter their chosen professions at the end of their educations (JDs, MBAs, MDs, PhDs). When they are no longer able to surf the tidal wave of debt and things begin to slip through the cracks their debtless peers and even their own families (whose experience in school a generation ago was very different) begin to view them as failures. This is a rebuttal to the default judgment against us.


Having heard of some of the levels of debt that one must undertake to get through college without mom & dad's help (something I can highly sympathize with), I found this to make for some interesting first-hand accounts of that.

[boutons_deux]

What's even better is the for-profit "colleges" putting students into 10s of $1000s of debt, often with govt help and guarantees, then the students find their "degrees" are not welcome at employers.

[RandomGuy]

What's even better is the for-profit "colleges" putting students into 10s of $1000s of debt, often with govt help and guarantees, then the students find their "degrees" are not welcome at employers.

Eyup.

Diploma mills that suck money for little value out of people's pockets.

The self-correcting mechanism for that is that when those former students become unable to pay the loans back, ain't nobody going to loan money to their present students, and the college will flounder.

The suck thing is that the administrators will have, by then, made out like bandits quite literally.

[boutons_deux]

A lot of these loans are govt-insured so when the students default, the govt pays up.

One of the great things that REALLY PISSED OFF THE VRWC was that Obama has stopped or greatly reduced the Repug/dubya "privatization" setup of private banks making govt-guranteed student loans. Banks were making 100 of $Ms in interest risk free. The govt has now gone back to making the loans directly to students, taking both the risk and the interest.

The scumbags who buy bad student loans off the banks were adding on collection fees of 10s of $Ks, like a $30K loan having $50K tacked for the collection fee.

[RandomGuy]

A lot of these loans are govt-insured so when the students default, the govt pays up.

One of the great things that REALLY PISSED OFF THE VRWC was that Obama has stopped or greatly reduced the Repug/dubya "privatization" setup of private banks making govt-guranteed student loans. Banks were making 100 of $Ms in interest risk free. The govt has now gone back to making the loans directly to students, taking both the risk and the interest.

The scumbags who buy bad student loans off the banks were adding on collection fees of 10s of $Ks, like a $30K loan having $50K tacked for the collection fee.

Yup.

That was, in my mind, a very solid indication that the entire "but private industry can do it better than the government" schtick is a failure.

It was privatizing the profit, but socializing the losses. That really chafes.

[boutons_deux]

But you don’t have to grab a government contract to profiteer off tax dollars. A hefty number of corporate concerns have developed highly lucrative business plans that exploit our tax dollars indirectly. For-profit institutions of higher “learning” have evolved this exploitation into a morally indefensible art form.

For-profit colleges have been around, of course, for generations, but mostly at the margins of higher education. Two decades ago, less than 1 percent of college students attended for-profit institutions.

That figure has since multiplied over tenfold. The secret to the for-profit higher ed sector’s success: Corporate educational empires like the Apollo Group, operator of the University of Phoenix, aggressively recruit low-income students who qualify for federal student loans.

The students use these loans to pay their tuition. But many never graduate, and many of those who do don’t have the skills they need to make enough money to pay back their loans. So they default -- and taxpayers get stuck with the tab.

The top execs at these for-profit education corporations, in the meantime, get rich. Last week, a Bloomberg news report documented, for the first time ever, the incredible extent of these riches. Top execs at the nation’s biggest 15 for-profit colleges, notes the new Bloomberg report, have together pocketed $2 billion since 2003 selling off shares from their personal stashes of company stock.

Nine of these execs took in windfalls over $45 million each.

The vice-chair of the Apollo Group, Peter Sperling, cashed out an amazing $574.3 million. He currently owns a $20 million estate in California’s Santa Barbara and a “neoclassical villa and guest house” in San Francisco worth $47 million.

“For-profit colleges,” says Columbia University education analyst Henry Levin, “are reaching into the public trough to finance luxurious lifestyles at the expense of people who are going to have to pay back loans.”


http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/148906

[SnakeBoy]

That's a terrific blog to bring to light the issues of the "Student Loan Boomerang Generation". This recent post should be particularly helpful to those trying to overcome their student loan debt...


I came across teh following comment reading an online article today:

Plot Synopsis: Sarah Palin’s Alaska: Episode 2 – Todd Strikes Back

When we last left our boy Toddy, the evil liberal writer next door had poked his head over the Great Freedom & Liberty Fence and caught old Toddy porking his favorite old pet goat (again) like a piston engine out back behind the snow machine shed. The old Granny Griz was none too happy about that you betcha. Toddy rallied the Greater Alaskan Frozen Tea Bag Patrol to help him build an Even Greater Freedom & Liberty & Patriot Fence so he could really git’er done Toddy style. Toddy told the Patriotic Patrollers that if they built our boy a bigger Even Greater Freedom & Liberty & Patriot Fence that he’d let them have a turn with his old goat… and after that they could have a shot at the four-legged one too….

I posted this mostly because it’s funny as hell, but there is a deeper point too that must be discussed.


Sarah Palin is an American Disgrace. This is so obvious I probably haven’t even written about Sarah Palin before. Sarah Palin’s one and only virtue is that she can make just about anyone feel better about themselves – be it their own level of intelligence, lack of a hokey accent, the fact their name isn’t synonymous with moron, the fact their daughter isn’t a giant slut, etc. Many middle-aged women compare themselves to Sarah Palin physically and feel even more attractive, even if you factor in her 19 kids. The fact that she no longer has to work more than makes up for it. But other than making one thankful that even with 150k worth of student debt one won’t go down in history as the subject of the longest running most famous SNL sketch ever she’s not much use. Of course not being of much use is a far cry from disgrace.

Sarah Palin is an American Disgrace because she’s a self-made moron whose patron saint is luck – much like the idiot who graces our twenty-dollar bills – the bastard child of two despicable practices: a sort of legacy nepotism with respect to the Oval Office and a desire by certain elements to put self-hating members of certain groups in positions of power to get the statistical check mark and have all of their oppressive legislation rubber-stamped by one of the oppressed own. This is bad for the student debtor because the undeniable message is 1) being degree-less and stupid can be an asset and 2) if you’re a woman or minority and therefore more likely had to struggle harder for your education, sell-out as fast as you can. After all, what’s a little more gas on a fire that’s already going to burn the house down?

The two idiots most directly responsible for Palin are Bush and McCain, neither of whom were qualified to work as janitors at the schools they attended, Yale and the United States Naval Academy. Without their last names they not only wouldn’t have gotten in, they would have failed out, early and repeatedly. In order for George Bush Jr. to be President for eight years there had to be a certain “cool” factor to being stupid. Stupid is good. Then in comes John McCain. McCain, a man of average intelligence, see the propriety of choosing a female as his running mate given that Hillary Clinton had just lost the democratic primary and he hoped to pick up disgruntled women, particularly disgruntled blind white women scared of black men and unable to tell how attractive Obama was. But where to find a female politician with a track record of working against women’s interests? Inspired by the story of Clarence Thomas, the McCain campaign didn’t give up until they found Sarah Palin.

Megan McCain says she always knew Palin was a snake in the grass, and that was confirmed at her father’s concession speech. Palin treated it like a coming out party. It was like the King died and she was next in line. She immediately began capitalizing on her newfound national fame in much the same way as a slutty teenager capitalizes on her amateur sex tape going viral. Whereas the slut typically drops out of highschool or college to pursue profits in prurient interests, Palin quit the governorship. For the people of Alaska, not the multi-million windfall she received. For us here in debtor’s prison that struck a particularly painfull chord. We all had the ability to quit something hard and save money in the process. Palin had sense enough to do that and she still has to sound out the words of her children’s bed time stories.

Sarah Palin doesn’t care that she’s a disgrace to her country, women the world over, her family (particularly the youngest son), but she will eventually care that she’s a disgrace to herself. She’s half token, half bad joke. When Bristol Palin starts posing nude for adult magazines, she has a few more grandchildren out of wedlock, her own marriage falls apart when Todd gets tired of hiding his mistresses and the same bubble-headed housewives who support her abandon ship when someone asks how a woman who claims to put family first can use her infant son with down-syndrome as a political prop and rarely if ever spend time with him, then she’ll care. But we won’t. She’ll just be the butt of a joke involving a nephew and uncle who are the same age arguing who is the bigger slut, the nephew’s grandmother or the uncle’s mom.