My letter to Congressman John Kline re: H.R. 4170

Lately I've been doing my small part in the political process by putting my name on various petitions, and communicating my opinion to Federal and State representatives. This invitation came to my inbox via signon.org.

There's a bill before Congress now, H.R. 4170, The Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012. The amount of debt that students are taking on is staggering. The fact that they're allowed to assume as much debt as they do needs scrutiny; doesn't this remind one of the subprime mortgage fiasco? In any case, these students will be defaulting on their loans in massive numbers, because the burdens of debt are unaffordable. The fundamental problem is that state universities have become too expensive for students from low-to-middle income families. Another problem are the commercial colleges that are in many cases a ripoff.

Here's what I wrote to the Chairman of the House "Education and the Workforce" committee:

Chairman Kline,

Please hold hearings on H.R. 4170 as soon as possible. The amount of student college debt held by recent graduates is a scandal in a prosperous country like ours, and doubly scandalous when compared to many European and Asian countries.

We Americans need to do more to support our smart and ambitious students. A democracy without educated citizens cannot stand. The rate of increase in tuition costs at state universities presents an insurmountable burden for students from low-to-middle income families. If we want to keep the American dream alive, we must make college affordable and accessible to motivated students.

Please move forward with the Student Loan Forgiveness Act, which should have strong bipartisan support. Compare the cost to the very expensive and nearly pointless wars we have recently engaged in, and we should see clearly by that comparison how we can pursue the public good with sensible economic policies that support education and the lives of working people. We should be talking more about supporting the public good, and affordable quality education should be at the forefront of that discussion.

Climate change: my view

A dear old friend of mine sent me a link to this article published in the UK paper The Daily Express, perhaps thinking he would be making a crucial point.

CLIMATE CHANGE LIES ARE EXPOSED

My emailed reply, below.

Media Matters discussion of that article

Wikipedia's well researched article on scientific opinion on climate change

I'm not a climate scientist, but when I see people kicking around this issue as a political football, I know it's being hijacked.

Have human beings significantly polluted fresh water supplies in many industrialized places, affecting aquifers, rivers, and lakes? I think we can find an unambiguous answer to that. Do all those toxic elements in our water supply pose a risk to the health of people? I think an answer could be found for that.

Tea party contradictions

Great reply by George R. R. Martin in response to a comment from a reader on his blog.

The blog post was about the eerie similarity he observed between a video of a Tea Party political rally or town hall meeting, not sure which, and the biergarten scene in Cabaret where a Hitlerjungend sings "Tomorrow belongs to me". I think George's observation is spot-on. He's picking up on the emotionalism of people, the kind of emotions that lead to fascism, as people cling ever more strongly to failing narratives about American individualism and American exceptionalism.

Pugix says (in his serious, professorial mode) that the Tea Party is a type of libertarianism. They want minimal government; they want to be left alone. The desire to be left alone by government was the founding impulse for Americans to move West. This may be why the Southwest part of the country demonstrates so well the consequences of libertarian pressure on government: note Arizona selling off their government buildings to try to meet debt obligations as a consequence of both economic downturn and severe cutting of taxes.