US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1314

On September 26 2014 02:55 Stratos_speAr wrote:


At the end of the day this difference doesn't matter because it's still ridiculous to tell a gay person not to commit gay sexual acts. A person's sexuality is an integral part of their identity, so telling them not to express it is to oppress them and to tell them not to be themselves.

The U.S. Department of Education is turning its back on at least 1,000 borrowers in favor of shielding their former colleges from potentially crippling sanctions that would have resulted from high rates of default on federal student loans.

The move, announced late Tuesday and further detailed on Wednesday, concerns an Obama administration decision not to punish as many as 20 schools for loan defaults caused by questionable servicing practices overseen by the Education Department.

Borrowers, however, were provided no such relief. The estimate of the number of affected borrowers is only a small subset of those with loans in default as a result of questionable servicing practices the Education Department identified on Tuesday.

"Borrowers aren't getting any relief or similar consideration from the Education Department," said Debbie Cochrane, research director at the California-based Institute for College Access & Success, which advocates affordable education. "If the school isn't held accountable for the default, then the borrower shouldn't either."

As many as 20 schools won't lose access to critical federal student aid programs, an Education Department official said Wednesday. Losing access to taxpayer-provided student aid would be the equivalent of a death sentence for most colleges. The institutions that were let off the hook include for-profit schools, private and public colleges, and historically black colleges and universities, the official said on a conference call organized for news media.

PHILADELPHIA—Lamenting that she will spend the foreseeable future paying off her college expenses, local 23-year-old digital marketing assistant Ashley Orlinsky expressed concern Wednesday that her student loans will prevent her from ever owning an entirely different type of utterly crippling debt. “Realistically, it’ll take years or even decades to fully repay $50,000 of loans, which makes me worried that I’ll never qualify for a backbreaking mortgage on a house that I can in no way afford,” said Orlinsky, adding that with $350 in monthly student loan payments, she will likely struggle to even borrow money to purchase a new car that will destroy her credit rating and may one day be repossessed by the bank. “I have dreams of starting my own company at some point in the future, but I just don’t see how I’ll have the opportunity to be saddled for my entire adult life with a suffocating high-interest small business loan if my student debt is following me wherever I go. It’s awful.” Orlinsky was reportedly encouraged, however, after coming to the mistaken conclusion that she could just default on her student loans and have them discharged in a bankruptcy filing.

On September 26 2014 02:18 Yoav wrote:


Except that you're only taking into account the practical position of the sinner. Christianity holds that feeling self-righteous hatred toward others is a bad thing morally and practically. The one doing the judgement is part of the equation, and their feelings (pity, rage, love, what-have-you) spill out into policy in a tangible way. Just look at the Israel/Palestine thing. What keeps resolution so far away is that both sides are obsessed with an idea of how evil the enemy is, and how it must be anihilated. The lack is of an understanding for *why* the enemy actually does these evil things.

On September 26 2014 07:34 IgnE wrote:

@Dangles
You are swinging your fists at a position I haven't taken. I was talking about nuance, not correctness. I'm not interested in having a disussion with you about the correctness of your interpretation, only its perceived degree of nuance ala Introvert's arguments. Like I said, you can have God hate gays all you want, just don't deny that he does.

On September 26 2014 07:19 Jormundr wrote:

Source
Actually a fairly interesting argument. Thoughts? Is all credit equal from a market perspective?

On September 26 2014 08:25 coverpunch wrote:

It depends on her income and her willingness to service her existing debt. To be honest, if she maintains a good track record of paying off her student loans for a couple years, she'll have no problems securing a mortgage or car loan. Whether she wants the stress of that added load and can afford a certain lifestyle along with it is her own issue, but I don't think she would have many problems getting a loan. I know this is joke news, but the system has enough flex that you could borrow more money than you could ever afford to repay and if you're a sucker, there are sharks who will encourage you to do really stupid things like roll over your mortgage and stave off disaster with the price appreciation.

I have met people who also thought they should borrow too much money, live big, and simply default when the chickens came home to roost (this was pre-2008). I would urge you to avoid that kind of financial planning.

They wear camouflaged uniforms, bearing military-style insignia. They ride helicopters over the forests of Mendocino County, Calif., on the state's north coast, equipped with firearms, where they cut down illegal marijuana. But they aren't the army. They aren't even the police. They are Lear Asset Management, a private security firm that is attracting a lot of attention for the work it's doing -- and even perhaps some work it hasn't done

KCBS in San Francisco described them as "mysterious men dropping from helicopters to chop down" pot plants. Rumors swirl in the area's marijuana community about heavily armed men choppering onto their private land and cutting down their marijuana plants without identifying themselves or answering questions about who they are. Lear has become a boogeyman of sorts for a certain population in northern California.

But they aren't hiding. Paul Trouette, Lear Asset Management's 55-year-old founder, spoke with TPM for more than 30 minutes earlier this week to describe what his company does and why they do it. They see themselves filling a void that law enforcement cannot. Trouette at one point invoked the Pinkertons -- the private detective agency notorious for, among other things, violently busting unions and chasing Wild West outlaws -- to demonstrate the historical precedent for what they're now doing in this county of 88,000 on the edge of the California Redwoods.

"Law enforcement just doesn't have the means to take care of it any longer," Trouette told TPM. The 2011 murder of Fort Bragg, Calif. city councilman Jere Melo by an illegal trespasser tending poppy plants as Melo patrolled private land for a timber company made a big impression on Trouette, he said. Lear was incorporated the same year, and the company has worked with a non-profit founded in Melo's memory.

"That's when the hole began to be filled in my understanding of how to put together a cohesive, legal, organized private security firm that is now dealing with these types of issues," Trouette said, explaining that he sees Lear "on the cutting edge of citizens becoming involved in their communities and utilizing their legal rights to affect positive change in their communities."

On September 26 2014 08:39 Jormundr wrote:

I understand it's almost always possible to take on more debt, but when does debt become unreliable as a currency?

On September 26 2014 08:53 Gorsameth wrote:
The increasingly lawless actions by American militias within its own borders is going to cause serious problems. Its a massacre waiting to happen, how the f*** does police and heck the military allow this to happen?

On September 26 2014 09:05 coverpunch wrote:

If you're not costing the government a lot of money in terms of tax revenue or police work, then they're not going to do much to stop it. They probably just realized the vacuum that they're in - similar to drugs, organized crime, prostitution, and illegal immigration, government authorities really don't do much to stop stuff. If they start committing heinous crimes or killing people, then the government will take notice and step in. But if they're just doing harassment like this, even on a wide scale, they're not going to stop them.

On September 26 2014 09:07 Gorsameth wrote:

And you dont see the problem with that? Oo

On September 26 2014 09:19 coverpunch wrote:

It is a problem, but I don't see why you seem more upset with the militias hassling people than gangs slinging drugs.

On September 26 2014 08:53 Gorsameth wrote:
The increasingly lawless actions by American militias within its own borders is going to cause serious problems. Its a massacre waiting to happen, how the f*** does police and heck the military allow this to happen?

On September 26 2014 09:28 Simberto wrote:


Is that legal? Can you just chopper onto some guys land and cut down plants? I guess you could probably shoot them, but they are more heavily armed, so that's probably not a smart idea.

In a civilised country, there should not be armed people in helicopters doing whatever they like on somebody elses property. It is probably only a matter of time until someone successfully sues those guys, there must be some kind of law against basically invading somebodies property with a paramilitary force, even if they are doing something illegal there.

The only people who have the right to do that are the police. If you know that something illegal is happening on somebody elses property, you should call the police. You should NOT assemble a lynch mob out of armed guys in helicopters and take the law in your own hands. Isn't vigilante justice illegal in the US?