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I’m not in favor -at all- of loan forgiveness. You buy it, it’s yours. You default, the same repercussions that you have when you dont pay back any other loans, including liens, should apply. Foisting your bad decision over on taxpayers is not okay.
One counterpoint that can be made is that you are barely an adult when you take on this massive life debt, and your consent to do so is not informed consent. Or at least it's but partially informed consent. And still partially necessary because of unreasonable education demands for jobs that don't really need a college degree, but still require one for applicants.
Anywho, I've at least got some sympathy for those who have it a lot worse than we did vis-a-vis college costs and marketability. The former have gone up tremendously whilst the other has gone down. It's a shit show and it's not going to get any better soon. The calls to alleviate college debt will likely increase in the coming years. I'm never a fan of the government bailing people out of their bad decisions, but I could get behind college debt relief if it came alongside sweeping reforms to the education system, massive tuition reductions, and eliminations of bullshit "diversity departments" and other useless nonsense.
I'll gladly point my finger and laugh at a Gender Studies major who is stuck in indentured servitude at Starbucks, but what about schooteachers and social workers? Should we tell all of them to go to community colleges?
I know a young lady who went to a local university that majored in Art Therapy...
WTF?
$60K and three years into it she switched to a generic Business Major. Dime-a-Dozen degree.
Fucking joke. I do have my bachelor's but it was a fuckton cheaper than that...and now as a business owner I really don't use or need it much...nice to have as a backup plan but going into a trade or business for yourself looks a lot more appealing to me. Yes it's a gamble as far as owning a business...but corporations aren't exactly loyal anymore so it's all a fargin' crap shoot.
Aside from concerns I posted up thread about Moscow using it's political organization outside Russia to establish administrative and symbolic control in the specific cities of Mariupol and Kherson, the CTR I follow believes, along with collaborating intel sources, that the Kremlin intends to "control" at the very least, the southern coastal crescent from Donetsk to Odessa along the Sea of Azov and Black sea coasts. It may also foreshadow his long term goal of erasing Ukraine as a sovereign state and cowing Ukrainian citizens who will conceivably give up the freedom they obtained from Soviet rule in the early 90s for the death and destruction to stop.
Ukraine is fucked economically if Putin achieves this political objective. He'd have to accomplish it beyond the two cities he claims to control by military force but that objective becomes easier with a terrified local population - and there is no doubt Ukrainians are terrified of Russian soldiers. The horrors perpetrated by them, under orders to do so, as awful as this is, served an important goal in Putin's strategic objective. Partisan activity will cease, protestation of Russian occupation will evaporate.
Back to advocacy for the use of force of arms by the west. You either defeat Russia's army and their DNR/LNR proxies in place, sending them back across the pre-2014 established Ukrainian boarders, or you give in to the subtle encroachment of Russian control over the former Ukraine as it turns inot part of Russia, keeping it that way at the end of rifiles.
In another bit of new news,
The Kremlin likely seeks to leverage its partners in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to evade Western sanctions. The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that Russia is courting CSTO members to procure input goods and materials for dual-use technologies that Russia cannot directly purchase due to Western sanctions.[5] The GUR stated that this effort will increase CSTO members’ economic dependence on Russia and enable Russian sanction evasion by using third-party countries to re-export Russian products to international markets.[6] The GUR stated that the Russian Ulyanovsk Mechanical Plant is attempting to obtain German components needed for the production of Buk surface-to-air missile systems and Tunguska missiles via Kazakhstan. Western sanctions may need to target Russia’s partners in the CSTO and Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) customs union to prevent Russian sanctions evasion.
This is bad news and the west cannot move fast enough to stop it. Unstopped it has the distinct possibility of enabling the scenario above. That it is happening seems to me to be proof of the limitations of sanctions in squeezing the Russian economy and its capacity to sustain a war effort. If Putin declares a state of war exists between Ukraine and Russia, as some pundits think he will on May 9th, not only will he have the resources to replace his early losses and continue the fight but he'll be able to conscript the soldiers, in a declared war-time national emergency he needs to operate it.
Mission to CFB's National Championship accomplished. But the shine on the NC Trophy is embarrassingly wearing off. It's M B-Ball ..... or hockey or volley ball or name your college sport favorite time ...... until next year.
One counterpoint that can be made is that you are barely an adult when you take on this massive life debt, and your consent to do so is not informed consent. Or at least it's but partially informed consent. And still partially necessary because of unreasonable education demands for jobs that don't really need a college degree, but still require one for applicants.
Anywho, I've at least got some sympathy for those who have it a lot worse than we did vis-a-vis college costs and marketability. The former have gone up tremendously whilst the other has gone down. It's a shit show and it's not going to get any better soon. The calls to alleviate college debt will likely increase in the coming years. I'm never a fan of the government bailing people out of their bad decisions, but I could get behind college debt relief if it came alongside sweeping reforms to the education system, massive tuition reductions, and eliminations of bullshit "diversity departments" and other useless nonsense.
I'll gladly point my finger and laugh at a Gender Studies major who is stuck in indentured servitude at Starbucks, but what about schooteachers and social workers? Should we tell all of them to go to community colleges?
I've heard the "informed consent" argument. Those who know better should inform the student, but they tend to be high school councilors and college admissions councilors. We can't simply say that an 18-year-old is informed enough to join the military, or informed enough to buy a $ 50,000 used car, or informed enough to vote or get married and then deny they are informed enough to take out a loan for college.
Hanni, I don't want to hurt anyone, but people graduating with a social worker or education degree are just as given to victimology as a person with a gender studies degree. Why do you figure teachers support the woke grooming of children? Why are almost all social workers Democrats. The difference is that a teacher and the social worker have to have credentials in order to get an entry level job, and a Starbucks barista doesn't need to be credentialed. Never feel sorry for a government worker. What is outrageous is the amount of money teachers or social workers are paid for their permanent, cushy, and non-results-oriented jobs.
A good piece on how the American right has been adjusting its language to describe ballot collection.
It has for a while been called "ballot harvesting" but over the past year or so it was decided this wasn't a pejorative enough description. The Heritage Foundation led the way in birthing a new term: ballot trafficking.
Researchers from the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington explain how rhetoric around “ballot trafficking” encompasses a potentially misleading framing of ballot collection…
*******************************
The use of loaded or euphemistic terms can mislead the public. While the line between “mere spin” and deceptive language is a fuzzy one, some terms can create distinctly false impressions about the events they claim to describe.
The terms “ballot trafficking” and “ballot mules” potentially distort the public’s understanding of the electoral process in two key ways:
The status of the ballot: The terms imply the ballots themselves are, by association, invalid or illegal.
The associations of the terms: The terms are potentially inflammatory, and connect to terms popular in conspiracy theory communities.
On the first count, the term trafficking is usually defined as the dealing or trading of something illegal. The long-standing term “vote trafficking,” for example, has been used in the past to describe systems of buying votes from voters. In these cases, the voter’s involvement in fraud renders the vote invalid. This parallels other uses of the term, where traffickers buy and sell illegal items or engage in illegal trade.
Illegal ballot collection, on the other hand, does not usually involve illegal votes. In fact, the regulations around ballot collection are there to protect the legal votes that are collected from interference by a third party. This distinction is particularly important, because unless it can be shown that the third-party collector modified the ballots, findings are unlikely to cast doubt on previous voting tallies.
The term “ballot mules,” which is increasinglypopular in some circles, similarly calls up parallels to the term “drug mules,” where individuals smuggle illegal drugs across borders. But again, the parallel is erroneous. If a person takes a ride with a cab that turns out not to be properly licensed by the city, the cabbie is not now a “passenger mule” and the passenger is not being “trafficked” — the passenger is simply a passenger in an illegal cab. Likewise, as Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger has emphasized in Georgia, while those engaged in illegal ballot collection will be punished, the votes that were cast are presumed valid and the people who cast them are not under sanction.
It’s possible, of course, that there may be future revelations, but the term as currently applied — and gaining steam through motivated amplification — can be misleading. There is a substantial difference between something being illegally transported and something illegal being transported, and eliding this difference is likely to confuse the public.
A final note is that these terms are also inflammatory. The terms overlap both with the sex-trafficking fixations of numerous conspiracy theory communities and invoke highly racialized tropes around drug smuggling. They assume — rather than prove — a large and shadowy criminal conspiracy, and potentially put legal collectors at personal risk.
A good piece on how the American right has been adjusting its language to describe ballot collection.
It has for a while been called "ballot harvesting" but over the past year or so it was decided this wasn't a pejorative enough description. The Heritage Foundation led the way in birthing a new term: ballot trafficking.
Researchers from the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington explain how rhetoric around “ballot trafficking” encompasses a potentially misleading framing of ballot collection…
*******************************
The use of loaded or euphemistic terms can mislead the public. While the line between “mere spin” and deceptive language is a fuzzy one, some terms can create distinctly false impressions about the events they claim to describe.
The terms “ballot trafficking” and “ballot mules” potentially distort the public’s understanding of the electoral process in two key ways:
The status of the ballot: The terms imply the ballots themselves are, by association, invalid or illegal.
The associations of the terms: The terms are potentially inflammatory, and connect to terms popular in conspiracy theory communities.
On the first count, the term trafficking is usually defined as the dealing or trading of something illegal. The long-standing term “vote trafficking,” for example, has been used in the past to describe systems of buying votes from voters. In these cases, the voter’s involvement in fraud renders the vote invalid. This parallels other uses of the term, where traffickers buy and sell illegal items or engage in illegal trade.
Illegal ballot collection, on the other hand, does not usually involve illegal votes. In fact, the regulations around ballot collection are there to protect the legal votes that are collected from interference by a third party. This distinction is particularly important, because unless it can be shown that the third-party collector modified the ballots, findings are unlikely to cast doubt on previous voting tallies.
The term “ballot mules,” which is increasinglypopular in some circles, similarly calls up parallels to the term “drug mules,” where individuals smuggle illegal drugs across borders. But again, the parallel is erroneous. If a person takes a ride with a cab that turns out not to be properly licensed by the city, the cabbie is not now a “passenger mule” and the passenger is not being “trafficked” — the passenger is simply a passenger in an illegal cab. Likewise, as Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger has emphasized in Georgia, while those engaged in illegal ballot collection will be punished, the votes that were cast are presumed valid and the people who cast them are not under sanction.
It’s possible, of course, that there may be future revelations, but the term as currently applied — and gaining steam through motivated amplification — can be misleading. There is a substantial difference between something being illegally transported and something illegal being transported, and eliding this difference is likely to confuse the public.
A final note is that these terms are also inflammatory. The terms overlap both with the sex-trafficking fixations of numerous conspiracy theory communities and invoke highly racialized tropes around drug smuggling. They assume — rather than prove — a large and shadowy criminal conspiracy, and potentially put legal collectors at personal risk.
It's their fucking game and they are good at it because the rubes buy into it.
Socialism!!!!
Pedophiles!!!!
They're going to take our Guuuuuuuuuuuuuuunsssssss!
They Stole the Election!!!!
The Meeeeeeeeedaiaaaaaaa!
Woke Grooming of Children!!!!!
I feel like I am watching the destruction of our democracy while my neighbors and friends cheer it on
Posting this evening on COVID. News outlets continue to arouse concern among readers by reporting new case numbers with hazy accounts of hospitalizations and death - you know, context. There's a "surge" in SA that's getting headlines. It's a localized surge and appropriately vaccinated individuals aren't getting it. This reporting is terribly misleading.
NB: waning immunity following an initial 2 dose mRNA vaccine treatment - about 90d - or 275d after a booster dose has been noted iin the case of reinfection but not in hospitalizations or deaths.
I refer again to the CDC's risk assessment map by county. Of the thousands of counties in the US only a handful are assessed to be at high transmission risk. The vast majority are at low risk. Yet, the NYT's publishes a map with the headline "the majority of states in the US are experiencing rising case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths. As I said, reporting case numbers out of context is meaningless and reporting that hospitalizations and deaths are rising is factually incorrect. Whatever.
One of the NYT's evening headlines reads Paxlovid - Pfizer's preventative anti-viral (like TAMA-Flu) that targets SARS2, "failed to prevent reinfection." That is simply untrue. STAT - a reliable source of COVID related information, published this article about Paxlovid:
Paxlovid’s failure as a preventative measure raises questions, but doctors still back it as a therapeutic.
The news that Paxlovid did not work as a preventative for Covid doesn’t affect its primary use, experts say: treating people who are already sick.
The article is technically complex but a gem of a conclusion in it is that the methodology that Pfizer used in clinically testing the drug as a preventative or prophylactic medication was overly rigorous (FDA imposed?) and produced findings that, wrt the drugs efficacy in actually preventing serious illness and death, were obscured. It does not 100% prevent the spread of the SARS2 but in the real world, it unequivocally blunts it. That's why doctors are still prescribing it. Patients who take it early in the course of a confirmed COVID infection do well, most recover, and like any person I ever treated for a respiratory virus, some don't clear it after treatment and still feel like shit after 3 or more weeks of illness. Especially true for people over 65. There are reasons for that going well beyond drug failure. What the NYT's headline claims.
TBF, there are lots of ways to look at COVID data notwithstanding questions about it's validity. I tend to look for and see faults in conclusions that over-hype the disease. I'll admit I have a motivational bias to demonstrate how misleading certain ways of interpreting the data can be. Take what I say for what it's worth but know that in the big picture, SARS2 is reaching an "infectiousness plateau" despite its predictable mutations - now all in the Omicron lineage. That's influenza's mutations in a nut shell and we're not counting, then going nuts over new flu cases.
Mission to CFB's National Championship accomplished. But the shine on the NC Trophy is embarrassingly wearing off. It's M B-Ball ..... or hockey or volley ball or name your college sport favorite time ...... until next year.
This is the biggest leak in Supreme Court history if it's real. That said, it's a first draft written by Alito. No guarantee this is the opinion they will eventually adopt. But if it is, it's a full reversal of Roe & Casey. No half measures here.
Stories go that Scalia used to threaten new clerks that he would personally see to it that they would be unemployable as a lawyer if he found out they had leaked something to the press. That’s a pretty fair punishment if one of them leaked this draft.
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