Saturday, June 16, 2012

Hey American, Heads I win, Tails you Lose!


Recently house republicans released e-mails that give further granularity and detail to the well known story of how big pharmaceutical giants shanghaied Obamacare in the cradle during the summer of 2009.  With the help of the Machiavellian Rahm Emmanuel and the White House devoid of any vision and convictions, companies like Pfizer made sure that ObamaCare became our Rosemary’s baby rather than America’s (huge) bundle of joy.  This study in ugly crony capitalism even had the Wall Street Journal up in arms in a recent op-ed piece, seeing that the virtual ownership of our political process by big business is undermining free markets, capitalism and democracy itself, in a word it is destroying America.


Crony capitalism is a primary animator of both the petulant Tea Party the infantile Occupy Movement but I am not sure either is going to move this ball very much alone (even thought I do hold out hope for Occupy’s Guitarmy :).  This issue should be a point of unity for both, and together with independent voters might exact some change. 


Crony capitalism is a sort of pure evil that should unify all political sects; Tea Partiers, Occupiers, Conservatives and Progressives.  I would suggest members of all “movements” read Luigi Zingales wonderful new book “A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity.”  Zingale’s book lays out the scorched earth policy that is crony capitalism as well as any I have read.  Crony capitalism is undermining the public’s understanding of the free markets, democracy and is the key element in the America’s deep distrust of government.  Until this demon is beaten back there will be no meaningful change in our land.

Girl's

On a recent episode of the HBO series “Girls” the lead character Hannah, played by the show’s creator Lena Dunham states that she is not “trained to do anything.”  This comment has stayed with me in light of all the mewing about the student loan debt crisis.  This “crisis” has prompted those paragons of virtue moveon.org to start a website called signon.org that has a morally reprehensible petition called “Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012” (less said about this the better).


A good friend recently sent a post to Facebook lauding the purity and higher good of education, i.e. college should not be turned into vocational training, and I agree.  That useless degree in journalism is fine if you or your parents have the wherewithal to pay for it.  On the other hand IF you are going to graduate with that degree in journalism and $10’s of thousands of dollars of student loan debt then you are going to have to address the responsibility of paying that loan back.  You cannot blindly stumble into one of the cockamamie new college degrees, accruing massive debt with no plan on how that debt is going to be repaid.  After all that “Women’s Studies” degree MIGHT not prove that marketable.  Couple this with the fact that the “Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012” might not pass and you are up shit’s creek!


I also wonder where are the adults in this travesty, are parents cosigning their children’s student loans on for these intellectually bankrupt college degrees (Women’s Studies, African American Studies) or traditional degrees with virtually no marketability; philosophy, psychology, sociology, journalism, etc.?  And what about the colleges, overpriced, creating contemporary “degree” programs and established programs for suckers.


Something certainly has to be done about the cost of college education; but writing off student loan debt while morally unconscionable will not help this problem, and would be college students are going to have to hit some balance between the cost of the degree/debt and their post degree earnings.