The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The ‘Free Stuff’ Party

Posted on | August 10, 2015 | 52 Comments

Democrats are Santa Claus, and it’s Christmas every day with lots of toys for good little boys and girls who vote Democrat:

With Americans shouldering $1.2 trillion in student loan debt, and about eight million of them in default, Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday will propose major new spending by the federal government that would help undergraduates pay tuition at public colleges without needing loans.
Mrs. Clinton does not go as far as her Democratic presidential opponents in promising to end tuition debt altogether, since her plan would still require a family contribution that could involve parents taking out loans to cover some tuition.
But her proposals, which would cost $350 billion over 10 years and include new refinancing options for those already struggling with debt, are an aggressive response to what many Americans — Democrats and Republicans alike — see as a worsening crisis forcing young adults to move back home with their parents and struggle to get out from under repayment bills.

(Via Memeorandum.) As has been pointed out by economist Dan Mitchell, Hillary’s plan will actually increase tuition.

This never-ending something-for-nothing hustle — the Democrat Party’s remorseless expansion of the Welfare State, so that the government is supposed to give everbody everything, for free! — is unsustainable, and is corrupting our national character. It is immoral to believe what Democrats believe, and it is immoral to do what Democrats do. It is sinful, wicked and wrong and, hey, did I mention that feminists are promoting witchcraft in Women’s Studies courses? This is relevant, because if the federal government is going to throw $350 billion at college kids, you know a lot of those the kids will major in Women’s Studies. This is what Hillary wants, more college-educated witches.





 

Category: Education, Hillary Clinton

Comments

52 Responses to “The ‘Free Stuff’ Party”

  1. RS
    August 10th, 2015 @ 8:36 pm

    Undoubtedly, supporters will invoke certain European countries where university is “tuition free.” What these supporters don’t know is that only the top students are allowed to attend university. It’s not a situation where everyone who wants to, gets to. In fact, a child is placed on the university track at about age 10-11. Try selling that part of the European model as a cost containment device and see how it goes over.

  2. RKae
    August 10th, 2015 @ 9:21 pm

    …new spending by the federal government…

    Our current unfunded liabilities* are 97.3 trillion bucks. The GDP is 17.8 trillion. That’s roughly 5 and a half times the GDP.

    So, yeah. Pull out the stops. Pedal to the metal. YOLO, baby!

    *Unfunded liabilities does not include the 18.3 trillion dollar national debt, which the clever may have noticed as also being past the GDP.

  3. RKae
    August 10th, 2015 @ 9:25 pm

    Also, I’m guessing they don’t pay university football coaches double-digit millions.

    (Of course, there’s not much to coaching European football. As John Cleese put it: “Well, Brian, I kicked da ball and there it was in da back o’ da net!”)

  4. SouthOhioGipper
    August 10th, 2015 @ 11:27 pm

    The football programs, including the coaches salary, not only pa for themselves they are responsible for millions in extra funds for the secondary athletics. It seems a pretty fair trade to me.

  5. SouthOhioGipper
    August 10th, 2015 @ 11:30 pm

    Well hey at least most of it is to ourselves. At the expense of our next 5 generations but that’s okay. Keynes is eternal.

  6. Lamprotatia
    August 10th, 2015 @ 11:59 pm

    So wait, people who are currently buried under loans will have to pay both their loans AND the subsidy for the next round to pay less?

    How is that supposed to sell?

  7. Finrod Felagund
    August 11th, 2015 @ 12:02 am

    In regards to this and the national debt, the phrase “straw that broke the camel’s back” comes to mind.

  8. Burn_the_Witch
    August 11th, 2015 @ 12:07 am

    Wouldn’t Witchcraft be a religious practice? I’m told by the ACLU that a cross on a hill near San Diego almost established a state religion in this country, so I’m certain that federal tax dollars couldn’t be used to promote another one in higher education. Right?

  9. RKae
    August 11th, 2015 @ 4:18 am

    Stealing from the future in order to keep the present running seems to be a theme of this culture. See: killing babies to keep our lives running smoothly.

  10. The original Mr. X
    August 11th, 2015 @ 5:18 am

    did I mention that feminists are promoting witchcraft in Women’s Studies courses?
    Maybe they’re hoping to magic up some extra money to pay for this new scheme.

  11. omicron123
    August 11th, 2015 @ 6:19 am

    There has to be a better way to sell responsibility, to make it look appealing when compared to free-stuff-now-ism.
    Maybe a carefully structured set of ‘little defaults’ on specific aspects of government, to illustrate the true cost of our wanton spending habits?
    Better that public works go bankrupt and stop working for a few months than that the entire country does?

  12. Quartermaster
    August 11th, 2015 @ 6:35 am

    That is true of very few Universities, if it’s true of any.

  13. Dana
    August 11th, 2015 @ 6:36 am

    Thing is, student loan debt isn’t a problem for the people who majored in something actually useful. It’s precisely the Women’s Studies majors who racked up debt for something useless who need the help.

    Why should we tax people who never went to college, and whose children
    won’t be going to college, to pay for the children of wealthier people
    to go to college? If they get good jobs after college, then we’ll have
    taxed poorer people to make other people wealthier, and if they can’t
    get good jobs, because they’ve pursued degrees in fields with no
    practical demand, then we will have wasted the money.

    In 2013, Forbes reported that half of college graduates are working in jobs that do not require a college degree. In the meantime, recent college graduates are having a difficult time finding jobs, frequently because they have the degrees in the wrong fields.

    http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltalohGjbP1r25y9yo1_500.jpg

  14. Ilion
    August 11th, 2015 @ 7:03 am

    I seriously doubt that (*), but even it it were true, the *job* of university is not football.

    (*) After all, even pro football is always looking for subsidies forcibly extracted from the tax-payers.

  15. RS
    August 11th, 2015 @ 7:22 am

    I think that’s only true for some of the schools in Power 5 Conferences.

  16. RS
    August 11th, 2015 @ 7:37 am

    Part of the problem is parents get caught up in the idea of college and let themselves be carried away, thereby abrogated their own responsibility to guide their children toward correct choices. I’ve gone through the process twice now, and have been amused by parents who love announcing that their kids will be attending “Snooty U” on the East Coast. Parents need to take charge of the college search process and not leave it up to the kids.

  17. daialanye
    August 11th, 2015 @ 7:38 am

    Which is fine, but football scholarships distort the purpose of education.

    My grandfather played guard for Ohio State, BTW, back in the days when players wore their hair long to protect their heads. No scholarships and probably more fun.

  18. daialanye
    August 11th, 2015 @ 7:48 am

    All the federal support was originally justified by our supposed need for scientists, engineers and mathematicians to prevent the USSR from dominating us. Turns out all we needed was a strong president.

    But student subsidies are a political problem that needs to be handled in a political fashion. As a first step, I suggest a Republican candidate demand all colleges cut tuitions and fees in half, pointing out that no other sector of the economy has inflated costs anywhere nearly as rapidly.

    Many administrators and overpaid faculty will sob that education is being destroyed, but a good rabble-rousing populist ought to be able to shout them down.

    After that, other steps can follow.

  19. Toastrider
    August 11th, 2015 @ 9:05 am

    That’s about the only way this is going to work.

    You can sidestep economic issues in Dungeons and Dragons. You can’t really do that in reality 🙂

  20. Ilion
    August 11th, 2015 @ 11:22 am

    “As a first step, I suggest a Republican candidate demand all colleges cut tuitions and fees in half, pointing out that no other sector of the economy has inflated costs anywhere nearly as rapidly.”

    No US President has the authority to do that.

    However, all US Presidents *do* have the authority to veto bills providing the very subsidies, forcibly extracted from the tax-payers, which act to ratchet up college tuitions.

    As one example, if the US government were not providing “student aid” and subsidizing “student loans” then potential students — and more importantly, their bill-paying parents — would be far more cost conscious when shopping for a college.

    The *only* reason anyone goes $100K into “student loan” debt for an utterly useless “degree” like backet-weaving, I mean, “XYZ studies”, is because —

    1) the poor dears really have no idea what they want to do with their lives, except that they know they want to avoid honest work;
    1a) mommy agrees that dearie should avoid honest work;
    1b) daddy doesn’t have the balls to over-rule mommy;
    2) money is being dangled before their eyes and presented as though there were no costs or strings attached;

  21. DeadMessenger
    August 11th, 2015 @ 11:33 am

    And sells baby parts that are used to create human-animal chimeras. What could go wrong?

    http://www.lifenews.com/2015/08/07/full-unedited-video-confirms-planned-parenthood-sells-baby-parts-to-create-humanized-mice/

  22. DeadMessenger
    August 11th, 2015 @ 11:36 am

    It’ll sound great to the same sort of stupid people who take (or allow the fruit of their loins to take) unmarketable majors.

    It’s just an excuse to fund indoctrination, anyway.

  23. DeadMessenger
    August 11th, 2015 @ 11:40 am

    You’re so silly! Religion is ok in higher education, so long as it’s not specifically Christianity. The father of lies (and liars) – satan – doesn’t approve of that one, because those guys are hatey-haters. (Plus, they harsh people’s sin mellow.)

  24. DeadMessenger
    August 11th, 2015 @ 11:45 am

    Well, they have done it so far. If your intention is breaking the backs of the middle class, resulting in a two class system of poor and fabulously wealthy elite, that’s how you’d go about it, wouldn’t you? Spend until your economy fails, utilize a UN (part of the wealthy unelected elite that you’re in bed with) mandated gun grab, then seize the property of the now-poor and destitute masses.

  25. Lulu
    August 11th, 2015 @ 11:47 am

    A big part of the problem is that many employers require a degree for jobs that should not require a college degree, e.g., Assistant Manager of the Aeropostale, Car rental clerk at the Enterprise, etc.

  26. Lulu
    August 11th, 2015 @ 11:50 am

    I’m sure as soon as Hillary is informed of that oversight (more voters to buy) she’ll add student loan forgiveness for all existing loans as part of her plan.

  27. DeadMessenger
    August 11th, 2015 @ 11:52 am

    I used this weird, old trick to pay for my degree.

    I got a job, and worked my way through the first one in 8 years. Then I leveraged my brand spankin’ new degree to move into a killer job at my existing company, pushing myself ahead of other new grads due to experience, thus making up for the extra 4 years it took to get the degree.

    At my next job, I let them pay for subsequent degrees and training.

    So, no debt.

  28. DeadMessenger
    August 11th, 2015 @ 11:56 am

    Those companies can do that now, due to Barry’s job-killing initiatives. If the country ever got leadership that’s not evil and corrupt (which it won’t), these things would be normalized. But alas, Babylon must receive its due recompense.

  29. RS
    August 11th, 2015 @ 12:54 pm

    Agreed. Whenever anything is subsidized, whether it’s wheat, cars (cash for clunkers) or college degrees, two things happen. You get more of it, regardless of need and the price goes up above what the market will bear in order to take advantage of the subsidies.

    Student loans are a subsidy, in that the taxpayers pay the interest on loans and the tuition up front. The reckoning is delayed until it’s too late. The only “winners” are the colleges which finance themselves from the public coffers.

  30. daialanye
    August 11th, 2015 @ 1:01 pm

    There is “authority” and there is “the bully pulpit.”

    I have five children who obtained degrees, as did four of their spouses, so I have a bit of experience in this area. Companies now commonly demand more education than most jobs require, even while accepting degreed persons whose capabilities, regardless of degree, are on the low side. The same thing is true, BTW, of highschool diplomas.

    The reason college costs are so high is that our laws regarding student loans and aid have made money available. Like Willie Sutton, the colleges have gone after it because it’s there, inviting students in who never would have been considered three generations back.

    The practical answer is to cut the money, eventually to zero, perhaps. The political answer is to blame the schools rather than the students, if only because students have more votes.

  31. Jeanette Victoria
    August 11th, 2015 @ 1:18 pm

    The answer is ALWAYS to cut the free money.

  32. concern00
    August 11th, 2015 @ 2:52 pm

    But…where’s the equality?

  33. Jerkins
    August 11th, 2015 @ 8:49 pm

    And then what? The only people who can afford a college tuition, and advance are the wealthy? That doesn’t seem fair. And of course we get the old canard from conservatives that the majority of students in debt studied(insert whatever cultural studies program)to justify your desire to cut student aid. Meanwhile, 84% of STEM grads aren’t working in their fields. The problem isn’t student aid, it’s neoliberal capitalism, and always has been.

  34. Dana
    August 11th, 2015 @ 8:53 pm

    Actually, it makes perfect sense: by requiring those degrees, in an economy that has enough people out of work, the companies are using the earning of a degree as a test of determination and discipline. It might be kind of a lousy test, but it still makes sense.

    The Army is doing the same thing, since the recession helped the military achieve its recruiting goals. Now incoming soldiers must have a high school diploma, and not just a GED, because the Army views the earning of the diploma as a test of discipline.

  35. Dana
    August 11th, 2015 @ 9:20 pm

    As a graduate of the University of Kentucky, I can tell you that the job of the university is basketball!

  36. Dana
    August 11th, 2015 @ 9:21 pm

    My daughters have used a different method: they joined the Army Reserves, and the GI Bill is putting them through college.

  37. DeadMessenger
    August 11th, 2015 @ 9:36 pm

    Good for them! They’re serving their country while simultaneously not draining your retirement fund.

  38. daialanye
    August 11th, 2015 @ 10:03 pm

    Glad you brought this up.

    What took place before federal student aid? Students attended college and graduated with costs paid through parents’ savings, scholarships and part-time jobs. What’s more, STEM graduates found work in their fields, as did most others.

    Fed student aid was a solution in search of a non-existent problem. It was initially justified by the need to keep up with the commies, which proved unnecessary. It was extended due to the belief, still widespread today, that education (in fact, school attendance and diplomas) was the answer to every problem in society. With broadened school attendance—whether in physics, math, women’s studies, art history or phys ed—would make us all wiser, fully employed, more honest and law-abiding, and assure improved personal hygiene.

    Colleges jumped on the idea and began raising tuition and fees more rapidly than the increase in medical costs or anything else. As of now the only solution being offered by politicians is “more of the same.” Insanity!

    I have no personal gripes. Four out of my five children are working in their fields and have paid their loans, though not without struggles. But everywhere else is a mess, and those 84% of underemployed STEM grads have been replaced by aliens with green cards.

    Go back to the old system and you won’t need to blame neoliberal capitalism, although there’ll be screams of rage from academia for awhile.

  39. Daniel Freeman
    August 11th, 2015 @ 10:10 pm

    And then what? The only people who can afford a college tuition, and advance are the wealthy?

    What does this have to do with need-based scholarships, and what part of “prices are lower when less money is available” do you not understand?

    Meanwhile, 84% of STEM grads aren’t working in their fields.

    So? How many are working in STEM?

    You seem to have a penchant for both asking and answering bad questions.

  40. nomen nescio
    August 13th, 2015 @ 9:27 pm

    Indeed. The land-grand state university system was created two hundred years ago in order to:

    train officers for the state militia
    educate lawyers and judges in the law
    educate physicians and schoolteachers for the frontier

    Full stop. Football isn’t part of it.

  41. ConservatismIsaMentalDisease
    August 13th, 2015 @ 9:50 pm

    What billionaire doesn’t seek subsidies forcibly extracted from the tax-payers.

  42. ConservatismIsaMentalDisease
    August 13th, 2015 @ 9:51 pm

    And none of those players are paying tuition, room or board.

  43. ConservatismIsaMentalDisease
    August 13th, 2015 @ 10:00 pm

    The ‘Free Stuff’ Party for the wealthy isn’t anyone you’re talking about. Why is that? Oh yea. Blinded by your own bias. How many new tanks are sitting unused in the desert? Who bailed out the crooks on wall street? Who created the Graham Leach, Bliley Act that led to the financial meltdown? Who started a war for profit, conservative profit, based on lies. The first gulf war was also based on lies such as when Cheney presented fake satellite images of enemy forces massing along the border – that other countries exposed as fake and our own CIA covered up. No wonder Obama feels he has so much to apologize for even though he didn’t do it.

  44. Daniel Freeman
    August 13th, 2015 @ 10:23 pm

    You just told me more about yourself than you intended to. You see, the authoritarian corporatists are entirely non-partisan, and conservatives span the authoritarian/libertarian axis — so your monomaniacal focus on right-authoritarians tells me that left-authoritarians are invisible to you, because you are one.

    You sick, commie freak. Don’t you know how many tens of millions of deaths left-authoritarians have been responsible in the last century alone?

    You came to the wrong place with your boilerplate complaint. The community here skews both right and anti-authoritarian — so we’re basically diametrically opposed to you, and could never make common cause.

  45. Ilion
    August 14th, 2015 @ 7:59 am

    Understand, I’m not *faulting* you for leaving something off the list — for, after all, the leftists/atheists who had controlled “education” for the past century have made sure to train us all not even to see these things. Nevertheless —

    The *primary* purpose of the land-grand education system was to promote “religion and morality”

    From the Northwest Ordinance — “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.“

  46. Dana
    August 14th, 2015 @ 8:04 am

    Sure they are, in a way: they are working for their tuition, room and board. They have jobs just as surely as I had a job when I was in college.

  47. Ilion
    August 14th, 2015 @ 8:15 am

    I see. Since your fellow *leftists* are addicted to Uncle Sam’s teat, and since your fellow *leftists* consider siphoning-off tax monies to their own bottom line to be a legitimate means of acquiring wealth, thereore *all* “billionaires” are like that?

  48. ConservatismIsaMentalDisease
    August 14th, 2015 @ 8:41 am

    I came to exactly the right place to expose the cowards like you. Of course you skew authoritarian and right. Where else could your kind of stupidity be welcome? Ignorant and proud of it is no way to go through life but you seem hellbent on trying.

    You have no clue what communism means. Saying the the folks who know more than you and therefore you hate them are Socialists or Communists (at least none that understand what it means to be a Democrat) is typical of your kind. If any of them were commies, they would leave the Democratic Party and join one of the many Socialist or Communist parties that exist in the US. The fact that they are Democrats means that they believe in Capitalism albeit with appropriate oversight and rules. Not the aberration of scewed capitalism run amok that your kind drools about.

    Commie is favorite term of the most weak minded when they have lost the argument before they begin – has more to do with who they are than who they wish they could project. Pretenders. Failures. All of you. You don’t even know who you shill for.

    Boiler plate complaint? Is that what you call … Oh let’s see… objections to the holocaust? What’s done can’t be ignored simply because revisionist twits like you come down off BS Mountain, your mothers for your altered state of reality and bring YOUR boilerplate rants to anyone who doesn’t agree with your lies and delusions – no matter how much you hold your breath and stamp our two right feet. No one but another idiot believes what you spew.
    It’s not a complaint azzwipe. It’s a statement of fact which causes your kind to foam at the mouth with ad hominems and venom from some, “i hate my mother, no i hate my father complex. Not enough attention as child no doubt so you show up here armed with what you have been told to say by your handlers. You tow the party line very well. They could not do the damage they do without your kind of stupidity.

    Yea right. You’re the smartest guy in the room – when you’re alone – with your thesaurus. You’re the jackwad who pimps for the folks who control the show. They depend on your kind of idiocy.
    You’re just another blind lemming for the thugs who brought this country to the worst financial crisis in recent history. Something you obviously can’t comprehend.
    Don’t you know how many tens of millions of deaths right-authoritarians have been responsible in the last century alone? Sure you do but you would rather blather on, blame shifting, inebriated with the exuberance of your own verbosity.
    Did you miss that little event on 9/11.
    You clueless idiot, you don’t even know the meaning of the term commie. I came to precisely the right place to bring out the idiocy of your kind of nothing. You’re irrelevant. You ignore the facts and serve up another portion of verbal diarrhea – sh!tforbrains.
    Your current party champions itself on being the defenders of the freedom, and in doing so they create more destitution to justify their existence. Lying to starts wars for profit and sacrificing our soldiers for the same purpose is on you, moron.
    Your current party also uses many marxist tactics such as leveling charges, lies, against political counterparts that they are guilty of committing, trying to control academia, the press, and the entertainment industry. Your party also minimizes and attempts to weaken the middle class which is a goal of communism. Your political entity also commits one of the worst offenses which is class warfare.

    You’re pathetically disarmed. You bring nothing to the discussion but your clueless grasp of nothing – except your party line.

    The Communist state uses its coercive powers to seize the wealth and properties of those who have earned financial security by their own hands. (Graham Leach Bliley act created by your party made sure of that). Communism does not help the poor people; rather, Communism makes people poor so that they have to become dependent on the Communist state and therefore beholden to those in charge of the government. Why else are your kind afraid of people making a decent wage and owning a home. Communism is the ultimate exploitative monopoly. No competitors (market alternatives) are allowed. All major industries, including food, banking, transportation, communication, and insurance are owned and operated as state monopolies.

    Banking… ah yes the Fed which is controlled by the kleptocracy you pimp for.
    Enough? Just let me know if you need another smackdown. You obviously like it.

  49. ConservatismIsaMentalDisease
    August 14th, 2015 @ 9:01 am

    So the righties addicted to the government teat are OK. Actually it’s your fellow *righties* that siphon-off tax monies to their own bottom line happy with both legitimate and illegitimate means of acquiring wealth. You gotta love righties like… Romney’s LBO money grab on the taxpayers dime. The military industrial complex siphons off so much for the right that America isn’t even allowed to know how much.
    So lefties lied to start that war and line the pockets of rich cons? Who knew. No one but the mindless cons who actually think everyone else is as dumb as they are. They get so testy when anyone doesn’t buy their lies and delusions They gets so dizzy that they call those Americans who reject their lies – lefties, commies, socialist or anything they think will upset and rally their fellow idiots.
    Try reality if you dare because only cowards on the right blame shift away their treason and that is oh so important to the right’s fleecing of America.

  50. ConservatismIsaMentalDisease
    August 14th, 2015 @ 9:07 am

    What job would that be – taking classes they don’t have to actually attend or have to pass. If they were playing a game for free before they got to college that you now say is a job because someone is charging admission, well then, we stand corrected.