The best and worst thing about the internet is that its memory is infinite. Yes, there was a time when most Americans thought war with Iraq was a good idea, too. Now stop for a minute and rethink how “good” an idea it would be to wage war against Iran. Do we really have another $6 trillion to waste?
The Article: Student Debt Tripled in Eight Years by Natasha Leonard in AlterNet.
The Text: A new report from the New York Federal Reserve further confirms what many commentators have been long saying — student debt is the bubble that just keeps expanding. Total student debt has nearly tripled in the past three years.
Total student debt stands at $966 billion as of the end of 2012, with a 70 percent increase in both the number of borrowers and the average balance per person. The overall number of borrowers past due on their student loan payments has also grown, from under 10 percent in 2004 to 17 percent in 2012.
Noting the N.Y. Fed report, HuffPo pointed out that the proliferation of indebted students and their families has knock on effects on other areas of the economy:
Yeah, toward the end there were major problems with censorship and oppression. But the real reason why oil and the US government disliked Chavez was because he refused to let international forces profit from the country’s national wealth (re: oil, or the resource he would use to support and uplift many Venezuelans from poverty) without charging an exorbitant amount.
So he’s Latino and cares about the poor. That’s great. But he’s also said very homophobic things in the past and now some believe the new pope to have been complicit with Argentina’s homicidal junta in the late 70’s. So yes, Pope Francis is changing up the papacy on a superficial level. It’s the deeper, less reactionary stuff that matters. And in that way, nothing has changed in the slightest.
The Article: Ghosts of the Tea Party by Alex Seitz-Wald in Salon.
The Text: Who are the names that come to mind when you think about leaders of the Tea Party movement? Maybe Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Jim DeMint, Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann? Those were the most popular leaders listed by self-identified Tea Party activists in a 2010 Washington Post poll, at the height of the movement. You could add to that list a handful of other congressmen, especially outspoken Reps. Steve King, Allen West and Joe Walsh, among others.
And then you’d realize that every single one of them either lost their job or abandoned being a voice of the movement.
The 2012 election was devastating for the outspoken leaders in Congress. Allen West lost after a protracted battle, Joe Walsh was trounced by rising star Tammy Duckworth, and Ron Paul retired. Other, lesser-known members like Roscoe Barlett also lost. The two House Tea Party Caucus members who ran for the Senate last year both lost — Reps. Denny Rehberg in Montana and Todd Akin in Missouri.
