Let’s Fix This Fraud With More Fraud. WTF?

Alan J. Yeck

Tossing out any dollar amount in student debt relief with no other action is just another form of fraud committed by our government against its people – again! It’s a fraud sandwich and we’re the protein.

$10,000 – 50,000 paid by the government, to the dirty government collection contractors (Navient, et al), will then be directed back to the political PACs, Super PACs, and student loan industry lobbying firms. Everybody in on the con, wins! But that’s not us, my friend. “It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son.”

There is a reason the politicians, including the attorneys general, are not listening about implementing the foundational reforms that must happen in the student loan industry to remove the corruption, provide relief to existing victims, and prevent this crisis from happening again.

The elected elite are either: 1) listening only to the lobbyists who work for the student loan industry to keep their money train scam rolling along; 2) are part of the corruption/kickbacks themselves; 3) have their heads up their asses.

While I can understand the skill of misinformation of number 1, and can personally relate to number 3, I have a feeling their lack of addressing the real issues that caused this crisis comes down to number 2. It’s gone on too long, over both blue and red administrations, for them to claim ignorance. 

We the people, are the least of their concerns. 

To end this problem today – 

1. Recalculate loan balances at zero interest (the government should not profit off of educating its people). With this formula we’ll save millions who have already paid back their original principal and are being held hostage by interest (10 times the original loan amount. I know you don’t understand how that can happen but it does).
2. Restoration of unconditional, full bankruptcy rights for student loans. Bankruptcy isn’t a free pass at all, is it? Millions of borrowers, through the racketeering of collections agencies are in true, lifelong, debtors’ prison today. When Congress began to tamper with this right in the early 1970s the loan default rate was less than 1%. Today it’s over 20% and growing. Removing bankruptcy protection is the foundation of today’s crisis which all the student loan industry corruption was built upon. 
3. Hold higher education accountable for the costs of their programs. Until this is done, they will just continue to raise their costs. Higher education is a financial black hole that will suck in every penny and then start going through your couch cushions to find more. Degree costs have risen 400%, above inflation, in the last generation. Policies have to be put in place that restrict loans going to any institution that cannot demonstrate fiscal responsibility and the return on investment for completing their programs.
4. Immediately end the practice of the loan servicers from garnishing wages, tax returns, and social security. 
5. Restructure the loan payback formulas to reflect the cost of life. Currently calculations from the loan servicers do not consider that you have to pay rent/mortgage. Car payments, insurance, healthcare, food, electricity, maintenance, emergency funds…they let the government get their taxes then they swoop in to steal the rest. The current formulas almost guarantee to force defaults, which in turn interest builds, added to the principal and interest applied on that new amount. 
6. Increase Pell and Perkins Grants including for the trades and apprentice programs, again holding the educational institutions accountable. 

The current system and the currently discussed solutions are all just part of the con, the scam. It’s Three Card Monty with Uncle Sam not only dealing but telling you how much you have to bet, knowing you’ll lose every hand. Fixing fraud with more fraud. WTF?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/2021/02/19/17-state-attorneys-general-push-biden-to-cancel-50000-in-student-loans-adding-to-pressure-campaign/?fbclid=IwAR0kvMqGz-QzRDroD3yS3_h11OY1f52iBl99nB55aKO6CyoPUn4wWxo3tRU&sh=20b451fe45fe

Reflections on Higher Education Reform: “Free College” and the fallacy of the college degree as a necessity.

By Christiane Warren, Ph.D., Guest Contributor

January 15, 2021

In today’s public discourse both on and off university campuses, the overwhelming consensus asserts that a college degree has become a necessity, even a collective right to secure individual economic security and to address past and present wrongs of racial and economic inequality.  If the cost of college remains high, many students, and disproportionally this means, students of color, are unable to attain a college degree.  Thus, existing levels of social and economic inequality continue to persist and even grow, contrary to the long-cherished belief that a college education serves as the key to social mobility and economic stability.

The answer to this generally accepted causal connection, as offered by the incoming administration and its Progressive supporters, can be found in an expanded role of Federal funding and regulation aimed at removing financial barriers from college attendance. While noble in its basic sentiment, these ideas are highly problematic and largely unrealistic in their implementation. Furthermore, much of their justification is built on a flawed premise, shaded by ideological subjectivity, and will lead, not to greater equality, but only to the hastened demise of the American higher education structure.

To address the issue in detail, it is necessary to clarify the current crisis in its actual terms: The first assumption, that a college degree is a “must have” and thereby should be fully funded by the public, namely the taxpayer, is false. Not every person needs to, nor is academically able, to earn a college degree. Most jobs still do not require four years of study. By reducing the college degree to a means for obtaining employment, we lower its educational value and place an undue burden on many students, who are neither prepared for, nor truly need four years of intellectual study in abstract thinking and theoretical analysis to obtain employment and relative financial security. Most of today’s occupations can be entered into with an arguably improved, High School education and 18 months to 2 years of vocational skills acquisition.

Yet, many argue that the modern-day high school diploma no longer serves the needs of the 21^st century workplace. The responsibility and cost of educating the American public has been displaced, largely on community colleges and state universities, where most under-prepared students attend. The need for additional services both in student activities and services along with the steep increase in assessment requirements, have greatly contributed to the growth in administrative costs.  Many educators place emphasis for reform here, demanding that colleges offer even more robust support systems, alter admission criteria and adjust course curricula to reflect the learning needs of academically under-prepared and financially marginalized students.

This acceptance of so-called “credential creep” as a fact due to the overall failure of many public high school systems, is inherently wrong and should be vigorously fought. Shifting the responsibility of general education from high school, which is free and mandatory, to colleges, which are voluntary and require payment, is contradictory to the tenets of equity and defies basic common sense.  It also further contributes to the escalation of costs and persistent educational inequality. When the educational responsibility of the secondary school system is transferred to post-secondary sector, society ends up paying twice for the same service and perpetuates instructional redundancies. Students spend additional time, financial aid, and energy, learning in college what society paid for them to learn while in high school. Not only does this deplete already limited public resources, but it also decreases their chances of success, and thus leads to greater drop-out and loan default rates.

Educators and reformers acknowledge the problem; however, they advocate for colleges to provide more support services in the name of racial and economic equity. Doing that, however, only exacerbates the original problem of inequality and further adds to the cost of higher education.

For those who truly seek reform, both for students and for society, the answers are far from easy. Points for exploration may be found in ending social promotion in public schools, curtailing systemic disciplinary discrimination against male students of color, raising the professional status of public-school teaching through recognition, salaries and support, and limiting the reliance on standardized testing as the primary measure of student achievement. By bolstering the depth and quality of the general education students achieve through their high school diploma across the board, the necessary community and critical skills, so valued can be acquired before leaving school. Thus, post-secondary learning can be either focused on acquiring specific job training skills or furthered in college for those who have both the inclination and ability to do so. Doing so should be preferable over lowering standards and expending money to teach the same course work again that was not processed in high school, during the first 2 years of college.  While on the surface, free college, especially with an emphasis on community college appears to be a laudable concept, however, on closer examination, it is based on flawed assumption and will inevitably prove to fall short of its social justice goals, while burdening the American taxpayer with an unsurmountable bill.

More About the Author: 

Guest author, Dr. Christiane Warren, Senior Consultant at Anna J Cooper Education Advocacy. Recognized for producing growth and cultivating success in the career and education space, Dr. Warren has served as tenured faculty, department chair and academic dean for entire divisions and in the Academic Affairs office at both 2-and-4 year institutions in NJ and NY. Read more about Dr. Warren here.

Drug Use at the Department of Education: The Discretionary Income Formula

By Alan J. Yeck

The formula used to determine how much of your monthly income the student loan “servicers” will steal is based on a model where Department of Education, in cooperation with Congress, fed rats LSD over a 15 week period and then observed their movements in a standard 20-point maze. What occurred was nothing short of remarkable on a global scale. After the results were reviewed by no less than seven times by outside scientists it was determined that the Department of Education, in cooperation with Congress, were the ones actually ingesting the LSD and not the rats. This explains why the payback formula used by student loan “servicers”, aka Sallie Mae, Navient, Fedloan, Nelnet, et al is so fucking insane.  

This is directly from the Navient website –

Income-Based Repayment Plan (IBR)

“Your payments will be 15% (10% if you are a new borrower*) of your monthly discretionary income, the difference between your adjusted gross income and 150% of the poverty guideline for your family size and state of residence (other conditions apply) divided by 12.”

Clear? Maybe if you’re on acid.

Here is what the federal government considers as ‘discretionary’ income, meaning they will take 10-15% from your monthly income before these bills are paid:

• Rent/Mortgage
• Food
• Utilities
• Clothes
• Trash pick-up
• Phone
• Internet
• Car payment
• Car insurance
• Car fuel and maintenance
• Dental/vision (deductibles if you’re lucky enough to have insurance)
• Health insurance (deductibles if you’re lucky enough to have insurance)
• Emergency savings (emergency trip for family emergency…transmission breaks…etc.)
• Any kind of retirement savings
• Pets (food, litter, veterinary – or do we just put the down?)
• Children (costs associated with children and or child support)
  • Trying to help them with their college costs so they don’t get sucked in this black hole of despair.
• Misc (expenses I just can’t think of now or that might be unique to your life

The student loan “servicers” will take all they want, after their big brother has taken their taxes, and whatever is left you have to figure out how to pay these normal bills of life. When the transmission goes, and you need your car to get to work, so you can get your pay, so you can pay the loan “servicers,” you have to fix it, right? Right. Since you have no savings you have to default on your student loans to get your car fixed…or to travel to a family funeral on the other side of the country…and another 1,000 unseen events that you need emergency savings for. Then begins the interest game, and capitalization of that interest on to the principal…months later when you’ve been “rehabilitated” (what a great word – so fitting of the debtors prison they have created) you will owe more than ever before with the same formula used to steal your life. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. This is the LSD influenced system they built and what our politicians protect. In turn for their feigned ignorance and silence to the plight of student loan borrowers, they are given campaign kickbacks through Super PACs to ensure the status quo remains the status quo and we go on paying. Forever. This story is told by millions of Americans and is the biggest scam ever inflicted by the U.S. Government on it’s own people.

At 59, with my 29 year plan ($35k loan will then be $310k), there’s a good chance I’ll be dead before it’s paid off. At least that’s one thing to look forward to.

#corruption #studentloandebt #dirtypolitics #bidenharris #joebidden #trump #kami #highered #students #business #innovation #blm #womensrights #elizabethwarren