leh-nerd skin-erd

You're like The Riddler. On the one hand, it's none of you business who needs what. On the other you are very judgy on people's relationship with money. That must be the socialist part of you?

Why would that be odd? People have hot button issues and vote with their wallets and emotions all the time. I'm conflicted about CK and hope it never comes to it, but I'd think hard about emotionally/financially supporting the team if he was QB. My son was stunned when I told him I'd be sorta meh about a SB win for BB if CK was at the helm. On the one hand, painting all law enforcement officials as pigs and whatnot seems to me to he the same as equating all NFL players as OJ, Ray Rice or Incognito. On the other hand, maybe I'd find myself swayed by his approach and demeanor and try and move past what he has said or done and how I feel about it. As for the NFL, you're 100% correct on the billions but I'd think there is more than a passing concern about attendance and social issues. When all is said and done, whether I watch/attend or not, and whether the Bill's win or not is all about perceived value to me. I'd bet they can afford to lose me, but do they want to?

You keep talking about moving chess pieces around like it's some grand economic plan that results in a wealth of riches all around. That's silly. At best it's a redistribution scheme that can be sold to the masses because you bang the rich people but save people who by and large don't need saving, they simply need to prioritize. See, in my opinion you're already a lost cause because the sacrifice part of the equation is missing. A cell phone is a necessity. Travelling overseas is a modest indulgence. Making the choice to pay back their loans as many, many, many people have done and continue to do is "delaying their life". When you paid off your loans, did you sit around contemplating that you were "delaying your life"? What does that even mean? You jumpstart your life when govt confiscates the money of others to pay for your decisions so you can get money you didn't earn and buy more ***** you don't need? Heck if you're going to reimburse to kickstart spending, reimburse the people who paid their debts because they seem a hell of a lot better with money. But we can't have that, we need couples making $120,000-$140,000 per year to cry for. Perhaps they will send us a postcard from Tuscany to thank us for our tears, though don't envy them, they had to stay with family when they went. Madness.

Bowing to pressure, the JayZ partnership blowback likely opened their eyes to what the sentiment is for some fans. I'm thinking they figure the calculus is they will lose fans either way, but better to side with the guy who hates law enforcement and compared them to slave patrols than with law enforcement in general. I'd think they focus grouped it.

Its about what I figured. Average salary per couple maybe $120k, leasing vehicles on avg prob $400 per month,$2-3000 vacation every year, $50,000 in loans that likely could have been much less, and the SYSTEM is the problem. Add to that cell phones for $1-200 per month, other non-essential stuff. If your friends are teachers in NYS, they get a pension that is phenomenal, will work 30 years and with life expectancy considerations are poised to earn worth far in excess of $1000000 in retirement each, have incredible health care, have summers off and earn extra $$$ by proctoring sporting events. I don't begrudge them any of that, but I'm hard pressed to consider them victims here. Get a summer job, lease a Hyundai, work at night and cut back. At a minimum, for the love of God, don't teach math or civics.

It’s hard for me to imagine a more pathetic group than these well-paid, well-dressed and well-fed losers.

I’m just pushing buttons on the ne’er do wells and simpletons part. Student loan debt is a problem for some people who become ill, disabled, lose a spouse or whatever. Your unwillingness to provide feedback on my 3 scenarios leads to believe that in your head, your universal forgiveness idea doesn’t always make sense, but your heart bleeds for all the victims. Well, not all the victims, only the ones who can’t pay debt. Rhetorical question for your teacher and nurse friends. Where are there priorities? Do they live at the home if their parents, drive older vehicles, eliminate bells and whistles (clothes, vacations, dinners out, etc) in favor of reducing the debt? Have they considered other careers that might pay more, or considered relocating to an area with higher wages? Have they considered putting off having children, or toning down the wedding, or getting married (or not) to improve their tax situation? My bet is...most have not. My bet is they have priorities and paying down debt is often not one of them. It’s the American way, I’ve reached the end and pray that there are not well-intentioned but seriously misguided souls out there like you. Alas, I know there are, and it’s just a matter of time before the takers...take more.

Sounds to me like all your political wabberjabbering totally killed the Nighties N Pillow fight vibe. You only have so many chances in life, and always remember: First things First!

You’re advocating a loan forgiveness scheme for ne’er-do-wells and (often) financial simpletons, funded by those who did not create the problem, while disavowing obvious opportunities to penalize the perpetrators (given your perspective, I’d think you would support governmental seizure of virtually all the assets that were ill-gotten) , and yet you tell the good and decent people victimized by the same scheme but begged/borrowed and worked to repay the debt to suck balls? That’s your line in the sand? Why not increase the speculation tax to reward the most deserving? As far as not being possible to hit the endowments etc...you advocate creating a punitive tax out of thin air, but are squeamish at this line? Do you work in education? You don’t seem to want to ask the wrongdoers to come to the table for anything at all. Your actions simply embolden and enable wrongdoers. Btw..would you support means-testing recipients of your loan forgiveness scheme? Person A graduates in 2011 from Princeton, with a degree in history and $211,000 in debt. They marry Person B, a graduate of...Syracuse Law...makes $372,000 per year and carries no debt as his/her grandparents were wealthy and funded the entire ride. A and B purchase a home in Chappaqua NY, the down payment provided by the parents of Person A, and they are stretching to keep up with the Jones’s. Person A decides to be a stay at home parent, and no longer has any earned income. Forgive the $211k? scenario 2: Two people meet at SUNY school, get their teaching degrees and accumulate combined debt of $86,000. They both get jobs at the state with low cost health insurance, low co-pays, near 100% job security with a fully funded and guaranteed pension. With two reasonable salaries, they spend money on clothing, car leases, upgrade iPhones yearly, drop a few hundred a year in tattoos, but never quite find the time to get ahead on their student loans. Forgive the $86k? Scenario 3. Student graduates hs and gets into the dream school U Miami to pursue film study. Self-funds the whole deal, let’s say $200k in debt (started school in 2015), plans to strike out for LA upon graduation and just figure it out as he goes. After a year in LA, comes back to Upstate and takes a job at Dunder Miflin for $22500, lives at home and realizes the math problem he faces. Forgive the $200k finally, your theory that loan forgiveness on the backs of some 3rd party suddenly creates a massive amount of ‘smart’ money to infuse the economy makes virtually no sense. The money goes to people who by the very definition made poor choices and were at least on the surface irresponsible. Invariably, these people make the wrong choice consistently. You’d be better off reimbursing the people who honored the debt to begin with.

10%??! 90% of the victim class were innocent victims who didn't know basic math? I'm not sure how the economy survives if 90% of people who graduated in the 90s are 90% imbecile.

Well, I was following your line of reasoning that someone, somewhere, somehow should be penalized for the decisions people make. I actually would not advocate for penalizing teachers and hitting their pension plans--I have no major issues with teachers, see no reason to punish them, and besides, that would never happen. As for the 3 generations of students...I would support them honoring their debt. Many likely drove past the 3 or 4 local community colleges on their way to amassing debt that made little sense anywhere along the way. Many, most, likely ignored the advice of those who cautioned against taking on the debt load--the suggestion that no one warned them or urged caution makes little sense to me. Aa an alternative, since we're going down this road--would you support reimbursing the cost of education for those who did not incur the debt? My 3 children attended college, and through work, reasonable loans and assistance from us they graduated debt free (or will, one is still in school). Honestly, I could use the money back and had I known the march toward all free all the time was coming, perhaps I would have encouraged financing the nut. I was under the impression they were doing something honorable and beneficial for their own future(s), had I known they were victims of Big EdU I might have handled things differently. Here's the other thing. Students attend school, obtain grants and loans and do all sorts of stupid $#!# with the money. Alcohol. Drugs. Spring Break. Live on campus instead of living at home. Drop out with debt. How do we separate the wheat from the chaff-- or do we not bother because we gotta find a victim somewhere? If the pols insist on the "forgive the debt of the victims, screw the people that paid as obligated, and screw wall street", yes, I'd suggest raising the coffers of the alumni funds, school budgets and endowments to solve the debt issue before ever getting to Wall Street. Thay, too will never happen because when you say "Seize 10% of the annual operating budget of "UCLA" or "Cornell Alumni Fund", its hard to see them as greedy as "WALL STREET". As for Wall Street reform, I'm all for it, but the money should not go back to a pretend victim class--it should go back to the people and victims of the scheme.

Universities are large and require administrators to function, of course. The problem is there seems to be no end to the expansion. This point was recently illustrated by Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan-Flint. Perry, who also is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, used the University of Michigan as an example to highlight the rise of “diversicrats” (diversity bureaucrats) on today’s campuses. The numbers are astonishing. 1. The University of Michigan currently employs a diversity staff of nearly 100 (93) full-time diversity administrators, officers, directors, vice-provosts, deans, consultants, specialists, investigators, managers, executive assistants, administrative assistants, analysts, and coordinators. 2. More than one-quarter (26) of these “diversicrats” earn annual salaries of more than $100,000, and the total payroll for this small army is $8.4 million. When you add to cash salaries an estimated 32.45% for UM’s very generous fringe benefit package for the average employee in this group (retirement, health care, dental insurance, life insurance, long-term disability, paid leave, paid vacation, social security, unemployment insurance, Medicare, etc.) the total employee compensation for this group tops $11 million per year. And of course that doesn’t count the cost of office space, telephones, computers and printers, printing, postage, programs, training, or travel expenses. https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/diversity-staff-university-michigan-nearly-100-full-time-employees

I am not on trial here. You seem to have typed a declaratory sentence yet ended with a question mark. I find this outrageous! Of course. And you know what else? Cecil is DEAD, and for all the know it all fact checkers among us, by that I mean he is no longer living. I suppose for all the Clinton apologist, that’s just another coincidence??

There is no challenge in our society today that blaming the system and a good old tax can’t fix. In spite of the hardship so many faced while walking the mean streets of high school, with unsavory characters in trench coats offer applications to colleges in far away lands, many chose the road less traveled. They applied reason to higher education, remembered the basic math skills they were taught in elementary school and ‘settled’ for a trade, a job upon graduation, community college or a local school. Still others committed to more expensive education and saw it through, honored their debt and managed to stay out of the soup kitchens. In the world you described, they system includes educators on every level, including and up to higher education. Why are they immune to being part of the solution? I’d think many schools have endowments, why not seize some of the money there? They directly benefitted from the culture. Why not a payroll surcharge on educators, the ones that participated in the scheme? What about a pension tax, seeing as they benefited directly from the scheme? I just checked the Penn State operating budget...$6.8 billion in 2019. Heck the Penn State Alumni association pimps everything from license plates to credit cards. Why tax Wall Street? I enjoyed reading your posts.

That would not align with my truth.

It sounds like they went rogue to me. The admin indicates a unilateral decision was made without consulting “members of the university administration”. If these individuals are professors, I would submit they are indeed rogue scholars.

I’m with you. No heads were actually thrown at that point. You pay the man until such time.

I don’t know why, but when I read your last sentence, I think maybe you’re a small town veterinarian from 1938 Appalachia, or you’re a gentleman caller about to court the local school marm. Much classier than “I had some $@#$ to do”!

All the voices pretty much agree. It takes a village.

Yeah I figured, but I do like to hear myself talk, even in the written form.

I'd retype everything I just typed but it would take too long. Plus, it would be redundant.

You would be hard-pressed to find a major politician in the past 100 years who did not personally or indirectly benefit from policies implemented or decisions made while running for or holding public office. From benefit programs, to sweetheart deals, to legislation, to pay-for play, to who works where after their time in office, to former presidents/senators/congress members working where and for whom they work post govt—government is THE largest and most corrupt (by your definition) ‘corporation’ in history. On the other hand, a citizen supporting the dismantling of an administration through phony charges and the weaponization of intelligence is no friend to patriotism or sanity. Your passion is acknowledged, your naïveté stunning.

First rule of a good defense attorney: know who is in the room. I just made that up, but it never ceases to amaze me how emotionally stupid highly educated and accomplished people can be.

And the song, Winds of Change: I follow the Moskva down to Graphic Park Listening to the winds of change Inspirational song about the graphic arts industry as i recall.

I was going to incorporate you into the reply, but in every version It ended up in some variation of Shawshank and no fancy pants jailhouse lawyer is climbing through 300 yards of the foulest smelling....well, whatever. You ended up on the cutting room floor. Seriously though, that place looks like everything’s nasty prison should look like.