Blackonomics 

Crisis in Education      
By James Clingman 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - We may as well call it “Edu-pay-tion,” as far as many prospective students are concerned.  The cost of a college degree has risen 1,120 percent since 1978, but wages have increased a mere 6% during that same period.  The national collective college debt is more than $1 trillion!  We have college grads mired in $29,000 of debt, on average, while they are looking for jobs that do not exist.  Parents and grandparents of those grads are also saddled with much of that debt, which is immune to bankruptcy, and they will have to make the payments until they die.

What have we gotten ourselves into?  The greed that accompanied those easy-to-obtain, just-sign-here college tuition loans, borders on immoral.   Financial institutions were like Black Friday crowds, trampling one another to get in on the act.  New lending operations cropped up every day, and new proprietary colleges and universities opened their doors throughout the nation, advertising their degrees and easy to get loans for tuition.  What would happen if students and parents just stop paying on that $1 trillion debt?  Who would pay then?  Bingo!  I can see another bailout coming, and this time it will be for student loans.

Ethical implications exist on both sides—the lenders and the borrowers, but no matter what side you take the problem is still here and is looming as yet another bubble about to burst in the near future.  As many schools are raising their tuition costs, despite the ominous specter of a meltdown, many prospective students are opting out of their plans to attend college. But where does that leave them in today’s “jobless market”?  Sounds like a catch-22.

This nation trails many other countries in various fields of education, and we will find ourselves even further behind if this tuition bubble is not deflated very soon.  Our young people will not be able to compete on a national level, much less on an international level, without access to adequate, relevant, and higher educational experiences.  In other words, the famous mantra, “Leave no child behind” will soon become, “Help every child catch up.”

We have smart bombs and dumb children. We have the ability to kill people with drones without even seeing them, but we cannot—or will not—provide adequate education for our children whom we see every day.  We have spent trillions destroying and rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, but a relative meager amount to secure the future of our own youth.  Now we are sending money to Ukraine, along with all the other places to which our dollars flow, while our young people slip further down the education scale.  Our priorities are all screwed up.

This is not to say that money alone will solve all of our education problems, but more of it, pointed in the right direction, sure would make a positive difference in our current educational crisis—and that’s exactly what it is.  Simply throwing money at a problem only results in it being caught by folks for whom it is not meant.  The students are at the bottom of the food chain and see little or no benefit from money meant to help them.

Meanwhile, as we teach our children how to take tests rather than how to use their critical and analytical thinking skills, we are doing them a gross disservice.  And similar to what we saw with the sub-prime housing debacle, if we continue to make financial institutions even wealthier by allowing them to make outlandish loans to college students who cannot afford to repay them, we will soon have another piper to pay.

So what do we do?  Prospective students should start looking at less expensive alternatives to attain their college degrees.  For instance, go to a local school and live at home (I know that’s a tough one, but it beats having to go back to live with your parents when you graduate); stop treating your student loan like it’s a free monthly check that you can use to buy everything but educational necessities; and, here’s a novel idea: work while you are in college.  It may not be the most glamorous job, but if it helps pay your tuition and keep you out of thousands in debt, that’s a good thing.

Government and financial institutions worked so well when it came to the bailouts.  Banks were too big to fail and had to be helped with $780 billion or so.  Aren’t our children too important to fail?  Maybe they are not; at least not in this country, huh?  Anyway, if they care to listen, banks, proprietary schools, and government officials should get together and stop the madness that has led to $1 trillion in student loan debt while graduates cannot get commensurate employment and cannot compete in a global society.

We have to stop education from turning into “educ-pay-tion.”

April 19, 2014

America Needs to Build Upon What LBJ Gave Us
By Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) -  Fifty years later, former President Lyndon Johnson got the tribute he more than earned. Four presidents praised his contribution. The Great Society, the War on Poverty, Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act opened doors that had been locked.

“I lived out the promise of LBJ’s efforts,” said President Barack Obama, rejecting the cynicism of those who would dismantle Medicare and food stamps, signature LBJ achievements. Bill Clinton praised LBJ for demonstrating “the power of the presidency to redeem the promise of America.”

Getting our history right is vital. For decades, LBJ’s achievements have been slighted. Liberals scorned him because of the war in Vietnam, and finally drove him to not seek re-election. Conservatives loathed him because of the civil rights achievements, with Republicans moving to displace Democrats as the party of the South.

The War on Poverty, which dramatically reduced poverty in America, was dismissed as a failure, as the anger of the cities exploded. New Democrats dismissed him for believing in big government, as they tacked to a conservative era. In fact, as the Civil Rights Summit at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas recognized last week, Johnson was a giant, standing with Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln as presidents who saved America.

Under Johnson, the scourge of segregation was finally ended, and equal protection under the law moved from a lie to a promise. Millions were lifted from poverty, as the poor were provided a ladder up out of despair. Johnson’s reforms — civil rights, voting rights, immigration, Medicare, child nutrition, food stamps and more — were nearly as great as those of FDR, and never matched since. Johnson was propelled by a massive movement for civil rights, as Americans moved at the courage and dignity of ordinary heroes willing to stand up or sit down, protest or march, suffer abuse and jail for their rights. He was helped by allies like Dr. Martin Luther King.

In the wake of the assassination of JFK, he had a legacy that he could invoke. But his leadership, passion, energy and skill were indispensable. President Obama invoked one of LBJ’s famed lines: “what the hell is the presidency for if not to fight for causes you believe in?” Acknowledging Johnson’s greatness in our rear view mirror is important in part because it may help our vision looking forward through the windshield. Today, America is more unequal than ever. Our schools are segregated, by race and by class, separate and unequal. We rank second to the lowest among industrial nations in the assistance we provide to the poor. In LBJ’s time, we enjoyed a broad middle class — for many, there were good jobs and good benefits. Now the middle class is sinking; we suffer mass unemployment with the jobs that are being created too often low pay and part time.

The millennial generation is graduating into the worst economic straits since the Great Depression. And across the country, basic rights are under assault. State after state, particularly across the South, are passing measures to suppress voting — limiting voting days, ending Sunday voting, demanding voter ID, stripping the right to vote from nonviolent drug offenders who have served their time, and more. The Supreme Court has weakened the Voting Rights Act and is rolling back affirmative action. Republicans in the Congress want to turn Medicare into a voucher, gut Medicaid and turn it into a block grant, slash food stamps, Pell grants and other support for the vulnerable. A detailed analysis by the Center of Budget and Policy Proposals finds 69 percent of the cuts in the budget just passed by Republicans in the House come from programs from poor and low wage workers.

We do well to honor Lyndon Johnson. He understood the power of government to make America better. But it is not enough to honor his legacy. It is time to stir ourselves, as he pushed himself, to not simply defend his contributions, but to extend them to meet the challenges of our day.