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JOE BIDEN

Let's get back to normalcy. Does normalcy fit into your schedule?
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FiveAcres
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#476

Post by FiveAcres »

Foggy wrote: Fri Oct 21, 2022 6:56 am Yeah, what MN-Skeptic said. Absolutely 150%.
My partner and I graduated college in the 1978/1979 with $600 of debt to my grandmother. (We had an expensive car repair and needed that car to get to classes.) We went to a good state university after doing the first two years at a two year college. (We met at the two year college.) I had SSI survivor benefits and he had VA education assistance. We both worked part time and lived off campus. We paid off my grandmother that first year post graduation. I am appalled when people compare their educational costs in the seventies with later decades. Although we didn't feel it at the time (I sometimes talked about my starving student days) we were so lucky. And grateful for the socialistic programs that helped us.
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#477

Post by Volkonski »

I was college class of '73. Because I was in what we now call a STEM major I could get National Defense Loans at 1.5% interest. Because of lowish family income my college found a lot of other student aid for me. I earned the money to feed myself by working every summer and saving every penny. A Research Assistanceship and being a dorm graduate resident tutor got me thru grad school with no cost to my parents.

Our mother was a bookkeeper and our father a janitor but both my brother and I attended prestigious private colleges. The American dream of upward mobility was real then.

I don't think that those opportunities are anywhere near so available today. :(
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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AndyinPA
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#478

Post by AndyinPA »

I also agree totally with MN. I'd add that unions also benefit society, but this is about college loans. I don't think many people who got their degrees 30-40+ years ago have any idea how things have changed. No one can work his/her way through college anymore. A college degree gives upward mobility; makes one more likely and able to afford to buy a home, creating generational wealth.

I think we can agree here that that's desirable.

But there's a large segment of the population who have been convinced by the republican party and their rich donors that this is not desirable. They've created the myth of the "others" taking what they have away from them. If they have college degrees from many years ago, they just don't understand how much more expensive colleges, public or private, are today. Add that to their resentment against helping anyone but themselves, and they think helping those with college debt is taking it directly away from them. They don't care about the common good. There is no common good to them.
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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#479

Post by MN-Skeptic »

I graduated from college in '75, my husband in '76. My sweetie's father was a tractor mechanic, his mother was a stay-at-home mom, so there's no way he normally would have been able to afford a private Lutheran college. However, Baby Boomers were overwhelming the state universities, so Iowa paid the difference so that he attended the private college at Iowa university rates. My husband could afford college by working during the summers and taking out a small federal school loan.
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#480

Post by raison de arizona »

My father went to college in the 50s, Northern Illinois University. He was able to work a couple menial part time jobs that not only paid for his tuition and living expenses, but also enough extra to send home to replace himself with a hired farm hand that my grandfather needed to keep the family farm afloat. How things have changed.
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
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Gregg
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#481

Post by Gregg »

Kriselda Gray wrote: Thu Oct 20, 2022 10:22 pm Well, it IS popular with a lot of people, but there are *also* a lot of people who feel it's unfair for their tax dollars to go towards paying someone else's school loans - especially among people who took out and paid off their own loans.
I just as well might feel it is unfair that my tax dollars went to treat millions of people with COVID, though I never contracted it because I was meticulously careful not to. Bloody idiots running around refusing toe wear a mas, social distance or stay home cost us TRILLIONS of dollars. Cost me well over a million dollars too, BYW, in lost earnings and investments.

Phuck 'em. Society has costs we all pay and benefits we don't all get. It's what civilization is (that, and non migratory agriculture). :smoking:
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Gregg
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#482

Post by Gregg »

It could be a Republican plot to open up most of the prestigious schools to people who can afford it as opposed to people who are wicked smart.

They are whining, and actually in SCOTUS this term trying to defeat Affirmative Action in colleges. I always wondered why I didn't see more white people at Harvard, :shrug:
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#483

Post by raison de arizona »

Who in the hell do they think they are?
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
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#484

Post by raison de arizona »

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
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#485

Post by pipistrelle »

Dark Brandon is trending again on Twitter tonight.
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#486

Post by Volkonski »

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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#487

Post by Kriselda Gray »

Volkonski wrote: Sun Oct 23, 2022 3:10 pm
I wonder how they're going to get out of this one. They'd better not give in to the extortion, that's for damn sure!
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#488

Post by Phoenix520 »

I don’t have student loan debt. When I attended, George Mason was a satellite college of UVA, and in-state tuition was cheaper’n dirt. I paid it all out of my pocket each semester.

To those who have issues with using “your” tax money to pay for loan relief, I will say so what? We’ve NEVER had any say in where “our” tax money goes, because once we send it in it’s not ours anymore. I don’t want to pay for unnecessary wars, or a border wall, or any number of things. I have no say; why should you?
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#489

Post by Gregg »

Phoenix520 wrote: Sun Oct 23, 2022 7:37 pm I don’t have student loan debt. When I attended, George Mason was a satellite college of UVA, and in-state tuition was cheaper’n dirt. I paid it all out of my pocket each semester.

To those who have issues with using “your” tax money to pay for loan relief, I will say so what? We’ve NEVER had any say in where “our” tax money goes, because once we send it in it’s not ours anymore. I don’t want to pay for unnecessary wars, or a border wall, or any number of things. I have no say; why should you?
Exactly! There are any number of benefits that I am not eligible for, along with the many, mostly tax breaks, that I am. Mortgage interest? I've sure as hell saved more than $10k on that. Same for Capital Gains, two things most of people getting loan relief aren't getting.
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#490

Post by pjhimself »

In remarks in Florida on Nov. 1, Biden repeated a boast about Medicare Part B premiums decreasing next year “for the first time in more than a decade.” As we’ve explained, that’s true, but misleading. The $5.20-per-month drop next year follows a larger increase the prior year that was partly due to anticipated Alzheimer’s drug expenses, which ended up not happening.

The president then immediately turned to Social Security. “And on my watch, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are getting an increase in their Social Security checks,” he said. “So, checks are going to be up and Medicare payments are going to be down.”

It may not have been clear to the audience, but what Biden meant was that “for the first time in 10 years” Social Security payments would increase while Part B premiums would decrease. He has made that point before. On Oct. 13, for instance, he said of seniors: “For the first time in 10 years, their Social Security checks will go up while their Medicare premiums go down.”

But Social Security payments have gone up every year except one over the past decade. And those increases had nothing to do with presidential actions.

Social Security cost-of-living adjustments are tied to inflation, specifically the Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index. The CPI usually goes up every year — though there have been a few years when the CPI was flat, and seniors didn’t get a Social Security increase. The last time that happened was in 2015.

This year, since inflation has gone up significantly, the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment also was robust: an 8.7% bump, the largest percentage increase since 1981. The COLA translates into an average increase of more than $140 per month for beneficiaries, starting with the January 2023 payment, the Social Security Administration explains.

The White House Twitter account attempted to make the same claim as Biden, but failed to include the Medicare part. “Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden’s leadership,” the White House tweeted on Nov. 1, later deleting the message.

As we just explained, the big bump has everything to do with inflation, not “Biden’s leadership.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in the Nov. 2 briefing that the message was taken down because “the tweet was not complete.”

“So in the past, we’ve pointed out that, for the first time in our — in over a decade, seniors’ Medicare premiums will — will decrease even as their Social Security checks increase. That’s a little bit of context that was not included.”

Of course, there’s even more context that the White House leaves out.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... r-AA13Hpae
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#491

Post by Foggy »

He turns 80 on Sunday. :smoking:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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#492

Post by Ben-Prime »

Foggy wrote: Tue Nov 15, 2022 7:40 am He turns 80 on Sunday. :smoking:
So let's throw a Fogbow Sweet Sixteen Times Five?
But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,
As round and round we run;
And the truth shall ever come uppermost,
And justice shall be done.

- Charles Mackay, "Eternal Justice"
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Dr. Ken
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#493

Post by Dr. Ken »

White house wedding
ImageImagePhilly Boondoggle
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Foggy
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#494

Post by Foggy »

Oh man, that will frost the former presinut. :mrgreen:

She's only getting married to make Trump look bad. :mad:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Kendra
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#495

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#496

Post by neonzx »

Much nicer venue than that ugly Mar a Lago monstrosity.
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#497

Post by John Thomas8 »

I wasn't aware stupid this strong existed:

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#498

Post by neonzx »

John Thomas8 wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 8:38 pm I wasn't aware stupid this strong existed:
Did you miss the author's name? Geraldo Rivera. He's not new of the scene of stupid. :P
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#499

Post by John Thomas8 »

neonzx wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 8:42 pm
John Thomas8 wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 8:38 pm I wasn't aware stupid this strong existed:
Did you miss the author's name? Geraldo Rivera. He's not new of the scene of stupid. :P
I didn't think he'd sink this low.

Oh well, it fits in snugly with the downfall we're observing first hand.
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#500

Post by AndyinPA »

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. PRESIDENT!

:groupdance:
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