GOP congressman: Student loans could lead to Holocaust.

[Landslide Lyndon]

I guess NYJew is consulting this guy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/maryland-politics/post/bartlett-calls-federal-student-loans-unconstitutional-invokes-holocaust/2012/09/06/70dd2974-f842-11e1-8253-3f495ae70650_blog.html#pagebreak

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) suggested Wednesday federally-issued student loans were unconstitutional. He also said disregarding the Constitution could lead down a “slippery slope” and cited the Holocaust as an example of what could happen when a country heads down a wrong path.

...

“Not that it’s not a good idea to give students loans, it certainly is a good idea to give them loans,” Bartlett said. “But if you can ignore the Constitution to do something good today, tomorrow you will be ignoring the Constitution to do something bad. You could. There are more people in our, in America today of German ancestry than any other [inaudible]. The Holocaust that occurred in Germany — how in the heck could that happen? And when you start down the wrong road, it can be a very slippery slope.”

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

House Republican makes absurd, anti-realitarian insults? This is not news.

[Likely Voter]

There is nothing I hate more than slippery slope arguments, and ending with Nazis are the worst.

For once I wish someone would say...OK, then. Please detail the exact steps on this slippery slope that begins with the Federal government offering student loans and ends with the Federal government opening up concentration camps and gas chambers.

The crazy hippies on the left turned liberal into a bad word to the point where it became a cudgel by the eighties.  Today's Republicans are in danger of doing the same to "conservative"

[Miles]

Yeah. We already know Bartlett is a pretty reasonable guy. Everything he's saying is essentially true. The only way to make him look like Todd Akin is to grossly misquote him.

That being said, his impending defeat will probably a great loss to Congress, an institution relatively short of reasonably people like Bartlett.

Hmmm....

[Donerail]

Roscoe Bartlett has a PhD from the University of Maryland...

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Yeah. We already know Bartlett is a pretty reasonable guy. Everything he's saying is essentially true. The only way to make him look like Todd Akin is to grossly misquote him.

That being said, his impending defeat will probably a great loss to Congress, an institution relatively short of reasonably people like Bartlett.

Hmmm....

I submit that one could argue that 'reasonable' applies in the context of being a member of the Tea Party Caucus and eighty-six years old.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Roscoe Bartlett has a PhD from the University of Maryland...

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Bartlett actually founded the University of Maryland.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Performance Art. Ignore it and it will go away.

[後援会]

Yeah. We already know Bartlett is a pretty reasonable guy. Everything he's saying is essentially true. The only way to make him look like Todd Akin is to grossly misquote him.

That being said, his impending defeat will probably a great loss to Congress, an institution relatively short of reasonably people like Bartlett.

Hmmm....

Student loans are utter sh**t and colleges are probably the most corrupt institutions in our country. Anyone who has ever had experience with a financial aid office anywhere knows student loans are utter sh**t. Bartlett likes his rhetorical flourishes, but his antipathy is very well placed.

[Ogre Mage]

Yeah. We already know Bartlett is a pretty reasonable guy. Everything he's saying is essentially true. The only way to make him look like Todd Akin is to grossly misquote him.

That being said, his impending defeat will probably a great loss to Congress, an institution relatively short of reasonably people like Bartlett.

Hmmm....

Student loans are utter sh**t and colleges are probably the most corrupt institutions in our country. Anyone who has ever had experience with a financial aid office anywhere knows student loans are utter sh**t. Bartlett likes his rhetorical flourishes, but his antipathy is very well placed.

Err ... okay ... but colleges were not the institutions responsible for the biggest recession since the Great Depression.

[Zioneer]

Yeah. We already know Bartlett is a pretty reasonable guy. Everything he's saying is essentially true. The only way to make him look like Todd Akin is to grossly misquote him.

That being said, his impending defeat will probably a great loss to Congress, an institution relatively short of reasonably people like Bartlett.

Hmmm....

Student loans are utter sh**t and colleges are probably the most corrupt institutions in our country. Anyone who has ever had experience with a financial aid office anywhere knows student loans are utter sh**t. Bartlett likes his rhetorical flourishes, but his antipathy is very well placed.

More corrupt than banks, oil/gas companies, and local governments?

[後援会]

Yeah. We already know Bartlett is a pretty reasonable guy. Everything he's saying is essentially true. The only way to make him look like Todd Akin is to grossly misquote him.

That being said, his impending defeat will probably a great loss to Congress, an institution relatively short of reasonably people like Bartlett.

Hmmm....

Student loans are utter sh**t and colleges are probably the most corrupt institutions in our country. Anyone who has ever had experience with a financial aid office anywhere knows student loans are utter sh**t. Bartlett likes his rhetorical flourishes, but his antipathy is very well placed.

More corrupt than banks, oil/gas companies, and local governments?

I would say so. Hell, if we're looking at banks, there are still regulatory agencies that can take them to task. Whether they do so effectively is another question, but they definitely do so. There is no such entity for colleges. And many colleges are tied with the most corrupt of investment funds, as their endowments end up being placed in the funds of well-connected alumni. And so these people profit massively.

Hell, at least with your typical bank, someone can declare bankruptcy to get out of a bad loan or something. Good luck doing that with a bad student loan. The incestuous web of American colleges and the financial groups of well-connected alums, as well as larger networks of rent-seeking players, is a god damn plague.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Hey, let's play devil's advocate and help this guy out. You never know when your art student who paints nice paintings like this will go on to kill 6 million Jews.

[BigSkyBob]

As Ronald Reagan so eloquently noted, a government that has the power to give you everything, has the power to take it away. A genocidal government would be the worst of tyrannies. The Constitution created a series of checks and balances to prevent our government from becoming tyrannical. If those checks and balances are ignored, even for seemingly worthwhile acts, then the only safeguards we have against tyranny is the benevolence of our elected leaders.

[minionofmidas]

An argument *can* of course be made that Hitler's rule as-it-actually-happened was impossible without right-wing judicial activism.
Of course, you'd have be confusing cause and effect to a sizable extent.

[opebo]

Student loans are utter sh**t

Only because of the unreasonable requirement that they be 'paid back'.  If they were grants they would be perfect.

and colleges are probably the most corrupt institutions in our country.

No, they reflect precisely the corruption of the society of which they are a part - capitalism.

[J. J.]

More corrupt than banks, oil/gas companies, and local governments?

Ah, Penn State?

[BigSkyBob]

Yeah. We already know Bartlett is a pretty reasonable guy. Everything he's saying is essentially true. The only way to make him look like Todd Akin is to grossly misquote him.

That being said, his impending defeat will probably a great loss to Congress, an institution relatively short of reasonably people like Bartlett.

Hmmm....

Student loans are utter sh**t and colleges are probably the most corrupt institutions in our country. Anyone who has ever had experience with a financial aid office anywhere knows student loans are utter sh**t. Bartlett likes his rhetorical flourishes, but his antipathy is very well placed.

A consequence of that corruption is that costs continue to rise a rate greater than inflation. As costs rise, one of two endpoints is reached: people can't pay more, or people won't pay more. Student loans don't subsidize students, they subsidize the corruption. They simply make it possible for students to pay more without actually having to pay more out of their, and their parent's, pockets.

The student loan program may in fact have negative utility to students. If the program didn't exist, colleges would have to provide a product at a price that students could and would buy. Students would still graduate with a degree. They simply wouldn't have the debt.

[MaxQue]

Yeah. We already know Bartlett is a pretty reasonable guy. Everything he's saying is essentially true. The only way to make him look like Todd Akin is to grossly misquote him.

That being said, his impending defeat will probably a great loss to Congress, an institution relatively short of reasonably people like Bartlett.

Hmmm....

Student loans are utter sh**t and colleges are probably the most corrupt institutions in our country. Anyone who has ever had experience with a financial aid office anywhere knows student loans are utter sh**t. Bartlett likes his rhetorical flourishes, but his antipathy is very well placed.

A consequence of that corruption is that costs continue to rise a rate greater than inflation. As costs rise, one of two endpoints is reached: people can't pay more, or people won't pay more. Student loans don't subsidize students, they subsidize the corruption. They simply make it possible for students to pay more without actually having to pay more out of their, and their parent's, pockets.

The student loan program may in fact have negative utility to students. If the program didn't exist, colleges would have to provide a product at a price that students could and would buy. Students would still graduate with a degree. They simply wouldn't have the debt.

No, if the program didn't existed, that would as before.
Either your parents are rich or are getting endebted much, or you don't go to college because you can't afford it.

The salary of teachers and the cost of buildings aren't really compressible.
There is two things which can be reduced, sports and the salary of the bosses, both things than college directions love.

[Person Man]

Well, it is very concerning that you can't discharge student loans unless you are too old or too sick to work to even make enough money to pay the interest and nothing to your self....and that's probably what will happen. In the end, there will probably be a student loan crisis in which the program allows for discharges or is cancelled and replaced with some form of mandatory savings account for parents which is probably enforced as some sort of child support and makes the systtem even more regressive in this country. The point is at this stage in the game you can't just not have people go to college or trade school. I can assure you that America will fail if it has no way of competing in a globalized world and it would probably be a lot like any developing country right now where people who are at least somewhat good at school find another place to live after High School. That all being said, at this point in time, student loans are a "neccesary evil"  and the system is so corrupt because the system is so neccesary and there will be no reform until these things single handedly cause a severe reccesion like 1981, 2008 or 1929.

The best you can do no is to not worry about the loans you get and to try to qualify for some sort of Income Base Repayment plan which basically makes your loan an interest only 20 year loan with a ballon payment at the end that is whatever the taxable income amount on the loan is at the end. The silver lining to that is that if you make an average of $80,000 a year as an attorney, PA, accountant or engineer, you will probably be required to pay about 650 a month if you took out $100,000 in loans for 20 years. At the end of that, the $100,000 would be forgiven and counted as "income" that year for tax purposes and you would have to pay $28,000 on that in income taxes. Hopefully with average inflation, that would be worth $14,000 and you could probably make a payment plan with the IRS for another $600 a month for three and a half years or you could take out a Home Equity loan to pay it off.

[Miles]

Here we go again.

Who's he getting his talking points from? John Raese?

[BigSkyBob]

Yeah. We already know Bartlett is a pretty reasonable guy. Everything he's saying is essentially true. The only way to make him look like Todd Akin is to grossly misquote him.

That being said, his impending defeat will probably a great loss to Congress, an institution relatively short of reasonably people like Bartlett.

Hmmm....

Student loans are utter sh**t and colleges are probably the most corrupt institutions in our country. Anyone who has ever had experience with a financial aid office anywhere knows student loans are utter sh**t. Bartlett likes his rhetorical flourishes, but his antipathy is very well placed.

A consequence of that corruption is that costs continue to rise a rate greater than inflation. As costs rise, one of two endpoints is reached: people can't pay more, or people won't pay more. Student loans don't subsidize students, they subsidize the corruption. They simply make it possible for students to pay more without actually having to pay more out of their, and their parent's, pockets.

The student loan program may in fact have negative utility to students. If the program didn't exist, colleges would have to provide a product at a price that students could and would buy. Students would still graduate with a degree. They simply wouldn't have the debt.

No, if the program didn't existed, that would as before.
Either your parents are rich or are getting indebted much, or you don't go to college because you can't afford it.

It is closed minded to think that college can only cost what it does today. The very same universities offered an education at a lower cost in the past. It simply isn't a law of physics that costs had to rise above inflation all those years. They just did. It might be painful, but, those marginal increases in cost all those years could be wrung out of the system, lowering costs to previous affordable levels.

I understand that poorer people can't contribute as much to their child's education as middle-income folks. That's were income-based aid should play a factor. But, when everyone receives a "grant," and everyone may take out a loan, it doesn't act to make college more affordable for anyone. It just allows colleges to raise costs the amount of the grants/loans without making college any less affordable.

[BigSkyBob]

Here is an article that makes many of the same points I have:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/09/09/megan-mcardle-on-the-coming-burst-of-the-college-bubble.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=in_newsweek&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bin_newsweek&utm_term=Tina%20Brown%20List

Here is one of many good passages:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Zioneer]

Here we go again.

Who's he getting his talking points from? John Raese?

At least his Patriot Act remark is closer to being true; it's a terrible and totalitarian piece of legislation that gives sweeping powers to the head of state.

[MaxQue]

Yeah. We already know Bartlett is a pretty reasonable guy. Everything he's saying is essentially true. The only way to make him look like Todd Akin is to grossly misquote him.

That being said, his impending defeat will probably a great loss to Congress, an institution relatively short of reasonably people like Bartlett.

Hmmm....

Student loans are utter sh**t and colleges are probably the most corrupt institutions in our country. Anyone who has ever had experience with a financial aid office anywhere knows student loans are utter sh**t. Bartlett likes his rhetorical flourishes, but his antipathy is very well placed.

A consequence of that corruption is that costs continue to rise a rate greater than inflation. As costs rise, one of two endpoints is reached: people can't pay more, or people won't pay more. Student loans don't subsidize students, they subsidize the corruption. They simply make it possible for students to pay more without actually having to pay more out of their, and their parent's, pockets.

The student loan program may in fact have negative utility to students. If the program didn't exist, colleges would have to provide a product at a price that students could and would buy. Students would still graduate with a degree. They simply wouldn't have the debt.

No, if the program didn't existed, that would as before.
Either your parents are rich or are getting indebted much, or you don't go to college because you can't afford it.

It is closed minded to think that college can only cost what it does today. The very same universities offered an education at a lower cost in the past. It simply isn't a law of physics that costs had to rise above inflation all those years. They just did. It might be painful, but, those marginal increases in cost all those years could be wrung out of the system, lowering costs to previous affordable levels.

I understand that poorer people can't contribute as much to their child's education as middle-income folks. That's were income-based aid should play a factor. But, when everyone receives a "grant," and everyone may take out a loan, it doesn't act to make college more affordable for anyone. It just allows colleges to raise costs the amount of the grants/loans without making college any less affordable.

Well, I have nothing against income-based aid. It is the thing which exists in Quebec and it works more and less well.

But sure, government should act to keep the education costs the lowest possible without affecting quality.
Same thing for healthcare.