on college being free

TL;DR: the solution to the student loan crisis cannot be sustainably solved by making college free, but it can solve many problems at once by heavily regulating student loan interest.  the set of problems solved by this approach are many: college has value and value should be paid for, students still have skin in the game, banks still make enough money to cover the cost of administering the loans, and it allows the 40-50 year earnings of graduates to be used productively, driving the whole economy, and not simply funnelled back to banks at rates that go many times further than the money originally loaned.

 

make something free and watch people treat it like it has no value. 

an education from college, university, trade school, or apprenticeship is a thing of value. it prepares young people with the mindset and skllls they need to be productive. that productivity has value, therefore the education that got them started down the path has value as well. after our constitutionally guaranteed primary and secondary educations, up to the age of 16-18 or so, young people have several choices on what to do next to prepare themselves for the rest of their life path. 

it’s an essential part of their commitment to their own life that they invest in themselves. to reap the greatest rewards, requires the greatest investment of time, effort, and yes, money, the latter is of course compensation for the time and effort educators provide. 

individual and society, a shared commitment

a college or trades education beyond high school should cost the student a fair amount of money, along with the commitment of time and effort to the learning process. while it benefits society to have the highest educated and skilled workforce possible, society’s collective commitment to the process shouldn’t include footing the entire bill. that teaches future parents nothing about savings, and tells students and everyone else in the process that an advanced education is owed to them, or worse, that it has no value.

fix student loans, you fix a lot of problems at the same time

the problem with student loans today is that the interest on them creates a cycle where a monthly payment they can afford doesn’t even cover the interest. 

the student keeps paying, a lot, for many years, and the balance due continues to go up. in the end, after 20 years, the remaining balance is written off (who knows who eats that, probably taxpayers), and the student is left to pay full taxes on the written off balance, often to the tune of 4, 5, or even 6 figures. 

meanwhile the banks have for decades extracted the maximum profit possible.
in other words, schools, students, and taxpayers are the losers. banks are the only winners.

it's sort of like how trump has done business. leverage finances to build something big, generate as much revenue as possible, pull out as much profit as you can, run the business until it starts losing money, protect yourself using very legal bankruptcy laws (those laws, btw, bought and paid for by the businesses who abuse them, so that, hey, at least it's all "legal"), walk away, and let the government and taxpayers clean up the mess. "privatize gains; socialize losses", yep, this is the person we elected to clean up government, and run it like a business. nice huh?

ok back on topic...

possible solution

is there a solution where banks still make money, students invest in themselves, and taxpayers pay much less than they do now? i think so.

here’s what government can do

the government should invest in the cost of advanced education by going back to heavily regulating the interest that banks can charge for student loans. i’m no financial wizard, and who knows if this is true, but in this digital age it’s hard to believe that it would cost a bank more than 1% annually to administratively process the maintenance of a student loan. that 1% could be regulated by the federal government, who could at the same time provide incentives to banks for writing loans based on quality and quantity.

rather than pouring out billions annually in grants to students, pour a fraction of that into subsidizing the 1% interest to the banks for 10 years.

here’s what students can do

they can now afford to pay for their entire education themselves. 

they can use parents’ savings, money they earn while attending school, or when those fall short, taking out 0% interest loans that cover tuition, room, board, books, and fees. 

after 10 years of 0% interest, whatever balance is left, the student can continue paying, and tack on the 1% going forward. incentivizes them to pay off the loan sooner.

what might happen as a result:

• moving from grants to interest subsidies, government costs for student tuition might go down considerably
• government can eliminate tax deductions for student loan interest
• students pay for their own education fully; they own the whole thing, paid off at 0% interest in a time frame they can
• banks stop profiting billions off the backs of students, unchaining them from the financial industry revenue stream. i’m all for banks investing and making money. just go do it somewhere else. 

on trump's racism

TL;DR: while trump may not be a racist, to them he is "their guy".  he has been very effective at using "draw your own conclusions" marketing principles to tap into that large bloc of voters that other politicians had previously worked hard to distance themselves from. 

 

is president trump a racist? i don't know. if there's evidence out there, it doesn't seem to be blatant, or show him to be one any more or less than your average rich white guy from his generation.

i think i do however understand why he walks, talks, and quacks like a racist.

is there evidence of racism? not much

i do believe that if the left-leaning news media who are could have found evidence of this over the past two years, they would have already.

i also believe that the right-leaning news media who (around the time that jeb, mario, and ted had high-hopes and money in the game) could have found evidence of this, they would have already.

so... given that there have been a lot of powerful people, with powerful money, on both sides of the aisle, with incentive to bring him down, and failing to find racist beliefs or actions, i tend to believe that the jury is still out on this one.

and, if you do find any evidence of this, during his decades of adult life, i bet you'll find that what might look like racism, is probably motivated more by green, than by black, brown, or white.

so...

so why did we elect him?

to drain the swamp, right?

hillary represented the best (worst?) example of a corrupt political empire, bought and paid for by the american financial sector. so, for the first time most of us can remember, americans were given the opportunity to destroy a corrupt political machine with one pull of the lever. we got to elect someone who wasn't a career politician. we specifically and purposefully elected a businessman. we elected a shrewd, savvy, independent, outsider, fuckyou entrepreneur.

but to win, he still needed votes, and to earn votes he needed to create enough value.

how do business people create value?

they create it in lots of ways, but here are two of them:

1) by dominating competitive markets
2) by exploiting untapped markets

for decades, it has been easy to see that trump is motivated only by finding potential value, adding value, then extracting value.

...because trump isn't a politician. remember?

right? i mean, that was the whole point of the campaign, and probably the most common reason given by people who voted for him.

objectively defined right and wrong are out, ethics are out, honesty is out (unless you can make a buck on it). all that stuff is replaced by loyalty and winning. he built businesses as cheaply as he could, then extracted as much personal value as he could until bankruptcy ended the party, at which time, he took off, taxpayers were there to pay the bill and clean up the mess. "hey, that's just smart business, folks"

how did trump use business value to crush the establishment GOP?

when there were over a dozen candidates in the GOP pool of possible nominees. trump ended up winning the nomination not because he competed better and harder during the campaign, and not because his vision of a great america was better defined and articulated (because his vision was actually more vague and less defined than the others, more emotion than logic, more fear than facts), rather, he won the GOP nomination because he refused to play by the same rules as the others. instead, he invented a new more exciting game, and then won that game because he was the only one playing.

the day the GOP shot themselves in the foot in front of a nation

omg do you remember? because if you don't then i'm all too happy to remind you. there was this debate. there had to have been 10 GOP dweebs on the stage. they were all unified in their demand that trump concede to their whim of declaring that he will support whoever the nominee ended up being. i've never before seen, and i hope never will see from now on, a more pathetic display of cowardice by a collection of accomplished successful politicians as this group who asked such a bullshit question. they were each so smugly convinced that it was them who would be the nominee,  but all so convinced that trump would not be, but that they were at the same time fearful that trump would magnetically split the party.

holy shit.

this was the moment THIS former republican lost ALL respect for the intellectually bankrupt emotionally manipulative republican party.

it was actually at that moment that it became obvious to the rest of us that trump would actually be the nominee. i mean, i still believed hillary would win the general election, but it was at that moment that i lost my last remaining respect for the GOP. this being the party i had been a registered member of, and idealistic true believer of, from 1981 to 1996.

you conservative fools. you let down your guard, and the idiot trump checkmated you all.

and you all. pricks all of you. when it came to hosting the republican national convention in 2016, which of you actually convened with your own party? bunone of you. none. of. you. proves you cared more about yourselves than your country. more about yourselves than your party. and more about yourselves than understanding what motivates the citizens who your fearmongering and tea party enabling fed and fostered, and finally grew up and blew up in your face.

i'm embarrassed to say that i was ever a member of your party. you used patriotism to manipulate good people into voting against themselves. you stuffed your pockets with wall street billions while redirecting hatred toward the poor of us who needed only a tiny percentage of that.

this was the election when it was jeb bush's "turn". it was ted cruz' "time". it was marco rubio's "below the zone" leapfrog. omg. freakin' amateurs. playing by the old rules. and now they're home sitting on their hands.

so what does this have to do with racism and white supremacy?

yeah, how about them white supremacists?

politicians normally avoid these folks, because their ideas are morally bankrupt and typically toxic to a sustainable political career.

but... when it comes to leveraging untapped markets to his profit and benefit, trump is a genius. and the angry white supremacists turned out to be a big pool of motivated voters who rose up and tsunami'd him into the white house.

...so to sum this up:

in other words: trump may not be a racist. but he pandered to them. they gave him the edge he needed to win office. and any actions (or inactions) by trump that look racist are nothing more than not biting the hand that feeds him. especially because he will need these "good folks" again in a few years.

so even if he is not a racist. he bought, paid for, and owns the racist voting bloc.

to the white supremacists, trump is "their guy". they know it. he knows it. and as an untapped market, as a huge pool of votes that no one ever wanted before, but still have plenty of value. so basically, tapping into that pool is a business move, not a political one.

but now he owns them, and like it or not, you are the company you keep.

the question then is: are you a racist if you befriend racists? not necessarily, but then, if winning is the only objective, that's not the point.

on hurricane harvey, maps, and you

are you into maps?

the storm is gone, but relief and recovery will take years, and americans far away still need help.

in addition to donating to reputable charities, would you like to do some hands-on work that helps, but can't get to houston, or at this point don't want to get in the way? here's a way you can help remotely.

in short, you can get online and contribute your time and effort creating and verifying basemap data for the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project.

what is OSM? well, think of it as the wikipedia of maps. it started back in 2004 with the goal of using crowdsourcing to map the entire world. at first it was interested in mainly in mapping streets, but in recent years has grown to map a whole lot more, whether it be mapping trees within parks, locations of places to get a coffee, or even mapping departments within retail stores.

...and just like wikipedia, anyone can edit it, and the crowd verifies to keep it correct. in the end, it's a living, breathing map, and changing every day---just like the world around us.

one of the most productive uses of OSM in recent years has been "humanitarian mapping". the 2010 earthquake tragedy that struck in haiti was its true coming-of-age as a valuable tool. actual data on this varies, but let's just say the OSM team on the ground and remotely transformed haiti from a country that was mostly not mapped, to one that was, and in great detail.

and that ever growing OSM basemap was used by first responders, non-profit organizations, command center briefings, media support, the general public, and many, many other uses.

interested? want to at least check it out, and maybe get involved?

1) first, go to OSM and click "Sign Up" to create a new account

2) click "Edit", then "Edit with iD", then "Start the Walkthrough" in order to learn how to use the editing tools. it will hand-hold you through the steps. i think you'll find it very easy and straightforward. the tutorial takes maybe 10-15 minutes to get thru.

3) go to tasks.openstreetmap.us, choose a task that needs work, and follow the instructions

apparently lots of work needs to be done with getting buildings added to the map; you can just use your mouse to draw them by tracing on top of satellite photos. there's also a lot of verification work to check stuff that others did, not just with buildings, but also streets, parks, and the location of public safety facilities.

i've been editing OSM maps on and off for years, and just picked up a task and did some work on it yesterday. there's a long labor day weekend coming up. great opportunity to put in some hours.

if you want to try it, and have ANY questions with this stuff, or get stuck or whatever, contact me directly, or comment below and i can help you.

on russian meddling--on trump's integrity

TL;DR: most countries try to influence things outside their own borders if they believe it's in their national interest to do so.  russia does, china does, we do.  to act high and mighty about russia successfully influencing the 2016 election is silly and naive.  as for trump, he has no integrity beyond what he himself wants.  let's face it, we elected to public office someone who has no sense of public service.

 

russians meddle in elections when they can. so have we. so do we.

even as an unapologetic liberal, i can say with all factual historical honesty, that, shit, the US has been meddling in elections under the table (and quite occasionally above the table) for the better part of the past 7 decades (if not more), and it has almost always worked in our own national interest. so, like trump said a few months ago, let's not pretend that the US is pure, and that russia's meddling in our election is some aberration. please. all nations have national interests. and all powerful nations have national interests that extend well beyond their boundaries. we have national interests. russia has national interests. you want to believe russia is some evil beast and the US is some innocent waif, keep dreaming.

so to democrats:
until you really want to fix the problem, you need to let the "russian meddling" story go. it's obvious you care more about political points than the meddling per se.

so to republicans:
to ignore russian meddling is pretty much treasonous, which makes you worse than the democrats, so time to put the flag pins back on and get some smart people on fighting and fixing this.

that said? the two problems i have with trump are these:

1) while he serves his own interests perfectly, he has absolutely zero ethical integrity when it comes to public service.
2) while he is an arguably successful businessman and imposing manager, he is not a leader.

yes. he won the election. the system we built and signed up for (and haven't had the motivation to change yet) worked as designed. love him or hate him, it's trumps turn on watch for the next few years. if you salute the flag and keep your feet planted here (rather than pack your shit and run off to some european socialist utopia) you really need to respect it. american democracy and the american republic is a messy business, but in the long run, despite its bumps and bruises along the way, points mostly toward justice, as much as the humans within it will allow.

as i learned my first week of boot camp when i was 17, you salute the rank, not the man. if i met trump today i'd salute him and give him respect. if i meet him 10 years from now, i'm slicing his tires and keying his car. that's what it means to love america and the constitution, and at the same time have the balls to fight for what's right and punish those (donald trump) who've spent a lifetime hurting people while helping no one but himself.

but let's get back to exactly how trump proves to us that he has no ethical integrity...

follow me... if he had lost the election, everything about his history confirms, that for pretty much all of 2017 so far, he would have been the standard bearer of complaining about this “america first” russian meddling that hillary arranged and obama did nothing about. (because in actuality, she did, and he didn't).

in contrast:

• the bush presidents, both of them, agree with their policies or not, had integrity. mad integrity.
• carter, had probably the most integrity of any president of the last century.
• rand paul, crazy man, but steadfast integrity.
• romney lost the election because he had zero integrity. he was all pander.
• cruz, rubio... already lost causes. maybe had integrity, but already sold out.
• sorry to say, as of 2008, so did mccain.

i mean, you can like bush43 or hate him, for leading us into wars that cost us trillions, but you can't deny the guy had integrity. he didn't pander. he had beliefs and he stuck with them no matter what, and couldn't care less about what people said about him. crazy thick skin.

but... like romney, trump has zero integrity. actually, trump has 100% integrity to himself, and only appears to serve the nation when any particular decision that benefits himself first.

as for if he'd lost the election. whoa... he'd be on that russian meddling shit just like birtherism. just like he was prior to the election. even the electoral college was a bad thing to trump--til he won. even hillary was a criminal going to jail (and maybe she should) until he won. "hey we don't care about that anymore now do we" -trump.

but now, russian hacking is a non issue, it's fake news. why? not because it’s fake. but because trump won.

even though the US meddles--the fact that russia meddles is still something we need to fight against. and we're not fighting it. because to trump, it's a non issue because it benefitted him.

the cancer that trump infects america with, is that to him--our president and head of state--there are no longer any objective rights/wrongs beyond whatever benefits him personally. no more morals. no more ethics. only winning. and by that he means, trump winning. not the middle class. not coal miners who've been part of a dying industry for a few decades now. not carrier inc. no one but trump and anyone who can help him.

the president should serve the nation, even if decisions pull against himself personally. if that doesn't bother you at all, and you still support trump even knowing that he's actually not "america first", well, that's certainly your right. but if you disagree, then maybe answer me this. in all of trump’s accomplishments over the past 7 months. name one that benefitted the country and happened to work *against* him personally.

on trump

TL;DR: like it or not, the system worked, and the result is trump is president.  don't like the result, then participate.  don't like the system, then work to change it.  

 

please. my liberal friends. get past it. the electoral college works the way it should. we didn't elect a public servant this time. stop pretending he will act as such.

if you wanna play the daily news cycle "gotcha" game, president trump will give you more than you can handle, and you'll drown in it, and the right doesn't care.

here's what happened... to punish the professionally lobby-bought politician motivated by whoever lines their pockets the most, we elected a CEO. that's right--we wanted to see what happens when gov't by the people and for the people is run like a business. these first 5 months are just a taste. objectively defined ethical right and wrong are out, teamwork and loyalty are in.

of course director james comey had to go. if you pull the wagon against the president, you have to go. does that make trump a kim jong-un dictator? no. (close, but no)

look, i've been in the corporate world for almost 30 years. if you pull against the boss, you're gone, and you *should* be gone. the pro-business right wingers know this, because a lot of them are business owners who tightrope through life on nothing more than their ideas and grit and have others' livelihoods on their shoulders. they stick their necks out more than liberals do. try to understand them for a second.

but, ok, look, what we're going to learn from this presidency is that, while government can learn a lot--and i mean A LOT--from business when it comes to cost-effectiveness, what business will never understand (nor should it) is that government needs to protect the level playing field and infrastructure of our. entire. society. and act in the best interest of the PEOPLE. and this basic thought is something business is simply *not* designed to do, let alone understand.

business will NEVER act in the best interest of everyone. it ONLY acts in the best interest of the market and in trumps case, the winners. for example, if you read stories of chemical companies in west virginia dumping poison in rivers then using incorporation to shield themselves personally, going out of business to escape liability, then reforming as a NEW company with new poison to dump, you're smart enough to know that business will never act in the best interest of the environment as long as competitors are saving money by not doing so.

i don't blame trump for lying. all. the. time. i don't blame trump for saying whatever he wants to in order to gain the most in any given situation. anyone who's followed how he works knows that this is in his DNA. he has no foundational principles, no ethics, and no integrity. his objective is to win or create the perception of winning. this is what creates the highest gain for a businessman who is driven to gain the most in the shortest amount of time, for himself and investors and stockholders, then let bankruptcy laws (and the taxpayers) clean up the mess left after private profits have been captured. this is smart business, folks. this is what happens when we elect a CEO to run gov't like a business.

in 4 (or 8) years we will learn, and then of course, thankfully, the american political pendulum will swing toward a younger bernie clone. and we will remember the lessons we learn from the trump presidency for a long time. 20 years at least, until thanks to our education system we will forget history and let the pendulum have at it again.

bottom line, whether you're on the right or on the left, i'm going to do my american duty to ask you to THANK the other side for their strength. because i've spent a good amount of time in countries where ONE political party gains too much power for too many decades, and it never ends up well. (i'm lookin at you mexico).

the extreme of the left is european socialism (bad), the extreme of the right is fascist dictatorship (not good), the extreme of libertarianism is anarchism (which while attractive while pulling on a bong in a dorm, fails a few steps into the game). in the end, keep voting, keep acting, keep caring, and america will be fine.

i am a wildly social liberal, wildly fiscal conservative, and if you're like me there is no party for us. maybe time to step up(?)

on STEM versus STEAM

TL;DR: the reason why STEM education is being emphasized, and encouraged to grow, is due to us deciding that we don't have enough STEM educated productive americans.  artists seem to think that the emphasis of STEM is because it is valued more highly than the arts, and therefore more important that the arts.  i don't know where this toxic inferiority complex comes from, but it doesn't help solve the STEM problem by redefining it as STEAM.  the arts of course *are* important.  arts education is *already* successful. keep it going, and at the same time, let's work to do better than we have been with STEM.

 

artists are sneaky.

education in the STEM fields has for the past few years increased as a national priority. apparently we're not teaching enough science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in schools, from K-12, and not enough bachelors degrees in STEM fields are coming out of our universities. the problem is both the immediate needs of our job market, and the strategic long term productivity and innovation of our economy.

so... STEM gets a lot of attention. you know who that seems to bother? the artists.

are the arts important? of course they are.
when you build something, is design just as important as the engineering? of course it is.

the reason why it's STEM and not STEAM is not because the "hard" sciences are better than the arts, rather it simply comes down to supply versus demand.  the US imports a few dozen thousand foreign nationals every year, and most of them aren't artists.  they're engineers, scientists, math whizzes, and technology people.  they're not art history majors, sociologists, or those who do work in comparative literature.

• STEM is important because our country creates more B.A. graduates than it needs.

• STEM is important because jobs in the sciences and engineering should go to americans first, and there is a perennial shortage.

why do artists get butthurt when STEM initiatives don't include the "A"?

you really want to help arts education? fight for it on its own merits. everyone knows that the education that goes into what to do, why we're doing it, what it looks like, and how it functions is at least as important as the education that goes into the details of how it's built.

arts are important on their own. quit lumping it in where it doesn't belong.