President Biden, Ukraine, and Michelle Obama: Americans Are Sickened By Lies

Recently, I reread Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and this passage struck me:

You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies--which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world--what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.

I immediately thought about our national life; it's one big lie. Media commentators and Democratic Party hacks (Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, etc.) claim that Joe Biden is a mentally competent and fully functioning adult--that he has all his marbles and is making rational policy decisions based on moral considerations and our national interests. But that's a lie.

Biden is suffering from severe cognitive decline and dementia. The symptoms grow worse with each passing week. Everyone knows it, and the refusal of our political and media elites to be honest about the President’s mental health is frightening.

President Biden, the Democratic Party leadership, and the legacy media insist Biden is running for a second term. That’s another lie. The puppeteers in the White House rafters have already chosen Biden’s successor. I predict the new candidate will be announced this summer shortly before the Democratic Party's National Convention. I believe that Michelle Obama, not Joe Biden, will be on the presidential ballot next November.

I feel sure that Biden’s handlers have already written the presidential decree pardoning Joe's son Hunter and other family members of all their crimes. Undoubtedly, the President has already signed that decree in case he keels over prematurely in the coming months or is incapacitated by a stroke.

Our war in Ukraine is another lie. Ukraine is losing that war, which has produced millions of refugees and perhaps a million battle casualties. Although our government is lying about it, the United States is directly at war with Russia, a nuclear power. For what?

The people propagating these gross lies don’t care that they are hiding the truth. Perhaps, as Joseph Goebbels suggested, they have lied so many times that they’ve come to believe the lies themselves.

However, I think the White House press officers, the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post know they’re lying about the Biden administration. And I think they know that Americans don’t believe the bullshit they’re spewing.

They don’t care that they’re being written off as liars and dissemblers. Why? The mainstream press doesn't give a damn whether the American people think the press is trustworthy, and that’s scary.

"Fill out those forms, fill them out!" Michelle Obama recklessly urges low-income students to go into debt to attend college

Michelle Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan were in Alexandria, Virginia earlier this week urging students to fill out federal financial-aid forms to attend college. "Fill out those forms, fill them out!" Michelle urged students as she watched them fill out the forms. "Don't leave money on the table."

Fill out those forms, fill them out!

I don't mean to be hard of Ms. Obama.  I commend her for urging high school students to attend college.  And I realize most low-income students need to borrow money in order to pursue the dream of a college education.  And the forms are complicated to fill out, although the Department of Education is trying to make them simpler.

Nevertheless, it is reckless and irresponsible to urge poor families to borrow money to attend college unless that advice includes some warnings about the trouble poor kids can get into when they take out college loans.

First of all, the federal student loan program has created a giant morass of debt that has sucked many people into a lifetime of penury. People who attend for-profit colleges are especially vulnerable.  According to DOE's own data, one out of five students who take out loans to attend for-profit institutions default within three years of beginning repayment.   And, as I have said before, the true default rate is probably double that.  And research shows that low-income and minority kids are most likely to be snagged by the rapacious for-profit college industry.

Is it irresponsible for the First Lady to urge students to take out student loans without warning them about the for-profit colleges?  Yes, it is.

Second, millions of people with college degrees hold jobs that don't require a college education, and millions more have made poor borrowing decisions--borrowing money to get an expensive degree in art education, for example, that will never open the door to a high paying job.

Consequently, lots of people have defaulted on their loans or have gotten economic hardship deferments. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency, 15 million people have either defaulted on their loans or have stopped making payments because they are under some sort of economic hardship deferment or other forbearance program.

 Among the people who are making loan payments, quite a few are making payments that don't cover accruing interest, which means their debt is growing larger over time, even though they make their loan payments every month.

Is it irresponsible for Michelle Obama to encourage young people to borrow money to attend college without warning them of the consequences of making poor choices in terms of a college major or the cost of tuition at the college they choose?  Again, the answer is yes.

Meanwhile, Arne Duncan's Department of Education is frantically urging student-loan borrowers to sign up for income-based repayment plans that lower monthly payments but stretch out the loan  repayment period to 20 or even 25 years.  In my opinion, DOE is setting up America's young people to become a class of indentured servants--forced to turn over a portion of their paychecks to student-loan creditors over the majority of their working lives.

Let's face it: Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Arne Duncan are in a frenzied effort to preserve the status quo for the higher-education industry--a bloated, self-satisfied, increasingly isolated and irrelevant bunch of institutions led by overpaid blow-hard presidents.

Millions of people have fallen into the student-loan trap.  Financially stressed debtors can't take bankruptcy to discharge their loans.  They don't have access to consumer protection laws.  Those who are ripped off by the for-profit colleges can't sue because the for-profits force students  to sign agreements promising not to sue as a condition of taking classes.

Michelle may think her life story is an inspiration for aspiring young people who are living in poverty.  But the chance that these kids will go to Princeton and Harvard Law School like Michelle did is about as good as getting a lucrative contract to play for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

If Barack, Michelle and Arne want to start behaving responsibly, they should work to kick the for-profit colleges out of the federal student loan program.  They should work to amend the Bankruptcy Code to allow insolvent student-loan debtors to discharge their loans in bankruptcy. They should publicize the true student-loan default rate--which is probably double what DOE reports every year.

But Barack, Michelle, and Arne won't do that.  The higher-education industry's lobbyists and campaign contributions make sure no serious reforms will ever take place.  And millions of low-income and minority young people are seeing their financial futures destroyed, not enhanced, by the federal student loan program.

References

Emmarie Huetteman. First Lady Urges Students to Apply for College Aid. New York Times, February 6, 2014, p. A15.

President Obama's White House Summit with Higher Education Leaders: How Important Was It?

President Obama invited about 100 college presidents and higher-education industry leaders to the White House yesterday to talk about expanding education opportunities for low-income minority students. How important was this event?

Well, the New York Times carried the story on page 14, so perhaps the event wasn't too important.  As its ticket for admission, each institution submitted a plan for expanding college access for poor, non-white students; but I'm sure that didn't take any of those 100 institutions more than 5 minutes to develop.  Higher education has been obsessed with affirmative action for more than 30 years.  They all have plans in place to increase minority and low-income enrollment.

I commend President Obama for highlighting the fact that higher education has become far too expensive, which has created hardships for low- and moderate-income families who want to send their children to college. His bully pulpit approach has probably contributed to the gradual easing of annual tuition-price increases.  Universities that charge $50,000 a year for room, board and tuition are embarrassed to raise their prices much higher.

But let's step back and look at the big picture. The Higher Education Act of 1965 was intended to provide opportunities for low-income students to attend college, regardless of their financial wherewithal. Affirmative action, which the Supreme Court approved in Grutter v. Bollinger was intended to expand educational opportunities for minority students.

Today, the federal government pours more than $100 million a year into student financial aid, and total student indebtedness has reached $1.2 trillion.  Average student-loan indebtedness among those who take out loans (about 65 percent) is pushing toward $30,000 by the time students graduate.

Millions of college graduates (almost half) hold jobs that don't require a college degree, and the gap between college completion for low-income families and high income families has widened. Will more money, more special programs, more focus on affirmative action improve this picture?

I don't think so. I think Michelle Obama might have made the most perceptive observation at yesterday's White House Summit. Intervention and encouragement are the key, she said, to ushering low-income and minority students into the world of higher education.

I agree, and I speak from personal experience. I came from an Oklahoma farm family and got a bachelor's degree from a public university in Oklahoma without any guidance about what I was going to do with that degree.  I  had no clue about how to develop a career or find a rewarding job with a middle class salary.

A friend of mine was attending the University of Texas School of Law, and he encouraged me to explore going to law school. My friend gave me the name of the Dean of Students, the late Thomas J. Gibson; and I made an appointment to see him.

Dean Gibson took time out of his busy schedule to ask me about my background and interests, and he made arrangements for me to sit in on some law-school classes--including a class taught by the great Charles Alan Wright--one of the nation's premier authorities on federal civil procedure and the courts.

Charles Alan Wright

As the result of my friend's encouragement and Dean Gibson's kind interest in me, I went to law school and graduated with honors.  And my legal education changed my life.

My point is this. We can pour more money into higher education; we can establish more federal programs; and we can hire more college administrators to administer those programs.  But what young people really need is for someone to take a personal interest in them and help them navigate the seemingly impenetrable bureaucratic obstacles to finding out what they need to know to get an appropriate college degree without going into too much debt.

In short, we need more kind and civic-minded people in higher education--more people like Dean Gibson. Unfortunately, for all the rhetoric and posturing by our college presidents and senior administrators, kind people are in short supply in our nation's college and universities.  And a White House Summit is not going to change that sad reality.

References

Allie Bidwell. Millions of Graduates Hold Jobs That Don't Require a College Degree, Report Says. The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 28,2013.

Jackie Calmes. Obama Lauds Pledges to Expand College Opportunities. New York Times, January 17, 2014, p. A14.

Jason DeParle. For Poor, Leap to College Ends in Hard Fall. New York Times, December 22, 2012. Accessible at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/education/poor-students-struggle-as-class-plays-a-greater-role-in-success.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Ivy League graduates are smarter, more ethical, and more competent than the average American: That's why we let them run the government!

President Obama graduated from Harvard Law School and Michelle graduated from Princeton.  All nine Supreme Court Justices graduated from Harvard's law school or Yale's.  More of Obama's top aides have graduate degrees from Oxford than from any American public university. Secretary of State John Kerry and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--both Ivy Leaguers.

Don't call me, Barack. I'll call you.

These are the people who run our government or greatly influence it. And that's as it should be because people who graduated from America's elite colleges are smarter, more high minded, and more competent than the average American--some guy who graduated from Kansas State University, for example.  That's why we put Ivy Leaguers in charge.

How's that working out for us?

Under Barack Obama's leadership,  American prestige has never ebbed lower.  The U.S. has managed to offend all of Europe's top leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande.  Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, looks like he doesn't want to be in the same room with President Obama when the two presidents are photographed together. Three South American countries offered asylum to Edward Snowden,whom the United States government describes as a traitor and a defector--something that would never have happened under previous American presidents.

Let's let Toni's company build
the Obamacare website: How
hard could it be?

In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, one of America's staunchest allies, turned down a seat on the UN Security Council out of anger toward the U.S.  Libya, where President Obama dabbled by ordering air strikes on Muammar  Gaddhafi, has been flooded by jihadists; and terrorists killed our ambassador in Benghazi.

And now we learn that Toni Townes-Whitley, Michelle Obama's college  roommate at Princeton, is Vice President of CGI Federal, the company hired by the Obama administration to construct the Obamacare website.  CGI got a no-bid contract to perform the work, and so far the website it constructed has been a disaster. Oh yeah, and CGI is a big Obama campaign contributor.  Are the Obamas really all that high minded?

When will Americans get the message?  Our Ivy League colleges do not teach their students to be problem solvers, to be competent, or even to be patriotic.  Instead, they produce graduates who are arrogant, narrow-minded, and contemptuous of traditional American values.

Personally, I'd rather give Joe Six-Pack a chance to run the country than continue with the bozos whom Barack Obama has accumulated around him.  Honestly, I think we would be better off if we limited all presidential candidates to people who reside in Pocatello, Idaho rather than continue to allow these Ivy League losers to drive our once great nation into the ditch.

References

Fox News. Michelle Obama's Princeton Classmate Was ObamaCare's Web Site Builder. Fox Nation web site. Accessible at: http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/10/27/michelle-obamas-princeton-classmate-was-obamacare-website-builder

Brian Resnick & Brian McGill. More Top Obama Officials Have Graduate Degrees from Oxford Than Any Public University in the United States. National Journal, July 19, 2013. Accessible at:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/decision-makers/more-top-obama-officials-have-graduate-degrees-from-oxford-than-any-public-university-in-the-united-states-20130719