Month: August 2022

First off, I never asked for or expected the federal government to pay off in full or part my college loans. Secondly, I’m not going to ask for it either. If, however, the government comes offering to reduce my student loan debt from a master’s degree, I may take it.

I’m kinda confused about the extreme agitation of Americans who oppose college student loan reduction. It seems their real anger is at any American who went to college for any reason, any degree, any additional knowledge or even skills. Behold, another generation gap. My parents did not provide for my college education. They did what they could to help with books and personal items but did not have the money to pay for a college education. College was something I not only wanted to do with all my heart but had to complete to be a public school teacher.

While in college, the student financial aid office told me about Pell Grants for which I qualified along with the work-study program. I applied and received Pell Grants and work-study on-campus jobs that pretty much covered my college expenses. Afterwards, I had to pay $50 a month for two federal student loans I (and not my parents) took out the first two years of college back in the early 1980s. The Jimmy Carter loan came with a two percent interest rate while the Ronald Reagan loan had a nine percent rate. Making that $50 a month payment was hard most of the time when starting out as a full-time worker, mostly with low-paying jobs that did not require a college degree. I wasn’t instantly hired as a teacher, see. But the loans were paid off and long ago.

By the way, I was so grateful to my country for providing me the golden opportunity to go to college that I did a lot of volunteer work after graduating, mostly at a homeless shelter. I was trying to give back to our society to make the world a better place. I was idealistic way before college. It had a little to do with held-over attitudes from the 1970s.

Through the ups and downs of life, I managed to have had a career in journalism and then, 16 years after college, finally got that first teaching gig which turned into a second career, albeit with two layoffs during the Great Recession. It was then I decided to go back to college. Grad school, it’s called in the world of academia. It had been 30 years since I’d been in college. I searched online options and old school campus scenarios and after much contemplation decided to pursue a master of liberal studies, AKA liberal arts. At age 50, I wanted to take courses in a variety of subjects. But on a teacher’s salary—yet in a career where it is expected you will always return to college and earn higher and more degrees—I had to look into financial aid.

I signed on the dotted line and agreed to attend night school twice a week along with summer sessions, accomplishing the goal in two and a half years. I was so proud. I know I did the right thing, wished I had done it a lot earlier.

After six months or so, I had to start paying the debt with a monthly bill five times what it cost for a bachelor’s degree back in the ’80s. I own a house now and am growing older. In short, life happens and impacts the budget from time to time. Even so, I kept my payments even when unemployed. Then the pandemic came, and for some reason college debt collection and payments were put on hold. Still is.

I’m very happy to pay off what I owe. After the new roof and other necessities, I figure it’ll take maybe four more years. That’s if nothing major happens.

When did college become a dirty word?

I’m not sure why my parents—featuring a mother who was a teacher and spoke of her college daze as the most fun time of her life—did not create a fund for me starting at birth in the early 1960s. But I didn’t have time to cry about it in 1980-81. I talked to the high school counselor who provided all sorts of college applications for student loans and grants. I filled them out by myself, only asking my parents for their income information. They earned too much for me to qualify for grants, so a federal student loan was my option. I also worked a lot of jobs while in college, something that I’m proud of but not really. Those jobs (sandwich maker, singing waitress, university news service reporter, music librarian assistant, writing tutor and freelance newspaper writer) took a lot of time from my studies—the purpose of being in college in the first place. Two of the part-time jobs were work-study. But by my final year in college, the federal government cut that program to bare bones. Somehow, penniless, I no longer qualified for work-study. The writing lab director kept me on anyway, explaining with a wink it’s all just paper.

I guess I was prepared for a bleak future in getting financial aid for college. My senior year in high school, the government teacher talked about our country’s divide in whom should attend college, making it clear one should already have the money before attempting to enroll. I never heard such a thing. It was the first time I feared I may not get to go to college. Some people believe college is only for the rich? For those who can afford it upfront? For those who upon graduating high school must work for years to save for college then attend? I disagreed with the premise and told her so, choking back tears, not realizing that a lot of Americans do not support the idea that anyone who wants to go to college should be ‘afforded’ the opportunity.

While in college a couple of friends had to quit. They had been attending on Social Security (one’s parents were dead) and the GI Bill. The Reagan administration cut the GI Bill and the Social Security provision which provided college tuition for kids whose parent or parents were deceased. The government’s line was budget cuts were necessary to balance the budget. College was only for those who can afford it and not for anyone else even if already in college. The friends made plans to live with relatives and work a job and save all that money to return and finish their education. I hope that is what happened. But I also know how for young adults, life can interfere with a goal like obtaining a college education if you don’t finish it while young. Young people get married, most have children quickly, start working whatever job they can get, and life goes on into covering a growing family’s necessities. For many women, college may be attempted but is never completed, left as a dream and perhaps their life’s biggest regret. I grew up seeing it often.

It was a C-SPAN series on all the American presidents, starting with George Washington, that made me realize why I was so adamant about the American right to attend college. The program on President Johnson revealed he was the one who believed a college education should be provided to any American who wanted it. I wanted it, more than anything. I’d pay for it one way or another. And I believed (and still do) that in this country, anyone who wants a college education should be able to get it. Johnson, architect of the Great Society, supported a college education because he knew the number one reason for poverty was the death of a parent, usually the father. A college education was a tremendous leg-up for a family facing generational poverty.

So I’d like to thank President Johnson who somehow, probably while speaking in his televised national addresses overheard as I played in the living room, put the idea in my little head that I and all Americans had the right to a college education. Still believe in that right. You just gotta work for it and yes pay for it, too. I thought that was what the federal student loans were for.

Nowadays our nation has changed from cheering on and even encouraging young Americans to go to college, to pursue that BIG dream if it’s their life’s goal and a necessity for specific career paths. No, now we hear mostly from bitter folks (ironically even by those with a college education) who believe college to be a complete waste of money and time, that people are much better off getting a trade (that’s like college, too) or just any job after high school and somehow working their way up to the top. College has become way, way too expensive, and many graduates will never pay off their debt.

This is the fast-paced high-tech age. America cannot be the greatest nation on earth if only a small percentage of the population is college educated. Most jobs do not require a college degree, and everyone doesn’t need a college education. But I believe a lot of people would benefit from it. There is nothing wrong with gaining more education and knowledge, to become smarter.

The highly criticized and equally lauded multi-billion-dollar cost to reduce student loans (ONLY to people earning less than $75,000 a year) will take many years and is, believe it or not, small potatoes within our very wealthy nation’s federal budget, in the ballpark of $22 trillion. Compared to two perpetual wars and all the other ga-zillion-dollar misadventures in which our nation has engaged in recent decades under ‘fiscal conservative’ administrations—the real reason for turning modern Americans into grumpy gusses—the student loan reduction act isn’t going to break the bank.

By far the strangest change in America’s political right is the turn-around from anti-communist anti-Soviet to blind adulation of Mother Russia and its forever leader Vladimir Putin. At 70 he’s leader until 2036. Putin, the man without a face, KGB anti-American anti-Western spy, hasn’t changed since the fall of the Soviet Union and, we smugly thought back then, the collapse of communism. And because America’s conservative republicans sing the Russian leader’s praises, particularly citing his grand gestures toward Christianity, democrats are the ones holding up law and order and making known the line in the sand. Democrats, who used to be called communists, pinkos and reds back in the 20^th century, are the ones warning of Putin and pointing out how corrupt, even murderous, his government is. I never thought I’d live to hear an American president gush over a Soviet leader, but Donald Trump repeatedly kissed the emperor’s ring and went so far as to accuse the FBI and CIA on the world stage as completely wrong about Russia and Putin.

They, who in our country are represented by the color red, claim Putin to be Christian, and all is right with the world.

Have they even read the words of Christ in the Bible?

There is not one thing about Putin that is remotely Christ like.

Calling him Christian because he calls himself that is insulting to Christians everywhere.

The root of all evil

After the Soviet Union fell, business people in the new Russia wanted to emulate American and Western capitalism as quickly as possible. But in our nation’s beginnings, America was very strict Christian, intentionally so from the Pilgrims and the Puritans and all the other Christian groups who left Europe to start over in the New World—to practice their religion without persecution. Christians who are sincere in putting their faith first do not cheat in business dealings. They don’t shortchange customers, sell flimsy garments or unsafe products. Not intentionally. Christian businesspeople go out of their way to make things right because not only is it good for business but it’s the Christian thing to do.

Russian business people in the 1990s toured this country to study our practice in commerce. They could not believe sales clerks would count back change so that the customer would see he or she was getting exactly the correct amount, what was owed him or her. Sales staff were courteous, helpful, kind and friendly with no sinister air as most Soviets expected and experienced in their homeland during decades of communist rule.  Fair business dealings, ‘do right by the customers’ and ‘the customer is always right’ mantras were unheard of and not practiced in Soviet Russia. The people were screwed in every possible manner when it came to business. Their cars did not run. There were always bread lines and lines for essentials. People spent hours in lines and then when finally entering a store, shelves were empty. Their water was impure. Their air polluted. Their nuclear plant accident produced ghastly birth defects and deadly cancers for generations to come.

Americans used to try to figure out how the Soviet Union, our arch nemesis, was a nation that could put a man on the moon yet incapable of building a reliable washing machine. Something was missing. Ingenuity? Perhaps. But the Soviet goal was and remains to produce smoke and mirrors and put all their money into one major project like building a rocket that could blast the stratosphere and land on the moon.

We beat them to the punch in 1969. And we could mass produce automobiles and machines that catapulted American life into the envy of the world.

Now Russia is admired along with their life-time leader? By republicans?

What happened? How did our two political parties go full 180?

I’ve never forgotten what we were taught about communism during the Cold War at school and church:

Communists do not believe in God.

Communists believe the people exist only for the benefit of the state and not the state for the benefit of the people.

The ultimate goal of communism is world domination; everyone will be communist even if by force. Objectors will be killed.

Communism—a government system whereby everyone takes care of one another, food is plentiful, no one is homeless, social ills like addiction and criminals are handled with heavy hand, everyone from garbage collector to brain surgeon earns the same wage, and everyone thinks exactly the same way—was proven to be ineffective at least in the Soviet Union because humans are flawed, jealous, stingy and basically not all that altruistic.

Hmm. The central belief, for those of us who witnessed via TV news the spread of communism in eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia, is the forced disbelief in God and religion. Bibles and all religious books, statues, pictures, prayer beads, etc. were destroyed. I won’t mention how the Communist revolution dealt with Buddhists monks and nuns in order to wield the government’s power. Unspeakable. Unconscionable. Evil.

See, hear, think

In the former Soviet Union (and really in present-day Russia), the people had a saying that explained their basic survival: You see one thing, hear a second, and think a third.

Entire classes of school kids were punished by standing straight as a rod with eyes staring forward for hours on end.

This is communism as I understand it from listening to people who lived in that kind of regime. Citizens have no rights. People are arrested on trumped up charges and thrown in putrid jails to languish without a trial or legal representation. Prison is hard labor. The criminally insane are thrown into jails, too. People spy on each other to report wrongdoing to the government, hoping for a reward or bump up among the party (better housing, more money, better job). The rulers at the top are always fat and live a life of luxury. You can see why a brutally suppressed and brain-washed people would come to think cynically about any government, that none is better than the other even America. And what do Putin and his followers say about our country? They think we’re trash … because Americans are not a pure race. We’re mixed ethnicities and cultures. They think this is awful and has brought down every great society in history. Ah, this would explain the republicans’ newfound enlightenment about their old foes the Russians. See, our country is indeed wrestling with our formerly touted melting pot. Some people aren’t supposed to be thrown into our once savory stew of humanity.  

Putin’s communism in the middle of this century has a big problem: the internet. China simply censors it. But that’s not how satellites and invisible waves work. Everything’s out there one way or another. The Russians know how others live all over the world. After the fall of the Soviet Union, many Russians were grateful to return to churches and worship God without fear of the government surveying them and chiding them as emotionally weak and inferior. Somewhere along the line, Putin decided to confirm himself a Christian.

But let us not forget that Jesus did not call himself a Christian; people called his followers Christians because they emulated his manner. Christians constantly forgive. They strive against excessive living. They give freely to help their fellow man. They pray and stay in constant contact with the Lord. They are not known to be brutal. They do not practice cruelty though history does not reveal former self-proclaimed Christians as righteous souls and innocent. Christ taught live and let live, judge not, and love your neighbor like you love yourself.

The Christian life is not just an adjective people call themselves to get along with certain populations in the world. It is a way of life that others can see and can believe. It is love, kindness, affection, honesty, freedom, integrity, faith, humility, gratitude—none of these are Putin’s attributes and are hard to see in a lot of politicians. So, stop claiming to be Christian if you’re not. At least with communists, we knew what we were dealing with.

The ‘sky is falling!’ crowd is convinced a global recession is moments away if not here already. They cite the old economic adage (or economic pop psychology) that a second consecutive quarter of economic downturn means the country is in recession. But this economy is real strange even to seasoned and highly educated economists. For one, there aren’t massive layoffs. Two, the unemployment rate is like three percent; the chamber of commerce would say anyone unemployed in this economy just doesn’t want to work. And businesses are in hiring mode for some reason, perhaps residuals of the pandemic when we were all told to go home. Perhaps millions of mothers decided to stay home with their little kids and not return to work just yet. On the other hand, inflation and higher gas prices are the underlying factors that may prove a recession yet.

Granted I’m no economist, but I understand ‘what goes up must come down.’ We weren’t going to ride the wave of economic prosperity forever. So what if there’s another recession? You know what? We live through them. Grow up silly billies.

One is the loneliest

In the 1970s, as a little kid I remember always hearing two big adult words: inflation and recession. These words were a constant in the news day after day, year after year after year with no end in sight. There were always layoffs, keeping everyone on high anxiety. Can you imagine? My laid-back denim-rock youth generation raised by nervous nellies. Many parents in my working-class neighborhood and even relatives were given pink slips sometimes more than once. At one point it seemed my parents (a teacher and a building maintenance engineer) were the only ones working who never were laid off. We were lucky. Plus, dad always made money on the side doing electrical work and auto body repair.

I don’t know for a fact about the 1960s’ economy, but I listened to the Greatest Generation fondly reminisce about the era. Working adults at the time recalled the ’60s with a feeling of contentment due to middle-class prosperity. Man, talk about a generation gap. Part of what drove the good-time economy was the war machine, the hippies said. See, the Vietnam War was never meant to end. And so when the war did end in the early-to-mid 1970s, tens of thousands of people lost their jobs that supported the military industrial complex, jobs like making helicopter parts and all kinds of machines needed, well, as the anti-war protesters said, for killing people.

Economically, I grew up in maybe the worst time to follow the Great Depression. Our entire nation suffered from ‘a malaise,’ as President Jimmy Carter said in a televised address. Times were so bad and getting worse every day (there were long car lines for gas and rationing based on license plate numbers) that I truly believed there would never be a good economy. Yep, doom and gloom is all I ever knew. The 1980s in many ways was the worst decade of my life even though I was in college, and it was OK to be poor in your early 20s. Jobs were scarce across the nation. Things weren’t good for people who were not wealthy or gainfully employed. During President George Bush I’s reign, I landed a clerk job at The Dallas Times Herald only to see it and all media thrive during the Persian Gulf War and by year’s end as newspapers continued folding, so did mine in December 1991. I was unemployed and on unemployment for several months and when finally employed not able to make ends meet. (Thanks Mom & Dad for the help!)

Hope springs eternal

So when Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, I was caught by surprise and remember saying to my roommate: “Guess everyone else must’ve been as bad off as I’ve been.” At the time a newspaper government reporter, I covered the Clinton presidency quite a bit, seeking any local angle on many of his economic and social programs.

The Clintons’ (Bill and Hillary’s) economic philosophy—don’t sit on the money; spread it around—was influenced by the New Age. One guru named Deepak Chopra advised in his many books to see money in a spiritual way instead of as strictly physical. Don’t think of money as scarce, and don’t be stingy. Chopra teaches that money has energy. We should give money to pay for our needs and as charity to help those who are disadvantaged. That’s just what the Clinton/Gore agenda did; they didn’t sit on the money (as did previous administrations). They budgeted and made sure to take care of the poor and disenfranchised.

And the strangest thing about that newfangled philosophy (one their naysayers ’dissed) was: IT WORKED! So with all his human failings, President Clinton opened the nation’s coffers and ended up balancing the budget and leaving a major surplus. This feat was unheard of, unimaginable to generations of Americans including mine. The economy kept booming. My mandatory 401k retirement fund doubled, tripled, quadrupled each quarter. Chopra teaches that the Universe (or God) is abundant supply. We should give of our money, pay our bills and do so cheerfully, realizing that what we give multiplies—as the old economic philosophy goes, a dollar spent rolls over seven times benefiting other businesses and individuals in the same community. Makes you think.

Recession was buzzed around again during the 2000 presidential election (the one Vice President Al Gore won but lost). Republican George W. Bush had to follow along with his Vice President (international oilman Dick Cheney) that our nation was in an economic downturn. HOW?!? During 2000, many major industries kept laying off tens of thousands of workers. All year long. What was up with that? The election was settled early in 2001. The major layoffs continued until 9/11 threw us into a full-blown undeniable recession with layoffs especially in the telecom field. The military was brought in full force to stop terrorism, fighting overseas in the Middle East. The war (well, two wars) was supposed to be like the Persian Gulf, a major economic boon especially to the oil business and mass media. We were supposed to be liberators, in and out. But that’s not what happened.

The economy struggled during President Bush II’s terms. Layoffs never stopped. No industry or business was safe—because we had become and remain a global economy. By the time Barack Obama was president, teachers were being laid off. What a mess. All those students weren’t going anywhere, and the lucky remaining teachers had twice as much workload. That’s when the Texas Legislature got involved and put a stop to mass teacher layoffs. But the Great Recession of 2008-2009 was pretty bad even for me, twice laid off.

Sure, recessions are drags; nobody likes ’em. But we shouldn’t fear an economic downturn. On the positive side, recessions bring lower prices because no one can afford to pay more. I recall unbelievable deals at department stores. It was like they just wanted the stuff outta the stores. Deals, deals, deals—if you have a job.

Recessions, more than the good times, are part of a bigger economic picture. We’re all in this together. The bad times teach us a lot about ourselves and each other. It’s full of job loss, lower wages, few benefits, longer work hours, family belt tightening, financial hardship, major relocation, and unforeseen challenges. Surviving recession requires grit.