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America, The Ponzi Scheme: A Commencement Speech For The Scammed
By Tom Engelhardt of Tom's Dipstach

Going for Broke in Ponzi Scheme Americ: You’ve Been Scammed!
It couldn’t be a sunnier, more beautiful day to exit your lives -- or enter them -- depending on how you care to look at it. After all, here you are four years later in your graduation togs with your parents looking on, waiting to celebrate. The question is: Celebrate what exactly?
In possibly the last graduation speech of 2015, I know I should begin by praising your grit, your essential character, your determination to get this far. But today, it’s money, not character, that’s on my mind. For so many of you, I suspect, your education has been a classic scam and you’re not even attending a “for profit” college -- an institution of higher learning, that is, officially set up to take you for a ride.
Maybe this is the moment, then, to begin your actual education by looking back and asking yourself what you should really have learned on this campus and what you should expect in the scams -- I mean, years -- to come. Many of you -- those whose parents didn’t have money -- undoubtedly entered these stately grounds four years ago in relatively straitened circumstances. In an America in which corporate profits have risen impressively, it’s been springtime for billionaires, but when it comes to ordinary Americans, wages have been relatively stagnant, jobs (the good ones, anyway) generally in flight, and times not exactly of the best. Here was a figure that recently caught my eye, speaking of the world you’re about to step into: in 2014, the average CEO received 373 times the compensation of the average worker. Three and a half decades ago, that number was a significant but not awe-inspiring 42 times.
Still, you probably arrived here eager and not yet in debt. Today, we know that the class that preceded you was the most indebted in the history of higher education, and you’ll surely break that “record.” And no wonder, with college tuitions still rising wildly (up 1,120% since 1978). Judging by last year’s numbers, about 70% of you had to take out loans simply to make it through here, to educate yourself. That figure was a more modest 45% two decades ago. On average, you will have rung up least $33,000 in debt and for some of you the numbers will be much higher. That, by the way, is more than double what it was those same two decades ago.
We have some sense of how this kind of debt plays out in the years to come and the news isn’t good. Those of you with major school debts will be weighed down in all sorts of ways. You’ll find yourselves using your credit cards more than graduates without such debt. You’ll be less likely to buy a home in the future. A few decades from now, you’ll have accumulated significantly less wealth than your unindebted peers. In other words, a striking percentage of you will leave this campus in the kind of financial hole that -- given the job market of 2015 -- you may have a problem making your way out of.
For those who took a foreign language in your college years, in translation you’ve paid stunning sums you didn’t have to leave yourself, like any foreclosed property, underwater. Worse yet, for those of you who dream of being future doctors, lawyers, financial wizards, architects, or English professors (if there are any of those anymore), that’s only the beginning. You’ll still have to pay exorbitantly for years of graduate school or professional training, which means ever more debt to come.
Does this really sound like an education to you or does it sound more like a Ponzi scheme, like you’ve been scammed?
Do I understand how all this works? No. I’m no expert on the subject. What anyone should be able to see, however, is that the promise of higher education has, in this century, sunk low indeed and that what your generation has been learning how to endure while still in school is a form of peonage. I’d binge drink, too, under the circumstances!
Nobody feels good when they’ve been scammed, but at least you’re not alone on this great campus in needing to reassess what higher education means. Many of your teachers turned out to be untenured part-timers, getting pitiful salaries. They, too, were being scammed. And even some of their esteemed tenured colleagues (as I know from friends of mine) are remarkably deep in the Ponzi pits. It turns out that, as government money flowing onto campus has dried up, the pressure on some of those eminent professors, particularly in graduate programs, to essentially raise their own salaries has only been rising -- a very highbrow version of peonage. They increasingly need patrons, which generally means “friendly” corporations. Talk about a scam!
Demobilizing You
Many of you undoubtedly think that your education is now over and it’s time to enter the “real world.” I have news for you: you’ve been in that world for the last four years, hence the debt you’re dragging around behind you. So, on a day when the sun’s in your eyes and it couldn’t be more apparent that the world’s not what you’ve been told it was, maybe you should apply the principles of the scam artist to the world you’re about to enter. Unless you do so, you’ll simply be scammed again in the next phase of your life.
Like the rest of us, presidents and politicians of every stripe have regularly told you that you belong to the one “indispensible” nation on the planet, a country “exceptional” in every way. As a college-educated American, you’ve similarly been assured of how important you’ll be to that exceptional land.
Get over it. You’re going to find yourself living in an ever greyer, grimmer country -- if you don’t believe me, check out the government’s unwillingness to fund essential infrastructure maintenance -- to which you will be remarkably irrelevant. And if the political elite, the plutocratic class, and the national security state have anything to do with it, in the future you’ll become ever more so. In other words, you are to be relegated to the sidelines of what now passes for American life.
Behind this reality, there’s a history. Since the Vietnam era, the urge to demobilize Americans, to put them out to pasture, to stop them from interfering in the running of “their” country has only grown stronger. When it comes to the military, for instance, the draft was sent to the trash bin of history in 1973 and most Americans were long ago demobilized by the arrival of an “all volunteer” force. So, today, you have no obligation whatsoever to be part of that military, to serve in what is no longer, in the traditional sense, a citizen’s army.
If that military isn’t really yours, the wars it's been fighting since the dawn of the twenty-first century haven’t been your wars either, nor -- despite the responsibility the Constitution reserves to Congress for declaring war -- have they been that body's. Congress still has to pony up sums so extravagant for what's charmingly called "defense" that the military budgets of the next seven countries combined don't equal them. It has, however, little genuine say about what wars are fought. Even when, as with the Islamic State, it is offered the modest opportunity to pass a new authorization for a war already long underway, its representatives, like most Americans, now prefer to remain on the sidelines. In the meantime, the White House runs its own drone assassination campaigns via the CIA without anyone else’s say-so, while secretive paramilitaries and a secret military -- the Special Operations forces -- cocooned inside the larger military and growing like mad have changed the face of American war and it’s none of your business.
Your role in all this is modest indeed: to pay as little attention as you want, endlessly thank the troops for their “service” when you run across them at airports or elsewhere, and leave it at that. Of course, given the sums, verging on a trillion dollars a year, that “we” now put into the U.S. military and related national security outfits, and given our endless wars, conflicts, raids, and secret operations, that military does at least provide some job opportunities, though it has its own version of job flight -- to so-called private contractors (once known as “mercenaries”).
And if you think it’s only the military from which you’ve been demobilized, think again. In these last years, so much of what the American government does has been swallowed up in a blanket of heavily enforced secrecy and fierce prosecutions of whistleblowers. An expanding national security state, accountable neither to you nor to the legal system, has proven eager indeed to surveil your life, but not be seen by you. In growing realms, that is, what once would have been called “the people’s business” is no longer your business.
Your role, such as it is, is to get out of the way of the real players. As with the military, so with that national security state: Americans are to thank its officials and operatives for their service and otherwise, for their own “safety,” remain blissfully ignorant of whatever “their” government does, unless that government chooses to tell them about it.
The Corruption Sweepstakes
It hardly needs to be said that this isn’t the normal definition of a working democracy or, for that matter, of citizenship. Other than casting a vote every now and then, you are to know next to nothing about what your government does in your name. And speaking of that vote, you’re being sidelined there, too, and buried in an avalanche of money. Admittedly, in the media campaign season that now goes on non-stop from one election to the next, sooner or later you can still enter a polling place, if you care to, and cast your ballot. Otherwise step aside. These days, the first primary season or “Koch primary” is no longer for voters at all. Instead, prospective candidates audition for the blessings and cash of plutocrats.
Just how the vast sums of money flooding into American politics do their dirty work may not matter that much. Specific contributions from the .01%, enacting their version of trickle-down politics, may not even elect specific candidates. What matters most is the deluge itself. These days in the American political system, money quite literally talks (especially on TV). Via ads, it screams. In the 2016 election season in which an unprecedented $10 billion is expected to be spent and just about every candidate will need his or her “sugar daddies,” the politicians will begin to resemble you; that is, they will find themselves dragging around previously unheard of debts to various plutocrats, industries, and deep pockets of every sort for the rest of their careers.
Take just two recent examples of the new politics of money. As the New York Times reported recently, Florida Senator Marco Rubio has been supported by a single billionaire auto dealer, Norman Braman, for his entire political career. Braman hired him as a lawyer, hired his wife as a consultant to a family foundation, financed his legislative agenda, helped cover his salary at a local college, helped him right his personal finances and deal with his debt load, and is now about to put millions of dollars into his presidential campaign. Rubio, as the article indicates, has returned the favor. Though no one would write such a thing, this makes the senator quite literally a “kept” candidate. Other plutocrats like the Koch brothers and their network of investors, reputedly ready to drop almost a billion dollars into the 2016 campaign, have been more profligate in spreading around their support and favors.
Now, jump across the political aisle and consider Hillary Clinton. As the Washington Post reported recently, she received a payment from eBay of $315,000 for a 20-minute talk at a "summit" that tech company sponsored on women in the workplace. Over the last 16 months, in fact, she and her husband have raked in more than $25 million for such talks. Hillary’s speeches pulled in $3.2 million from the tech sector alone, which she’s now pursuing for more direct contributions to her presidential campaign. “Less than two months [after the eBay summit]," the Post added, "Clinton was feted at the San Francisco Bay-area home of eBay chief executive John Donahoe and his wife, Eileen, for one of the first fundraisers supporting Clinton’s newly announced presidential campaign.”
Say no more, right? I mean, it’s obvious that no one pays such sums for words (of all things!), not without ulterior motives. No deal has to have been made. No direct or even indirect exchange of promises is necessary. On the face of it, there is a word for such fees, as for Rubio’s relationship with Braman, as for the investor primaries of the new election season, as for so much else that involves “dark money” and goes to the heart of the present political process. It’s just not a word normally used about our politicians or our system, not by polite pundits and journalists. If we were in Kabul or Baghdad, not Washington or Los Angeles, we would know just what that word was and we wouldn’t hesitate to use it: corruption.
The Un-Kept Americans
We are, it seems, enmeshed in a new hybrid system, which fits the Constitution, the classic tripartite separation of powers, and the idea of democracy increasingly poorly. We have neither an adequate name for it, nor an adequate language to describe it. I’m talking here about the “real world” in which, at least in the old-fashioned American sense, you will no longer be a “citizen” of a functioning “democracy.”
As that system, awash in plutocratic contributions to politics and taxpayer contributions to the military-industrial-homeland-security complex, morphs into something else, so will you, whether you realize it or not. Though never thought of as such, your debt is part of the same system. A society that programmatically trains its young into debt and calls that “higher education” is as corrupt as a wealthy country that won’t rebuild its own infrastructure. Talk about the hollowing out of America: you are it. No matter how substantial you may be in private, you are being impersonally emptied in what passes for the real world.
If Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton are kept politicians, then you are un-kept Americans. You are the ones that no one felt it worth giving money to, only taking money from.
Being on the sidelines, it turns out, is an expensive affair. The question is: What are you going to do so that you aren’t there, and in debt, forever?
Of course, there’s a simple answer to this question. Think of it as the Rubio Solution. You could each try to find your own billionaire. But given the numbers involved and what you don’t have to offer in return, that seems an unlikely option. Or, if you don’t want the version of higher education you experienced to morph into the rest of your lives, you -- your generation, that is -- could decide to stop thanking others for their “service” and leave those sidelines.
They’re counting on you not to serve. They assume that you’ll just stay where you are and take it, while they fleece the rest of us. If instead you were to start thinking about how to head for the actual playing fields of America, I guarantee one thing: you’d screw them up royally.
As you form into your processional now to exit this campus, let me just add: don’t underestimate the surprises the future has in store for all of us. The people who sidelined you aren’t half as good at what they do as they think they are. In so many ways, in fact, they’re a crew of bumblers. They have no more purchase on what the future holds than you do.
You’ve proved in these years that you can get by despite lousy odds. You’ve lived a life to which no one (other than perhaps your hard-pressed parents) has made a contribution. You’re readier than you imagine to take our future into your hands and make something of it. You’re ready to become actual citizens of a future democracy. Go for broke!
Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He is a fellow of the Nation Institute and runs TomDispatch.com. His latest book is Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World. This graduation speech was given only on the campus of his mind.
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Good thing no one forced them to sign on the dotted line for all that debt.
If one is unable to qualify for a need-based scholarship then they need to look at their parents for failing to save and in a mirror for failing to excel in high school and qualify for a scholastic scholarship.
The problem isn't the debt. The problem is the refusal to face reality.
Take away Gimmemint backng and give back the option to decalre bankruptcy, and watch how much does not get lent.
that didn't stop the mortgage market from caving in, student debt will be one of the next bailouts anyway . . .
I got your scam right here faggots
https://youtu.be/llbzUyv1CLU
Make Zerohedge a mandatory highschool freshman course. Can you imagine the breadth and currency of topics of discussion everyday? Would they ever run out of willing, informed participants? No, only time.
What a downer of a world to come into.
Micro-entrepreneurship is the answer and the future. Even micro-companies will be agglomerations of complimentary micro-entrepreneurs, co-located.
FUCK JOBS! Yes, all of them.
Hope that future doesn't have VCs or use the word 'startup.' Nails on chalkboard...
They will also definitely NOT have end-evers or under-takings either!
FOOOOOKED BY LANGUAGE!
We R!
https://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/the-deep-perversion-of-langu...
The problem is Assholes like you.
I would blame a society that believes a higher education is neccessary for menial positions.
You can trace it all the way back to money and greed if you want, but its the one drinking the kool-aid by choice who must bear the responsibility.
...thats another thing that society has chosen to reject - taking responsibility for your own actions.
If you "allow" exploitation of young children, then the problem isn't society, it's the leaders of that society, and that's the bottom line... Just look at the payday/quickcash/pawnshop reality, it's entirely & wholly criminal, and it proves our leaders are corrupt through and through, that should give you a clearer picture of reality & truth.
No one is forced to use a payday loan. Those who do are poor and stupid. I worked with a moron who used them. When we got our yearly bonuses I suggested he *save* it so he wouldn't have to use a payday loan the next time he was short on cash.
Did he listen? No. He spent it on postage for his sideline business -which was a pyramid scam.
Some people deserve to be ripped off.
"I would blame a society that believes a higher education is neccessary for menial positions."
And at 373x the average workers compensation, any position below CEO is menial.
I would blame a society that believes a higher education is neccessary for menial positions.
but if your niggers were educated you would have no problem in ferguson and co, this is appliable world wide and especially in france also.
education = raise of level of corruption and smartness.... no education = oug oug monkey behavior.
simple. education set the difference of the socialized human as a person from the animal.
"...education set the difference of the socialized human as a person from the animal."
Indeed, it takes educated "professionals" knowing so much that isn't so, to direct and manage such non-monkey socialized activities like the Roman Empire, WWI Belligerents , and The Manhattan Project.
The problem is that seventeen year olds (who are a lot less worldly-wise than seventeen year olds were fifty years ago) are given really bad advice. Which is - "Go to college, it is worthwhile in the long run".
For some it is worthwhile, for a few it is hugely worthwhile, for most it is damaging to their lives. But no teachers at their schools are telling them, "Consider not going to college even if you excel, you have better things to do with your life".
Such as?
Please be specific and offer a number of better alternatives, given the reality of the Economy, the fiat Ponzi, the ever growing number of laws and regulations, and the Plutocracy.
Seriously, I'm curious.
Reviewing the techniques used by Ice Age man to survive that ordeal would perhaps be fortuitous for the youngskulls, rather than the standard fare offered in today's identity-groupthink mills. Learn to hunt, fish, basket weave.
let's talk "material misrepresentations"
Actually, a big part of the problem IS the debt. Tuition costs would never have risen so high if not for ZIRP and government-guaranteed student loan programs. When people take on debt, they look at how much the monthly payment will be to see if they "can afford it." This is true of housing, automobile loans, and, yes, tuition. For-profit colleges can raise their tuition to unreal levels only because government provides unreal financing. And such a policy guarantees that a whole generation will be chained to the oar of debt.
The education bubble is ALL about debt.
The parties that deliberately blew the bubble and sold a bill of goods are going to get rich. The parties that bought the bill of goods will not.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-04/the-student-debt-colle...
The Lawsuit Machine Going After Student Debtors“This is robosigning 2.0”
The people that get rich off of this are counting on people blaming the students while they laugh all the way to the bank. Sound familiar?
Paging Linda Green, paging Linda Green...
"Like mortgages, student loans were bundled into packages and sold to investors. “This is robosigning 2.0 with student loans,” says Robyn Smith, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center, a nonprofit advocacy group. “You have securitized loans in these large pools; you have the sloppy record keeping,” as in the mortgage crisis."
If true, that means that one way to have student loan debt discharged would be to pursue the "show me the creditor" strategy. If a supposed creditor cannot be specifically named, and be able to show exactly what you owe, and how they got that debt instrument, then you can say to the judge "they have no grounds to demand payment, and I request you immediately discharge this debt." This may be something worth looking into.
I'm sure that will come up; from what I've read, courts typically hold that debtors are not a party to securitization so it's none of their business. The only attorney that ever makes that stick is Glenn Russell in Fall River, MA. (See: Ibanez, Galliastro...in MA SJC) http://www.foreclosuresinmass.com/
Classic line paraphrased from Glenn "Your honor, my client doesn't dispute he owes somebody money. I'm looking around and don't see anyone in this courtroom named "somebody".
Why should any of it matter? We Millennials run up the bills, and then vote for Hillary when she promises to forgive it all. Easy peasy.
I got a free BMW out of the deal, and I bet you paid for it. Thanks for that.
crisrose - You missed the author's point - Read the article again.
yeah! why don't they just go work in a factory for the next few decades? oh right...that's not an option anymore. Well, it's good to know that the Forbes/Bloomberg/Wall Street Journal set is blaming the US consumer and his/her love of low prices for the disappearance of all the factory jobs. That makes sense after all. It was the workers who raised funds with big banks and big corporations and said ok boys, let's fire all of us and set up factories en masse in other countries. Let her rip!
Elitist fuck
You;re right. But a whole bunch of people they trusted and looked to for guidance told them that college was a can't lose proposition, that everybody goes to college, that a degree (any degree purchased at any cost) was a golden ticket. And being young and impressionable and in many cases having clueless sheople for parents, they believed the lies they were swimming in.
So yeah, it's all their fault that annual tuition at many universities costs more than the median household income of the United States (gross income at that).
And it's all their fault that all those people lied (and continue to lie) to them. And it's their fault that many of their parents are clueless TV watching propaganda believing sheople.
Downvote, bitch.
Banksters: ConGradsElation
It's mvthafvkin graduation speech season around here. Graduations are nauseating. It's about the journey, retards - not the finish line. And a speechial cherry on top. If you don't engage in the development of your skills, especially the employable kind, you don't get shit. Simple as that.
2nd, 3rd and 4th that.
It's not about the Job. Work on pretty much anything except your self is over-rated.
And SB, perhaps that should have 1st 3rd and 5th that? ;-)
Our bodies, particularly the shape, and consciousnesses, particularly the ability to know infinity, allow for the nurture and mastery of many skills. To neglect the development of those skills is wasting precious life minutes. Unfortunately people are forced to work at a 'job' for this absolutely necessary (in this present time) sometimes-physical-sometimes-digital thing called 'money', and all their precious life minutes are spent having to do something for someone else.
Logistically speaking, a human only needs water, food, and shelter, in order to pursue things outside of just trying to exist. We have more than enough resources to feed and shelter everyone for free, a million times over, and we can't ever get there because evil motherfuckers rule this planet. So we have gajillions of people who go to 'work' (not doing real work, which is working on your self) and do shit all day long for someone else, never bettering themselves through whatever means of bodily and mental exercise and practice.
What is the purpose of life? To nurture skill. That should be the official answer.
p.s. one of the most melodious sounds ever put together:
Blut Aus Nord - The Meditant
p.p.s need to post the song that follows as well: Vipassana. Breath, sound, consciousness.
"We need to elect the first Female President of the U.S."
"Hey, look at my new smart phone, isn't it awesome!?"
"We have to sacrifice freedom to be safe."
"Cash is such a pain!"
Crickets.
Neither awe-inspiring nor particularly helpful.
Since when was America a "democracy?" Sheeesh...if those who consider themselves leaders in the fight of reclaim America for the people can't get that right, why the hell should anyone listen to them.
I don't know anything about the American Empire Project, but any time someone mentions the Koch brothers on one side, Soros should be dragged out for comparison. One is no more corrupt than the other. Perhaps Soros funds the AEP?
Education has hit the point where it should cost almost nothing.
Instead we have this bloated system that costs students hundreds of thousands of dollars.
You can earn almost any degree online nowadays... where the degree comes from does not matter, that shits all just a marketing scheme schools use to justify bloated tuition costs. . . by selling students on the idea that if they somehow graduate from their university that it will guarantee them better entry positions, from my experience almost all the people doing the hiring came from lower level schools / cheaper schools . . .
You dont need to spend 500,000$ to become a civil engineer, such an education should not cost you more than 15,000$ for the entire 5~7 year Degree program.
Only specialized professions like dentistry have huge bloated education costs, because these costs are meant to act as a barrier to entry (to prevent people from becoming dentists) so that dentists can hold a sort of monopoly over the field and charge higher fees....
Step 1
You find a high paying position that you could enjoy working in.
Step 2
You find the cheapest way to get past all the bullshit certification and credits
Step 3
Profit because you know just as much as anyone about the field you are trying to get into, most graduates forget 80% of what they learned in college anyway, its hands on experience and a generic familiarity with the subject matter that counts, not knowing everything and anything.
And another thing . . . about study media. . .
When I went to school, I did not buy one damn book, I went to the library used a portable scanner (about 140$ at the time) and made scans of the chapters/question pages I needed/study chapters, you literally have nothing to do at the campus for atleast 5 hours a week, go to the freaking library and save yourself 10,000 that would of went to books, you dont need this stone - age brick of paper at your house it isn't going to do you any damn good, just scan the shit you need from it and go home.
Books should be fucking free by now, its just general human knowledge the days where we had encyclopedia salesmen going door to door are fucking over.
Easy money / credit led people who couldn't afford houses to go into debt to buy houses. The same is true for the higher education bubble. Everyone wants the American Dream but the American Dream is not attainable for people who make dumb decisions and have dellusions of grandeur. It's a sad fact that the FED just made these people beleive they were now qualified for the higher level in society. Reality of this corrupt monetary policy will again kick a few more million family's in the nuts. It's the new American way thank to your puppet masters.
"When your 50 you'll realize you spent $150k on an education you could got for $1.50 in late charges at the public library"
Good Will Hunting
Most people aren't college material. If you're in the average IQ range, you belong in a trade school.
Every society is saturated with mythology that supports the major public institutions and serves to create a consensus about how things are and how things work. Functionally this is probably necessary to ensure anything remotely like a cohesive, relatively peaceful society. The reality of the situation in all societies, a few haves, most have less or nothing, simply can't be faced.
The American Dream works magnificently when we have empty space to spread to. Under these conditions, then the true balance of power is stable, and that balance of power is not the "classic tripartate" balance that we teach our children today.
Our system was not designed for the balance of power to hang between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches -- those are all leaves off the same branch. Those are all federal entities, and lo and behold, they all work together to support the idea that the Federal government should be in charge of all things. All ultimate decisions go the the Federal Supreme court. All legislative decisions go the the Federal Congress. All leadership comes from the Federal Executive branch. It's a monopoly system in which the Federal government shares power with no one. They only allow the scraps of power that they can't be bothered with to flow through to their subsidiaries the States and people.
The balance of power we were given, on the other hand, the 3 legged stool as the Constitution was designed, was supposed to hang between the sovereign states, the people, and the Federal government. The states were represented in the Senate, which is why their delegates were appointed by state legislatures, the people were represented in the House, which is why their representatives are voted for directly by the people, and the Federal government was represented by the Executive and Judicial branches. Each pillar of power jealously guarded its territory and prevented power from flowing to and coalescing in a single entity.
With this design, as long as the people had empty space to emigrate to that was difficult to control because of its remoteness, the balance worked and prevented the accumulation of power capable of taking power from any other branch, and the people were free. But, as population pressure built up and the economy began to approach a zero sum game in which a living could not be earned except by accepting or taking it from someone else, the balance of power shifted from a decentralized to centralized paradigm. But, as you mention, this offended our sense of ourselves, so after we destroyed the balance of power through a civil war, we continued to pretend that we were free by changing the meaning of much of the constitution.
We cannot be free if we do not have the right to walk away from a bad deal, and the civil war represented the last attempt anyone has made to walk away from a bad deal. The only way we have the right to walk away from a bad deal is if there is somewhere to walk to. And all the places to walk to are now occupied. So the dream is dead, and the system is a zombie, supported only by the pretense on the part of the compliant population who believe in what they wish was true rather than what they should be able to see with their own eyes.
Should end the speech
Think of it this way...If you took out $30k in loans and banged 300 chicks in the 6 years it took you graduate then thats $100 a bang. And hey you still have the tattoos, the gay beard, and fit into your really gay skinny jeans....now go fuck off.
Peace
CrisRose you're a 100% dingdong
If your parents failed to provide for you and you personally can't afford it and don't qualify for scholarship, you don't get to go. That's life.
You choose to take out a loan for a halfwit major at a third rate univeristy so you can 'pretend' you are what you are not: intelligent and on the brink of accomplishing great things in life, you deserve what you get.
Predatory lending has a goal - capture a bill payer for life. A nation of idiots is a burder on the tax payer but a nonthreat to a corrupt system. Glorifying stupidity is just a stepping stone to corralling the masses. Free phones become monitoring devices. This is a plan to neuter the intellectual mind which would question. The universities should be available to everyone at a minimal cost unless you would prefer to foot the bill for these people to either live on the bad side of town or in prison.
Enemy is dressed in fine suits, not combat fatigues and the enemy is winning thanks to people such as yourself, who actually side with them, after all that has been presented showing the fraud and cronyism. If you are an American, you should apologize to your countrymen for being so fing stupid.
crisrose - Your world view is so narrow. It is clear you have no imagination or talents. Pity, you do have a big mouth and could share intellegent thoughts, if you had any. Try slipping away and hide.
Wow,
Dear Crisrose, the last guy talked same like you was a guy from Muslim from India from a well to do family with high education. He was very sure, he is smart and all others are stupid becuase he has money for education while others did not.
I promptly cancelled his contract and send him home. He destroyed a lot of data from our main server before he left.
Are you guys related?
As fucked up of a move as that is, it's kind of on you if that server is not being backed up at least once a month...
Blah blah blah, whine whine whine. Check your privilege college kids. While you were boozing, whoring, and playing video games there were young folks your age losing their lives in the Middle East trying to defend the civilized world from Islam and its murderous adherents.
A little student loan debt is nothing to cry about.
You mean those deluded duped flag-waving Halliburton interns boozing, whoring and adhering to the remote control of drones and other weapons of mass destruction to murder innocent civilians in their homes on the taxpayers dime?
Massive deficit spending on the military industrial complex to genocide generations of your own youth, plunge future generations into indebited servitude to the bankster tribe while creating extremist behaviour from our otherwise mild-mannered, conservative Muslim brothers and sisters is a lot to cry about.
PS. I know I'm a day early, but...happy 4 weeks on Zerohedge! It's almost time to join the queue of shills ready to collect your monthly wages for selling-out.
Hi Willy. I like skimming through the comments until I feel pretty certain I've found the first guy who clearly didn't read the fucking article.
tag, you're it.
"defend the civilized world from Islam and its murderous adherents"
LOL
Sure, that's why they are there. To defend freedumb and the childrens.
Fuck, that was the funniest fucking thing I read today.
Member for
3 weeks 6 days
You trying to compete with the blogger Million Dollar Bonus (MDB) and his brand of Steven Colbert satire?
Better men than you are living in the gutter. This system is designed to advance failures and sequester winners because competition is the last thing 3rd generation rich brats who gained their privilege through nepotism need. Destroying the person above them (murder, ruined reputation) is the low road to success. But it is the only road they know - lying, stealing, bribing, extorting, murder.
"This system is designed to advance failures and sequester winners because competition is the last thing 3rd generation rich brats who gained their privilege through nepotism need."
God Bless America!
Thick willy,, yes a thicker more ignorant prick is hard to imagine .
Fuck off asswipe, get back to sucking monkey cock
IKR, too bad we can't all be Chelsea Clinton. And that most of us have to work for more than 1 year to earn what she earns for a 1 hour speaking engagement ($75k).
The sperm lottery. We didn't win it.
Actual citizens of a future democracy. On what planet? Everyone knows the meek will only inherit the earth when there's nothing left on it worth inheriting.
Getting involved in politics for a cause that our masters truly do not approve of is only wise if your goal is to get yourself killed or thrown in prison with litle hope of ever coming out, and your memory stricken from history.
While the article and commencement highlight the debt and its burden, I would like to highlight that that debt actually reveals a hole in Zion and tyranny's armor.
The American people are armed with a mighty weapon that no victim populace in the history of the world has ever had. That weapon is based on the precarious and vulnerable way that Zion and the DC US have built their empire on our backs in the form of fiat-debt.
The most powerful weapon the American people have is Rejection.
The system of fraud and theft that has been built up upon the backs of the American people is dependent upon our backs. Withdraw our backs, and the whole scheme collapses. This is our greatest weapon.
Stop Paying--Put it into food, and precious metals, etc. They stole whatever "debt money" they loaned you in the first place (fractional reserve banking) and soon you won't be able to pay them anyways, so Stop Paying.
Stop Playing--Stop being a tool for them to use, mock, and call "stupid." Stop Playing.
Stop Obeying--If they are in violation of the Constitution then they are not legitimate anyways, so Stop Obeying their unlawful dictates.
The Four Rs
Rejection: Stop Paying, Stop Obeying, Stop Playing
Revolution: It is inevitable, so prepare, as they are.
Restoration: Restore the American people, country and Constitutional republic.
Retribution: The guilty must answer for their crimes against the American people and the Constitution.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
rejection and revolution is hunger and death.
The kids that are really being scammed are the ones working hard, and paying for their own education with cash - when they could be getting it for free. Although i imagine they aren't taking art, or gender studies.
USG Ponzi is the largest, illegal terrorist scam in the world
Good read, sent it out to a retired Army general, retired Arthur Anderson ex, retired G man and others. Doubt I get a rsponse except from the general. These kind of articles get und his skin.
I retired from insurance fraud investigator. Saw lots of fraud, arson over 32 years by individuals but nothing like this great fraud going on now.
Regarding the benefits of a college education, I went back to college after I was drafted (did one year getting an A plus in partying and a few D,cs and F's before I was drafted) to learn theory and double majored in Poly Sci and Econ. My professors at graduation told me" well at least you will know why you don;t have a job! At the time I had just got married, was running a 100 plus head of cows and their calve on leased gov't land and driving a mail truck all night. So I actually did not need a job, just answers to why thing were working like they were and how could it be changed.
Regarding college educated people comming out of college/universities, after all the training courses with initial hiring they would assign these young poeple to me for field training. My first comment to them was "so, you thought you were going to be captain of industry" when you got out, what have you learn so far?" As all young kids graduating they are not taught anything abut the fundamentals of insurance,and they are like young freshman in college.
In summary, I advise them that "age and trecheary alway supersedes youth and enthusiasm" Many of my trainees are now managers and report to me occasionally and almost all report that they use both lines on their new trainees.