freshwest
freshwest's JournalPresident Obama is searching for 350K permanently disabled Americans to forgive their student loans
By Sophia Tesfaye - Apr 12, 2016
(Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin) After years of failing to reach eligible disabled debt holders, the White House is getting proactive
President Obama’s Department of Education is set to take on the huge task of identifying and forgiving the federal student loan debt of 400,000 permanently disabled Americans.
The Washington Post reports that beginning next week, the Obama administration plans to forgive $7.7 billion in federal student loan debt for 387,000 people who receive disability payments and have the specific designation of “Medical Improvement Not Expected,” 179,000 of whom are currently in default on their student loans, putting them at risk of having their Social Security benefits garnished.
“Too many eligible borrowers were falling through the cracks, unaware they were eligible for relief,” Education Under Secretary Ted Mitchell said in a statement Tuesday. “Americans with disabilities have a right to student loan relief. And we need to make it easier, not harder, for them to receive the benefits they are due.”
While by law, anyone with a permanent disability is already eligible to have the government forgive their federal student loans, few have taken advantage in the last several years. According to the Post, “the Department of Education is now taking it upon itself to identify eligible borrowers and guide them through the steps to discharge their loans”:
Starting next week, borrowers identified in the match will receive a letter from the government explaining the steps needed to receive a discharge. They will not be required to submit documentation of their eligibility, unlike disabled borrowers who apply for the discharge on their own.
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/12/president_obama_is_searching_for_350000_permanently_disabled_americans_to_forgive_their_student_loan_debt/
THANKS, OBAMA!
No surprise from the bought and paid for Joe:
Reid has always been saavy and courageous despite the ignoratti GOP. They derailed momentum when his releases on the Koch agenda came out and was gathering air time. So the media diverted the public with Bundysville. When Reid's disclosure was derailed long enough to make the public forget, they left the story and moved on. It has been played from all sides by the Koch brothers and their shills. Thanks for posting this.
Clearly, he's a power mad megalomaniac who loves getting punched?
Wants to get a role in the remake of Rocky?Wait, doesn't work either,. Stallone probably has a copyright on that.
One of my favorites...
Okay, I got nuthin'
She's worked with POC for a long, long time. Thanks for posting this. A little more:
Former ACORN chief backs Hillary Clinton
By Carl Campanile - April 20, 2015
Bertha Lewis — the former head of ACORN and a longtime powerful voice of progressivism in New York City - says she’s “ready for Hillary...”
And Lewis says Clinton long ago proved her progressive bona fides. Clinton earned Lewis’ “admiration and respect” for the beating she took when the health-care expansion plan she helped craft with her husband, then-President Bill Clinton, was rejected.
“Hillary recovered from that. Absolutely, Hillary is a progressive. Her core is still there,” Lewis said.
“There’s no one who can hold a candle to her. She’ll be a great president. She’s a fierce fighter. No one is more qualified,” said Lewis, who now is executive director of The Black Institute.
http://nypost.com/2015/04/20/former-acorn-chief-backs-hillary-clinton/
Right-wing heads explode...
The issue is explained in this video:
Clergy Rebukes Media for Asking Wrong Questions About Amendment OneUploaded by Eric Preston - May 6, 2012
In a press conference held in Greensboro, North Carolina, Clergy from around the state gathered together to pray for the wisdom of its citizens regarding the May 8th vote on Amendment One.
In that conference, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber took the time to rebuke the media for asking the wrong questions regarding the amendment. Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II is the President of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP.
Sadly, the frightwingers, who were shown to be like the miscengenation fears of the past, won the day. I hope that state is obeying the law now. One of the clear wrongs here is that she is elected to follow the law, just as Kerry was given grief for respecting. Also Democrats do believe in law to prevent a return to Rex Lex. When the articles claim she is a Democratic Party supporter, she doesn't support the platform.
Increasingly, the attack on women and minorities is being done through the private sphere. That is easier when it includes privatization. The Hobby Lobby has been buying up hospitals and schools to convert them into RW religious enforcers. They funded anti-same sex laws in the various states that passed them and fund movements to stop women from not just abortion, but getting birth control.
Our governors got involved to stop pharmacists from denying women morning after pills based on their 'beliefs.' The governor had to intervene against the attempted buy out of a rural hospital by a religious group that would have been able to deny women legal healthcare for lack of alternatives in the private hospital.
The RWNJs are increasing and so are the churches. They swallow all the lies from media and pastors. This battle is going to go on for a long time, these folks are doubling down. I suspect they're being paid for it, too.
48 husbands? The matriarchy is back! But we will be kindly feminine overlords.
We won't make you wear a dress, either.
My favorite quote on Cheney and an article from Daily Kos describing his character (or lack of):
You can always tell when the Republicans are getting restless, because the Vice President’s motorcade pulls into the Capitol, and Darth Vader emerges.~ Senator HRC.
And I loved her take down of Rumsfeld in a hearing. He was simply speechless, after having given permission for Ritter and the rest of the crew to inspect. But BushCo never intented to follow that mandate, they had the war planned since Darth's 'Energy Summit' that took place behind closed doors in the first month of GWB's reign of terror on the world and the American people. I think he met with the oil barons and they decided how to make a fortune off the war. Just my opinion, because that's how it turned out. Blood for oil and profits for the few.
Dick Cheney more amoral than immoral which is "more dangerous" says Colonel
by HoundDog - Jul 01, 2014
Given the magnitude of the damage former Vice President Dick Cheney has done to our country at so many different levels it would be impossible to say too many negative things about this opportunistic power-monger. Among many of the more thoughtful and patriotic Americans, one worthwhile endeavor is refining typologies to categorize Dick Cheney's many character flaws.
Rarely do we find a more talented, experienced and qualified spokesman for castigating Dick Cheney's vile and reckless impact on America's international reputation than Retired Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (who) Rips Dick Cheney: He Isn't Immoral, He's Amoral, and explores "the exact nature of his villainy," in this interview with Alyona Minkovski of the Huffington Post. As former chief of staff for Colin Powel Wilkerson had many opportunities to see Dick Cheney's flaw up close and personal, especially during the preparation for Colin Powell's testimony to the United Nations Security Council.
Wilkerson said that to many Americans, including those "interested in the progress of this country, the progress of international criminal justice, human rights, human dignity and so forth," Cheney is considered immoral. But Wilkerson has a different take.
"I think amoral is a better and more precise, descriptive term. With Dick Cheney, it's all about power. Yes, it's about wealth coming from that power, too -- he's worth $70 million or $80 million now, so one can hardly say that's not the case -- but I think the power aspect of it... is more important to him than the amassing of wealth," Wilkerson said.
He added that an amoral person makes for "a more dangerous individual" than an immoral one.
"Immorality is something that can be ferreted out, checked and balanced. Amorality is an altogether different affair, especially when you're exploiting the politics of fear in order to carry out state purposes, which is what Dick Cheney's forte is," he said.
Dick Cheney is such an unsavory character I'm sure you are probably feeling as unclean as I am just by virtue of remembering him.
So, I'm ending this post with a cleansing, and beautiful tropical Hawaiin video of Kamakawiwo'ole performing his unique and refreshing music which is about as opposite of Dick Cheney as one can get. Please take just a moment to decontaminate yourselves so you do not track "oily and unclean, Dick Cheney Neocon vibes all over the Daily Kos site.
OFFICIAL - Somewhere Over the Rainbow 2011 - Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole
Cheers, You may now safely resume your normal evening blogging
HD
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/01/1311041/-Dick-Cheney-more-amoral-than-immoral-which-is-worse-says-Colonel-Laurence-Wilkerson
© Kos Media, LLC
Site content may be used for any purpose without explicit permission unless otherwise specified.
A one track mind is a burden to all. But I have reason to agree with BS on this:
Because our growth model, and stressing the GNP is a problem for two reasons:
First, the growth model is not sustainable. It it the reason for environmental destruction and enslaving 'others' around the world, and the poor, especially women and children, is needed to make it work.
They are denied what the 1st world thinks we should have, such as education, healthcare and the most basic of human rights, agency over one's body. There is no such thing when one's time and one's body are for sale. The creative force of billions is being suppressed by the lack of value placed on it by the 'market.' It's great academic talk for those who have the leisure and distance to talk, but I focus on the often denied reality that influences all living things on this planet.
We're racing like raving horsemen to the edge of a cliff and we are not pulling back on the reins. All to keep our jobs and our so-called standard of living.
What kind of person does such things? What kind of system of economics does not take life into account?
GRAPHIC PICTURE: Don't worry, see explanation below:
The children on the left were rescued from the refugee camp. All were well taken care of and lived through it.
Consider the juxaposition of what the third world and the middle class believe they are entitled and have the right to have, while not solving the first side of the picture first. That's 'setting the cart before the horse' for those who believe that all are equal.
Hope that is what BS is saying but he's not talking the language of most. HRC , who has a proven track record of using the wealth from corporations to change conditions for women and children. In the words of Russell Means, a founder of the AIM, the most powerful 'economic units' on the planet are now the corporations, who are the ones we will have to talk to about this, like it or not.
Morality is lacking in all that is being done to the planet and living things. All our candidates in the Democratic Party are for a more moral society in ways they understand.
Russell Means says that the price for denying living creatures respect, will come at a terrible cost. 'There will be hell to pay,' he said, as these 'natural laws' are being broken in the name of the 'market.' Humans have come to 'a sorry pass.'
It's not a wise policy to see endless growth as the most important thing. There is more than one kind of prosperity. Those who can, buy land and produce their own food and drink water from their own well. Those who can't manage to get to or maintains that state of affairs are living at the whims of those who do.
And even after a lifetime of sacrifice and what some might call poverty holding onto that piece of earth (instead of having the cash to buy the latest consumer goods) can also be run off their land by the 'market' mentality which is capable of shoving them off their patrimony. It's to be argued whether it is theirs fairly to begin with, since the way they got it from a larger perspective was theft.
The middle class in this country and others live in a bubble that pretends by going over numbers, it created its own wealth without a negative effect on others and the planet. This is not true. It made its wealth by the greatest theft known, destroying land and resources (living ones), then making a profit by extracting the energy of the laborers without bringing them out of the system of environmental destruction.
Those pressed to work in such conditions are doing what was once called, 'eating the seed corn' or the means of biological production. In other words, the source of 'prosperity' is limited to destroying their local ecosphere for a piece of the first world pie. When it's done and gone, the first world will leave them in the dust, and they will be impoverished for many generations.
Some of what are fondly called the 'good old days' of the middle class, were built on theft from others in this country or the world. And some of the greatest wealth was made by eating through the seed corn, like privatization and bubbles. As the cash flowed freely, some got rich. But it cannot last, it never does.
And during the middle of the bubble, real people are hurt badly, but the media always cheers it on. The Iraq War, which I call 'the greatest money laundering scheme in world history,' and the entire Bush reign, bankrupted us, causing our creditors to call in their notes in 2008. They wisely wrote their terms for lending to be 'paid in kind' with trade deals that have decimated our economy and manufacturing base an enriched and strengthened theirs. These loans were not made for the sake or love or sentiment. They funded the Bush wars, not because they supported the reasoning behind them, but for their own benefit. No one lent us money because they were our allies. It was just 'good business' for them.
They didn't trust the foolish American people to be good for the payment of debt. Every GOP Congress under their baleful control proves them right and tried to renege on the payments, including pushing 'default' to make the country go bankrupt. Then we'd lose more than the 'seed corn', we'd lose the land it grew on. And we are.
For the millionth time, I say the media is not a friend, for so many reasons. All 'news' stories are designed to divert us off the theft in process and brainwash us into the next round of theft.
Endless growth for a few on the planet, including most of the fabled 99%, is just plain suicide, IMO.
Second, the GNP is touted as the solution for a nation's prosperity. It isn't. Wealth doesn't buy real joy or meaning to life, it only buys more of its own innate corruption, dead and temporary things and the destruction of the living being reduced to the level of commodities, that is by definition, for using up and then discarding. 'For whose benefit is all this chaos being done to so many?' I always ask.
The things being destroyed are irreplaceable, like species and communities. It is a function of where one is to rejoice in this state of affairs and call it wealth. I cannot be happy buying vanities, destroying the future, even the hard work of the generations passing or have passed in their idealism and sacrifice.
An example is the planned obsolence model of consumerism that is wrong and wasteful of time and resources, and the media facilitates it. (Enough about my ire for the media.)
The things being done around the planet, both to the living and our spirits, is obscene. I recall the words of RFK on GNP and I took them seriously and have pondered on it ever since:
Please forget any and all 'HRC bashers.' They're hurting themselves just by being what they are. Don't waste your time, as HRC doesn't, because she's using her fire power on the GOP, as always. It's why they hate her so much, she will not allow them to talk down to her belief system.
There are epic smack downs she has done to the GOP in Congress, in the Senate and as SoS. They always, and will continue with it, and come away looking stupid. To us in our liberal bubble. To them, it's all a big win to block their version of the natural order of things, with a few at the top ruling the rest of us. And that's even before they went apeshit. It's all they have, no substance even though power gives that appearance.
Still, we must think of something better. I see giving agency to women as an essential part of maintaining the ecosystem. Overpopulation is the breeding ground for poverty and empire which creates environmental disaster. This is history, pre-history, and a natural cycle that has been inescapable and leads to permanent changes in human and animal population and landscape.
We're going into a period of scarcity, diverted by consumerism to take our minds off of what is being degraded. Satellites are monitoring the loss of arable land and vegetation that sustains the circle of life. It's been hidden bycultural blindness. There are apocalyptic scenes that don't stay in the world's consciousness long enough to do enough.
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