DEPT. OF EDUCATION – OUR WORK HERE IS DONE

It appears a few children were left behind.

The Department of Education was created in 1979 and now has an annual budget of $73 billion, with 5,000 government bureaucrats roaming its hallways. When you include all Federal, State and Local spending on public education it totals about $700 billion per year, or $13,000 per student. The Department of Education was created to improve the education of our children.

After 37 years and trillions of dollars “invested” in our children, see below what they have achieved. The public school teachers who have been on the front lines for the last 37 years work 9 months per year, earn above average salaries, get awesome benefits, and have gold plated pension plans – all at the expense of taxpayers. And look what they have accomplished.

The tens of millions of illiterate drones think they deserve $15 per hour because it’s fair, even though they can’t count to fifteen or spell fifteen.

STAGGERING ILLITERACY STATISTICS

California

  • According to the 2007 California Academic Performance Index, research show that 57% of students failed the California Standards Test in English.
  • There are six million students in the California school system and 25% of those students are unable to perform basic reading skills
  • There is a correlation between illiteracy and income at least in individual economic terms, in that literacy has payoffs and is a worthwhile investment. As the literacy rate doubles, so doubles the per capita income.

The Nation

  • In a study of literacy among 20 ‘high income’ countries; US ranked 12th
  • Illiteracy has become such a serious problem in our country that 44 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to their children
  • 50% of adults cannot read a book written at an eighth grade level
  • 45 million are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level
  • 44% of the American adults do not read a book in a year
  • 6 out of 10 households do not buy a single book in a year

The Economy

  • 3 out of 4 people on welfare can’t read
  • 20% of Americans read below the level needed to earn a living wage
  • 50% of the unemployed between the ages of 16 and 21 cannot read well enough to be considered functionally literate
  • Between 46 and 51% of American adults have an income well below the poverty level because of their inability to read
  • Illiteracy costs American taxpayers an estimated $20 billion each year
  • School dropouts cost our nation $240 billion in social service expenditures and lost tax revenues

Impact on Society:

  • 3 out of 5 people in American prisons can’t read
  • To determine how many prison beds will be needed in future years, some states actually base part of their projection on how well current elementary students are performing on reading tests
  • 85% of juvenile offenders have problems reading
  • Approximately 50% of Americans read so poorly that they are unable to perform simple tasks such as reading prescription drug labels

(Source: National Institute for Literacy, National Center for Adult Literacy, The Literacy Company, U.S. Census Bureau)


THE STUDENT LOAN BAILOUT HAS ARRIVED

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Another Obama success story. Have the government take over the entire student loan industry in one fell swoop. Utilize the program as a way to artificially reduce the unemployment rate and to provide Keynesian stimulus to the economy as the “student” borrowers don’t actually go to class, but spend the borrowed money on iGadgets, Xboxes, and nights out at Applebees. Dole out $400 billion in NEW student loan debt in the last four years, bringing the total outstanding to $1.23 billion. This was all done with taxpayer money. When you realize the functional illiterates who got the loans will never be able to pay them back, you start reducing the interest rates, reducing monthly payments  and create a brand new loan forgiveness program. Loan forgiveness is a clever name for FUCK THE TAXPAYER.

You then make ridiculous assumptions about the number of participants and the loan amounts to make it seem like a perfectly reasonable government program. Tell the dykes on MSNBC to rave about the wonderful plan and tell them it’s for the chilrun. Then you hire a bunch of unemployed liberal douchebags to market the plan to dumbass students getting degrees in African history and Mural art appreciation. Then you send emails to every indebted student in the country encouraging them to default on their student loans. And guess what? Huge success. Millions of students with no brains or hope for a job are stampeding into this wonderful program.

You the taxpayer are fucked at the rate of $72 billion so far. Obama’s brilliant strategy in controlling the student loan market will now cost you $14 billion per year in loan losses. And this is just the beginning. The losses will run into the hundreds of billions. It’s called math – something these students and Barack Obama have failed miserably.

Who could have predicted this result? Oh yeah, me – The Subprime Final Solution

Do you think Obama’s cost estimates for Obamacare will be this good? I can’t wait to find out.

Flood Of Students Demanding Loan Forgiveness Forces Administration Scramble

“Loan forgiveness creates incentives for students to borrow too much to attend college, potentially contributing to rising college prices for everyone,” is a study’s warning over government plans that allow students to rack up big debts and then forgive the unpaid balance after a set period. As WSJ reports, enrollment in student debt forgiveness plans have surged nearly 40% in just six months, to include at least 1.3 million Americans owing around $72 billion. The administration is looking to cap debt eligible for forgiveness, as President Obama’s revamped Pay As You Earn scheme has seen applications soar and is estimated to cost taxpayers $14bn a year. The ‘popularity’ of the student loan bailout plan surged after Obama promoted it in 2012, and now the administration must back-track as costs have massively outpaced government predictions.

 

 

We have been aggresively focused on the government’s blowing of the student loan bubble…

Student debt has nearly doubled since 2007 to $1.1 trillion, disproportionately driven by the growth in graduate-school debt.

And questioned the need to incur such massive credit-fueled costs of tuition only to gain a low-paying job…

there is no point in trying to preserve the old regime. Today’s emphasis on measuring college education in terms of future earnings and employability may strike some as philistine, but most students have little choice. When you could pay your way through college by waiting tables, the idea that you should “study what interests you” was more viable than it is today, when the cost of a four-year degree often runs to six figures. For an 18-year-old, investing such a sum in an education without a payoff makes no more sense than buying a Ferrari on credit.

And while government plans are nothing new, Obama has aggressively promoted them…

The government has offered some form of income-based repayment since the early 1990s, but few studentsfound the terms enticing. But in 2007, Congress allowed borrowers working in nonprofit and government jobs to have unpaid debt forgiven after 10 years, and cut monthly payments for new borrowers to 15% of discretionary income.

 

In 2010, it cut those payments to 10% for borrowers who took out loans from 2014. A year later, Mr. Obama, through executive action, moved up the date when borrowers could qualify for the new terms, creating a program for those who took out loans from 2011. The White House this year has proposed making the program available to all student borrowers, regardless of when they signed their loans.

 

The popularity of the programs surged after the Obama administration began to promote them, starting in 2012, on the Internet and later through email to borrowers.

And it seems they are ripe for abuse…

“Income-based repayment can be a way for students responsibly to manage debt, but it should not be a bailout for students who borrow too much or for schools who charge too much,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the Senate Education Committee.

But, as usual, the government screwed up…

The plans’ long-term costs have greatly outpaced the government’s predictions. In the last fiscal year, debt absorbed by the repayment plans from the most widely used student-loan program—Stafford loans—exceeded government expectations from a year earlier by 90%.

 

 

A report Monday last week from the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank, offered one of the few preliminary examinations of the programs’ impact. The most popular plan could cost taxpayers $14 billion a year if it becomes available to all borrowers as Mr. Obama has proposed, while fueling tuition inflation, it said.

 

“Loan forgiveness creates incentives for students to borrow too much to attend college, potentially contributing to rising college prices for everyone,” the study said. The authors recommend scrapping the forgiveness provisions.

Sure enough everyone piled in looking for their handout…

Enrollment in the plans—which allow students to rack up big debts and then forgive the unpaid balance after a set period—has surged nearly 40% in just six months, to include at least 1.3 million Americans owing around $72 billion, U.S. Education Department records show.

 

Which means costs are soaring and the administration feels the need to do something to fix what it had broken by intervening once again…

 

The Obama administration has proposed in its latest budget released last month to cap debt eligible for forgiveness at $57,500 per student. There is currently no limit on such debt.

 

The move reflects concerns in the administration not just about the hit to the government, but over the risk that promising huge debt forgiveness could make borrowers and schools less disciplined about costs. Colleges might charge more than they would otherwise, leading students to borrow more.

And so is the government about to pop the student loan bubble by spoiling a good thing – unlimited debt forgiveness – for students and trickling down that credit tightening impact on colleges only to happy to raise tuition costs to reflect the credit-forgiveness-adjusted amount of money on the table?

Source: The Wall Street Journal