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This is the world we live in now, folks. One where conservatives think students borrowing money from the government is an "entitlement." Back in the days when people were sane, we used to believe paying for our young people to be educated was an obligation of a healthy democracy. Now, it's all up to kids who are expected not only to pay for their college educations, but to bury themselves deep in debt to do it. Listen to George Will's arrogant pronouncement:

TAPPER: And, George, you and I were talking about this earlier. You think that we're witnessing the birth of a new entitlement, with the president's push on -- on student loans.

WILL: Well, look what happened. It's a slow-motion, almost absentminded creation of a new entitlement, exactly at the moment when the entitlement state is buckling under the weight of its already existing commitments. Five years ago, Congress says, well, let's cut in half the interest rate on certain student loans, from 6.8 to 3.4.

Wow, no brownie points to Jake Tapper for just repeating that nonsense without so much as a raised eyebrow. Entitlement? Really?

From the time our kids are in kindergarten, parents, teachers and society alike hammer home the value of their education. By the time they're freshmen in high school, they're expected to know what they want their career to be and forge a pathway to college. If they want to get into something other than a community college, they're told to stress out for the next four years, take all the AP or IB classes they can, volunteer in their communities, participate in extracurricular activities, work a part-time job, and make sure they maintain their straight As in the process.

Those who actually manage to do these things are then rewarded with acceptances to the colleges of their choice and immediately presented with a bill for anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000 per year. If they're really lucky, they might win one of the few scholarships available to shave some of the pain off that bottom line, but there are no guarantees.

If they're not, they're told they can borrow around $5,000 per year from the government, and if their parents qualify, mom and dad can borrow about $25,000 from the government to send them to that school. Here's what happens: Those kids who we pushed to achieve and qualify for those public and sometimes private university educations land in community college for a couple of years while they try to save enough money to go to a 4-year university and not go broke in the process.

If they choose the 4-year university/tuition loan route, they leave school with debt, hazy job prospects, and the sense that everything they just worked toward was a farce. Which it will be, if Will has his way.

TAPPER: 6.8 to 3.4, yeah.

WILL: We'll do it, they said, temporarily. Well, now we're coming up against the expiration of that, and they're saying, well, let's temporarily move it on yet again.

TAPPER: But Romney supports that, as well.

WILL: I understand that. And that's why this is a bipartisan example of how entitlements -- because once you do this, once you extend it again, you'll never go back to 3.4 percent.

SMILEY: But when -- but when -- but when student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt, and we want to label that an entitlement, we don't call corporate welfare an entitlement. I just -- I don't see...

WILL: Of the two-thirds of the people who graduate from college with debt, the average debt is something under $30,000 total. That is just about the one-year difference in earnings between a college graduate and a high school graduate. We're talking about a pittance a month (ph).

(CROSSTALK)

SMILEY: But, George -- but if we give interest-free loans to bankers, why not interest-free loans to students, George?

WILL: Let's not give interest-free loans to anyone.

At last! Something I agree with George Will about. Truly, let's not give interest-free loans to the banks, and let's not make students and their struggling middle class parents break under the weight of student loans. Instead, let's recognize that this country has always believed that educating our children is the cornerstone of a healthy democracy, and start paying for it again the way we have in the past.

The reason Will and his ilk argue against student loan interest rate breaks is simple: They want to control which students have access to a college education. Their preferred flavor of student is a conservative one. They truly believe educating those librul ingrates who show up at Occupy protests or dare to question the status quo are unworthy of an education. If conservatives could choose which students got a college education, they'd be the very compliant sons and daughters of fine, upstanding, churchgoing types. The ones who qualify for Koch scholarships.

The ones like people in my family who protested the Vietnam war, went to college in the days when the University of California was tuition-free, and then dedicated themselves to public service for their entire career? They need not apply if their voter registration says "Democrat."

I'm completely serious about the need to return to the values that made this country great, and those values include assuming the costs for educating our young people and making sure they have the finest education possible in order to innovate, create, and shape a new, better, more equal world. Enough of the philosophy of educating only caretakers for the oligarchs.

Not only should there be no interest charged on student loans, there should be no student loans. It's as simple as that.

File this in your notebook under "in case you didn't believe prejudice and bigotry lives on" here in the United States. I won't even try to summarize this. I'll just give it to you straight:

Kymberly Wimberly, 18, got only a single B in her 4 years at McGehee Secondary School, and loaded up on Honors and Advanced Placement classes. She had the highest G.P.A. and says the school's refusal to let her be sole valedictorian was part of a pattern of discrimination against black students.

Wimberly says that despite earning the highest G.P.A. of the Class of 2011, and being informed of it by a school counselor, "school administrators and personnel treated two other white students as heir[s] apparent to the valedictorian and salutatorian spots."

Wimberly's mother is the school's "certified media specialist." She says in the federal discrimination complaint that after her daughter had been told she would be valedictorian, the mother heard "in the copy room that same day, other school personnel expressed concern that Wimberly's status as valedictorian might cause a 'big mess.'"

McGehee Secondary School is predominantly white, and 46 percent African-American, according to the complaint. Bratton says that the day after she heard the "big mess" comment, McGehee Principal Darrell Thompson, a defendant, told her "that he decided to name a white student as co-valedictorian," although the white student had a lower G.P.A.

I guess the school authorities found it uppity that someone who had the highest GPA in the school would actually expect to have the valedictorian honor bestowed on her.

I think I'll set a Google Alert for this one...and hope for an appropriately punitive outcome.

Bill's Big Diamond Blog

In the midst of the all-Rove discussions this weekend, a little reality seeps through. Passing through the blogosphere, I stopped by Riverbend to see if she had weighed in recently from Baghdad. She had. Riverbend reported sadly that another blogger, Khalid Jarrar, author of Tell Me a Secret, had been abducted by “the new Iraqi mukhabarat.”

It’s one thing to read the numbers and the see the faceless stories from Iraq. It’s another to be touched by someone’s words and then to know they’ve been taken off, to God knows where, perhaps to rot in jail, perhaps to worse. You get a glimpse of what someone cares about and what their daily existence is like, then see they’ve offended the authorities your own government has set up. By doing what? By simply writing about their life, or turning the wrong corner at the wrong time on the wrong day. Who knows?

Khalid is a blogger I’ve read off and on. His brother Raed is a prolific blogger and both of them have been good sources of information about daily life in occupied Baghdad since the invasion. Khalid had most recently been in Amman, Jordan. He had finished exams at university in Baghdad and had reported about a mortar blowing up one of his fellow students this May (he had suffered from some student laziness and missed class that day). Before that, there was a car bomb 100 meters away from his family’s home. And before that…well, you get the picture. Go, read his blog.

Khalid had recently posted about using real names in his blog and about transparency, a post that makes me now worry for him. Naturally, he’s been critical of the madness around him.
He is now somewhere in an Iraqi prison. His family is thankful to know he isn’t dead. His brother Raed writes today, “my brother is spending his 6th night in jail. He's just one of the thousands of people in Iraq who disappeared and ended up in one of the many jails and prisons around the country without a clear reason.”

Make Judy Talk    The Talent Show is a prolific blogger and both of them have been good sources of information about daily life in occupied Baghdad since the invasion. Khalid had most recently been in Amman, Jordan. He had finished exams at university in Baghdad and had reported about a mortar blowing up one of his fellow students this May (he had suffered from some student laziness and missed class that day). Before that, there was a car bomb 100 meters away from his family’s home. And before that…well, you get the picture. Go, read his blog.

Khalid had recently posted about using real names in his blog and about transparency, a post that makes me now worry for him. Naturally, he’s been critical of the madness around him.
He is now somewhere in an Iraqi prison. His family is thankful to know he isn’t dead. His brother Raed writes today, “my brother is spending his 6th night in jail. He's just one of the thousands of people in Iraq who disappeared and ended up in one of the many jails and prisons around the country without a clear reason.”

Boo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo!

via Green Knight

Via Canadian Cynic, Russell Jacoby has a great piece in The Nation about the new breed of crybaby conservatives, and their war against academia...read on

This is what happens when you stop viewing education as an investment that society makes in itself, and start viewing it as a product purchased by individual student/consumers. Students begin to expect their instructors to cater to them and their preconceptions, rather than challenging them to think beyond what they already know (or think they know)

Blessed are the sneaky bastards TBogg

Sometime back we referred to Mel Gibson's theological snuff film as Crouching Jesus, Hidden Agenda. Now reader Ed (no, not that Ed, the other one) provides us with a link where handy tips are provided for slipping Jesus through the eye of a needle cracks:

If you are worried that your local schools are teaching children that religion has no place in the study of biology, please consider donating biology-related books, posters, CDs, and DVDs with religious content to your school. These materials can be given to public libraries, too, and even directly to science teachers who can keep them in the classroom as convenient reference sources. Students benefit greatly from being exposed to alternatives to the theory of evolution, which is the bias of most textbooks used these days.

These donations are completely legal, and provide a very good way to provide balance in the school without formally challenging the agenda of the mainstream curriculum.

[...]

"These donations can also be tax deductible, but are best made anonymously so that a connection is not easily made to the religious affiliations of the donor. Purchases made at Amazon.com can be sent directly to the school's librarian." (my emphasis)

Oh. And if you want to have some fun, there's a contest to rename Intelligent Design. Why? Here's why:

As you know, lately we have enjoyed increasing success in getting religious explanations of life reintroduced into public school curricula, and we believe our strategy of "repackaging" every 10 years has been a critical contributor to this success. In particular, it has allowed our members to appear more "fair and balanced" at school board meetings.

Because appearing to be "fair and balanced" is much more important than actually being "fair and balanced".

8 Students Injured in Ind. Knife Attack

By TOM COYNE, Associated Press Writer

VALPARAISO, Ind. - A high school student wielding two knives slashed eight schoolmates Wednesday, authorities said. The injuries were not believed to be life-threatening.

From Americablog

Possible evidence of voter fraud in Ohio

I just received a photo a Cincinnati poll manager took this evening, and it seems to be proof of some fishy actions with ballots in Ohio. Bottom line: Note the already-voted-with ballots in the back of the truck with the Bush-Cheney sticker in the back window. Does this prove fraud? Well, it certainly doesn't look good in a state that's already had lots of problems .

In a nutshell, Stefan Skirtz is a poll manager for the Kerry campaign in Cincinnati. His precinct is heavily made up of minorities and students (i.e., leans Kerry). One of the duties of the poll managers, Stefan told me in a phone call minutes ago, is to follow the poll workers to election headquarters as they drop off the ballots and ballot boxes. Stefan followed the poll workers who didn't go directly to the election headquarters. Instead, they went to a local public school where workers put the ballot machines into a semi trailer, and then the poll workers handed off the sealed bags containing the ballots to someone Stefan assumed was with the county board of elections.
In a nutshell, Stefan Skirtz is a poll manager for the Kerry campaign in Cincinnati. His precinct is heavily made up of minorities and students (i.e., leans Kerry). One of the duties of the poll managers, Stefan told me in a phone call minutes ago, is to follow the poll workers to election headquarters as they drop off the ballots and ballot boxes. Stefan followed the poll workers who didn't go directly to the election headquarters. Instead, they went to a local public school where workers put the ballot machines into a semi trailer, and then the poll workers handed off the sealed bags containing the ballots to someone Stefan assumed was with the county board of elections.
In a nutshell, Stefan Skirtz is a poll manager for the Kerry campaign in Cincinnati. His precinct is heavily made up of minorities and students (i.e., leans Kerry). One of the duties of the poll managers, Stefan told me in a phone call minutes ago, is to follow the poll workers to election headquarters as they drop off the ballots and ballot boxes. Stefan followed the poll workers who didn't go directly to the election headquarters. Instead, they went to a local public school where workers put the ballot machines into a semi trailer, and then the poll workers handed off the sealed bags containing the ballots to someone Stefan assumed was with the county board of elections.I don't know whether the Bush partisans did or didn't play any games with the ballots they received, but it sure doesn't look good, and I wonder whether it's even legal. And let's not forget, this is a state that was already well on its way to becoming the new Florida of GOP election fraud.

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(h/t CSPANjunkie)

It's hitting the fan in California as students protest the grotesque 32% hikes in their college tuition.

Angry students at the Davis, California, branch of the University of California refused to vacate the school's administration building Thursday evening in a show of defiance and protest over a 32-percent undergraduate tuition hike instituted by the California Board of Regents earlier in the day.

About 50 students remained in the building, which was supposed to close by 5 p.m. PT (8 p.m. ET), UC Davis spokeswoman Claudia Morain told CNN. At one point, as many as 150 students were at the building protesting the tuition increase, she said. She said she hopes campus police can resolve the issue without the need to make arrests.

CNN affiliate KCRA captured footage of students outside the building shouting, "Who's university? Our university!"

Nearly 400 miles south and hours earlier, hundreds of students marched and chanted against the increase while outside the UCLA building in Los Angeles where regents met to vote on the hike.

Protesting students and others say the increased tuition will hurt working and middle-class students who benefit from state-funded education. But officials argue that a fee increase and deep cuts in school spending are necessary because of a persistent budget crisis that has forced reductions across California's state government.

California is in bad shape and it's only to get worse.

Hullabloo:

And there's no end in sight:

In what's become a depressingly familiar story over the last 2 years, California faces another big budget deficit:

Less than four months after California leaders stitched together a patchwork budget, a projected deficit of nearly $21 billion already looms, according to a report to be released Wednesday by the state's chief budget analyst.

The new figure -- the nonpartisan analyst's first projection for the coming budget year -- threatens to send Sacramento back into budgetary gridlock and force more across-the-board cuts in state programs.

As the article points out, the deficit for 2009-10 (current fiscal year) is $6.3 billion, and the projected deficit for 2010-11 is $14.4 billion. Arnold is already talking about closing it with cuts...

Congressional Democrats decided they didn't have the months it would take to renegotiate the aid formulas, which resulted in some real disparities between districts:

RANDOLPH, Utah — Dale Lamborn, the superintendent of a somewhat threadbare rural school district, feels the pain of Utah’s economic crisis every day as he tinkers with his shrinking budget, struggling to avoid laying off teachers or cutting classes like welding or calculus.

Just across the border in Wyoming, a state awash in oil and gas money, James Bailey runs a wealthier district. It has a new elementary school and gives every child an Apple laptop.

But under the Obama administration’s education stimulus package, Mr. Lamborn, who needs every penny he can get, will receive hundreds of dollars less per student than will Dr. Bailey, who says he does not need the extra money.

“For us, this is just a windfall,” Dr. Bailey said.

In pouring rivers of cash into states and school districts, Washington is using a tangle of well-worn federal formulas, some of which benefit states that spend more per pupil, while others help states with large concentrations of poor students or simply channel money based on population. Combined, the formulas seem to take little account of who needs the money most.

As a result, some districts that are well off will find themselves swimming in cash, while some that are struggling may get too little to avoid cutbacks.

Schoolhouse Rock defines a generation: this morning my third grade son had a school program, during which the students recited the Preamble to the US Constitution. Practically the entire audience of forty-something suburban parents suppressed both giggles and the urge to sing the version above, some more successfully than others.

Open thread below...