The same period has seen a massive growth of social inequality,
with income and wealth concentrated at the very top of American society to an
extent not seen since the 1920s.
“This study follows
reports released over the past several months documenting rising mortality
rates among US workers due to drug addiction and suicide, high rates of infant
mortality, an overall leveling off of life expectancy, and a growing gap
between the life expectancy of the bottom rung of income earners compared to
those at the top.”
According to a report from the Economist published last week, anxiety and depression rates in teenagers have skyrocketed over the past two decades.
Just over the past decade, the number of American children and teenagers who have been admitted to hospitals over suicidal thoughts has more than doubled. The suicide rate for 15-to-19-year-olds increased between 2007 and 2015. This is the subject of a recent reportby the Economist on the consistently increasing amount of American teenagers who are experiences issues with anxiety and depression.
The report suggests that the use of smartphones may be a contributing factor to the rise of such issues. A new study conducted at San Diego State University concluded that young Americans who report higher usage of their smartphones were more likely to hold bleak outlooks about their own future. The study’s author admits herself that the correlation between those factors does not prove causality. However, she argues that teens that use their phone as an escape are more likely to be unhappy than their peers that do not. The report states that millennials look at their phones on average more than 150 times per day.
Another study suggests that the use of social media is connected to a decline in happiness. In 2016, a randomly selected group of participants reported that felt less depressed after not using Facebook for one week.
Nicole Green, the executive director of Counseling and Psychological Services at the University of California, Los Angeles, argues that the uptick in anxiety and depression issues in young Americans may be due to another factor. “A number of things are pretty unique to young people today. They were born around when the Columbine shooting happened, they were kids for 9/11, they were kids during one of the worst recessions in modern history,” she explained.
Despite the bleak outlook, some research suggests that social media can actually make users happier if it is used to engage directly with other users rather than as a window into the more lavish and exciting lives of others.
CALL IT OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS OR TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH!
Tennessee punishes workers who default on student loans, ignores politicians’ fines
By Warren Duzak 28 November 2017
The state of Tennessee punishes the working class in its struggles to secure an education and a decent job, but looks the other way when it comes to election law violators who fail to pay fines.
The New York Times recently pegged Tennessee as the nation’s most aggressive state in penalizing those who default on student loans. Nurses and teachers lose their licenses and their jobs if they fall behind on payments, and the future is anything but bright for those now in school.
More than 44 million Americans hold a total of $1.4 trillion in student debt, a sum greater than total US credit card debt or automobile loans. Student loan debt could soon rival the total debt for home mortgages, with an average payoff time for a student loan approaching 20 years.
As the WSWS observed in a recent perspective, “Today’s recent graduate can look forward to at least half a lifetime of penury as the cost of an undergraduate degree. And for those who can’t afford more than the interest every month, it’s a lifetime.”
Daily more than 3,000 people for many different reasons, including health problems, family troubles or a lack of work, default on their federal student loans.
But while they punish those unable to pay their student loan debt, a forgiving Tennessee state legislature, state election officials and even the state’s attorney general’s office conveniently overlook those owing election violation fines, including those imposed for failing to report all money donated to their campaigns or committees.
The Tennessean reported that the state has allowed election law fines totaling $1 million for 220 individuals and dozens of political action committees to go uncollected for decades. Some of the fines are 26 years old.
Meanwhile struggling workers who borrowed money to go to school and then stumble cannot evade the state apparatus.
“Tennessee is one of the most aggressive states at revoking licenses, the records show,” the Times reported. “From 2012 to 2017, officials reported more than 5,400 people to professional licensing agencies. Many—nobody knows how many—lost their licenses.”
In Tennessee and 19 other states, workers pay back their student loans…. or else.
The Times led its lengthy report with the case of Shannon Otto of Nashville, Tennessee. Otto lost her nursing license when she developed epileptic seizures and was unable to work. With no income, she failed to make her student loan payments. The state responded by suspending her hard-earned nursing license.
When she was able to get treatment, got her seizures under control and was ready to go back to work, she was unable to pay the $1,500 the Tennessee Board of Nursing demanded to reinstate her license.
“I absolutely loved my job, and it seems unbelievable that I can’t do it anymore,” Ms. Otto said.
The Times notes: “Firefighters, nurses, teachers, lawyers, massage therapists, barbers, psychologists and real estate brokers have all had their credentials suspended or revoked.” It added, however, that “determining the number of people who have lost their licenses is impossible because many state agencies and licensing boards don’t track the information.”
According to the publication the licenses of at least 308 nurses and 223 teachers in Kentucky have been revoked or flagged for review. In Louisiana, 87 nurses now face losing their jobs unless they can become current on loan payments.
However, unlike working class students, those who run for office are generally not worried about money nor are they pursued for their refusal to pay off fines. The more well off—lawyers and morticians have been disproportionately represented in the legislature—finance their own campaigns or readily find the businessman or corporate sponsor with deep pockets to underwrite them.
How other states handle election law fines is not apparent, but Tennessee waits years to try to collect fines from the privileged group of Tennesseans who represent the ruling class in the legislature.
Even as the state reluctantly goes after delinquent fines, it does not go after all that they owe, much less demand interest or revocation of professional licenses.
The state’s Attorney General’s office is considering an agreement to cut the fine in half for two legislators, one who owed more than $40,000 and another who owed $10,000.
In a revealing comment, the Tennessean reported: “No one clarified why the attorney general and registry decided to accept such payment agreements…”
While elected officials in Nashville are merciless in their efforts to squeeze money out of former students for creditors, those in Washington D.C. find money for tax cuts for the rich and for corporations by slashing educational benefits for those who need them most.
A tax plan proposed and approved by the House of Representatives, should the Senate approve it and President Trump sign it, would:
· Raise the cost of attending college over the next ten years by $65 billion, according to an estimate by the American Council on Education (ACE).
· Repeal a tax deduction for interest payments on student loans that saves borrowers $625 annually for borrowers making less than $65,000 a year, or for married couples making less than $120,000. In 2015, 12 million people filed for this deduction.
· Require that tuition waivers for 145,000 graduates who work as teaching assistant be taxed as income.
To add insult to injury, President Trump is proposing to abolish subsidized federal loans and institute a single program for all federal lending for students. Such a change would result in a single income-based repayment plan at 12.5 percent of adjusted gross income .
PATHOLOGICAL
VIOLENCE, OPIOID ADDICTION, STAGGERING POVERTY, SOARING JOBLESSNESS FOR LEGALS
AND POVERTY FOR ALL….. While the rich only get SUPER RICH!
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS to serve the
filthy rich
The same period has seen a massive growth of social inequality,
with income and wealth concentrated at the very top of American society to an
extent not seen since the 1920s.
“This study follows
reports released over the past several months documenting rising mortality
rates among US workers due to drug addiction and suicide, high rates of infant
mortality, an overall leveling off of life expectancy, and a growing gap
between the life expectancy of the bottom rung of income earners compared to
those at the top.”
"The Dodd-Frank bill, which created it, was an effort by the Obama administration and the Democrats, who then controlled Congress, to pretend to crack down on Wall Street while actually doing very little."
Democrats
posture as opponents of Wall Street in CFPB dispute
By Patrick Martin
28 November 2017
In what can
only be described as a stage-managed publicity stunt, the director of the
Consumer Financial Protection Board, Democrat Richard Cordray, resigned
abruptly on Friday after promoting his chief of staff, Leandra English, to the
long-vacant position of deputy director.
English then
declared herself to be Cordray’s successor and acting director, under the
provisions of the Dodd-Frank bill, which established the CFPB in 2010 to act as
an extremely limited, essentially toothless consumer watchdog on the
depredations of US financial institutions.
The Trump
White House, momentarily confused by the maneuver since Cordray had been
expected to resign a week later, hastily named Budget Director Mick Mulvaney
the acting director of the CFPB, and instructed English to report to Mulvaney
as his deputy.
On Sunday
night, English filed a civil lawsuit with the US District Court for Washington
DC, seeking a declaratory judgment that she was the rightful CFPB director.
However, the CFPB’s own general counsel, Mary McLeod, issued a memorandum to
the agency’s employees instructing them that Mulvaney, as the nominee of the
president, had the legal authority to direct the agency.
On Monday,
Mulvaney visited the CFPB and took possession of the director’s office,
announcing that he was halting all new hiring and regulatory actions for 30
days, pending a review of the agency’s operations.
While the
1,600 employees of the agency are concerned about an imminent threat to their
jobs and livelihood—Mulvaney is an open enemy who, while in Congress, described
the CFPB as a “sick joke” and advocated its abolition—the actions of Cordray,
English and their Democratic congressional supporters are purely a political
stunt.
There is
little doubt that Trump has the authority, as president and head of the
executive branch, to name interim replacements for vacancies at any executive
agency. This authority is further codified in legislation enacted as recently
as 1998.
The CFPB has
been the subject of political posturing by both Republicans and Democrats since
it was established six years ago in the wake of the 2008 Wall Street Crash. The
Dodd-Frank bill, which created it, was an effort by the Obama administration
and the Democrats, who then controlled Congress, to pretend to crack down on
Wall Street while actually doing very little.
The
Republicans, for their part, treated the CFPB as the second coming of the
Bolsheviks, claiming that the tiny agency, with little enforcement power, was a
threat to US financial markets and to the capitalist system itself.
Each
capitalist party has used the agency for its own political purposes, while the
CFPB itself has been nothing more than a minor annoyance to Wall Street. In six
years of operation, it has been responsible for fines and restitution to
consumers totaling $12 billion, or $2 billion a year. This amounts to barely
one percent of the net profits of the US financial industry ($173 billion in
2016), and less than one half of one percent of bank revenues alone (over $400
billion and rising every year since the 2008 crash).
Cordray’s
own role personifies the uses of the CFPB as a political cover. He was named to
head the agency after Obama caved in to Republican opposition to Elizabeth
Warren, his initial choice. Warren parlayed her undeserved reputation as a
scourge of the bankers, and victim of the Republicans, into a successful
campaign for a US Senate seat from Massachusetts.
Cordray’s
fixed five-year term runs until July 1, 2018, so he was practically the sole
Obama appointee to continue serving in the Trump administration. But he decided
to abandon the post eight months early—and thus cede control of the CFPB to
Trump—in order to seek the Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio. He then
engineered the handover of authority to English, setting off the subsequent
media firestorm, to jet-propel his own political campaign.
BLOG: YOU TAKE GOLDMAN SACHS OUT OF THE SWAMP KEEPER'S ADMIN AND THERE WILL BE NO AT HOME!
More
broadly, the obvious determination of the Trump administration to stamp out
even a fig leaf of accountability for the big banks allows the Democratic Party
as a whole to adopt the stance of opposition to Wall Street.
NEXT TO OBAMA, CLINTON, FEINSTEIN
AND TRUMPER, CHUCK SCHUMER IS THE
BIGGEST BANKSTER SLUT IN THE SENATE
Senate
Minority Leader Charles Schumer met with Leandra English and Elizabeth Warren
Monday afternoon, and then denounced Trump for “putting the fox in charge of
the henhouse.” So says the paid agent of the foxes, who has received more
campaign contributions from Wall Street than anyone else in Congress.
Schumer’s
deputy, Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, hailed the CFPB, declaring, “Wall
Street hates it like the devil hates holy water”—perhaps uttering an
inadvertent truth, since the CFPB is precisely as useless as holy water in
fighting the domination of Wall Street over the US economy.
CALL IT OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS OR TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE SUPER
RICH!
Tennessee punishes workers who default on student loans, ignores politicians’ fines
By Warren Duzak 28 November 2017
The state of Tennessee punishes the working class in its struggles to secure an education and a decent job, but looks the other way when it comes to election law violators who fail to pay fines.
The New York Times recently pegged Tennessee as the nation’s most aggressive state in penalizing those who default on student loans. Nurses and teachers lose their licenses and their jobs if they fall behind on payments, and the future is anything but bright for those now in school.
More than 44 million Americans hold a total of $1.4 trillion in student debt, a sum greater than total US credit card debt or automobile loans. Student loan debt could soon rival the total debt for home mortgages, with an average payoff time for a student loan approaching 20 years.
As the WSWS observed in a recent perspective, “Today’s recent graduate can look forward to at least half a lifetime of penury as the cost of an undergraduate degree. And for those who can’t afford more than the interest every month, it’s a lifetime.”
Daily more than 3,000 people for many different reasons, including health problems, family troubles or a lack of work, default on their federal student loans.
But while they punish those unable to pay their student loan debt, a forgiving Tennessee state legislature, state election officials and even the state’s attorney general’s office conveniently overlook those owing election violation fines, including those imposed for failing to report all money donated to their campaigns or committees.
The Tennessean reported that the state has allowed election law fines totaling $1 million for 220 individuals and dozens of political action committees to go uncollected for decades. Some of the fines are 26 years old.
Meanwhile struggling workers who borrowed money to go to school and then stumble cannot evade the state apparatus.
“Tennessee is one of the most aggressive states at revoking licenses, the records show,” the Times reported. “From 2012 to 2017, officials reported more than 5,400 people to professional licensing agencies. Many—nobody knows how many—lost their licenses.”
In Tennessee and 19 other states, workers pay back their student loans…. or else.
The Times led its lengthy report with the case of Shannon Otto of Nashville, Tennessee. Otto lost her nursing license when she developed epileptic seizures and was unable to work. With no income, she failed to make her student loan payments. The state responded by suspending her hard-earned nursing license.
When she was able to get treatment, got her seizures under control and was ready to go back to work, she was unable to pay the $1,500 the Tennessee Board of Nursing demanded to reinstate her license.
“I absolutely loved my job, and it seems unbelievable that I can’t do it anymore,” Ms. Otto said.
The Times notes: “Firefighters, nurses, teachers, lawyers, massage therapists, barbers, psychologists and real estate brokers have all had their credentials suspended or revoked.” It added, however, that “determining the number of people who have lost their licenses is impossible because many state agencies and licensing boards don’t track the information.”
According to the publication the licenses of at least 308 nurses and 223 teachers in Kentucky have been revoked or flagged for review. In Louisiana, 87 nurses now face losing their jobs unless they can become current on loan payments.
However, unlike working class students, those who run for office are generally not worried about money nor are they pursued for their refusal to pay off fines. The more well off—lawyers and morticians have been disproportionately represented in the legislature—finance their own campaigns or readily find the businessman or corporate sponsor with deep pockets to underwrite them.
How other states handle election law fines is not apparent, but Tennessee waits years to try to collect fines from the privileged group of Tennesseans who represent the ruling class in the legislature.
Even as the state reluctantly goes after delinquent fines, it does not go after all that they owe, much less demand interest or revocation of professional licenses.
The state’s Attorney General’s office is considering an agreement to cut the fine in half for two legislators, one who owed more than $40,000 and another who owed $10,000.
In a revealing comment, the Tennessean reported: “No one clarified why the attorney general and registry decided to accept such payment agreements…”
While elected officials in Nashville are merciless in their efforts to squeeze money out of former students for creditors, those in Washington D.C. find money for tax cuts for the rich and for corporations by slashing educational benefits for those who need them most.
A tax plan proposed and approved by the House of Representatives, should the Senate approve it and President Trump sign it, would:
· Raise the cost of attending college over the next ten years by $65 billion, according to an estimate by the American Council on Education (ACE).
· Repeal a tax deduction for interest payments on student loans that saves borrowers $625 annually for borrowers making less than $65,000 a year, or for married couples making less than $120,000. In 2015, 12 million people filed for this deduction.
· Require that tuition waivers for 145,000 graduates who work as teaching assistant be taxed as income.
To add insult to injury, President Trump is proposing to abolish subsidized federal loans and institute a single program for all federal lending for students. Such a change would result in a single income-based repayment plan at 12.5 percent of adjusted gross income .
JOBS ARE GONE. ALL GO
TO "CHEAP" LABOR
ILLEGALS.... THE ECONOMY
IS IN THE HANDS OF
CRIMINAL BANKSTERS.
NOT ONE POL IS NOT ON
THE TAKE and MEXICO IS
FLOODING THE COUNTRY
WITH OPIOIDS.... and
American youth are getting
depressed.
Report: Teenagers are Becoming More ‘Anxious and Depressed’
According to a report from the Economist published last week, anxiety and depression rates in teenagers have skyrocketed over the past two decades.
Just over the past decade, the number of American children and teenagers who have been admitted to hospitals over suicidal thoughts has more than doubled. The suicide rate for 15-to-19-year-olds increased between 2007 and 2015. This is the subject of a recent reportby the Economist on the consistently increasing amount of American teenagers who are experiences issues with anxiety and depression.
The report suggests that the use of smartphones may be a contributing factor to the rise of such issues. A new study conducted at San Diego State University concluded that young Americans who report higher usage of their smartphones were more likely to hold bleak outlooks about their own future. The study’s author admits herself that the correlation between those factors does not prove causality. However, she argues that teens that use their phone as an escape are more likely to be unhappy than their peers that do not. The report states that millennials look at their phones on average more than 150 times per day.
Another study suggests that the use of social media is connected to a decline in happiness. In 2016, a randomly selected group of participants reported that felt less depressed after not using Facebook for one week.
Nicole Green, the executive director of Counseling and Psychological Services at the University of California, Los Angeles, argues that the uptick in anxiety and depression issues in young Americans may be due to another factor. “A number of things are pretty unique to young people today. They were born around when the Columbine shooting happened, they were kids for 9/11, they were kids during one of the worst recessions in modern history,” she explained.
Despite the bleak outlook, some research suggests that social media can actually make users happier if it is used to engage directly with other users rather than as a window into the more lavish and exciting lives of others.