Do you mean "private"? I know for sure that Rice and Harvard are both 501(c)(3) Non-Profit businesses. Pretty sure MIT is, too, Stanford, and all Ivy League schools. I don't think that really makes a difference to your point (does it?), just saying.
Again... it is always something other than Sanders or his proposals... the depths that some will go to are amazing.
Don’t worry, you are already earmarked for one of those death panels I heard so much about. I’d put in a good word for you with the local government socialist official but with all the prisons being emptied and the borders being open, I would have no time.
I don't know how many times I have to explicitly state flaws of Bernie before people stop beating up strawmen. His uphill battle against monied interests is A reason. It's the reason that many here believe is merely a conspiracy hence why I concentrate more on it. No need for me to preach to the choir about his lack of charisma or other issues because that's hammered to death and I've acknowledged them.
I've stated that in principal I am not for M4A. In general , I think the government getting involved in most things only makes the mess worse , products and service worse while prices rise. Our government overpays for literally everything. Companies love government contracts for a reason. Then again , I don't know if you've ever been to a public hospital like Ben Taub or LBJ .... If you aren't critical , no one's in any hurry to do much of anything , the next shift might get around to you , maybe. I cringe at the thought of that type of care being the norm in an M4A situation. I just realize that society has made the decision (not really society but actual doctors and their oath is what got us here) that people will not be denied care they need and that someone has to foot the bill and we are all doing that already with our HC premiums and tax dollars. Realizing that , we have to come up with a solution to the rising costs. I'm willing to entertain M4A as a solution , assuming quality of care doesn't deteriorate. I can think of no other solution to the funding problem. It's absolutely insane that I spend somewhere in the neighborhood of ~$25k a year for medical coverage for me , my wife and three kids and the only "Use" is a handful of doctor visits a year. Something's got to give there. There is no Hippocratic oath when it comes to education ....
I disagree. We really need to be dumping money into early education. The system is just pumping out dumb kids. Some eventually get it, some don't. Parents who work the system for their kids always tend to better off at a much high margin. Massively amounts more teachers in grade school, school provided food with health education playing a significant role and free before and after school care. It might take a generation for it to pay off, but its better than mortaging tomorrows generation for a quick fix today.
Right now Bernie sounds like a Democratic Trump and the last thing anyone wants is anything resembling a Trump... I love how Bernie has gotten the young people involved, but right now he is doing the same thing that Trump did when he was running... T_Man
I agree with your premise about what is being done about costs going forward. My comment was regarding the comments about how some people made sacrifices and tough choices that allowed them to attend college and no longer have a debt while suggesting that anyone who currently has a crippling debt has it because they haven't been willing sacrifice or made horrible irresponsible choices.
That's a sensible question, but you won't like the answer. Nothing. Because elected officials don't possess the political capital to set things back to when the costs were affordable and no one is going to because doing so would cost them elections. But if they could somehow? Well I spent a few minutes with google and now I'm an expert in higher ed , but in seriousness I did my best to take a stab at how things got where they are and propose a solution. Leaving kids with six figure loans is not a solution -- it's a bubble and it's not good for the country. The cost of tuition is ridiculous, but what's even more ridiculous is that while no bank would be dumb enough to loan my public-sectored-salaried ass the money to buy a G class Mercedes (always wanted one of those, don't judge me), they'd be fighting each other to fund a more expensive law degree or MBA or for that matter, an MFA in film production if I applied online right now via FASA. They don't have to assume nearly the same level of risk if I'm asking for a loan through the Department of Education and banks have no problem expecting me to pay it off for the rest of my life, even if there's no guarantee I'll graduate. People didn't do this crap back in the 70s and 80s. What's changed? Well, while I won't pretend this tells the whole story, expenditure by states is significantly less than it once was and it's safe to say that's the elephant in the room: State schools used to be a lot cheaper in the 70s and 80s because they were way better funded by their respective states. If the burden was shifted back to states and giant ass loans were a lot harder to get, states would have to spend more of their state budgets to fund their schools. And maybe that means there would be less universities that could afford to be funded, but it would make them more competitive and get the federal government out of the business of subsidizing banks. I'm willing to sacrifice the ease of C students to go to a party school if it accomplishes that. For public universities at least, I'd say limit enrollment, but I checked and I was wrong. Looking at major universities in Texas, at least, the numbers have been pretty stable for 40+ years. They aren't churning out more degrees. It's 2 year colleges that have seen the majority of attendance increases. That's left a gap that's been filled with tuition and federal expenditure going up, and in more recent decades, decreasing grants and increasing loans (bad), tax incentives (nice but I'd prefer not having massive student debt in the first place), and post 9/11 GI Bill benefits (I'm fine with that). I think the federal government should get out of the business of loans altogether and force states to figure it out on their own. No one likes taxes but I'd much rather see a modest tax increase in states and have the revenue go to the universities within those states, at the level those state legislators want to fund their universities at, rather than subsidize high risk loans for banks with federal taxes with even less say on how it gets spent. That's not advocacy for "big government." It's advocacy for federalism. I work at a Texas public university and less than 10% comes from state funding. Most funding comes from alumni donations and tuition, which keeps going up as universities keep cutting their budgets. I certainly could not have afforded my undergrad education now. Anecdotally, the kids I see and hear on campus seem a lot more privileged than when I was in school (and I won't claim I know that to be true -- just my impression). Nevertheless, I would prefer the smartest and most academically motivated students go to the better public universities rather than those with the richest daddies. Let the rich kids drive their BMWs to USC. A&M and UT recently starting giving free tuition for students from households that make less than 60/65k, and I like that because it attempts to address that issue, but overall I think the problem is part of a bigger one in governance -- that politicians have increasingly relied on the the financial system to solve their problems, while wooing voters with tax cuts and claiming to be fiscally responsible. In my opinion, it's a shell game that is just outsourcing responsibility to banks, which leads to big ass loans that government assumes the risk for. In short, the taxpayer is stuck paying for it either way -- better to pay it directly to your state and have the money go further to fund education than through the middlemen of Too Big To Fail Banks and the Department of Education to do it, but good luck finding anyone with the courage to sell that to their voters or campaign contributors.
I doubt it, and it's unfortunate. While there's no doubt the Democratic party and the managerial/media/politico class would go to great lengths to avoid a President Sanders (and for some, possibly even more than four more years of Trump), I think Bernie's 2020 campaign failures are largely his own fault. I don't expect that to change now that there's a clear front running opponent, in Joe Biden, but I would enjoy being wrong. He hasn't been nearly assertive enough in making his case for M4A and student loan forgiveness, or his other policies, and has allowed others to use fear, uncertainty, and doubt and Soviet iconography and comparisons to Cold War dictators to undermine him and he doesn't fight back. Comparisons to Trump pretty much stop at his status as an outsider and appeals to populism. Sanders seems too concerned about not ruffling the feathers of an establishment that already doesn't like him, and that's simply not a winning strategy for him if he's supposed to represent change. Trump, for all his faults, was relentlessly competitive, played to win, and to be fair, Republicans were much less happy with their old standard bearers than the Democrats are theirs. But it's still a primary. He needed to attack his opponents for supporting the status quo he's ostensibly fighting. If you keep saying Joe Biden is your good friend and colleague in the Senate, why should voters support you and not him when there's less perceived risk in doing so? Why should anyone feel any sense of urgency in supporting the change you represent? Joe Biden is a very vulnerable candidate and if Bernie doesn't attack Biden's suitability for the job, Trump will get those points instead. Bernie made a much stronger case in 2016 when he criticized Clinton, and it got him a lot of independent voters -- and those voters are the ones that haven't shown up in 2020. He won't get much without them. His policies are pretty much 1930s-40s New Deal FDRism, which I think is a perfectly reasonable correction to 40 years of neoliberal economic policy, and I think there's definitely a large enough coalition to build around that to win a general election. But he should be rocking the US flag lapel and tying his policies to the legacy of FDR, and things American enjoy today from that legacy, and tell the history of how FDR got people to work meaningful jobs building infrastructure, and state and national parks, and in general, sell his own vision as something American and patriotic and not something to let others spin as something foreign and suspicious. Instead, he's doubled down on calling it socialism and scaring voters, even when the countries he sites as examples (Denmark and Sweden) have corrected him and explain that they are in fact capitalist social democracies, not socialist. The US has a socialist party -- and while it is endorsing a candidate from another party, it's not Bernie Sanders, who they are extremely critical of.
I do not like everything coming from the Bernie camp but you are right here that this is not fair at all, and even non Bernie supporters cannot contribute to false equivalence of this sort that spilts the big tent more than it is. Right now Bernie is running a negative attack campaign because he has to in order to stay alive. Politics is a contact sport, and this is not new when there is a consequential election with you behind at the end of your rope. Bernie has tried to focus on the issues and not the person with Biden, but he’s inevitably going to infer that Biden has fundamental greed and corrupt motive by trying to paint Biden as a bought politician by the billionaires so it’s inevitable that it’ll be a little personal for sure and that is unfortunate. But make no mistake.... Democrats need to do everything they can to be empathetic to Bernie folks to include them in the fight come August and allow their voices to be heard even if it comes at a cost of admitting the party hasn’t always had clean hands in the past and needs to do better in the future, and damnit start talking about overturning citizens united any time you get accused of being corrupt or its inferred. It’s the easiest get out of jail card a Biden type can take.
Let me restate this... Bernie's actions, his supporters and his tactics are very similar to Trump.... He is trying to start a revolution on the democratic side... Trump started a revolution on the Republican side... There are a lot of similarities on how Bernie is running his campaign and the way that Trump ran his... T_Man
I don't get the idea that Trump started a revolution. Trump hasn't shaken up anything other than norms in terms of how we expect our president to behave. His governance has basically been let Mitch write whatever bills he wants and Trump signs them. No revolution in foreign policy either, just cult of personality dumbassery. His "revolution" on the right was basically saying "I'm not going to dog whistle or pretend we are something we aren't. I'm outright calling out angry white people."
His policies against our first amendment might be revolutionary. His spending of our tax dollars to pay ranchers and farmers who can't sell their products because of his trade war might be revolutionary. Him putting in people who aren't qualified to do their job and making money from their positions of power is revolutionary, but it is revolutionary, extreme, and radical in the worst kind of way.
Bernie has opted not to address his supporters with a statement tonight and diverted home to Vermont instead of continuing on to Ohio. There is now speculation that he may end his campaign tomorrow.
I really don't get the sense that Sanders is concerned about ruffling the feathers of the establishment or that he hasn't been attacking his opponents. I think the problem with Sanders was that he was too inflexible in his rhetoric and painted himself in a corner with his idea of a revolution. After 2016 Sanders had the chance to expand on his support and could've done much more to move the party in his direction. Instead he went back to not being a Democrat and he actually lost support from 2016 to 2020. Have you considered that Joe Biden really is his friend? This is a problem with current politics that if someone considers someone who he or his supporters don't agree with politically a friend, then that is considered a weakness. Biden comes from a time when friendship with people you didn't agree with and even not in your party were common. That is why John McCain was Biden's best friend and Orrin Hatch was Ted Kennedy's. None of that meant that they didn't oppose each other politically. I don't think it weakens Sanders or Biden positions for them to be friends. Clinton and Biden are centrist and "establishment" candidates but they aren't the same. Clinton is very capable but is severely lacking in natural charisma. Her naked ambitious and Machievellian nature made her an easy target and it was no accident that many of Sanders supporters adopted the same rhetoric that the Right used against her for decades. Biden bugs the crap out of me but I will acknowledge he does have a charisma and affection that Clinton never had. Biden's is at his best when he talks about his personal experience such as a townhall when he talked about faith with the AME paster from the church that got shot up. That's much harder to attack and it makes sense that Sanders has had a harder time attacking Biden than Clinton. At the same time while I think Biden is vulnerable but he's not vulnerable in the same way that Clinton was. Neither Sanders or Trump's attacks will work the same on Biden as they did Clinton. FDR made a lot of changes but he was an insider coming from both a political family with a long political tradition. LBJ was the consummate insider and he used that power to get Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and Medicare passed. This idea that only through revolution and the establishment is the enemy doesn't work that well under our system. Consider the Gingrich Revolution fell flat and for all of Trump's outside even the GOP dominated Congress wouldn't pay for his Wall. Outside of traditional rightwing interests of tax cuts and judges Trump hasn't gotten much done. This is one of my pet peeves. "Socialism" as it was used recently in American politics isn't actually Socialism. Neither what the Republicans say to try to tar Democrats or what people like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez say they are.
