Personal reflections on the student loan forgiveness policy

I got some very good news last week. An email was tagged: “Your student loans have been forgiven.” First I thought it was fake and then I checked it out and yessiree, no more student loan payments. I have been paying off $20,000 in grad school loans since 1993. Successfully, at first, and then as our financial situation experienced some serious ups and downs, I worked with my student loan provider, one of the businesses that the government contracts to provide this service. I would get them down to a payment I could afford and then they would suddenly, as if some invisible switch was pulled, jack it up to a higher level I couldn’t pay. I then would request a forbearance for six months or a year and that would expire, the company added in all of the unpaid interest, and my payments would be higher than ever. Or I would sign on to a payment plan and suddenly my company shuffled me over to another and I had to start all over again. When my wife's coffee shop/art gallery business failed (she was ahead of her time) 20 years ago, we declared bankruptcy which I thought would include my student loans. I neglected to read the fine print.

I consolidated my loans in 2012 when they reached the $102,000 mark and worked out payments with Nelnet and the amount with accrued interest and fees reached $165,000. Interesting to note that the federal government paid off the student loan servicer and it, conceivably, was very happy to have the money and scratch me off their to-do list. Not such a great deal for the feds and my fellow taxpayers. But, as a taxpayer, I was also supporting the government to contract with this servicer which didn’t seem to give a damn about me and millions of others in debt for attending college. One of the worst servicers is FedLoan Servicing, an arm of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, a company co-owned by Betsy DeVos, Trump’s “secretary of education.” The PHEAA was, for a short while, my loan servicer. DeVos made millions while arguing forcefully against student loan forgiveness. She now is back under the rock she came out from under. A very fancy rock to be sure.

But, in good faith, I was paying off my debt. All I asked is that the servicer find me a level I can afford and I will pay it until its paid off or Doomsday arrives, whichever comes first. We all got a reprieve when Covid hit and payments were suspended. According to Mohela, a new loan servicer that picked up my account under President Biden’s watch, when my future payments resumed, I would be billed $1,963 a month. My Social Security deposit (I am 72 and retired) each month is $1,940, slightly above the average Social Security check of $1,701. My wife, who volunteered to go on this journey with me, gets $1,240 a month, below the national average because her working years were spent with childbearing and childcaring and household management, none of which enhanced her Social Security benefits. I am disabled and my wife in a Type 1 diabetic and breast cancer survivor. It’s ludicrous to think that a retiree should remit his Social Security check to the government which deposits it into his credit union account every month. But there you have it. Then again, we have GOPers who believe that Americans should not be allowed to retire at 65 or should never retire and, if they do, don’t deserve the funds that came from their paychecks for 40 years.

The Supreme Court aided by GOPers such as Wyoming's entire Congressional delegation and Governor Gordon, stymied Biden’s forgiveness plan so he found new and interesting ways to relieve the burden of millions, many of whom are senior citizens. Because I made a certain number of payments and loans older than 20-25 years were considered time enough to pay, I was forgiven. My loans were 30 years old. I also worked in public service so I was credited with monthly payments I made which go toward forgiveness. All of Biden’s positive ideas to solve this crippling debt were fought by Republicans because CRUELTY is their middle name. Also, they despite higher education, education of any kind – witness the New College fiasco and GOP-mandated public education requirements in Florida. GOPers, even Harvard-educated ones such as DeSantis, have used the loan forgiveness issue as another cudgel for the MAGA crowd to use against the so-called elites.

I send thanks to Pres. Joe Biden and his allies. 

Remember that the Loan Forgiveness Program could be reversed if the wrong people take control of governance in 2024. 

Suicide risk factors explored by National Institute of Mental Health

Suicide, especially teen suicide, is a scourge in Wyoming. Instead of casting blame, better to get more and better information from the National Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health

What causes someone to commit suicide? In a sense, it is an unanswerable question. Professionals who study the risk factors associated with suicide say that its causes are complex and slippery, difficult to pinpoint. Still, there are a set of risk factors agreed upon by the National Institute of Mental Health and others that tell us some of the things that can cause suicide rates to increase. Click here to view full article.

Thirty years later: Remembering El Salvador's Oscar Romero

"A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed – what gospel is that? Very nice, pious considerations that don’t bother anyone, that’s the way many would like preaching to be. Those preachers who avoid every thorny matter so as not to be harassed, so as not to have conflicts and difficulties, do not light up the world they live in." -- Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered by right-wing death squad, March 24, 1980, San Salvador

Romero button (at top) and quote from Pax Christi USA web site

"The Disappeared" still haunt us

Nothing prepares you for the exhibition currently at the University of Wyoming Art Museum.

"The Disappeared/Los Desaparecidos" brings together the work of 26 living artists from Latin America who, over the course of the last 30 years, made art about those who have disappeared.

I viewed the exhibit last week when I was in Laramie for the UW Art Museum's public art symposium.

The largest of the works shows a Guatemalan flag made from the exhumed bones of those killed during the country's dirty wars, which really were Cold War proxy battles between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Many of Latin America's killer thugs were military men trained at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. Not all, of course. Paramilitary bands roved Guatemala and Argentina and El Salvador and Uruguay. They operated with the sometimes explicit -- and always implicit -- consent of the ruling juntas.

One of the most depressing works of the exhibit shows couples who were disappeared. Their crimes? Subversive activities. Belonging to student activist groups. Consorting with suspicious characters. Complaining about the government. Some couples were married and some weren't. The women were pregnant and they and their babies still are missing. The legend under the pictures read: "Baby was born on or about April 5, 1979" or "Baby thought to be due in December 1977." The mother was bayoneted or thrown from a chopper or beat to death while pregnant. Or the baby was born but never seen again. Neither was the mother and -- oftentimes -- the father. These were young couples who looked a lot like couples I knew when I was in my twenties in the 1970s. They looked like pictures I have of my wife and I. Happy. Together. But we're alive and they aren't.

"Exhumations: Appearing the Disappeared - Uncovering Repressive Archives in the Recovery of Historical Memory in Latin America" will be the topic discussed by Kate Doyle at the next Art Talk hosted by the UW Art Museum. Her presentation is set for Monday, April 13, 7 p.m. Doyle is a Senior Analyst for the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Her talk will focus on uncovering the truth of military actions in Latin America during the mid-20th century, and the people who disappeared as a result.

Art Museum Director Susan Moldenhauer notes, "This talk comes at an historical moment in time, given the current news regarding the conviction of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori for crimes related to the death squads in that country." Doyle considers Fujimori’s conviction to be a landmark event. She states, "He is the first democratically elected president to be convicted of human rights crimes by his own country... in the world! Ever!"

The National Security Archive campaigns for the citizen’s right to know, investigates U.S. national security and foreign policy, and uses the Freedom of Information Act to obtain and publish declassified U.S. documents. Doyle directs several research projects on U.S. policy in Latin America for the Archive, including the Mexico Project, which aims to obtain the declassification of U.S. and Mexican government documents on the Mexican dirty war, and the Guatemala Project. Since 1992, she has worked with truth commissions in Latin America, including in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala to obtain records from secret U.S. government archives in support of their human rights investigations.

Doyle’s public talk is in conjunction with the UW Art Museum’s current exhibition The Disappeared/Los Desaparecidos exhibit. Doyle will also be giving a Gallery Walk Through of the exhibition from 10:30 a.m. to noon on Monday, April 13 at the Art Museum.

FMI: UW Art Museum at (307) 766-6622 or visit www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum
or the museum’s blog, www.uwartmuseum.blogspot.com/.

The museum is open Monday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.

Interesting to see that the exhibit originated with the North Dakota Museum of Art. N.D. poet Thomas McGrath would be proud.

Exhibit photo: Fernando Traverso from Rosario, Argentina, made a wall of silk "tombstones" emblazoned with the ghost image of a bicycle, one for each of his fellow resistance workers disappeared during those dark years of dictatorship. Why the bicycle? Because if someone went missing their abandoned bicycle served as early evidence of their fate. Entitled "In Memory, 2000-2001," the work consists of 29 silk banners, each 10 x 3.5 ft. with screened images of bicycles. Courtesy of the North Dakota Museum of Art.

Is help on the way for student loan debt?

If Business Week, Daily Kos and U.S. News & World Report think it's an idea whose time has come, who am I to argue?

This strange mix of media outlets have recently run stories about the idea of forgiving student loans -- or at least finding ways to lessen the burdens of those saddled with whopping student debt.

Business Week noted on March 24 that "help is on the way" for those with federal student loans.

The Income-Based Repayment plan, part of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007, will provide some relief to federal student loan borrowers when it goes into effect on July 1. The program will cap most borrowers' monthly payments at less than 10% of their gross income for 25 years, after which any remaining debt will be forgiven. Another program, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness, allows borrowers to make income-based repayments and have their debt discharged after 10 years. "These programs actually provide some major help now and in the immediate future," says Irons of the Project on Student Debt.

But the situation is not quite as rosy for private loan borrowers. Many of these debtors have been unable to meet their monthly payments, putting their loans in forbearance for several years or, in the worst-case scenario, defaulting on their loans. Making matters worse for private borrowers is a clause in the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act that included private student loans as one of 10 debts that can't be forgiven in bankruptcy cases.

Read the entire article at
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/mar2009/bs20090323_558993.htm

I'm one of the 144,000 members of the Facebook group Cancel Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy. We all have horror stories to tell. Some members of the group have raised the point that the $500 we pay each month in student loans might be a better economic stimulus if we could spend it, rather than give it to a student loan conglomerate who uses it to line the pockets of their overpaid executives. It's well known that some of the same giant banks that bundled home and car loans also bundled student loans. The conglomerates made out like bandits, while we were left holding the bag of loans larded with compiling interest and collection charges.

It's consumer spending that stimulates the economy. After all, how many solid gold umbrella stands does one bank executive need? I understand that the purchase of gold umbrella stands contribute to the economy, especially if they are made in the U.S.A. and bought in the U.S.A. But it's a little-known fact that jobs in the the gold umbrella stand industry have all been shipped to Sri Lanka by those same executives who bought those umbrella stands during boom times for precious-metal accoutrements such as gold-flaked gourmet ice cream, gold-encrusted cell phones and 24-carat gold bullion doorstops. Not to mention those golden showers execs administered to us all.

But I digress, in the hummingbirdminds style.

What if that same $500 that went into an exec's gold umbrella stand budget line was instead spent locally on groceries, clothes, car repair and even umbrellas? What if there were thousands -- even millions -- of us doing that? Wouldn't that be better for the GDP and our local economies than the purchase of a few you-know-whats by you-know-who?

Think about it.

Meanwhile, check out a few other articles about student loan forgiveness on the CSLDTSTE group on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=46657437878. Thanks to group founder Robert Applebaum, NYC.

This lapsed Catholic chooses Obama

Lively discussions erupting around the blogosphere about Catholics voting for Sen. Obama -- or not. As always, the right wingers who have hijacked Catholicism are telling Democrats they are going to hell because they support abortion rights. I am a proud "Cafeteria Catholic," which means I pick and choose what I want off of the Catholic menu and leave the rest. However, I no longer attend Catholic mass in Cheyenne. I've outlined some reasons in the letter (below) that I recently wrote to my sister. I attend mass when I'm out of town on a Sunday, just to see what Catholics do in other parts of the country. The basics of the service are the same all over the world. I grew up experiencing it in another language -- Latin -- so I have no trouble with the mass en Espanol.

Not only am I a Cafeteria Catholic, but I'm also "lapsed" or "fallen away." Maybe I'm just taking a break until the church comes to its senses and realizes it's made a major mistake forging alliances with Christian fundamentalists because of the abortion issue. If you know your U.S. history, you know that fundamentalists have a long tradition of hating Catholics. Catholics were immigrants from Ireland and Poland and Italy. They spoke in strange tongues (especially the Irish) and took their marching orders from the pope in Rome. It's Un-American, that's what that is. At least that's what Americans once thought, even in 1960 when JFK ran for president. Some thought that JFK would not only have a red phone but also a direct line to the pope.

Now, there are those American Catholics who insist that all of us must follow the dictates of the pope when it comes to abortion. When you object, they say that you must obey, that "the church is not a democracy." Funny, but these same people didn't call for unquestioning obedience when Pope John Paul II called for opposition to the war in Iraq. Talk about your Cafeteria Catholics.

Lots to report on this subject. Memphis Bishop J. Terry Steib said this in an Oct. 21 story in the National Catholic Reporter:

“We must recognize,” he wrote, “that God through the church, is calling us to be prophetic in our own day. If our conscience is well formed, then we will make the right choices about candidates who may not support
the church's position in every case.”

Citing words from a statement, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” a voting guide issued last November by the bishops of the United States, Steib wrote that "there may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate's unacceptable position may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil."

Father Michael Carr in the October issue of the Wyoming Catholic Register wrote this:

"In the Catholic Tradition, responsible citizenship is a virtue, and participation in political life is a moral obligation. As Catholics, we should be guided more by our moral convictions than by our attachment to a political party or interest group. As Catholics, we are not single-issue voters."

Father Carr does talk about abortion as an "intrinsic evil," yet he equates it with another intrinsic evil: "promotion of racism." He takes an even-handed approach to the issue. But he's that type of person. He's one of the first priests I met when we moved to Cheyenne in the early 1990s. We served together on the first board of directors for Laramie County Habitat for Humanity.

This comes from the Oct. 21 Chicago Tribune:

"I feel that every Catholic can vote for Obama in good conscience," said Patrick Whelan, president of Catholic Democrats. "I think Barack Obama is the first Democratic presidential candidate who has come out and said he plans constructive measures to reduce the number of abortions in the United States."

www.catholicsforobama.org/ argues that voting on the basis of only one issue runs afoul of the faith. Obama's broader social policies would do more to reduce the number of abortions than anything proposed by Se. John McCain, who is an open opponent of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. the group says. The crux of the argument is that criminalizing the procedure is less effective in reducing abortions than addressing the social circumstances that lead women to seek them.

Finally, here's a letter I e-mailed to my sister (one of my eight siblings, all in various states of lapsedness) after she had received some hateful e-mail missives from holier-than-thou Republican Catholics:

Dear Molly:

Don't know if you saw the video last week from the Daytona Beach News-Journal that showed the demolition of Father Lopez. It made me sad. I know that Father Lopez has built a shiny new school, but I spent four good years at the old Lopez. Made some good friends, learned a lot about being a Catholic and I learned a lot about myself.

Watching the old school come down, I thought about my life as a Catholic. I don't go to Catholic Church any more. Occasionally I go to to the First United Methodist Church which has an open-door policy and a very spiritual Sunday service. No priests or deacons are up at the altar railing against gays or Democrats or abortion or birth control or stem cell research. I've had it with that nonsense. I used to find a lot of comfort going to mass. But no more.

It's an interesting and passionate thread you have going on here. As you know, I'm voting for Barack Obama and his Catholic running mate, Joe Biden. Their platform is pro-life in the truest sense. Universal health care, a living wage, an improved education system (including more aid for college students), a plan to wean us off foreign oil in ten years, and an end to the ridiculous war in Iraq. John McCain wants to continue us down the same destructive path we've been on for eight years. McCain and Palin have been spewing their hateful message across America during their campaign, while Barack Obama brings a message of hope.

You probably remember the three theological virtures we learned in the catechism. The Bible in First Corinthians puts it this way: "And now abideth faith, hope, and love, even these three: but the chiefest of these is love". Sometimes "love" is translated as "charity." It's a selflessness that lets us to care for another human being, whether that's our mate, our kids, even our enemies. It's sometimes a challenge to do the latter.

Faith comes first on the list. Love -- the most important --comes last. I'll take that (and hope) over faith any time.

Sometimes faith can be blind. We're seeing that in some of these pious "Defenders of the Faith" in this e-mail thread.

Me, I'll keep working for Obama and a truly pro-life America.

Love, Mike

Takin' it to the streets in D.C.

Ford’s WYO Ties

As a Yellowstone National Park ranger during the summer of 1936, Gerald R. Ford worked as an armed guard on a bear-feeding truck, counted visitors’ license plates, and greeted VIPs at the Canyon Hotel and Lodge.

He and his young colleagues rose before dawn each morning to record the make, model, state and license number of every visitors’ car before 7 a.m. According to an article in the Casper Star-Tribune, it took about two hours of running around to list the 150 to 200 licenses parked in the lots. The future president and football star saw it as a great opportunity to keep fit.

He wasn’t so hot about greeting VIPs in the hotel lobby. Ford once told his supervisor that it was "undemocratic and un-American to give special attention to VIPs."

Ford was obviously a man ahead of his time. VIP-greeting and ass-kissing is now a sought-after career path.

Ford died Tuesday at age 93. He’s the only president ever to have served as a ranger in the National Park Service. Ford himself called it "one of the greatest summers of my life." When he became president, Ford added 18 new areas to the national park system.

Most people know about his ties to Vail, Colorado, and its skiing. Ford was a jock and was still hitting the slopes into his seventies. Strangely, Ford’s ancestral ties to Wyoming were strong but he never spent much time here.

His paternal grandfather, C.H. King, was a Wyoming pioneer with businesses in Riverton, Casper, and other central Wyoming towns. His son, Leslie King Sr., married Ford’s mother, Dorothy Ayer Gardner in Illinois in 1912. Their son, Leslie King Jr., was born July 14, 1913 in Omaha.

"In terms of ancestry, he's the closest we've had to a president," University of Wyoming history professor Phil Roberts said in the CST article. "No other president had grandparents who were Wyoming pioneers."

On Dec. 19, 1913, Dorothy filed for divorce because her husband beat her up. King returned to Wyoming to manage business in Riverton, Shoshoni and Arapahoe. Dorothy and her son moved to Grand Rapids, Mich., where she married Gerald R. Ford, who adopted and gave his name to young Leslie.

In his autobiography, A Time to Heal, Ford briefly discussed his parents' short, traumatic marriage. "Apparently, my parents quarreled all that time -- later, I heard that he hit her frequently."

In an essay for the book and PBS series Character Above All, one-time Ford aide James M. Cannon said Ford's mother was at first charmed by the outgoing Mr. King, but soon realized he "was not only brutal, but a liar and a drunk."

Ford finally met his biological father when he was a high school senior in Michigan. Leslie King Sr. Came up to Ford as he worked his restaurant job. According to Ford, they had a "superficial" talk over lunch, and then King, who never paid child support, handed him $25 and left.

He said he was later consoled by his parents, but "nothing could erase the image" of King, "a carefree, well-to-do man who didn't really give a damn about the hopes and dreams of his firstborn son."

Several King family buildings still stand. There’s one that most of us have seen. It’s C.H. King’s former bank building on the corner of Idaho and First streets in Shoshoni. It’s on the National Historic Register and is occupied by a drugstore and ice cream parlor famous for its real milkshakes. It’s one of the few businesses in this town of 500, referred to as a "semi-ghost town" on the Ghost Towns web site because actual people (and not just ghosts) still live there. (Find out more about the town at Wyoming Tales and Trails.)

Next time you stop to get a shake, think about life’s strange twists and turns. What if the King family had returned intact to Wyoming and young Leslie King Jr. (if he lived to survive his father’s drunken rages) grew up to be a Shoshoni businessman? Would he have still become president? Or would he have become the proprietor of an ice cream store in a WYO crossroads?

This seems like the right quote for today, a cold and windy Monday: "Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you." From Ephesians 4:31-32. (Thanks to today's "Verse and Voice" e-mail newsletter from Sojourners.)