April 28, 2012

"Occupy Student Debt."



Nice poster... but what's going on? There's this:
The Occupy Student Debt Campaign, organised by members of Occupy Wall Street, planned rallies in at least a dozen cities including the college towns of Ann Arbor in Michigan, Madison in Wisconsin, and Newark in Delaware, the home of the lender Sallie Mae.
Madison, Wisconsin? Here we go again...

42 comments:

Seven Machos said...

Poor Obama. This is really the last shit he needs.

Matt Sablan said...

By occupying the debt, are they taking up charitable donations to help retire it? Because, I think that would be an interesting non-profit, with the goal being getting people you helped out of debt turn around once they have an established career to help bail out the generation behind them.

ignatzk said...

Give us your morose, your snippy, Your self-righteous masses yearning to bleat free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the hipsters, temper-flossed to me. I am Madison, I lift my skirt for all to see.

Occupy the Same Boring Sh*t.

Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...

May Day. How cute. How marxist. How terribly trite and out of date. But please, Please, PLEASE keep on doing this stupid shit because it shows you lefties for who you really are.

rhhardin said...

Demoonstration ought to be the word for making a stink that will attract women viewers.

The most viewer-attracting event takes over the entire field, which is its point.

traditionalguy said...

So the Obama Campaign is cranking up the civil disorder brigades 2.0. The ones that the MSM strangely honors and believes in its sincerety as if they are legitimate voices newly landed from outer space onto their newly set up camps from which they are entitled to make demands starting with, "We are now your Leaders."

The Marxist Czar Van Jones blows his trumpet and the Spring Games begin.

rhhardin said...

You have nothing to lose but your chairs.

Leon said...

Ha when I told the financial counselor in college I wasn't taking out a loan his eyebrows shot up so far they almost knocked off his toupee. I works full time and ended with $312 in the bank. Really, I read the first page of the site, didn't these fools have any concept how much money it was they were borrowing. Didn't they talk to a bunch of people in the profession they hoped to join about starting income? Did they not understand interest? Some are not even paying things off faster than the interest is growing. Wow! If we had a just government it would not participate in peoples delusional ruin of their future. Let people have to make a rational market cost/benefit argument to a banker with only his own money to loose and selling of worthless degrees will drop like a rock.

Rose said...

Poor Obama????? This is entirely his doing. Are you kidding? Why do you think he's been out setting up the tee. Not only that h'ell hold the golf ball steady to be SURE it gets whacked.

You have to have seen this coming for more than a year... every little pin in place.

The most DIVISIVE and SUBVERSIVE man ever to get himself into that office. Disgusting. Don't kid yourself.

Leon said...

*worked. See what I get for using a phone on the internet

Palladian said...

"We are Undocumented"

Really? Because hardly a day has passed that I haven't seen your ugly, scrabbling, screechy faces.

I think you've been over-documented.

FedkaTheConvict said...

Wasn't there a March Against the War on Women in Madison today?

Ann Althouse said...

"Wasn't there a March Against the War on Women in Madison today?"

Sorry. I guess I have protest fatigue.

I guess any Saturday, being a Farmers Market day on the square, is likely to have some political event.

The weather sucks here today though.

I have not left the house.

Anonymous said...

May Day, huh?

Will there be a May Pole, and the various pre-Christian fertility rituals therewith associated?

wv: fecovele - I suspect it's an archaic verb form related to fecund

Automatic_Wing said...

In a surprise development, occupystudentdebt.com seems to be full of whiniy, self-pitying losers.

I am a full time musician who graduated in 1996 with an original student loan dept of $80,000 that since then has escalated to over $105,000.  As you know, musicians do not make a lot of money as it is, but I never fully realized I would have to carry such a burden now, especially at the age of 45.

It's tough to pay off $80K in student loans as an itinerant French Horn player, eh? Who woulda thunk it. Truly shocking that the richest country in the world makes its French Horn players pay back the money they borrowed. The shame!

Paul said...

The Occupy Student Debt Campaign can just GTFH. If they don't want debt, then work while going to school.

I worked summers while in school (in a factory.)

They can to.

FedkaTheConvict said...

Thanks Ann, I was just wondering if it was called off because of the weather. It did not seem well organized so I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't well attended.

I'm Full of Soup said...

By lending some of these sad sacks tens of thousands of dollars, how are the colleges and loan agencies any less of a predator than an sooper eeevil hedge fund manager or a mortgage broker who allegedly gave mortgages to people they knew could not re-pay it?

MadisonMan said...

At some level, I sympathize. Kids have been sold a bill of goods that they "need" to go to College to get ahead. I've thought that as well, and my kid is in College now with no idea what she'll do when she gets out. But she's not borrowing money for it either.

MadisonMan said...

The weather sucks here today though.

Just started a fire in the fireplace. Damp coldness be gone!

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

AJ Lynch,

By lending some of these sad sacks tens of thousands of dollars, how are the colleges and loan agencies any less of a predator than a sooper eeevil hedge fund manager or a mortgage broker who allegedly gave mortgages to people they knew could not re-pay it?

That is the question too few people have been asking, isn't it?

edutcher said...

Student Debt?

Oh, you mean that bill Zero campaigned for all last week that he's now going to veto?

That student debt?

And if the Occupiers (oh, I hope Hatman's among them) are counting on the Undocumented, they'd better start setting up bus service to Guadalajara.

(We are workers? That'll be the day)

Seven Machos said...

Poor Obama. This is really the last shit he needs.

Ah, but the community organizer in him couldn't resist the siren song of the barricades.

Can't wait for the asymmetrical warfare to start.

Will he tell us that, if he had a son, he'd look just like Hatman (oy!)?

Or will he give them a whiff of grapeshot and claim to have put down the insurrection?

(he forgets Richard Daley did in Chi-Town in '68 and look at all the good it did the Demos)

Ann Althouse said...

Wasn't there a March Against the War on Women in Madison today?

Sorry. I guess I have protest fatigue.

I guess any Saturday, being a Farmers Market day on the square, is likely to have some political event.

The weather sucks here today though.

I have not left the house.


Protest fatigue?

Haven't left the house?

Good Lord, woman, what are we paying you fo...

Oh, yeah.

Never mind.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Michele:

In our lifetimes, is there any chance the many, many failed fed govt programs aka liberal pipedreams will be scrapped?

Renee said...

Agree with AJ.

While unlikely to happen, we need to consider a full boycott of college and starve the institutions until they lower tutition and fees. That won't happen. Parents who should be saving for retirement will mortgage the house and young adults will sign their lives away.

The long term affects of this debt has been dramatic.

edutcher said...

AJ Lynch said...

Michele:

In our lifetimes, is there any chance the many, many failed fed govt programs aka liberal pipedreams will be scrapped?


According to the Trustees Report, Medicare will crash in 2016, Social Security in 2033.

I'm betting on 2 months after we all go in the hospital.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Since I am Catholic, I can pick on the Catholic colleges. I saw the US Bishops criticized Paul Ryan's budget as too hard on the poor. How can they say that with a straight face when their own colleges tend to charge ridiculously high tuitions of $40,000-$60,000 per year?

wyo sis said...

If Obama will sign the bill he asked for, the interest on student loans issue will be resolved. He won't though. It's more fun to protest. And, if he does he won't have the issue to flog all summer. Wouldn't it be ironic if there were a real crisis this summer for Obama to deal with so he could show us his real competence. Or lack of.

ed said...

I'm waiting for them to occupy a mop & broom do some cleaning around here.

ed said...

"At some level, I sympathize. Kids have been sold a bill of goods that they "need" to go to College to get ahead. I've thought that as well, and my kid is in College now with no idea what she'll do when she gets out. But she's not borrowing money for it either." - MadisonMan

Frankly I advocate getting into IT. I've been programming professionally for decades now and IMO we're going to see a serious drop off in the number of older IT workers because we're all getting old.

And I get at least 20+ email requests a day to respond to job offers and to refer anybody I might know who is qualified.

SteveR said...

Not only is college massively expensive, its dumbed down, grade inflated, PC infested and not nearly as useful as it used to be.

Hard to believe people get mad about borrowing moey. Duh, you have to pay it back

Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...

I guess any Saturday, being a Farmers Market day on the square, is likely to have some political event.

How true. My wife and I gave up our Farmers Market visits for this reason. And so far, we haven't missed it.

Cincinnatus said...

Great, more socialist losers out demonstrating against the results of their own lack of character.

madAsHell said...

I'm out here in the Soviet of Seattle.
The police expect a lot of broken windows, and fire bombs on May 1.

They never did this during the George Bush administration.

Scott said...

Isn't there an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that makes it illegal to cross state lines to start a riot?

I think it's long overdue that some of these professional progressive riot inciters do some serious jail time.

Seven Machos said...

You guys who think that Obama is somehow fomenting these goofy protests are just silly, silly people. Did you know that the WTO protests (I think it was WTO) were moved to Camp David? Were you aware of that?

Now, you gotta, ask yourselves: why? Here we have President Obama from Chicago and Mayor Rahm (who I must say is doing a great, somewhat Walkeresque job here) presiding. Why, if Obama wants protests, would you move a meeting from your home base, so to speak, to a very private, very well-guarded resort?

You think about that. Then get back to me.

In the mean time, perhaps you should consider the obvious truth that these protests of conventionality from the left cannot possibly help Obama in any way whatsoever.

Rusty said...

Occupy the debt?
Oh this will end well. Plus it has a jelly thick,cloyingly sweet hypocrisy built in.
Can't wait to hear the comments supporting it.

Issob Morocco said...

Tell them to stop at Krazy Jim's Blimpy Burger in Ann Arbor and get 1% off of their meal with a protest sign or placard.

Issob Morocco said...

Tell them to stop by Krazy Jim's Blimpy Burger in Ann Arbor and if they bring in a protest sign or placard they can 1% more for their meal.

MadisonMan said...

My wife and I gave up our Farmers Market visits for this reason. And so far, we haven't missed it

I go to the one at the DOT off Segoe. Drive in, walk and get your stuff quickly (Yesterday I got maple syrup, and given the very short season this year, I was glad to find it), and leave.

CSA delivery starts soon, and that'll cut back on the need to visit a Farmers' Market.

Synova said...

Occupy...

... because access to a world class education just isn't enough.

RonF said...

College is a fine thing. Everyone who can hack it academically should go.

However, if you're going to borrow money to go, figure out who much money you can expect to have to pay back and how much money you can expect to make BEFORE you borrow money.

Simple concept, eh? When you get a loan, plan first how you're going to pay it back. Nobody held a gun to these kid's heads to borrow the money.

I paid my school loans. I paid most of my daughter's loans. I paid some of my son's loans. I'm done. Pay your own loans, kids.

Nora said...

What 99% got to do with this? 99%of students were stupid enough to get loans they are unable to pay back?