A Real Education

For several years now - even before she was elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts - Elizabeth Warren has been one of our favorite policy wonks,  for a whole host of reasons.

As the children and grandchildren of a few our friends graduate college this month, Sen. Warren and a few others on Capitol Hill are looking to help them - and us - with a huge and growing problem nobody wants left on their doorstep.

While the economy continues improving, and college grads are faring surprisingly well in the job market - as they did even through the great recession - the facts are still fairly brutal. As Brad Plumer of Wonkblog pointed out recently, if your child didn't get a post-secondary education, the economy isn't getting any better.

Even for hundreds of thousands of recent college graduates, the promise that a higher education would lead to higher wages and a better life has proven to be false, a version of the American social contract that our nation has broken, leaving thousands of people - if not millions - with piles of college debt and no way to pay it back.

So it was with great excitement Wednesday, that we watched Senator Elizabeth Warren present her first official bill, an idea that might allow more Americans to finish college without those piles of debt, while repairing the credibility of America's social contract.

Senator Warren is not alone. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and even The Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also appear to be ready to give some of the banks behind the student loan squeeze a real education in ethical financial practices.

The CFPB - the government organization Sen. Warren helped to start - also issued a group of proposals Wednesday, designed to help the millions of Americans being buried by private student loan debt. In short, the CFPB loan plans would force the private banks and institutions that lend money to students to be more flexible with their repayment plans. Further, the CFPB's new proposals also push the banks and bank regulators towards new industry reforms.

That's where Sen. Warren's bill comes into play. Warren, proposing her bill on the floor of the Senate, made herself clear, stating that students who get government subsidized student loans should get the same extremely low discount rate banks get from the Federal Reserve. That's currently around 0.75%, instead of the approximately 7% rate students and grads are hit with now.

The Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has also begun attacking the problem, with its recent decision in April. The Court's decision effectively forces back the draconian standard passed in 1976, when student loans were disallowed from being discharged under the bankruptcy code. In short, the court seems to have found their initial restriction to be ridiculous, which may finally open back up the ability - under limited circumstances - for graduates to be able to get rid of their outstanding student debt through bankruptcy.

The combination of the three actions, if enacted and used in other bankruptcy cases, might actually force Wall Street and other banks to stop preying on college graduates and start treating them like the adults they are.

All of which will likely get those same young people out of their parent's houses and onto their own path forward in life significantly faster.

Chickenhawk Distractions

On a day when Wall Street will still be swooning over record highs, some Republicans will be attempting to gloat over a special election in South Carolina, and the long neglected issue of sexual assault in the U.S. military has finally received a small bit of attention, what you won't likely hear enough about today is the real issue Americans need to pay attention to in the Middle East - Syria.

We're well aware of what the right-wing extremists will be screaming about today, including those in Congress who will be holding yet another pointless hearing on Capitol Hill. For all the pearl-clutching and empty threats the right-wing nuts have thrown at President Obama, the facts behind the Benghazi, Libya incident of 2012 still don't rise to the level of a cover-up - and have less to do with Obama in 2013 than they do Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The truly important focus point in the Middle East right now - the one where both neo-con chickenhawks and liberal interventionists are squawking at President Obama that he should jump into another war - is already beginning to to be aimed towards a resolution in Moscow.

In case you missed it, Secretary of State John Kerry landed in Moscow Monday. By Tuesday, Kerry and Russia's current Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, had already announced a diplomatic conference in the coming weeks to push the warring factions in Syria into peace.

Few Americans seem to understand Russia's position in the Middle East is very similar to the U.S. position, politically. That hasn't changed much, even with the end of the Cold War, and the changes inside the Kremlin. While the U.S. held up dictators like Mubarak in Egypt for 30 years, the Russians have propped up the Assad family in Syria for just as long.

The difference now, however, is that the biggest political players in the region are no longer just Russia and the U.S.

Hezbollah has made significant political gains in the region over the last few years, thanks in large part to Iran. Militant Islamic groups like Al Qaeda have also gained power in the region over the past few years, as has Israel, the dominant power in the area at the moment.

All of this adds up to a political conflict that isn't simply a proxy war between two groups of old intelligence members - a group of old Russians and a group of old Americans, many of whom are still fighting the Cold War. Instead, helping settle the Syrian conflict has become a multi-team challenge, with plenty of extra wild cards in the deck.

There are plenty of reasons for President Obama to be both cautious and skeptical of involving the U.S in Syria, not the least of which is the still ongoing military mess in Afghanistan.

Some of the best reasons though, were outlined by the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, who asked all the armchair chickenhawk generals the questions they've tried hardest to avoid.

Most importantly, Robinson asks, "Have we learned nothing at all," from the last decade-plus of war?

It seems that President Obama may have learned a least a few of those lessons, even if the chickenhawks urging him to go to war haven't learned a thing.

Hungering For Action

While the right-wing media feedback loop is having a pointless apoplectic fit about Libya - as Jonathan Bernstein pointed out on Monday - all their screaming and hollering won't change the facts on that subject, as we outlined them six months ago.

It also won't change what Congress will be working on this week - and it won't change the fact that millions of older, low income, often housebound Americans, will go hungry today.

Air traffic controllers, some defense department employees, and many federal regulatory employees - from meat inspectors to seasonal archeologists - have all been exempted from the biting sequestration cuts that keep hurting more and more Americans. Meanwhile, one of America's key nutrition programs, Meals on Wheels, is limping around on fiscal flat tires. Unlike the breathless hype that's become a key feature surrounding so many other budget issues - like the deficit - hungry old people just don't seem to merit the concerns of Congress today.

For those concerned about what the sequester cuts are doing to America's elderly, food isn't the only thing they're hungering for.

Across the nation, older Americans affected by the inaction of Congress to fix the federal budget cuts - cuts that were caused by Congress' budgetary inaction in the first place - can't seem to score a moment on national TV, a minute on national radio, or a more than a short story in most newspapers.

The reason for this limited focus is partly obvious. Older, somewhat reclusive individuals don't have their own multi-billion dollar lobby to fight for them, like American 'brick and mortar' retail companies, who got the Senate to pass the sales tax bill they wanted on Monday.

Typical users of Meals on Wheels also aren't exactly the strange, inflammatory, seditious, ratings grabbers from the annual NRA convention, so the cable "news" networks aren't exactly looking to talk about the hungry old people, or help anyone do anything about them.

In large part, that's the problem Meals on Wheels was set up to solve, as those who usually benefit from the program are most often quiet individuals who no longer can get up and raise hell. Many can't even get out of their homes.

For all the screaming about debt and deficits we've heard over the years from the Republicans in Congress - and a few Democrats too - we've heard virtually nothing from those same publicity-happy members of Congress as the news recently came out that the Federal government can now afford to pay down the debt for the first time in six years. You might even think if America can pay off our collective debts that we could help our elderly at least not starve. Reality seems to say otherwise.

We're sure the thought that America can finally begin to pay off the debts that our nation's government ran up during the Bush years is a comforting idea to the elderly Americans who are struggling today to get through another day with little or nothing to eat.