Progressives (Liberals)

Free college for all.

That's what guaranteed student loans, Pell Grants and scholarships are for.

We can't even run k-12 public schools well and he wants the government to take over colleges as well? No. Higher education should not be "free" to any one who wants to go. It's a waste of time and money and resources better spent elsewhere.

NYT

Perfectly fine with me.

That’s not a weakness; it’s a great strength. It’s why last election, more millennials voted for Bernie than voted for trump and Clinton combined.

Because of the exorbitant cost of an education today and the shyster fed loan interest rate, millennial lives are basically ruined. They’re stunted by soaring student loan debt.

Community college should be free and fed loan shouldn’t charge insane interest for young people trying to earn a way to live in this country.

You may not like it, but this is a great strength for Bernie.

Listen to the kids

Excerpt:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/first-time-2020-voters-bernie-sanders-age-not-an-issue-iowa-2019-3

College students who support Sen. Bernie Sanders and will be voting for the first time in 2020 say the senator's age is not an issue to them.
Sanders, 77, has faced questions as to whether he's too old to run for president since the senator announced he's running again.

Anthony Johnston, 18, a student at the University of Iowa, told INSIDER that "age range doesn't matter" when it comes to Sanders because he "just knows" young people's values and "shares them."

IOWA CITY, IA - Young supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders say they're not concerned about his age as the 77-year-old from Vermont makes another run for president.

At Sanders' rally in Iowa City, Iowa, on Friday night, students from the University of Iowa could be overheard talking about how the senator has "always" had the same values.

One such student, Sam Johnston of Forsyth, Illinois, told INSIDER he supports Sanders because he's "fair," "reliable," and he trusts the senator to "follow through" on his campaign promises.

Johnston, 18, who will be a first-time voter in 2020, said "age range doesn't matter" when it comes to Sanders because he "just knows our values and shares them."


Read more: Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign slogan is a direct rebuke of Trump's 2016 message of 'I alone can fix' America

Anthony Schulte, who came to the rally with Johnston and will also be a first-time voter, nodded in agreement as his friend spoke.

Schulte, 19, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, told INSIDER he has "no concerns" about Sanders' age.

"Nothing is more important to me than climate change," Schulte said as he explained why he supports Sanders. He added that the senator is "not in bed" with Wall Street and big corporations, which also matters to him a great deal.

Bernie Sanders Univ. of Iowa
Sam Johnston, 18, and Anthony Schulte, 19, at a rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders in Iowa City on March 8, 2019.John Haltiwanger/INSIDER

Aluna Olaniyi, 18, of Fairfield, Iowa, who was with Johnson and Schulte, also said she doesn't care about Sanders' age.

"The ideals he believes in I also believe in," Olaniyi, another first-time voter, said. "He has held the same values for a long time, so he's obviously not wishy-washy."

Johnston, Schulte, and Olaniyi all said they would've voted for Sanders in 2016 if they could've at the time.

When asked if they would support the ultimate Democratic nominee even if it's not Sanders, the trio hesitated to respond.

Johnston, appearing deep in thought, said "most likely, yes" but added that there's "so many" candidates to choose from and it's early. If it came down to it, Johnston said his second choice would would be Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

I disagree. It will be his downfall.

Of course millennials will vote for free college, they're not the ones who have to PAY for it. Who pays for schools? Mostly home owner taxes.

And you're making my point, community colleges are for the people who didn't take high school seriously, either by flunking out or quitting. Remedial courses in Math, English and the basic sciences is what is mostly offered. As with most things, having to earn the right to be in college has its cost, whether that be opportunity or financial.

Technical training in high school has programs in a wide variety of fields. If one chooses that route, I'm certainly going to be supportive. But once one hits 18, your education is YOURS to figure out.

High schools now offer college credit. It is up to the student to take advantage of those options first, before leaning on the government for higher education costs.

This is damned interesting
WP

From the piece above
Note how perfectly this tracks with some of the most common right wing propaganda lines.

Student loan costs were much higher when I used the National Defense Loan program to finance my university education than they are now. Sanders just employed a hook to get the attention of young voters. He's been in Congress too long to seriously contend that as president he could do anything about that in the face of Republican opposition. Sanders is a carpet bagger who was never a Democrat until it was convenient in a bid for the White House. He is a destructive element in the Democratic Party, and the sooner he's out of the picture, the better for the Democrats.

You’re out of touch on this subject.
It’s about affordability for kids from working class families.

Old Republicans make the argument you’re making—they don’t deserve it, they didn’t work hard enough. That thoughtless, insulting rhetoric turns people hard against those who spew it.

They just don’t deserve a college education, huh?

Do you know how many families were ruined in the Wall Street debacle just 8 or so years ago? Those kids do. Now, going to college enslaved them for decades to a draconian fedloan system. They can’t buy homes, or enjoy the fruit of their hard work. Hillary Clinton’s problem was like yours—people who have everything they need lose sight of what’s happening to others. You tend to create blame. Many times, just random fate makes these tragically different outcomes.

Unrestrained Capitalism failed. More restrictions are necessary to stop the flow of money to the few. This shitshow is being played out on the backs of the many who can’t afford basic care, whose food is either poison or unaffordable.

This train is coming.

I will not vote in the primaries for a candidate who makes unrealistic promises and doesn’t even bother to explain how difficult or even impossible it will be to implement their policies.

I want a realistic candidate. One with bold goals, but no illusion of how difficult it will be to implement those goals. And this candidate needs to have the courage to explain that to their voters. They have the responsibility moreso.

I want an intelligent electorate who (if they are left of center) understands the importance of electing any and all democrats, and not demanding absolutist purity.

Often, we don’t get what we want and in November I’ll hold my nose and vote for the candidate closest to my position, which will be the Democrat of course.

Same elitist Republican screed, same bullshit.

As you have been told many times by several people, Sanders’ methods of paying for these policies are widely known and spelled out.

https://ourrevolution.com/issues/college-tuition/

College Tuition
In a highly competitive global economy, we need the best-educated workforce in the world. It is insane and counter-productive to the best interests of our country and our future, that hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college, and that millions of others leave school with a mountain of debt that burdens them for decades. That shortsighted path to the future must end.

Our Revolution will fight to make sure that every American who studies hard in school can go to college regardless of how much money their parents make and without going deeply into debt.

THE SOLUTION
What can we do about it?
Make tuition free at public colleges and universities. This is not a radical idea. Last year, Germany eliminated tuition because they believed that charging students $1,300 per year was discouraging Germans from going to college. Next year, Chile will do the same. Finland, Norway, Sweden and many other countries around the world also offer free college to all of their citizens. If other countries can take this action, so can the United States of America.
Stop the federal government from making a profit on student loans. Over the next decade, it has been estimated that the federal government will make a profit of over $110 billion on student loan programs. This is morally wrong and it is bad economics. We need to prevent the federal government from profiteering on the backs of college students and use this money instead to significantly lower student loan interest rates.
Substantially cut student loan rates. Interest rates on undergraduate loans would should be cut in half.
Allow Americans to refinance student loans at today's low interest rates. It makes no sense that you can get an auto loan today with an interest rate of 2.5%, but millions of college graduates are forced to pay interest rates of 5-7% or more for decades.
Allow students to use need-based financial aid and work study programs to make college debt free. Require public colleges and universities to meet 100% of the financial needs of the lowest-income students. Low-income students would be able to use federal, state and college financial aid to cover room and board, books and living expenses. Triple the federal work study program to build valuable career experience that will help them after they graduate.
Fully paid for by imposing a tax on Wall Street speculators. The cost of this $75 billion a year plan is fully paid for by imposing a tax of a fraction of a percent on Wall Street speculators who nearly destroyed the economy seven years ago. More than 1,000 economists have endorsed a tax on Wall Street speculation and today some 40 countries throughout the world have imposed a similar tax including Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, and China. If the taxpayers of this country could bailout Wall Street in 2008, we can make public colleges and universities tuition free and debt free throughout the country.

From the same site:

Income and Wealth Inequality
Today, we live in the richest country in the history of the world, but that reality means little because much of that wealth is controlled by a tiny handful of individuals.

The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time, and it is the great political issue of our time.

The reality is that since the mid-1980s there has been an enormous transfer of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the wealthiest people in this country. That is the Robin Hood principle in reverse. That is unacceptable and that has got to change.

Despite huge advancements in technology and productivity, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. The real median income of male workers is $783 less than it was 42 years ago; while the real median income of female workers is over $1,300 less than it was in 2007. That is unacceptable and that has got to change.

There is something profoundly wrong when one family owns more wealth than the bottom 130 million Americans.

The reality is that for the past 40 years, Wall Street and the billionaire class has rigged the rules to redistribute wealth and income to the wealthiest and most powerful people of this country.

Our Revolution is sending a message to the billionaire class: “you can’t have it all.” You can’t get huge tax breaks while children in this country go hungry. You can’t continue sending our jobs to China while millions are looking for work. You can’t hide your profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens, while there are massive unmet needs on every corner of this nation. Your greed has got to end. You cannot take advantage of all the benefits of America, if you refuse to accept your responsibilities as Americans.

The Solution
What can we do about it?
Demanding that the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share in taxes. Stop corporations from shifting their profits and jobs overseas to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. Create a progressive estate tax on the top 0.3 percent of Americans who inherit more than $3.5 million. Enact a tax on Wall Street speculators who caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, homes, and life savings.
Increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour by 2020. No one who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty.
Putting at least 13 million Americans to work by investing $1 trillion over five years towards rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, railways, airports, public transit systems, ports, dams, wastewater plants, and other infrastructure needs.
Reversing trade policies like NAFTA, CAFTA, and PNTR with China that have driven down wages and caused the loss of millions of jobs. If corporate America wants us to buy their products they need to manufacture those products in this country, not in China or other low-wage countries.
Creating 1 million jobs for disadvantaged young Americans by investing $5.5 billion in a youth jobs program. Today, the youth unemployment rate is off the charts. We have got to end this tragedy by making sure teenagers and young adults have the jobs they need to move up the economic ladder.
Fighting for pay equity by signing the Paycheck Fairness Act into law. It is an outrage that women earn just 78 cents for every dollar a man earns.
Making tuition free at public colleges and universities throughout America. Everyone in this country who studies hard should be able to go to college regardless of income.
Expanding Social Security by lifting the cap on taxable income above $250,000. At a time when the senior poverty rate is going up, we have got to make sure that every American can retire with dignity and respect.
Guaranteeing healthcare as a right of citizenship by enacting a Medicare for all single-payer healthcare system. It’s time for the U.S. to join every major industrialized country on earth and provide universal healthcare to all.
Requiring employers to provide at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave; two weeks of paid vacation; and 7 days of paid sick days. Real family values are about making sure that parents have the time they need to bond with their babies and take care of their children and relatives when they get ill.
Enacting a universal childcare and prekindergarten program. Every psychologist understands that the most formative years for a human being is from the ages 0-3. We have got to make sure every family in America has the opportunity to send their kids to a high quality childcare and pre-K program.
Making it easier for workers to join unions by fighting for the Employee Free Choice Act. One of the most significant reasons for the 40-year decline in the middle class is that the rights of workers to collectively bargain for better wages and benefits have been severely undermined.
Breaking up huge financial institutions so that they are no longer too big to fail. Seven years ago, the taxpayers of this country bailed out Wall Street because they were too big to fail. Yet, 3 out of the 4 largest financial institutions are 80 percent bigger today than before we bailed them out. We need to fight to get this legislation signed into law.

This illustration attends an editorial on the front page at Haaretz. But on the page, this text is overlaid on the photo

From the SAME SITE: OurRevolution

Physical Violence
Perpetrated by the State

Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Jessica Hernandez, Tamir Rice, Jonathan Ferrell, Oscar Grant, Antonio Zambrano-Montes, Samuel DuBose and Anastacio Hernandez-Rojas. We know their names. Each of them died unarmed at the hands of police officers or in police custody. The chants are growing louder. People are angry and they have a right to be angry. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that this violence only affects those whose names have appeared on TV or in the newspaper. African-Americans are twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police. African-American and Latinos comprise well over half of all prisoners, even though African-Americans and Latinos make up approximately one quarter of the total US population.

Perpetrated by Extremists

We are far from eradicating racism in this country. Today in America, if you are black, you can be killed for getting a pack of Skittles during a basketball game. Or murdered in your church while you are praying. This violence fills us with outrage, disgust and a deep, deep sadness. These hateful acts of violence amount to acts of terror. They are perpetrated by extremists who want to intimidate and terrorize black, brown and indigenous people in this country.

Political Violence
Disenfranchisement

In the shameful days of open segregation, literacy laws and poll taxes were used to suppress minority voting. Today, through other laws and actions — such as requiring voters to show photo ID, discriminatory drawing of Congressional districts, restricting same-day registration and early voting and aggressively purging voter rolls — states are taking steps which have a similar effect.

The patterns are unmistakable. 11 percent of eligible voters do not have a photo ID—and they are disproportionately black and Latino. In 2012, African-Americans waited twice as long to vote as whites. Some voters in minority precincts waited upwards of six or seven hours to cast a ballot. Meanwhile, thirteen percent of African-American men have lost the right to vote due to felony convictions.

Yet in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the seminal Voting Rights Act, even while saying “voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that.”

This should offend the conscience of every American.

The fight for minority voting rights is a fight for justice. It is inseparable from the struggle for democracy itself.

Legal Violence
Millions of lives have been destroyed because people are in jail for nonviolent crimes. For decades, we have been engaged in a failed “War on Drugs” with racially-biased mandatory minimums that punish people of color unfairly.

It is an obscenity that we stigmatize so many young Americans with a criminal record for smoking marijuana, but not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy. This must change.

If current trends continue, one in four black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during their lifetime. Blacks are imprisoned at six times the rate of whites and a report by the Department of Justice found that blacks were three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop, compared to white motorists. Together, African-Americans and Latinos comprised 57 percent of all prisoners in 2014, even though African-Americans and Latinos make up approximately one quarter of the US population. These outcomes are not reflective of increased crime by communities of color, but rather a disparity in enforcement and reporting mechanisms. African-Americans are twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police. This is an unspeakable tragedy.

It is morally repugnant that we have privatized prisons all over America. Corporations should not be allowed to make a profit by building more jails and keeping more Americans behind bars. We have got to end the private for-profit prison racket in America.

The measure of success for law enforcement should not be how many people get locked up. We need to invest in drug courts as well as medical and mental health interventions for people with substance abuse problems, so that people struggling with addiction do not end up in prison, they end up in treatment.

For people who have committed crimes that have landed them in jail, there needs to be a path back from prison. The federal system of parole needs to be reinstated. We need real education and real skills training for the incarcerated.

We must end the over-incarceration of nonviolent young Americans who do not pose a serious threat to our society. It is an international embarrassment that we have more people locked up in jail than any other country on earth – more than even the Communist totalitarian state of China. That has got to end.

We must address the lingering unjust stereotypes that lead to the labeling of black youths as “thugs” and “super predators.” We know the truth that, like every community in this country, the vast majority of people of color are trying to work hard, play by the rules and raise their children. It’s time to stop demonizing minority communities.

In many cities all over our country, the incentives for policing are upside down. Departments are bringing in substantial sums of revenue by seizing the personal property of people who are suspected of criminal involvement. So-called civil asset forfeiture laws allow police to take property from people even before they are charged with a crime, much less convicted of one. Even worse, the system works in a way that makes it very difficult and expensive for an innocent person to get his or her property back. We must end programs that actually reward officials for seizing assets without a criminal conviction or other lawful mandate. Departments and officers should not profit off of such seizures.

Local governments that rely on tickets and fines to pay bills can become dependent on implicit quotas for law enforcement. When policing is a source of revenue tied to the financial sustainability of agencies, officers are pressured to meet internal goals which can lead to unnecessary or unlawful traffic stops and citations which disproportionately affect people of color. Implicit quota systems promote racial stereotyping and breed distrust between officers and communities of color.

Furthermore, we must ensure police departments are not abusing avenues of due process to shield bad actors from accountability. Local governments and police management must show zero tolerance for abuses of police power at all levels. All employees of any kind deserve due process protections, but it must be clear that departments will vigorously investigate and, if necessary, prosecute every allegation of wrongdoing to the fullest extent.

Economic Violence
It is necessary to try to address the rampant economic inequality while also taking on the issue of societal racism. We must simultaneously address the structural and institutional racism which exists in this country, while at the same time we vigorously attack the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality which is making the very rich much richer while everyone else — especially those in our minority communities – are becoming poorer.

In addition to the physical violence faced by too many in our country we need to look at the lives of black children and address some difficult facts. Black children, who make up just 18 percent of preschoolers, account for 48 percent of all out-of-school suspensions before kindergarten. We are failing our black children before kindergarten. Black students are expelled at three times the rate of white students. Black girls are suspended at higher rates than all other girls and most boys. According to the Department of Education, African-American students are more likely to suffer harsh punishments — suspensions and arrests — at school. Black students attend schools with higher concentrations of first-year teachers when compared with white students. Black students are more than three times as likely to attend schools where fewer than 60 percent of teachers meet all state certification and licensure requirements.

Communities of color also face the violence of economic deprivation. Let’s be frank: neighborhoods like those in west Baltimore, where Freddie Gray resided, suffer the most. However, the problem of economic immobility isn’t just a problem for young men like Freddie Gray. Despite hard-work and the will to get ahead, millions of Americans spend their entire lives struggling to survive on the economic treadmill.

We live at a time when most older workers have no retirement savings, and millions of working adults have no idea how they will ever retire in dignity. An unforeseen car accident, a medical emergency, or the loss of a job could send their lives into an economic tailspin. And the problems are even more serious when we consider race.

Let us not forget: It was the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street that nearly drove the economy off of a cliff seven years ago. While millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, life savings and ability to send their kids to college, African-Americans who were steered into expensive subprime mortgages were the hardest hit.

Most black and Latino households have less than $350 in savings. The black unemployment rate has remained roughly twice as high as the white rate over the last 40 years, regardless of education. Real African-American youth unemployment is over 50 percent. African-American women earn 64 cents for every dollar white men make. This is unacceptable. The American people in general want change — they want a better deal. A fairer deal. A new deal. They want an America with laws and policies that truly reward hard work with economic mobility. They want an America that affords all of its citizens with the economic security to take risks and the opportunity to realize their full potential.

Environmental Violence
Perpetrated by Polluting Industries

People of color disproportionately experience a daily assault on their health and environment. Communities of color are the hardest hit by air and water pollution from industrial factories, power plants, incinerators, chemical waste and lead contamination from old pipes and paint. At the same time, they lack access to parks, gardens and other recreational green space.

Like income inequality, environmental inequality is rapidly growing in the United States.

Black children are five times more likely than white children to have lead poisoning. Indigenous peoples are impacted disproportionately by destructive mining practices and the dumping of hazardous materials on their lands. As demonstrated by Hurricane Katrina, poor communities of color have a harder time escaping, surviving and recovering from climate-related disasters. Taken together, it is clear that people of color experience a disparate exposure to environmental hazards where they “work, live, and play.”

Nationwide, the health of communities is consistently ignored in favor of the profits of corporate polluters. The fact that people of color breathe 46 percent more nitrogen dioxide —which causes respiratory diseases and heart conditions — than whites helps explain why one in six African-American kids has asthma.

The environmental violence being inflicted on people of color who are denied the full rights of citizenship — especially migrant workers and new immigrants — is especially pronounced. Low-income Latino immigrants are more likely to live in areas with high levels of hazardous air pollution than anyone else. In fact, the odds of a Latino immigrant neighborhood being located in an area of high toxic pollution is one in three.

Latinos and African-Americans are more likely to work in hazardous jobs that place them at higher risk for serious occupational diseases, injuries and muscular-skeletal disabilities. The fatality rate among Latino workers is 23 percent higher than the fatal injury rate for all US workers. Often reluctant to complain about poor working conditions for fear of deportation or being fired, Mexican migrant workers are nearly twice as likely as the rest of the immigrant population to die at work. This is unacceptable and must be addressed.

Taken together, these injustices are largely the product of political marginalization and institutional racism. The less political power a community of color possesses, the more likely they are to experience insidious environmental and human health threats. The environmental violence being inflicted on these communities of color is taking a terrible toll, and must be made a national priority. Access to a clean and healthy environment is a fundamental right of citizenship. To deny such rights constitutes an environmental injustice that should never be tolerated.

I'm more in touch with affordability than you are since I AM a working mother, one in college and one will be this fall. SO, yeah, I DO have a leg in this race.

I love how you twisted words to suit your agenda. I NEVER said they don't deserve a college education, I said they get to PAY for their college education. That's completely different than placing blame on Republicans or Democrats.

Yes, my 4.2 GPA graduating student will not get a diversity scholarship. She will however, get the STEM Achievement Award and hopefully a whole host of other grants and scholarships because she EARNED it. That is what these programs are for, the students that WANT a higher education.

Have you THOUGHT about how a "free" college program will actually go? Or do you just spew rhetoric on other people's money?

Nothing is ever free.

Would it be better if he ran as a third-party candidate?

Ed Kilgore at NYMag

Typically great piece by Kilgore. The bolded bit is what we need to grasp to understand what was/is really going on. The "libertarian" and other anti-government voices active in the Reagan era are still around and even more influential now.

Again, I disagree.

I won't vote for Bernie for President. He makes an awesome Senator though.