In a sublime moment of probably unintentional clarity and funniness, Rick Santorum looked out over the Tea Party crowd at the Values Voter Summit and earnestly called them "stupid" and "uneducated." But that's okay - they don't need those elite brainiacs in their party telling them what to do. According to Santorum that's the job of the church.
Somehow this is both an epic fail and an epic win. Truth is good - hearing a conservative speak the truth, priceless.
We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do. So our colleges and universities, they’re not going to be on our side.
The conservative movement will always be – and that’s why we founded Patriot Voices – the basic premise of America and American values will always be sustained through two institutions, the church and the family. (Applause.)
And so economic conservatism - libertarian types can say, oh, well, we don’t want to talk about the social issues. Without the church and the family, there is no conservative movement. There is no basic values in America in force, and there is no future for our country. (Applause.)
So it is our job in this election, it is our job, to go out and make a difference. It is our job to go out and talk to fellow believers. And I don’t mean Christians. I mean fellow believers in the American creed, fellow believers in those basic principles that built our country.
The Big Ten Conference issued its own penalties Monday to Penn State, banning the school's football team from appearing in the Big Ten championship game for four years and stating the school won't receive any conference bowl revenue during that same span.
That revenue is estimated to total about $13 million, bringing the grand total Penn State has been fined to $73 million.
. . . "The accepted findings support the conclusion that our colleagues at Penn State, individuals that we have known and with whom we have worked for many years, have egregiously failed on many levels -- morally, ethically and potentially criminally," read the statement from the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors.
The NCAA slapped the Nittany Lions with sanctions that will reverberate through College Station for the next four years and beyond. They gutted the revenue earned this year from the Penn State football program, banned the team from bowl games for the next four years, and "vacated" all wins from 1998 through 2011, effectively destroying the legacy of Joe Paterno, who is no longer the "winningest coach in history."
So the football team survives and players can play the game, but the prestige is gone along with Joe Pa's statue, and that's fitting. Why should a team and a university have bragging rights when the so-called "ethical" leaders were nothing but apologists and enablers for a serial child molester?
I find all of it very satisfying, since it puts the priorities of the university back where they should have been in the first place.
Penn State will be banned from bowl games for four years. It will lose 20 scholarships a year for four years. It will pay a $60 million fine -- a year's average gross annual revenue for the football program. That money will be used to fund programs to prevent child abuse. Penn State can't pay that fine with academic money or by cutting other athletic scholarships.
And the Nittany Lions 109 wins between 1998 and 2011 have been vacated. Joe Paterno is no longer the winningest Div. I football coach of all time.
NCAA president Mark Emmert said the NCAA crafted the punishment as a consent decree, which the university has signed. No appeal is expected.
The penalties are meant to carry a message, Emmert says. Big sports he said, have become too big to fail, and in some cases, too big to question.
President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob ... Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. –Rick Santorum, speaking to a Tea Party group in Michigan (February 2012) Via
Yes, Rick Santorum really said that, and it's probably a good reason (among others) why he is out of the presidential race now. Of course, higher education was good enough for Rick Santorum, who has multiple degrees, only he wouldn't admit that. And if he really came from such lowly working class roots, he probably took out student loans to pay for it. And I bet he wants his own children to go to college, and with so many kids in his family at least one will surely need a boost from a bank. But that is too much reality to share with the Tea Party because their heads explode.
It's unbelievable that Republicans in general could be so out of touch with the way universities run their student loan programs. At an undergraduate level, students compete for scholarships, and if their families make more than is considered "need" then they are out of luck. Pell Grants sometimes cover tuition with just a little to spare for expenses, but the Republicans hate those so much the "mahvalous" Paul Ryan budget would cut them, of course.
A child of five would understand this. Please fetch me a child of five.
Many professions such as law and medicine require a huge investment of money beyond the needs of most universities to provide financial aid, so these schools are set up around student loans. Most post-baccalaureate students - the people who run the world after we're gone - graduate with debt in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. That is not their fault. Most of these students work several jobs over the course of the 8-12 years they spend in college. Most of them get help with ordinary things like car payments, rent, and insurance from their parents.Yet the Republicans seem to think students and parents alike are a bunch of freeloaders - or they pretend to believe that so idiots will vote for them.
Take Virginia Foxx . . . please. She's the bitch Congresswoman from North Carolina (R of course) who recently made this ridiculous statement:
I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there's no reason for that," Foxx continued. "We live in an opportunity society and people are forgetting that. I remind folks all the time that the Declaration of Independence says 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' You don't sit on your butt and have it dumped in your lap."
Law, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, education . . . sitting on their butts? Really?
Republican intelligence - a contradiction in terms.
Then we have the intrepid Mitt Romney, with his easily paid-for Harvard Education that he dismisses when it suits him politically. Someone asked him at a rally back in February what he intends to do for people with crushing student loan debt, and he said this, with a condescending tone in his voice:
Via Politico:
I wish I could tell you that there’s a place to find really cheap money, or free money, and we could pay for everyone’s education. But that’s just not going to happen....I hope you shopped around to find a school with the lowest possible tuition.
Yeah, boy - no pat on the back for that woman getting into Law School. Just a lecture about how poor people should go to cheaper schools. But that's not how it works, Mitt. These schools - even "best deal" state universities - are highly competitive, and there are only so many positions open every year. Students fight tooth and nail to get in, and can't pick and choose the plum school of their dreams. Oh, but you didn't have to do that, did you, Mitt? No. So of course you don't understand.
I guess he will say later that the quote was misquoted.
Because now Romney is shifting to the center for the general election, and it's suddenly occurred to him that he needs the youth vote. Maybe he realizes they are the only group left gullible enough to accept him as presidential. Suddenly Romney agrees with President Obama that we need to cut interest on student loans. Call it what you will - flip-flop, etch-a-sketch moment, song & dance, or even a major break with his party - most people will think Romney's educational IQ has suddenly risen several points.
From Huffington Post:
"Particularly with the number of college graduates that can't find work and can only find work well beneath their skill level, I fully support the effort to extend the low interest rate on student loans," Romney said. "There was some concern that that would expire halfway through the year and I support extending the temporary relief on interest rates on students as a result of student loans obviously, in part because of the extraordinarily poor conditions in the job market."
It's like watching an elephant change pajamas.
President Obama had some choice words for Virginia Foxx as he spoke to students this week. Via Talking Points Memo
Speaking at the University of North Carolina about a bill to prevent some interest rates on some student loans from doubling, President Obama let loose with a lengthy dig at the state’s Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) for comments she made dismissing student’s complaints about their debt load.
“She said she had ‘very little tolerance for people who tell me they graduate with debt because there’s no reason for that.’ I’m just quoting here,” Obama said. “The students who rack up student loan debt are just ‘sitting on their butts having opportunity dumped in your lap.’ I’m reading it here. I didn’t make this up.”
He continued: “Now, can you imagine saying something like that? Those of you who’ve had to take out student loans, you didn’t do it because you’re lazy. You didn’t do it lightly. You don’t like debt. A lot of you, your parents are helping out, but it’s tough on them. They’re straining. And so you do it because the cost of college keeps going up and you know there’s an investment in your future.”
“I just want everybody to understand: I didn’t just read about this,” Obama said as the audience at the University of North Carolina crescendo from gradual applause to a full cheer. “I didn’t just get some talking points about this."
He continued, referring to himself and wife Michelle, “We didn’t come from wealthy families. We paid more in student loans than we paid on the mortgage when we finally did buy a condo.”
He noted the length it took for him to pay off his student loans, even though he now holds the nation’s highest office. “We finished paying our student loans. And check this out -- I’m the President of the United States -- we only finished paying off our student loans about eight years ago.”
I think any young people out there can see who is more sincere and isn't just pandering for votes. Obama has always been pro-financial aid. While Romney can afford to flip-flop and say whatever gets him elected, he is always dragging around the ignorant Tea Party naysayers like Virginia Foxx and ex-Rick Santorum fans who don't care if young people succeed or not.
