<p>You are so lucky to have had such great teachers for your kids, and you are also right that the south siders have been blessed by the efforts and attentions of both Obamas, but it still irks me to constantly be hearing about their student loans ( and it IS a run up to their student loan agenda).</p>
<p>Right now our neighbor’s S is having to decide between a free ride to a state u law school (on scholarship) and Harvard Law (on student loans). He also got into Yale Law. It’s going to be a tough choice and I’m pretty sure they’re going to go for Harvard and incur the debt. Don’t know what his goals are, but the family considers themselves truly blessed that their S has the options, even with the debt.</p>
<p>A college friend of mine went to a private law school, got student loans and became a mental health advocate. He now runs a state funded mental health version of a legal aid clinic. He never complained about his student loans, just paid them off in 10 years, sent his kids to public school (which he supports vigorously) and lives a modest but nice life. A female friend who went to Brown ug, then law school spent her whole career in a legal aid clinic (she died prematurely from cancer). Lots of people choose the public service path and we are lucky to have them.</p>
<p>Marite, the school where my neighbor’s S got the scholarship has tuition of $10,722 for in state and $19,818 for out of state. They gave him a full tuition scholarship, but it’s a lot less than New England School of Law. Of course, it is in the south and not the northeast, but it’s a very good school and turns out well trained lawyers, esplly the law review grads, which I’m sure he would be if he went there. Obviously, it wouldn’t be the same experience as Harvard or Yale, which is why the family is considering just biting the financial bullet.</p>
<p>The New England School of Law was established, if I heard correctly, for people who wanted to practice in MA. One of the arguments that was made for receiving state funding was that the school expected a lot of its graduate to go into public service (unlike HLS grads who would join Wall Street firms). So I was surprised that the difference in tuition was not greater. </p>
<p>As for Obama’s student loans, I keep on reading about medical and law school bills that keep parents in hock well into their 40s. I don’t see Obama’s situation as being different. Neither he nor his wife came from wealthy background. While he attended an elite high school in Hawaii, it was thanks to a scholarship. I believe it was the success of his memoirs that enabled him and his wife to retire the loans.</p>
<p>Excuse me mercymom, but…what is it I should be apologizing for?:rolleyes:</p>
<p>And I fail to understand why you went off on a tirade about "being tired of hearing about Obama’s student loans, as if that was central to the point I was making. Explain to me, if you will why you seem to resent the fact that Obama chose to attend a school commensurate with his intellect, like the vast majority of the kids (and probably your own) here at CC aspire to do. He worked hard, and did extraordinarily well, certainly bucking the stereotypes about black students that many here at CC love to smugly bandy about. So he has mentioned that he had heavy student loans. So also, did he ultimately pay them off, like every other responsible borrower. Good God, imagine what you would be saying had he defaulted on them…:rolleyes:</p>
<p>Her promotion & big raise at the hospital where she works (for which he coincidentally requested $1 million in earmarks) probably didn’t hurt either.</p>
<p>Excuse me for jumping in here (and I’m probably going to get flamed for this), but I don’t suppose he got into those elite schools in the interest of “diversity” (i.e. affirmative action)?</p>
<p>Go ahead, flame away. But see how a program like aa could cast doubt upon the qualifications of any/all minority graduates?</p>
<p>bz2010, I’ve heard Obama speak. And I’ve heard Bush speak. And as a result I have no doubt that Obama was intellectually and academically qualified to attend top schools, and that Bush wasn’t. I guess that casts doubt upon the qualifications of all rich white guys, eh? Go ahead - flame all you like. :)</p>
<p>This discussion has collapsed into a series of irrelevant hyperbole and a contest of “white” vs “black” in which many have quite “elitist” attitudes. </p>
<p>I never cease to be surprised by the utter ignorance of some of the things you say, simba</p>
<p>Last I checked, there wasn’t a federal program enacted to promote the admission of “rich white guys” into colleges or universities over other more qualified applicants.</p>
<p>poet, your earlier post seemed to pointedly criticize tega as being a regular for making condescending remarks about black people, and it also seemed (at least to me) that you were implying he was white and that might be the genesis of the condescending remarks. Then it was obvious that tega was black and making his remarks based on personal observation from his work, and also his opinion of what should be done to actually help his people. He’s certainly entitled to his opinion, esplly if it’s a result of personal experience, and his opinions never sounded condescending to me anyway. (it really is awful, i freely admit that any of us is making assumptions of other’s race; i hate the way it seems we, some of us, me even, assume certain people have certain opinions and no other ones)</p>
<p>as for the student loans, it seemed like you were criticizing Clinton for not doing enuf work for the poor, and instead using her law degree to make lots of money, unlike Obama who went the public service route (you did admit you might do the same as Clinton if you had the student loan debt he had). it’s not just you, but man that student loan debt of the Obamas seems to constantly, constantly come up - every sound bite on tv, every interview i read, every article about them - like a drum beat. it just set me off, cause i still feel ok, if you want to do public service, know it’s low paying and plan ahead, and quit complaining about it.</p>
<p>no, but there has been the whole system of legacies and connections since the beginning of higher education. </p>
<p>i didn’t realize you were so naive to the subject?</p>
<p>and as for tega, many black people are just as racist towards black people as any other racist person(Ward Connerly). Even worse in that they feel that they are justified.</p>
<p>“Government aid policies that demanded the absence of fathers from the home was the beginning of a devastating spiral whose repercussions in today’s inner cities are difficult to reverse. That’s just one example of how poor economic policy has played a part in strengthening a permanent underclass.”</p>
<p>I totally agree with you on this one, and I think there should be a total reform of the whole welfare program. I don’t like the idea of trowing more money at a broken system. It should be restructured from the bottom up. There should be some incentives to make more dads part of the family. The system should not punish families where both parents are together. </p>
<p>Creating new jobs will be difficult, but I love this whole idea of the green energy movement. Jobs are being lost in the manufacturing sectors of the economy but we can also create jobs in new sectors like green technology. I was watching a program on PBS the other day about solar energy in Germany and a town in Massachusetts. It seems like this has the potential to create technician jobs.</p>
<p>This country has a lot of money and an abundance of talent, and I hope that we can pool experts together to make recommendations on how we can begin to fix this poverty problem. The world is constantly becomming more globalized, and I am afraid that if we don’t act to address this problem now, more and more people will be left behind.</p>
<p>Kluge, my personal feeling about how Bush talks is that he’s dyslexic. I’m pretty sure Neil Bush is dyslexic, and I’ve read things about George Sr that lead me to think he might be too. It’s always been my suspicion that that’s why Barbara was so into promoting reading as her philanthropy or whatever, and to an extent Laura too. That’s not to say W might not have been the “happy bottom” at Yale, but he could possibly be more intelligent than he seems and just have a learning disability that screws up his speech.</p>
<p>mercymom: “That’s not to say W might not have been the “happy bottom” at Yale, but he could possibly be more intelligent than he seems and just have a learning disability that screws up his speech.”</p>
<p>He had the same grades as John Kerry at Yale. I believe he is dyslexic also, but I think it worsened when he moved to the White House.</p>
<p>“I don’t suppose he got into those elite schools in the interest of “diversity””</p>
<p>I had given up, but this I have to respond to.</p>
<p>Suppose he was an AA admit. Well, he graduated in the top 10% of his Harvard Law class (maybe higher; that’s as detailed as the graduation honors get). This is a school where blind grading was universal in first year classes and typical in second/third year classes. Older students chose him to be part of the oldest and most academically respected legal journal in the world. His classmates on that journal then elected him as its president.</p>
<p>So there’s simply no question that he was eminently prepared to compete at Harvard. In light of his record, it’s clear they made the right call when they admitted him.</p>
<p>mercymom: But even if President George W. Bush is dyslexic, how does one get “Iraq” out of “Iran”? Seems more like carelessness than dyslexia. Regarding Senator Obama’s intelligence, he is certainly smart enough to qualify for any university in the world (except CalTech), but he is not seasoned enough to be President of the U.S.</p>
<p>“and as for tega, many black people are just as racist towards black people as any other racist person(Ward Connerly). Even worse in that they feel that they are justified”</p>
<p>The central weapon of Obama groupies is that if you don’t like Obama, you are a racist. I think most press is paralyzed by that notion and hence the free passes to him.</p>
<p>Well, I’m not sure that I qualify as an “Obama groupie” but my take is that the anti-Obamists expect that, since he’s black, he should do things like “take care of Chicago before running for President” whereas the pro-Obama group thinks he should be held to the exact same standard as he would face if he were white, which would not assign him that burden.</p>
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<p>Is Clinton held to that standard? McCain? I don’t see it. I don’t think it’s “racism” in the classic sense - more of a glass ceiling effect. I suppose if he were a woman people would sniff that he should “take care of his family first.”</p>