President Obama’s budget proposal, released Monday, would cut about $100 billion in funding for higher education over the next decade by eliminating summer Pell Grants for low-income students and by imposing, for the first time, interest rate fees on graduate and professional student recipients of subsidized federal loans. The proposal would also freeze the maximum Pell Grant award at its current level of $5,500 for the next decade, regardless of increasing tuition, housing, and food costs.
In unveiling his proposed budget on Monday in Virginia, Obama, flanked by White House budget director Jacob Lew and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, referred obliquely to his proposed cuts to the Pell Grant program and interest rate subsidies for graduate students as “tough choices to put them on a firm footing for years to come.”
“Tough choices”—i.e., deep cuts—are only inflicted upon spending that benefits the working class. At the end of December, Obama shepherded through Congress a renewal of Bush-era tax cuts for the richest Americans that will cost an estimated $150 billion over two years and $700 billion over the next decade—seven times what Obama claims he will save by rolling back college aid for millions of low-income students.
Tough Choices Like Bailing Out London’s Banking Cartel With American Tax Payer Money And Then Cutting All Of America Back On Stupid Comments Like ‘Tough Choices’. Banking Cartel Orchestrated The Housing Bubble With Fraudulent Derivative Mortgages And Then We Provide Them With The Money By Printing It And Making Our Children Pay It Off, While We Become Slaves To The Crown’s High Taxation Scheme Called (BAILOUT). Does Anyone Remember Why We Became A Country In The First Place? This New Scheme Is Called New World Order, Which Makes Us Prisoners In Our Own Country, While Preserving The Quran And Burning Our Bible & Constitution.
About 8 million students, overwhelmingly from poor and working class families, relied on Pell Grants to help pay for their college education last year. In 2005-2006, about 60 percent of Pell Grant recipients came from households that earned less than $20,000 per year, and in 1999-2000 90 percent of beneficiaries came from families with less than $40,000 in annual income. The summer Pell Grants are especially helpful to students who work one or more jobs while they study, compelling them to take summer classes to complete their degrees.
Likewise, the removal of interest rate subsidies from graduate students’ federal loans will disproportionately affect working class students, who cannot rely on family assistance for the lengthy study required to gain a post-graduate degree.
That these cuts single out students from poor and working class households exposes Obama’s pretensions that it is “absolutely essential that we put a college degree within reach for anyone who wants it,” as he put it in a July 2010 speech. In the same address, Obama hypocritically noted “the unemployment rate for folks who’ve never gone to college is almost double what it is for those who have gone to college” and that “eight in 10 new jobs will require workforce training or a higher education by the end of this decade.”
The cuts that will ultimately be inflicted on the Pell Grant system will likely be far deeper than Obama’s proposal. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is demanding an even greater funding reduction. Any “compromise” will likely fall in between.
The Pell Grant system is already woefully inadequate. The current maximum grant is $5,500, about one third of the national average cost for tuition, room and fees at a public four-year college, and about one-sixth the cost of the average private four-year college. It is also about $3,000 less than the average cost of a year at a two-year or community college, where about a third of Pell Grant recipients study. At one time, Pell Grants, named after the liberal Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell who championed the program, covered on average 70 percent of the cost of a year of college.
Obama’s proposal to freeze the maximum annual grant at $5,500, and the Republican counter-proposal to cut it by as much as half, will have disastrous consequences under conditions in which public universities are rapidly increasing tuition to make up for declining state aid. Over the past 20 years, the average cost of college has more than doubled, far outstripping inflation in the overall economy. During the same period, workers’ wages have stagnated or declined.
The imposition of compounding interest rates on graduate students will close the door on many students’ pursuit of post-graduate degrees. Under the plan, students would still be able to defer payments until after they graduate, but in the meantime interest rate fees would accrue on the outstanding balance.
NUREMBERG PRINCIPLES
Principle I
Principle I states, “Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.” Obama Is A Stooge For The British Crown.
Principle II
Principle II states, “The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.”
Principle III
Principle III states, “The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.”
Principle IV
Principle IV states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him”.
This principle could be paraphrased as follows: “It is not an acceptable excuse to say ‘I was just following my superior’s orders’”.
Previous to the time of the Nuremberg Trials, this excuse was known in common parlance as “Superior Orders“. After the prominent, high profile event of the Nuremberg Trials, that excuse is now referred to by many as “Nuremberg Defense“. In recent times, a third term, “Lawful orders” has become common parlance for some people. All three terms are in use today, and they all have slightly different nuances of meaning, depending on the context in which they are used.
Those principles deal with the conditions under which conscientious objectors can apply for refugee status in another country if they face persecution in their own country for refusing to participate in an illegal war.
Principle V
Principle V states, “Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.”
Principle VI
Principle VI states,
“The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.”
Principle VII
Principle VII states, “Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.”
And trials there must be. No matter the cost, the nest of vipers on Capitol Hill, and all of the traitors in the government at large, must be brought to task for their behavior, or a free America is doomed.
At 6 percent annual interest rates, someone entering graduate school with $23,200 in college loan debt—the average for US college graduates—would face a debt total of $31,000 on the initial debt after five years of study, not counting additional loans taken out to pay for graduate or professional school. For those entering pricey medical and law schools, where it is not unusual for students to graduate with $200,000 or more in student loan debt, the compounding of interest rates will be particularly devastating, inflicting potentially tens of thousands of dollars in additional costs.
Overall, Obama is proposing a $77.4 billion education budget, a slight increase over last year. He requested another $900 million for his Race to the Top educational initiative, which dangles paltry funding in front of states in a competition to see which can do the most to promote charter schools and tear up work rules governing teaching. This year Duncan is proposing pitting school districts in competition against each other, bypassing the states.
Political Vel Craft 