(via Sharan Shetty at Slate)
Truly, the sheer accessibility of modern technology has created marvels.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.
In my day, never was longer.
The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.
I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.
Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?
Hot air and ill-informed banter
When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?
The willow is too close to the house.
Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.
They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.
Their freedom requires your slavery.
Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.
The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.
The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.
After roe, women are no longer free.
The revolution will be supervised.
Technically true, but collectively nonsense
I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.
Bark louder, little dog.
Everybody saw this coming.
A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.
Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.
The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.
This blog will pay for itself.
craigie
Not everything that can be done, should be done. Still, that was pretty cool.
mikefromArlington
Nice…
This article kinda cracked me up.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-06/volkswagen-sued-by-west-virginia-over-clean-diesel-claims-ifer2tox
The state that fights to pollute the world suddenly worries about emissions.
Elizabelle
This has been a popular thread. I’d worry about The Rapture. Except I know us.
ThresherK (GPad)
I’m not sure why, but this has made me think the new Star Wars can be leaps and bounds better than #s 1, 2 or 3.
Would have liked to seen something from Fantasia or even Plane Crazy here, just for geek’s sake.
Another Holocene Human
If Trump ends up being the nominee and he faces Clinton, what do you bet he will bring up all the fundraising peccadilloes involving Gore, Clinton, and Chinese donors?
Schlemazel
@Another Holocene Human:
Thats a safe bet no matter which of the bozos gets the shiny red nose.
Another Holocene Human
Wow, major shades of Adam Lanza here:
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/oregon-gunmans-mother-i-read-trumps-book-to-him-before-he-was-even-born/comments/#disqus
Read the top-rated comments, too. Mommy was a dedicated open carry nut who splurged on guns but was crammed with her teenage son in a one bedroom apt, as one commenter said, no wonder he had no girlfriend.
She also claimed he had autism. Father says “some sort of mental health issue”. Depression and/or budding personality disorders are mental health issues. Self-diag autism (or mom-diag) is something else.
I have a crunchy mom friend who was convinced her eldest child was autistic when he started acting out. But he was acting out because of her extremist “never correct any behavior” parenting. Eventually he got too big and mature for that to be cute any more. She didn’t want to “stifle his creativity”. The bad behavior harmed his ability to socialize with his peers, for example. My wife (I would have blown up) had to gently explain that the child showed absolutely no signs of autism–which is a good thing*, although I’m sure it didn’t seem that way to her because a disability provided such an easy, neutral explanation for what was going on.
*-I am autistic, and it is tough growing up autistic in a neurotypical world, especially with parents who aren’t equipped to handle it
Another Holocene Human
@Schlemazel: That shit scares me a lot more than the other crap the GOP has been whaling about. Granted, she wasn’t closely involved in that, but the temptation is there to run on “remember the 90s?” and that can backfire. Of course, she has the option, and it looks like she’s going for it, to run on “more of this”.
I’m just not convinced by the whole Bernie thing. I’m glad he’s running, but that’s about it. He does seem to excite a lot of young people. Probably because he’s talking about money stuff and they are so fucking screwed by our corrupt system right now. It’s actually what drew them to Ron Paul. Paul implicitly talking about bringing about a deflationary whirlwind which would make houses and businesses affordable (also trash the economy, no jobs, and debtors would be fucked). That’s the same reason why a lot of people thought Paul fans were nuts (“Ronulans”). Paul looks pretty silly now given the failures of austerity overseas versus what Obama pulled off.
Another Holocene Human
@Another Holocene Human: aaaaand turns out this kid had inpatient psychiatric treatment
and was only stable on meds
so you kettle him in a tiny apt full of guns
This woman sounds like those pit bull nuts that get their niece/nephew/grandbaby killed.
PurpleGirl
Now I want to see the new Star Wars movie. I know this video isn’t from Disney but it gives one a little hope that the Disney connection may add something to the franchise. Lucus blew it with the prequel movies.
OzarkHillbilly
@Another Holocene Human:
My wife works with someone who’s precious bundle of joy has been kicked out of 4 different pre-schools. Naturally enuf, “He’s just not ready yet.” The father has given up. Every time he tried to administer any kind of discipline, she would contravene him. They are no longer together.
Another Holocene Human
Yikes. And fuck the SCOTUS.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/supreme-court-rejects-death-row-appeal-over-racist-juror-who-said-execution-is-what-that-nr-deserved/comments/#disqus
bystander
@Elizabelle: On that Great Gitting Up Morning, I’m sure all will be present and accounted for.
…er, maybe not that guy with all the kittens.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: My friend’s kid hit another kid at UU Sunday daycare.
Because of course he did, he wasn’t taught boundaries and doesn’t think they should apply to him.
Another Holocene Human
I had to teach this mom (I guess for one moment all those years of forced childcare paid off) that you can train and discipline a kid without screaming or spanking. Throw a toy at somebody? One warning. Now toy is in time out. After a couple of time outs, he got the picture.
To be honest, I feel bad for her. Her parents are right wing Mormons and she watched the results of their parenting, which included some siblings landing in jail for extended stays. And then the internet lied to her and told her she could parent this way and everything would be fine.
Another Holocene Human
@PurpleGirl: To say the least. Have you ever seen film buff Mike Stoklas’ take-down of the prequels? The only caveat is that he sets the stage by having the film criticism be delivered by an active serial killer, so if you hate cheesy grindhouse, stay away. But otherwise, he makes his film-school analysis accessible to the lay person, which I really appreciated.
Kay
@Another Holocene Human:
This stuff is why the new talking point among gun nuts about “stronger mental health measures” is such bullshit in the “freedom” frame they love. To make a dent on prevention based on mental health with a person like that would require really restrictive laws. There would be huge civil liberties implications. From what I’ve read he did nothing that would rise to the level of state intervention based on mental health. The only practical thing we can do is limit access to weapons- you can’t preemptively put him on a locked ward or restrict his movements as an adult and “poor parenting by gun nuts” isn’t sufficient cause for state intervention even when he was a child.
Adam Lanza’s mother had plenty of access to medical care. She was advised he was in bad shape over and over and over- when he ran into trouble she simply put him in a different school or took him out of school completely. The one thing she didn’t do but actually could have done? Limit his access to weapons.
PurpleGirl
@Another Holocene Human: No, I’ll have to look for Stoklas’ film. I saw the first two prequels, I don’t remember if I saw the third one. I was just so disappointed with the prequels. When the original Star Wars came out it seemed so fresh and then Lucus got swell-headed about himself and his work.
David Koch
@Another Holocene Human:
We can only dream that Trump will be the nominee pull a Goldwater.
But that aside, Hillary knows how to fight, she’s a junk yard dog. Just look as some of her recent attack ads against ¿Jeb? saying Dubya kept us safe and against teh Ben Gazra committee. It was just a brutal, devastating broadside.
Plus, she’s a good bartender.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
I heard the other day that mental health is an issue in only about 4% of shootings, that a far greater predictor is a history of violent behavior.
WereBear
If my nephew didn’t live with his grandparents, he would have dealt with the same “benign neglect.”
OzarkHillbilly
We all thought Boehner was weak as Speaker. According to Josh Marshall, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Elizabelle
NY Times profile of Laurel Harper: nurse, self-proclaimed person with Asperger’s, gun enthusiast, and mother of a mass shooting murderer.
I feel a lot of compassion towards her, much as she enabled Chris with the gun culture. For why the compassion, you will have to read the story, which is nuanced and full of detail. But as for what she wrought at home:
From the profile:
A person I feel a LOT less sympathetic to: the Roseburg sheriff, whose name I will not use, who is trying to negate that shooter Chris is a human being who committed the murders.
“Don’t say his name” is another form of denial, this from someone who was, in the past, a Sandy Hook “denier” who assailed gun regulation in the wake of that mass murder of small children and their school staff.
They can’t pretend he does not exist. And his is a very hard case to solve. Someone who needs to be on psychiatric meds to function should not be able to obtain and retain high powered weapons, legally, and should not live in an arsenal.
The family member who sounds the most grounded in reality is the divorced father who lives in SoCal.
Matt McIrvin
@PurpleGirl: Disney is hardly infallible. Neither is Abrams.
But I fear the most likely outcome is that these movies are just OK: perfectly cromulent Hollywood action-adventure product, without the odd missteps of the prequel trilogy, but without a lot that’s new to make them memorable either. I guess we’ll see.
It may take time to tell. It’s interesting to go back and look at the reviews of the original trilogy when they came out. Most critics seem to have recognized Star Wars as something new and extraordinary, though the ones who most loved serious ’70s film grumbled about it (and later blamed it for killing a great era of the movies).
The Empire Strikes Back, the one that fans and critics often name as the best now, actually got a much more mixed reaction at the time: people weren’t sure they liked where the franchise was going with this somewhat more serious, downbeat film with an unresolved ending. And then the critics gushed over Return of the Jedi, which is now pretty universally regarded as the weakest of the three. I sometimes wonder if attitudes changed as a result of being able to repeatedly watch them back-to-back on video, or if hardcore Star Wars fan consensus just became mainstream.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle: Is there actually an inference in the article** linking Aspergers to the shooting? ‘Cause if so I just want to say BULLSH!T right now. Autistic people are no more likely to shoot someone than your avg Joe in the street. This whole “mental health” + “mass shootings” linking is just an avoidance measure to stay away from the real issues.
** don’t want to use up one of my free articles when I can just ask, thanx
debbie
@Kay:
They use this as a diversionary tactic. Say “mentally ill” and most people think of the person living on the street, talking to invisible demons. That ain’t them, the gun nuts say, I’m just fine. Then they go off on the kid in the next car, blasting his music.
If “mental illness” accounts for 4% of the shootings, I guarantee 100% are the result of rage, which every single living being experiences. That’s why we can’t live in a gun-filled society.
Adam Lanza was outraged that his mother was moving them to Washington State. He was so pissed off, he stopped eating and refused to even speak to her for weeks before he acted out.
It’s rage that’s the problem.
ETA: And when you add in the non-fully-developed prefrontal cortex, the only result can be disaster.
satby
@Kay:
It comes down to that all the time, doesn’t it? The one thing that is demonstrated to be effective is the one thing that we can’t seem to accomplish.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: Not necessarily linking Aspergers to the shooting, but Ms. Harper says she and her son both suffer from it.
She also read to him, prenatally, and said she gestured to him so much she was practically a mime. She was a very engaged parent. She had him placed in a Torrance psychiatric facility at one point when he refused to take his meds, and did not collect him until his doctors said he was ready to leave. She encouraged his talents as much as she could; got him involved in investing in the stock market.
Clearly, there was a LOT psychiatrically and medically going on with this son. She tried. Neighbors report that, when she was at work as a nurse, they could hear Chris pacing the floor until 3 or 4 in the morning.
Unfortunately, Ms. Harper is into gun culture, and she involved Chris in that world too.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Growing up, I went to school with the mother of one of the Columbine shooters (she was a few years ahead of me). You couldn’t have found a kinder, gentler soul than she.
I think a mother’s love must be very blinding. A mother might see her kid is unhappy, but can she be expected to think her child is capable of mass murder?
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
When they start hounding you to subscribe, delete their cookies and you get a start-over.
Cervantes
@OzarkHillbilly:
Not really, no.
Amir Khalid
Behold: the paper car!
Elizabelle
@debbie: Yes! Rage. And guns.
This shooter apparently left writings that he regretted being a virgin, that he wanted a girlfriend. He could not make human connection, except with his mother.
Same deal with the Elliot kid in Santa Barbara, the one who made the video to the girls, about what they missed. And then went shooting.
In that case, the kids’ parents sent the police to his apartment some weeks before the shooting. They were concerned about his behavior. He appeared sane and cordial. That was the last encounter with the police, if memory serves, before he started murdering.
The former newscaster who killed 2 people on camera a month or two ago. Escorted out of his job after firing. His employers compiled a paper trail of memos on how he didn’t get along with others and made them uncomfortable, so they could eventually fire their on-air talent. He obtained a handgun just fine.
Matt McIrvin
@debbie: Also, I don’t like the fact that the whole business of diverting the discussion away from guns involves re-stigmatizing mental illness. Normal people get depressed and enraged and even have violent impulses that could be described as mental illness. And people who are non-neurotypical in some way are a large fraction of everybody. When people draw that “it ain’t me” line, among other things, they’re denying that “mental illness” could be them.
I think it’s particularly telling that gun advocates like to dismiss the two-thirds of gun deaths that are suicides, as if adding them in and not counting only homicides is an illegitimate trick. There’s an assumption that suicides are abnormal, weak or crazy people who are not like them, or that they’re all obsessively driven people who will find some way to kill themselves even if they don’t have a gun, rather than somebody who had a bad moment and had a ready means available.
Cervantes
@debbie:
It can be, I agree.
These days it takes willful ignorance to discount the possibility entirely, especially if, as part of all this love, one is nestling the child in guns and nursing him with ammunition.
NB: I am not suggesting mothers in general have more, or less, to do with these shootings than fathers.
PS: And then there was the ten-year-old boy (yesterday?) who shot an eight-year-old girl dead for refusing to show him her dogs. (Not a slang term; actual canine puppies.)
magurakurin
@Another Holocene Human:
Sanders is promising a bunch of things he has no chance in hell of ever delivering on. His “medicare for all” proposal is smoke and mirrors. It isn’t even a true national single payer system, he’s talking about having each of the states set up their own. How is that going to work? Hell, Oregon couldn’t even code a damn insurance shopping web page for the PPACA, how are they gonna set up an entire single payer system. And how shitty do you think Alabama’s system would be? What happens when you move? You’ll have to switch to another system. So many moving parts and really none of the true benefits of one national single payer.
He says he wants to pay for it with the stock transaction tax, but he also wants to pay for free college for all with the same tax. And why is free college the absolute best use of the 2 trillion or whatever it is supposed to cost for free college tuition. If I’m a high school student in a run down, poor funded inner city high school with leaky toilets and paint peeling walls, why am I going to get all stoked about the rich white kids in the suburbs now getting to go to college for free? There will still be only a limited number of seats, so testing will prevent those who attend shitty high schools from getting accepted. Wouldn’t it make more sense to spend that money on high schools and primary education? Wouldn’t a massive increase in Pell Grants help the poor more than giving a free ride to upper middle class families that can actually afford the tuitions. And isn’t a more pressing question just why the hell does college cost so damn much now anyway?
Clinton is far from perfect, but at least some of her proposals seem in the realm of doable. Sanders is looking more and more like a snake oil salesman to me everyday. I don’t think this ends well at all.
Elizabelle
@debbie: That’s true. Parental love can be blinding. So maybe a background check has to spend time, in problematic cases, with neighbors and workplaces, etc.
And then you will have the issue of companies afraid to say anything, afraid a former employee does obtain a gun and is ticked that his former boss and colleagues tried to stand in the way. You’ll have a lawsuit, or a message delivered with bullets.
Remember how many of the airlines were passing subpar pilots around, and not saying much their actual skills or issues. …
America. The land of guns and lawyers and the aggrieved. Definitely too many of the first, and a surplus of the second too.
Elizabelle
Where is everybody today? I wonder if there’s a party we’re not invited to.
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
I never get invited to the Balloon Juice parties. They’re all in America. Pout.
magurakurin
@Amir Khalid: Me neither. Maybe we can meet in Hong Kong for our own party, that’s about halfway for the both of us.
satby
It’s pretty late for everyone to still be sleeping…
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle: @Cervantes: OK, good.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: I delete cookies every day and it doesn’t help my computer at all. It does however, have an effect on my waistline.
magurakurin
Paul Starr not feelin’ the Bern
boatboy_srq
OMEFFSM ROFLMAO. That was WONDERFUL. Now I really want to see Ep7.
@satby: Not really a coincidence, is it, that so much b#tsh!ttery has grown since states decided that public mental health was an investment they no longer needed? Granted that such things in their day tended toward the barbaric, but the infrastructure that could have addressed that particular complaint vanished decades ago and is as likely to return as the Red Car.
boatboy_srq
@Amir Khalid: Well, every time one of us talks up KL, you make odd faces…
Elizabelle
I could get behind a Hong Kong meetup. BJ goes international.
CNN: good essay by crime novelist (and former Oregon resident and deputy district attorney there) Alafair Burke (daughter of James Lee Burke) with lots of good links.
She wrote a book about a mass shooting that’s at the printer, and her protagonist hails from Roseburg, OR.
** Here’s that website: TV Tropes, Too Soon
She’s got a lot of good links embedded in her CNN article. Link to the Mass Shooting Tracker. Totally worth looking through.
Keith G
@magurakurin: While far from being a snake oil salesman, Sen. Sanders does have rather profound challenges to surmount. His support now is true and organic, but also approaching what may be a bit of a natural limit.
See this article in Slate for an easy to consume discussion of this.
satby
@boatboy_srq: states decided that with help from the Reagan administration. Almost 40 years later and we’re still paying the price for that senile old fuck and his band of looters.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle:
My wife’s company escorts ALL employees upon termination of their jobs, especially those who quit and give notice. As to the paper trail of memos and his inability to get along with others, in all of that (IIRC) nobody thought he was capable of violence. That he needed help? Yes, but not violent.
magurakurin
@Keith G: So, you think his plan to enact 50 single payer health care systems is a good one and politically, economically and practically possible? Or not. Ditto for free college for all. If you are selling a bottle of stuff that won’t possible do what you’re claiming it can, what are you? I get the whole bringing attention to the issues thing and pushes the discussion leftward, but the enthralled people in those crowds think they are going to get single payer and free college. What happens when they don’t?
Snake oil salesman is a bit strong, but I’m not getting a good feeling about all this. My best mate tells me I worry too much, and he is probably right but…his ex-wife was/is a monster so, even the mighty are prone to mistakes….
checking slate now.
Redshift
@Kay:
It’s not even really about mental illness, it’s about “crazy,” something anyone watching on TV can readily diagnose. The diversionary sequence is:
1. Only a crazy person would do something like this, obviously.
2. Therefore the shooter is crazy.
3. Crazy people are completely unpredictable and irrational, so no rules will stop them.
4. Therefore any proposed rules or laws are “not the answer.”
Actual mental health is irrelevant, which is why their supporters never care that nothing is done about mental health either.
Of course the entire sequence is bullshit, because that’s what it’s intended to be, starting with the fact that “crazy” isn’t a real thing, and ending with the fact that just as surely as a fence stops “crazy” people from wandering onto railroad tracks, gun ownership requirements can stop “unpredictable, irrational” people from getting guns.
The only effective way to deal with bullshit arguments is to call bullshit and move on. Mental health is not “the problem” and pretending it’s possible to “solve” mental health so we don’t have to deal with guns is bullshit.
debbie
@satby:
In all fairness, a lot of Dems had no problem with this policy; it allowed them to empty out the mental health facilities and save all kinds of money (I’m looking at you, dead Ed Koch).
rikyrah
I love this site…LOL
………………
Why The Kayak-Eating Bear Is The Blackest Thing I’ve Ever Seen This Week
Damon Young, 10/5/15
By now, I’m sure many of you have seen the footage of a bear in Alaska using a woman’s kayak to floss his teeth, ignoring the woman’s hysterical pleas to leave the kayak alone. And, if you haven’t watched yet, please do
Unbeknownst to the woman recording this — and, likely, unbeknownst to the bear — this two minute and 30 second long clip is a perfect synopsis of the Black American’s experience in America.
To wit…
1. When the footage begins, the bear wasn’t in Brooklyn and he wasn’t standing in line at a Chick-A-Fil. Nope. He was just minding his own damn bear business in his natural habitat. You know who else was minding his own damn business in his natural habitat before some White person decided to bother him? Kunta Kinte, that’s who.
2. And, just like Kunta Kinte, the bear was probably offended by the woman calling him out of his name. He’s a bear, sure, but I’m sure his name wasn’t “Bear.” He actually looks like his name would be “Maxwell.” But she didn’t even bother to take the time to learn his name. Because all bears look alike, apparently.
http://verysmartbrothas.com/why-the-kayak-eating-bear-is-the-blackest-thing-ive-ever-seen-this-week/
Ohio Mom
@Another Holocene Human: I’m an autism mom, and this trend of excusing all sorts of bad behavior as “autism” bugs me no end.
I see examples all over the place where people use “autism” to mean not just bad behavior but also actual sociopathy. I know that most people don’t know enough (and don’t know that they don’t know) about autism, or psychology in general to not mix up the two conditions, but what they are doing is spreading that confusion, and normalizing the misuse of the term “autism.”
I think that eventually the combination of traits currently referred to as the Autism Spectrum will be given a new moniker because people on the spectrum will get very tired of being assumed to have anti-social personality disorder.
It will be similar to what happened to the term “mentally retarded.” That term was once an improvement over other terms for the combination of the traits of lower IQs and deficits in daily living skills (imbecile and idiot were once medical terms) but over the years, “mentally retarded” was too often used to mean”sub-human,” so now the correct term is ID (Intellectually Disabled), and “Respect is the new R-word.
Also very tired of people self-diagnosing themselves with Asperger’s. It’s okay to think you might have Asperger’s but follow that up with a visit to someone with the credentials to evaluate your suspicion, or else drop it.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly:
And for you and others: also embedded in Alafair Burke’s very fine CNN essay: to save you a click:
WaPost link for a 2012 op ed co-authored by former Arkansas congresscritter Jay Dickey, who sponsored legislation preventing the CDC from studying gun deaths and came to regret it, publicly: Appeared in wake of the Aurora theatre shootings. 12 dead then, 70 injured.
Silver lining: some of the most effective advocates, going forward, might be former gun enthusiasts, NRA supporters, and previously dismissive people affected by tragedies, who have woken up.
Elizabelle
@Ohio Mom: Great comment.
Cervantes
@Keith G:
Re Sanders leading Clinton in last month’s YouGov/CBS primary polls:
Iowa:
Women: +5
Men: +18
New Hampshire:
Women: +11
Men: +38
In other words, at the moment, according to these polls Clinton appears to be losing to Sanders among all four groups (without regard for age).
gene108
@Matt McIrvin:
Mental illness covers a lot of ground. You can be perfectly stable, while medicated, you have not broken any laws in your life, and because you have a diagnoses you are denied the right to own a gun? If your right to own a gun gets singled out due to a diagnoses, what else gets denied to you because of your diagnoses?
It will make a group of people, who do get treatment less likely to get treatment or be open about their diagnosis.
Guns make it easier to kill things than any other method we have at our disposal, which is why militaries have been using them for centuries.
Suffocation, overdosing on pills, slitting wrists, crashing you car at high speeds are a lot less instantaneous, so there’s always a chance to change your mind, before you get the noose tied around your neck, the pills in your system, bleeding out or driving around in your car until you find the right spot.
Pulling a trigger and there’s no time to take it back, if you may be inclined to have a change of heart.
NotMax
Creating and inhabiting a landscape whose atmosphere consists of such thick, persistent fear and paranoia that the presence of multiple loaded firearms deigned to kill people is deemed not only good, not only necessary, but imperative is a mental aberration, if not a symptom of more deep-seated mental illness.
NotMax
@NotMax
Should read designed, not deigned.
rikyrah
About the NH Senate race:
Monday, October 5, 2015
Last Call For Taking It For Granite
Posted by Zandar
……………….
I’ve got a good feeling about this race for the Dems about getting rid of nasty corporate Republicans like Ayotte
Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Sen. Shelley Moore (R-WV) introduced the Student Loan Relief Act of 2015 on Thursday, which would let borrowers refinance their federal student loans in the private market. The senators argue that if their legislation passed, students would be able to benefit from lower interest rates.
Sounds great, right? Republicans like Ayotte are moderates who care about student loan and debt relief, see?
Although many large banks left the private student loan market after the financial crisis, plenty of politically connected organizations such as state agency lenders and nonprofits have fought to stay in the market. One example is Granite State Management, a New Hampshire nonprofit organization that does student loan servicing. GSM’s primary income is through its student loan servicing, but they would make much more through issuing loans. GSM’s status as a charitable organization was challenged by the City of Concord in 2013 but the court ultimately held up its status, saying that “servicing and administration of loans is not GSMR’s charitable purpose, but a means to achieve” the purpose of its mission to “providing low cost or alternative financial assistance to eligible students and to parents . . . and of supporting the development of higher education and educational opportunities.”
I bet you can see where this is going.
“What they’re trying to do is go back to the bad old days of a bank-based loan system. They want private banks to take over the loan and take none of the risk. So what they’re saying is, ‘Oh, it will be good for students because they will get a lower rate from the private market,’” said Ben Miller, senior director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress. “But really what’s going to happen is that the private market is going to get a giant windfall and pass along a tiny slice of it to the students in the form of a lower interest rate … You would hope to do a lot more by spending the exact same amount of money and just cutting their interest rates. There is no value add from the private market.”
That’s right, Ayotte’s student loan bill is really a way to get Wall Street back into the student loan business. Shocking, I know.
Can’t wait for Hassan to kick her ass.
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2015/10/last-call-for-taking-it-for-granite.html
gene108
@Redshift:
On the flip side, if gun nuts were serious about the mental health argument they would be proposing ways for people to get better care. But of course that will require government spending money on the poor and sick, so it is a non-starter for them.
Mental health is vastly underfunded compared to other forms of medical care in this country.
PurpleGirl
@debbie: NYS began closing psychiatric hospitals and programs in the late 1960s as being expensive and not as effective as they could be. They were proposing more community-based programs, which of course, were just as, if not more expensive and were never developed because… NIMBY. (My BIL’s mother was in and out of Creedmoor Pyschiatric Hospital for years so I saw the results up close of institutionalization and early drug therapy. His sister was a patient in Elmhurst Hospital’s psych ward several times too.) The early drugs had severe side effects and weren’t very effective but across the board drug therapy became the sine qua non of mental health treatments. Even our drugs today could probably be better.
ETA: One of my boyfriend’s is a psychiatric RN who was trained at Pilgrim State Hospital.
Redshift
@gene108: I’ve known quite a few people who were suicidal at one time or another. The only ones I know who committed suicide used guns.
gvg
@satby: My recollection of the defunding of mental institutions is that it was at least 1/2 the fault of liberal good intentions because many of the institutions resembled torture or were bad science or were imprisoning the inconvienent. One flew over the cukoos nest, the Kennedy daughter, etc. It turned out that some of the people who appeared able to take care of themselves really needed the excessive structure and orderliness plus regular supervised meds. The appeared on the streets and got worse. Families are not really as good as professionals at caring for many kinds of cases and then their is the issue of money, not to mention caretaker relatives aging past being able.
On the other hand once this was obvious, it was the republican cheapskates that prevented us from rebuilding infrastructure.
I do think most who call themselves libertarians are really just dumb cheapskates. Pennywise, pound foolish and blind.
How would we design a just and scientifically correct helpful, merciful real mental health institution where those who needed it could be cared for even if they had no family left? I know we need more beds. I know we need more guardian ad litem’s…what else?
PurpleGirl
@Ohio Mom: Good points. Thank you for the comment.
Eric U.
@gene108: I have definitely been treated differently by physicians when I told them I was on anti-depressants. Of course, a solid majority of physicians are republicans, so how smart and open-minded can you expect them to be? Pretty much expect them to be small-minded bigots and hope to be surprised.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ohio Mom: Yes, what I was driving at. I have a nephew with Aspergers (diagnosed by a physician, my sis had to fight every inch of the way to get him what he needed from the schools), he is the nicest kid in the world.
bystander
Refusing to say the killer’s name is like suggesting that Hinckley’s assassination attempt made it clear to one and all that murder is not the way to a woman’s heart. These killings are so frequent we no longer even remember their names. Also, who would take their cues from a Newtown truther?
Cervantes
@gvg:
Have you read Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and The Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, by Bob Whitaker?
Noting that (for example) schizophrenics have better treatment and outcomes in the developing world than in the US, Whitaker asks: “Why should living in a country with such rich resources and advanced medical treatments for disorders of every kind, be so toxic to those who are severely mentally ill?” Part of his unsurprising answer: mental illness has become a profit center built on cruel incentives, for drug companies and for psychiatrists.
PurpleGirl
@gene108: I knew a young woman who threw herself out of window; IIRC it was a third floor window. She broke a lot of bones and had brain trauma but didn’t die. She’s disabled now for life and lives with her parents again, with her daughter.
Gin & Tonic
@PurpleGirl: Holy cow, Pilgrim State. I grew up near there. Long time since I’ve heard anyone mention it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Redshift: I know 3 people who attempted suicide, 2 of them were fatal. Guess which ones used a gun.
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift: An old friend of mine actually did kill himself with pills–and he was the exception, the guy who probably would have done it somehow regardless.
He was actually getting regular therapy for depression and suicidal thoughts, which apparently wasn’t working… but when he killed himself he did it the way he did everything, methodically and with great effort aimed at guaranteeing success. He planned what was, in hindsight, a whole saying-goodbye vacation with his family before he did it. He’d apparently had it all worked out weeks or months in advance.
No restriction on means was going to save him. Neither did mental health care. But most suicides aren’t quite so intractable.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s basically my expectation. Nothing I’ve seen by Abrams was bad, but none of it was especially good either, though I’m told I might change my mind if I saw Lost. As far as I can tell, he’s carved out a niche for himself making fun but forgettable revivals of (Mission Impossible, Star Trek) or homages to (Cloverfield, Super 8) older stuff that was popular in its day but isn’t being produced much anymore. I liked his Star Treks, but he’s never going to make a Wrath Of Khan and I doubt if he’ll ever make an Empire Strikes Back either.
Keith G
@magurakurin: I am finally back from my earlier commitments.
I think that such a person is a politician running for office. He is campaigning in poetry. Can he govern in prose?
I was one among the crowd in 2008 who knew that Obama would not be able to entice the cancerous GOP into the practice of rational and good governance purely on the power of his wit, smile and pure intentions. I did not think he was a snake oil salesman (my brother sure did). I did feel that he was a bit naive, but I figured he was a quick learner – maybe a bit quicker than he actually was.
redshirt
@Chris:
Lost was wonderful, but apart from helping create the show and directing the first episode, Abrams didn’t really have much to do with the show.
But yeah, most of his stuff seems good, just nothing special. I was not particularly impressed by the Star Trek reboots.
Another Holocene Human
@magurakurin: You’re telling the truth about those Pell grants. I thought Hilary actually had a great rebuttal–Why should I pay to give Trump’s kids a free ride through college?
Underlying this is the political reality that the wealthy are not paying their share through taxes so we have to attack this problem multiple ways. Florida tried giving kids with good grades a free ride and look at where they are now. Poor kids kept out for want of a few hundred dollars and rich kids getting paid for, while their parents’ taxes have been slashed.
J R in WV
@Cervantes:
I don’t know who extracted these numbers without any labels or context:
But as they stand they are completely meaningless, without labels and context they tell me nothing.
+5 what?
+11 who?
Now maybe I’m just statistics-impaired in spite of all the semester hours dedicated to Chi-square and standard deviations, etc. But without knowing more about these numbers and who they apply to, no data can be extracted in my brain.
Sorry to be so negative, but there I am, helpless.
Cervantes
@J R in WV:
The heading tells you something:
As does the conclusion:
The numbers are the margins by which Sanders is leading Clinton in the respective groups.
Having read all that, if you have more questions just let me know.