Universities hold students’ transcripts hostage over debt

American universities — whose grads often owe six-figure debts that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, and that can even be charged against their Social Security checks — are increasingly engaging in the (legal) tactic of refusing to provide transcripts to grad schools or employers as a means of extorting payment out of students who get behind. A good summary of what this means comes from NYU’s Andrew Ross, a prof who helped start Occupy Student Debt: “It’s worse than indentured servitude. With indentured servitude, you had to pay in order to work, but then at least you got to work. When universities withhold these transcripts, students who have been indentured by loans are being denied even the ability to work or to finish their education so they can repay their indenture.”

http://tinyurl.com/bmb9rd9

The ‘Austerity Trap’

“When you have high unemployment and a lot of underutilized capacity, the idea is you cut public budgets? That’s insane. Because that leads to a shrinking of the entire economy, when the real problem is … the ratio of debt to the size of the economy overall,” the former secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration says about the backwardness of the budget cuts being imposed by leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. “If you shrink the economy, that ratio becomes worse and worse. That’s an austerity trap. That’s what happened to Spain. It’s what’s happening even to Britain. It’s what’s happening to Europe as a whole. Angela Merkel is absolutely wrong. You need jobs and growth first, before you embrace austerity.

“Now we’re gonna come to exactly the same decision point in January, because we’ve got these sequestration cuts coming up. If nothing is done between now and then, we are going to be forced to embrace our own version of austerity economics at a time when there is still going to be high unemployment and still a lot of underutilized capacity in the United States. We have got to understand … that jobs and growth have to come first before so-called fiscal austerity discipline.”

http://tinyurl.com/cutm5r9

Europe in Revolt

In America, anti-austerity has found its voice through the Occupy movement, which stands resolutely outside electoral politics. But in Europe resistance has often been orchestrated through mass parties that do stand for elections. This Sunday’s vote saw the stunning success of many such groups across the continent. I spoke to Seth Ackerman, editor of a special section on the European left in Jacobin’s new issue, about the new developments.

http://tinyurl.com/72qx4n8

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/9/12” »

 Austerity backlash: Sarkozy out in France, ruling parties lose in Greece

French and Greek voters delivered a sharp rebuff to their governments in national elections Sunday, raising questions about the viability of the European Union’s austerity program intended to preserve the euro as Europe’s dominant currency.

By a 52 to 48 margin, France elected Francois Hollande its first Socialist president in 17 years, replacing the right-of-center Nicolas Sarkozy, who became the first French leader to be denied a second term in 32 years.

In Greece, voters delivered a stinging judgment against the two ruling parties that had supported austerity agreements with the EU, cutting their support by nearly half and raising questions about whether they would be able to cobble together a new government. The biggest winners in Greece were the Radical Left coalition, which finished second, and the Golden Dawn party, a neo-fascist group that won parliamentary seats for the first time, with nearly 7 per cent of the votes.

http://tinyurl.com/cpwfg3v

How Occupy Wall Street Has Already Won 

The idea that policy is the only way to make change is precisely the ideological assumption that Occupy subverts. The Occupy movement is non-hierarchical because it recognizes that it’s not leaders we need. The changes necessary to provide human rights to the masses and safeguard the earth can not be outsourced to policy makers, but will require that individual people begin to build the world they wish to live in.

http://tinyurl.com/7e2467u

Student loan battle heads to Senate

The Senate is the newest arena in the election-year face-off over federal student loans, and both sides are starting out by pounding away at each other.

With Congress returning from a weeklong spring recess, the Senate plans to vote Tuesday on whether to start debating a Democratic plan to keep college loan interest rates for 7.4 million students from doubling on July 1. The $6 billion measure would be paid for by collecting more Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes from high-earning owners of some privately held corporations.

Republicans want a vote on their own bill, which like the Democrats’ would freeze today’s 3.4 percent interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans for one more year. It would be financed by eliminating a preventive health program established by President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

http://tinyurl.com/6pnh3xs

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/7/12” »

RIP Adam Yauch, Occupy protester

Adam Yauch marched with us in November over the Brooklyn Bridge. He was a visionary artist who never lost sight of his community. [OWS tweet]

http://tinyurl.com/coa4839

Boston protesters send digitized memo to Bank of America

For two years, Presley Obasohan says he has begged Bank of America to modify a mortgage on a home he bought in Dorchester at the height of the housing bubble. Every time, he has been denied. “They are not listening to me,” said Obasohan, 55.

Friday night, a group of more than 75 protesters could not ignore Obasohan’s plea. A recording of his voice reading his letter to Bank of America boomed over a pair of speakers in Copley Square. His words were digitized and projected on two floors of a Bank of America building on the corner of St. James and Berkeley streets in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood.

City Life/Vida Urbana, a Boston-based advocacy group, has been protesting foreclosures throughout the economic crisis, but Friday’s rally in downtown Boston came with a twist. Enlisting the help of volunteer John Hulsey, a Harvard University graduate film student, the organization took their message to the bank. They digitized the words of a handful of homeowners who have either have been foreclosed on or are facing the threat of losing their homes and projected those messages onto the Bank of America building.

http://tinyurl.com/clbadhz

New York Times says ‘the jobless young find their voice’ in slick new Astroturf groups drenched in money

The Campaign for Young America is in the midst of a 21-state bus tour that is set to conduct 100 round tables with young people, Occupy Wall Street protesters, community leaders and entrepreneurs. “One thing we are really focused on is trying to better connect colleges and universities to local employers,” Mr. Smith said. Later this year, the group will endorse specific policy recommendations based on input during the round tables, and host candidate forums, he said.

Fix Young America is supported by members of the nonprofit Young Entrepreneur Council, based in New York. (Officially the new group has a hashtag in front of its name, to reflect its presence on Twitter.)

The group assembled more than two-dozen people – including Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, Representative Patrick McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, university leaders and entrepreneurs – to offer prescriptions for solving youth unemployment.

http://tinyurl.com/84uqgrn

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/5/12” »