(LastWeekTonight) With over 43 million Americans paying off student loans, John Oliver discusses how so many people have come to take on student loan debt, why it’s so hard to pay off, and what we can do about it, Mama. (Let's ask Snookie for sympathy).
Connect with Last Week Tonight online...
Subscribe to YouTube channel for more almost news as it almost happens, Facebook like your mom would, Twitter for news about jokes and jokes about news, or visit official site for all that other stuff at once: hbo.com/lastweektonight
John Oliver, Last Week Tonight (HBO), March 21, 2024; Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
President Joe Biden’s small student loan forgiveness plan angers everyone, except the people who believe they're getting some debt relief with more coming. The story is more nuanced. His plan has left everyone unhappy, saddled with debt, increased the burden on taxpayers, and promised too much while delivering too little.
Head of “progressive” caucus, this leader gives tongue bath to Biden
Demonstrators in the Occupy Wall Street movement gather to call for the occupation of Wall Street in New York. Alumni of the Occupy Wall Street protest are gathering Saturday, Sept. 17, 2016 in the NYC park they took over five years ago to mark the anniversary (AP).
NEW YORK - For a time, Occupy Wall Street was everywhere with its grass-roots encampments -- first in New York City, then globally -- and the refrain, "We are the 99 percent!" And then it was gone. Its most famous camp in lower Manhattan was cleared out in an overnight police raid two months after it started, and other Occupy locations fizzled soon thereafter. More
Black Friday? Cyber Monday? No way, bankers! We celebrate Buy Nothing Day!
Wallets as weapons? #HandsUpDontSpend, #BlackOutBlackFriday (adbusters.org)
“Today humanity faces a stark choice: save the planet and ditch capitalism, or save capitalism and ditch the planet.”
– Fawzi Ibrahim
Until we challenge the entrenched values of capitalism -- that the economy must always keep growing, that consumer wants must always be satisfied, that immediate gratification is imperative -- we’re not going able to fix the gigantic psycho-financial-eco crisis of our times.
That challenge is a deeply personal one: in a world where every inch of the capitalist system is bullying you into submission, can you resist? When advertisers hound you day and night, can you escape?
This Black Friday a massive, absurd, and destructive consumerist machine will coordinate against you and me for one simple reason -- to convince us to max out our credit cards to buy crap we don’t need so that a broken, harmful system stays afloat. So when they say "BUY!" we will say "NOTHING!"
Buy Nothing Day is legendary for instigating personal transformation. We suddenly remember what real living is about. Sense an upsurge of radical empowerment, and feel a wonderful magic reinvigorating life.
Join millions of us in over 60 countries on November 28/29 (from Black Friday to Cyber Monday) and see what it feels like. Then after Buy Nothing Day, take the next step: For generations Xmas has been hijacked by commercial forces. This year, let’s take it back!
And let’s get playful while we’re at it! Let’s put up posters, organize a credit card cut ups, pull off a Whirl-Mart, or a Christmas Zombie walk through the local mall. How? More
BDS: Boycott, Divest, Sanction Israel
Cutting up those plastic "debt cards"!
Once upon a time a group of concerned brides held a mock wedding inside Bed Bath & Beyond in Los Angeles, California to affirm their commitment to peace, justice, and a vow to boycott illegally-made Israeli settlement products from SodaStream and Ahava (toxic sugar water and makeup). Do we cherish human rights? Then sign the pledge to boycott at: stolenbeauty.org. Join the BDS Brides, a group of CODEPINK Women for Peace, in standing up for justice!
Stop Capitalism. End the Climate Crisis. Pledge to #FloodWallStreet. Join the flood on September 22 starting at 9:00 am. The economy of the 1% is destroying the planet, flooding our homes...
FloodWallStreet (Adbusters)Culture Jams · Buy Nothing Day · Occupy Wall Street · Kick It Over · Tools for Activists · Blackspot Shoes · Media Lit Kit...
(OWS) In September, world leaders are coming to New York City for a UN summit on the climate crisis. On Sunday the 21st, there will be a massive march.
On the 22nd, the day before their summit, as politicians have meetings
with the corporate oligarchs who profit from the disasters they themselves are
creating, we are going to take action! We will Flood Wall Street. Be there. Climate Change is here, and the only solution is a movement. NYC Planning info: beyondthemarch.org/action-support/. RSVP page for #floodwallstreet: facebook.com/events/832215646797522/.
Loud confrontation disrupts UC Regents meeting near the Capitol. It wasn't a chain gang. But that was the message
University of California students sought to convey as they showed up in orange prison garb, complaining to UC Regents that they were "sentenced to debt" due to ever-rising tuition. The Regents, gathered in a rare Sacramento meeting near the state Capitol on Wednesday [May 16, 2012], were forced to temporarily suspend their open meeting and retreat behind closed doors for a time, as students engaged in a loud and sustained chant. The police presence at the Sacramento Convention Center was heavy. More
Pat Macpherson edited by Seven and Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly
Today marks a watershed in the next economic bubble that will rock the American economy.
Bigger than Google's future bust after its 100 billion dollar valuation, mounting student debt will rock the country and the world worse than the housing crisis because most student debt cannot be defaulted on.
How much is a trillion dollars? A thousand-billion is a misleading answer because a billion is only a thousand-million. Have a look.
In the absence of a Jubilee of biblical proportions, the future for us will be debt bondage and indentured servitude -- slavery, revolt, and draconian crackdown.
Why are foolish "college" commercials proliferating offering job training? It is because they make a great deal of money for fly-by-night schools with very few attending students. The rolls are full, but few complete the training. The few that do do not go on to get jobs.
FAMILY GUY: Man brags: "My son got into DeVry!" [DeVry is one of many technical institutes, colleges, universities, schools, and training programs that advertise heavily on daytime TV for people at home watching TV in the middle of the day]. His co-worker replies sarcastically: "Ah, good. What'd he have to do, open the door?"
Jobs in what they were trained in are not in demand when they graduate. We foot the bill anyway because the role of these "colleges" is to book applicants, drop outs, and secure them federally-backed student loans they will not be able to repay but cannot default on.
They are often seduced or forced into attending such sketchy "training programs" in order to qualify for unemployment insurance.
Even if they successfully declare bankruptcy anytime in their future, the debt will survive to haunt them.
The "most powerful man in the world," the US president, said he only recently overcame his student debt. And he is a lovable and successful lawyer, senator, drug-abusing closeted bisexual, and top executive, not to mention a grand sell-out to MIC corporate interests of all stripes.
Wouldn't it be great to live in a Judeo-Christian society? Then we could have a Jubilee every 50 years.
But American-capitalism, a perversion of what the Nazis envisioned. The MIC we back is out to conquer and enslave the world through debt. This is milking labor (the 99%) for the benefit of an elite ruling caste (the war-happy 1%).
(MB) WAR BY OTHER MEANS: montage of a special report by John Pilger. The IMF (International Monetary Fund) and World Bank are weapons of war.
Occupy Wells Fargo Banking Corporation
Bloomberg via San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate.com)
Wells Fargo & Co.
shareholders needed police help to enter today's [April 24, 2012] annual meeting in San
Francisco as about 500 [Occupy Wall Street activists] people gathered to protest the bank's lending and
foreclosures.
Sounds from the street wafted up to the 15th-floor
meeting hall, where Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf was interrupted
at least four times by people shouting objections. Earlier, six
protesters chained themselves together to block an entrance, and about
five to 10 were inside chanting as police cleared paths for attendees at
the Merchants Exchange Building in the city's financial district,
across from Wells Fargo's headquarters.
Members of Occupy Wall Street are among groups seeking
to revive last year's protests against the nation's biggest banks for
their role in causing the financial crisis and gaps between the incomes
of the nation's richest and poorest citizens. Wells Fargo is the largest
provider of U.S. home loans and runs the biggest servicing operation,
which handles billings, collections and foreclosures for banks and
investors... More
The Jubilee campaignís origins are linked with the
Biblical Year of Jubilee, outlined in Leviticus 25-26, a magnificent and
widely ignored text which calls for periodic complete overhaul of the
economy.
In the Jubilee, there is release for those enslaved because of debts, a Sabbath rest for land and people, redistribution of lands lost because of debt, and a reordering of prices for land and labor based on proximity to the next Jubilee.
Leviticus 25 never even explicitly mentions
debt -- but the Jubilee is all about debt cancellation, restored
community, and freedom from debt bondage. The Jubilee cycle of release
builds on the Sabbath Year debt release and rest cycle outlined in
Deuteronomy 15 and Exodus 21:2 and 23:10-11, building from an every
seventh year rest and release to a super-release in the fiftieth year.
It was no accident that rebels against colonial authority chose a line
from Lev. 25:10 "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the
inhabitants thereof...." as the inscription for their liberty bell. More
I'm not on the right wing, not for the [Koch AstroTurf] Tea Party, but I like Congressman Ron Paul. He would make a good president in 2012.
When the Occupy Movement began on Wall Street, it was mostly young guys, Ron Paul supporters upset about the Fed.
Religion can be a problem by putting people to sleep. But is atheism the answer? OK, the Church is corrupt, but the people are good. Money is good. The [bankers'] love of money is the root of all evil.
I believe in personal choice for private and social issues. Fiscal, economic, and defense [OK, war] issues are a different.
BANNED AD: What capitalist China will say if we fail to elect Paul
Right-wing Gingrich is a fraud. Soft Republican Romney is a sellout, just like moderate [war-loving] Obama, who has gotten more money from Wall Street than any candidate in history. The only liberals or authentic left-wing voices [Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader] are not running. Jon Stewart has to give it to Ron Paul.
So let's listen to libertarian Ron Paul a chance. I cannot support everything he says, does, or stands for. But on the economy, he is right on.
UCLA students protest fee hikes in front of Royce Hall and blocking street (minamipictures.com)
As expected, UCLA students and other protesters will be out in force at the Westwood campus today as some of the UC Regents hold a meeting that could ultimately decide the fate of another tuition hike [for California students].
Some demonstrators are unhappy with the Regents' decision not only to postpone their last meeting out of fear of radical protests, but to then hold today's make-up meeting at four different locations (UC San Francisco-Mission Bay, UCLA, UC Davis, and UC Merced) and vote via phone.
UCLA's short lived Take Back UCLA (Occupy) tents were resurrected today (Daily Bruin).
Demonstrators told us it was a clear attempt to diffuse the Occupy related anger over the tripling of student costs in the last 10 years. The group ReFund California has helped to organize the protests and has attempted to connect the unhappiness with hikes to the anti-bank, anti-Wall Street movement. More
In the most fractious and rambunctious General Assembly (GA) in Occupy LA's history, the debate was deceptively simple:
Accept 10,000 feet of office space for $1 a year and a farm to grow food on (the Brave New World carrot) or endure beatings, tear gas, plastic cuffs, live ammo, and potentially deadly projectile munitions (the Orwellian New World Order stick). Your choice. No pressure. We already have a plan (pretext) to displace your encampment.
Jim Lafferty, Esq. (The Lawyer's Guild) tried to reason with the crowd and answer questions with Scott and Mario and others. But they were frequently shouted down by a homeless woman and Juan the beloved but violent homeless court jester.
The issues were not directly related to making a choice. People wanted to talk about the meta-issue of someone, anyone, negotiating behind the back of the GA. We have a movement to consider, OM (Occupy Movement). This is not about Los Angeles, the largest Occupy Movement encampment in the country now that #OWS, New York has been de-tented.
(MacIverInstitute) An unfriendly voice tries to explain the movement's origins and process.
No one has to leave (anyone choosing to stay can stay, splitting the movement but taking up a legal and permanent location for OM). While the City Council supported the use of the City Hall lawn, it will not do so indefinitely. There are no demands they or anyone could meet to move the camp, so no one can actually "negotiate." The Lawyer's Guild will defend everyone petitioning the government for a redress of grievances.
But attorney Lafferty opined that it was a good deal to consider. The GA uses (misuses) a system of consensus that is so easy to bog down, it has yet to make a decision. It is argued that the system, superior to voting and majority rules, is not used correctly, so to no one's surprise it often does not get anywhere.
Easily disrupted or ruined by provocateurs and spoilers
This means some will take the space and others will remain homeless and at the mercy of police brutality. Come make your voice heard tonight... or watch history in the making through the livestream.
Life during wartime means endless hypocrisy from chameleon politicians of all stripes.
Occupy Cal has not gone anywhere. Tents were destroyed and teenage students dragged away by "storm trooper" style police in jack boots. In outrage students are holding teach outs and a general student strike. People -- supporters, faculty, graduate student teachers, Occupy Oakland (who are marching to Cal in support), Occupy San Francisco, and UC students -- will not stand by for 1960s history to repeat itself as the country (empire) is again engaged in secret wars around the world and strip mining the planet from its base on Wall Street and anti-environment corporations (Monsanto, ADM, Halliburton
(Susan Swift) We can put a face behind the Occupy movement -- and it appears to be a wanna-be one percenter. Peter Thottam is the creator of Occupy Los Angeles and also the progressive force behind Occupy the Rose Parade.
Thottam’s been planning this occupation disruption of the Rose Parade for the last six months — at least that’s how long he’s had the “Occupy the Rose Parade” Twitter feed going. Ironically, Peter Thottam is a Goldman Sachs alum, an Ivy-Leaguer, and former corporate lawyer from an international mega law firm, and recent MBA grad. Yale, Boalt Hall Berkeley Law, and UCLA MBA. Does this sound like a community organizer or a one percenter? While Peter Thottam’s CV reeks of Wall Street elitism, his bio depicts someone grabbing for the corporate brass ring. But he is strangely unwilling or unable to keep a job at such elite corporate employers as Goldman Sachs or O’Melveny and Myers.
The Lakey Sisters, Wisdom Quarterly Classic speech accompanied by new images courtesy of the Lakey sisters
One of the most inspirational speeches in recorded history was given, paradoxically, by a silent movie comedian named Charlie Chaplin. It beckons us to forgive our Hitlers -- Dick Cheney, the Bush Dynasty, B.S. Obama, Rumsfeld, Rove, Goebbels, Bill Gates, Ashcroft, Rice, Hillary, Stalin, Osama, Kaddafi, Thatcher, Saddam, Adolf... A new and better world -- full of fairness, compassion, and solutions -- is not built by opposing the previous bad, but by erecting the present good. Share these inspiring words around the world in many languages. It has been enhanced with new imagery.
Wisdom Quarterly, Democracy Now!, Michael Moore, Rage Against the Machine
Rage Against the Machine once hired Michael Moore to produce their video for the song "Sleep Now in the Fire" eleven years ago. They chose Wall Street, shutting the stock exchange in the process as police overreacted to a music video.
Moore was arrested while everyone else ran away. But the story lives on because just today, he was banned from filming a news piece for a cable news agency. Apparently, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) now owns the street outside the exchange and determines who can be interviewed on the street.
Moore was interviewed on Democracy Now! this morning recounting the story to Amy Goodman. While he could have gone down to Occupy Wall Street a block or two away, Moore said he was going to Wall St. whether or not the news crew was coming. More than a decade later, one sign in this video says it all: "I CAN'T BELIEVE WE STILL HAVE TO PROTEST THIS CR*P."
On a trip from Vancouver, Dr. Gabor Maté stopped by Occupy Wall Street. He talked to "Democracy Now!" host Amy Goodman and observed:
"50 percent of American adults have a chronic medical illness. And much of that has to do with stress. And if you look at the literature of what causes stress, it's uncertainty and lack of information and loss of control, and lack of expression of self.
"And the uncertainty that has been forced upon the American population by the recent economic crisis -- the loss of control as power has flown into the hands of very, very few people, and the absolute powerlessness of the many in the face of all that, and the lack of expression through the ordinary political process -- people are totally disempowered and deprived of their voice.
"This protest addresses all those issues. So I can only say that this is an extraordinarily healthy thing to happen. People who participate here will be healthier as a result. And maybe society in general as well."
History is very educational. If we learn from it, there is no need to repeat it. Some gods say there is nothing new under the Sun. And back in 1984, the hardest workers among the other 99 percent of the British population went on strike. How most people viewed the action depended on how the mainstream media portrayed it.
Those who saw it from the side of police and bankers (funding the police and politicians) sympathized with the right. But when images started to emerge from the side of the demonstrators, suddenly people could sympathize with striking coal miners. At least the miners had a job.
US citizens, dissidents, students, and rabble-rousers who are occupying Wall Street are usually sinking into debt with or without a job. When they protest, to begin with people blame them. But as time goes on, it becomes clear that society (the banking-credit-debt system) will be upheld by paramilitary forces (peace officers) brutalizing anyone standing up for civil rights, economic fairness, constitutional rights, equality, or even basic human rights.
(SH) How does Wall Street feel about protests? Unidentified occupants watching from on high in balconies along Wall Street sip champagne and watch the show (Source).
What are the bankers up to as poorly paid blue collar police do the dirty work of holding white collar crime in place?
I want to meet the Buddha. He lived 25 centuries ago. The problem is that we can re-invent somebody who lived that long ago, and in a sense, re-form that person in our own image, taking what he said or supposedly said. Meeting the Buddha today
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Until we challenge the entrenched values of capitalism -- that the economy must always keep growing, that consumer wants must always be satisfied, that immediate gratification is imperative -- we’re not going able to fix the gigantic psycho-financial-eco crisis of our times.
This Black Friday a massive, absurd, and destructive consumerist machine will coordinate against you and me for one simple reason -- to convince us to max out our credit cards to buy crap we don’t need so that a broken, harmful system stays afloat. So when they say "BUY!" we will say "NOTHING!"
Join millions of us in over 60 countries on November 28/29 (from Black Friday to Cyber Monday) and see what it feels like. Then after Buy Nothing Day, take the next step: For generations Xmas has been hijacked by commercial forces. This year, let’s take it back!
Today marks a watershed in the next economic bubble that will rock the American economy. 
Jobs in what they were trained in are not in demand when they graduate. We foot the bill anyway because the role of these "colleges" is to book applicants, drop outs, and secure them federally-backed student loans they will not be able to repay but cannot default on.
Wells Fargo & Co.
shareholders needed police help to enter today's [April 24, 2012] annual meeting in San
Francisco as about 500 [Occupy Wall Street activists] people gathered to protest the bank's lending and
foreclosures.
The Jubilee campaignís origins are linked with the
Biblical Year of Jubilee, outlined in Leviticus 25-26, a magnificent and
widely ignored text which calls for periodic complete overhaul of the
economy.
Leviticus 25 never even explicitly mentions
debt -- but the Jubilee is all about debt cancellation, restored
community, and freedom from debt bondage. The Jubilee cycle of release
builds on the Sabbath Year debt release and rest cycle outlined in
Deuteronomy 15 and Exodus 21:2 and 23:10-11, building from an every
seventh year rest and release to a super-release in the fiftieth year.
I'm not on the right wing, not for the [Koch AstroTurf] Tea Party, but I like Congressman Ron Paul. He would make a good president in 2012.
Religion can be a problem by putting people to sleep. But is atheism the answer? OK, the Church is corrupt, but the people are good. Money is good. The [bankers'] love of money is the root of all evil.
UCLA students protest fee hikes in front of Royce Hall and blocking street (minamipictures.com)
As expected, UCLA students and other protesters will be out in force at the Westwood campus today as some of the UC Regents hold a meeting that could ultimately decide the fate of another tuition hike [for California students]. 
UCLA's short lived Take Back UCLA (Occupy) tents were resurrected today (Daily Bruin).
Demonstrators told us it was a clear attempt to diffuse the Occupy related anger over the tripling of student costs in the last 10 years. The group ReFund California has helped to organize the protests and has attempted to connect the unhappiness with hikes to the anti-bank, anti-Wall Street movement. More
In the most fractious and rambunctious General Assembly (GA) in Occupy LA's history, the debate was deceptively simple:
Jim Lafferty, Esq. (The Lawyer's Guild) tried to reason with the crowd and answer questions with Scott and Mario and others. But they were frequently shouted down by a homeless woman and Juan the beloved but violent homeless court jester.
Occupy Cal has not gone anywhere. Tents were destroyed and teenage students dragged away by "storm trooper" style police in jack boots. In outrage students are holding teach outs and a general student strike. People -- supporters, faculty, graduate student teachers, Occupy Oakland (who are marching to Cal in support), Occupy San Francisco, and UC students -- will not stand by for 1960s history to repeat itself as the country (empire) is again engaged in secret wars around the world and strip mining the planet from its base on Wall Street and anti-environment corporations (Monsanto, ADM, Halliburton 
Classic speech accompanied by new images courtesy of the Lakey sisters
One of the most inspirational speeches in recorded history was given, paradoxically, by a silent movie comedian named Charlie Chaplin. It beckons us to forgive our Hitlers -- Dick Cheney, the Bush Dynasty, B.S. Obama, Rumsfeld, Rove, Goebbels, Bill Gates, Ashcroft, Rice, Hillary, Stalin, Osama, Kaddafi, Thatcher, Saddam, Adolf... A new and better world -- full of fairness, compassion, and solutions -- is not built by opposing the previous bad, but by erecting the present good. Share these inspiring words around the world in many languages. It has been enhanced with new imagery.
Rage Against the Machine once hired Michael Moore to produce their video for the song "Sleep Now in the Fire" eleven years ago. They chose Wall Street, shutting the stock exchange in the process as police overreacted to a music video.
"50 percent of American adults have a chronic medical illness. And much of that has to do with stress. And if you look at the literature of what causes stress, it's uncertainty and lack of information and loss of control, and lack of expression of self.
History is very educational. If we learn from it, there is no need to repeat it. Some gods say there is nothing new under the Sun. And back in 1984, the hardest workers among the other 99 percent of the British population went on strike. How most people viewed the action depended on how the mainstream media portrayed it.
US citizens, dissidents, students, and rabble-rousers who are occupying Wall Street are usually sinking into debt with or without a job. When they protest, to begin with people blame them. But as time goes on, it becomes clear that society (the banking-credit-debt system) will be upheld by paramilitary forces (peace officers) brutalizing anyone standing up for civil rights, economic fairness, constitutional rights, equality, or even basic human rights.
What are the bankers up to as poorly paid blue collar police do the dirty work of holding white collar crime in place?
