Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Home ec

The high school my wife and I attended in East Tennessee back in the early 70s offered both home ec and shop. She took home ec, but I didn’t take shop. Shop was power tools and home ec was domestic skills like cooking and sewing. The Boston Globe just published an article that reminded me […]

Millions of People Have Been Unfairly Declared as Dead Beats

The result of the governmental cuts to employees in the Department of Education has resulted in many students having loans unable to contact the department in a timely basis. The action of the DE is to place them in a delinquent status. Few can afford to pay for a college or technical school education. What […]

Number of US Students in College Decreases as Political Views Discourage Foreign Students

This is a rambling commentary pulling from an Angry Bear writer and two articles. I believe I have it all in order. Most recently Joel discussed Academia with an eye on colleges, “The end of the golden age for academia.” As he points out: “Recent months have brought terminations of 120 staff members at Boston […]

Student Loan Debt Increased under Joe Biden, despite historic forgiveness

“Student loan debt swelled under Biden, despite historic forgiveness,” CNBC Some Factoids: Student loan debt grew during the Pandemic Former President Joe Biden forgave more student debt than any other president. However, the country’s  education debt tab still grew during his presidency. Much of this is due to interest incurred during the pandemic Outstanding federal student debt stood at […]

Students Voting for Trump did Not Gain Them any Help or Access to Student Loan Bankruptcy

None of this means people can default whenever they wish. It does mean the consequences for student loans is harsher than for commercial loans, etc. One example is our president. Trump’s bankruptcies amount to $billions. No one has said no to Trump, you have to pay it off. The reason being? He is entitled to […]

MIT rejects Trump “Compact”

The Trump White House has proffered a “contract” to US universities that, in exchange for the universities giving up 1st Amendment rights, curricular control and staffing criteria, offers . . . nothing. The offer is all sticks and no carrots. It does define the financial penalties schools will face if the administration deems they are […]

Teacher Pay Penalty

EPI has a good article on Teacher salaries. I stole part of it to paste on Angry Bear The Teacher Pay Penalty reached a record high in 2024: Three decades of leaving public school teachers behind, Economic Policy Institute Over the past three decades, stagnant weekly wages of public school teachers have fallen further and […]

Being Seized by Homeland Security and Border Control Agents

It used to be said, “If you were not doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?” Today, just being on the street going home, to a store, walking to church, etc. is not guaranteed to being safe anymore. Authorities can target you, just because you look different than what they perceive a […]

Vaccine Exemptions by State for Children

Not sure if you noticed last evening(?), the President was commenting about acetaminophen (known by various brand names) and autism. Thereby his warning to pregnant women not to take this pain reliever. Both he and Robert Kennedy are advocating such. As soon as the claim was made, the news channels cut away from the announcement […]