At Vox, Matthew Yglesias writes—How Bernie Sanders convinced me about free college:
In its early months, Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign suffered from the impression that it was a protest candidacy more about discussing issues than about electing a president. More recently, it has looked more like a genuine effort to deny Hillary Clinton the nomination — an effort that seems likely to fail. But judged by that earlier standard, Sanders has been highly successful. I'll use myself as an example: Thanks to Sanders — and specifically thanks to his campaign — I've come around to the idea that the correct tuition for qualified students at public colleges and universities is $0.
If the government is going to be in the business of encouraging people to go to college and spending money on making it affordable, the right way to do that is to make it free.
The traditional case against free college, both in the United States and in other countries where this is discussed, is that it's a waste of money to offer publicly subsidized higher education to the children of affluent parents. Hillary Clinton has made this especially pointed by saying she doesn't want the public paying for Donald Trump's kids to go to college.
It's a decent laugh line, and it does make the underlying policy point correctly. But it also reminded me of the few times in my life that I met Trump's daughter Ivanka. At the time, I was attending an expensive private high school and Ivanka was attending a different expensive private high school, and we had a mutual friend who attended yet another expensive private high school and would sometimes throw parties when his parents were out of town (think Gossip Girl, but with real-life awkward teens instead of gorgeous actors).
None of us was attending school at public expense, but we all could have been as a matter of right and public policy. Which is to say we don't charge tuition at public high schools and then provide grants and loans to make it affordable to families in need. We make it free, and to the extent that we need to consider families' differential ability to pay we do that through the tax code. [...]
I'm not sold on the implementation details of Sanders's plan, and most people feeling the Bern seem to have no idea what those details are. If Sanders were to actually become president, the idea would need a lot more work. But Clinton's plan seems like it was written by higher education wonks for an audience of higher education wonks. Some of my best friends are higher education wonks, and obviously you need some wonks to seal the deal on any kind of workable legislation. But it's useful to start with some kind of clear big-picture goal that means something to normal people.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Local Jobs Proposal Demonstrates Smart Approach:
While the worst of the layoffs in the private sector are over, we're on the cusp of major layoffs, furloughs and paycuts in the public sector as states and municipalities face revenue shortfalls that could total more than $350 billion in the next two years. State and local payrolls have already been trimmed by 191,000 jobs from August 2008 until January 2010. How bad the situation may become is illustrated by a story in the San Francisco Chronicle, which noted that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom issued pink slips Friday to 17,000 of the city's 26,000 workers. Most will be rehired for a shorter workweek amounting to a 6.25% pay cut. Los Angeles has begun cutting 4000 city workers from its payroll. And it's the same from Abilene, Texas, to Columbia, South Carolina.
Rep. George Miller is seeking support in the Democratic Caucus for his Local Jobs for America Act, H.R. 4812, a two-year $100 billion that he hopes will leverage a million public and private sector jobs. It's precisely the kind of medicine the economy needs. But Republicans and deficit hawks among the Democrats aren't likely to find it to their liking.
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On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, we had another damn debate for Greg Dworkin to recap. Trump tried to play it cool, but his events are increasingly violent. Mom of mom shot by 4-year-old declares they’ll learn nothing. Trump’s fight with media leads wingnut media to out-Breitbart itself.
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