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Where’s my f’n $10k handout?!? I’m being discriminated against since I don’t have a school loan. Forgive my auto loan then!

The Tradition said:
Do YOU listen daily?

I do.

They used to be like you described, but again, they purged most of their cis-gendered white male hosts about four years ago and have made a clear decision to go completely leftist. They have openly-stated their mission is to have non-white, non-male, non-binary voices on their network.
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That isn’t leftist, that is trying to reflect your entire audience.

You’re nuts. Or you never leave the county you live in.
 
The Tradition said:
Do YOU listen daily?

I do.

They used to be like you described, but again, they purged most of their cis-gendered white male hosts about four years ago and have made a clear decision to go completely leftist. They have openly-stated their mission is to have non-white, non-male, non-binary voices on their network.
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They sound more liberal than leftist by your characterization. I only listen to Marketplace at nights after work sometimes and it most definitely is not leftist in any way.
 
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torbee said:
Do you read replies? I literally wrote I’m a daily listener.
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Then HOW THE HELL can you not admit what has happened to them?

There's no more Car Talk.

On Point does not have both sides anymore.

There are no more male voices that don't have gay accents (except for Jack Spear).

They can't do a story about ANYTHING without bringing up race, gender and/or climate.

They've gone completely woke.
 
Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford have a combined $140 billion in endowments that they pay no taxes on.

Now the middle class gets to work even more so they can keep every penny of it.
 
ConvenientParking said:
They sound more liberal than leftist by your characterization. I only listen to Marketplace at nights after work sometimes and it most definitely is not leftist in any way.
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Marketplace is an exception. I'm sure someone will accuse Kai Ryssdal of buggery sooner or later, and he'll be gone, too.
 
I'm mostly interested in the political strategy behind this sort of move. As an issue... I think we need to address the rising costs associated with college. But I'm not sure this is how, or that this is the right time.

Anyway, here's a questioning take from a piece I saw today in the Atlantic:

An Unforced Error​

President Joe Biden has finally announced his program for alleviating the burden of student debt. Biden and his party have been on a winning streak for most of the summer: With a 50–50 Senate, they have managed to notch a string of legislative wins while gas prices have plunged, inflation has cooled, unemployment has remained low, and a dreaded summer COVID-19 meltdown has failed to materialize. And how will the Democrats spend this political capital? By celebrating a niche policy that will hand the Republicans a free issue in America’s ongoing culture and class wars, just as Biden and the Democrats head into the 2022 and 2024 elections.

It could have been worse. Some Democrats were pressing the president to write off $50,000 of debt, an idea that I said more than a year ago would have been a political disaster. The current plan, by comparison, is merely bad and politically obtuse.

The argument for loan forgiveness is not only that it is the right thing to do—I’ll come back to this—but that young, college-educated people are an important pillar of the Democratic Party’s base. It sounds moral and caring, at least within the bubble of a highly educated party, to advocate for relieving some of the cost of higher education. After all, everyone has to go to college, right? It’s practically a life requirement now. And kids don’t know what they’re signing up for when they take on boatloads of student debt—they’re only teenagers!


The truth, however, is that most people don’t go to college, and the majority of those who do go manage to get out without life-destroying debt. Fewer than four in ten Americans over 25 have a four-year college degree. Only 13 percent have federal student debt, and the average undergraduate leaves college with an obligation about the size of a moderate car loan. (Graduate school is where the numbers really climb.)

Worse, this policy is aimed at the young and college-educated, a group that is, in the main, composed of reliable Democratic Party voters—and who should by now be plenty motivated by the ongoing threat to democracy from the Republican Party. The legendary American general George S. Patton, describing his disdain for retreating and then having to retake the same ground, reportedly said that he hated to pay for the same real estate twice. But that’s what Democrats are doing: They are trying to buy a constituency that ought to be firmly in their camp. The point of a “base” is that it will vote for its own party come hell or high water. A “base” that needs to be enticed with a $10,000 bonus isn’t, by definition, a base.

Instead, the whole business seems like class-based special pleading for a very specific and small group residing mostly within the Democratic Party. The right-wing narratives and Republican attack ads easily write themselves—and they will carry some sting with independent voters in swing states, many of whom are workers in blue- or gray-collar jobs, or in service, clerical, and other nonprofessional occupations. “Did you go to college? No? Tough luck. Your debts don’t qualify for forgiveness. Medical bills? Business failures? Too bad. Joe Biden is giving 10 grand to a select group of people as a thank-you, and you’re not one of them.”

Yes, such ads will stink to the skies of rank hypocrisy. Republicans are happy to take bailouts when it suits them. And it will be unfair in the extreme to go after the Democrats for servicing an interest group in their party when the GOP is, in my view, nothing but a giant, cronyist pandering machine that hands red meat to its culture warriors and tax cuts and other breaks to its own special interests. But political messaging isn’t about fairness; it’s about messages that work, and this one is likely to land a punch that could cost the Democrats otherwise winnable votes. With democracy hanging in the balance, taking such risks for the transitory sugar high of a onetime hand-wave is irresponsible.

I have said nothing so far about whether loan forgiveness is a good idea. It isn’t. Even if the Democrats controlled legislative supermajorities, I would still argue that one more bailout won’t solve very much (and might even contribute to reigniting inflation, according to Larry Summers and other economists). As my Atlantic colleague Jerusalem Demsas recently pointed out, some of the main arguments about who would benefit, and by how much, don’t hold up very well. “The issue’s prominence in our discourse,” Demsas writes, “has less to do with its merits than the changing political landscape that has stymied legislative efforts and given college graduates agenda-setting power.” The progressive political analyst David Shor has made the same point—and warned that the dominance of a college-educated elite in the Democratic Party could undermine effective messaging from the Democrats to the rest of America.


My complaint here might seem pointless, since Biden’s decision is now done and dusted. And I think Biden’s doing a solid job—more than he gets credit for—as president. But I see this debt policy as an unforced error, and I hope that the Democrats do not make this a talking point in an election year. Republicans would be much happier debating college-debt forgiveness to households earning a quarter-million dollars a year instead of talking about how the GOP is a menace to American democracy.
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The Tradition said:
Then HOW THE HELL can you not admit what has happened to them?

There's no more Car Talk.

On Point does not have both sides anymore.

There are no more male voices that don't have gay accents (except for Jack Spear).

They can't do a story about ANYTHING without bringing up race, gender and/or climate.

They've gone completely woke.
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Speaking of Car Talk, one of the frequent jokes was about how the hell NPR ever gave them a show in the first place.

Today, that would really never happen.
 
BelemNole said:
Great point - next thing we should do is start funding our schools like we used to so tuitions are so stupid.
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I personally think taxpayers should fund public colleges and universities so that they're free for everyone and not just poor people. Some for tracking the best and brightest in advanced fields of study who will go on to rule us all and some just enriching their communities by allowing anyone who wants it the opportunity to undergo a rigorous formal academic experience in a field that interests them because that's a decent life for many.
 
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ConvenientParking said:
I personally think taxpayers should fund public colleges and universities so that they're free for everyone and not just poor people. Some for tracking the best and brightest in advanced fields of study who will go on to rule us all and some just enriching their communities by allowing anyone who wants it the opportunity to undergo a rigorous formal academic experience in a field that interests them because that's a decent life for many.
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Well, no.

That means a college degree is the new HS diploma.
 
The Tradition said:
Well, no.

That means a college degree is the new HS diploma.
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Not terribly worried about my degree becoming less valuable on the job market. More educated population is far more valuable to me than lording my degree I abused Adderall to get over people who had to work as teenagers to support their families.
 
BelemNole said:
Great point - next thing we should do is start funding our schools like we used to so tuitions are so stupid.
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i've seen reports that a lot of the debt was racked up by folks who attended for profit institutions i.e. not the more reputable universities. needless to say the degrees are worth very little and the students did get screwed. bailing them out some was indeed fine. but the go forward path should involve some punitive measures to discourage such shenanigans. for them to be able to continue screwing over people (usually working lower paying jobs and studying part time) is unconscionable...
 
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You guys were talking about NPR and its politics. I think the programming, presentation and everything is really smart. I don't think it's explicitly partisan. We need more news sources that behave the way they do.

However, I do think they're guilty of "talking about things liberals like to talk about." It's sort of a cultural thing, the way I look at it. It's no coincidence that liberals like them much more than conservatives. Their programming reflects more a liberal mindset.

So I think that's what Trad is picking up on. Of course... where's the right's version of this sort of smart programming?
 
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Colonoscopy said:
You guys were talking about NPR and its politics. I think the programming, presentation and everything is really smart. I don't think it's explicitly partisan. We need more news sources that behave the way they do.

However, I do think they're guilty of "talking about things liberals like to talk about." It's sort of a cultural thing, the way I look at it. It's no coincidence that liberals like them much more than conservatives. Their programming reflects more a liberal mindset.

So I think that's what Trad is picking up on. Of course... where's the right's version of this sort of smart programming?
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Oh, they're smart all right. And it's really cunning. When they DO have a conservative voice on, the questions are set up as a strawman and any answer the conservative might give is quickly chopped down and they "run out of time" before the guest can object.

It's really pretty slick.
 
Colonoscopy said:
You guys were talking about NPR and its politics. I think the programming, presentation and everything is really smart. I don't think it's explicitly partisan. We need more news sources that behave the way they do.

However, I do think they're guilty of "talking about things liberals like to talk about." It's sort of a cultural thing, the way I look at it. It's no coincidence that liberals like them much more than conservatives. Their programming reflects more a liberal mindset.

So I think that's what Trad is picking up on. Of course... where's the right's version of this sort of smart programming?
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That is exactly what I explained to Trad last week.

NPR absolutely covers issues that are interesting to progressive and liberals.

But does so in a factual manner.

The concept that fact makes it a “leftist organization” is absurd on its face.
 
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torbee said:
That is exactly what I explained to Trad last week.

NPR absolutely covers issues that are interesting to progressive and liberals.

But does so in a factual manner.

The concept that makes it a “leftist organization” is absurd on its face.
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No seriously. You people are thinking about how NPR was before Trump.

They're completely different now.
 
The Tradition said:
No seriously. You people are thinking about how NPR was before Trump.

They're completely different now.
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torbee said:
That is exactly what I explained to Trad last week.

NPR absolutely covers issues that are interesting to progressive and liberals.

But does so in a factual manner.

The concept that fact makes it a “leftist organization” is absurd on its face.
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That's funny then.

Yeah, I think the perfectly politically balanced in content and opinion news or media source is just a myth. So I figure it's my job as a reader to look for quality and variety. (NPR has always been high quality)

One of the big problems I have, though, is finding good high quality news/media sources that cover things well from a conservative perspective. All I've found, generally, are certain writers from certain sources -- like David Brooks at the Times or Atlantic now -- or oddball political commentators like that will do a good job with certain conservative viewpoints.

I never really got started on the WSJ, although I suppose they'd be good.
 
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Morrison71 said:
It’s pretty sad the amount of people that are upset about some people getting a little relief.
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Because it’s not fixing the system.

We are going to be right back where we are next year because the system is ****ed.
 
I won't argue that NPR isn't largely liberal. They are. And they cover a lot of issues that non-radical college educated frequently affluent liberals like to hear about because NPR has bills to pay. So you get a lot of human interest pieces that ultimately serve to assuage white liberal guilt. This is not leftist media. This is for-us by-us liberal corporate media for
driving clicks.
 
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