Jesse Jackson and HuffPo's Next Crusade: a Student Loan Bailout
Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader, has moved on from the health care debate and found a new oppressed, downtrodden minority: student loan recipients. And naturally, the Huffington Post was happy to afford “the Reverend” a platform for his activism.
“A plan to earn debt forgiveness retroactively must be instituted at once as an acknowledgment that an entire generation is mired in tens of thousands of dollars in student debt,”
Although the federal government’s latest takeover in student loans by “cutting out the middleman” pleased
“Students need more than good intentions,”
“This is the Second Great Depression. Students should not have to worry about loan repayment while they are unemployed and looking for work. Nor should compound interest mount during periods of unemployment.”
Jackson specifically called for: a pledge to lower interest rates for student loans to zero and one percent; “retroactive provisions” for students who have already graduated; legislation and regulations to implement bankruptcy safeguards; extended grace payments and defered compounding interest rates for unemployed graduates.
In demanding that the “rules should reflect reality,”
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