In the film “Network” the protagonist, Howard Beale’s makes a to arms: “First you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a human being goddammit-- my life has value!’ I want you to get up now, I want all of you to get up out of your chairs, go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!’”
If you’re like me, you’re a twenty something who has gone to college in the USA, and are currently trying to pay thousands of dollars of student loans, have been in forbearance on multiple occasions, and have paid in interest the value of some of your loans multiple times over. You probably have floating around in your subconscious an unfocused notion that you and everybody you graduated with, everyone you work with, is getting swindled.
Default: The Student Loan Documentary draws on the stories of individuals like you, expert testimony, and simply runs the raw numbers to bring that unfocused notion into crystal clarity.
This film takes the elephant in the room that has been invisible right in front of our faces, and highlights it with neon orange spraypaint. YES you are getting swindled! YES our higher educational system is broken. YES the USA is becoming a debtors prison. YES it really was easier to get a college degree and a good paying job when your parents were your age. What’s more YES there is something you can do about it!
Just as Howard Beal’s call to arms rallied a nation, Default: The Student Loan Documentary has the potential to be a flashpoint for an entire generation to organize around. It is my hope that this film it will spawn a generation-wide economic justice movement.
"S&P's ratings express our opinions. They do not speak to the market value for security, the volatility of it's price, or its suitability as an investment." -Deven Sharma, Standard & Poors Credit Rating Agency
"Our credit ratings are just opinions." - Stephen Joynt, Fitch Ratings
"[Credit Ratings] are opinions, and they are just opinions." - Raymond McDaniel, Moody's Corporation
Sure, here they were testifying before congress on their AAA rating for subprime mortgages. But hey! They still said it! It's in the congressional record!
Credit Ratings are total bullshit! Why should we take them seriously when they downgrade US Treasury Bonds?
The Robber Baron Jay Gould said famously “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” That was back in the 1800s. It’s still true today.
This struggle we see today in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and all across America, this isn’t a new struggle. This is an old struggle. This is a struggle older than America. This is a struggle where the poor man, the man who does all the rich man’s work gets tired of having the screws put to him day in and day out-- and so he puts his foot down and says he ought to get a fair shake. That he’s a human being with dignity and ought to be treated as such.
When he does, the rich man comes down on him with hell’s fury and tells him he’s a coward, a thug, a cheat, and a parasite. And he tells him to shut up and get back to work. People get confused by sychophants shouting through the rich man’s megaphone, the ABCs, CBSs, NBCs, FoxNews’s, and CNNs. They’ve learned how to talk like you so you get confused into thinking that these Devils are just like you. They’re not like you. They talk like you. They talk like you all day, with little drops of poison in every word, poisoning your mind, and then you get confused and you start to talk like them; you go around telling people if we let the Rich Man work you just a little bit harder and pay you a little bit less, everything will come out all right; That it’s not the rich man’s fault you’re poor cause he doesn’t pay you shit, it’s your brother and sisters fault for taking too many crumbs off the floor under the Rich Man’s table. If we all just sit back and let the rich man do whatever he wants, step on whomever he wants, poison and kill whomever he wants, everything will come out okay. They’re like the Devil whispering in your ear, telling you the Devil is Jesus, and Jesus got a plan to save you from the Devil. You know you’re sick of getting the screws put to you, day in and day out. But the devils are there telling you it ain’t their fault they’re working you so hard and paying you so little. It’s your own fault , it’s your brother and sister’s fault for thinking you ought to have a bit dignity on this earth before you die. Listen to them-- Can’t you hear it? The Devil in the way they talk? Their job is make sure that crooks on Wall Street, the Robber Barons, the Jay Goulds of today, can still hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.
This episode brought to you by: Michelle Duffy, Jason Dawson, Maike Both, James Sullivan, Brian Bergman, Gina Dennis, Stephen Totten, Matthew Pieper, Christopher Allen, Dennis Trainor Jr, Cheryl Keil, Kelly Houghland, Deborah Henry, David Bergeron, Rex Pechler
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HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT:
Find an economics professor, and ask him, what would be the result of every college student in the USA refusing to pay back their loans. Film their response. Send me the raw video at punkpatriot411@gmail.com
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