[Vision2020] College Student Penalized

[Tom Hansen]

Somebody's got to pay for those expanding tax breaks that the Idaho legislature extends to corporations and Idaho's top income bracket, right?  So, why not the college students . . . (as their American dream devolves into a fantasy)

Courtesy of today's (May 2, 2012) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with appreciation to Chris Norden.

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College student penalized

Idaho's Republican legislators have again aped their tea party counterparts in Congress, this time penalizing Idaho's college students while further subsidizing, via additional tax cuts, the upper crust of Idaho's richest and most politically influential taxpayers. As national interest rates on student loans for college students in Idaho and the rest of the U.S. jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent beginning this summer, Idaho's Republican legislators have further discouraged our citizens from accessing college-level education, jacking the cost of a college education from between 4 percent for Lewis-Clark State College to 6.1 percent for the University of Idaho.

Technically, these increases were requested by the individual institutions. In fact, the schools were forced to squeeze their already squeezed students - many of them working low pay, off-campus jobs to the point of fatigue already - due to higher education budget cuts, justified in order to lavish further tax breaks to a minority of already comfortably rich citizens and businesses.

Thomas Jefferson famously said that a democracy can only happen with an educated citizenry. Some may simply refuse to believe that any of Idaho's college students would seek education for any reason other than to personally enrich themselves. If so, explain why any sane person would go into debt in order to become a teacher in the Idaho public school system. It's called public service, same as the men and women who risk life and limb defending our country, again knowing it won't make them rich.

Chris Norden, Moscow

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"If not us, who?
If not now, when?"

- Unknown


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