Category Archives: Youth and students

Economy, Youth and students

How About A Bail-Out for Young People?

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Students in Dire Need of Debt Relief:

Government Vastly Undercounts Defaults

Many More Students Are Defaulting Than Official Tallies Show 1

Photo illustration by Ron Coddington

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By Kelly Field

Chronicle of Higher Education

July 11, 2010 – The share of borrowers who default on their student loans is bigger than the federal government’s short-term data suggest, with thousands more facing damaged credit histories and millions more tax dollars being lost in the long run.

According to unpublished data obtained by The Chronicle, one in every five government loans that entered repayment in 1995 has gone into default. The default rate is higher for loans made to students from two-year colleges, and higher still, reaching 40 percent, for those who attended for-profit institutions.

The numbers represent thousands of students like Lourdes Samedy, of Boston, who ended up defaulting on about $7,000 in student loans after completing a nine-month-long medical-assistant program at Corinthian Colleges Inc. Everest College, and now cannot get a job.

Continue reading How About A Bail-Out for Young People? →

antiwar, Economy, labor, Youth and students

Pittsburgh First-Hand G20 Reports: Day Three

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front-march

Photo: PDA’s Randy Shannon with banner, center, next Michael McPhearson of Vets for Peace with Rick Kimbrough, right.

10,000 Marchers Beat Back
The Steel City’s ‘State of Siege’


By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Nearly 10,000 protesters marched through the streets of Pittsburgh on the last day of the G20 this Sept. 25 afternoon, delivering a powerful message for global justice that was expressed with a brilliantly colored display of unity, militancy and diversity.

Peace and justice groups demanded an end to wars and occupations and healthcare for all, trade union contingents demanded green jobs and fair trade, women and people of color raised the banners of equality and empowerment, and young people called for a sustainable and liberated future in a new world.

“Will we make any difference?” Rick Kimbrough asked me a few hours earlier as we headed down a parkway heavily secured with police cars at every exit on our way into town. Kimbrough is an old high school friend, an African American steelworker with 37 years in a huge Beaver County mill that’s now shutdown and gone, Jones and Laughlin Steel. When I asked him to join me the day before, he was fired up to go already, until he heard a nephew had taken a bullet as a bystander in a senseless street fight. When he heard his nephew would do OK, he called back, ready to ride in with me and join the United Steel Workers contingent in ‘the People’s March’ at the close of the G20 sessions. Continue reading Pittsburgh First-Hand G20 Reports: Day Three →

Community, labor, Youth and students

Does PA Senator Elder Vogel Care About Children? Ask Him!

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by Randy Shannon
 
Protest Daycare Cuts in Belleview
Protest Daycare Cuts in Belleview

Who Is Elder Vogel?

Elder Vogel is a farmer on the plateau above the valley of the Beaver and Ohio Rivers . He is also the freshman Republican State Senator representing the 47th Senatorial district encompassing much of Beaver and Lawrence Counties, including the cities of Ambridge, Aliquippa, Beaver Falls, and New Castle.

As his website says: “A citizen-legislator, Senator Vogel is a fourth-generation dairy farmer, operating the family farm in New Sewickley Township which was established in the late 1800s.  For many years, Senator Vogel served as president of the Beaver-Lawrence Farm Bureau, and until his election served as a New Sewickley Township Supervisor.”

Vogel defeated Jason Petrella, a Democratic Party newcomer with no political experience. Petrella was also running with the overhang of scandal. Local Democratic leader Mike Veon and other Democrats were previously ousted for stubbornly supporting a midnight pay raise despite widespread protest and criticism.

What Has Elder Vogel Done?

Continue reading Does PA Senator Elder Vogel Care About Children? Ask Him! →