Debt Ceiling Bill : How this impacts students (and screws grad students)

I'm the first to admit that I am not savvy enough to instinctively understand all this talk about debt ceilings and defaults. I'm still really proud that I can figure out how to do my own taxes.(go me!)  I also can't really fathom the "blah-blah-blah" trillions of dollars that the US is in debt for. However working in a university setting makes me acutely aware of when things affect university students.

That being said this debt deal bill royally f**ks graduate students. As part of the deal, Congress has decided to scrap the subsidized portion of the Stafford Direct loan. For those fortunate enough not to have to deal with loans, the subsidized loan means that the government will pay the interest on the loan for the duration of time that a student is enrolled in school full-time. By eliminating this benefit, when grad students enter repayment they will have on average 6% more debt to repay, which at the end of the day, amounts to thousands of extra dollars to repay.
On the upside, they are using the money that they save to continue to fund the Pell Grants for extremely high-need students but that still seems completely lopsided.

At the end of the day people will still be able to go to graduate school but they will be in crippling debt by the time they come out.

*Sigh* There ends my rant.

P.S. if you want to read more about all the ways in which financial aid has been affected click here to go to an article on Fastweb.com

The Birther Movement makes no sense

This whole movement to discredit President Obama has really ticked me off.  I am soo very tired of all the news articles that are focusing on this. I don't want to hear it anymore! The man has released his birth certificate, his "long form" birth certificate, had Hawaiian officials swear that they are authentic and yet there are still people in this movement that persist in believing that he was not born in the US.

C'mon people! If you dislike his politics, have some integrity and challenge his issues rather than his basic qualifications. He was sworn in as President! Don't you think that they would have checked that before they put him in the Oval Office???

Underhanded acts like this just a bad taste in everyone's mouth and make you lose allies.

That is all. Rant complete.