Gentleman’s F

There’s a restaurant in town called Blue C Sushi. A visiting friend from California (where every eating establishment is graded by the health department on a scale of A-F, a la grade school) remarked, “No one in California would ever name their restaurant with a C like that.” A C is, of course, the worst grade one can have and remain open.

This Drake thing is like that, but if the restaurant in question were actually located in the administrative buildings of the California Department of Health.

So which’ll be the next bubble to pop in our ¡bonkers! e-CON-omy: $tudent loan$ or “health”care?

Anyone wanna take bets?

You know what we need right now? Jon Hamm shirtless.

@Mistress Cynica:

Bleh. So hairy.

@¡Andrew!:

Ooh, think they’ll allow cram downs on student loans?

@Tommmcatt: Cram-downs? Is this a West Village bathhouse?

@Tommmcatt :

I’m gonna solve my grad school student loan problem the olde-fashioned way: frying off my fingerprints, buying a passport of someone who sorta looks like me online, donning a fake moustache and a fedora, then fleeing the country.

@¡Andrew!:

Sex change is my advice. They’ll never look there…

@¡Andrew!: Since death or bankruptcy doesn’t discharge student loans, your proposal sounds the most possible…

@Tommmcatt: My fat cobra vigorously rebukes that idea.

@SanFranLefty:

My student loans had a discharge-at-death clause. I heard tell you could even get payments reduced through bankruptcy, though that might just have been wishful thinking.

@¡Andrew!:

Vigorous fat cobra. That sounds good.

@Tommmcatt: It’ll rebuke you twice a day on weekends.

WSJ, August 9, via a very timely tweet:

Student-Loan Debt Surpasses Credit Cards

@nojo: And The Economist has a depressing chart showing how college fees have risen faster than Americans’ ability to pay them. Also, a column in their deliciously-named “Schumpeter” blog on American universities going the way of American car companies.

@Tommmcatt Cannot Be Arsed To Think About Sharon Angle: Very wishful thinking. There were some proposals this year in Congress to make it easier to discharge student loans, but currently it’s almost impossible, thanks to Shrub’s 2005 bankruptcy “reform” bills that made it impossible to even discharge “private” student loans from lenders like Citibank (my pimp) on a level with the federal student loans, which were already non-dischargeable.

An effort started last year called “Cancel Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy,” but so far it hasn’t gotten anywhere other than some media coverage and pleas from bloggers.

@Mistress Cynica: So why would someone go $100,000 into debt to become a public school teacher, my conservative brother in law asked this evening.

A very good point. I think the Powers that Be have decided to price a college education out of reach of most people because a college education is the great leveler in society. Make it hard to get, expensive, and eventually the people will lack the ability to make informed judgments on the issues of the day.

BTW, Rand Paul is increasing his lead in Kentucky.