The thing about this project that I dislike the most, is that the road tolls crept up a little, but will not skyrocket (as was long denied, and then finally admitted), until AFTER the agreements are signed, when it will be too late to say “HEY! That’s not what I understood” and back out. And now, an audit of massively excessive costs will be handed to us after that point as well.

Most people think this rail project is just nonsense as usual – they have no idea how it has moved to a whole other level. I say, STOP THE SHOW – until we have those facts in hand, and they have been properly considered.

please provide a list of particulars with reference to the rape of American by boomers…

Want to cut the deficit in half in four years? Generate 18% inflation.

Just because the Clown Show in Richmond is unable to understand inflation (see: frozen gas tax for 26 years) that doesn’t mean that the The Card Monty Machine on Capitol Hill doesn’t understand.

The real trick is keeping inflation substantially higher than interest rates for years on end.

Jimmy Carter is still eligible for a second term, no?

Maybe time for a reprise of President Malaise-Stagflation.

You sound pretty bright to me. Drop me a line – DJRippert@GMail.Com. I know a lot of people from 3+ decades of work. Who knows? Maybe I know somebody who wants to hire somebody like you. Get some of those loans paid off.

I am quite serious. I am embarrassed to be part of the generation that wreaked America.

my reading says that even if we accepted ALL of the GOP “cuts”, we’d still have to extend the debt about 5 trillion.

so what this is about is apparently an attempt to move the Dems on the Sequester agreement and Bush tax cuts expiration – both of which occur in December.

The GOP is unfit to govern in my view. There is no way to truly cut the budget without including DOD in the cuts. It’s painful but no more so than the cuts that will have to occur with entitlements.

You simply cannot wipe out the entitlements to keep from making cuts in DOD.

and yet..that appears to be what they want…

and I hope you continue to comment here at BR…. ..

No one can sit in another’s shoes and I’ll not be so presumptions as to sit in yours….

but 12K a year that does not include room & board sounds pretty pricey to me. ( I know there are even bigger numbers).

I went to nighttime community college for several years at night right after my 40hr a week day work (as a apprentice/technician) and would get home at 10pm … My employer helped out with books but I had to pay tuition and travel expenses…

it took a while to get a 4 year degree but at the end I owed not a penny.

there has got to be cheaper ways to get a degree than 12K a year in tuition alone.

Am I so far out of it that there are essentially no options cheaper than 12K a year for college sans room & board?

even then.. if I was starting out again.. I’d have to swallow hard to sign up for a loan that I knew was going to take so much of my earnings that I’d have trouble paying for a car and a place to live.

I’m not saying it is easy.. It’s not. It’s damned hard and if I was put in the same situation that young folks are put in today… perhaps…I’d end up with the same dilemma… but when you do taxes and you see (for example) a young women with 24K in debt and she’s working as an intern at a non-profit-museum… you know that she’s got a tough road ahead….

I’ve seen a ton of young people in their 20′s carrying significant college loans barely making it at a service sector job …and it leaves me wondering if I were that young again if I’d make that same choice and maybe I would but it just doesn’t feel right.