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Cancel All Student Loan Debt!

By Adam Pedesclaux

61% of college students have to take out loans to pay for their education; for many of these students, their debt becomes a lifelong burden. In total, over 44 million people in the US owe more than $1.5 trillion to various loan providers. The majority of this debt has accrued over the last decade.

Since 1987, the number of students enrolled in public and private institutions has almost doubled. In this time, costs have more than doubled. Students often have no choice but to accept these loans, sometimes with fluctuating interest rates that go as high as 25%. Once out of school, students are discovering that wages aren’t high enough to live, much less service their debt.

Parasitic loan companies have a record for making the repayment process as difficult as possible, charging fees for payments and forcibly holding back payments to extend the debt. As loan company Navient (changed from Sallie Mae as lawsuits piled up) admitted in court in a rare moment of corporate honesty: “there is no expectation that the servicer will act in the interest of the consumer.” These words sum up the industry, cold and unwavering in their pursuit of maximum profits.

It should be no surprise that more than 3,000 students default on their loans every day. The ultra-rich shareholders at Navient do a service to their fellow capitalists when they saddle workers with the distraction of never-ending debt. They count on the constant harassment by debt-collectors and the threat of wage garnishments being enough to keep people in line. They count on us always running on the hamster wheel to avoid poverty, with little time to consider a future beyond debt bondage. They expect that we’ll suffer our debts in private while we’re denied jobs because of our credit scores. But there are 44 million of us! We must unite to demand a cancellation of all student debt! Education should be free; other workers have won this right across the world. It’s time we catch up! Cancel the debt!

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High Schoolers’ Freedom of Expression Under Attack

By Adam Pedesclaux

Far from doing anything to address the root causes of mass shootings, Congress is using these tragedies to sneak an attack on students’ right to privacy and free speech. Texas Senator John Cornyn recently introduced a bill called the Restoring, Enhancing, Securing, and Promoting Our Nation’s Safety Efforts (RESPONSE) Act which would broaden the discretion police have to surveil and repress students based on their online activity. The act would also require federally funded schools to contract for-profit surveillance companies to monitor students’ social media posts for “inappropriate content.”

People are understandably desperate to put an end to mass shootings, but that’s not what this act is really about. If Senator Cornyn were really concerned about curbing mass shootings, he would denounce the white supremacist National Rifle Association and other lobbies for the arms profiteers. Cornyn won’t because he’d lose a source of campaign funds, having taken over $210,000 from these lobbies.

The real reason that this bill has been proposed is that students are beginning to rise up against the oppressive conditions they face in and out of school. The capitalists and their politicians view this as a threat, so they’re moving to suppress the youth’s power.

This act falls in line with other national tragedies that have been used to increase police surveillance on U.S. residents. They want to use school shootings as cover for the diversion of more of our tax dollars to private surveillance companies. They want to empower police to judge whether or not students’ posts are “suspect” or not. The record on police fusion center databases is clear: a person’s speech is most likely to be judged “suspect” when they disagree with the policies of the U.S. government. Progressive minded—not to mention revolutionary—people will be hounded by these “Big Brother” type programs while openly violent white supremacists occupy Congress and the White House. The FBI names earth protectors as one of the largest threats to the country. Funny that they pose such a threat to capitalism!

As workers, we must stop putting up with these bullshit programs. We cannot keep sacrificing our rights to millionaire liars. If we want violence to stop, it is CRITICAL that we ORGANIZE our own communities. The Feds are not going to protect us. We workers hold the collective power to protect our loved ones.

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Lower the Insurance Rates!

No More Bribes for the Insurance Commissioner!

By Adam Pedesclaux

The insurance rates in Louisiana are outrageous. Car and home insurance rates are nearly the highest in the country, and if you live in New Orleans, you also need flood insurance. If you’re poor or oppressed, you are punished doubly, since nearly all high elevation land is populated by rich people, a feature of the city established during the violent conquering and settling of the city landscape. Just as the landscape of New Orleans reflects the oppressive rule of the capitalists, the insurance rates also reflect their tight grip on power.

Before James Donelon (R), the latest politician to take the seat of Insurance Commissioner in Louisiana, there were three politicians: Doug Green (D), Jim Brown (D), J. Robert Wooley (D) all of whom went to prison for taking bribes/money laundering. Given that the Insurance Commissioner controls insurance rates and allows/bars insurance companies from operating in Louisiana, whoever serves in this position sits as the gatekeeper to insurance companies. So that the insurance companies can suck as much out of Louisiana ratepayers as possible, they keep plenty of cash on hand to “grease the palms” of the commissioner.

Whether or not Donelon has taken illegal bribes has yet to be revealed. That he has accepted more than $680,000 in legal bribes—aka campaign donations—from insurance companies and agents since 2015 ought to be a scandal.

Donelon, who hates workers, has even had the guts to say that car insurance rates are so high because of all the uninsured/underinsured drivers. But the lies don’t add up: nationwide, Louisiana ranks twentieth for the number of uninsured drivers, and yet we have the second highest rates in the country. How could working people even afford to have more insurance when the ruling class steals from of us left and right?

Insurance rates do not fall out of the sky. They are not “mathematically determined” nor are they set by any other scientific means. The reason so much of our hard-earned money is stolen each month is because the capitalist owned media conceal the true nature of the capitalist government. The news media would have us believe that Santa or the Easter Bunny sets these rates as much as they avoid the facts of this important issue.

The people ought to have the final say in how prices are set, but we workers have to fight for better conditions or we will continue to be taken advantage of. No more closed door negotiations and off-shore bank accounts! No more politicians in the pockets of the insurance companies! All power to the people!

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Bankers, War Profiteers Censor Facebook Feed

By Adam Pedesclaux

Its common knowledge that we don’t see everything that is posted on Facebook because certain things are censored. But what doesn’t get said is that the U.S. government and various bomb and weapons manufacturers, banks, and even companies like Nestle and Starbucks control the filter on what we see. Everything we see or read comes through this filter. It makes sense that users would be sheltered from certain violent or hateful content, but with this power to regulate our feeds also comes the ability to censor “undesirable” political content. For the censors, that often means anything that criticizes the U.S. or any other imperialist governments or various companies. After the 2016 election and in the beginnings of the Mueller-Trump foolishness, the same-colored wool that they tried to put over our eyes after 9/11 to push the Patriot Act to better spy and censor us was once again drawn over our eyes—this time under the pretense of stopping “fake news.”

To save us from the monster of “fake news” after the 2016 election, Facebook partnered with the Atlantic Council, which is a NATO lobbying group. For those who don’t know, the Atlantic Council is a group representing government and business interests, with weapons manufacturers like Raytheon and General Atomic being high level members, as well as various domestic and foreign banks including Goldman Sachs and a few oil companies. Lower level members even include Reuters, one of the most commonly sourced news organizations. A “nonpartisan” organization as they describe themselves (yet funded by the never nonpartisan U.S. government and various other governments of NATO nations as well as bomb manufacturers, banks, and many, many more), they lobby for pro-war and business policies (i.e., anti people policies) and now have a major say in what we can see on our Facebook feeds.

It only makes sense, then, that many anti-war and pro-peace pages have been removed without reasonable excuses from Facebook, and they have even attempted to remove teleSUR a few times, a Venezuelan-based news organization that shows the opposite side of the aggressive stance U.S. media has taken against the country. Perhaps this should serve as a reminder not to trust everything on the internet (especially social media) and question the limited perspectives offered to us on these broad issues when we need all sides to formulate opinions.