“A writer’s notebook is not a diary. Writers react. Writers need a place to record these reactions. That’s what a writer’s notebook is for. It gives you a place to write down what makes you angry or sad or amazed, to write down what you noticed and don’t want to forget. A writer’s notebook gives you a place to live like a writer.” - Ralph Fletcher
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
An Ode to My Debt Collector: in prose
I wholly accept that the occasional bad day is part of life. However, when my day is ruined by some bottom-feeding debt collector, that just makes me snap like an angry dog for the duration. Of course, I’m blowing it out of proportion. I’m sure. One of the credit card debts I accumulated during an […]
The carre rouge, or red square, has become the Canadian symbol of revolt. It comes from the French phrase carrement dans le rouge, or “squarely in the red,” referring to those crushed by debt.
Chris Hedges
(Source: truth-out.org)
Much like your post office or your social security, your public higher education system is something that has served you well for generations. Much like your post office or your social security, your public higher education system has, as such, become a target of corporate colonization. Much like your post office or your social security, your public higher education has been facing generations of politically driven budget cuts while facing pernicious informational attacks pretending it’s dysfunctions are the cause of public ownership, transparency and community involvement (and of course, never the budget cuts). Much like your post office or your social security, we are in a multi-generational struggle to prevent the corporate transformation of public higher education from a public service into a private profit engine.
Manny Jalonschi
(Source: politicususa.com)
There are now thousands of people legally jailed because they aren’t paying their bills, ie. debtor’s prisons have returned. Occasionally elites let it slip that this is not an accident, but is their goal – former Comptroller General David Walker has wistfully pined for debtor’s prisons overtly (on CNBC, no less).
(Source: alternet.org)
$100,000 in debt, before they even apply for their first job. American #HigherEducation
6 figure student loan debt for me! #PhD #ows
We need a radical movement around labor and wages. #OWS
(Source: occupywallst.org)
There is also a financial cost. The federal government makes about $250 billion in interest payments a year. So even a small increase in the rates demanded by investors in United States debt could add tens of billions of dollars to those payments.
(Source: The New York Times)
