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JerseySmarts.com

Student Loan Forgiveness Advocates Need to Do Better…

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Some of you might remember two few weeks ago when I posted an entry talking about the major positive effects of canceling all student loan debt. Obviously, with $100,000+ in student loan debt, I would be in favor of such a move by the government! However, I understand that this is my debt which I freely assumed and I have every intention of paying it back, yada, yada, yada.

The purpose of this post, though, is to report back to you all on something I saw when I went over to the petition site earlier today to read some of the brief stories that the signers are posting. I read the blurb below and my jaw hit the floor.

Mr. Obama: I first would like to command you on job well done for past 2 months into your presidency. Most importantly, I would like to urge you to seriously look into this important issue that contributed to greater debt of our nation. Please, consider a relief package for student loan debtors. This will forgive student loan debt and therefore, will enable us to invest in our future and save the economy in the long run.

Seriously? You would like to “command” the President “on job well done for past 2 months into your presidency?” Really? Is that what you want to do? You want the President to seriously look into canceling student loan debt “that contributed to greater debt of our nation?” Yeah?

Are you serious?

If I was President of the United States and a letter like this mess came in (which, by the way, was written in support of an idea!), I’d first laugh out loud and then I’d personally write back to this individual and suggest they engage a lawyer to press charges against their alma mater! How can anyone on the planet take such a disgrace of a letter seriously?

Look, I love the passion that people have regarding student loan cancellation and I agree wholeheartedly with the economic principles behind the concept, but if you can’t write a decent paragraph in favor of the idea, then don’t write anything at all! Sometimes it is okay to shut up!

All I know is that if the student loan cancellation crowd wants to gain any traction, they need to do better than the blurb posted above.

The Constitution Party in the 2008 Election

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Continuing with my look at the Constitution Party, I thought I’d relay some information both e-mailed to those of us on their mailing list and posted on their website. This message talks about how the party fared in the 2008 election. From the e-mail:

Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin and his running mate Darrell Castle wound up with close to 179,000 votes, showing even with no ads and comparatively little media attention, the message of liberty resonated with many.

The tally was a 24% increase over the party’s vote total in 2004. However, this year we were not on the ballot in California or Pennsylvania, and in 2004 those states accounted for 33,000 votes. The Baldwin/Castle ticket even grabbed 3,418 write-in votes in Texas, the highest for any write-in candidate in that state.

While the Constitution Party lists their final tally to be “close to 179,000” votes, Wikipedia lists their total for 2008 as 181,342. Not too bad, really. Both the Libertarians and Ralph Nader finished ahead of the Constitutionalists, but they got a few thousand more votes than the Green Party. More from their message:

In addition to larger percentages of votes, 20 states will remain ballot qualified meaning fewer time-consuming and costly ballot-access campaigns will be necessary going forward. This is a 33% increase over 2004.

Many people do not realize that one of the biggest hurdles that young political parties have to overcome is actually getting on the ballot! You don’t just “wind up” on the ballot – you have to actually collect signatures and petition to be on the ballot in each state. It’s not the easiest process and as the quoted message above alludes to, it’s not an entirely quick process either.

It would appear that the Constitution Party made a decent showing for a third party with no financing and no advertising in the 2008 election. America needs a strong third party at the national level – could it be this one?