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Show - · - - - ••• ¥ ... _ ,,., "') _.,,.... J~v-... •• •"'·=···-·- " " ' • l i MOLLY IVINS SEAN GONSALVES COMMENTARY COMMENTARY ... ..... . ....... .•.•··-,.•.•• - .. ... •'. ~ .,. -~ " ••• V1.• .. •• M • ,.• • , W•{' "·- " ' l l " ~.......,.._._.,......,,.,,,, ! M .., ..,, ' ?' American students receive another monetary rip-off President Clinton needs to tell the entire truth Eeee-yew, gross! Watch 5 million students bank profits from student loans are second get backhanded so bank profits can rise only to credit cards. U.S. commercial banks from excessive to obscene. Watch Congress earned a record $59 billion last year- 12.6 sell out both the students and the nation, percent more than the previous record, which needs all the educated citizens it can $52.4 billion in 1996, according to a report produce, in exchange for campaign contrl- by S&L Secu rities. It was the sixth butions. What a country. What a mess. consecutive record year for the banking This week, a House subcommittee takes industry. up the matter of interest rates on student According- to the Center for Responsive loans, which are set by Congress. The rates Politics, banks and lending institutions are scheduled to drop on July 1 from 8.25 contributed a total of $14.2 million during percent to about 7.1 percent. But the big the ·1996 election cycle, 31 percent of it to banks are crying poorhouse and claiming Democrats, and the other 69 percent to they ' ll gei: out of the student -lending Republicans. bidoess altogether if this shocking decrease In 1994, the government began making in thci!: ~a«;;r_~d orofits is allowed to go direct loans to students and now covers thro ugh . Of course, these are tne saffi-e- :!.hn!.lt 35 percent o f th e market. But banks that manage to make mortgage loans because the government program is-aew for 6.75 percent without going broke. And and has bad some start-up prob]ems, it student l oans are no-risk fo r t he banks, can't possibly absorb the entire field. being co-signed by Uncle Sam In the past, Republicans have T he 1993 budget act requi res that banks traditionally sided with the bankers and lend to students at the 91-day Treasury bill Democrats with the students, but there is interest rate plus 3.1 percent, which com es so much lobby money out on this case that to the 8.25 percent t hey currently charge. one source said even longtime friends of st udents open their After July 1, the fo rmula .-------.....,.....,, changes to the interest rate m o uths and put forth on 10-year T bills plus l words that he knows are percent, o r 7. l perceo t straight from the bankers' interest on student loans. propaganda on the issue. According to a spokesVice president Al Gore man fo r th e American came up with a comAssociation of State promise proposal to keep the three-month T bill Schools and Universities, the estimated difference ind ex but lower the between the current margin to 2.3 percent. formula and the new However, the lobby clout formula comes to $11 on the issue is massive, billion during the next five and that may be just a years- $11 billion that start ing point in coneither stays in the frayed cessions to the banks. "We are very concerned, jeans pockets of students or goes to the banks. No very alarmed" by the Gore wonder the banks have proposal, said Joe Belew, lined up a full lobby press president of the Consumer on the issue, even sending Bankers Association. "I form letters to s tudent don't th.ink there'll be loan offices so they can anybody left in the pressure Congress. program," he told The Bank of America and Washington Post. Northwest Corp. are threatening to stop all This is a variation on the old student lending if they don't get their manufacturers' blackmail: Give us what way- this despite a Treasury Department we want, or we'll pull up stakes and move study issued in February showing that the our factories to Mexico. The bankers have banks have been earning a return of about numbers proving they can barely limp 1.65 percent on student loans, which along under the current formula. But government officials say is about twice Citicorp has broken with the rest of tbe what it should be. herd and actually lowered its student rate Knight Ridder's Business News reports: to 8 percent already. A Citicorp spokesman "This isn't the first time lenders have held said it's a chance to build market share and students hostage to their demands. In win loyalty from students in hopes they recent years, as the government reduced will turn to Citicorp for their other interest subsidies or capped rates, lenders banking needs. "We view the students as a routinely complained about losing money strategic asset," said the spok esman, and vowed to leave the business. Though according to Business News. No £lies on some smaller banks have dropped out, the Citicorp. major lenders have stayed put. In fact, even So here you have a classic case of the as they griped about bow marginally effects of campaign financing-it's the profitable student loans are, lenders have people against the money. Anyone want to fought vigorously to hang onto the bet on the outcome? business, opposing government's attempts Molly Ivins is a nationally syndicated to compete with direct-loan programs." According to a 1991 government study, columnist. Why not tell the whole truth about our involvement in Iraq? This has nothing to do with supporting Saddam or demonizing America. It's simply about doing what's the most fundamental moral obligation of all human beings: to tell the truth to oneself. The major press, Pentagon and State Department officials and the president are not telling the whole truth about the Iraq situation. In fact, they are suppressing important information. When they do talk about Iraq, they only tell partial truths with Little or no context. And that's propaganda. Take President Clinton's speech last week where he unpersuasively tried to !:!!a~ ~ case for another U.S. bombing of Iraq. It's important to remembd that Clinton is one of God's children just lik e you and m e. That's wh y I refer to him (and others) as brother (or sister). We all have the same Father (or Mother if you prefer). Having Laid that out, let's call a spade a spade. What we are doing is Machia vellian madness. It's amoral, it's foolish, and, more important, it's dangerously selfdeceptive. Let's examine a few snippets of Clinton's speech. He should have started by calling the Iraqi situation exactly what it is. ft is not a potential "war" or a "strike" we are or will be, involvel in. A war requires two legitimate combatants. Bombing a weak army and destroying the infrastructure necessary for the civilian population to survive is not "war." It's slaughter. Of course, brother Clinton didn't begin his spiel that way. Nope. First be thanked all of those wonderful people who were instrumental in shaping our policy with Iraq. "Thank you very much ... for your years of service to America and for your passionate patriotism Let's just stop right there with that bit of doublespeak. Passionate patriotism? As n o ted by Harvard philosopher Michael Walzer, author of fust and Unjust Wars, these policymakers Clinton is applauding are the ones who made the decision to bomb military facilities and power grids and water purification plants. "The direct effect of the destruction of powe.r grids and water purification plants was. to impose upon civilians in urban areas the risks of disease in epidemic proportions," Walzer observes. They were tremendousl y successful in doing that. According to UNICEF, about 4,500 Iraqi children die every month because of what we did and are doing to that country. Recall that President Bush kicked off the " n ew world order" with the invasion of Pan.amain 1989. It was called "Operation Just Cause," which is Orwellian lang uage for kicking people's teeth in. The World Court condemned the U.S. for its "unlawful use of Jorce," followed by a General Assembly resolution that denounced the action as a ''flagrant violation of international law and of the independence, sove reignty and territorial integrity of states" and called for the withdrawal of the "U.S. armed forces from Panama." Yet, not on e American official was ever legally reprimanded iii ~". 1 '.'!~'f; shaP-e or form. Then there was the bombingCiinton ordered on lraq for Hussein's alleged plan to assassinate Bush. Again, America was.condemned by the wo rld via the United Nations. And again, U.S. officials didn't even blink. In public they claimed to have had "certain proof." But, as The N ew York Tim es bare ly r eported in 1993, " administration officials, speaking anonymously," informed the press "that the judg-ment of Iraq's guilt was based on circumstantial evidence and analysis rather than intelligence." During the course of his speech, Clinton-with a straight face, mind you-talked about Saddam's refusal to allow U.N . inspectors i:oto Iraq's weapons facilities. This is unbelievably hypocritical. We are currently doing the exact same thing. For some reason the "liberal" American press has decided that the public can't handle this inconvenient truth. "The U.S. government has struek out the names of Cuban and Iranian nationals from a list of U.N. arms inspectors visiting U.S. chemical-arms facilities under the Chemica Weapons Convention," The Economist reports. Therefore, we prohibit U .N . inspectors from checkin g out our bio -ch em facilities. "The U.S. is reported to have about 30,000 tons of chemical agents and Russia about 40,000 tons." As pertinent as all o f this information is to tbe Iraqi "crisis," it bas somehow been left out of the picture being crudely painted by U.S. warmongers and the major "free" press. Go figure. Sean Gonsalves is a nationally syndicated columnist. |
