THE $400 COLLEGE TEXTBOOK IS HERE: Thanks, Government Intervention into Student Loans and Higher Education!

By Mark J. Perry

A new milestone must have been established recently – we’re now officially in a new era of the $400 new college textbook and the $300 used college textbook, see accompanying graphic showing the top 15 most expensive textbooks at the University of Michigan-Flint based on a new unpublished report by Matthew Wolverton, an electronic resource management librarian at the Thompson Library (UM-Flint’s library). The graphic below shows the most expensive college textbooks by discipline at UM-Flint, based on the average price of new textbooks for each discipline in winter 2015 semester.

For business students taking five classes per semester and paying an average of $250 per textbook, their textbook bill would be $2,500 per year and $10,000 over four years! Of course, those students would be taking courses in non-business disciplines where the average textbook price is lower, but even at an average price of $200 per new textbook, students could be facing costs as high as $8,000 over four years. And even though renting textbooks is a less expensive option compared to purchasing books, rental costs per semester are running above $200 per new book and well above $100 per used textbook (and as high as $180), see top graphic above. Even if students could rent used textbooks for all of their college classes at $100 per course (which is probably on the low side), that would still amount to $1,000 per year (for ten classes) and $4,000 over four years (for 40 classes).

The graph below shows the historical increase in college textbooks (981%) between 1978 and 2014 in comparison to increases in the overall CPI (262%), the CPI for medical care (604%), and the median sales price for new homes (408%) over that 37-year period. Textbook prices seem like they are clearly on an unsustainable trajectory, especially in the face of new low-cost alternatives as discussed below.

DIABOLICAL: Obama now wants to fundamentally transform your neighborhood (into a ghetto)

By Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Obama is now making offers to debt-ridden municipalities that they dare not take. It’s like the devil offering you a way out and then collecting on that debt. Or, if you prefer, it’s like the mafia giving you money to solve your problems and then you owe them. Forever. The leaders in these areas won’t ask the residents and voters, they’ll let the silver cross their palms and will be blinded by the shininess of the coin they pocket. Corruption will finish selling free America down the proverbial river. I’ll be blunt… these municipalities should not be taking money from the feds. They should solve their problems at the local level, stand on their own and not be beholden to a governmental behemoth.

Under the guise of Obama’s Utopia, our president has been plotting for years the ultimate wealth redistribution here in America. It’s Marxist social and demographic engineering on a breathtaking scale. I believe this is the most insidious thing he has planned for us and it is a killer.

Obama believes the suburbs and wealthier neighborhoods are far too white. They are not racially diverse enough for his tastes. So, he is now going to municipalities that are sorely in need of funds and very much in debt up to their eyeballs, and offering them a way out. Say they are $5 or $10 million in the hole… well, the feds will give them $50 million. All they have to do is buy some land in an upscale area; sell it to a contractor that will build affordable housing and the government will take care of the rest. They will bring in minorities, the poor and disadvantaged… but even more importantly, liberal voters who will vote for Marxist policies. They will also resettle Islamic refugees and immigrants from across our southern border throughout these neighborhoods, leveling the demographic playing field into one huge ghetto from sea to shining sea. Just ask Sweden and the Netherlands how that has worked out for them.

Smashing the "Republicans Are Growing More Extreme" Myth

By Matthew Vadum

There is an insidious meme afoot that in the Obama era Democrats have been heroically restraining themselves by clinging to moderate policies while ideologically extreme Republicans have gone hog-wild in the pursuit of conservative purity.

Today’s Democratic Party makes common cause with the criminals who burn down poor people’s neighborhoods in American cities. And yet the Right is somehow alleged to be more susceptible to “extremism.”

Sharpening her class-warfare guillotine, Hillary Clinton calls for the “toppling” of the one percent. She copycats her potential rival, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), claiming that “the deck is stacked” in favor of the wealthy and powerful.

“My job is to reshuffle the cards,” Clinton says.

Yet Republicans, who haven’t singled out identifiable social groups for destruction, somehow get tagged as the radicals.

This alleged so-called asymmetric polarization by the GOP is just the latest iteration of the hoary media myth that Republicans are dangerous extremists and Democrats are reasonable moderates. It is popping up now because the two parties’ primary contests are heating up. The benighted masses need to be reminded by their betters what to think and how to vote.

ELIZABETH WARREN STRIKES BACK AT OBAMA: Declassify the Trade Agreement!

By William Teach

I strangely find myself in agreement with Senator Warren

(Reuters) U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren hit back at President Barack Obama in their tussle over “fast-track” authorization to negotiate a Pacific Rim trade treaty, a power she says could be used in the future to weaken Wall Street reforms.

The president, who wants expedited negotiating power to streamline the passage of trade deals through Congress, said last week that Warren’s claims were “absolutely wrong.”

Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and prominent liberal voice, stuck to her argument in an interview published on Monday with a Washington Post blog, saying Obama should release details of the Pacific trade talks so legal experts can determine if a pact could be used to weaken U.S. bank rules.

“If the president is so confident it’s a good deal, he should declassify the text and let people see it before asking Congress to tie its hands on fixing it,” Warren said in the interview with the Plum Line blog.

One has to wonder exactly why the trade deal is classified. Why it cannot be released for public view. Why Congress critters can only view it in a secure room, cannot have any recording devices, be watched over as you read it, and cannot take any notes they make with them.

From the Plum Line interview

TOPPLE YOURSELF, BI***: Billionaire Hillary Clinton's Pathetic Class Warfare Rhetoric

I call Hillary Clinton a billionaire because -- in addition to her personal net worth of about $25 million -- she helps control the Clinton Global Crime Fund Initiative. Thanks to an endless series of "pay-for-play" scandals in which foreign governments donated cash for State Department favors, the Clinton warchest is worth about $2,000,000,000. That's two -- with a "b" -- billion.

Which makes Clinton's attack today on the left flank of fellow multi-millionaire Elizabeth Warren all the more obnoxious.

So Hillary Rodham Clinton has acquired a brand new sobriquet. She’s come a long way, baby. She’s gone from the sharp knife-edge of bankruptcy, to having earned the nickname “Quid Pro Dough.” I don’t envy her wealth. I see her, but I wouldn’t want to be her. She’s made her money the old fashion way; she influence-pedaled...

Perhaps this is why she campaigns on the idea of hating success that is acquired by others. Here is her take on being an even more lame and more hypocritical version of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)...

Mrs. Clinton pointed at the top category and said the economy required a “toppling” of the wealthiest 1 percent, according to several people who were briefed on Mrs. Clinton’s policy discussions but could not discuss private conversations for attribution.

A “toppling of the 1%?” Does this entail a reprise of the Havana Bull Ring Trials? ... When Che Guevara lined people up against the wall it wasn’t to rank them from ugliest to dumbest*. Leftism always has purpose. As long as you have 1 dime more than the Leftist down the block, Leftism has a purpose. She’s doing her five fundraisers at the end of April for the people, you see.

With $2Bil in the bank vaults of the Clinton Foundation, she wants to get other people’s money out of politics. With $262Mil in “donations” during 2013 alone, she now wants to topple the 1%.

Topple yourself, bi***.

Like we say when the corporate jetsetters fly millions of miles in their private planes to convene meetings on "global warming", I'll believe Hillary's rhetoric when she starts living it.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

People are Fleeing States Where Elizabeth Warren's Economic Policies Have Already Been Tried

By Stephen Moore

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently appeared on one of the late night talk shows, beating the class warfare drum and arguing for billions of dollars in new social programs paid for with higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires. In recent years, though, blue states such as California, Illinois, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland and Minnesota adopted this very strategy, and they raised taxes on their wealthy residents. How did it work out? Almost all of these states lag behind the national average in growth of jobs and incomes.

So, if income redistribution policies are the solution to shrinking the gap between rich and poor, why do they fail so miserably in the states?

Day after day, the middle class keeps leaving California. The wealthy areas such as San Francisco and the Silicon Valley boom. Yet the state has nearly the highest poverty rate in the nation.

The blue states that try to lift up the poor with high taxes, high welfare benefits, high minimum wages and other Robin Hood policies tend to be the places where the rich end up the richest and the poor the poorest.

California is the prototypical example. It has the highest tax rates of any state. It has very generous welfare benefits. Many of its cities have a high minimum wage. But day after day, the middle class keeps leaving. The wealthy areas such as San Francisco and the Silicon Valley boom. Yet the state has nearly the highest poverty rate in the nation. The Golden State, alas, has become the inequality state.

WHO KNEW? Elizabeth Warren is Pro-Life!

By Warner Todd Huston

Yesterday Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted on all counts for his murderous act of terrorism. He could get the death penalty… but not if Mass. Senator and left-wing hero Elizabeth Warren has her way.

She wants the terrorist’s life spared.

That’s right, folks, Warren wants the child killer spared.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) said Thursday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 21-year-old who was convicted Wednesday for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, should not face the death penalty.

“My heart goes out to the families here, but I don’t support the death penalty. I think he should spend his life in jail. No possibility of parole. He should die in prison,” Warren said on “CBS This Morning.”

Like everyone knows… Democrats want to spare the lives of convicted murderers and terrorists but they have no problem killing babies in the womb.

But, let’s face the facts here. Warren wants Tsarnaev spared because she agreed with what he did.

Read more Warner Todd Huston at PubliusForum.

Meet the Radical Marxist that Union Fat Cats Want to See Occupy the Oval Office in 2016

By Labor Union Report

While many on the Left (and the Right) believe that the Presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton is a foregone conclusion, there is another woman that many on the Left—and of greater importance, within labor’s ranks—would rather see become President and they are beginning to voice their preference ever more loudly.

Enter Democrats’ more liberal senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren.

Last week, the AFL-CIO hosted a “wage summit” and Warren–not Clinton–was among the keynote speakers.

• View Warren’s full speech here.

Though, in the past, she has claimed she is not running for President, Warren is receiving much more attention from the institutional Left—including the ever-important union bosses—than the presumed nominee.

However, what AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka said about Warren—and, to a lesser extent, Clinton—is causing concern for Clinton supporters:

GOOD NEWS: Democrats' Latest Economic Plan Goes Full-Bore Marxist

By James Pethokoukis

There’s been a big gap between how Democrats have described America’s economic problems and the scope of the solutions they’ve offered. Recall President Obama’s late 2013 speech where he declared the “dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility that has jeopardized middle-class America’s basic bargain” to be the “defining challenge” of our time. Strong stuff.

But what have been the subsequent policy prescriptions? Relatively small stuff, like raising the minimum wage. You can debate whether it’s a good idea or not, but only 3% of workers age 25 and over earn the minimum wage or less. Raising it to nearly $10 would raise incomes of only 11% of workers who live in poor households. Or take the “free” community college proposal. Attendance is already essentially free for many students. What’s more, research on student outcomes suggest, notes AEI’s Andrew Kelly, that “pushing tuition to zero may not be a silver-bullet solution to lackluster student success.”

Party progressives, such as Elizabeth Warren, have pushed for bolder policies. And a new proposal by Rep. Chris Van Hollen — the ranking minority member on the House Budget Committee not some radical back bencher — certainly qualifies. This from ace Washington Post reporter Lori Montgomery:

The Pigmen Win Again

By Jim Quinn

“The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they’re an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They’ve got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying ­ lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.” - George Carlin

After the disgusting example of politicians of both spineless parties bowing down before Wall Street, the military industrial complex and corporate interests this weekend with the passage of a bloated pig of a spending bill totaling $1.1 trillion, how can anyone not on the payroll of the vested interests not admit there is only one party – and it serves only the needs of the wealthy business interests. Obama, champion of the common folk, signed this putrid example of political corruption and corporate capture of the American political system. For all the believers who voted for the red team in the November mid-terms, this is what you got – a bipartisanship screwing of the American people.

The entire episode has been nothing but Kabuki Theater. Both parties have proven to be puppets marching to the tune of Wall Street moneyed interests, while further entrenching the status quo by voting to allow more corporate influence over the election process. Each side of the aisle allowed just enough dissent to make it appear they might not reach an agreement. But at the end of the day Pelosi, Boehner, Reid and McConnell joined hands and gave it to the American public good and hard. And of course we had the candidates for president in 2016 Warren and Cruz playing to their constituents with speeches and maneuvers designed to make them look like fighters for the common man. It was nothing but a show, as they did nothing substantive to stop the bill from passing.

TOP 12 QUOTES FROM RUSH'S EPIC RANT: Boehner and Obama Have Joined Forces to Destroy Conservatives

There's only one problem with their plan: Constitutional Conservatives are the American people; therefore, any attempt to destroy conservatism is an attempt to eradicate the fabric of America:

1 The news is that the Republican Speaker of the House has thrown in with Barack Obama. I don't care what the Democrats are doing. What does that matter? Holy smokes: John Boehner has just squandered the election results before the Republicans even are sworn in to run the Senate...

2 There is a major falling out taking place in the Democrat Party, and we're supposed to be enthused by this, by the way, we're supposed to be excited by it... we're supposed to look the other way while our Speaker of the House gets in bed with Obama and advances the Obama agenda, takes care of it, amnesty, Obamacare, fully funded, done deal. The election must not have mattered.

3 [Campaign contribution] limits have practically been obliterated, which means that corporate donors can just start giving left and right. It used to be a limit of $37,000. Now it's $737,000, something... You know why? The Republicans put it in... This is how corporate America's gonna defeat the Tea Party. By allowing limitless donations from that crowd under the rubric that it's campaign finance and money is speech and freedom of speech and First Amendment. The theory is that Main Street, Tea Party people can't come close to competing with corporate money.

4 Marlin Stutzman is a Republican from Indiana... he's saying ... that he was lied to by the Republican leadership; that the Republican leadership reneged on a deal they made with him to get his support for the omnibus bill... Stutzman, Republican, Indiana, was one of the last Republicans to vote in favor of the rule allowing the House to fully vote on the omnibus spending bill, the $1.1 trillion omnibus... Stutzman backed the rule at the last minute after the Republican leadership told him that they would pull the $1.1 trillion omnibus bill, once the rule was passed, and they would replace it with a short-term continuing resolution that conservatives, including Stutzman, wanted, and that they would take up the whole thing next year after the Republicans and the new Congress are sworn in, and he was lied to.

Run, Liz, Run!

Because nothing spells national political success like a faux Cherokee from Massachusetts!

Run, Liz, run! http://t.co/mStui3MTOW pic.twitter.com/6DVyo552eh

— CJ Ciaramella (@cjciaramella) November 14, 2014

To tie a bow on the headdress of the far, far, far left progressive fraud known as Elizabeth "Hiawatha" Warren, please note that the would-be contender for a future Democrat presidential nomination is a brash critic of deep-pocketed Republican campaign contributors.

And, hilariously, she was the featured speaker at a meeting of the Democracy Alliance, a far, far, far left progressive cadre of donors who, according to the schmucks at Politico, are significantly more deep-pocketed than the Koch brothers:

Since its inception in 2005, the club’s partners have combined to give more than $500 million to recommended groups, and they played a pivotal early role in boosting Barack Obama during his 2008 Democratic presidential primary bid against Clinton.

Hypocrisy, thy name is "Democrat".


Hat tip: Masked Avenger.