[Note: The purpose of this blog is to enlighten and educate the reader about music and other current and important issues. Typically, in Tick’s Notes and Tunes the blog post opens with a transcript of the first half of the ficitonal radio broadcast, then the article in the form of an editorial appears (in this case “Student Loan Forgiveness“) and then finishes with the last half of the radio broadcast. Please see the very bottom of this blog post about the music and other links referenced herein.]
Hey folks.
Stony here.
back with some poppin tunes
to put a little snap in your step
for the weekend.
First up tonight is a guy
Who is probably nowadays
Most famous
For a tune he did
For a great great movie
Ghostbusters. Starring Bill Murray
Dan Aykroyd
Sigourney Weaver
Harold Ramis
And Rick Moranis
Talk about an allstar cast!
I’m not sure but our first tune was released i
Around 1981, which was before Ghostbusters.
Anyway here a great tune by
Ray Parker Jr. Still in the Groove
https://youtu.be/jfWBK5hrYWk?si=s0xQ1hImgUg8okMB
And for our next tune
We can all thank Red Dog
Yes, I was fortunate enough
To have lunch with RD
A week ago
And while we were chatting
Waitin for our order to be served
He kept hummin’ this tune under his breath
And he kept mumbling something
That …by gosh…sounded
A little….Frenchy
I asked him what it was.
And he mentioned the title
Well, I just had to send
Suzi down to the garage
To the archives
to see if she could find it
and by dingies
to my utter amazement
…….she did !!.
So without further ado
let’s give it a whirl…
straight from the land of American fries
You might know it as
France
Anyway here’s
Jacques Dutronc with “ Le responsible “
https://youtu.be/oszTRwhMNDE?si=tvJmZYAW4XkjZeDT
Yeah, that was rockin’
But I just have to say
That I actually think
Red Dog’s version was even better.
And by the way
Thanks to someone with the handle @battlebunny123
Who has done all of us Yanks
….and Rebs too for that matter,
the favor of providing us
some of the translated lyrics to that tune
which are:
“I have worries, I have cares I have troubles
I have torments I don’t have morals,
I don’t have money I don’t have luck,
I don’t have friends I don’t have the pot,
I have taxes My stomach aches,
I have a toothache
But I wouldn’t want to change skins
Because I like the pain I am a responsible man
I don’t hide my head in the sand “
Geesh…sounds like my dad
Not a rock n roller
But who listens to lyrics
And it did rock …right?
Okay, ole Red Dog
Man of international intrigue and mystery
Always insists that we
Should do more to promote international harmony
Like he always says
One big way to do that
Is to understand other cultures
And that means
Learnin’ to dig their music
And it just so happens that GURU
Left this next CD on my desk
…not sure exactly why
…but I do recognize it
Because he had us play it
A couple of years ago.
And it is ….
…German…I think…
Anyway here’s
An album or a group called
Country Musik
That’s music with a “k”
with a tune called
Breite offene Raume
Which I think roughly translated to
“wide open spaces”
https://youtu.be/lFvSPNt-4rk?si=Q2hjrJ0yEF3Ye5xR
Okay, that was a really nice piece
a change of pace that
I hope Yinz enjoyed
Alright
If we don’t watch out our next artist
Is going to demand that she be put
On our station’s payroll
Simply because
We’ve linked several of her tunes
Over the last month or so.
When last we visited she had moved I think
From Texas to Nashville.
But since every visit has been so enjoyable
Let’s check in again on…
Brennen Leigh
Here doin’ Carole with an E
https://youtu.be/ipL-onqMfNQ?si=VjN0hnSsOcchbm66
breaker 1-9 breaker 1-9
Yinz old geezers will remember that from the
Pre-cellphone CB radio days
Don’tchya?
In any event its time for
Our editorial staff to break in with
Some thought provoking tidbits for us
I understand that Rufus is out for the evenin’
And we have an esteemed guest providing us
With tonight’s insight
———————————–
Thanks Stony
Hello folks, this Bob Browder. I’m an attorney who’s been tasked with filling in for Rufus Coldwater tonight.
I’m going to talk for a moment about student loan forgiveness, which is a hot button topic these days, given recent efforts by the Biden Administration to forgive one heck of a lot of student debt. Many folks strongly object to this. They say, and with some justification, that the amount of debt being forgiven only exacerbates the severe budgetary problems this country faces. Moreover, it seems grossly unfair for taxpayers to pay for someone’s education and then let them walk away from their financial responsibilities scot-free.
On the other hand former students who find themselves saddled with a lot of unpaid debt will have bad credit might well slip into poverty and require a lot of costly government services in the future. Moreover, relieving them of excessive debt allows them to make major purchases like cars and homes all of which helps to further stimulate the overall economy.
I’m not going to argue the point one way or another here, except to give but one small example of the problem that a heck of a lot of former students—folks just like your kids and mine—face or will face. And I think this problem will become even worse over time, simply because, if ChatGPT, Covid and current world events have taught us anything its that things change quickly and in unexpected ways. And this is true for business and professions as well.
This isn’t the age of Ward and June Cleaver anymore where somebody goes to college and spends 40 or 50 years in one career. It is doubtful that most of us will be able to rely on doing just one type of job or working in just one type of profession for our whole lives. For this reason, in my own humble opinion a lot of the old assumptions about student lending are now very shaky and the whole subject is worthy of reexamination.
Current bankruptcy rules make student loans nondischargeable in bankruptcy—meaning a former students cannot take bankruptcy and have their student loans discharged (meaning legally forgiven). There is, however, a very limited exception that, at least in theory, allows discharge if hardship grounds are shown. However, it is very difficult to get a hardship grounds discharge of a student loan because the former student has to also institute what is known as an adversary proceeding (which can be costly to implement) and then show that they cannot maintain a minimal standard of living and that the hardship will last for many years. This is often difficult and costly to prove in court. Some may disagree but the language of the code almost seems to require a permanent physical or mental disability to show a sufficiently long hardship to allow a student loan to be discharged. But the point is that hardship discharges are very difficult to obtain in too many instances.
I had a client come in my office about a year ago. She was 25 years old and worried about passing the bar exam. But she also had bigger worries. She had $250,000 in student loan debt. Financing a substantial portion of college and law school will do that to you. (In-state tuition nowadays runs around $17,000 per year at a state institution. Law school however can cost a whopping $65,000 per year.) Her problem was that she was struggling also to pay her credit card debt and other bills. She had attended very good and reputable schools but indicated that she was (A) worried about finding a legal job because her fellow students were also having job search problems; and (B) even if she did find a legal job, finding one that would allow her to actually pay off her student loans.
Why? Student loans typically require repayment over 5 to 10 years with perhaps the chance for an extension to 25 years. We did some calculating and figured that at her interest rate of 6 percent, her monthly student loan payment for a 10 year loan would be about $2,600 per month. If, however, she could get the repayment term extended to 25 years that her student loan monthly payment would be $1,600.
She said she estimated that if she was lucky she said that she thinks she might be able to land a job making $75,000 per year. We figured her take home would be $4,500 per month. She said she was currently paying $1,100 per month for rent. She also has a car payment of $250 per month and car insurance of $170 per month.
If one does the math her housing payment, student loan payment and car payment add to $3,120 per month. This is before calculating her expenses for necessities such as: food, clothing, hair care, utilities, gas, health insurance, medical expenses, prescription medications, bar dues, continuing education requirements of the state bar, dry cleaning and her credit card expenses. And, did I tell you that she was also 5 months pregnant? And what about occasional entertainment? The bottom line was it just didn’t add up. While she might barely get by for a few months, one car break down, one unexpected expense and she will start to back slide financially, and if the unexpected occurs often enough she will surely slip into bankruptcy.
Which brings me to things like Covid and ChatGPT. In these fast moving changing times the U.S. Department of Labor expects that the average person will change careers five to seven times. If disease or sickness or some unexpected macroeconomic event occurs where she loses her job, or worse, her career, perhaps for a long time, or, alternatively, if something happens to make her job obsolete, not having bankruptcy as an option will likely put her in an extremely disadvantageous position for the rest of her life unless she has the same, or something that is at least closer to the same, rights to a bankruptcy discharge as other debtors do.
Originally, there are several reasons why student loans weren’t made forgivable in bankruptcy. First it helped to encourage banks to make federally insured student loans (thus increasing the number of students who could afford to go to college). Secondly, it also helped to keep student loan interest rates down because for lending banks there was less default risk in making student loans. Another reason was that the government didn’t want students declaring bankruptcy right after graduation thus getting the benefit of a government paid education for free. Naturally, taxpayers do not want to be saddled with the responsibility of paying banks for defaulted loans taken out by student borrowers.
The problem, of course, is that in the 25 year loan situation the monthly payment amounts to an extra apartment rental payment and in the 10 year situation the monthly payment equates to an additional home mortgage payment on a $250,000 home. And, in both situations that payment has to be made for a long time and worse—under current law that debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcv in over– my guess –well over 95 (probably 98) percent of the cases.
And I will add, that nowadays, with the introduction of ChatGPT the job market for lawyers just might get a little more uncertain. In fact, in my client’s case she was already 6 months out of law school and still had no job. Theoretically, that put her at least $9,600 in arrears on her student loan already. At least she probably has her best earning years in front of her and perhaps for that reason shouldn’t allowed to walk away from this debt now. But what happens if she’s similarly indebted when she’s older and past her prime income earning years, or if her profession, for any reason suddenly becomes obsolete? And let me add, that looking for a job is tougher for poor folks than it is for those who have financial resources to spend on a job search.
The sad fact of the matter is that young students and their parents hardly ever think about the downside and bankruptcy risks of borrowing a lot of student loan money to pay for a college education. They only believe what everyone’s always been told, namely, that one must have a college education in order to succeed. The trouble is that once they emerge from college they often then get bushwacked with a reality that they really didn’t know existed in the first place.
It was unclear to me why the Biden Administration and Republicans haven’t at least considered changing the bankruptcy laws. But that’s par for the course in today’s toxic political environment. The attitude in Washington seems to be: Don’t solve problems, just point fingers blame each other and score political points. Winning the next election, and making other side look bad, are the only things that matter. Surely, there’s a healthier way to approach this problem. And one might be to change the bankruptcy laws to make them more realistic and yet still protect taxpayers and the banks.
To make any such change more palatable, and in order to discourage former students escaping their student loan obligations for illegitimate reasons rules such as the following could be incorporated into the Bankruptcy Code.
To take one possible example of how the bankruptcy laws could be amended, a new set of bankruptcy rules could provide that no discharge( forgiveness of the debt) in bankruptcy would be permissible until ten years after the loan was taken out and then only if the lesser of the Debtor’s (i) current or (ii) average income over the last 3 years is less than ten times the total student loan debt outstanding. And then also keep the current hardship discharge as an additional remedy for the truly unfortunate student. This is just one possible approach. Congress could tinker around with specifics. Who knows, some might even be able to convince Congress to have the federal guarantee apply to only a certain percentage of the loan (thus risking at least some bank capital) and to make student debt fully dischargeable in bankruptcy just like all other debts. The advantage of this approach would be it would force banks to be more stringent and risk conscious when making student loans. This would also have the very positive effect of forcing colleges and universities to do more to make their educational degrees more relevant to the actual job market and cost effective. The biggest problem with this type of approach, however, would be fewer students would be able to get loans to attend college.
Before closing it’s important to note that the client referenced above probably represents a more extreme case than most. Most students do not accumulate the large student loan debts that she has. But, any student who goes to a private school or attends an out-of state college, or who goes to graduate school, can easily accumulate six figure student loan debt. However, the point is that this problem is not going to go away. In fact, it’s probably only going to get worse. If one thinks about it, colleges and universities are probably going to have to find ways to deliver less expensive and more practical job friendly degrees and certifications going forward than the more traditional time-consuming and costly degrees that they now offer.
Anyway, thanks for listening
this Bobby Beau Browder
Rufus Coldwater will be back next week.
———————————–
Okay thanks Bobby Beau great job!
Next we have one of GURU’s favorite bands
…and mine too.
Brothers Ray and Dave
might have not always gotten along
and may have occasionally thrown a punch or two
at each other
But Ray could definitely write a tune
In fact he’s very underappreciated here in the States
And At 3:34 of this next live clip
Brother Dave makes me understand why
I’ve always wanted to be a guitar playin’ rock God
I just always love Dave’s solos
And he’s clearly a big time,
too-oft over looked
Geeetttarr playin’ genius.
And why might that be?
Probably because the Kinks were actually banned
From playing in the U.S. during much
Of the mid and late 60s
(and I’m still not exactly clear why)
Yeah, I mean they could not play here
And that just so happens to be the
The very heart of the British invasion
(meaning the era started by the Beatles, the Stones
And the Who etc)) and the real start
Of what ultimately became an era
Dominated by Led Zeppelin, the Stones,
The Who, Pink Floyd, Yes,
Jethro Tull and I’m probably
Forgetting one or two great groups.
Anyway, long live the Kinks
And Here they are playin’
A rockin’ tune from
one of the best live rock albums goin’
One for the Road.
Here are…
The Kinks
Live
with Superman
https://youtu.be/Nvsbk4P3NQ0?si=7Plku3yJYP1KzE4h
I’ve said it before
And I’ll say it again
..the Kinks should have only
Ever done live shows
Their studio stuff ..with the possible exception of Destroyer
Never really captures their amazing talent
Okay, we’re runnin’ short of time
So let’s wrap up tonight’s show with
A great tune, and a really great video as well
This tune was originally written
By Cat Stevens
And made famous by the Tremeloes
While I’ve never been sure
That the Tremeloes version made musical sense
Given what seems to be a misalignment of
The moods of the music and the lyrics
…it’s like GURU always says
Hey…it’s rock n roll who even listens to the lyrics?
Ya can’t even hear ‘em half the time.
Anyway here the Mavericks more or less cover
The Tremeloes cover of the Cat Stevens tune
Here Comes My Baby
https://youtu.be/cos9y6Mfv6s?si=khorjhRlMQG45yvN
Wasn’t that great?
But unfortunately,
My director is giving me the cut sign
So we gotta get outta here
And I mean now
So…
for GURU, Suzi
And me,
I’m Stony Riva
Yinz are the best
Thanks for listen’
Thanks for watchin’
Until next time
Goodnight
And don’t let those
Gosh darned bed bugs bite.
————————————————————————————–
END NOTES:
All links to all videos are to offsite URLs. Some factual background was provided by
articles on the various artists and other topics discussed herein by Wikipedia.
No part of this blog was written by artificially intelligent software.
Please note that the names and descriptions of all characters are fictional and any similarity with any actual person is unintended and coincidental.
© Copyright 2024*, David Dixon Lentz All Rights Reserved
*Copyright claim herein applies only to the content contained in this article/blog post that originated with the David Dixon Lentz and not to any quoted or referenced material originating from another source and the like. It does not apply to any music, lyrics, videos or other content contained in or on any linked site, including any of the words, lyrics and/or the performance of any music or videos contained on the sites linked.