Both and...

Any regular writer not discussing the tragic shooting in Texas is insensitive. While I have grown desensitized to adults shooting each other - you read about a few of them in the paper every morning - I am still horrified by our elementary students' deaths. Good grief.

As always, the Uvalde shooting has created an outpouring of prayers*, sympathy, and expressions of grief. But it has also, as always, offered highly politicized methods of preventing such incidents in the future. I am totally disgusted with using tragedies for political gains, regardless of which side of the issue is being argued. Disgusted.

• The gun crazies say more psychological counseling is needed.
• The anti-gun loonies say more restrictions on gun ownership are needed.

Those of us in the radical center, say yes - to both. This is not an either or situation. It is a “both and…” 

So many current “issues” should be dealt with by using a “both and” approach.

• Women should have control over their own bodies.
• The health of expectant mothers and viable fetuses should be protected.

• Police methods should be reformed.
• More police and mental health care workers should be added to communities.

• College tuition should be forgiven.
• College tuition loan forgiveness should be means tested.

I don’t know of a single controversial political issue to which a radical center cannot be found by using a “Both and…” approach.

The right solution to these major issues of often moral division will piss off the absolutists on both sides. When in a leadership position in my school districts, I always said that I could never make a decision which made everyone happy, so my goal was to make sure everyone was equally unhappy.

Where is our political party of the radical center? You’d get my vote along with, I am sure, a great many more of us pragmatists. 

*Prayers like acts of kindness only count when done in private and without public recognition. Politicians, don't tell me you are praying. Tell me you are acting.

A restaurant rant

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper. 

A friend and I took a week-long road trip last week to a couple of WIsconsin “hotspots.” (Oxymoron?) We stayed a few days in Bayfield, gateway to the Apostle Islands, and a few more days in Fish Creek, Door County. The scenery was stunning, the hiking trails were energizing (if often a little wet), and our weather cooperated. It was a most enjoyable trip.

We counterbalanced the current high gas prices by driving Heidi’s Prius hybrid that gets 57 miles per gallon. We stayed in modest hotels. Neither of us are big souvenir shoppers. But what startled me were the prices we often had to pay for even a modest meal.

First off, I am no epicure. I don’t expect or look for fine gastronomical experiences - in fact if it says “fusion,” I tend to give the food a wide berth. Heidi is vegetarian and I don’t require meat with every meal. I like a glass of wine with my supper, but the house red is just fine.

But even small cafes offered few entrees costing less than $20, not including salad. Just a sandwich and potato chips usually ran $18. Better be prepared to lay out a couple Hamiltons if you wanted a steak,  porkchop, or some walleye. A stingy pour of bad Merlot was often $10. Yes, we were in two of Wisconsin’s most touristy areas, but even our local restaurants here in the Twin CIties ‘burbs are plenty expensive. (I am sure there are plenty of younger people reading this who find this hysterically cheap.)

A couple strategies helped us bring down the cost of eating on the road. Breakfasts are a pretty good deal and we ate hearty. (See above.) We often enjoyed light trail lunches of sandwiches and fruit purchased at convenience stores. And we often shared an entree and a salad for supper since most servings are enormous and it’s tough to deal with leftovers while traveling.

I also play a mental game when I see the bill. My income today is ten times what it was when I first graduated from college. So divide the bill by ten and think if the price is still outlandish. Hmmmm, would I have paid seven dollars for that nice meal back in 1972 that I am paying $70 for today? Probably. I also have to remind myself that costs have gone up for restaurateurs. And I hope the higher prices reflect better pay for servers, cooks, and dishwashers, not just more expensive raw materials and bigger profits.

There are few things that give me more pleasure than providing a meal to those I love. I love cooking for family and friends. I like picking up the bill when treating at a restaurant. And I consider someone else buying me dinner or cooking for me to be a most sincere act of affection.

But the sticker shock seems to be getting worse each time the server brings the bill.

Forgiving college loans - an alternative

I guess I’ve concluded that it’s wrong to generalize as if there is a single group called “college grads.” In reality, we have at least two different classes of college students and college grads. One group is secure students and grads — those who came from middle-class homes and have some resources as they go from campus into adulthood.

The other group is the precarious students and grads. Over the past few decades, America has done a much better job of getting less-affluent students through high school and into college. These folks are seizing the chance to make the big leap into the middle class, but they have few resources and no margin for error as they make that leap. David Brooks, We Should Cancel Student Debt, but Only for Some, NYT, May 5, 2022

I sometimes joke that anyone who racks up a huge college loan debt may not have been smart enough to go to college in the first place. Perhaps at heart, I am not a very kind person.

College loan forgiveness is a hot political topic right now. And like with most political topics, I love finding the “radical center” which will piss off the highly opinionated on both sides of the debate. 

I get both sides. Rising college costs, often driven by decreased public (tax) support, have hurt recent grads' ability to buy houses, start families, etc.  On the other hand, much of this debt being paid for with our tax dollars helps those in income brackets who least need government support. (Brooks in the column quoted above reports that “the wealthiest 20 percent of households owe almost a third of all student debt. The bottom 20 percent owe only 8 percent.”

I don’t mind my tax dollars going to pay off some student college loans. There should be a cap and the forgiveness should only be for those making or coming from households with modest incomes. (Like teachers, nurses, etc.)

But I have another suggestion based on the forgiveness of a college debt I once held.

When starting my undergraduate degree in 1970, I applied for and was given a National Defense Loan. For $500. In 1970, $500 was nothing to sneeze at. I used it to help fund my first semester of my freshman year at the University of Iowa - the only semester of college during which I did not have a job. It was the first, last, and only government financial aid I ever received in college. (I did once have to borrow $600 from my dad for an unexpected car repair, but that’s another story.)

I finished my undergraduate education at the University of Northern Colorado. I had worked in Colorado for a full year before starting there so I received in-state tuition. As I recall, fees and tuition each quarter were a bit less than $150. Married student housing was less than $100 a month. I drove an old clunker car and rode a used bicycle. There were no cell phone bills, no cable TV bills, no Internet bills, no five dollar lattes, or $200 sneakers. Groceries were about $10 a week including cigarettes at 25 cents a pack. By working 42 hours a week at a slightly higher amount than the then $1.60 an hour minimum wage, I could pay for my education as I went. I had the National Defense Loan repayment deferred until after graduation.

It was when I started my teaching career that  I was the recipient of governmental largess - I only had to repay $300 of that $500 loan. As it turned out, my first teaching job was in a small school district in rural Iowa that qualified as an economically depressed area. And if one worked in a school in an area so identified, 20% of one’s ND loan was forgiven each year of work. Thank you taxpayers from the 70s! I didn’t know this was a “benefit” of working for the school. Given the tight job market for teachers in 1976, I was just damn happy to have a job in my field.

I could get behind a similar program to help recent grads “repay” their debts - through some form of service - regardless of personal wealth. Serving in the military, teaching in K-12 education or preschool, working on medical, police, or firefighting frontlines, providing social services in poor parts of our country, could all lead to loan forgiveness. It is human nature to place less value on the things we are simply given as opposed to those things we earn. College degrees among them.

Quite honestly, I still don’t understand how college students can rack up college debts in hundreds of thousands of dollars. I suspect unscrupulous for-profit colleges and loan providers are a large part of the problem. And the unfortunate delusion that private, high cost colleges guarantee a better job and better salaries than lower cost public colleges or training in technical fields. (See my opening joke.) So along with looking at bailing out grads with high student debt, are there funds being dedicated to teaching students how to avoid getting into such a pickle in the first place?