Excellent reasoning against privatizing governmental agencies as the congressional Republicans and Donald Trump propose.

(D)ude: Man! You know, I was actually trying to retrieve articles online at the public library yesterday about OPEC, or Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and ended up having to reject the prospect of printing a New York Times article and ended up finding only one source whose printing options did not waste too much paper in the process of retrieval and printing onto the public library’s printer. It was an article from one of Al Jazeera Media Network’s many websites!

(M)an: Dude! The major publishers of online versions of periodicals like the New York Times and Reuters and BBC News are not opening the doors of communication between themselves and millennials. Rather, online versions of major periodicals make the experience of millennial readers retrieving copies of articles, that they find easy to understand and noteworthy to really study and remember for future conversations or lectures and exams, difficult. Particularly difficult to print from the Internet.

D: Man! Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine’s book Stronger Together: A Blueprint for America’s Future does address making the Internet available to all homes in the United States. The disparity in public schools — between students who have and those who don’t have access to do their homework and to engage in supplemental educational opportunities online such as direct access to teachers and tutorials – is already severe but will become quite debilitating for the newer generations of students who will comprise of, essentially, preschoolers who were exposed to computer technology as soon as they became cognizant of the world around them. Have you noticed toddlers in pushchairs from diverse backgrounds at the grocery store playing computer games and apps on their parents’ cell phones and tablets?   

M: Dude! It is startling, yes. But what I would hope is for the toy industry to compete with these computer games and apps by creating newer and newer toys year-to-year instead of relying on fundamentals as old as forty, fifty, or sixty years! The only difference between the toys I played with as a baby and toddler and the toys my nieces and nephews play with today revolves around better safety measures put into place to avoid accidents as a result of faulty gadgetry.

D: Man! Talk about the consumer protection agencies in place because of American politicians from both sides of the aisle coming together for the best interests of the citizenry!

M: Dude! Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine address the issue of protecting everyday Americans like us from fraud and holding the upper echelon in our economy accountable for paying their fair share of taxes. Clinton and Kaine go into details that every American household must read before casting their ballots on Election Day, Tuesday, November 8, 2016. Points like, for example, the following from page 44 that offers excellent reasoning against the question of whether to privatize governmental agencies as the congressional Republicans and Donald Trump propose,

Crack down on predatory schools, lenders, and bill collectors.

Too many students work hard and are supported by taxpayer dollars, only to emerge without a degree, or weighed down by excessive debt for a degree from a for-profit school that doesn’t deliver what was promised. And when things go wrong and students default on their loans, it is students and taxpayers who end up holding the bag, not the colleges that took advantage of them in the first place. We need our nation’s colleges to have strong incentives to keep debt low – and they should be penalized when their graduates are unable to repay their loans. We will embrace bipartisan efforts for schools to share in the risk of paying for college, and ensure that these efforts encourage, not discourage, enrollment in quality programs for underserved students.

1. Enact a new Borrower Bill of Rights. This bill of rights will ensure accurate and timely advice on repayment options, including income-based modification for private borrowers who are in distress. We will also pursue a robust enforcement agenda to protect those rights. These standards will also be privately enforceable so that borrowers can assert their rights even when regulators fall short, which will further deter malfeasance by lenders and servicers.

2. Defend and strengthen the gainful employment rule. We will set standards that ensure for-profit schools adequately support students to complete their degrees and prepare students for work.

3. Ban repeat offenders from contracts to service federal loans. Servicers and bill collectors who consistently break the law and mislead or overcharge borrowers will no longer have access to contracts to service federal loans. We will also have zero tolerance for firms that overcharge service-members and veterans.

4. Protect borrowers from misleading, law-breaking for-profits. We will crack down on law-breaking for-profits by expanding support for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice, and Department of Veterans Affairs to enforce laws against deceptive marketing, fraud, and other illegal practices. We will grant the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau the power to put into place strong consumer protections to ensure all borrowers understand all their options during the entire life cycle of a student loan and are not misled by either lenders or bill collectors.

5. Help defrauded students discharge debt. In addition to pursuing every possible legal remedy against schools that defraud students, we will streamline the process by which students can cancel their debt so that it is not cumbersome. We will also give defrauded GI Bill students another chance to use the education support they have earned.

D: Man! Have you heard of ITT Educational Services having to close down their for-profit ITT Technical Institute campuses across the United States because of the same fraudulent practices listed by Clinton and Kaine above?

(TO BE CONTINUED…)