SOTU open thread: Fightin’ president totally ready to fight or something

You’re quite mad. At what, I don’t think you even know…but quite mad nonetheless.

$12.33 trillion

As for his actual performance, im thinking you just didnt appreciate him having made the republicans sit down when he called for common sense 80% issue reforms like clean energy or increased pell grants.

he made your guys sit down for more funding to poor college students…you GOPers got to own your cynical callous worldview over and over again. it was a fine performance.

Karl Marx on January 27, 2010 at 11:53 PM

Yes, he made them sit down everytime he called for more Gov’t spending.

uknowmorethanme on January 28, 2010 at 12:08 AM

But when paired with a public university, whose tuition is actually less than the usual pell grant allotment, you have an effective means of providing a college education to those who would otherwise not get one.

Explain to me why they can’t get a student loan? There is plenty of Financial Aid available for those who need it. Pell Grants are, as explained earlier, a joke.

and besides, your anecdotal sob story is entirely irrelevant. lets stick to the policy, and not your imagination. theres nothing wrong with pell grants, and theres nothing wrong with increasing funding for pell grants.

Karl Marx on January 28, 2010 at 12:12 AM

The primary controversy is that a small set of educational institutions comprising 6% of all college students receives roughly 20% of all Federal Pell grant money. University of Phoenix tops this list with Pell Grant revenue of $656.9 million with second and third place held by Everest Colleges at $256.6 million and Kaplan College at $202.1 million for the 2008-2009 educational year. This is combined with accusations of predatory loan practices on students by the highest Pell Grant recipient, University of Phoenix. Additionally, some of the universities that are top recipients of Pell Grants have low completion rates, so students leave with no degree and large indebtedness leading some former students to accuse recruiters of being “duplicitous.” Top recipient University of Phoenix received $3.2 billion in federal moneys of all kinds in 2008, and these federal dollars provided 86% of its revenue (thus, roughly 20% of its revenue came from Pell Grants). University of Phoenix has, among similar online universities, the lowest graduation rate tabulated by OEDB at 4% compared to the median of 37% and a high of 84% for Champlain College.

uknowmorethanme on January 28, 2010 at 12:24 AM

The Supreme Court decision allows foreign governments or just any entity with tons of cash to greatly influence our elections. It was one of the most detrimental decisions ever made by the Supreme Court. Obama should have spend more time calling them out on it.

You are a damn liar, and you either know it, or you are just ignorant:

President Wrong on Citizens United Case

Tonight the president engaged in demogoguery of the worst kind, when he claimed that last week’s Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, “open[ed] the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.”

The president’s statement is false.

The Court held that 2 U.S.C. Section 441a, which prohibits all corporate political spending, is unconstitutional. Foreign nationals, specifically defined to include foreign corporations, are prohibiting from making “a contribution or donation of money or ather thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State or local election” under 2 U.S.C. Section 441e, which was not at issue in the case. Foreign corporations are also prohibited, under 2 U.S.C. 441e, from making any contribution or donation to any committee of any political party, and they prohibited from making any “expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication… .”

This is either blithering ignorance of the law, or demogoguery of the worst kind.

uknowmorethanme on January 28, 2010 at 12:33 AM

That should be so easy to enforce. Right?

Decider on January 28, 2010 at 12:35 AM

At least make sense when you try to me smart.

uknowmorethanme on January 28, 2010 at 12:37 AM