This debt crisis was legislated into existence
Bronx: To Voicer Lee R. Pitts: No one is more responsible for the student loan financial nightmare than Joe Biden and Barack Obama. When the Middle Income Student Assistance Act was introduced in 1978, Biden helped write a separate bill to block student loan borrowers from seeking bankruptcy protection on the loans. He later championed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, which made all student loans virtually non-bankruptable. He only later adopted student loan cancellation policies as a political ploy to buy votes and maintain power.
Student loans were federalized by Obama in 2010 as part of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act as a means to help underwrite Obamacare and cure defects in the original Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Income-based repayment plans were modified over the years to the point where payments didn’t even cover the accruing interest. Under Obama, the government took over student loans and allowed borrowers to make payments that didn’t cover the interest, which capitalized the loans, and then handed the expanded debt to the taxpayers.
Bankruptcy doesn’t mean debt gets cancelled. If student loan borrowers want the same protection as businessmen, shouldn’t they be held to the same standards of asset verification and credit worthiness?
Colleges and universities took advantage of this unscrupulous system to benefit themselves without any risk while handing worthless degrees to students they saddled with debt. They actually approve and issue the loans. If anything, they should be the ones responsible for subsidizing payments and absorbing losses, not the taxpayers. Charles T. Compton
He was what he said
Manhattan: To Voicer Thomas Murawski: I don’t have to have met or debated Charlie Kirk personally to know he was an unapologetic racist any more than I had to have fought in the Civil War to know that the Southern states caused it to protect slavery. Research and reason prevail over myth and ignorance, or at least they used to. Michael Barnhart
Domination debater
Philadelphia: To Voicer Thomas Murawski: Please let readers know when three Kirk miracles are confirmed so he can be beatified and later canonized into sainthood. Kirk did welcome open debate — with young college students, mostly still teenagers, who mostly didn’t possess the skill and education to verbally spar with the adult fear-mongering Kirk. Steer us to video clips of Charlie debating a mature person with an educated background, like Jon Stewart, and then we can do another assessment of Kirk’s debating skills. Speaking the truth about Kirk — i.e. pointing out that his rhetoric was mean-spirited, anti-women, anti-people of color and just another white male all-around racist like glib-tongued former KKK Grand Knight David Duke — is not “name-calling.” It’s pointing out facts. “No one in their right mind would want to marry such a monster”? Still, plenty of such monsters throughout history have been married. Diane Doberman
Each equally tragic
Fort Worth, Texas: Since President Trump ordered all flags to be flown at half-staff in memory of Kirk, who was shot and killed on Sept. 10, I can’t help but wonder why every American parent hasn’t demanded that flags be flown at half-staff in memory of their murdered children. Tragically, with more than 44,000 gun deaths annually in this country, the problem with memorializing a different child every day is that it would take more than 13 years just to honor the 5,151 children who were shot and killed in 2024. Sharon Austry
Something’s off
Long Beach, L.I.: The caption for the photo accompanying the article “Many in GOP no longer see U.S. headed in right direction: poll” (Sept. 21) stated that Kirk was shot dead in Utah on Sept. 17. Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10. This is not a typo but a blatant lack of research by your liberal “newspaper.” And we all know how accurate these polls are (eye roll). Lisa Tutino
Too political
Mount Vernon, N.Y.: The issue is not free speech versus hate speech. The issue is polemics versus punchlines. Both Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel should have been removed from the air by their networks long ago, even without federal scrutiny, for failing to do their jobs: entertaining the viewing public. Tedd Smith
Democratic crackdown
Bronx: I am not a Trump supporter, and I agree that Trump’s actions bespeak a dangerous kind of totalitarianism. But where was all this outrage from George Clooney et al. when Obama was going after reporters for alleged violations of the Espionage Act? Gene Roman
Ad interruption
Queens Village: The live Farm Aid concert that CNN broadcasts is always for a great cause. The music from rock and country legends is a special treat. I waited patiently for one of my favorites, a rare appearance from Bob Dylan, and when he finally goes on several hours into the night, CNN cuts into the start of his second song to give us some words from their advertisers. Really! What boneheaded person was involved with that decision? Perhaps they were related to the idiot who suspended Kimmel! Lawrence Krasner
Checked out
Bronx: Carlos Mendoza is doing a horrible job of managing the Mets this year. It seems like he doesn’t have a killer attitude this season. Too many bad calls. Feels like he lost interest. Ralph Canzone Sr.
Centrist fence-sitting
Manhattan: Bradley Tusk might better have framed his declaratory advice (“How we should elect centrists in NYC,” Sept. 20) as an interrogatory: “Should we elect centrists in NYC?” Centrists stand for nothing beyond maintaining the status quo. Their survival depends upon skimming support from voters who may be a little right or a little left. Centrism describes the politics of most of the current Democratic Party. Except for a handful of states and urban strongholds, the Democrats — although a natural, historical majority — lose out to a polarized, populist (and minority) GOP. The further implication that the interests of ordinary New Yorkers might coincide with those of business leaders seems remote, since the goal of business has become to increase the value of property without altering its productivity, which means that the cost to its users increases. Michele P. Brown
Silenced majority?
Brooklyn: I am a middle-aged white woman and a lifelong Democrat. I am inspired by Zohran Mamdani’s vision for an affordable and equitable New York for all New Yorkers and look forward to voting for him. I’m sure I’m not the only Daily News reader who supports Mamdani, but you’d never know that because you never print any letters from people who share my views. I wonder if you’ll print this one. Kathy Giaimo
Nothing abnormal
Brooklyn: To Voicer Bradley Morris: Your claim that Mamdani’s father is an “Islamic fundamentalist lunatic who has compared the Founding Fathers to Hitler and the U.S.A. to Nazi Germany” is inaccurate. But you’re entitled to your opinion. I’ll stick with the facts. As I originally wrote, Mamdani qualified to move into his rent-stabilized apartment when he was earning a $47,000 annual salary. He’s stated that he’d give it up if elected mayor. On the other hand, Mayor Ed Koch refused to relinquish his rent-controlled apartment while he was living in Gracie Mansion. Facts still matter. Alana Wilson
Driver testimonial
Belvidere, N.J.: Voicer Kosmas Patikoglou is hoping the MTA will catch wind of his critique of the NYC bus lanes. In the 1990s, I drove NJTransit buses throughout Newark and bus line work from Newark to Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan. The bus lanes in Newark were about a quarter-mile along Broad St. and only during rush hours. The morning rush-hour trips from Newark to Midtown Manhattan had a dedicated bus lane on State Rt. 495, through Union City to the Lincoln Tunnel. As a bus operator in that lane, you needed strong nerves because the buses traveled on the “wrong” side of the concrete divider that separated the opposing directions of the travel lanes to and from the Lincoln Tunnel. Some student operators literally froze at the idea of driving a bus through that. I sailed through with flying colors. Dan Arthur Pryor