Hamiltonian by birth & occupation!  

.... seeking to restore values, traditions, institutions, laws and protections Canadians once enjoyed
      .....lost by apathy
          ..... but stolen nonetheless

WARNING BEWARE OSAP FRAUD Like the Mafia, OSAP is using sucker rates to tempt innocent students into taking on too much debt. Their calculator shows a default setting of 3.5% which is ludicrous when they know damn well the rate right now is above 5%. Plus, they know rates are headed higher, possibly MUCH higher, like double or triple by the time you were hoping to pay it off. Do not let them sucker you in. See what you can afford at 10%, which is the max setting the calculator allows. Their strategem is deplorable, tentamount to fraudulent. Taxpayers and students, screwed by banksters (agents) - again. Lost? Broken Link? Try changing the file extension from .html to .php or vice versa. Sorry for the inconvenience TAGS FCP, CAP, Election 2011 Bank of Canada (BOC) Money - create, inflate, deflate, banks Fluoridation LRT 1ST, Latest Stadium, Ti-Cats, Pan-Am student debt, OSAP Light bulbs, ban Green Other Back to Initial post in this series - Reflections on Student Debt & higher education. #17, OSAP, the Student Debt Trap -#18 Jan 11, 2011, updates, Dec 2011. My apologies for having you navigate away from the base page but the technical arrangement I wanted to do here wouldn't work on the original pages. Where were we? Oh yeah. . . . . . . "Don't worry", the kid was saying. "OSAP's got me covered. Everyone's doing it, no problemo". You shudder. You're still trying to get your dearly beloved to understand money isn't growing on a tree in the backyard, and even if it is, it shouldn't be treated as such. Indeed, OSAP does promise to take care of everything. Within limits of course. Its website is most welcoming, designed to calm the fears of any student or parent, and encourages any prospective student to follow their dreams and become the best that they can be. There's even Ontario's "Student Access Guarantee: No qualified Ontario student will be prevented from pursuing a postsecondary education due to lack of financial support". What's not to like? Well, maybe you feel all those lessons you taught your kid about living within one's means and saving before spending are beginning to crumble, though to be sure, many would not get there without such support. Sensible advice of working for a year or two before university falls prey to the fear of higher dreams succumbing to mercenary schemes. A first car is very tempting. A co-op program is not always available. But is all this borrowing being made too easy? We hear horror stories about grads carrying huge debts. I listened to a person interviewed on CBC quip that she graduated with a $45,000 "bar tab" - and then went a further $40,000 into the hole because of the bad credit card habit she learned in school. Is that what we call an education? Is this contributing to our society's bent for immediate gratification? Isn't that the very antithesis of the kind of long term thinking that a good education is supposed to inculcate? Isn't that why we study history? What does history say about a society of the indebted? One thing for sure - banks love such folks. Let's have a look at some info I pulled off the OSAP site. Let's see if you find the same kind of easy money feel to it as I do. Will you, like me, hit the roof over the interest rate issue or am i reading too much into it? Please do not rely on the info here for any of your own planning, this is just for discussion purposes - getting a feel for how it all works. Although collected recently, it may be out of date by the time you read it so act accordingly. Click where indicated to reveal it, click at the same spot to hide it. Which is a bit of HTML code I just found and which is way too cool, no?! Fine Print from the OSAP website - read disclaimer (click to display or hide) The OSAP site contains many pages. I made no attempt to maintain the same order or presentation, in fact, I rearranged according to topic so you can see how the same thing is stated in slightly different ways. The wording is theirs, any comments I make are in brackets and/or italicized grey. My text editor cleansed out any of their formatting so any bolding, underlining or italics are mine and are to emphasize a point you might want to consider as a red flag, ie. weasel words. You can be sure that where it says " may " your kid will read it as "will"! The worried parent might want to go right away to the Financial Planning/Paying page which provides links on Scholarships, Financial Aid (grants) and Bank Loans as well as mentioning that students may earn up to $103 per week without affecting their student loan. [not sure how that relates to summer jobs]. On the What is OSAP page one finds a link for HowMuchAidCanYouGet. Your knees wobble. This is it. A table on this page lists (at this time) $360 to $560 per week for singles and married / sole support parents respectively. Yikes, you've been giving your kid about 50 bucks a month for spending money??!! September to April is 8 months or about 34 weeks or about $12,000/yr. How good were your budgeting lessons? Ha! Interest rates - The amount you have to pay to borrow money. On the federal portion of your OSAP student loans the interest rate can be as low as the prime rate of interest plus 2.5 per cent. On the provincial portion, the rate is the prime rate of interest plus 1 per cent. On a Details link one finds the following useful clarification Interest Calculation The following assumptions were used in the calculation of your monthly payment. Outstanding Debt * Federal Student Loans - 70% * Provincial Student Loans - 30% Interest Rate * Federal Student Loans - Prime Rate + 2.5% (Floating Rate) * Provincial Student Loans - Prime Rate + 1.0% (Floating Rate) All students have a six month grace period prior to repaying their loans. If you complete your studies on or after August 1, 2010**, your Ontario Student Loan will be payment and interest free during your 6-month grace period, but interest will accrue on your federal loan. [** I haven't yet figured out what this date refers to - but it probably means we missed out on something! Other pages do not mention it.] Repayment Calculator [with my assumptions plugged in] Total repayable loan debt upon graduation: (After Ontario Student Opportunity Grant) -[assume 4 yrs at the max 12k/yr = $48k ] Repayment period: (Number of months you choose to repay) [Lets use 120 months ] Interest rate: their default is 3.5%, their max is 10% I guess this is the present rate being paid by students?? At 3.5%, 120 months, Your estimated monthly payment: $ 534 Estimated Student Loan Interest Tax Credit: $ 570 At 10%, 120 months Your estimated monthly payment: $ 721 Estimated Student Loan Interest Tax Credit: $ 1292 at max=10%, over max=174 months Your estimated monthly payment: $ 612 Estimated Student Loan Interest Tax Credit: $ 1307 How Do You Repay Your Loan? [Here are various statement made on debt repayments and maximums. One has to be careful not to think that any limits apply automatically or for every student. ] Total repayable loan debt. This is the total amount of OSAP student loans you receive during your program after any Ontario Student Opportunity Grants have been applied against this amount. We've made it easier to pay back your student loans. The Ontario portion of all OSAP loans is interest- and payment-free for the first six months after the end of their studies. The new Repayment Assistance Plan ensures that no one will be asked to pay more than 20 percent of their family income towards the monthly payment on their loans. Capping Student Debt Ontario caps your OSAP student debt at $7,300 for a two-term academic year through the Ontario Student Opportunity Grant. No matter how much you borrow at the beginning of the year, your repayable amount of OSAP will be no more than $7,300 for each year of study. Ontario Student Opportunity Grant May limit your yearly debt to a maximum of $7,300. Repayment period. The usual loan repayment period is 9.5 years. You can repay your OSAP student loans as quickly as you like or take up to 15 years to repay them. The faster you repay, the higher your monthly loan payments, but the lower your total interest payments will be. Paying off your debt Details on Repayment Assistance Options click to expand or collapse) Repayment Assistance Options Repayment Assistance Plan - Helps borrowers with repayment of student loan debt through reasonable and affordable payments. Ontario Student Opportunity Grant - May limit your yearly debt to a maximum of $7,300. Interest Relief - You may be able to suspend your monthly OSAP loan payments if you cannot afford to make them. Revision of Repayment Terms -You can change your monthly payment by increasing your loan repayment period. Debt Reduction in Repayment - May help you reduce your debt if you are still having difficulties repaying 5 years after school. No-interest, No-payment Grace Period For the first six-months after graduating, you are given a grace period before you're required to make any loan payments. During this period, no interest will be added to your Ontario portion of your student loan. This period gives you time to get a job and get grounded in your post-academic life. Repayment Assistance Plan The new Repayment Assistance Plan provides students with more help in repaying their Ontario student loans. The plan is a payment-relief program for qualified borrowers who are having difficulties making their monthly payment on their government student loans. If you're already paying back your loan and are having trouble, you may be eligible to apply for the Repayment Assistance Plan as well. Under the plan, you would make affordable payments based on your family income and family size. The affordable payment increases gradually with your income and can't exceed a maximum of 20 per cent. Borrowers with very low income are not required to make any payments until their income increases. The plan also guarantees that if you keep your loan in good standing, your loan will be paid off over a maximum of 15 years and over a maximum of 10 years for borrowers with permanent disabilities. To enrol in the program, you need to apply through the National Student Loans Service Centre. A single application will give you access to both the new Ontario Repayment Assistance Plan and the federal Repayment Assistance Plan. However, you must reapply for the plan every six months. After you graduate, or are no longer a student you must consider how you'll repay your debt. If you complete your studies on or after August 1, 2010 no interest will accrue on the Ontario portion of your student loan during your grace period. However, interest on the federal portion of your student loan will start to accrue during this six-month period. If you choose to make voluntary payments during your grace period, they will be applied against your outstanding loan principal. Consolidation. On the first day of the seventh month following the month your studies ended, all your outstanding loans are consolidated. This is called your consolidation date. For example, if you finish school in April, your consolidation date would be the first day of November. You're responsible for making your first monthly payment by the last day of the seventh month. You must contact the National Student Loans Service Centre (NSLSC) or your lender within the first six months after you leave school to ensure that all your repayment arrangements have been made. The NSLSC will send you a Consolidation Agreement. It tells you how much you owe, your expected monthly payment and the interest rate. You'll need to sign and return a copy of the Consolidation Agreement. You must repay your loans to the National Student Loans Service Centre (NSLSC) if you have any of the following: + Canada Student Loans negotiated on or after August 1, 2000, or + Canada-Ontario Integrated Student Loans negotiated after July 31, 2001. You must repay the lender (bank, credit union, or caisse populaire) holding your loans if you have either of the following: Canada Student Loans negotiated before August 1, 2000, or Ontario Student Loans negotiated before August 1, 2001 As of your consolidation date, the amount of interest that accrued on your loans during the grace period is calculated and you can either pay the interest or add (capitalize) it to your loan principal. If you choose to capitalize the interest, your monthly payment amount is adjusted accordingly. If you choose to pay the grace period interest, you may be eligible for a tax credit on your T4A for the tax return season in the following year. You're responsible for repaying your loan and any loan, grant, bursary and/or scholarship overpayment. If you don't make your payments, you'll be in default. Your debt will be turned over to a collection agency and you'll be reported to a credit bureau. As a result, your ability to obtain credit such as a car loan, mortgage or credit card may be impaired. You may be ineligible from receiving further financial assistance until the default has been cleared. It may also result in the withholding of your income tax refund and GST rebate. There's no limitation period for the collection of the Ontario portion of the Canada-Ontario Integrated Student Loan. While you're in default, interest will continue to accrue on the unpaid balance of your loan. That's why, if you can't make your payments, it's vital to set things right as quickly as possible. Here's how you can deal with default: Gross monthly family Income Threshold for zero affordable payment Number of Family MembersGross Monthly Family Income 1$1,684 2$2,631 3$3,399 4$4,009 5 or more$4,569 Amount of Aid - RAP Stages Stage 1: Interest Relief . This stage of RAP is available for up to 60 months or until you are 10 years out of school, whichever comes first. During Interest Relief, you make the affordable monthly payment. Your affordable payment will go first towards paying down your loan principal and, if large enough, the remainder will go towards paying monthly interest. The Governments of Canada and Ontario cover all monthly interest that is not covered by your payment. Stage 2: Debt Reduction. This stage occurs after Stage 1, that is, after you have received RAP Stage 1 Interest Relief for a minimum of 60 months or you have been out of school for ten years, whichever comes first. All applicants for Debt Reduction must include proof of their reported family income (e.g. copies of pay stubs for the applicant, and spouse if applicable). If you have a Permanent Disability, you can apply to enter Stage 2 immediately upon entering repayment, without receiving any RAP stage 1 Interest Relief. During RAP Stage 2, you will make either no payment or a monthly affordable payment, depending on your income and family size. Your affordable payment, if any, will go first towards paying down your loan principal and, if large enough, the remainder will go towards paying monthly interest. The Governments of Canada and Ontario cover all monthly interest and principal amounts not covered by your payment, so that your debt is eliminated within a maximum of 15 years from exiting school, or within a maximum of 10 years if you have a permanent disability. Some stories click to expand or collapse) 1. From a forum: I went to school in Ireland. Paid 0 tuition and got a grant of over 3 grand to cover books and expenses. I worked during my last year full time and had a fair chunk of money to come back here with debt free. Canada is proud of its free health care system, and rightly so, but education is also a basic right. All people who want to go to school, and have the ability should be able to. Health care costs every canadian $3000 per head, per year. I've been to the hospital once, and the doctors once in the last 5 years, I have not got my $15000 worth. THat money could have been used for education instead of free health care which primarily benefits the older crowd. A 55 year old man earning 250k can afford to pay for a doctor. A student struggling making 10k a year, can't afford tuition fees. My bro is graduating MAC this year and will be 30k in debt, I feel your pain. 2. And the following from the Star story: "I've come to the conclusion that, even if you follow the instructions perfectly, they'll omit telling you something, or lose a form, or something else, to delay the process. You literally need to call five to 10 times in a month to get it approved, or even make sure it's processed." One might want to suspend judgement on these comments and the whole repayment process because of the change initiated last summer. Steve Russell says new program known as the repayment assistance plan or RAP which says. Payments will be geared to income, with a limit of 13.3 per cent of a borrower's monthly gross income for federal loans and 20 per cent in provinces where governments adopt the RAP for their loans. No payments on federal loans will be required for those individuals with a gross annual income of $20,000 or less. For those required to make only partial payments, Ottawa will pay the remainder to ensure payments can cease after 15 years or 10 years for persons with permanent disabilities. [We wont know how this is going to play out for a year or two. Without having become a expert on all the intricacies of this, it seems that the gummerment is probably responding to complaints and is trying to limit horror stories by putting limits on student's ultimate responsibility, at least for those not in the high salary vocations. This will be a good deal for students if I've understood it correctly.] 3. Derek says (in the comments): September 15, 2010 at 9:37 am It does not follow, as the OECD Report suggests, that higher levels of education will result in greater levels of individual tax contribution: A man with a tertiary level of education will generate an additional USD 119 000 in income taxes and social contributions over his working life compared to someone with just an upper secondary level of education.” There are a limited number of higher-paying professions, and providing higher education to every individual does not mean each will have access to a higher paying profession; the supply is limited. This kind of thinking is responsible for the credential inflation we've been struggling with since the 50s. It won't be long before retail outlets are demanding that their employees have undergraduate degrees. Arguing for higher education for a better-informed citizenship is one thing, arguing for higher education for a guarantee of a better paying job is quite another. Here is the coolest little gizmo I've seen for awhile. If you're too rushed to read, just click the LISTEN button. It's still experimental, so please let me know if I need to fix it! The voice isn't perfect but seems remarkably coherent. Or you can save the mp3 file to listen from your ipod while you're walking or driving. To do this, right click on the button, and save target to your system. Be sure to rename the file with the extension .mp3. After plowing through all this info, two streams of thought present themselves. The interest rate thing, which boils my blood, and the overall educational angle, which has many components. On the latter, my little heart softens up - just a little. No doubt there are worthy students who could not afford an education without borrowing money, No doubt, society needs a highly educated workforce. What is not to like? When everything works out, indeed, there is nothing to dislike. With a good job, loans can be paid off quickly. Everybody benefits. But loans, as we have seen, can go sour, both for individuals, and for whole nations. Therefore I believe we should look this "gift horse" in the mouth. First, a few guesses. I will assume that 20% of the students are aces, 60% are the muddling middle, and 20% are in the wrong place, as suggested in the opening blog or the story about Mary Joosten. Further, I will posit that many of the aces are foreigners, as will be easily found by a google search, or a drive through a premier campus. Taken together, this means that the majority of our kids are vulnerable to things not going so swimmingly. Negative outcomes can be caused by all sorts of factors - personal, institutional, economic and systemic - too many to list. These are the risks that one takes, and I have no objection to individuals taking risks. But I have a lot of objection to 'the system' duping whole student populations. It is one thing for a fast talking swindler to sell some teenager an expensive car, or a phony trinket, or even an education at inflated prices, even if it relys on borrowed money. It is quite another for our government to bully huge batches of kids into tricky dicky loans, or into credit card living, or to confuse education versus credentialism, as I will discuss later. Grade 12 grads are totally unprepared to assess the implications of their loan - which I have not heard discussed anywhere. Plus, kids like Kelli Space are being encouraged to adopt risky credit behaviour, which runs counter to the lesson most parents want their kids to learn. This begins to look like a con game of gigantic proportions. Consider that huge numbers of kids switch courses. One recruiter mentioned 50%. Nothing wrong with that, but shouldn't it be a yellow flag? An indication that the borrowing of relatively huge sums by young folks basically telling their parents where to get off, is based on a wobbly project? An education is not like a salable physical asset that backs a mortgage. The educational asset is very nice, but financially many degrees may be totally useless, unless the student can leverage it into a career. Lots can't. (Certainly one would not suggest students should not change, which would only mean they stuck to a poor fit just for the sake of it.) But maybe more kids should wait a year, instead of being peer pressured to move faster than their minds have really developed? We should wonder why nobody pushes that option. Putting aside the notion that there is any sense to the qualification race (credentialism), for the moment, maybe you, like me, sensed that the tenor of the OSAP site is to sweet talk innocent and excited students into signing themselves up for the very same con job, that is causing the US and Europe so much anguish - variable rate loans. We should be familiar by now with dangers of adjustable rate mortgages. Same thing. Doesn't anyone read the papers? Doesn't anyone get it? Such loans are toxic because one does not appreciate how much repayment difficulties increase as interest rates rise. Only a few old boomers like me can recall when rates hit 20%. It happened once. It can happen again. The whole idea of asking grade 12 graduates to fill in the interest rate box is absurd. Outrageous. A high school grad is expected to do what Mark Carney, ex Goldman Snakes, and now Governor of the Bank of Canada, refuses to do - determine a long term honest and realistic forecast of interest rates! Aren't we kidding ourselves? Most applicants will probably leave the setting at the default of 3.5% which is ridiculous given that real inflation is about triple that rate. The chances of rates being under 4% in 10 years seem laughable, especially in light of my earlier blogs on the banking system. Indeed, even the maximum setting of 10% seems absurdly low - I would certainly not lend out my money for any long term at this rate, despite it being 10 times what I get from my bank. Folks are not clued in yet - one has to consider what one can do with the dollars one gets back as the loan is paid off. How much has gas gone up this year? Anyway, Mark Carney is busy telling Canadians not to go into so much debt, and OSAP is busy sucking young innocent students, into variable rate debt they have no hope of appreciating. What choice do they have anyway? Take the loan, and hope the gummerment will cover your ass if you have problems? That can become a real headache if a good job doesn't materialize. Is that what we want for our kids' future - bowing and scraping to collection agents, as the poster above noted? reader skips down Just to put this into perspective and change the pace a little, let's try out a little polling service that i discovered recently. Being a curmudgeon, I've devised a suitably diabolical task for you - of ten true but conflicting statements, please chose the most true! Canadians should answer for Canada, all others for the US (or whatever). This survey is a new invention designed to increase electrical brain activity to the point a fuse blows, as will be indicated by your actually making a selection! The scientific conclusion will be that you blew a fuse. The unscientific conclusion will indicate which dichotomy sets you off the most. But I thought it was a fun way to present the conflicting sentiments we might be sharing over this dilemma. Is it possible that student needs can be met by anyone not owning a diamond mine? So if the this entire scheme seems like a scam, what could be the purpose? What do we see when we look closely at this gift horse? click to reveal this obvious little secret!! BANKERS, BUREAUCRATS & BOOMERS! ..... is what I see. No matter what happens, bankers and bureaucrats get paid, if not by students, then by taxpayers. Ancient boomers keep their benefits - as long as we/ they can vote. Heads they win, tails kids 'n taxpayers lose. reader starts again Some may protest I'm sure, the same folks that think everything is hunkey-dorey, but we have to also think about what we are trying to accomplish. One of the ideas of higher education is that the more one adopts a future orientation, and accepts delayed gratification, the more one is likely to make a significant contribution. Almost every major advance is preceded by endless effort and error. But by means of loan programs such as this, we reinforce instant gratification, short term thinking, short term goals and short term measurements. We also have to ask WHY so many students need such big student loans. This is because the entire system has become exorbitantly expensive. Overpaid bureaucrats and overpaid profs soaking a million students for an overrated degree too many folks hardly use - but employers demand anyway, just because they can. Some call that degree creep, others, credentialism. When we made these credentials mandatory, we leave the kids too little maneuvering room. Taxpayers are footing much of the bill (80%) - but is there any real offsetting gain? Slowly, second, and even third degrees, are exerting themselves into the workforce, but to what benefit? Canadian living cost creep ever higher in real terms. Tuition is high. Parental wages are falling in real terms. Taxes are sucking the lifeblood out of the economy, in order to pay for fat bureaucrats and all the schemes put in place by Boomers for Boomers, not Gen Xrs. Meanwhile, the good jobs the grads are hoping to get, are being shipped off to China, as fast as our leading citizens can arrange it. Free trade they call it, ignoring the currency manipulation that keeps that party going. Meanwhile, everyone struggles with high taxes, that is supposed to pay for all this, but doesn't. Canadians pay taxes until June, but university education, which is supposed to benefit everybody, is not free (or nearly so) as it is in France, Germany and the Nordic nations. No. Boomers get free health care and expect themselves to be looked after in expensive nursing homes, even if they have no savings. People who should, and could be out working, are enjoying welfare life (while working under the table). Who will pay for all this? The kids. We will leave our trillion dollar debts to the next generation. The kids, once out of high school, get little benefit from all the taxes we pay. They can't get a decent job without a degree, or two. Even students trying to earn a few bucks in part-time 'jobs', are increasingly being told the only thing available is unpaid volunteer positions. Hey, young kids are a liability, not a resource any more - our vaunted system took care of that. The whole darn thing smells like a scam, or maybe a bubble. Every year, two to three hundred thousand high school grads traipse off to our grand institutions, few with any definite goal in mind, except to get away from home and enjoy themselves, leaning on parents, grandparents and greedy banks to come up with the 17 grand for a year of higher 'education'. Don't get me wrong - nothing should be completely free, or it just gets abused. Nor should we abandon higher education. But the way we have stacked the deck in favour of boomers, and against kids in a way this boomer thinks is completely unfair. Just to make absolutely sure they start out on the wrong foot, it seems that we have devised a cunning system of both persuading them that all this crap is essential, AND then we developed a debt trap for innocents to fall into. You hear the stories - new grads owing 50 to 100 grand and unable to find a job while interest is piling up. Employers are saying universities are failing. Universities say high schools are failing. High schools say grade schools are failing. Taxpayers are owed $15 billion or so and the only ones to really benefit, as noted, are those who get the money regardless of outcome - , bureaucrats, boomers and bankers. As a final poke-in-the-eye, bankers may be setting up a second sting in the form of a bursting bubble to ensure the hapless taxpayer gets screwed again. The US situation is particularly bleak with private colleges producing disastrous levels of defaults. One can now see OSAP in a new light - that of a facilitating seducer, tempting young impressionable students with all kinds of promises, in order to sucker them into a lifetime of something that even now is being called debt bondage by means of a sucker loan at artificially low rates, while at the same time building a debt bomb for taxpayers. Not a healthy future vision. I think its time everybody involved had an attitude adjustment. Caveat Emptor. DISCLAIMER. I'm not a lawyer and may easily have misunderstood information - you are responsible for ascertaining facts for yourself!!! Stay Tuned :-) Bob Green Innes Comments - Date: Tuesday, 19 April 2011, 7:24 AM I really appreciate the honesty and time you took to research on OSAP and the literal Debt Trap it is. I am 35 and currently 70k in Student Loan Debt, due to changes in my finances during the recession crunch in 2008 my overall family income dwindled from 2 person to one person and of course my Provincial Loans is now in Collections. As an Immigrant and ethnic minority, OSAP not only gives you false hope but continues the cycle of financial struggle and poverty. Although I have a degree I cannot find employment that suit my educational background and I am half-way through my Masters which I discontinued because I can no longer afford to pay for it myself and no longer qualify for OSAP. I am sure you heard many horror stories and mine is not the 1st. Thanks for the time you took to break this down because many unknowing high-school students are unaware of the false promise OSAP bring, because although you may get the education you still have to pay for it and may not get a job. I currently have an 18 yr old son graduating from high school in June and I shudder to think that he may have to consider OSAP since I cannot afford to pay for his fees, after our family living costs, my student loan payments..like I said it enables a cycle of poverty. Sincerely, Rachelle Thanks Rachelle. Ouch. There are two components that must be pursued, especially in light of the monetary tsunami about to be unleashed in the US which will inevitably bring high interest rates that will crush the Rachelles of this world, and likely her son as well. First the government must take steps to recognise the problem, its complicity in the scam, and the need for remedial programs such as outright debt forgiveness, lower tuition, etc. Secondly, the kids like her son, now contemplating their future must, in the absence of such gummerment foresight (an oxymoron?), look outside the box, especially where there is no backstop such as a rich uncle or well paying job somewhere in the family. Perhaps also, I will put in a shameless plug during this federal election, for the Canadian ACtion Party which has the only policies to tackle the monetary issues we face, which indirectly addresses issues such as student loans. Best of luck - please be careful. Bob. April 24, 2011 Have Your Say Commenting is now in an online forum Hopefully clicking this link will open a new window so you can refer to the original in this window. You don't have to register. Enjoy.

Go to home page (or refresh if there already) Recent Blogs Canada's Central Bank Debacle - Bankers vs Jobs vs Inflation Series format at my newest blog site. Some parts of this blog are published here on this site - I ran out of space here for the entire looong blog! August o11, Blog 26. Family Coalition Party, Canadian Action Party, candidacy Hamilton East, Election Shenanigans, Voting, Results Where's the NOPE party? Blogs 29, 25, 24, 23 Something new for me - a new blog location I'll be dedicating to the Fluoridation issue and it's related petition. Petition to Stop Fluoridating Hamilton's Water - #20 Various blogs on Hamilton's Stadium Debate & Clr Sam Merulla replies - #18 A second look at OSAP, the Student Debt Trap & the post secondary education system. What's the deal? #17b Reflections on Christ-mas #15 Money, meltdown & Banking Blog Risk of monetary Collapse, Analysis of Banking and How our Money is created. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and now 5 (of 5 part series.) Puppy Linux - an amazing mini operating system (OS) #15 Plus, How to make Win 95 do something. #11 - Reflections on Extremism. 1 Did Ryan McGreal find an alternative to spending a Billion? - Melbourne's Makeover. 2 Can Hamilton can have its LRT cake and eat it too? Maybe. Nov 23, 2010. 3 Also a look at whether RTH risks irrelevancy by boosting LRT too much. Tires & Wheels meet Curmudgeon. A Saturday morning discussing how we the people get hosed again. Nov 20, 2010. The blogosphere asks - Can Hamilton Innovate? I list ideas posted, with my 2 cents! Nov 16, 2010. Smart Meter - Money Saving Tips. Energy saving lights may not save energy! Nov 10, 2010. Solar Heater vs Smart Meter. New Hydro time-of-use rate system discourages energy harvesting. Nov 8, 2010. Hamilton's LRT proposal - not so fast. Nov 1, 2010. Windy day for a rooftop blogger. An old laptop soars! Oct 27, 2010. Re - recent bid for trustee Post mortem, links, thoughts, even some updates. There's no such thing as a finished topic or a last thought in politics! Why I ran Problems in education The Credentialism problem The Ritalin problem The spending problem The Union problem Economic Problems The Green thing Voting for your Trustee MailBoxes! Economy General Coming Up MyStoneyCreek asks pertinent questions - i'd better explain myself - if that is possible! Solar energy vs the last of the PIIGS vs local efforts Banking, money risks, a modest proposal Reflections on a Greek phrase Forcing my mind to grapple further with that pesky smart meter thing. I'd hate to be a party pooper when it comes to the good intent of the smart meter - BUT......... So much to mention - GMO foods, fluoridation, dogcast listening, Puppy - maybe I'll put up a sort of note space for miscellaneous Ongoing economic meltdown - two threads: Hamilton's unique problems and the more general economic melting down of the US. Four Horsemen. Global warming questions and myths. I'll borrow this for now. Eventually, thoughts on the deeper questions that vex our world. Favs & Locals Canadian Awareness Network Brainchild of Terry Wilson. Interesting articles of universal interest. RaiseTheHammer.org Brainchild of Ryan McGreal. Many interesting contributors. Hamiltonlive.ca Interesting articles of civic interest. theHamiltonian.com Brainchild of Cal DiFalco. These two blogs will lead you to other bloggers, both individual and NGOs William Gairdner - Right leaning Libertarian Thinker Writings of Stephen James Kerr - Left leaning Blogger & advocate for Athenian Democracy Shiv Chopra - fired whistleblower Health expert Other Hamilton bloggers, more personal than 'systematic' at this point. Jason Allen MyStoneyCreek Hardcorps Undustrial Meridith Pxtl Villany adrian Turbo I thnk this is a blog by Herman T Hamilton-on.ca News - a nice alternative to the Spec USA Watchdog by Greg Hunter Zerohedge by Tyler Durden Bob's BlogLog This website is finally getting to be something organized. Alas, just as it's getting into full swing, it's getting full! I'll be keeping this site alive for various purposes, but I'll be more or less migrating to my page at Hubpages.com, probably with a trailer here. In case you had some difficulty with broken links, please be patient. I'm just changing files over to php so if something doesn't work, try changing the extension from .html to .php. PHP cuts the storage requirements and facilitates the updating of anciliary sections like this one. Master files are used that are pulled into every page (links, header, footer, favs, breviations, etc). For anyone interested, the clever command that is used for this is 'include', the syntax for which can be found on the net. Very cool, no? Most blogs are based on simple table layouts - two or three column using a markup language. The professional sites have sophisticated coding in many languages to provide many features such as automatic archiving, variable text size and the like. We shall see what the future brings but for now I'm just enjoying using HTML and a smidgeon of others such as PHP, javascript. CSS looked interesting too but with the above php setup, looks to be unneeded. Debugging is not my strong suit but this page is nothing like the old basic programs that once drove me nuts. Next: I'll also be starting to group blogs on the same page - why not - saves storage space too. New table for miscellaneous??? (For now, I'll just stick odd stuff below.) Eventually I may get code to improve the comment section but in the meantime, i found an online forum site which makes things easy and fast. First though is to bring some order to the numbering system which right now is conflicted between normal chronological postings, logical pointing system, and page groupings in reverse chronological. Also need to ensure font is not too small on newer hi res screens. Please use your browsers zoom feature as needed - or complain! As you can see, Netfirms is hosting this site. My frugal buddy Johnny suggested it as the most economical site for a modest blogger. The two domains and the two sites cost about a case of beer per year which i guess is justified. There is limited storage and limited bandwidth but that's ok for now. They offer pagemaking services but being a control freak, I prefer to stick to my own understandable system. Hope you enjoy. Bob's 'Breviations LRT - Light Rapid Transit MSM - Main Stream Media k, Mn, Bn, Tn - thousand, Million, Billion, Trillion Dollars GMO - Genetically Modified Organism Foods PIIGS - Portugal, Iceland, Ireland, (Italy?) Greece, Spain, OSAP - Ontario Student Assistance Program. RAP - Repayment Assistance Plan CSLP - Cdn Student Loan Program Cdn, US, Aus, GB, Fr, Ont, PQ - Places abbreviated F - fluorine or, because I'm lazy, fluoride, fluoridated water

Links to other Interests.

Link to letter sent to Prime Minister Harper expressing concerns about the nature of the Copenhagen Treaty and its effects on our democratic rights.

Discover unsettling truths about how the financial system helps itself while trashing your savings & pensions

Green interests: Green Roof, Solar Energy, Waste management/Recycling/ Reuse, politics of Green.

Click for background on provincial issues as an FCP candidate. Further background on the Family Coalition Party.