Wiretap: Lots of college debt, no college degree

 
Everything you think you know about student debt is wrong, according to Upshot’s David Leonardt. According to a report to be released by the Brookings Institution, student debt is high – but it has been similarly high for the last 20 years. The stereotype — the poet who has $100,000 in student debt — is just that, a stereotype. Brookings reports that 76 percent of households with student debt have a total of $20,000 or less. The real problem is not the barista poet, but the person with college debt who has no college degree. According to Brookings, the average amount of debt in those households has doubled over the last two decades. Via the New York Times.

Aaron Blake crunches the numbers: Just how open is the Republican Party to the Rand Paul brand of not-Dick-Cheney-style foreign policy? It’s impossible to know, because it hasn’t been tested. But it might well be in 2016. Via the Washington Post.

It’s pretty clear that most Americans think the Iraq invasion was the terrible blunder. Check those numbers. Via pollingreport.com.

In reply to Elliott Abrams, Jeffrey Goldberg makes the obvious point (and makes it well): No, President Obama did not break the Middle East. It has been broken, in one way or another, for a long, long time. Via the Atlantic.

The University of Dayton announced Monday that it’s withdrawing all investments in the fossil fuel industry. Dayton is the first Catholic university in the United States to take take the step, according to Vatican Radio. University President Dr. Daniel J. Curran said it was the right thing to do and a popular decision on campus. “When we looked at this, we were asking the question: ‘What should we be doing as a Catholic institution to support the social teachings of the Church?’” He said trustees and consultants worked out how to do it to make the move fiscally responsible. “We do believe that this is a model that can be applied in other institutions,” Curran said. “We believe that it can be a catalyst for discussions at other institutions.”

What Republicans don’t get about the Hillary Clinton populism “gaffes”: Romney-like tone-deafness is not the issue. Via the New Republic.

Why Dianne Feinstein slapped down the White House over the Bergdahl swap. The National Journal says the rebuke — with an Obama administration apology – was a long time coming.

[ Image by A.r.e. ]