Sherry Chandler

Elizabeth Warren on her testimony before the Senate Finance Committee on the topic “Can the Middle Class Make Ends Meet:”

One exchange stands out. Senator Salazar asked if I had any ideas about how to help middle class families afford college. I talked about Service Pays (direct government loans for four years of college expenses, which could be forgiven if the graduate put in four years of public service–essentially an expanded GI bill). Several senators seemed interested, but Senator Jim Bunning was clearly out of sorts. He explained that he paid for college for his seven children and he didn’t ask for a “government hand-out.” He wanted to know when thinking had changed that families should expect “government handouts” if they wanted to send their kids to college. I haven’t checked the transcript, but I think he said “government handouts” about ten times.

…

I think the senator and I were having an argument over the basic social contract. The senator seemed to be suggesting that the state has no role in developing opportunities for its citizens. As he put it, he provided for his own children. He also seemed to imply that education is a private good–something that is valuable only for the individual who has it and that produces no benefits for the rest of us in terms of higher productivity, more taxes to be paid, more social stability, and so on.

I think the senator is wrong on both counts.

Richard G. Jones in the NYTimes on A Father’s Pain and an Empty Pizzeria:

COOKSTOWN, N.J., May 11 — After the third death threat of the day, Muslim Tatar decided on Thursday to telephone a sign maker. He had an assistant dictate precisely how he wanted the big new banners to read: “Under New Management.”

Not that Mr. Tatar was certain he would be able to sell his beloved and suddenly beleaguered pizzeria here, Super Mario’s. Not that he was even sure he wanted to. But he had to do something about the empty tables, the car honks, the nasty taunts.

“Now, I am target,” Mr. Tatar said, standing in the deserted restaurant on Thursday afternoon. “How do I know some kid won’t come and. …” Instead of finishing the sentence, he raised the thumb of his right hand and jabbed his forefinger, riddling the air with invisible bullets.

“Many learned books on poetry have been written, and they find, at least in the countries of the West, more readers than does poetry itself. This is not a good sign…”

—Czeslaw Milosz in The Witness of Poetry (Harvard University Press, 1983)