So, a whole lot has happened.  So much in fact that it’s hard to decide exactly what to write about.  First there is this

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/business/law-school-economics-job-market-weakens-tuition-rises.html?_r=1

And if you’re here on this site you are aware of everything in the story linked to above.  What makes it newsworthy is that it’s in the New York Times.  I suppose I should be happy that one of the most widely read newspapers in the world has taken note of my specific plight.  But instead all I did was crack a beer.  Then I cracked another, and another and then I got REAL mad.  Is this how people who see parents murder their children all the time felt when the media found Casey Anthony? And now thanks to the NYT article…well, my life’s still over.  I’ve got this blog, I do my part to help the next generation.  All I am left with his emptiness.

But there’s more.  How about this

http://abovethelaw.com/2011/07/suing-law-schools-potpourri-tidings-from-law-schools-named-after-a-thomas/thomas-cooley-lawsuit-cl/

That’s right.  Kids like me are rising up and suing their law schools.  Read on to hear what I think about that.

Sure.  If you went to a third rate law school nobody has heard of with few if any successful alumni and you can find a job doing something else or whatever the hell else you did before you went to law school than sure, more power to you.  It’s not like you can’t find a lawyer these days to take virtually any case on contingency.

Me, I went to an Ivy League school.  Sure, they hiked up tuition.  Sure, they lied about employment statistics (though not nearly as brashly) but they have A LOT of powerful alumni who in theory could stand to lose a lot if the name of their dear old alma mater was besmirched.  You see, my law school COULD use its own to defend a lawsuit I would bring against it with some freshly minted Cooley graduate.  Plus I did technically (however very briefly) have a job upon graduation so according to all of this I should be dancing in the street.  Because apparently I didn’t go to law school for a career in law I went to have to have a six-figure job for a couple of months.

So I really don’t know what to write about.  I mean none of this effects me.  None of this effects the people who have been derailed for YEARS.  I don’t this is progress either.  These are just the things that happen as a scam matures.  Everyone knows the pitfalls of playing the lottery or selling knives door-to-door.  Everyone knows that Taco Bell doesn’t have real meat in their tacos.  Everyone knows that Disney World is just paying a ton of money to spend your only free week of the year waiting in lines in 100+ degree heat.  BUT PEOPLE STILL DO IT.  And they probably always will.

Ugh.  Nothing changes.

I try and give you folks a lark with some good-old fashioned bro humor. I had a great story about a bro who opened a puppy rental stand who paid this slam piece to jerk off guys she saw walking said puppies and suggest that for paying off high interest private loans. But you people need help. Serious help. So instead I am going to explain to you something you should have learned growing up watching sports.

Now here is how I know there are no sports fans on this site. One if there were ballets among you you’d have gotten scholarships. Two if you could converse about sports with people you’d be less miserable at work, more pleasant to be around, less likely to lose your job and more likely to find a new one if you do.  And before you get started yes I am going to make a sports analogy BUT I am going to explain it so even those who think Jordan was the greatest football player because he scored the most runs in history can understand.

You are playing a game, say basketball, (round ball, bounces, played indoors) and your opponent is debt. Whoever has the most points at the end of the game (aka the amount of time you want/reasonable amount of time to take to pay off your loans is) wins. Debt is winning by the amount you owe, aided by crooked refs we’ll call interest.

Now the first thing you’re thinking is debt’s baskets count more than yours. You feel like you made one decision aka to go to school, and debt racked up a huge lead. Wrong. Every day you stayed in school was a day debt scored points and you scored none, just like every day you go to a high paying job (such as the one I have) is a day you score points and debt doesn’t.

Now in a close game a team can do what it’s used to doing and have a fair chance of winning. For most people this is working in either there chosen field or in an IT/government role in some cramped cubicle, collecting a check and making payments.

But this isn’t a close game. Moreover if you’re like Benito the opposing team might have shutdown your best player (let’s call him job). Either way though you need to find more ways to score. My homeys on the street refer to this as “hustlin’ “. Please note that this term does not denote illegal activity such as prostitution or selling drugs.

So you want to hustle. Great! There is just one problem; injuries to your roster, particularly the player known as “credit score.” Credit score would be the player that would allow you to get a traditional loan from a bank to start the sort of entrepreneurial venture most individuals associate with the American Dream. Next, if you’re underemployed you also have an injury to the player known as “time.” So in other words, it takes money to make money and time is money and you have neither. Hah!

Sorry. I’m an asshole. But seriously, it’s not all bad. Even you who are ignorant of sports are familiar with the term “comeback.” Games that are so famous that even you’ve heard of them are probably comebacks where a team that fell way behind was able to come back and win. And that’s what greatness is.

In London when the government raised tuition to a small fraction of what it is here in the United States, students took to the streets en masse to remind their country and the world that education is a right not a privilege in the sort of world we want to live in and the next generation deserves.  I realize that a large part of the student debt problem is that generation upon generation buried us with their silence on the issue.  Finally, things got so bad that we took to…the blogosphere.  Where I sit on my  mother’s couch complaining to people of a like mind in a similar situation at no personal risk to me.  I often talk about having nothing to lose, but that’s not true.  There is always the net physical comfort between my current situation and prison or what my life would be like if I were to say, camp outside of Sallie Mae with a sign demanding justice.

It’s easy to blame past generations.  The hard part comes when we ask the question “where do we go from here?” Sadly, the malfeasance of past generations does not absolve us of our duty to try and do better for the next one.  It just means we are going to be largely unsuccessful in changing the world in a timely fashion.  Heck, we are unlikely even to slow the pace at which we are heading in the wrong direction.  All we can really provide the next generation is a small toehold, all we can provide them with is the simple solace that not 100% of everyone did nothing while America was on it s way to a place where you are either lucky enough to have parents who can afford to pay for your education, somehow come to the attention of a relevant scholarship committee or mortgage your future to pay for something that is not worth the cost if thought of purely as an investment in economic terms.  This is of course because the parents of students who can afford to pay are willing to pay even more because of the quasi-discriminatory effect this has with respect to…well…us. 

Going back to the kids in London, the real reason they are in the streets rioting, whether they even are consciously aware of it or not, is not so much that the tuition is a backbreaker for them, but it’s an effort to nip this sort of thing in the bud before it gains momentum and becomes business as usual like it has in this country. 

So kudos to you London.  Whether or not the tuition hikes are mitigated or remain the same the government damn sure will think twice about raising it again because of budget problems created by going off to war with the Americans.

Roy Jones Jr. is a 16 year-old engineering protege who decided to attend The Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, an HBCU, over ivy-league institutions and since has suffered ridicule for his courageous, brilliant and right decision. He exemplified honor, discipline and pride throughout the ordeal and has responded admirably to his critics. It is high time someone commended this young man and help him up as an example of someone who has acted with audacity, pride and power.

The implication for this blog is obvious. Mr. Jones chose the school that offered him the best scholarship, education and experience. He demonstrated wisdom beyond the grasp of 18 and 19 year-oldsters, citing the quality of his specific program and his recognition that many of the schools that accepted him are prestigious in name only. Mr. Jones is not a clown or a performer. He is not here to amuse or impress you because you don’t have a job for him. You can’t afford his services. Mr. Jones has impressed Lockeed Martin. Perhaps you’ve heard of them – they are one of the many employers unimpressed with your over-academic pedigree and has yet to respond to your unsolicited job application.

So why all the hate? Let me tell you why. Mr. Jones scares the mediocre/marginally above average establishment that uses student debt and prestigious schools to weed out minorities and then hunt down and destroy the ones who are so bright that the system has to let them in the front door.  Why, if our best and brightest who happen to be black choose their own institutions free of daily exposure to virulent racism and prejudice that stunts their youthful minds from developing while simultaneously keeping themselves off our radar until they are strong enough to withstand our attacks then we are in serious danger of developing into a pluralistic society.

Detractors of Mr. Jones expected him to pay more money and travel further for an inferior education that he’ll have to earn amidst a student body and faculty that will credit affirmative action for his presence there – and make sure he knows it – only to plop the credential on a potential employer’s desk and find out his attitude is pretty much the same.  You’d like that wouldn’t you? Sorry. Mr. Jones is too smart for that. You’re just going to have to compete with him. Guess who my money is on?

Sigh. I am in line at Costco. Who can tell me three things wrong with that? 1) The Princess should be doing this kind of crap. 2) I shouldn’t have to use condoms with my live-in girlfriend of going on three years to not catch the latest strand of Herpes from a mediocre frat and 3) I shouldn’t have to be at Costco at all. Costco is expensive as hell and the Princess has a very expensive BREAKFAST and LUNCH meal plan only. I didn’t even know that was an option. Not wanting to go hungry, I occasionally make it to campus only to be greeted by asanine questions from her idiot friends “don’t you have a job? Shouldn’t you be at work? Aren’t you like 30?” I was so angry I almost didn’t get a third helping of eggs. I do have my pride though. I am not Benito. I refuse to bring Tupperware.

Oh but get THIS – the Princess isn’t even 100% daddy-funding this. The trifling, shiftless, spaghetti-legged trollup actually took out loans. She’s taking out loans to fuck fratboys while owing me 15 grand.

What does debt for a partner mean in a longterm relationship where you don’t plan to marry that person? Read on to find out.

I mean first there’s the obvious. In a relationship like mine where it’s understood that when you get a better offer you’re gone, if someone else starts borrowing tons of cash to be around good looking people in great shape you expand your search to include not just better offers but comparable ones. Also the cashflow in the household comes to a standstill. The student partner is naturally strapped for cash and the other partner doesn’t want to pay for joint goods like groceries , rent etc. because they know the chance of being paid back is virtually nil.

There are also new turns on the emotional roller coaster. Specifically there are two possibilities: most likely the student partner, racked by guilt and stress fails in every respect and comes crawling back more willing to take the abuse they most likely deserve until the non-student partner leaves for greener more successful pastures.

Now there is the outside chance that the student partner becomes very successful and earns a previously non-existent respect from the non-student partner. The student partner then is put in the tough situation of choosing to stay with their partner who supported them when they were garbage or move on to the untested fellow student-weighing the fact that the sex isn’t stale on one hand to the fact that the student has never been in the real world.

Sigh. But joke’s on the Princess. She will be walking to CVS for the morning after pill from now on. I’ve already got the Herpes cream. Also I am spending the last of the abortion fund here at Costco. In my book for a kid to really be mine and hence obligate me to kill it or raise it is more than just blood and DNA, it’s also a level of exclusivity, otherwise I am just a sucker who got unlucky.

Good luck on your midterms honey!

I am glad Mike Triforce didn’t go to law school five years later, because if he did he would have what I have in my possession: a student loan debit card.  That’s right, in between my student ID and Visa, I have a student loan debit card just in time for Oktoberfest.  You can’t make this stuff up.

So here’s what first came to mind. WWMT.  What Would Mike Triforce Do?  Well, obviously he would steal them.  Imagine how easy these cards would be to steal, and how many cards/accounts could be stolen WITHOUT A STUDENT EVER EVEN KNOWING.  I mean if the card gets stolen who foots the bill?  Keep in mind, the card is linked to the same indebtedness that does not afford you bankruptcy protection. 

Next, I applied my new legal skills.  When analyzing cases I really one ask myself one question: who stands to benefit from this decision? So who benefits from student loan debit cards? Who benefits from students borrowing more money?  The student loan industry had always been a bulk business.  If students are being enlightened on one end with blogs like this one something has to be introduced to counter-act the effect.  Take any harmful product from cigarettes to fast food.  The more people learned about how harmful these things were, the more available the proprietors had to make their products.  Example: in 30th street station the restrooms close certain hours.  The McDonalds does not.  Cigarettes are also given away for so much as taking a survey. 

I can’t help but compare myself to Mike Triforce.  I know that I’m not as likely to get a super firm job as he did, but I honestly feel like I have a better chance of getting out of all this debt.  If student loans are willing to put their money on debit cards…maybe they’ll start accepting online credit card payments.  If they start accepting online credit card payments there will be a period of months before someone invents the obvious fail-safe of only accepting ONE such payment per student per month.  During that time, if one were so inclined, one could apply for and probably obtain 40-50 new credit cards, put a couple grand balance on each one and immediately declare bankruptcy.

I just hope it happens three months after I graduate.

So if this was any other blog I, the most consistent female contributor, would be going on some wild zany trip between jobs where I would discover my lesbian side and drive a car that only only people who don’t have to work at all drive. Well sorry guys. If you’re looking for a sex fantasy you’ve come to the wrong place.

Instead I am going to elaborate on the plan I mentioned earlier about how to get the rest of my JD paid for and earn another degree to boot. Read on for the details.

First as I mentioned I got a new job as a Jr. Analyst at a consulting outfit. The funny thing is they wanted someone with legal training and experience but wasn’t actually a JD or a lawyer. I was specifically told I got the job because I DID NOT finish school. I didn’t have the heart to tell Benito.

Once again if you are reading this because you equate a female blogger between jobs to an orgy tour across some region of the country or corner of the globe you will be disappointed.  I am actually doing the opposite working both jobs for as long as I can. That’s how we roll in Debtors Prison.

But anyway, my plan is to get an executive MBA from the same University where I was going to law school and have my company pay for it which they will do after you have been working for a year. My law school will count a certain number of out of program credits toward graduation, as will the MBA program. Then for the rest of them I just need to take classes that count in both schools…of which there are plenty. So instead of paying for one degree I will be getting two for free (and not taking time off to earn either).

So rather than regurgitating something from ATL three or four days after it gets posted I thought I’d share my news and my plan.  I think step one is self-explanatory if you read the title.  The last straw you might ask? One of those canned “farewell” emails that a laid off associate who still believes in the networking fairy sends out instead of putting as many of his belongings as possible in a bag before security arrives.  This farewell was special though.

Was it sarcastic? Did it rip the firm a new one? No.  Was it a stream of consciousness nervous breakdown?  No that wasn’t it. Read on to find out but if you’re an above the fold type person I will give you a hint.  It has to do with the length.   It was exactly three and a half sentences.

As some of you may know today will be my last day at the firm.  I will be leaving to pursue new opportunities. I enjoyed my time here and appreciated the opportunity to grow professionally. I plan to remain in the area for the time being so please feel

Please feel what? It sounded like she was going to say “please feel free to contact me” and perhaps some personal contact info was to follow.  It wasn’t until I saw this at the bottom that I realized what happened “sent from Mobile.”  So as near as I can recreate the scenario this woman was literally typing her farewell email when the blackberry was snatched out of her hand.  That’s not how you treat people.

So what did I do?  I decided to take a page out of the Mike Triforce playbook.  I stopped going to work and when I WAS at work I spent my time looking for other jobs.  Jobs that had nothing to do with the practice of law. When I found my new job I told the firm that I would have to cut back to part time.  We’ll see how long it takes for them to fire me.  In the meantime I get two checks! Hooray!

The best part however is that by switching jobs out of the legal industry I have discovered a way to finish my JD for practically nothing and pick up another degree to boot.  I am more optimistic about the future than I have been in a long time.  I think I will save that for another post though.

Sigh.  I wish Alpha Man had gone to law school or had at least agreed to write this, but he said it was MY responsibility and to tap into my “righteous anger.” Well kids, here it is.

The New York Times reports that law schools are automatically raising grades on PAST EXAMS for CURRENT LAW STUDENTS and PAYING LAW FIRMS to accept their students.  The first question that comes to mind is, why not help out recent alumni who have been UNEMPLOYED FOR 6 to 24  MONTHS particularly since their grades lack the NATURAL GRADE INFLATION already present on the transcripts of more recent classes?  Well, once you no longer affect the employment statistics of these hallowed halls of learning, nobody cares whether you live or die. 

First let me post the link and then I will dissect what it means for us JD debtors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/business/22law.html

Ok, first let us define the term grade inflation because the article doesn’t quite get it right.  Grade inflation is when, over a period of time, schools (either by changing a curve or by less exact methods) make an effort to raise the overall GPA of students.  There is nothing retroactive about this.  Grade inflation does not mean that “B” you earned your first year is a “B+” by your third year.  Grade inflation is when a member of the class of 2006 and a member of the class of 2009 turn in comparable Property exams the former is a “B” and the latter is a “B+.”  Now, this is bad enough once someone in the class of 2006 becomes unemployed and has to compete with younger graduates with no gaps in their resume and better grades.  Retroactively changing the grades is…I mean there aren’t words really to describe it.  It doesn’t really help students, it simply makes employment even more random than it already is…

Moving on to schools PAYING LAW FIRMS to hire their students…their current students.  No-name law schools have thousands to pay law firms to hire their students?  Why not just LOWER tuition by that amount?  That way students get hired by places that are actually interested in them, are not taxed on the money and don’t have a law firm skimming a tidy profit off the top.  I personally would hire ANYONE to do ANYTHING if I could pay them some fraction of what someone else was giving me to employ them – I just simply wouldn’t trust them with any work that materially affected my operation.

The bottom-line here is the commodification of law students.  In law school we are not the consumer, we are the product, and the beauty of the business is that we’re sold as a final product before we’re even bought as a raw material.  I’m supposed to be impressed by a law school that spends $3,500 so a law firm will hire it’s student when that same student borrowed and will pay back with interest $150,000?  What the law school is REALLY paying for is another sucker willing to borrow that much and put their life on hold for three years only to face crippling unemployment, economic hardship, chaos and shame for the rest of their working life.  How does this work?  Because now the law school can say that the kid they sent to that law firm is employed however temporarily, when it reports its statistics, which thereby effect its ranking, which is directly related to how much students will pay/borrow to go to the school.  And the shameful cycle continues.

To borrow a phrase from Icarus “I feel like a corpse screaming at the living.”  I’ve seen hell but nobody can hear me.  Probably because to accept the magnitude of the fraud being perpetrated would actually lead to madness in those who are currently being sucked into the black hole. It’s like a child hiding under the bed during a thunderstorm.  If you shut your eyes tight enough, just maybe it will go away.  Unfortunately we’re not that little anymore.  We have to face reality.

If you’re living off the grid summer is the best time to travel – less clothes to take, easier to hitch hike since more students are on the road, and you’d be surprised how much free food you can get if you know how to find a barbecque honoring a grad, dad, country or a vet, and that’s not even counting block parties.  Recently I have been traveling and I found myself in Washington, DC where I saw Laurence Fishburne at the Kennedy Center in the one-man bio drama Thurgood.  Just in case any next of kin ever read this, yes I wore a coat and tie.  And I was blown away.

Benito says he’d give back his JD, earned in the guilded halls of the ivy-league, if they would just relinquish his debt.  He calls the piece of paper worthless.  It is of course an understatement to say that Justice Marshall’s JD, earned in extremely more modest accommodations at a time where most law schools were still segregated was priceless, not just for him personally but for our country.  The play alludes to the fact that Justice Marshall saved up enough for tuition working in the service industry and that his mother sold her engagement ring and wedding band in order to help pay his way.  I know an author at the New York Times that would have frowned upon that.

Read on to find out why I think debt might be the new Jim Crow.

It is difficult not to tread into covered territory.  Benito just wrote about parents sacrificing to send their kids to school.  I wrote about HBCU’s about two months back.  So please forgive me if I get repetitive.

Fishburne portraying Justice Marshall stated that one of his early cases had to do with getting equal pay for African-American teachers in a segregated school system.  In a rare call home I was reminded that my own grandmother was a school teacher who NEVER received pay equal to whites and this was reflected in her virtually non-existent retirement well after the laws changed, and this lack of retirement transformed what would have been an inheritance for my mother into unpaid bills, bills which were coming at the same time that I needed help with tuition…help I eventually received in the form of a loan that to this day has gone unpaid, and has more than tripled with interest.  I don’t think my story is unique as far as the plight of African-Americans is concerned.

Now, with that in mind, let’s examine the purpose of Jim Crow.  If one accepts that the purpose of Jim Crow was to keep a race once held in bondage, as close to the state of bondage as possible, and in that sense Jim Crow was an evolution of the remnants of slavery…could this new debt regime be part of the evolution of Jim Crow? Something that is harder to attack through the courts and through marching?  It’s an established statistical fact that black families with equal incomes as white families are worth only a small fraction of what that white family is worth.  Tuition for both college and graduate school has grown far beyond what an individual can expect to earn prior to getting that education, thereby bringing generational wealth to the forefront and in a way resurrecting past discrimination to directly affect the first generation that never went to a segregated school.  And yes, this is the first generation of graduate school age that never attended  a segregated school.  Brown v. Board was 1952 but Boston was having desegregation type RIOTS in the 70’s.  We have a black president but his parents’ union was illegal in a number of states when he was conceived.  We haven’t come that far people.

Sorry I ramble.  Anyway, with me so far?  So, thanks to that meddlesome Justice Marshall we can go to school, but Beck, Palin, Coulter and the rest of the Klan want to hold us back.  How?  Well, we all know what a big deal it is when the first person in a family goes to, say college.  Why? Because that usually marks the beginning of when that family is able to accumulate wealth which is the beginning of freedom from an existence dominated by daily or weekly subsistence.  So, from the Klan’s perspective, it’s not the education so much as it is the wealth that is problematic, and what better way to destroy wealth than to assign debt?  Worst case scenario (again from the Klan perspective) is that the minority in question gets a good job and after three decades more or less breaks even and his children are regulated to the same, thereby preserving the massive inequality that exists today.  Best case scenario the minority has a hiccup in employment, or does public interest work, or has an illness in the family, can’t pay his loans and by the time he is 50 is in a worse situation financially than if he’d dropped out of high school at 15 and started working at the local fast-food chain or grocery store.

Sure this plan screws over poor whites, but poor whites have always suffered the residual side-effects of institutional racism.  Think any of the 15 year-old Confederate soldiers who died ever owned any slaves? Poor whites continue to be pawns of the system.  Borrowing heavily for school themselves they turn their anger toward African-Americans and resentment builds over the handful of blacks who benefit from scholarships or certain Affirmative Action programs…just like the elite power structure intended. 

It’s the same war.  As the enemy evolves battle becomes necessary on multiple fronts.  In the beginning their was one front, blue v. gray.  In the second act their was the courtroom front and the marching front.  Now the fronts are many. Debt is one of them.  Debt cannot be defeated with a musket, or a brief, or a sign with a catchy slogan.  I don’t know how we as the collective can defeat debt but I think the first step is awareness.