Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Greetings from Thailand

Today I walked into a dusty old museum on the grounds of a centuries-old temple and monestary, one of over 300 here in the beautiful northern city of Chiang Mai. The museum keeper, an old man speaking broken English, asked me where I was from. "Am-ri-ka," i answered in my best farang English. "Oh!! I think I see on the TV that the Democrats won the day!" he answered with a broad smile.

Since as Luke notes, youth voter turnout grew on Tuesday compared to '02, and we went for Dems by something like 22 points ( I voted absentee, by the way) seems to me like the Democrats have some promises to keep...including cutting student loan interest rates in half (Nancy Pelosi promised in June--look it up) and increasing student aid. It is up to you to hold them to it. While they're at it, how about expanding access to loan forgiveness and income-contingent programs such as we see in every other developed country?

1 comment:

The Urban Naturalist said...

Anya is in fact correct-Pelosi and Miller have pledged to cut interest rates in half on student loans on the first day of a Democratic Congress.

The other pieces of the Democrats higher educaiton platform:
-Increase the maximum Pell Grant to $5,100.
-make tuition tax deductible.