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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maceng2 who wrote (24793)	1/19/2004 3:30:33 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793689

Student loans "AtlanticBlog" The Guardian describes Clive Stafford Smith as a famous opponent of the death penalty in the US. But apparently what really gets him worked up are student loans. He offers up this in the Guardian today. I have worked against the death penalty in the United States for nearly 20 years. I have watched six men die in the execution chamber - two have been gassed, two electrocuted, and two killed by lethal injection. For me, capital punishment is a symbol of everything wrong with this harsh society. And yet, if I were forced to choose, I would rather see Britain reintroduce the death penalty than follow the American path of pawning the future of a generation with student loans. The real nightmare? Student loans are the excuse students give him for taking lucrative jobs in corporate law, rather than putting up with his paltry wages for his anti-death penalty fantasies. Every year our US office attracts a dozen law students who volunteer to work against the death penalty. The threat of loans stopped none going to university, because they never thought that far ahead. Yet every year I ask who will come back after graduation, and receive the same answer: how can we pay off student loans on $18,000 a year? The decision is forced on them. . . . If students want to spend their lives working for faceless firms such as ICI or IBM, that is their decision. But I resent the fact that I cannot hire talented young people because they owe student loans. I abhor the fact that a generation will be coerced into a corporate lifestyle. How can a government which prides itself on inspiring youth to public service conspire to rob our children of this choice? In other words, he is unhappy about the prospect of losing government subsidized cheap labor. And it gets even better. All these Manhattan corporate lawyers, struggling all through their lives to pay off $50,000 - $100,000 student loans, never following their true calling of saving savage murderers from death row because they can't pay off their student loans. I was driving round Texas with a British student who is currently volunteering to work with my office. He told me how he has to pay £15,000 in university debt, and a further £25,000 incurred qualifying in law. This debt has already stolen his future. For the last month he has worked to help save the life of Linda Carty, a British woman on Death Row in George Bush's home state. He has loved the experience and would dearly like to continue. But he cannot. He is a debt slave. Not surprisingly, he is going to work for a major City law firm. He will probably never be emancipated. Do you see the sweat on their brow? You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store atlanticblog.com