Student loans have suddenly become a big deal. Both Obama and Romney are now courting the youth vote by advocating lower rates. I call shenanigans.

First of all, student loan debt is now higher than credit card debt, mortgage debt, any kind of debt you could name. This did not happen overnight or by accident.

The interest rate on student loans is about to double, even though we are experiencing no inflation to speak of.

The problem is not simply the ease of receiving student loans, but the fact that most students are steered into loans with companies that don’t necessarily have their best interests in mind.

It is standard for totalitarian countries to pass laws to prevent its people from leaving. For example, after 1941, Jews in Hitler’s Germany were prevented from leaving Germany or other Eastern European countries under Nazi control. Modern Iran works the same way.

And soon, so will the U.S.

I remember a time when the U.S. used to brag about America’s freedom of travel and complained about other countries restricting that right. I think that time was as long ago as last week, when some officials were talking smack about North Korea.

SUPER CHICKEN

By Marvin Wolf          

When I was a child, I visited the Museum of Natural History in New York. That museum has an interesting history of its own. In a sense, it was inspired by the showman P.T. Barnum. Barnum’s American Museum near Wall Street was a museum of curiosities - many of them fake. That museum still exists in Barnum’s hometown of Bridgeport, Connecticut. However, among the fakeries, such as Fiji mermaids, was a real desire to record the natural history of our planet and provide an educational role. The Museum of Natural History essentially took the place of the American Museum, but with a more scientific and less balderdash type of scientific entertainment. Or so I thought.

As I said, as a child, one of my formative memories of that museum was seeing the giant Brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils. I felt I was learning something about the past. The giant displays made them come alive for me. I believed in these animals, and how they looked because they were in a museum, and scientists worked for that museum, so it had to all be real.

What the heck happened to privacy? I’d like to blame the government for 1984 tactics. I’d like to blame big business for intrusive profiling and data crunching. But I can’t. The problem is… us.

Everybody has a profile or archive of postings somewhere. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Google +, LinkedIn, Google searches, Yahoo searches, text messages. We’ve become a nation of egotists. We can’t let 5 minutes go by without writing it down and publishing it somewhere. Look at me. Look at what I am doing. My mundane business is important because I am important. Is it the fault of government and big business that you leave your likes, dislikes, and far too much personal information around like detritus where anyone can get at it?

Some employers are now asking potential employees for their Facebook passwords. Given the smack talked about employers on the internet, can you blame them? If someone’s Facebook page talks about how they got drunk at work or urinated in the coffee pot, maybe the employer might like to know that.