Good morning, everyone.  Our roller coaster weather continues.  Last weekend we had sun and 80s.  This weekend we won't get out of the 50s.  The seasons are definitely changing.  We had wind yesterday and expect more of the same today.  I haven't had to pick up the leaves on the patio yet--haven't had any.  But that will come soon and I will have more in my compost bin.  We plan to close up all the storm windows and put up the plastic on the windows this week.  That chore has been in the back of our minds for a bit as we watched the weather patterns.

This story both surprises me and doesn't surprise me.  Like so much else in our predatory capitalist system,  higher education has become a mine field that can as easily plunder the people it is supposed to serve.  The "for profit" education system has become a scandal that the mainstream media has only sporadically discussed.  The victim in all this mess is the student who is often left with unmanageable debt (much of it not dischargeable if t is government guaranteed student loans) and either no degree or a useless degree.  This scam resembles the subprime mortgage scam.  Organizations whose profits demand increasing numbers of loans expanding to exploit people ill-equipped for college and inexperienced enough to be conned into believing that the debt can be repaid easily when they get good jobs with their degree.  In both cases the student gets stuck and the perpetrators of the fraud get off scott free to continue the fraud with new marks.

Lois and I have exchanged a few thoughts on the electoral system.  Eli at FireDogLake has a few remarks on the Occupy Wall Street movement.  He links it to the fact that voters have been negated in our electoral process.  The 2008 election landslide should have given Obama and the Democrats the right to legislate but the Republicans set out to negate the election results and succeeded.  We have entered the era when election results , even landslide election results, an nothing except for as media talking points.  But what does that say about American 'democracy?'