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Thursday, February 19, 2009

Things you can hear in a network lab.

So today, I end up in a discussion about the proposed solutions to the plan of reducing foreclosures. It was obvious immediately that these 2 gentlemen were most likely Conservative Republicans. No big deal. While discussing the housing market, I disagreed with them both over how house prices would recover. I said they would not get anywhere near as high as they were 2 years ago within the next 15. They both disagreed, and said that it would take about 3 or 4, and not more than 7. And finally, one of them basically says "We're both 40, you're 25, we know more than you," which did irritate me, but topics were switched to the Obama plan so I shrugged it off.

They expressed concerns about how people who bought houses they couldn't afford and had no business buying were going to be "bailed out" while people like themselves who have struggled but continued making the payments were to get no help. I made the argument that there were people out there who got conned into adjustable rate mortgages that suddenly shot up prematurely, and people who had lost their jobs due to no faults of their own, and people who's house was suddenly worth half what they paid for it because of the housing bubble busting, and these people do deserve some help.

They both agreed, even though it really seemed neither wanted to. Then they proceeded to bring back up the people who feed off the system, and complain more about them. I agreed, there are far too many people who do that, but there is no macro way to weed those people out, and the others really do deserve help so they can stay in their homes that they've worked hard for. One of them actually said "I guess I should just become a Democrat and feed off the system like the rest of them." This kinda irritated me. I only said "I'm a democrat, and I'm not on welfare, tenncare, or any other government program other than the Pell Grant & Federal Work Study, which I actually do work for." And basically quit participating with them, since they had taken this from a discussion to an "I hate Democrats" meeting rather suddenly.

Not 2 minutes later, I hear one complaining and the other agreeing about how much they hate the idea of "having to do community service in order to get their Pell Grant money from the government." I said nothing, because I'd already determined that these 2 were so completely among the 3R (Retarded Redneck Republican) category that it was pointless and a waste of my energy to try to convince them of their stupidity. But seriously, how do you go from complaining about people getting money from the government, even if they might deserve and need it, to complaining that you're going to have to work for your money from the government? Do people even know what hypocrisy is anymore? I silently laughed to myself about how self absorbed and misinformed these 2 were and continued doing some lab work.

This doesn't even address the fact that, while I haven't researched or heard anything about it in quite a while, I do believe the community service for college money was supposed to be in excess to the already in place Pell Grant. So it would be "working for extra money." Sigh. 

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