Under this legislation, the states received thousands of acres of land (or ’scrip’ for federal lands in other states – New York’s scrip was, believe it or not, forest land in Wisconsin), to be used/managed/sold for the purpose of the establishment of land grant colleges. “The purpose of the land-grant colleges was:
…without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.”

For a list of land-grant colleges and universities, go: Land Grant Universities

The system of Cooperative Extension (basically to have agents bring the wonders of all of this research being done at the land grant universities to farmers and housewives everywhere) was added in 1914 by the Smith-Lever Act. And county cooperative extensions have been growing and adapting to their roles every since, harnessing research to help community development, business development, youth development (the umbrella under which 4-H resides) and so on. Cooperative Extension and land-grant universities are not just for agriculture anymore.

The reason I’m bringing this up is that land grant universities and county cooperative extensions might just be the doorway that entrepreneurs need in order to get their ideas and products out there.

Cornell University, for example, has a Food Venture Center, in Geneva, New York (the main campus of Cornell is in Ithaca, but it has other locations as well). Food Venture Center
They literally can take a New York State entrepreneur who has an idea for a food product all the way from a pot full of whatever this is, all the way through the testing, commercial recipe creation, partnering with processors, getting products inspected and licensed, to marketing and partnering with retailers. This is huge help for someone at the beginning of their business. Now, in Cornell’s case, their Food Venture Center has worked with everyone from Tropicana and V-8 all the way to the New York State Apple Growers Association, all the way down to a lady who showed up with a pot full of her family’s favorite barbecue sauce.

I’m not saying that every land-grant college has a food venture center, but if you have an idea for a product of any sort, it just might be a good idea to contact your county cooperative extension to ask them who might be able to help you at the land-grant institution that they are associated with, and take it from there.

There just might be a business in it.
(photo of Cornell courtesy of Matt Hintsa)

On the face of it, that sounds like something out of a ’say wha?” sort of experience. Doesn’t every place have a farmers market? Someplace?

No. Actually, not. And it’s not like one of those Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland pictures from the 30s where all the kids get together and gosh-darn, come up with the idea of putting on a show to raise money (for, choose one, the school, the town hall, some poor kid who needs to go to the hospital). It’s one thing for a single producer to pull a truck off the side of the road, put up signs in both directions and set up a display of tomatoes and melons. It’s an entirely different thing to develop a farmers market. And even if all the ‘i’s” are dotted, the paperwork is all filed correctly, etc. etc., the farmer’s market might still not succeed.

Here are a few items that are really and truly necessary to have a farmers market (success is another deal):

– A group of producers who are already growing what the local customers would buy AND who are not already over-drawn on other farmers markets in the reasonably close area. If your community doesn’t have one and the neighboring counties DO, there’s a reason for that. It might be that no producers in your county have the time to commit to a farmers market. Or, they might not be in the ‘direct to the consumer’ part of agriculture. Or, they might all be growing commodity items like soybeans, wheat, feedstocks. Or, they might already be going to the other farmers markets and do not have a family member or friendly person who will come out to the farm, pick up the freshly picked produce or the eggs or the dressed chickens or whatever it is, first thing on market day. Nor go to the market location, set up the canopy and the tables and the ice chests or whatever. Nor stay there for the whole market, promote the products, sell, make change, take customer names and emails, and the thousand other things that the individual vendor must do in order to make sure the customers come back next week. Participating in a farmers market takes a lot of person hours. Hours that are taken away from ..oh yes, the farm. For many producers, having a farm stand right at the end of their drive looks like a far better deal. So, question one is: Are there actual farmers (not folks who will go to the wholesalers and buy up yesterday’s green peppers and try to pawn them off as home grown) who are not already committed to a farmers market AND are interested?

– What does the ‘area need’ look like now? How close is the closest farmers market and how often does it operate? Once a week? Twice a week? Is it reachable by public transport? Who is the customer base? If you feel your community needs a farmers market or another farmers market, you have to look at that. We already had several farmers markets in our county at various times of the week, including one that operates downtown two days a week. However, the biggest market at that time operated all the way out at the western end of the county and due to location, had basically no parking and a vendor waiting list that was several years long. So we had access issues and we had vendors who were being shut out. The local cooperative extension was able to make the case that the area could use another farmers market, in an area more accessible, with more parking, and with public transport, one day a week, in a county park. This is now the largest farmers market in the county.

– Do you have an agency or organization that is willing to sponsor a market? This is mostly for organizational and physical location issues. Our local city economic development agency sponsors the downtown markets – they made arrangements to get the street shut to traffic; the park one is sponsored by the county parks department, the county cooperative extension, with an assist from the county public transport, which schedules bus runs into the park, right by the market, on market day. The agency or organization will also need to help the vendors organize themselves into a market group, write bylaws, set fees, define roles and so on. If vendors want to sell processed foods, such as baked goods, jams, jellies, salsa, etc. etc., depending on your state’s Health Department or Agriculture Department rules, the sponsors need to work with those state and local departments in order to get vendors certified, inspected if need be and so on. Again, this is not a Mickey and Judy “Let’s put on a show”.

– Is there a location with visibility and access? Our downtown farmers market has been moved several times over the years and every time it changed location, they lost vendors and customers. They finally moved it in a permanent sort of way several years ago and did lot of promotion and activities on market day to attract people from the 6 square block area. They put the market right next to the court house, on a non-busy little street, which basically was within a two block walk of all the major downtown employers. So, they concentrated the customer base. The county park market has a number of benefits: It’s in an open parking lot that is seen directly from the interstate. There is an exit and entrance right off the interstate right there. There is signage outside the park and inside the park advertising the market and the market developers do a fair amount of ‘activities-based’ promotion to get families to come to the market (bike helmet checks and giveaways, car seat checks, free cookbooks, and so on). The vendors at the park market love that location.

– Is there someone who is willing to put in all the work, usually as a volunteer (unless the sponsoring organization makes it part of that person’s job), to organize the market, collect fees, pay bills, police the situation, act as the face of the market, be the interface between the market, the vendors and state and local agencies and organize and put into play promotional activities, PR and so on? This is a huge issue for markets because vendors want their money to go into activities which put money into their pockets. They really would rather not have to pay for a market manager. Only in large cities or where the market is a ‘destination’ situation where vendors can charge premium prices for their goods and produce, do you find paid market managers. Being a volunteer market manager is a labor of love and burn out is a huge issue. If the market is on weekends, the manager not only has to do work during the week on the market but also has to be there for the market as well. There is a lot of turnover in market managers.

So, let’s say you feel your community could use a farmers market? My best suggestion at that point is to approach your county cooperative extension and ask to speak to the agricultural economic development specialist to talk about it.

(photo of farmers market courtesy of Corey Templeton)

But I digress. As many of Aunt Toby’s readers recall, I have a keen interest in small business, in entrepreneurship, in plain old ‘following your passion’. Although long after the 2010 Winter Olympics has faded from the collective memory, in the chronicles of international curling, I am sure that the growth of interest in the sport is going to be tagged to the pants worn by the Norwegian team this year. But my interest in this story actually is in the company which designed and makes these pants, which are technically golf clothing, Loudmouth Golf.

Brown Alumni magazine

Scott Woodworth, “a graphic designer who lives in Sonoma, California, with his wife, Cathy, and sons, Robert, 13, and Bailey, 14, turned his passion for audacious attire and brightly colored geometric designs into a men’s clothing business targeting a particular subspecies of golfer. “Loud mouth guys may be a little obnoxious,” he says, “but deep down they are good guys. You put those pants on, you are going out to tell jokes and have fun.”

“..After he moved to California, he noticed that golfers there dressed in muted tones. That would have to change. So in 2000 he went to the fabric store, bought a bolt of powder-blue stuff that depicted Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck riding in golf carts, and had a local seamstress make him a pair of pants to wear at a charity golf tourney. “They were horrible looking pants,” he says, “and I loved them. Guys kept asking me all day where I got them.”

He found a clothing manufacturer and ordered seventy-two pairs for his newly formed company, Loudmouth Golf. Six weeks after placing a classified ad in Golf Digest, he’d sold half his inventory. He doubled the next order, and before long he’d drafted his children into helping him pack merchandise from his garage. It was good-bye graphic design and hello clothing business.”

The international interest in the pants crashed Woodward’s server and he is scrambling to restock this particular model, with delivery scheduled for April.

For people who dream of having their own business and who feel that all the ‘needs’ that need to be filled are gone, I’d like to mention that crazy pants for golfers are not necessarily something that screams ‘a need needing to be filled’. What Woodward did, by wearing crazy pants to the tournament and getting comments was actually an unconscious form of focus group testing – on the fly, certainly, but testing nonetheless. Woodward’s advantage was that he also realized that there was a market there (the need) that no one else was doing anything about and that he could fulfill (filling it).

A lot of people would like to start a business, but many times they allow their fears of risk or lack of knowledge to stop them. Woodward was a graphic designer – it is not as if he grew up in the garment business (as Isaac Mizrahi did – Mizrahi’s father owned a dress design and manufacturing business). The difference is that Woodward got on the phone, called around, asked questions, found more people who could answer more questions, found more people who could help him, direct him, show him resources for fabric, sewing, manufacturing and so on. And that’s how he started and has grown his business.

Now, you can be sure that there are people already out there, already in the sports clothing business, who are riffing changes on the Norwegian Curling Team’s pants. Maybe they called up some curlers and asked them if they liked the pants or perhaps what they wanted in pants to curl in? Maybe they are producing them in water repellant fabrics for skiers or snow boarders. Maybe they are producing them with bibs. Or matching jackets. Or matching shirts. or with zippers down the legs. Or glow in the dark? Maybe someone has decided that the whole curling pants thing is a fluke – in Canada, the big deal in curling clothing from what I have heard is colorful sweaters. Maybe someone is going to try to reproduce the diamond motif in a heavyweight sweater. A heavyweight sweater with a zip in the front.

Gad. The opportunities are endless.

Mobile Electronics Repair

The DH heard this story on NPR this week and told me about it – he was fascinated by the major aspect of the story: A guy turning a personal need into a business that is growing like crazy – a mobile ‘small personal electronics repair’ business. From the description above, of people coming up to his van to ask for help when they see the advertising on the side, another thought comes through.

This is the 21st Century version of a hot dog cart. Or the late 19th or early 20th century pushcart guys found in every major city. “Strawberries!!” “Rags..Rags..we buy Rags!!” “Pots and Pans – we fix pots and pans!”

The other thought is this: In the midst of what some economists claim to be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, some people have found a way to build a small business based on repairs, which is a very ancient profession indeed.

People who can repair stuff have a skill that is very useful when times are bad because – people are not in the financial situation where they feel comfortable just throwing something away and buying new. Before the ‘throw away economy’ was produced by the Wal-Martization of manufactured goods (and Wal-Mart is not the only ‘villain’ of the piece here – I fully admit that), there were a lot of things that due to the way they were designed and manufactured and the amount of their cost, people would have them fixed. Electronics such as television sets and stereos, shoes, clothing, electronic appliances, small engine goods such as mowers were all the basis of a thriving sector of the economy: Service and Repair.

The cheapening of practically all goods basically put that out of people’s minds. When it costs almost as much (or perhaps even more) to repair than what the item could be purchased for, then it made no monetary sense (we won’t discuss the whole issue of ‘life time cost’ which includes disposal and landfilling) to have something repaired – it only made sense to throw it away and buy something new..whether it was a pair of shoes, a tee shirt, a pair of blue jeans, a toaster, or a laptop.

What Leontaris (and others who are doing the same thing) has found out is that there are a lot of broken small electronics around with owners who actually just want the damn thing repaired. People have become so dependent on their personal electronics that having the item out of their possession for even a couple of days causes upset(how many people do you know who actually wear a wrist watch now? How many people do you know who turn off their cell phones to go on vacation? How many people do you know who have repetitive motion disorder from using their PDA? How many people do you know who refer to their PDA as ‘a Crackberry’).

The other thing is this: The prices of some of these items new have now become high enough that having to replace it now is going to cause a certain amount of ‘wallet pain’.

Enough so that repairing an Iphone makes sense. Even when repairing a cracked screen will set the person back – 10 minutes of time…and $99.00 for parts and service (which is what Leontaris charges). Enough so that Leontaris not only has this mobile business, but a shop where techs repair other items such as laptops and so on that he can’t keep the parts in his van.

I’ve talked before about businesses that got their start or got really growing in the Great Depression. One of the biggest and most famous is HP – Hewlett Packard, which got its start in the Depression in Mr. Hewlett’s garage. In my local area, a safety pin business which was struggling even before the depression (basically because they were trying to compete in what had become a commodity market), took the opportunity to morph themselves into a tool and die manufacturer, which survived on holding the line on costs. They then evolved into an electronics ‘pick and place’ machinery and systems manufacturer and now they are all over the world. Their headquarters is still in my home town here.

Things are very bad right now – let’s not make any mistake. But for people who are interested in ‘finding a need and filling it’ – now is as good – or as bad – a time to start a business as any. Who knows, perhaps you could be someone who can be a success, help people with their needs, and make more jobs for others.

Now THAT’s a plan we can all get behind.

(Ipod clinic photo by Dan Theurer)

And that has not changed.

I don’t care what the economics pundits and MSNBC bozos wave around. “It’s over.” “It’s NOT over.” “Green shoots” “Turned a corner.”

I could not care less what some of these know-nothing self-interested gasbags say, actually, because I know that there are a lot of people in a world of hurt right now and a lot of them have been that way, frankly, for years. A lot of them used to be middle class and owned their own homes and had retirement. And then things happened..

Job transfers overseas. Outsourcing. And now the economy is in the crapper. For some people, their emergency happened 3-5 years ago – they lost their homes a long time ago and have been living with relatives, driving around the country looking for jobs that are no longer there, or working in places like WalMart (which is really pretty ironic given that the price pressure that companies such as WalMart put on American manufacturers combined with the changes in the laws during the Reagan Administration were the two engines that moved all those jobs out of the country overseas..but I digress).

To get back to my point: One of the things that makes what is going on right now WORSE than what happened in the Great Depression is this: In 1929, people were a lot closer, in terms of skills and knowledge to being able to provide for themselves and to being able to cope than people are now. People who lived in places such as New York City, or Chicago, or Atlanta or a lot of other places were not only within one generation of growing and raising their own food, but were also still doing things such as making and repairing their own clothing, doing their own carpentry, canning and drying food and so on.

Today? Even people who have a piece of ground that they can grow something on if they want to and need to are at a loss as to what to do and how to do it. Additionally, for the last 30 years, we’ve been encouraged to live in a ‘consume and throw away’ society fed by loose credit. That credit threw gasoline on the economic fire and we all went along for the ride, encouraging companies to produce throw-away goods, which fed the economy and the landfills.

Only now, we aren’t buying so much. The savings rate at the latest report is at 8% – a huge increase for US consumers. Doesn’t do squat for the retail sector, but for people who are concerned where their next paycheck is going to come from, socking away money is the only way they know of to have some feeling of control over what is happening.

Now, there is not a whole lot Aunt Toby can do – the president and the head of the Dept. of the Treasury have not picked up the phone to give me a call and ask MY advice. And the only way I know of to help people is to put some knowledge into people’s hands. The only question is: How to get that information into the hands of people who need it the most. If you are really hurting, how are you going to find out what you need to know?

Let’s put it this way – if you know someone who is hurting, who has lost their home and is in a shelter, who is dealing with this situation please help them to get information. Even if it is not here – there is all sorts of info out there, both at a local, regional and national/international level. And to get to it, they need to find where they can get access to it.

In our area, that is at the local public library. In some places, the state labor department has free access in their offices or in job training areas. In some local school districts, or community colleges, they have free local access for community residents.

If you want to do one thing (and you know Aunt Toby is very big on ‘doing one thing’) that will enable you to help someone who’s having trouble in this economy(and it might even be YOU), pick up the phone or go to the public library and talk to the reference librarians and ask them where free internet access is locally. At the same time, ask them if they do workshops there at the library on how to use the internet, what resources there on locally and regionally in terms of finding information on topics such as:

–Job training and apprenticeship programs
–What to do if your home is in foreclosure – any resources out there to help you stay in your house.
–Food pantries
–Programs where people can grown their own fruits and veggies – do such things exist locally?
– Clothing banks
– If you lose your housing, what programs are available to get you and your family into some sort of shelter as soon as possible.
– Free programs for your kids for the summer
– Home heating assistance (it’s summer now, but winter will be here before you know it)
– Home energy efficiency assistance (as in money and help to get your home more energy efficient, whether it’s to keep the heat out or the heat in).

And if you are finding out the answers to these questions for someone else – if you find that in your community, things are not as effective or efficient in terms of these issues, perhaps it is time for you to make some calls, let other people know what the situation is and organize to get some programs started. Yes, I know the economy is in the dumper – but I’ve got to tell you that no one wants to find out in January that there are people sleeping outdoors because they’ve lost their housing and there is no program or not enough spaces for them.

When times are good, it’s easy to hide the ‘worry gene’ – because we all think that somehow, everyone is taken care of — well, before this is over, a lot more people are NOT going to be taken care of and in order for us all to get through this, we are going to have to be a lot more generous with one another. But like the guy in the photo at the top has on his sign: What people want and need is not charity (though charity will get people through the immediate need). What people need are tool that will help them survive – in his case, it was a job. A lot of people need jobs too, but a lot of people can also make use of information right now — people know that there are things they can do for themselves and others.

But to help take care of the immediate and the long term, they need information. Help to be the conduit for that information; it’s the most charitable thing you might be able to do right now.
(photos courtesy of renny67 and merfam)

Well, sometimes, Aunt Toby feels that way about KCE. I have to make sure to keep some of the ongoing things up in the air and revisiting them from time to time before they..well, they won’t go smash on the floor, but the story may not be fresh or interesting any longer and all of my little buggers might lose interest.

So, this post is a bit of a catch up.

Chicks: Well, as we saw last time, they stopped being chicks a very long time ago and are now pullets and cockerels and are now behaving a lot more chicken-y. The cockerels are getting quite annoying for the pullets now, and by the end of July, the pullets will have turned, magically, into hens and will start laying eggs, which means that they need places to lay those eggs IN..nesting boxes.

The DH, having gone through the experience of building the first chicken ‘tractor’ felt that he’d worked out the bugs from that and was now ready to build a ‘new and improved’ tractor complete with nesting boxes. No white wall tires, electric windows or automatic watering devices. In any case, no matter what, we would have two tractors and could theoretically pick and choose our way through our little flock to find the boys and the girls so that we could for sure get the girls into the ‘condo’ with the best roosters and leave the rest of the boys in the first tractor. You would think that knowing a boy chicken from a girl chicken would be the easiest thing going, and for the most aggressive and sexually mature cockerels, it is pretty easy: they are the biggest ones with the combs and wattles. It is a lot harder to select out the least mature cockerels, whose combs have not really started to develop and who do NOT have wattles. But we had to do it, if only for the space factor. There are all sorts of types of combs; our chickens because they were bred for cold northern winters, have what’s called a ‘pea comb’ which is teeny and lays close to the head. In the photograph, you have what people think of as a rooster with a comb – the farther south the chickens are, the better it is for them to have a big upstanding comb like this one because..combs radiate heat out of a chicken’s body. Those red things under the rooster’s chin are what are called ‘wattles’ and I have no idea what their function is, if anything.

As lonely as that sounds, it is not a whole lot of fun to be the cockerel who is NOT the biggest or best because that means that you are constantly being picked on, being shouldered away from the food, and being pecked. You are, as the saying goes, at the bottom of the ‘pecking order’. The ‘last guy’ as it were, is really in tough shape. So, by taking out the biggest (which turns out to be the most aggressive, most sexually mature, nastiest and so on) roosters out of the flock to put in with the pullets, it was as if we had completely reshuffled the deck for the rest of the roosters. They immediately got a lot more room than they had been able to occupy before, had less competition for the food, and a whole new pecking order had to be established. This did not, however, help the little guy at the bottom of the heap; frankly, he is still at the bottom of the heap but he will be able to avoid being pecked a bit more, be able to get a bit more food and will grow a little better and a little bit faster now.

It will also mean that he will probably be the last to go ‘a la Pepperoniville’ as we say at Chez Siberia. But I’m sure that being the last to ‘turn off the lights’ is not going to be much of a compensation for a lifetime of being the guy at the bottom of the totem pole.

The Garden: One of the things about gardening here in Upstate New York is the telescoping nature of time. We really do not get a very long spring, so keeping up with harvesting early things like lettuce and spinach becomes a race against the plants’ bolding as the days get longer and warmer. Needless to say, we have eaten spinach in as many permutations and combinations as I can think of, though I think I might just blanch and freeze the rest to use during the winter when I make my own pasta.

Pick Your Own: Aunt Toby and Elder Daughter will be returning tomorrow to the strawberry farm to pick…snap peas, actually. They are rushing in and are still nice and flat and not woody. My plan is to pick several pounds, blanch a little bit and freeze them in seal-a-meal pouches for use in asian dishes this winter.

The Economy: I don’t care what the pundits are saying – it’s still stinko.
And that is all you need to know.

Anyone who has a child who graduated from college this spring (as we did at Chez Siberia)knows that the overwhelming majority of these kids (unless they are engineers, computer programmers or accountants) are unemployed at the moment. My son’s estimate (backed up by a college intern we have at our office) is that only 1 of his friends had a job by the time he left school and that most of his friends opted to try to get into graduate school to sit out the recession. The Boy has a job for the summer but is looking…and competing with people with much more experience than he has.

We have assured him that Chez Siberia will not be going into the boarding house business any time soon and that he still has his bed to sleep in. However, by the end of the summer, we will no longer be able to cover him with our health insurance (hey people; write your Congressional Reps and Senators and DEMAND health care reform with a public offering). Luckily, New York State has a program that will allow him to buy his own insurance coverage at a not horrible rate.

If you have a child who graduated and is not going on to graduate school, you will need to check out what is available in your state to keep your kid covered — they are only covered for 90 days after their date of graduation. Trust me – for some reason, they can go through an entire four years of college with no more problems than an attack of acne…and as soon as their coverage lapses, something will happen and they will need major healthcare or dental work.

(rooster photo courtesy of nal in miami Juggler photo courtesy of Robbie Veldwijk)

One thing I have not written about is how I feel about credit card companies targeting people who not only are not in a position either psychologically or financially to take on debt, but the effects of people such as these groups who end up with huge amounts of debt at times in their lives when they can least afford to have it.

These people are college students. At one time, even Aunt Toby and her beloved DH, both working, could not even get within smelling distance of getting a credit card. That was before the banking laws were changed in the early 1980s. Soon thereafter, we were inundated with credit card offers. We were not the only ones. As banks and credit card companies started to realize the overwhelming amount of money that was to be made by sticking a hunk of plastic into people’s hands and encouraging them to go shopping, they started to look for other groups of people to market debt (woops, credit) to – and one of the first was to college students. They not only went after college students with mail, special events, advertisements in college newspapers and so on, they also marketed themselves to colleges and college organizations themselves. They gained access to college student records, their home addresses, phone numbers and so on. Students were inundated with multiple card offers constantly.

Students who don’t have any visible means of income. Students who more than likely already had Guaranteed Student Loans and other forms of financial aid.

Students who could not afford to take on any more debt.

“In each year between 2000 – 01 and 2006 – 07, an estimated 60% of bachelor’s degree recipients borrowed to fund their education. Average debt per borrower rose 18%, from $19,300 to $22,700 in 2007 dollars over this time period…. In 2008, 84% of undergraduates had at least 1 credit card, up from 76% in 2004, the last time the study was conducted. The average number of cards has grown to 4.6, and half of college students had 4 or more cards.
Undergraduates are carrying record-high credit card balances. The average (mean) balance grew to $3,173, the highest in the years the study has been conducted. Median debt grew from 2004’s $946 to $1,645. 21% of undergraduates had balances of between $3,000 and $7,000, also up from the last study….The average outstanding balance on graduate student credit cards is $8,612, an increase of 10% from the 2003 average of $7,831.”
Student Debt Stats

We’ve discussed what credit card debt really costs Atkins For Plastic

Now we can discuss the new federal legislation that changes the way that credit card companies can approach college students from now on:
“The bill also addresses some of the worst abuses of credit-card use on campuses. Without a co-signer, full-time college students under 21 will be confined to what amounts to credit-card training wheels, with credit restricted to 20% of a student’s income. The presence of a co-signer protects college students from sudden rate increases; under the new law, a student’s co-signer has to approve any such hikes.”
That’s the good news. 20% of a student’s income. If a student has no income of his or her own, then that student can’t be given a credit card. On the other side, however, the bill did nothing about the access that colleges give to credit card companies in the first place:

“,…the sweeping law, which takes effect in nine months, doesn’t address every college credit-card controversy. Most notably it does little to address affinity-card contracts, which encourage colleges and universities to sell students’ contact information to credit-card companies. These often confidential contracts bond hundreds of schools across the country with credit-card companies eager to sign up undergraduates. In some cases the school’s financial reward increases handsomely when students frequently swipe their cards…”

Indeed, many students, under increasing pressures of exploding rates of tuition and fees and moribund financial aid programs, have turned to using their credit cards to pay for education.

“College students aren’t just swiping their cards to pick up pizza tabs or buy school-spirited sweatshirts. They are increasingly using them for such big-ticket items as college tuition. Just five years ago, 24% of students charged a portion of tuition to a credit card — a number that has grown to about 30%, according to Sallie Mae.”
College Students Debt

Even a college loan would not be charging the rates of interest that credit cards do. And in today’s economy, where this year’s graduates, it is estimated, only have a one in five chance of having a job at this point, how will recent graduates pay off these balances, which will be growing…and growing…and growing with all the late fees, and increased interest as we saw in the example on paying the minimum balance.

In any economy, young people just starting out are actually a vital part of the economic engine. Whether it is buying a car, furnishing an apartment, getting married, having children, or saving up for a house – young people between the ages of 22 and 30 are a vital part of the economic pipeline. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this vital piece of the machinery has actually been stalled for quite some time, as young people, burdened with huge amounts of debt upon graduation and largely without high paying jobs to repay that debt, cannot afford to get married, cannot afford to get an apartment of their own, cannot afford to buy a car..cannot afford to participate in any meaningful way in growing the economy.

The vibrant economy really does require people to spend money. Hopefully they are spending it on sensible sorts of things and saving and investing for the future.

But they can’t do it if they are starting out their lives with something approaching $30,000 in debt, most of which they have to pay off in ten years.

Here is an example
Loan Balance:
$30,000.00
Adjusted Loan Balance: $30,612.24
Loan Interest Rate: 6.80%
Loan Fees: 2.00%
Loan Term: 10 years
Minimum Payment: $50.00

Monthly Loan Payment: $352.29
Number of Payments: 120

Cumulative Payments: $42,274.24
Total Interest Paid: $12,274.24
Note: The monthly loan payment was calculated at 119 payments of $352.29 plus a final payment of $351.73.
The loan balance was adjusted to yield $30,000.00 after deducting the 2.00% loan fees.
It is estimated that you will need an annual salary of at least $42,274.80 to be able to afford to repay this loan.
Student Loan Payments

For me, the lightbulb moment is that last sentence: ‘need an annual salary of at least $42,274.80 to be able to afford to repay this loan.” How many students do YOU know who, upon their bachelor’s degree graduation, have a job in hand that grosses over $42,000? Me neither.

Something much more dramatic must be done to deal with the relationship between colleges, college students, student loans and credit card debt. The current bill is already being screamed about by credit card companies and banks and even this does not go nearly far enough. President Obama has already talked about student loans – Aunt Toby is sincerely hoping that that situation can be radically changed, otherwise, we truly will return to the days when college was affordable only to the rich.

But this morning, it definitely got weird when The Boy looked out the window and announced, “Ma, there are a couple of guys in suits and sunglasses getting out of a sedan – they’ve got wires on ‘em. Whadya do this time?”

Yep – definite FBI or Secret Service; they have the look, you know? And wearing sunglasses at 6:30 a.m., when it’s barely light is a definite give away.

Ding-dong.

“Ma’am — are you the blogger known in some circles as Aunt Toby? We’d like to speak with you a minute.” I showed them into the kitchen (where else) and sat them at the counter (ditto).

“What’s this about, gentlemen? I just write about food, gardening, saving money, that sort of thing. The political and ecological stuff gets posted at firedoglake; I try to keep the whole thing neat and tidy, you know?”

“That’s what we want to talk to you about, Miss Toby,” the taller, beefier agent said, folding his sunglasses and putting them in his coat pocket. “It looks as if you are not doing your part to support President Obama’s efforts with the economy.”

You couldn’t have shocked me more if you’d hit me with an axe.

“Excuse me? Moi? Aunt Toby? Miss “spend your money wisely? Miss “make your own bread” and “how to reline a coat by yourself?” What more can I write about that is going to help people get through the depression we’re having?”

“Not a depression, Ma’am,” the agent said, taking out a small notebook and flipping a couple of pages. “We need you to promote more distracting material – give people something else to think about, to work on.”

“Well, we will be starting a new series on raising chickens next month,” I told them. “The chicks will be here next week – I assure you, they will be very very cute. Very distracting.”

“No, Miss Toby, the President needs your most patriotic efforts in this matter,” the agent said, snapping a rubber band around the notebook and looking me straight in the eye. “He’s asking you to write about…(cue scary music)…the First Lady’s arms.”

A guffaw escaped my lips. “We don’t DO fashion here, gentlemen, “ I told them, turning to the stove to take out a pan of coffee cake. The scent of cinnamon permeated the kitchen; the agents sniffed appreciably. “Besides, for a set of naked arms, those biceps, delts and triceps have received so much coverage that even the most ardent critic should be silenced by this point. What would I write about them that has not been dealt with already?”

The second agent interrupted me. “Ma’am; the President thinks of Mrs. Obama’s arms sort of like FDR’s fireside chats. He believes they give people confidence..make them feel uplifted; he wants as much attention paid to the First Lady’s arms as possible. Everyone needs to do their part.”

And with that, the two men grabbed a couple of pieces of cinnamon coffee cake and left.

So, here is my ‘bit’ for the national economy, courtesy of Michelle Obama’s biceps:

America, you need to get Mrs. Obama’s upper arms. Not doing your part is letting the country and your underarm dingle dangles down. We all need to think of the entire economy is being exemplified by the First Lady’s firm and effective arms because:

1) We don’t have ‘em now. I’ve got big arms – I’ll bet I can benchpress a whole lot more than Michelle Obama because I live on a farm and have to lift a whole heckuva lot. So, I have big arms – but seeing the individual muscle groups is impossible.
2) Getting arms like that requires work. There is so much coverage out there on what our First Lady does to get those arms that I don’t have to cover it in detail. Just remember this: Find something heavy (see “No Excuses Weightlifting” and the gallon jug of water) and lift it. Then lift it again. And again. If the back of your arm hurts, do that again. Stop when you start crying.
3) Getting arms like hers requires sacrifice. The reason we can see Mrs. Obama’s muscles in her arms is the same reason that we can see the muscles in Madonna’s arms and the arms of every weight lifter and fitness model out there. It’s called ‘lack of coverage’ as in ‘not a whole lot of body fat lying on top of that stuff’. Want a six pack? Everyone has a six pack; the trick is uncovering it. I’ve got big honkin’ biceps, delts and triceps but no one can see them unless they’ve got x-ray vision because …well, Aunt Toby is definitely built for comfort, not for speed. If I want Michelle Obama arms, I’m going to have to sacrifice a whole bunch of caloric intake and burn up a whole lot of caloric outtake to uncover them.

So, there you go – use Michelle Obama’s arms as your blueprint to fixing the economy: work and sacrifice will work for both.

Just don’t tell that to the folks from AIG.
(photograph courtesy of touchyphiliac)
This is cross posted at relaxed politics