In the first half, Alan Collinge, the founder of StudentLoanJustice.org, and an outspoken advocate for the millions of Americans whose lives have been harmed by predatory practices of student loan lenders, addressed the ballooning levels of debt, and how there's been a recent crackdown on those in default. In a recent case in Texas, a man named Paul Aker was arrested at his home in connection with unpaid student loans. "This is not an isolated case-- just in the Houston area alone, there are currently plans by the Federal Marshals to arrest some 1,500 people" who haven't responded to court summons for non-payments, Collinge reported.
Student loans have been uniquely stripped of consumer rights, such as bankruptcy protections and statute of limitations, giving rise to a predatory lending system "where the Federal government, quite frankly, sits at the top of the pyramid," Collinge declared. The student loan debt has risen to a staggering $1.3 trillion, with the average undergraduate leaving college with around $35,000 in loans (20 years ago, it was between $5,000- $6,000), he cited. To fix the system, he suggested returning bankruptcy protections, and putting meaningful limits on loans, which would lead to a significant reduction in the cost of college, as well as the booting of various schools that aren't offering legitimate education to students, but are just in it to make money from the loans.
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In the latter half, Prof. Stephen E. Braude, a past President of the Parapsychological Association, discussed his lifelong interest in the paranormal including psychokinesis (PK), evidence for the afterlife, and his studies of physical and mental mediumship. Physical mediumship involving such phenomena as levitations, ectoplasm, and materializations has generally not been looked at in a scientific manner, and is difficult to study under laboratory conditions, he noted.
Braude was able to investigate the German physical medium Kai Muegge of the Felix Circle under somewhat controlled conditions, and searched his body before the videotaped experiment. During the séance, there were some table levitations, and Kai produced large quantities of ectoplasm from his mouth, in a seemingly unexplained manner. Yet, Braude learned later that there was conclusive evidence that Kai had cheated at some other seances he hadn't supervised. Even so, just because a medium uses deception on occasion, it doesn't mean they don't have genuine abilities, Braude pointed out, adding that these so-called "mixed mediums" sometime use trickery out of convenience or necessity when they make their living from producing spirit contacts.
News segment guests: Lauren Weinstein, Andre Eggelletion