Shows what happens when kids get educated - they can recognize a con man.  The   
   U.S. is now realizing why they have to get their younger college people out to   
   vote.   
   ____________________________   
   Toronto Star - Jan. 18, 2019   
      
   Ontario’s buck-a-beer playbook is coming to a campus near you — with   
   tuition discounts too good to be true   
      
   You don’t need a college education to know there’s no such thing as a free   
   lunch.   
      
   And you don’t need a university degree to know that discounted tuition comes   
   at a cost.   
      
   The Progressive Conservatives’ plan to cut tuition by 10 per cent has a   
   seductively populist appeal, recalling their buck-a-beer campaign pledge. But   
   it’s only a matter of time before the bubble(s) burst on an equally   
   effervescent gimmick.   
      
   Boasting that he is once again “leaving more money in your pocketbook,â€�   
   the premier is robbing Peter to pay Paul. And hoping the Good Lord won’t   
   notice Doug Ford picking other pockets in the process.   
      
   This isn’t the first government to promise reduced post-secondary costs. The   
   difference is the Tories won’t be making up the difference — because the   
   money will come straight off the bottom line of Ontario’s cash-strapped   
   colleges and    
   universities.   
      
   Remember how apoplectic Progressive Conservatives were when the Liberals   
   raised the minimum wage to $14 an hour? They complained that the   
   government’s generosity was coming at the expense of private employers who   
   would have to find the money elsewhere;    
   now, the Tories are putting postsecondary institutions in the same tight spot.   
      
   But what elevates this gimmick from mere shell game to outright sleight of   
   hand is the government’s cynical bait-and-switch tactics: This tuition   
   discount disguises a regressive revamp of the grant-and-loan program rolled   
   out by the Liberals to deliver    
   effectively “free tuitionâ€� for deserving students.   
      
   Rather than fine tune its fast-rising costs, the Tories have gutted the   
   free-tuition package. They are repackaging it as a modest discount for all   
   (including the most affluent) while the neediest are saddled with higher debt   
   burdens.   
      
   Here’s another way this government is being disingenuously ungenerous: The   
   six-month grace period on interest payments conferred upon students — fresh   
   out of school and out of work — has been rescinded.   
      
   That means debt payments with interest begin upon graduation: Congratulations   
   â€” now pay up.   
      
   In addition to its tuition distraction, the government is promising another   
   pocketbook ploy for students: Colleges and Universities Minister Merrilee   
   Fullerton is now demanding that every student on campus have the option to opt   
   out of any fees they don†  
   ™t want to pay (with the exception of compulsory safety costs).   
      
   This is buck a beer ginned up with a political spin. It cynically undermines   
   student government, campus clubs, or pesky student newspapers that depend on   
   mandatory fees from everyone enrolled so that all will benefit from their   
   collective voice and    
   shared efforts.   
      
   Students will be “empoweredâ€� by not having to pay for student government   
   activities that “they do not see the value in,â€� Fullerton argued.   
      
   It is perhaps no accident that empowering students in this way is emasculating   
   student government along the way. And it is an attack on any minority group   
   that could lose vital funding merely because students don’t like who they   
   are, what they    
   represent, or what they do (Fullerton declined to declare such funding   
   mandatory when asked).   
      
   Imagine a democratically elected student council that publicly opposed modern   
   sex education on campus, or worked against the minimum wage, or associated   
   with a white supremacist. Our premier has said and done all those things, all   
   of which I personally    
   oppose, but that doesn’t give me the right to withhold my taxes and enjoy   
   government services as a free-rider.   
      
   It is an axiom of democracy that there shall be no taxation without   
   representation. Why then do Tories posit representation without taxation (via   
   student fees or, one day, union dues)?   
      
   Beware the wedge from Tories testing the waters of a student opt-out now so   
   they can impose it on unions later. Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives   
   talked publicly about a similar union opt-out (with U.S.-style “right to   
   workâ€� laws) before the 2014    
   election, and we may not have seen the last of it.   
      
   The Tories keep talking about padding our pocketbooks, but their approach is   
   penny-wise and pound-foolish. Everyone knows you need a postsecondary degree   
   to get the job of your dreams (though not having one never stopped Doug Ford   
   from becoming premier,    
   thanks to the family business he inherited after dropping out of college   
   unburdened by debt).   
      
   Education isn’t so much an expense as an investment that opens up   
   opportunities. It’s not akin to a can of beer whose price can be reduced to   
   a bumper sticker slogan.   
      
   Behold the triumph of ideology over pedagogy.   
   ________________________________________   
      
   Massive protest planned in Toronto against Ontario government   
      
   https://www.blogto.com/city/2019/01/osap-protest-toronto-ontario-government/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)