Robert Applebaum's blog

Welcome to the fastest-growing grassroots effort on Facebook and the web! Since January, 2009, the Facebook group has seen nearly a quarter of a million people join this cause to make their voices heard and thousands more have joined here. Our success is entirely due to the active participation of our members. As such, here's a few tips on how best to get involved:

Check it out! ForgiveStudentLoanDebt.com now has its own YouTube channel! Now you can post your own video testimonials about your own student loan situations! Keep spreading the word and make everyone aware of this growing crisis and next big bubble about to burst!

http://www.youtube.com/user/ForgiveStudentLoans

President Obama will be appearing this Sunday on This Week with George Stephanopolous and Mr. Stephanopolous is asking the general public to submit questions that you'd like him to ask the President. This is an excellent opportunity to, once again, make our collective voices heard, this time directly by the President of the United States.

Please click on this link to submit your question:

http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/question-president-barack-obama-email-geo...

http://www.twitter.com/bobbyapples

I posted the following statement on my Facebook status the other day which generated a LOT of heated discussion. Figured I'd post it here and let the debate continue. . .

Food for thought: If we have a government "of the People, by the People and for the People," as well as a democratically elected President who won a majority of the vote, what does that say about those who constantly smear not only our president, but the entire federal government in general? Isn't *that* elitist and anti-American?

If 2008 was the year of "Hope" and "Change," then 2009 is the year of Action. Since the beginning of the year, people from all walks of life have begun to realize that, for too long, their destinies were being written for them by people and institutions who didn't have their best interests at heart.

The ever-growing Student Loan Forgiveness movement is a perfect example of how the concepts of Hope and Change have translated into real Action by people who have decided to stand up and demand that their voices be heard.

The Bad News:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/your-money/student-loans/27forgive.htm...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32420582/ns/business-personal_finance/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/14/income-inequality-is-at-a_n_259...

http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/08/a_little_more_than_a.php

Sallie Mae’s desperate efforts:

Tactic 1: “Woe is me:”
http://www.protectdelawarejobs.com/
http://www.protectfloridajobs.com/

http://www.wjhg.com/news/headlines/55468402.html

Today, an article was published in US News & World report entitled "Is Student Debt Really a Problem?" (http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/paying-for-college/2009/08/12/is...). In it, a very telling statement was made:

"The College Board, an organization made up of colleges, published the report to "take down a notch the sensationalist stories about students drowning in debt," Steele says." (emphasis added)

Along with the admonition about taking on too much student loan debt to finance a legal education that goes something like: "if you live like a lawyer when you're a law student, you'll live like a law student when you're a lawyer," the title of this blog is another truism that most new students learn almost immediately upon beginning law school. Bad facts do, indeed, make bad law.

The U.S. Supreme Court today, in a 5-4 decision, overturned Judge Sonia Sotomayor's 2nd Circuit decision in the New Haven Fire Department "reverse discrimination" case(http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-1428.pdf). This summer's upcoming nomination hearings just got a little more interesting.