The core Mad magazine luminaries have been getting their belated due for a while now, something that continues with an AV Club interview with Sergio Aragones, who has made a career of working in the margins.
For Me, Not Thee
When he talks about borrowing money today and forcing that debt on the unborn he is literally talking about the very scheme that the Cubs are pushing. That plan calls for the bonds to be paid off over 35 years through amusement taxes.
I saw this on Roger Ebert’s Twitter feed: Joe Ricketts, head of the family that now owns the Chicago Cubs, has spent time and hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money railing about government spending even as the family asked for a $300 million Illinois bond issuance for the renovation of Wrigley Field.
The Housing Scam
Matt Taibbi’s recent Rolling Stone article about special courts set up to facilitate foreclosures details the fraud anchoring the whole process. You’ll feel smarter–and dirtier–after reading it.
Biden in the Onion
“I need to steer clear of D.C. until some shit blows over,” said Biden, sitting in the far corner of a Mexican cantina with his back to the wall and taking a long swig from a bottle of Tecate Light. “It’s nothing I can’t handle, but let’s just say there was a little misunderstanding. Somebody didn’t get something they were supposed to get.”
“And somebody else got a whole lot more than they bargained for,” he added.
The New York Times has a story examining the Onion’s representation of Vice President Joe Biden as a trailer park Lothatio. The story is great, but better is the link to the articles themselves, which are hilarious. (I love the recurring Trans Am.)
Quote from “Biden to Cool His Heels in Mexico for a While.”
The Education Bubble Begins to Deflate?
Reports of students who leave such schools with heavy debt, only to work in low-paying jobs, have prompted the Department of Education to propose regulations that would cut off federal financing to programs whose graduates have high debt-to-income ratios and low repayment rates.
Great article in the New York Times today on the scam of for-profit colleges, which sucks federal money from students and leaves them indebted and jobless.