In the last segment of "Meet the Press", reporter David Gregory elicited a stunning response from GOP Presidential Candidate Ron Paul:
He wants to do away with student loans for post-secondary education.
At least that is the brief assumption of an AP report in the LA Times, which offered this title to their reaction to this move:
"Ron Paul would cut student loans"
The bald assumption at first glance suggests that he would slash their financial support right away.
Only in the text of the piece does the reported spell out the whole policy:
"He would kill the program eventually," after previously pointing out that Paul's economic policy calls for the elimination of cabinet-level departments and a privatization option for young workers. Nothing about cutting student aid.
The the article editorializes further:
"That [cutting student loans] could put him at odds with some of his followers."
Despite the emotional reaction many have to such a move, the rapid infusion of grant and loan money is the very scourge causing college tuition to explode six times the rate of inflation. Ron Paul stressed this economic reality in his interview, yet the Times conveniently neglects to mention this argument.
Dismissing his contention with the mention of current tuition for Paul's undergraduate and medical Alma maters is also a cheap attack. The Texas Congressman paid a fraction of such costs nearly five decades ago because the government was not subsidizing post-secondary nearly has much as now.
Whether purposely or inadvertently, the media's ignorance of economics undermines the salient and salutary polices of Presidential Candidate Ron Paul, the one contender for the Executive Office with clear-headed views and insight to take this nation out of its current torpor and into renewed prosperity.
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