Anya Kamenetz’s column on Yahoo Finance entitled “The Big Issues for Young Voters” has been getting slaughtered in the article’s comments. Here are a selection of negative comments that illustrate the perceptions of young voters by the finance-page demographic. All spelling is left in context.

Socialists Rock! Oh yeah and John McCain is still breathing… hey I could do unbiased journalism too…. Wake up yahoo! This is a personal finance page (read: wealthier people who rather see people like this roasting on a spit before seeing their taxes go up to support those who dont know what responsibility is).. Get with the program.

the “youth vote”….the most over rated thing since paris hilton.

no, no, no. you must stop drinking the Democratic/socialist koolaid and start laying responsibility at he feet of the younger generation! when i attended college i worked 30 hours a week and took a full workload of glasses while the spoiled kids joined frats and partied all night long. what really needs to happen is kids need to be required (in high school) to take several classes in personal finance to understand how to handle their finances and not just make a plan to move back in with mom and pop when things go to hell and they saddle up a mountain of credit card debt. i am sick and tired of the dems telling voters the government has let them down. are you kidding me?? i have never taken out an ARM and have always lived way below my means, avoiding the financial ruin so many Americans face today. blaming the government is a cop out. the irresponsible all want the responsible homeowner and taxpayer to bail them out! Obama and Clinton are selling a socialist plan they say people are entitled to, but i say you get what you work for, so the younger generation needs to get to work and act fiscally responsible, which our role model government is not inclined to do! wake up and smell the roses Anya!

I don’t even know where to start. For those that don’t know, Anya got her start with a book she wrote about all of Generation Debt’s problems. Great, so we’ve established that as a college student she could put a long report together saying things suck out there. Now, for those of you that haven’t read the book, I saved you the trouble. As for this article, it is much worse because Anya has a degree in journalism, not economics and surely not finance, at least I hope not because it would only be a testament to how bad education has gotten. She states all the problems we have but never has a decent solution. She wants more money in the GI Bill and for colleges. Great, the GI Bill helps about 1% of those going to college and the government giving more to colleges will just result in more domes being built for sports. That’s brilliant. Next idea, let’s discuss social healthcare that we can’t afford as a society and will never get. She writes about young voters as though inexperienced young people have a clue what is waiting for them outside of college. If they did, they would not go to college and wrack up countless thousands in debt. She and her like are the problem young people are faced with. At one point she says our grandparents were better off with manufacturing jobs and pensions, but then she turns and says that the children of tomorrow can’t have pensions and good paying jobs because we have to abide by free trade laws. Anya obviously doesn’t even know why she is saying that because she just made the argument against free trade. I do not wonder how Anya got the position writing for Yahoo. What I wonder is how she keeps it with crap like this!

Anya, your musings on politics are amatuerish. The entire purpose of this column was simply to plug your awful book, wasn’t it?.. I ask Yahoo! Finance, what in the world were you thinking in hiring this girl? P.S. Anya you need to wear more makeup.. I can still see the bags under your eyes..

The much-vaunted “youth vote” comes up every election cycle, yet the same thing always happens: the youth have virtually no impact on the result. Obviously, this article is a complete disaster from start to end. Does she honestly believe Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and the national debt will ever be brought “into balance”? And given the massive financial problems facing this country, sending more people to college to obtain largely worthless degrees is moronic to say the least. She is obviously much better suited to write for college newspapers and free city magazines than a serious Yahoo Finance column (Rock The Vote? “Declaration of Interdependence”???? How can anyone take this buffoon seriously?)

Don’t worry readers, not all young people are this ridiculous . . . but at least she’s cute and went to Yale!

Generation Y members need to come up with their own opinions instead of copying the group on Gootube or Digg. They are such heavy evangelists of group thinking, election results R now decided by only 1 or 2 people high up in the media corporations.

Young people are are rocking the vote and I wish they wouldn’t. It’s bad enough the more experienced aging population sucks at picking politicians (Democrat and Republican)… now we have an entire generation of Americans raised by television who are picking our politicians. Contrary to this article, our young people don’t know what the issues are. They don’t know how to read, that’s why our newspapers are failing and picture-based gossip magazines like “IN TOUCH” are thriving. All they know is what the advertisements are telling them the issues are.

These negative comments are overwhelmingly dominated by McCarthy-esque name-calling, throwing around the labels Socialist, Communist, Leninist, Marxist, Soviet, etc. They also have mastered the ad hominem fallacy with demeaning comments such as “Anya you need to wear more makeup.. I can still see the bags under your eyes..” and “at least she’s cute and went to Yale!” And for commenters that claim young people are uninformed and are single-minded, they sure don’t want to have to see any opinions that contradict their currently-held beliefs: “This is a personal finance page (read: wealthier people who rather see people like this roasting on a spit before seeing their taxes go up to support those who dont know what responsibility is).. Get with the program.”

From the comments we can see their thoughts on young voters. For me the most offensive comment was “Young people are are rocking the vote and I wish they wouldn’t…They don’t know how to read, that’s why our newspapers are failing and picture-based gossip magazines like “IN TOUCH” are thriving. All they know is what the advertisements are telling them the issues are.” Seriously, to use the parlance of the internet, WTF!?! Young people don’t know how to read and we shouldn’t vote. Our minds have been brainwashed by advertising and we can’t think for ourselves. Apparently they haven’t looked at all the research showing that young people are the LEAST affected by advertising and MOST skeptical of it. Newspaper readership is falling because more Americans across the board are going online for their news, not because of generational illiteracy.

From these sentiments we can see the kind of message we as young voters need to send: Our generation is engaged and informed, and we will stand up for our ideas and beliefs despite the myriad systemic obstacles previous generations have put in our way.

How well does your university score when it comes to LGBT equality?

Campus Pride has released its Campus Climate Index rating U.S. colleges and universities on the LGBT-friendliness.

You can read the press release here.

To date, nearly one hundred public and private four- year campuses are listed online, and nearly twice that have committed to an assessment in the near future. In development since 2001, the LGBT-Friendly Campus Climate Index was created in response to the increasing demand for tools and resources to support campuses in assessing LGBT-Friendly programs, policies and practices.

Every campus listed online has participated in a comprehensive self-assessment process based on more than 50 questions under eight different LGBT-friendly categories. Each institution participating in the voluntary program receives a confidential report with results and recommendations to improve the quality of campus life for LGBT & Ally people.

Campus Pride encourages all colleges and universities nationwide to be listed online. The index boasts a Premier Campus Spotlight as well as an Honor Roll that highlights campuses scoring a three-star rating or above. Each participating campus has a public profile available for viewing, and the My Bookbag feature allows visitors to choose an unlimited number of campus favorites to compare and request additional information.

Read the entire article at Consumerist

Hey kids, good news! Student loans will become cheaper under a bill approved last week by the Senate. H.R. 2669, passed 78-17, will recast the Department of Education as Robin Hood, diverting money from lending companies to students.

 WSJ - College Students Facing Rising Birth-Control Prices

College students returning to campus in a few weeks will be greeted by steep increases in one of the few items they have been able to buy cheap: birth control.

For years, drug companies sold birth-control pills and other contraceptives to university health services at a big discount. This has served as an entree to young consumers for the drug companies, and a profit center for the schools, which sell them to students at a moderate markup. Students pay perhaps $15 a month for contraceptives that otherwise can retail for $50 or more.

But colleges and universities say the drug companies have stopped offering the discounts, and are now charging the schools much more. The change has an unlikely origin: the Deficit Reduction Act signed by President Bush last year. The legislation aimed to pare $39 billion in spending on federal programs, from subsidized student loans to Medicaid. And among the changes was one that, through an arcane set of circumstances, created a disincentive for drug makers to offer school discounts.

The contraceptive prices offered to schools are now included in a complex calculation that determines certain Medicaid-related rebates that drug makers must pay to states. In this calculation, deep discount prices would have the effect of increasing drug makers’ payments.

Colleges and universities say the change is having a significant impact on their health centers and the students they serve. Prices have begun skyrocketing for many popular brands of birth control. Health centers are having to reconfigure their offerings and write new prescriptions. And college students are making some tough choices, such as switching to cheaper generic brands or forgoing their privacy in order to claim their pills on their parents’ insurance.

The changes actually took effect earlier this year, but when it became clear to college health providers that the economics were going to change, many of them stocked up on several months’ worth of supply. Only lately has that cheaper supply begun petering out. Some students started seeing the steeper prices last spring and some are dealing with it now during summer sessions, while others won’t see it until they return for the fall semester.

In recent months, at Michigan State University, East Lansing, the price of Ortho Evra, a birth-control skin patch by Johnson & Johnson, more than doubled to $50 for a month’s prescription from $20 last year. At the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo, a low-estrogen pill also by J&J, rose to $52 recently — from $16 last year. The University of Texas at Austin now charges more than $50 for Organon Inc.’s popular NuvaRing, a monthly vaginal device, from $12.

To save money, at the University of Iowa, about three-fourths of students on Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo — a pill that has no generic form — have switched to a less-expensive option.

Such changes concern health professionals, who fear that switching is going to lead to unintended pregnancies by women who are less likely to consistently take a daily pill. “One of the seminal concepts in contraceptive medicine is when a woman is using a method correctly and successfully, the last thing you want to do is change her from that,” says Lee Shulman, board chairman of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals. “You don’t want to change her unless there is an absolute medical necessity to do so.”

He says even switching from one type of daily pill to another can pose new risks for side effects and discomfort, potentially leading women to stop taking it.

Susan Maly, a 22-year-old student at the University of Iowa, says she struggled with switching pills recently. When she went to her college health center to get a refill on her Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo prescription a few months ago, she was distressed to find out that it had gone up to $54 from about $18. Starting this month, she has switched to a cheaper generic pill that has higher levels of estrogen than the Lo brand.

“That was an issue for me,” says Ms. Maly, but she says she will see how things work out for a couple of months. Initially, she says she felt some heartburn side effects from the new pill, but that has since gone away. She finds the dramatic price increase “unfair” to women who have come to rely on birth control, and feel comfortable with the brand they are on.

“This is the one thing that many females on campus are getting from student health,” says Ms. Maly. “It felt like we were a target.”

At drug maker Organon, Nick Hart, executive director for contraception, says, “On the one hand, it’s a tremendous disservice to our customers, our young women.” But he says that providing low-cost access to young consumers has to be balanced with “our fiduciary responsibility. It puts us in an untenable position.”

A Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman said, “As a result of this new legislation,” only institutions that qualify as “safety net” providers under the law will get the company’s discounted prices. Safety-net providers include certain facilities that serve low-income families. She added, “We are one of the lowest-cost providers of contraceptives to public health services.”

Health professionals say it’s particularly critical for college women to have access to cheap contraception. Two-thirds of college students reported having at least one sexual partner in the prior 12 months, according to a fall 2006 survey of more than 23,000 students by the American College Health Association. Condoms have been available free on many campuses, and are considered the best form of contraception for preventing sexually transmitted infections.

“Maybe, if more people switch from hormonal methods to condoms, we may see a positive outcome of fewer STI’s,” says Mary Hoban, a project director for the American College Health Association. “But from a contraceptive standpoint, we may see more unintended pregnancy. It’s a double-edged sword.”

About 40% of sexually active college women reported relying on pills and other prescription forms of birth control, according to the ACHA data.

“College women are at the highest risk for unintended pregnancy because they’re sexually active, they’re very fertile, and they are away from home,” says Dr. Shulman, adding that students count on their health service for a host of reasons, from counseling to testing for sexually transmitted diseases, to birth-control prescriptions.

Many young women turn to their college health centers for these services because of the privacy it affords as much as the convenience and pricing. Theresa Spalding, medical director at UT Austin’s University Health Services, says that “now, at the higher price, they are faced with having to decide, ‘Do I involve my parents?’” in order to get insurance coverage.

College health centers also say the change threatens to lessen the quality of service they can provide, since the price increases have eaten into the profits that they make. Pamela Houle, administrative director for the health center at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., says the health center now subsidizes each NuvaRing by about $4. “Previously, we were making $17 a ring.” That may mean fewer educational resources and materials down the line, she says.

When I graduated from college in 1977, the average cost for a year’s tuition, room, and board at a public, four-year school was $1,936. That was a major expense: almost 15% of the average American household’s income, enough to make many families think twice before sending their children to college.

Since then, the price tag has grown much, much higher. It is now a dizzying $13,000, almost 28% of the average household’s annual earnings. Instead of graduating with hope for their future, today’s college students graduate with loan payments as far as the eye can see.

Earlier this month, Congress acted to rein in the runaway cost of higher education. With my enthusiastic support, the House of Representatives passed the College Cost Reduction Act, which will help millions of American students afford a college degree.

The bill expands eligibility for Pell Grants, dramatically reduces the interest rates on federal student loans, and helps public servants such as firefighters and first responders pay off their college loans. Best of all, it won’t cost American taxpayers a single new penny. By eliminating excessive subsidies to the student loan industry, the legislation pays for itself.

Here in Kansas, we have always believed that everyone who works hard should have the chance to succeed. We believe that college should open doors, not close them. Education should create opportunities, not debt.

The College Cost Reduction Act brings that vision one step closer to reality.

With warm regards,

Nancy Boyda
Member of Congress