Debt relief is good

Brother was here from Tuesday evening to Friday morning. We had a good time together. He likes to do home improvement projects. So I let him, though the big one he chose isn’t quite done. I created a lot of tabs in my browser for interesting articles that I found while Brother was working and I wasn’t. I’ve already deleted a few of them. Many of the others will get a brief mention. I listened to one of the bonus episodes of Gaslit Nation on Monday (access to subscribers). Hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa answered subscriber questions. I don’t remember the question, though one of the answers was something like this: Those who could fix democracy aren’t. Then they blame citizens – I’ve written about the call to vote harder. And these calls come as the thing they are telling us to do is being taken away. See the new voter suppression and vote meddling laws being passed. Yes, Democrats are calling us to vote harder and Republicans are passing voter suppression laws, but Democrats had a chance to stop voter suppression and didn’t take it. They could have passed anti-gerrymandering laws. Failure to do so means laws passed now may not have effect until 2032. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos wrote on Wednesday Biden made a big announcement about canceling up to $10,000 of debt per student borrower and up to $20,000 if the student had a Pell Grant. There’s a reason for that Pell Grant distinction. If all student borrowers saw same amount of debt canceled the whole program would primarily affect white people. That’s because people of color have more student debt. Since Pell Grants went mostly to people of color helping them more evens out the program. Clawson reported that a parade of people, including Republican members of Congress, were quick to complain that it’s just wrong to borrow money and not pay it back. And equally quick were those saying most of the complainers, including those same members of Congress, had gotten PPP loans at the start of the pandemic that were forgiven. And the record of whose PPP loans were forgiven is conveniently public. Leah McElrath summed it up rather well:

• Debt relief is good. • Elected Republican representatives who themselves enjoyed debt relief criticizing debt relief for others is bad. • The bad part of PPP loans was manipulative RECIPIENT behavior. • The bad part of student loans was manipulative LENDER behavior.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included several good quotes about student debt forgiveness. First from Charlotte Alter of Time:

GenX/millennials/GenZ are carrying the financial burden for educational costs that the state carried for earlier generations. In Colorado, state funding for education dropped 70% btwn 1980-2011. In SC: 66%. In AZ: 62%. Students picked up the tab. By the way, when Mitch McConnell graduated from the U of Louisville in 1964, tuition cost $330 (about $2,800 in today's dollars.) Today, it's up 300%, even when adjusted for inflation. In 1987, a student could pay her tuition at the U of Kansas working a minimum wage, part time job and still have $ left over. Today, that same job would cover only half her tuition, and leave her more than $38k short. In 1987, more than 1/2 of Michigan State's revenue came from state funding-- by 2012, just 18% did. The U of California saw their funding halved over the same period. Meanwhile, schools kept adding new programs, gyms, dorms to attract students. The kids picked up the tab.

Dworkin quoted Anexandra Petri of the Washington Post who mimicked those who declare relieving student debt is unfair to those who struggled to pay it off.

Every time anyone’s life improves at all, I personally am insulted. Any time anyone devises a labor-saving device, or passes some kind of weak, soft-hearted law that forecloses the opportunity for a new generation of children to lose fingers in dangerous machinery, I gnash my teeth. This is an affront to everyone who struggled so mightily. To avoid affronting them, we must keep everything just as bad as ever. Put those fingers back into the machines, or our suffering will have been in vain.

Dworkin quoted Prof. Paul Musgrave, who included a chart that covers part of what he is saying.

please stop saying that student loan burden is the result of a conspiracy led by a future supreme court justice 50 years ago and not the result of broad-based (and often popular) reductions in state support over generations

From a tweet by Joshua Holland:

It is the height of elitism to think working people don’t hold student debt. Many “blue collar” workers do. 87% of the relief is going to people earning less than $75k.

Finally, Dworkin quoted Jeffrey Lazarus, a political science professor:

If you're worried Biden is buying votes with student loan forgiveness I've got news for you about the mortgage interest deduction, SALT, 401(k) contributions deduction, the earned income tax credit, lifetime learning credits, farm subsidies, IRA contributions, not to mention... If you're worried Biden is buying votes with student loan forgiveness boy do I have some news for you about how politics has worked since the beginning of time everywhere in the world.

Clay Jones tweeted a cartoon tackling that fairness issue, in which a doctor says to a patient:

We discovered a cure for cancer... but giving it to you wouldn’t be fair to everyone who’s died from cancer.

And Joe Heller drew a cartoon of a man getting a small live preserver labeled “Student debt help” while others in much bigger live preservers labeled “PPP Loan Forgiveness”, “Billionaire tax breaks”, and “Corporate subsidies” complain “That’s not fair!” Mark Sumner of Kos reported that on Thursday evening Biden gave a speech and came out swinging against Republicans. Biden said:

The MAGA Republicans don’t just threaten our personal rights and economic security. They’re a threat to our very democracy. They refuse to accept the will of the people. They embrace—embrace—political violence. They don’t believe in democracy.

Later Biden gave a bit of his vision of what Democrats will do if they keep the House and get another couple senators:

We’ll codify Roe v. Wade. We’ll ban assault weapons. We’ll protect Social Security and Medicare. We’ll pass universal Pre-K. We’ll restore the child care tax credit. We’ll protect voting rights, pass election reform, and make sure no one ever has the opportunity to steal an election again.

Kos of Kos wrote about the results of last Tuesday’s primary. The big news is Pat Ryan, D-NY, won a race to fill a US House seat through December. It was a race he wasn’t supposed to win. So the general message of this primary and several others since the Supremes overturned Roe is the Red Wave that usually happens during the first midterm of a Democratic president is fizzling. Wrote Kos:

How can you have a referendum on a sitting president, when the old one won’t go away? No one motivates the progressive base like Donald Trump. (All the crime-ing is just a bonus.) But more importantly, we knew the Supreme Court was slated to axe Roe v. Wade. Had Chief Justice John Roberts had his way and merely half-killed it, perhaps things might still be looking up for Republicans. But the High Court’s conservative wing went full reactionary with Dobbs, and the results was a devastating loss of rights.

And that is having a big influence on this election. Stephen Wolf of Kos Elections reported that the North Carolina Supreme Court had a lot to say about a couple recent additions to the state constitution. They ruled 4-3 along party lines that since the legislature was unconstitutionally gerrymandered Republicans may have lacked the power to approve the amendments and put them before voters. The amendments are still in place while the case returns to a lower court. In a Ukraine update, Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote:

Two weeks ago, a Russian paratrooper named Pavel Filatyev published a scathing 141-page memoir of his experiences on VKontakte (Russian Facebook), castigating what he saw as the appalling condition and ineptitude of the Russian military. Filatyev had been involved in Russia’s capture of Kherson. He composed this devastating missive while recuperating from an eye injury sustained during the Ukrainian bombardment near the town of Mykolaiv.

Some of what Filatyev wrote was about destroying towns and not actually liberating anyone. It’s all a lie. Morale is bad. The troops disillusioned with what the government is saying about the invasion. Filatyev was interrogated by Russian Special Ops in Moscow. After 16 hours he was released, and fled the country. Sumner wrote about what Putin has accomplished in six months of trying to invade and subjugate Ukraine. 1. They haven’t gotten very far. 2. They suffered heavy losses. 3. The respect for the Russian army has vanished. 4. NATO has been strengthened and new members applied. Russia’s hold on Europe is significantly less. 5. And their economy is much worse than they proclaim. Their intervention to prop up the ruble is unsustainable. They are selling natural gas to Asia at a steep discount. Foreign companies, that were 40% of GDP, have left, erasing three decades of foreign investment. 6. There is a significant brain drain. They won’t be able to recover from their problems. In another post Sumner said that Putin has increased the number of positions in the Russian army to 2 million. It’s a symbolic gesture because the army is currently well below 1 million. The next day Putin said he would add 137,000 actual soldiers to the army. But from where? Those actually in uniform are refusing to fight – which is why it looks like Russia is gaining centimeters a day. Their current method of shelling a town into rubble, then sending in troops to see if any opposition remains, shows an incredible disregard for the lives of the soldiers. Russia is forcing the men of Donbas to fight against Ukraine, which has prompted many men to go into hiding. And what else can Russia do? A draft? The possible response to that is unclear. Joan McCarter of Kos reported:

Some of the states with the greatest potential for wind and solar energy production are red states, some of which are already exploiting it to the benefit of their citizens. The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the biggest federal investment made yet in green energy, will only increase that production, and with it will come more clean energy jobs and lower costs for ratepayers. But every single Republican in Congress voted against that bill, and Republican governors in those states opposed it as well.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that California is expected to release a proposal that by 2035 will require all cars sold in the state to be emissions free. Since California is the largest car market in the US (and 11th largest in the world) it will put a lot more pressure on the auto industry to switch to electric. Arezou Rezvani of NPR listed four things that are still in the way of California’s goal: (1) Electric vehicles are still really expensive, still priced beyond what a lot of people can pay. (2) There are rare earth minerals that are required for batteries. A lot of companies are in competition for those minerals and China currently dominates the market. (3) EV infrastructure – charging stations – is still limited. (4) Auto manufacturers are adjusting their workforces, laying off gas engine and transmission engineers while hiring electric motor engineers. During the summer my church does a family movie night. We sit outside with the movie projected on a sheet hung on the side of the building. The movie last night was Soul by Pixar-Disney. I enjoyed it. Joe is a middle school music teacher and gets a dream gig as a jazz pianist. Just after clinching it he falls down a manhole and ends up between earth and heaven. He tries to convince the authorities he wasn’t supposed to die yet and tries to get back to earth. Of course, uplifting life lessons are learned along the way. One thing I appreciated is that it looks like Joe actually hits the right notes on the piano. He doesn’t look like a live actor trying to hit somewhere close (or the piano and camera are positioned so hands aren’t seen at all). I learned through IMDB trivia that when the live musicians were recorded for the soundtrack the pianist played on a MIDI keyboard so the animators knew what actual keys were played.