Has Biden heard back yet from DoJ and DoE on whether he has authority to do this by executive order? My understanding was that he waiting on this before taking action.
Maybe he was lying then, too? His administration seems to love doing it.
Meh. Getting so angry at a politician who doesn’t manage to keep all his promises in the first few months in office is a waste of energy. So far I’m pretty impressed with what he’s been able to accomplish, especially with such a slim majority in the legislature, an opposition full of obstructionist loonies, and an uncertain mandate from the electorate.
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Ensuring that millions of college graduates don’t have to contend with student loan debt would’ve been a massive boon to my entire generational cohort, Millennials, who’ve had to deal with constant upheavals over the last 14 years. But meh.
Being saddled with so much debt to where we can’t afford shit is part of how my entire generation has been ruthlessly infantilized and mocked. But meh.
Research shows that Millennials have net zero real estate wealth. Canceling student loan debt would give us the ability to start accruing that wealth, some small measure, some small modicum of power. But meh, who gives a shit, amirite? Biden’s stood so strong and has accomplished so much that it’s okay if he failed to get this done in his first few months, and never gets back around to it. When are Joey and Congress getting back around to Minimum Wage after it failed to get included in the stimulus bill; can you tell me that, David?
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Student loan debt is a serious problem, one of a really large number f problems that the POTUS is charged with addressing. He hasn’t solved them all in less than 6 months of being president, and politics being what it is there are some he won’t solve at all during his entire term of office, no matter what his intentions. That’s the way the world works. He had a couple of options for addressing this particular problem, either through executive order or through budget recommendations. As the POTUS does not actually set the budget, if it is missing in the final budget bill your beef is with the Congress, which does have that authority. I believe he has not yet given up on addressing it through executive order.
If he gets this done within his first couple of years in office it will have been blisteringly fast. If he doesn’t get it done at all it won’t be because he decided the day after the election to throw your generation under the bus.
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The Onion is just killing it lately:
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It’s the whole idea that if you admit that you should write down debts when the effect is to help the economy grow and you write down debts that impair economic growth, then people would put economic growth over the welfare of creditors. And that’s revolution. That’s not what our economy is all about. We put creditors first, not the economy. And the very thought of putting the welfare of the people first over the creditors in general, well that’s totalitarianism. That’s a dictatorship. We can’t possibly have that. So it’s the greed of the creditors and the fact that the creditors are able to control politics and who gets nominated, et cetera, enables them to prevent anything that might shock the assumption that the sanctity of property is really the sanctity of creditors to evict property owners if they can’t pay. It’s really the sanctity of debt. And if you talk about the sanctity of debt, it’s the sanctity of the exponential growth of debt, even when it’s beyond the ability to pay, even when it pushes the economy into a chronic depression. And in fact, what we’re suffering now is debt deflation. And the debt deflation at the bottom, students are experiencing, the unemployed are experiencing, cities and states are experiencing it. The transportation systems are running at deficits. All of these deficits are the savings and the gains and the wealth of the one percent or five percent or whatever you want to call the banking and creditor class.
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That’s the long version of the basic truth: He doesn’t want to cancel student debt and knows he won’t have to.
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When the Onion provides us a slice of reality, it’s both hilarious and discomfiting for me. I appreciate, this one, too.
ed-duplicate Onion layer removed
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Not sure why the DOJ is dropping the ball here. A bad president causing worse precedents shouldn’t be ignored. They should be preventing those actions from being repeated.
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Meanwhile, look who Joe or his handlers have chosen to be an Ambassador, to Japan, no less.
This man is famously non-diplomatic at best, a gaping asshole quite often. but that seems a secondary disqualifier.
It’s a middle finger to victims of racist police violence in every city, starting with LaQuan McDonald, making his words of support empty and hypocritical to the Floyd family and all those who’ve lost a loved one to the barrel of a cop gun.
IMO, any D Senator who votes to reward Emmanuel for Party loyalty will confirm that this loyalty (or their own re-election) is more important to them than caring about police violence or racism.
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The buck stops somewhere yada yada yada…
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Better headline:
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Another atrocity:
Edit: and regarding the filibuster, I think Robert Reich is right on how Biden should change his tone, stat:
Friends,
During his speech commemorating the centennial of the Tulsa massacre yesterday, Joe Biden remarked, “I hear all the folks on TV saying, ‘Why doesn’t Biden get this done?’ Well, because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends.”
That “two members of the Senate” line is a thinly veiled reference to conservative Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who are refusing to end the filibuster and actually use Democrats’ Senate majority to pass crucial legislation like the For the People Act.
Listen, I understand that getting these two to fall in line is no easy task for Joe Biden. But here’s the thing: the stakes are simply too high. We are talking about the future of civil and voting rights — critical to fighting racism and preserving American democracy.
There is no excuse for two Democratic senators to allow Republicans to stomp on our democracy and entrench their minority rule for generations.
And there is no reason Joe Biden should let them. It’s time for him to assert the leadership that President Lyndon Baines Johnson asserted more than a half-century ago.
When someone tried to persuade LBJ not to waste his time on civil and voting rights, he replied, “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” Johnson worked to break the southern filibuster – lobbying recalcitrant senators and pressuring their colleagues to do the same. As Senator Hubert Humphrey later described it, “the president grabbed me by my shoulder and damn near broke my arm.”
Historians tell us that Johnson’s efforts may have shifted the votes of close to a dozen senators, breaking the longest filibuster in Senate history and clearing the way for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.
We are once again at a crucial juncture for civil rights and voting rights, one that will shape our nation for decades to come. Joe Biden must learn from LBJ, and wield the power of the presidency to make senators fall in line with the larger goals of the nation.
Otherwise, as LBJ asked, “what the hell’s the presidency for?”
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They say that all that is required for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing.
And I think Biden is a good man.
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Okay it’s not an atrocity, just a minor nitpick. Here in oregon, we’re at around 45.5% fully vaccinated. BUT, in less than a week, we’re going to hit 70% vaccinated per Biden’s “70% by July 4th” metrics. See, those 12 (at this point in time) states that have hit 70%? At the start of this, that 70% was “70% of the population”, and then they changed it to “70% of the active population who can get vaccinated.” BUT, that’s not looking like it’s going to happen, so now it’s “70% of the population over age of 18 with at least one shot.” In Oregon, that number is 66.7% right now.
Except here’s the thing. I suspect as we get closer to July 4, that number will shift again. And it’ll become "70% of the population over 18 with one shot PLUS all the covid cases (since they have immunity) " and if that doesn’t work, it’ll be “70% of the population over 18 with one shot plus people who’ve had covid plus people who indicate they are not going to get vaccinated.”
All this is to say, when we become whatever number we are to hit 70%, in reality, only like 3 states so far have eeked above 70% of population to get a covid shot, and it might still just be one or two that have fully vaccinated and are above 70%.
EDIT:
Citations: CDC COVID Data Tracker
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“When we aim high, we go low”?
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I mean technically we’re still aiming high and hitting high.
We’re just apparently redefining the definition of the meter to be something closer to 60 centimeters.
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