Archive for 2015

SOME CAUTIONARY THOUGHTS ON THE SELF-DRIVING CAR: “Completely autonomous vehicles will remain a fantasy for years. Until they’re here, we need technology that enhances human drivers’ abilities rather than making those abilities increasingly obsolete.”

DAVID RIVKIN & ELIZABETH PRICE FOLEY: The Federalism Fallacy in King v. Burwell: A new interpretation claims to protect the states, but would actually hurt them. “Particularly notable is this: In every single instance where the Supreme Court has invoked the clear statement rule, it has been to prevent Congress from using its enumerated powers in a manner that harms the states as states. The clear statement rule is utterly inapplicable, however, when Congress uses its power directly on citizens. And in the Affordable Care Act, when Congress exercises its taxing power to grant (or revoke) tax subsidies to individuals, that power operates directly on individuals, not on states. This is an extremely important distinction.”

JIM TREACHER: Secret Service Agents Party Too Hard, Crash Car Into White House Barricade. “Yep. That’s how it works. Five years ago, the DC Metro PD covered for the State Dept. by issuing me an utterly fraudulent jaywalking ticket. A week ago, they covered for these Secret Service guys by letting them go home and sober up. When federal employees run amok and break the law, they can always count on the DC cops to help them out.”

ROGER SIMON: Free Guccifer!

MEGAN MCARDLE: Lending Bankrupt Students A Hand:

It is a great shame of the American financial system that we do not allow student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy. There’s no logic to it: “Well, you can’t pay all your other debts, but apparently, you can pay this one, even if it’s larger than all the others.” Its exclusion from the bankruptcy code, like the rules surrounding taxes, are a bit of special pleading from the government, an assertion that government obligations are somehow immune from the rules surrounding other sorts of debt.

As part of changes to the federal student loan program, the Barack Obama administration will be looking at relaxing the restrictions on bankrupting student loans. This is a change we should be looking at. But it has to be done the right way. . . .

At the very least, however, we could contain some of the damage by imposing a time limit on your ability to bankrupt loans — say, no bankruptcy until you’ve been out of school for 10 years. This would at least discourage the tactic that caused legislators to enact the student loan exception in the first place: that of taking out huge loans to attend professional school, then declaring bankruptcy as soon as you graduate.

Two thoughts: (1) I actually sympathize with many of these folks because, as has become increasingly clear, they were deliberately lied to by institutions of higher education in order to get the money. So bankruptcy is fair. But the institutions that lied should pay a price. Which leads to suggestion (2): The GOP should come up with a proposal that is significantly friendlier to borrowers, but that punishes the higher-ed institutions. That would neutralize the real purpose of this initiative, which is to buy votes for Democrats, while punishing the guilty. Who, conveniently enough, are overwhelmingly Democrats.

Of course, that’s probably true of the people in debt trouble, too, so it all evens out: Washington, DC has most-indebted students of any place in the nation.