IN RESPONSE TO BIDEN’S STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS, A FRIEND SENDS THIS FLASHBACK: Luxury College Dorms Offer Upscale Amenities: Think tanning beds and fire pits are too luxurious for college? Think again.
His observation: “People who have never lived this well are now forced to subsidize people who lived this well.”
JONATHAN ADLER: Why the IRA Does Not “Grant” the EPA “Broad Authority to Shift America Away from Burning Fossil Fuels.” “A New York Times story creates a false impression about the effects of the Inflation Reduction Act’s Climate Provisions.”
Well, that’s what New York Times stories are for, nowadays.
JOHN HINDERAKER: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.
MORE THOUGHTS ON THE ARMY’S PERSONNEL CRISIS: Long-Term Effects. “The longer the military is seen as an undesirable place to serve, or a place that cannot attract quality personnel, then the longer it will take to restore the status and prestige of military service.”
It takes three years to build a ship. It takes three centuries to build a tradition. But far less to lose one.
OPEN THREAD: Be here now.
CSPAN REPORTER ASKS JAMES O’KEEFE IF USING ‘DECEPTION’ DURING AN INVESTIGATION IS OK, AND HIS RESPONSE IS PERFECT: “O’Keefe quoted ethicist Lous Hodges who argues that journalists have a moral imperative to deceive their subjects if they intend to do investigative reporting. He added that it is a worse deception to claim to do investigative reporting when the journalist wants to read off of a teleprompter and believe everything the subject says.”
Video at link.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: The Artemis plan: Why NASA sees the moon as a stepping stone to Mars.
GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA:
Shot: California will ban new gas-powered vehicles sales starting in 2035.
—The Verge, today.
Chaser: California Issues ‘Flex Alert’ to Combat Rolling Blackouts, Energy Plan Failing.
California — under the illustrious leadership of Gov. Gavin Newsom — has asked its residents to avoid their air conditioners in the midst of a heat wave to prevent rolling blackouts, again.
Sounds like California is indeed the fifth largest economy…in the third world.
—Outkick the Coverage, Friday.
UH OH: Some Dems nervously condemn Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
Biden knows the regressive aspects of the policy are a huge problem potentially for the party and had a snappy answer ready today when asked about it:
REPORTER: Is this unfair to people who paid their student loans or chose not to take out loans?
BIDEN: Is it fair to people who, in fact, do not own multi-billion-dollar businesses if they see one of these guys getting all the tax breaks? Is that fair? What do you think?
That’s super, but the reason Americans tolerate tax breaks for mega-billionaires and their companies is a combination of fatalism and optimism. Fatalism: The rich always get away with murder and have the wherewithal to rig the game in their favor. It’s not fair but it’s life, as inevitable as gravity. Optimism: Tax breaks for corporations benefit everyone in theory by maximizing the ability of those businesses to expand, which in turn means more jobs for the local community. States don’t compete with each other to offer perks to Tesla and Amazon because they enjoy online shopping or think EVs are cool. They do it because having a major corporation blow into town means lots of hires, and lots of hires means lots of economic growth.
Telling an average joe that the guy next to him deserves 10,000 bucks just because he went to college and took out some loans to pay for it is much harder to defend. I suppose one could say that debt forgiveness is a form of stimulus for the (already overstimulated) economy, but then you’re stuck having to explain why we don’t just give everyone ten grand instead. Lots of stimulus! The student loan debtors can use the money for their loans and the rest of us who aren’t in debt can invest or enjoy the money as we see fit. There’s simply no good moral or fiscal reason to randomly select this group of people for an enormous federal giveaway while cutting everyone else out of the action, including and especially those who behaved more responsibly than the recipients. Democrats deserve to get wrecked for it. And Ryan, Pappas, and Bennet know it.
Which brings us to: Student Loan Forgiveness Is Left-Wing Trickle-Down Economics.
I’m a blue-collar worker, and when I talk to other blue collar workers about student loan forgiveness, it’s one of those subjects where no one disagrees. It gets a resounding, 100 percent “Hell no!” every time it comes up.
This isn’t because we’re anti-college. Most of the folks I work with and talk to have kids in college or have kids that graduated college. But if you ask if college students’ loans should be paid off by taxpayers, the answer is always the same: No way.
Unlike progressives, we don’t see student debt cancelation as an avenue out of poverty. We see it as a tax on those of us who chose not to go to college, who now have to pay for those who already got a big advantage in the labor market by way of their degree.
Maybe the college degree didn’t give them the job they wanted. But when it all comes down to it, before taking out a big loan, it’s on you to know what you’re getting into. It’s on you to do your due diligence. Big decisions like taking on thousands of dollars in debt have consequences. Why should that burden fall to taxpayers?
And it does fall on taxpayers. Calling it “canceling student loans” is just as dishonest as calling government funded health care or education “free.” None of this is free; it’s taxpayer funded. It’s not cancelation; it’s taking money from the taxpayer and putting it toward paying off student debt held by borrowers.
It’s deeply disrespectful to the people they are trying to convince to help pay for their loans to misrepresent it.
Earlier, I quoted Iowahawk, who said, “Thank god we’re finally addressing the plight of America’s most disadvantaged community, Harvard Law graduates.”
But team Biden is finally addressing an even more disadvantaged community: Majority of White House Staffers Eligible for Biden’s Student-Loan ‘Forgiveness.’
A White House report that detailed the pay of more than 470 staffers last month showed that roughly half of current White House employees make $90,000 or less per year, with the other half making more than $100,000. More than 300 staffers on the list earn less than the $125,000 threshold.
It is not clear how many White House staffers have student-loan balances. One-in-five White House aides required to file a 2021 financial disclosure reported having student loans, according to disclosures reviewed by Bloomberg News. However, only senior or well-paid staffers have to file the disclosures, the report notes.
At least 30 senior White House staffers have student-loan balances, according to the report. However, the staffers mentioned by name in the report — press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and deputy director of the National Economic Council Bharat Ramamurti — make a yearly salary that exceeds the $125,000 cut off.
The 30 senior staffers collectively owe as much as $4.7 million, according to the report.
Washington, D.C., residents have more outstanding student-loan debt than residents of any other city in the country, according to a 2021 report from the business insurance research company AdvisorSmith, which found that the average D.C. borrower has $54,982 in unpaid student-loan debt and 16 percent of D.C. residents had unpaid student-loan debt.
As Erick Erickson tweets, “Republicans, Joe Biden has just handed you your general election issue. Like defunding the police, Democrats think making the responsible taxpayers pay the debts of irresponsible woke students is a winner. STFU about Mar-a-Lago and make the general election about this.”
SORT OF LIKE GOP POLITICIANS AND SPINES: These Amphibians Grow Lungs At First, Until They Mysteriously Vanish.
TRUE COST OF BIDEN’S STUDENT LOAN BAILOUT: Liberty Unyielding’s Hans Bader pegs the actual cost of Biden’s $300 billion college loan forgiveness initiative at more than $1 trillion. And that’s just the dollars.
A BIT LEAN FOR MY TASTE, BUT IMPRESSIVE: No kidding! From outdoor workouts to eating BUGS, how Nicole Kidman, 55, achieves her VERY toned figure – as the actress flaunts her ripped biceps and abs on new magazine cover.
It’s not healthy to stay that lean for very long, but of course this was for a photo shoot. And it’s not that big a deal, as pretty much every serious gym in America has women like this, many of them in their fifties. Personally, while I like some muscle on a woman, I also like a bit of squish. We have some superfit female friends and while they look great, hugging them feels like hugging a child, not a woman. Not to my taste, personally, though they don’t seem to lack for male attention.
FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF “DON’T PUSH YOUR LUCK”: After the infamous “Slants“ case, where the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to deny protection to potentially “disparaging” words or phrases, luggage and jewelry designer Erik Brunetti succeeded — after the Supremes decided in June of 2019 in his favor — that he had the right to register “FUCT” as a trademark.
Yesterday, the USPTO denied his application to use the word “FUCK” in the same manner:
“Erik Brunetti can’t register “FUCK” for various goods including cell phone cases, jewelry, and luggage because it does not function as a trademark, the TTAB said in a precedential decision Monday. The decision in part hinged on the fact that the word is so ubiquitous, noting “it now appears without fuss in an impressive range of cultural domains.”
Curious little monkey that I am, I went poking through the USPTO database, and found that there are more than 31 applications pending for variations on “LET’S GO BRANDON”, including my personal favorite, “LET’S GO BRANDON YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH”; “LET’S GEAUX BRANDON”; and the sure-fire hit at the Mexican border, “VAMOS BRANDON.”
Interestingly, it appears that the USPTO is denying these applications en masse, based on the theory that:
“By October 6, 2021, a clip of the expression’s origin uploaded to Twitter had been viewed over 3.8 million times and retweeted by over 10,000 separate accounts. In other words, consumers rapidly became accustomed to seeing the phrase used by a wide range of people, companies, and/or other entities […] Because consumers are accustomed to seeing the wording “LET’S GO BRANDON” commonly used by many different sources, they would not perceive it as a mark identifying the source of goods and services, including applicant’s goods. Instead, consumers would perceive the wording “LET’S GO BRANDON” as a reference to the common expression that began on October 2, 2021.”
It’s good to know that bureaucrats in agencies other than the DOJ will Do What It Takes to protect The Big Guy.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. DeSantis has seen enough of Dr. Fauci: “Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac!”
I WON’T BELIEVE THEY’RE SERIOUS UNTIL PEOPLE ARE FIRED: CDC Director Walensky admits agency ‘didn’t reliably deliver’ during pandemic, outlines change: ‘Learned a lot.
And now that the agency is “acknowledging shortcomings,” how about an apology for calling its critics anti-science ignoramuses who just wanted grandma to die?
THE 21st CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT HOW I HAD EXPECTED: Trans prisoner who impregnated two inmates tries to cut off testicles over being misgendered.
WHEN DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTS FULFILL DEMOCRATS’ WISHES, AUTHORITY ALWAYS MAGICALLY APPEARS.
Just as when Republican presidents frustrate Democrats’ wishes, it’s always a “constitutional crisis.”
Also:
2020:
"I've saved all my money. [My daughter] doesn't have any student loans. Am I going to get my money back?"Warren: "Of course not."
"So you're going to pay for people who didn't save any money and those of us who did the right thing get screwed."pic.twitter.com/Z19hR5Vsdg
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) August 23, 2022
More:
.@pdoocy: "The people that already paid their student loans, they don't get anything out of this deal."
Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona: "Right." pic.twitter.com/PNrs3Z2HCl
— Kevin Tober (@KevinTober94) August 24, 2022
PAST PELOSI IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Pelosi Does Complete 180 as Biden WH Reveals Where Debt Relief ‘Authority’ Purportedly Comes From.
From the Tuesday memo:
For the past year and a half, the Office of General Counsel (“OGC”), in consultation with our colleagues at the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, has conducted a review of the Secretary’s legal authority to cancel student debt on a categorical basis. This review has included assessing the analysis outlined in a publicly disseminated January 2021 memorandum signed by a former Principal Deputy General Counsel. As detailed below, we have determined that the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (“HEROES”) Act of 2003 grants the Secretary authority that could be used to effectuate a program of targeted loan cancellation directed at addressing the financial harms of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have thus determined that the January 2021 memorandum was substantively incorrect in its conclusions.
[…]
The HEROES Act, first enacted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, provides the Secretary broad authority to grant relief from student loan requirements during specific periods (a war, other military operation, or national emergency, such as the present COVID-19 pandemic) and for specific purposes (including to address the financial harms of such a war, other military operation, or emergency). The Secretary of Education has used this authority, under both this and every prior administration since the Act’s passage, to provide relief to borrowers in connection with a war, other military operation, or national emergency, including the ongoing moratorium on student loan payments and interest.
Isn’t it just amazing how they managed to override themselves on the legality of such a move just in time for Biden’s announcement? It’s like this power just magically appeared out of thin air – and conveniently just in time for the November midterms.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who said in April 2021 that Biden didn’t have the power to forgive student loans, has also done a convenient 180:
PELOSI IN APRIL: "People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not."
PELOSI TODAY: Biden's move to cancel student debt "is a strong step in Democrats' fight to expand access to higher education." pic.twitter.com/zr3PRKHjk5
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 24, 2022
Given that for over a century, the Democrats’ organizing principle has been the Moral Equivalent of War, the connection between 9/11, COVID and stiffing the taxpayers for student debt it must have seemed logical in President Klain’s mind. In any case, as Iowahawk tweets, “Thank god we’re finally addressing the plight of America’s most disadvantaged community, Harvard Law graduates.”
HAVING SOLVED ALL THEIR OTHER PROBLEMS, SAN FRANCISCO BOLDLY TACKLES THE TRULY IMPORTANT ISSUES: Giants are selling gear with San Francisco’s most hated nickname.
It’s not entirely clear how a piece of Giants clothing with such a disliked nickname is not only is on display at a team store, but was designed and produced at all in the first place. (It seems highly unlikely that the Giants themselves committed such a faux pas.) I asked an employee of the store if someone was available to speak about the shirt, but they immediately directed me to the team’s PR department. Requests for comment from the Giants and Nike were not answered by time of publication.
Someone — presumably not San Francisco residents — is buying SAN FRAN Giants shirts, though, as a black version of the shirt is sold out online.
When San Francisco Chronicle culture critic Peter Hartlaub first drew attention to the shirt, fans reacted with disgust to the universally loathed abbreviation. Hartlaub himself wrote that it “would be like walking in the Hogwarts store from ‘Harry Potter’ and finding a T-shirt that says ‘Voldemort.’” Though the origins of “San Fran” hatred are not totally clear, locals view the usage of the moniker as a sign that someone is a stranger to the area, and likely a tourist. In a survey from Curbed SF, it was ranked as the least-used nickname for the city, below even “Frisco.” (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but operate independently.)
Charles Fracchia, the founder of the San Francisco Historical Society who died last year, once summed it up in a press release.
“It is vitally important to call the city ‘San Francisco’ over ‘San Fran,’” he said. “Utilizing the full name of any person or place gives it dignity, and I believe ‘San Francisco’ deserves to be referred to in its full name.” (Though many locals will tell you “SF” is OK, in my experience.)
Get over yourselves, San Fran.
I WISH THEY COULD HAVE BOTH LOST: Trailing Nadler Badly in the Polls, Carolyn Maloney Tosses Up a Couple of Gun Control Hail Marys.
RUSSIA: Who Murdered Darya Dugina? “While I’m not quite (yet) prepared to agree fully with Kamil Galeev’s take on the matter, he makes some good points. One not raised directly is that the Kremlin was ready to roll with the propaganda even before the smoke cleared. That means advanced planning, which means she was sacrificed. Think the maskirova of the children in Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising.”
Lots of interesting thoughts here, check it out.
READER FAVORITE: Digital Meat Thermometer with Probe. #CommissionEarned
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