Shooting Themselves In The Foot

You almost have to laugh at the intensity that Democrats are trying to lose, not only this fall, but in 2024. I know what the pundits are saying. They keep harping on the narrative that the races are all tightening, and that the red wave may not be so blood red after all. I know I’ve written about how some of the Senate races are not that close. Well, they’re closing. And it looks like the Dem’s are pulling a play out of the old GOP playbook and are shooting themselves in the foot.

A lot of it has to do with Joe Biden.

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democrats thought that it would be the lynchpin in the Republicans chances to getting Congress back. Certainly no one would vote Republican in the tight Senate races! And here in the AZ, Mark Kelly is using two issues in all of his campaign ads…abortion, and privatizing social security (I didn’t even think that last one was a thing!)

And, as we’ve seen in a New York runoff for the House, abortion rights played a role in that one. In Kansas, voters there rejected doing away with abortions. But there is an underlying problem Democrats up for election this cycle all face.

It’s Joe Biden.

Biden’s decision to cut student loans by $10,000 for those making under $125,000 a year without a real plan on how to pay for it is swamping Democrats’ chances this fall. Apparently, K-baby Harris is the one that was adamant about pulling the trigger on it, and it could just be yet another K-baby hustle that goes flat (insert cackling laugh here). A poll by Reuter’s/Ipsos just released, and taken over two days since the student loan debacle was announced, showed that Biden’s approval rating, which had been climbing into the low to mid 40’s over the past couple of weeks is now at 38%. And that Democrats are taking the heat for it.

72% of Americans in a recent poll say that they are angry at Biden’s decision and that 61% say it will effect their vote come this November!

In Arizona, a new poll shows that Mark Kelly, who’s lead over Blake Masters was almost double digits a week ago, is now down within the margin of error. And that’s with Kelly running five ads to every one of Masters! A new presidential poll (which really doesn’t mean anything) shows that Biden would beat Trump in a presidential election if held today by one single solitary point, 43-42%. 8% said they wanted to vote for someone else.

And in case you’re thinking that the poll was weighted toward Republicans, 1,005 adults took part. 449 were Democrats, 357 were Republicans, and the last 199 were Independents.

Maybe there’s hope for this thing after all!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Here’s Why Biden’s Student Loan Bailout Is Illegal.

You would figure that Democrats would have learned by now. It’s not a matter of whether or not a student loan forgiveness program would be a good thing. I think most people are in the camp that this isn’t good. We’re teaching our kids (and those that are now adults) that it’s okay to backout of a deal like a loan without any consequences. You don’t have to worry because Uncle Sam will come to your rescue.

Except to do it the way Joe Biden did it isn’t going to work.

My hunch is, if it hasn’t happened already, there will be lawsuits filed that block his executive order to forgive $10,000 to up to $20,000 (for Pell grants) for any person with a student loan so long as their income is under $125,000 ($250,000 per married couple). The reason for that is simple. All you have to do is look at Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

In a nutshell, that sentence says it all. If the White House is going to shift the payment of the student loan debt to the United States’ taxpayers, and do so by an executive order, it is illegal. Only Congress has the power to “lay and collect taxes”. The mere fact that Biden issued an executive order transferring $10,000 per eligible student to the taxpayers breaches Congress’ role to lay and collect taxes. The Executive Branch cannot do that.

It will make it’s way to the Supreme Court long before any student anywhere receives dollar one off of their student loan. And since Biden has continued the repayment holiday until the end of this year, it’s very likely that the lawsuits will be filed and most likely a temporary injunction issued prohibiting Biden from moving forward on this until the case is settled. That’ll probably happen at the Supreme Court level and may not make their docket this year.

More and more Democrats are having buyer’s remorse when it comes to this plan of Biden’s. They originally were all for the idea until it sunk in that it WILL be inflationary, and it WILL cause harm to the economy. Not only that, but there are several independent and non-partisan accounting groups who have run the numbers and say the $300 billion that Biden has proposed is actually going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 to $900 billion because the administration under-played the number of people that they felt would be applying to have their loans forgiven.

Even liberal bastions like CNN and MSNBC are starting to question the legitimacy of this program, and the intelligence behind it. Of course it stems from Joe’s campaign promise, but didn’t he also promise that taxes wouldn’t be raised on anyone making less than $400,000 a year? And then that was revised to be $400,000 per household. Still, this E.O. will hit every American, regardless what that babbling idiot, Karine Jean-Pierre says as she stumbles through yet another Peter Doocy question!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

This Is What We Do To Fix Higher Education…

This whole thing with Biden “forgiving” the school debt for most of the people that have college debt has hit a nerve in the country. Yes, I will admit that there is a HUGE number of people that took out college loans, got degrees in fields where the prospects of landing a job are pretty much zero, and then can’t afford to pay their loans back. But I have one nagging question.

Why should I be responsible for paying back someone else’s loan?

The obvious answer is, I shouldn’t be. There are several things wrong with Biden’s plan… which pretty much follows his modus operandi throughout his presidency. First and foremost, you are teaching our kids that it’s OK to welch on a loan. And yes, I understand some of these kids can’t pay it off because they don’t have the money. That’s called a lesson. When my kids got into credit card debt when they went off to college, did I pay it back? Nope. They did. They both got extra jobs just to pay it off. They figured their own way out of it, because they were the ones that put themselves into debt. I’m happy to report that lesson was learned and they are both doing wonderfully well financially now.

The second problem is that Biden may have kept a campaign promise on “forgiving” debt, but he also broke a promise that taxes wouldn’t go up for anyone making under $400,000 a year. EVERYONE is getting a tax increase on this one to repay the debt. Debt, as Peter Doocy points out, doesn’t just disappear. It has to be reassigned.

Then there is the obvious problem of adding to the inflationary spiral. I don’t care how the Biden administration spins it, it is going to raise the inflation rate. It pumps more money into the economy and that’s what caused the inflation in the first place.

So, how to fix the problem?

First of all, I would place the impetus on colleges and universities. Tuition should be set no higher than what can be paid back in a set period of time. If historically, a college’s mean income of graduates after their second year out is $100,000, then they can charge $25,000 a year for their tuition. If it’s $40,000, then they can charge $10,000 a year. Most colleges and universities I’m familiar with have endowments that have billions of dollars in them. Harvard can afford to pay for 100% of student’s tuition for the next 200 years! If a college or university doesn’t adhere to this rule, they are taxed at nominal corporate tax rates for the total amount of revenue produced.

Second, professors at state affiliated universities, or private schools that accept federal college loans can make as much as they want from secondary pursuits such as speaking tours, expert witness programs, books, and publications, but their salary can be topped out at $100,000, and be increased annually at 25% of the inflation rate. They are a major part of the problem here.

Third, if a university accepts federal student loans, they are not allowed to solicit funds from their alumni. This is an incredible source of income for these institutions. If they violate this in any way, they are not allowed to raise their tuitions for 10 years.

Universities can only raise tuitions once every five years and no more than the fifth year’s inflation rate. Failure to adhere to this means they must keep tuition the same for 10 years.

That would be a start. If you really want to get crazy with it, we would need to get rid of degrees in programs that could not produce enough jobs to employ those graduation. I’m looking at art history, Egyptology, women’s studies, and the like. Those are areas that frankly don’t have a future in this country and need to be withdrawn from curriculum.

There you go! And if you really feel that I’ve done a great job here, you can all chip in and pay my share of paying for all of these deadbeats’ student loans that they got themselves into. No lesson learned there, that’s for sure!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Hey Brandon…Please Pay Back MY Loans!

You are getting a pretty hefty tax increase today!

Joe Biden is facing a deadline. In just a few short days, the extension to the forgiveness period of student loans is going to expire. Word is that Biden was planning to issue an executive order later today that would forgive those debts, or at least a part of them. Talk is that Biden will forgive $10,000 in student loan debt for anyone making $125,000 or less, and there would be a continuance of a payback holiday, which expires at the end of the month. There has been a lot of speculation over whether or not it would happen, if it would include everybody or if there would be some sort of means testing. But not all is peaches and cream in DC these days. The cost of Biden’s plan could be upwards of $980 billion over 10 years.

There are plenty on both sides of the aisle that see the forgiving of student loans as an inflation generator that would basically wipe out all of the so-called “inflation reduction” the recent overblown spending bill would counter. It could very easily tip the United States further into recession, and as we are going to see next month, the news isn’t going to be all good on the economic front just two months ahead of the midterm elections.

In fact, one person that Biden has said he has talked to continuously regarding the recession and inflation is former Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers. Summers has been looking very Trumpesque recently on his Twitter account. Here’s what he tweeted recently:

“I hope the administration does not contribute to inflation macro-economically by offering unreasonably generous student loan relief or micro-economically by encouraging college tuition increases. The worst idea would be a continuation of the current moratorium that benefits among others highly paid surgeons, lawyers, and investment bankers. If relief is to be given, it should not set any precedent, it should only be given for a few thousand dollars of debt and for those with genuinely middle class incomes.

Of course, Biden refuses to believe that inflation is that bad, touting the fact that there “was zero inflation in the month of July”, though the inflation rate is still at near 40 year highs of 8.5%. And anyone that is living in that fantasy world isn’t about to take a look at the actual numbers and what it’s doing to ALL Americans, regardless of gender, income, social status or even sexual preference. It could be just one of the many reasons why Joe Biden has not been asked by ONE Democrat candidate to hit the campaign trail with them this fall during the midterm elections. I can’t remember ANY president being shut out like that during midterms. Even Richard Nixon was able to go out and campaign for people as the Watergate scandal was unfolding.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!