^ I think we should basically structure it as reparations. Figure out what thresholds exonerate the highest number of black borrowers and make that happen.

Probably the biggest reason this doesn't happen though is current and future borrowers... makes no sense to really cancel past debt when there's no plan to eliminate future debt. One thing we need to do is make student loan debt easier to discharge via bankruptcy, and probably build up the community college system to focus more on vocational education. Most people go to college to learn a vocation, even programming, which is a waste of what research focused universities are supposed to be doing.

There should be a clear path between "I want higher ed to get a job" and "I want higher ed to do research".

12/28/2021 5:27:05 PM

Given that he campaigned on getting the pandemic under control, the fact that there are no at home tests to be found is a pretty big hit to his credibility.

Also, ditto on the student loans restructuring in bankruptcy. It's the #1 driver of skyrocketing college costs, and needs to be dealt with.

12/28/2021 10:04:33 PM

Wait explain how loan restructuring drives tuition costs?

12/28/2021 10:09:41 PM

^^ at-home tests are free in some states

quite a weird coincidence that the states most opposed to help from the federal government are among the least-vaccinated

12/28/2021 10:59:37 PM

also tough to get those most opposed to vaccines to agree to regular testing

12/28/2021 11:34:31 PM

I would love to see many of my clients get a break on their loans. Do they deserve it, no. Did they get it thrown at them at a naive age yes. Am I a little bitter that I did it the hard way? No. But all change has a give and take. Our country was built on setting examples. I get drastic times call for drastic measures. I don’t like entitlement and I don’t appreciate universities taxing their alumni either. I don’t know the answer but there has to be a middle ground. I get calls every year from NCSU asking me for $$ and my thought is always “we had an agreement for me to give you 10s of thousands and you handed me a piece of paper, the transaction is inked and done”

12/29/2021 8:31:16 AM

12/29/2021 1:40:03 PM

Looks like CNN is possibly accusing Biden of planning from the same playbook as Trump, regarding putting the economy before health. But I don't think we can face another shutdown. And also, if schools go remote again, I think young students will just start to give up. Many are still struggling from the 2020 remote school year - I know my daughter is, as are many of her classmates.

More and more evidence is coming out speaking to Omicron being a milder variant in terms of disease. Sure, it appears to be highly transmissible, but do we really need to shut down the economy if we're going to have cold-like symptoms?

I'm still convinced everybody will end up getting it.

12/30/2021 8:56:01 AM

Free tests are useless if you can't get them at any stores. I went to five stores a couple days ago and none of 5hem had a single test. I ended up saying "fuck it" and went home. I'm not going to bother making a doctor's appointment for a sore throat just to get a test. Biden campaigned, among other things, on getting a testing apparatus rolled out. Every media outlet is reporting that stores have no tests.

As for how restructuring debt would help with college costs, it's fairly straightforward. The difficulty in discharging student loan debt in bankruptcy yields almost no risk to the lender in any transaction. This has led to almost zero lending standards in the industry. Basically lenders will give anyone almost unlimited sums of money for any degree, with no concern for whether the borrower will be able to repay the loan (or even finish their education). In fact, lenders want you to default, because they can charge you fees and make more money. The end result is an extremely inelastic demand response from students to tuition increases, as they can always go get more loans to cover the increase.

12/30/2021 9:25:22 AM

Quote :

"I had scholarships, grants and worked full time going through school."

I hear you, and I can see how this would be frustrating, but let's break this down into some simple facts:

1) The economy as it is currently structured requires X number of college graduates
2) There are enough grants and scholarships to get Y number of people through college
3) There are enough appropriate jobs to put Z people through college ("Appropriate" here meaning "doesn't require a degree but pays enough to put someone through school while also feeding and housing them and providing them transportation to work")

And the simple math is X > Y+Z.

That's a massive oversimplification but the essential truth of it stands. You gotta change one of those variables or a lot of people are going to have to take on student loans in order for the country to function. Past a certain point it doesn't matter whether they work hard or plan well; the beast has to be fed, and what it wants to eat are college graduates.

We could, as a nation, take a look at every job and realize that a lot of them really don't need a degree, thereby reducing X and, eventually, the demand for expensive diplomas. This is basically impossible to legislate and requires employers to act when they have no real incentive to do so. The employer doesn't give a fuck if you've got student loans. If anything, they like that you owe a ton of money; it means you're less likely to risk being unemployed, so they can squeeze more out of you.

You run into the same problems with increasing variable Z, the number of jobs that can reasonably put someone through college (even in conjunction with the available scholarships and grants). Private employers have little incentive to reduce their requirements and even less to increase their pay.

That leaves you with increasing Y - scholarships and grants. I'm obviously in favor of this, as are a lot of people, but to eradicate the need for loans you'd have to offer so many that at some point you're just talking about making college free.

Quote :

"But those who just carried the debt and now just get it wiped learn nothing."

I don't give a shit about teaching some grandpa-style lesson about sound financial planning. By the time they're out of college and stared down the barrel of their debt for a couple minutes, that lesson has either already long since been learned or is never going to be. I'm more concerned with the massive dead weight dragging on the country's economy.

---

As for COVID testing, Biden didn't just drop the ball here, he never even picked it up. From the very beginning, what this country needed most - arguably more than a vaccine - was a halfway decent testing and tracing system. Trump never encouraged setting one up, partly because it would be difficult and he's lazy, partly because he understood (as he said) that more testing means more positive cases means he looks bad.

Then Biden came along and evidently thought vaccines would have this whole thing wrapped up by July so he never bothered fixing the other huge part of the problem. So here we sit, waiting on 500 million tests to arrive a month late so that we can all check ourselves twice and then be out of tests again. It's a fucking joke.

12/30/2021 11:59:47 AM

This is a small fraction of the problem, but there are jobs out there that require master's degrees that really don't need master's degrees. Look at the extension agencies in this state alone. If I recall correctly, you need a master's degree to become an extension agent. For what, 35k per year? Why? Why can't someone do that job with a four year degree? It also seems like anything related to library science/archival work requires a masters degree. I feel certain those jobs can also be done by folks who have completed an appropriate four year degree.

Master's degrees are very expensive.

12/30/2021 12:41:56 PM

-As recently as August COVID test manufacturers were destroying tests and laying off workers due to a massive slump in demand. It’s important to remember that as delta waned and vaccination picked back up, a lot of people thought we had this beat. Now, I’d still agree Biden was caught with his pants down, but y’all act like it was a no brainer to foretell the current demand. Can you imagine the whining if Biden authorized buying millions of tests that ultimately weren’t needed and got trashed?
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/568859-abbott-directs-employees-to-dispose-of-rapid-covid-test-materials

-^ Cooperative Extension is literally about disseminating research from the University to the people. I’m sorry, but undergraduate degrees do not even scratch the surface of how to interpret or teach newish research. Extension also provides assistantships that pay for (or part of) your Masters while you work for Extension. Extension is a crazy good deal for the state IMO.

-It’s easy to blame the federal loan program for rising tuition costs, but the reality is state legislators have spent the last two decades (and possibly more like 3-4 decades depending on the state) cutting higher education funding to the bone. If you want college to be as cheap as your parent’s tuition and solve the long-term college debt problem, you really need to elect state legislators that care about education rather than a race to the bottom on corporate tax rates.


[Edited on December 30, 2021 at 6:02 PM. Reason : Image fuck up like a got damn noob]

12/30/2021 6:01:12 PM

Quote :

"-^ Cooperative Extension is literally about disseminating research from the University to the people. I’m sorry, but undergraduate degrees do not even scratch the surface of how to interpret or teach newish research. Extension also provides assistantships that pay for (or part of) your Masters while you work for Extension. Extension is a crazy good deal for the state IMO."

Then the pay needs to be commensurate with the degree required to do the job.

1/3/2022 10:20:18 AM

American workers are almost across the board underpaid, wildly so in many cases.

1/3/2022 1:48:51 PM

^^^ I get that market demand changes and expectations were hopeful, but that doesn't excuse Biden expecting this thing to be licked and just sitting around with his dick in his hand as a result. Market intervention by the gov't, even to this libertarian-minded fool, is reasonable here to preserve enough stock for the coming winter where, even without Omicron, we could reasonably expect a surge. For someone who campaigned on getting this thing under control, it's a colossal failure. And fuck the people who would complain about the gov't guaranteeing a quarter billion extra tests at cost plus a little margin, which would probably amount to less than $2-3Billion; they are probably the Let's Go Brandon fools and would criticize Biden no matter what he did. Hell, if we ended up not needing the tests, then just ship em somewhere else for goodwill and make it a PR win. This aint difficult.

As for the state budget cuts angle, I might be inclined to buy that argument, if only colleges and universities were acting in any way like they were facing budget cuts. Look at your local school districts... What are you seeing? Teachers getting canned or furloughed, arts programs cut, no new textbooks (my wife's textbooks mention recent unrest in the Soviet Union over glasnost, FFS), administrative support staff (nurses, counselors, aides, etc) being scaled back, buildings in desperate need of repair. Now, go look at college campuses, what do you see? Massive building sprees (Talley, Carmichael, Centennial, for example), administrative support staff exploding (the faculty to admin ratio was ~4/1 four decades ago and now it's approaching 1/1... fuck, you got special buildings and offices popping up all over for every marginalized group you can think of), new degree programs, you name it. There's a lot of howling from chancellors and provosts about budget cuts, but for an entity that's supposedly facing massive budget cuts, they sure are continuing to spend a shit ton of money they allegedly don't have. The reason, of course, is because their funding isn't really being cut; the source of the money is just changing from tax dollars to students. I'd argue that state legislatures are doing this because they know that cutting higher education doesn't matter, precisely because of the unlimited lending available to student borrowers.

[Edited on January 3, 2022 at 9:58 PM. Reason : ]

1/3/2022 9:58:01 PM

Quote :

"Can you imagine the whining if Biden authorized buying millions of tests that ultimately weren’t needed and got trashed?"

Honestly...no? I don't even think Fox or the GOP would gripe much about it - not because they'd acknowledge the wisdom of it, but because there are other things to gripe about that are sexier to the base. And even if we had a slow news week and Fox did run headlines blasting Biden for buying excess supply, so what? Worrying about that - particularly at the expense of preparing for the next variant - is idiotic. There's nothing in the world that Joe Biden could do that would make Fox/Trump/GOP happy, except - maybe - declare that he had lost the election and hand the keys to the White House over to Trump. Even then, they'd probably spend most of the coverage complaining about how long it took.

1/4/2022 5:10:06 PM

^my counter example is Youngkin winning the VA governor race. People talk about election cycles but that’s just media driven superstitions.

There is a Trump->Biden->Youngkin voter-type that I think Biden and many Dems believe they really need to be successful in the near-term(2022 through 2024). In VA, a significant number of these voters fell hook, line, and sinker for Critical Race Theory hysteria. They were “disappointed” in Trump’s behavior, and decided to give Biden a chance. There’s a strong chance they are worried about the crime rate, despite not being sure which direction it’s headed. I believe they were referred to as “suburban white parents” in the Youngkin race autopsy. Fox News could throw together a minimum 36 hour news cycle connecting the CEO of the COVID testing company to Hunter Biden’s college roommate’s second cousin. There’s no doubt in my mind it would get traction.

What I’m trying to say is: Biden is walking a tightrope trying to keep these drooling morons in the fold. I’d call it pathetic, but the pathetic part is Biden is probably right that Dems need these people in order to maintain control in congress and win national races as well. Unfortunately for the Country, it has caused some significant paralysis in his administration.

You see the same thing with Biden trying to tap dance past student loan forgiveness. I think others pointed it out last page, but They internally focus-grouped and polled a few narratives about student loan forgiveness and saw it absolutely crash and burn. Sure the issue polls ok nationally, but when you drill down to the swing voters they need, it does terribly.

1/4/2022 8:34:23 PM

Quote :

" And fuck the people who would complain about the gov't guaranteeing a quarter billion extra tests at cost plus a little margin,"

100%

Also, rereading my previous posts, it’s not really clear, but I do overall agree this is a legit fuck-up.

Quote :

" The reason, of course, is because their funding isn't really being cut; the source of the money is just changing from tax dollars to students. I'd argue that state legislatures are doing this because they know that cutting higher education doesn't matter, precisely because of the unlimited lending available to student borrowers."

Yep, this is basically my point. Higher education costs were pushed onto students from tax payers and the federal government tried to paper over it by subsidizing loans. However, I’d argue that State Legislatures are doing this because voters don’t value education while big donors reward tax cuts.

1/4/2022 8:43:55 PM

Shit, the world is ending when Terd and Burro agree on stuff.

But, I'd counter that, yes, the legislatures can throw those bones to their donors *only because* of the student loan issue. Take that away and university system collapse under such continued behaviour. That's a lot less palatable.

1/4/2022 10:21:28 PM

Quote :

"even if we had a slow news week and Fox did run headlines blasting Biden for buying excess supply, so what? Worrying about that - particularly at the expense of preparing for the next variant - is idiotic."

100%

This is a huge problem for democrats. They worry WAAAYYY too much about what Fox News will say or what Republicans will say, instead of just doing the right thing. There's enough swing voters that will see it and vote accordingly.

The other problem is that most of them especially the older ones are just Republicans from the early 2000s, they don't want or care or value the things the young and/or working class value anymore.

1/4/2022 11:57:08 PM

Quote :

"Fox News could throw together a minimum 36 hour news cycle connecting the CEO of the COVID testing company to Hunter Biden’s college roommate’s second cousin."

No one doubts Fox's ability to spin a mile of shitty yarn out of the smallest of turds. I just think there's plenty of easier, sexier things for them to focus on, and there have been for the duration of Biden's term. Why waste time on that when the CRT well is so deep? Obviously we've neither of us any way to prove the point, but just as there's no doubt in your mind that it would gain traction, I am absolutely positive that it wouldn't.

Even if you consider blowback to be a real possibility, the calculus doesn't do it for me, from an administration perspective. You've got four possible outcomes:

1) Stockpile tests that aren't needed (you maybe get some bad press for waste)
2) Stockpile tests that ARE needed (you look smart, fulfill campaign promise, maybe good press)
3) Don't stockpile tests that aren't needed (nobody notices)
4) Don't stockpile tests that ARE needed (fail to fulfill campaign promise, anger everyone whose IQ is higher than their shoe size, and people die)

Nobody looking at those options should come away thinking, "Let's not stockpile diagnostic tests in the middle of an ongoing pandemic."

1/5/2022 9:44:30 AM

Quote :

"Lol Susan Rice is the key policy person opposed to student debt cancellation sez Politico WH Playbook https://t.co/u1TpoIEvMS"

1/5/2022 7:15:28 PM

Better (very) late than never?

Quote :

"The White House is finalizing details with the U.S. Postal Service to deliver 500 million coronavirus test kits to households across the country. Officials aim to begin shipping the kits by mid-January. https://t.co/Pn4IlA1x5j "

1/7/2022 7:22:31 AM

B(V)LTN 2?

Quote :

"Today, my administration announced that health insurers will be required to cover the cost of at-home COVID testing kits starting January 15th."

1/10/2022 5:09:14 PM

Going through insurance cos is pretty boneheaded, if they don't have some plan for the uninsured. Also, maybe this time will be different, but everytime i've had to partake in any service from my insurance co, even "free" flu vaccines, it's a lot of forms and waiting and really a huge PITA.

Seems like they just want to make this difficult. I'm honestly amazed at how badly the biden admin is dropping the ball on the little things, bad messaging, CDC looks incompetent, schools don't have clear guidance from anywhere, no coordination across levels of government, travel policies that don't make sense... i feel like they've basically given up. There's not much difference between biden policies and desantis, yet you still see right wing nuts screaming about lockdowns or whatever. It's the worst of both worlds for them.

Now the IRS is saying that they don't have resources to send tax returns out in time? I can't pinpoint what the biden admin is working on, from the outside it looks like they keep trying to court conservatives who want nothing to do with them, passing weak legislation, struggling on the really meaningful legislation.

Biden is nearly maintaining trump's policies across the board-- same afghanistan policy, similar border policy (no child separation or family detention at least), minimal refugee resettlement, travel bans that don't make sense, same covid policy, same iran policy. Hugely disappointing IMO.

[Edited on January 10, 2022 at 11:33 PM. Reason : ]

1/10/2022 11:31:34 PM

A couple notes I'm not sure how much education department can do, schools are mostly state and/or local controlled. The irs had some massive funding cuts under Trump and no way the slim Dem majority is going to restore it. Otherwise mostly agree.

As for insurance, I have the shittiest hmo my company offers and I've never come near paper work for a FLU SHOT! I knew insurance could be really shitty but damn. I don't think I've ever filled out any paperwork for anything

1/10/2022 11:40:56 PM

^ me and my lady did flu shots at cvs, we have different insurance and cvs still makes you fill out paperwork to get it. Maybe if I went through my primary care might be different but then you have to worry about scheduling.

1/11/2022 9:43:37 AM

Oh, I guess you're right I had to fill out a form (got covid booster at same time) but I interpreted that as the pharmacy protecting themselves (some minor medical history) if the vaccine kills you or something, I gvae them my insurance card but don't remember much on the form about that.

1/11/2022 10:01:46 AM

^^^^
Biden’s covid policy is worse. No stimulus since early last year, no extra unemployment, record breaking hospital admissions, etc

[Edited on January 11, 2022 at 1:13 PM. Reason : .]

1/11/2022 1:11:56 PM

what is he doing to enable record breaking hospitalizations?

encouraging the vaccine too much?

1/11/2022 1:53:32 PM

Some things Biden could be doing:

Paid days off for getting the vaccine
Enhanced unemployment to encourage people to stay home when sick
Contact tracing
Some type of federal pension for healthcare workers to counter the staffing shortage and open up more beds
Encouraging instead of discouraging remote learning

Etc

[Edited on January 11, 2022 at 2:26 PM. Reason : .]

1/11/2022 2:24:55 PM

pretty decent speech

1/11/2022 6:18:41 PM

the vaccine alone won't stop the disruptions to school and work and supply chain. When you have 10-20 percent of a school sick with a flu even if they're vaccinated, they're not working or learning. Having this roll through your entire population over several weeks is going to cause issues. Then having it roll through the rest of society because schools are a vector.

There should have been mass testing and self-quarantines for months now, plus more stimulus to give poor people the option to skip work when they're sick, plus an encouragement to maintain work from home policies for all employees that can.

1/11/2022 10:26:35 PM

moron you must have some pretty shitty insurance. I've yet to pay (or fill out anything non-trivial) for flu shots or my covid vaccines.

1/12/2022 12:28:34 AM

Follow up to ^^^^

From Chit Chat:

Quote :

" Honestly i am only testing from home. If i test positive i can honestly say i will keep going to work. I straight up don’t give a fuck. Shame me all you want. This shit is beyond ridiculous, and I just want my motherfucking money."

1/12/2022 1:07:08 AM

Re student debt

Quote :

"BREAKING: The 16 universities named in the lawsuit used a shared formula to determine financial aid, resulting in a higher net cost of attendance for the over 170,000 students alleged to have been overcharged by a total of hundreds of millions of dollars. https://t.co/OD7T1DFqKi "

1/12/2022 7:31:52 AM

I agree with one or two of these:

Some things Biden could be doing:

Paid days off for getting the vaccine - Agreed

Enhanced unemployment to encourage people to stay home when sick - I'm unconvinced there is a path where this would work. The process time for unemployment alone makes it unrealistic to use it for a single day. Even if you signed up the entire nation, I'm not sure there is the staff to pay those claims reasonably quickly.

Contact tracing - I agree in theory but the American issue with contact tracing is how unwilling people are to participate (i.e. they don't get tested to begin with, they don't care who they interact with even if they do test positive, it's none of the government's business who I've associated with). I'm not sure it'd be effective enough to waste any time on prioritizing it.

Some type of federal pension for healthcare workers to counter the staffing shortage and open up more beds - Again, I like the idea but getting people hired and then up to speed is a slow process. We'd be months in before any material number of workers did join, even if money was motivating. However, we're seeing that some individuals, especially women, are exiting the workforce entirely because families have learned to live on a single income, so that would be another limiting factor.

Encouraging instead of discouraging remote learning - Remote learning doesn't work for many people, especially the already impoverished, ignored, or otherwise disenfranchised.

1/12/2022 12:35:51 PM

Remote learning failed us. It required nearly a year of tutoring to catch my daughter up on reading. It's day 3 of remote learning for this week due to covid, and it has been a very difficult situation.

I couldn't imagine what families who can't afford tutoring are doing right now. I'm very fortunate.

1/12/2022 7:32:35 PM

Right now it doesn't seem like in person schooling is working either though. Kids are out, teachers are out, students are just sitting in classrooms with no teacher or being crammed into other rooms not doing anything, busses can't run, all sorts of knock on effects from thousands of people infected with flu-like symptoms simultaneously-- whoda thunk??

Vaccines stop hospitals from filling up, but they don't stop kids and teachers from being out sick.

1/12/2022 10:09:35 PM

^^^^^seriously. I feel the same way

1/13/2022 1:45:42 AM

Remember when Trump's press secretary constantly talked down to and shit on the press questions. Good thing our new president wont do that.

1/13/2022 9:59:32 PM

one was the mouthpiece for a legitimate fascist/told outright lies in defense of said fascist multiple times a day, and the other deals with bad faith questions from pro-fascism news outlets on a daily basis

seriously, man, that post reads like a Chris Cillizza tweet

[Edited on January 14, 2022 at 12:29 AM. Reason : .]

1/14/2022 12:24:28 AM

Ok

Btw here's what sparked this

Quote :

"Reporter: "So the sense is things are going well [at the White House], there's no need for change right now?" Jen Psaki: "We could certainly propose legislation to see if people support bunny rabbits and ice cream, but that wouldn't be very rewarding for the American people." https://t.co/LXO5s2duPM "

This one was also fun
https://brentroad.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=650397&page=26#16609419

[Edited on January 14, 2022 at 1:14 AM. Reason : E]

1/14/2022 1:03:51 AM

you’re complaining about manners and norms while an entire party/media apparatus is hellbent on fascism and ending democracy

it’s a total apples and oranges situation yet you’re essentially saying, “this tone from the Press Secretary: as bad as Trump or worse than Trump??”

[Edited on January 14, 2022 at 1:36 AM. Reason : .]

1/14/2022 1:28:40 AM

2 wrongs don’t make a right?

1/14/2022 2:42:55 AM

^^^Im glad I watched the video because that tweet barely even captures the exchange. Psaki answers the initial question with like a minute long response that is measured, reality-based, and shifted the narrative from the administration’s failures to successes. Basically what you expect a decent spokesperson to do.

Then the reporter tries to force the “Dems in disarray” narrative again in the follow up, because beltline media is seemingly incapable of running with any other narrative,

And Psaki got slightly facetious and shut that weak shit down.

Sorry if I’m not outraged.

1/14/2022 6:28:03 AM

Psaki is a professional liar, like every White House spokesperson.

1/14/2022 10:06:35 AM

Professional alternative factorian.

1/14/2022 10:37:09 AM

Quote :

"as bad as Trump or worse than Trump??”"

Condescending to the wants and needs of American people is, I suppose, a time honored tradition across the aisle. So I guess I should have said as bad as any secretary, ever, instead of specifically Trump. My fault for having very high standards for elected leaders..

And yea, it's me, the 'norms' guy, who has been talking for years about removing filibuster, packing courts and executive actions.

1/14/2022 11:51:56 AM

I think you're missing the point. Yes, there is a spectrum that isn't as bad as Trump that is still unacceptable. The point is this wasn't even close and that she'd legitimately answered the question in good faith the first time around and with reasonable decorum shut down a question that was posed in bad faith.

1/14/2022 12:23:35 PM