My CNN Article on "Why the Supreme Court Got it Right on Student Loans"

The article goes over the main reasons why the Court's decision was justified.

CNN just published my article on today's Supreme Court student loan forgiveness decision. Here is an excerpt:

 

In a lawsuit brought by six state governments, the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that President Joe Biden's massive $430 billion student loan forgiveness plan is illegal because it was never authorized by Congress, and the Constitution gives Congress – not the president – the power to determine how federal funds are spent. The court made the right decision: If the administration had won, Biden and future presidents would have been empowered to use vague statutes to usurp Congress' constitutional control over the federal budget. Moreover…. it also would have allowed the president to abuse emergency powers for partisan ends….

The Supreme Court…. rightly ruled that the HEROES Act's language comes nowhere near authorizing such a massive loan forgiveness plan. As Chief Justice John Roberts explained in the majority opinion, "The authority to 'modify' statutes and regulations allows the Secretary to make modest adjustments and additions to existing provisions, not transform them." The word "waive" also doesn't give the government the power to forgive loans on a massive scale, because, as Roberts noted, the government conceded that the term "waiver" as used in the HEROES Act cannot refer to waiving loan repayments.

In addition, for the  majority of the more than 40 million borrowers the White House claims would be eligible for forgiveness, the government presented no proof that, as a result of Covid, they were placed "in a worse position financially." Over 80% of employed college graduates did not even report a decrease in salary during the pandemic, and few suffered prolonged unemployment, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The lack of evidence that most beneficiaries' ability to pay was impaired by the pandemic seems to me a stronger basis for the court's ruling than Roberts' analysis of the terms "waive" and "modify…"

Presidents of both parties can be tempted to use emergency powers as a pretext to enact policies they otherwise can't pass. In 2019, Trump used a dubious emergency declaration to try to divert Pentagon funds to build a wall along the southern border. Trump's emergency declaration was bogus, and the statutes he cited didn't give him the power to transfer military funds….

Biden's abuse of emergency powers, like Trump's before it, would likely have caused more harm than good. His student loan forgiveness plan would have been a waste of taxpayer funds when the US is already facing a looming fiscal crisis, a regressive policy in that it helps the relatively affluent (former college students) and potentially inflationary…

Those who differ on policy should still be able to agree that it is dangerous to give one politician the power to circumvent the Constitution and divert federal funds to political projects not authorized by Congress. Even if you trust Biden to wield such power wisely, you likely do not have similar faith in the next Republican president – and vice versa.

Comments

[Dr. Ed 2]

The political left always understood the last line -- whatever they could do *now* meant that the right could do *later* when they were in the majority. That's all gone into the toilet now, including Pelosi's refusal to let the minority pick whom it wanted on the Jan 6th Committee -- and that's a precedent now -- watch for it in the inevitable impeachment hearings, not just on Biden.

The bottom line is that Congress would never forgive the loan forgiveness because of all the people like me who would be so incredibly pissed off about it -- and that's a feature, not a failure.

But Ilya's right here -- if this principle is established, then a right-wing President could use it for Federal subsidies for gun purchases under the Serviceman's act of 1940 or whatever. Maybe forgiving VA house loans or something.

The mistake the academic left has been making for the past 40 years is presuming that they will always be in power -- and not thinking about the consequences of years in which they are not.

[Brett Bellmore]

The left aren't making the mistake of thinking they'll always be in power; They're pursuing the goal of always being in power. Not quite the same thing.

I think a lot of people on the institutional right have not understood that. The left aren't worried about tit for tat, because they are working towards rendering the US a permanent one party state.

Somebody picks up a gun with the intention of shooting you dead, they're not going to take seriously the threat that you'll inevitably shoot them when the tables are turned. You can't, you'll be dead.

[Sarcastr0]

The right is the one trying six ways from Sunday to ignore the will of the people in the next Presidential election. You apologize for them at every turn.

And then you use your usual telepathy to accuse the left of being the ones trying to overturn our Democracy. Yep, that is how it goes - every accusation a confession.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"The right is the one trying six ways from Sunday to ignore the will of the people in the next Presidential election."

Not true. There are plenty of folks on the left trying to disqualify Trump from the presidency.

[Magister]

Trying one way from Wednesday (January 6th, 2021) to disqualify Trump, as an insurrectionist who attempted a coup. Republicans are ripping themselves apart trying to escape Trump's stranglehold. Many on the left are more about "nobody above the law" than stopping Trump from running.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Did you see how Trump was the only recent president without ancestors that were slave holders?? It’s because Trump has the shallowest American roots of any president in history!?! His paternal grandparents were Germans and his mother was Scottish!! So Trump attempted to disqualify Obama over lack of American roots and rails against immigrants…and yet Trump is barely an American…and his children other than Tiffany are also barely American!?! Wtf??

[blue-heron]

His grandfather ran a bordello in Alaska. The miners paid him in gold and he bought New York City real estate with it.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Yep, Trump comes from whore money.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Trying one way from Wednesday (January 6th, 2021) to disqualify Trump, as an insurrectionist who attempted a coup."

So convince people not to vote for him.

[Magister]

Sure. Did that in 2020, can do it again, against Trump or against any wannabe Trump (there's not much else possible in the current Republican party).

But candidates for President aren't above the law.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

If bigots, evangelicals, and other culture war casualties want to vote for a candidate locked in a cell at Guantanamo under Secret Service protection, they should be free to do so..

[Theendoftheleft]

How are you yourself going to vote when the American rightists blow your brains out? (Not that your blue team hasn't had dead people vote on its behalf before.)

[Magister]

Right-wing terrorism is a huge concern, but it isn't going to erase the vote margins in favor of Democratic presidential candidates. More likely it will discredit Republicans further.

But, kudos on not threatening Kirkland's grandchildren lately.

[Theendoftheleft]

Cheers, idiot. Actually, I have never threatened threatened them. I’ve noted how his American betters will Breivik him and them (though it would be helpful for his fellow Americans to know where his grandkids go to school). I’m not American, thank all the gods, old and new.

This is going to be a regular, pervasive feature of American social life for years to come as well. Enjoy! Your election results will become meaningless, as America becomes more fragmented and violent, and wanes in global power. Your blue team officials will be incapable of governing scores of millions of people who perceive them, correctly, as regular abusers of the rule of law, election tamperers, and zealots engaged in a comprehensive social re-engineering project — one that throws those people under the bus socio-economically. That’s to say, now that the veneer has been torn away, and the liberal-progressive totalitarian project is clear to the masses, elections will become meaningless if officials cannot govern effectively (because their mandate and their laws are deemed to be wholly illegitimate).

Live with the consequences of your regular abuses of power, and of the system. Die with those consequences too.

And keep pushing the right too! Make them more and more people angry, afraid, alienated, and push them to develop a sense of doom! Immanentize your own destruction.

Furthermore, it is he, Arthur (aka AIDS), who regularly threatens others on this blog, noting how they can continue till such time as their ‘betters’ put an end to them.

[Randal]

Exactly. And many more on the left want Trump to win the primaries because he's so beatable.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nope. If Trump is disqualified, then Trump disqualified himself from the presidency. You think no one is supposed to notice, or to care. That's a lousy way to be an American.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

This blog is lousy with un-American losers. It's a miracle that John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark never became Conspirators.

[Theendoftheleft]

'This blog is lousy with un-American losers'. You lead the pack, AIDS. Good work trying to subvert traditional American values in the name of your comprehensive social re-engineering project and global imperialist project. Every single Framer of the USA would have deemed you to be an enemy of the republic they created.

[bernard11]

There are plenty of folks on the left trying to disqualify Trump from the presidency.

Bullshit. There are few people talking about it, but, unlike GOP efforts to destroy American democracy, nobody is doing much.

[bevis the lumberjack]

“GOP efforts to destroy democracy”.

What are those efforts, Bernard? Things like the New Jim Crow voting laws that cost Atlanta the all-star game but blacks in Georgia are happy with to the tune of 90%+?

Things like trying to start a Ministry of Truth to suppress criticism?

No offense, but you’re getting caught up in your own narrative again.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

What are those efforts

An informed, decent, lucid person would start with election lies and a low-budget insurrection. Then perhaps race-targeted voter suppression, bigoted gerrymandering, and efforts to increase the effects of our system’s structural amplification of hayseed voices.

[Sarcastr0]

1. Refusing to push back at the right-wing media pushing the GOP base with the 2020 election was stolen myth.
2. New levels of gerrymandering, racial and otherwise
3. Restricting access to the polls
4. Capturing state electoral administrations in swing states.
5. Criminalizing minor, technical infractions by election workers, creating a lever to delegitimizes later, and running non-zealots out of the job now.
6. the (now failed) Independent State Legislatures doctrine push.

[Theendoftheleft]

1. The American corporate media mainstream and left media refusing to address banana-republic forms of election law changes that NO civilized Western country would implement, because they violate basic rule of law and election integrity standards. (This includes ballot harvesting, decreased ID requirements, late ballot counting, not clearing state ballot rolls of emigrants to other states and the dead, etc).
2. Blue team gerrymandering for identity politics candidates.
3. Russiagate, the Clinton emails, and the FBI conspiring to subvert the 2016 election and a presidency. Demonstrating to the world that your government is a mafia.
4. On the one hand, creating ‘sanctuary’ cities that lock in the systematic violation of health and labour laws in order to exploit brown illegals as a neo-serf class. On the other hand, completely debasing the idea of immigration law in order to bring in millions of unskilled illiterate labourers to exploit and to further an invidious, anti-democratic population replacement scheme.
5. INCESSANT ‘progressive’ propaganda in all forms of media, pushing the same superficial narrative.
6. Cancelling, the rape of academic freedom, and the efforts to consolidate control over academic discourses (a la Foucault’s notion of an episteme).
7. Corrupt misadventures in Ukraine, including by the POTUS and his family, which your government tries to cover up.

You are UNQUESTIONABLY the mortal enemy of the American republic, the rule of law, democracy, and freedom of thought and speech. Any American who has any interest in preserving their republic will deem you AND YOUR FAMILY to be a domestic threat and ENEMY of the US Constitution and the republic. You are totalitarians and should be treated by real Americans exactly as the Nazis and Soviets were.

You also alienate your own democratic allies, who cannot trust you AT ALL any longer, and will not heed your bidding. We will not fight and die for your global agenda. you have discredited yourselves. Russia and China may be corrupt, authoritarian and totalitarian pieces of shit, but that does not make you the credible ‘leader’ of the free world.

[myself]

1. I won't push back on any of these claims because, at best, they made voter fraud more likely. They still don't include a single bit of evidence that voter fraud happened.

2. Both side gerrymander, but the right does it far worse.

3. Yes, the FBI did subvert the 2016 election by dropping a Clinton email bombshell days before the election while largely keeping the Trump-Russia investigation under wraps (that's what you were talking about, right? right?)

4. Ok, starting with a weird perspective then veering right into white nationalism (great replacement theory).

5. Ok, the media doesn't share your worldview.

6. Because using "rape" in that context made you sound oh so reasonable. Btw, I assume you support DeSantis's actual attack on academic freedoms?

7. Not sure if you're just playing into a Biden conspiracy theory here or full pro-Russia rhetoric.

[Theendoftheleft]

1. Those election law changes, ALONE, serve as evidence of your country’s becoming a banana republic. No other Western country would ever adopt them, and with good reason. The defences raised on their behalf by your blue teamers, who are their authors, shows how rotten, evil, and anti-democratic they have become in their lust for power.

2. Both gerrymander because your red and blue teams are both pieces of garbage. However, your blue team does so in the name of identity-based tribalization, which is far worse for the health of your already-flailing republic.

3. I’m talking about how Clinton violated 18 USC 793(f) by keeping government emails on her private servers, how she and her staff magnetized and destroyed the evidence they handed over to your federal police, and how Comey invented a mens rea requirement out of cloth to preempt charging Clinton for her criminality.

In any civilized Western democracy with an analogue statute, someone in Clinton’s position would have been charged, tried, and found guilty in a court of law. She would be in prison. This isn’t about your red-blue squabbles. This is about your FBI, DOJ, and government being corrupt pieces of shit. Some people are above the law in America, and the whole world sees that clearly.

4. You just invoke the notion of white nationalism because it deflects from your racist policies. No one in the rest of the world believes that if your illegals were all white you’d treat them thus, or if they were all black you’d even let them in.

Moreover, if you weren’t such a parochial American fuckwit, you’d KNOW how most Western Europeans are NOT ‘white nationalists’: they would never consider the Irish or Eastern Europeans to be equal, and never have. White ‘nationalism’ is nothing more than a DEI concept to advance ‘inclusiveness’ for those populations. Same in most English-speaking countries, prior to WW2, save the USA and South Africa (which was a Dutch-Brit state since the Boer War).

5. The entire world, from the secular hard left, the religious left across the Global South, the secular right, and the religious right REJECTS the American corporate media’s (uniform) viewpoint as propaganda and misinformation. People who read global news sources, particularly high quality ones from Europe and Asia, CANNOT believe your media — especially if the read both left and right sources.

6. I am disgusted by DeSantis. He is an authoritarian pig. (Further, the GOP establishment hopes to use DeSantis to trick its voting base to return to the pre-Trump status quo ante politics. If the voters have any brains whatsoever, they will see through that, and through DeSantis.)

Relatedly, the MORONS who support getting rid of tenure fail to understand how quickly leftists will weaponize other uni policies to try to oust conservative and libertarian faculty members on entirely duplicitous and spurious grounds.

Whilst DeSantis and his lot are awful authoritarians, trying to silence speech, the blue teamers are unquestionably TOTALITARIANS, who wish to completely control and police speech, thought, and conduct. They therefore represent a far greater threat to Western civilization, and to the American republic and constitution, than DeSantis the clown. There is a REASON why, as the empirical evidence shows, MOST faculty and students in American campus are afraid to voice their views on campus, and it is NOT due to the political right.

7. As I note repeatedly on this blog, Americans must resort to accusations of critics espousing ‘pro-Russian’ rhetoric, or of being pro-putin to deflect BECAUSE they are afraid of being labelled racists for calling me a CHINESE agent or provocateur instead. It’s moronic and hypocritical, especially as your own Executive branch considers China to be the US’ #1 security threat. How do you know my heritage is not Chinese, baizuo gweilo?

Moreover, one needn’t go down some conspiratorial rabbit hole to know the facts on the ground of WHAT THE HELL America has been doing in Ukraine the last couple of decades, how you are militarizing the area, and how you are doing things that you yourselves wouldn’t tolerate on your own Mexican border. Adjudging America to be making idiotic and illegitimate foreign policy mistakes does not entail that one supports Russia or China.

[Magister]

Regarding only #1, the overblown accusations from the right have indeed led to more voting fraud -- by Republicans, mostly trying to balance out the imaginary fraud they've been told about by right-wing agitators.

[Theendoftheleft]

‘Regarding only #1, the overblown accusations from the right have indeed led to more voting fraud — by Republicans, mostly trying to balance out the imaginary fraud they’ve been told about by right-wing agitators’.

Notice how that ISN’T a response to my point.

Name ANY social democrat, democratic socialist or liberal elections law scholar, in ANY OTHER Western democracy, who don’t think what America has done in those specific, listed ways, undermines election integrity and the rule of law. Name EVEN ONE who wouldn’t actively oppose their adoption in their countries.

All you fucking idiots do is lie and deflect. Keep pointing at the American right and pretend that YOU yourself aren't a complete disgrace.

[myself]

1) Not my country, lots of countries modified election laws for COVID, and again you offer zero evidence of fraud.

2) I'm still not American, and your claim is very suspect.

3) Zero evidence that Clinton was the one who ordered the emails to be destroyed after the subpoena.

4) "Anti-democratic population replacement scheme", ie great replacement theory.

5) For someone who doesn't seem to be American. You have a weird insistence both that everyone else is American, and that the broad narratives in US media you object to are also shared by mainstream non-US media.

6) Ok, we have some partial agreement, though I disagree that DeSantis is "pre-Trump", he's trying to be as Trumpy as can be (but without the charisma).

7. Why do you jump to attacking Ukraine if not for some pro-Russia propaganda. Besides, the US, and the rest of the West, never started arming Ukraine until Russia performed an unprovoked invasion in 2014. The Mexico metaphor breaks down there.

[Randal]

INCESSANT ‘progressive’ propaganda in all forms of media, pushing the same superficial narrative.

& I love that you quoted some of it earlier above. Consciously or subconsciously I wonder? Either way... it seems to be working!

[Theendoftheleft]

In response to ‘Myself’:

On 1. No country changed its election laws in the specific ways America did. If you can control yourself, stop lying about this.

I laid down a very simple challenge: name even one non-American, Western election law scholar who endorses the American blue team’s new modes, who doesn’t think they’re rule of law violating, AND thinks they’d be perfectly valid in their own countries.

On 3. The best you can come up with is that Clinton didn’t order the drives destroyed??? That says nothing about her having the info on those drives in the first place, let alone what the government did to get her off thereafter. In more civilized countries, Clinton would be in prison.

On 4. It is a replacement model, especially given the failure to meet replacement rate domestically, one predominantly relies upon the importation of unskilled illiterate labour instead of skilled labour. It demonstrates the government’s failure to address its basic demographic and class problems, let alone its ulterior agenda. The observation is not impugned just because you don’t like the politics of a subset of people who espouse it; one could just as well say that, from Marxist and socialist lenses, the policy is to USE multiculturalism as a tool to engage in class warfare.

On 5: No I didn’t. I explicitly stated how media is different in Europe and Asia.

On 6: Desantis is not Trumpy. The knockdown proof: the neocon stooges at the National Review and the (now-deformed) DrudgeReport champion DeSantis.

On 7: There’s no logical entailment there. It’s perfectly consistent to believe it’s foolish and unnecessary for America to be involved there, let alone to do what it’s done (and its involvement in Ukraine LONG predates 2014, as any mainstream source can confirm), and think Russia’s actions are illegitimate.

Stop antagonizing Russia. It’s unnecessary and it’s bad for the world. Furthermore, this is Europe’s problem, so let the EU take care of it (and cover the costs). America has furthermore pushed Russia even further into China's arms, which will be horrible for the world. They took a country that's being invaded in the East by China, one with its own shrinking demography, but massive military, economy, natural resources, and nuclear arsenal, and pushed them towards China. This American folly isn't something most Western allies wanted -- even if we think Putin is a piece of shit.

In response to Randal. Consciously. Regarding the WSJ link, even your own propaganda machine is afraid for America’s future now. You need to working class drones to enlist, fight, and die for your insane, undemocratic global agenda. The people can nevertheless now see how it’s 100% against their interests to do so, especially since they’d be fighting for a different America than what they always believed their republic to be, but also because they know their government and elites despise them and wish to destroy them. This will NOT get better.

[Randal]

I wasn’t thinking of the WSJ link. I was thinking of the liberal-minded American pop culture reference.

[myself]

1. Almost all European countries have automatic/mandatory registration, so changes there irrelevant. 8 EU countries have mail-in voting for all voters. And overall very few countries have the US's ridiculously long lineups with multiple elections being held at once, so in-person was far less risky for them regardless.

As for this new demand (that you claim is an old demand) for an election scholar, I'm not going to go on a wild goose chase for whatever you think is acceptable.

3.I mentioned the drives because that was by far the easiest claim to criminality. The Clinton emails themselves, people who sent the emails would have been just as guilty (State Dept email wasn't secure either). Not to mention Pence's and Biden's papers. When folks are regularly dealing with classified info (marked and unmarked) mistakes sometimes happen. It only becomes criminal if there intent or at least a severe degree of negligence.

4. However you defend it "population replacement scheme" is a conspiracy theory.

5. You've got weird views on media.

6. You've got weird views on DeSantis.

7. Poor Russia, victim to Ukraine not only not wanting to be a vassal state, but not even wanting to have their language and culture extinguished by force!!

When Prigozhin calls BS on the Russian excuses for war (hey! non-US media!!) you should take note.

[Theendoftheleft]

On 1: ‘As for this new demand (that you claim is an old demand) for an election scholar, I’m not going to go on a wild goose chase for whatever you think is acceptable’.

EVEN THIS you feel the need to lie about? Read my earlier comment in this very thread, in the paragraph commencing ‘Name ANY social democrat…’. What is wrong with you?

Further, having mail-in ballots isn’t the same is having ad hoc judicial decisions about which late ones to count now, is it? Why don’t you just admit that you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about? Why must you be so American in that regard?

On 3: You’re also basically admitting that you don’t know what the specific criminal law provisions are, particularly 18 USC 793(f), why other government officials (long before Clinton) had gone to prison for violating this law, and why Clinton was treated differently. Hell, why didn’t the FBI find out, and charge, the persons who erased the drives either? How the hell do you think you’re raising a cogent, worthwhile point?

On 4: It’s obviously not. Just go ask Rev Arthur C Kirkland (aka AIDS aka Coach Sandusky aka Jeffrey Epstein). And your mere say so means nothing.

On 5 & 6: Why on earth would I care if you think they’re weird? Why, moreover, can’t you address the merits, other than it being another instance of ignorance? Again, the National Review and the DrudgeReport are 100% anti-Trump. Given that they’re both pro-DeSantis, and given that they’re political insiders, which credible, valid inferences can be made about DeSantis?

On 7: Poor Ukraine. It’s a corrupt, American vassal/client state. Firm believers in self-determination for its constituent populations, too, yeah?

And grounds for war have been fairly well explained by Mearsheimer in the US and others, save for their leaving out one key thing. Namely, how the conflict is a direct challenge to the entire international legal order, and why a large portion of the world, which doesn’t necessarily like Russia, therefore isn’t anti-Russia or pro-Western about this.

[David Nieporent]

Sure, Vlad. Whatever you say.

[Theendoftheleft]

Sorry, I couldn't hear you what you said with Kamala Harris' dick in your mouth.

Was it something about you being a useful idiot who helps the American left advance its totalitarian agenda via Soviet tactics?

[bevis the lumberjack]

Does a president-king unilaterally changing a law to fulfill his student loan jihad destroy democracy? Is there democracy if there are no checks on the Dear Leader?

Doe’s gerrymandering Maryland so that the congressional districts look like a pinwheel centered on Baltimore and leaving a state with a Republican governor zero representation in the House destroy democracy? Or does that only apply to one side?

Once again, we’re all unprincipled hypocrites guided by only our zealotry.

[Sarcastr0]

Executive orders being a thing is not the end of democracy, and the idea that there are no checks on Biden, or that anyone much wants that is ridiculous. Trump in the GOP is not the same as Biden in the Democratic Party.

Dems gerrymander and it sucks. But the issue is not position (things are about equal now depending on your metric) it's momentum - after REDMAP the GOP has to go further as the suburbs go Dem. They're targeting race now, as their uncovered records show, and which the post-Shelby era now allows. And NC is making courts rethink their position on gerrymandering.

And my list had 6 items. You read it, responded to 1 without a lot of depth, had an off-topic thing on Biden as Dear Leader, and then that's all. Not a great rejoinder.

[bevis the lumberjack]

I don’t give enough of a shit about this garbage to breathlessly track every single act by every single player. I’m objecting to the horribly overwrought DESTROY DEMOCRACY rhetoric.

The new Georgia voting laws were going to DESTROY DEMOCRACY because they’re the NEW JIM CROW but it turned out in practice democracy was quite pleased. And y’all dishonored actual Jim Crow victims (quite a few of whom I knew personally) with your garbage rhetoric. But at least you got to feel virtuous for a bit before scurrying on to the next narrative.

You yell REPUBLICAN GERRYMANDERING IS DESTROYING DEMOCRACY, then I point out Maryland and you quietly mutter “well, that’s bad too I guess”. But apparently not bad to the point of DESTROYING DEMOCRACY!!!!!!!

Was Minister Jankowicz going to destroy democracy by attacking free speech? Does democracy benefit from free speech? Apparently you don’t think so because you support (or excuse) the fact that majorities on campuses are afraid to speak due in part to the efforts of your DEI people.

So yeah, you’re a complete phony. You don’t give any more shits about democracy than, say, MTG does. You just wrap yourself in the garbage narrative when in reality if something anti-democratic serves the goals of your political attitude democracy can just suck it.

This place is so fucking disheartening that it makes me fear for our future. But it’s uou every bit as much as cbd and frank because you’re their mirror image.

[Sarcastr0]

I don’t give enough of a shit about this garbage to breathlessly track every single act by every single player. I’m objecting to the horribly overwrought DESTROY DEMOCRACY rhetoric.

So you are going to not engage with my comment, you're going to write a whole bunch taking issue with an argument other people made elsewhere.

If you want to call something melodrama, engage with the thing itself, don't go somewhere else and decide that's melodrama instead and pretend you've proven anything at all.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Why should I engage with your comment? It’s not sincere. You (and a lot of others) are on here every goddam day defending unethical, illegal behavior by politicians and other public figures on your side. Every day. How much credibility does that give you to criticize that by others?

Your team’s president is now openly defying both of the other branches over something as petty as student loans. And we were having fainting spells over our norms because of Trump. Look how fast things change when your team gets the ball. I know that pointing that out means I’m a MAGA fascist, but whatever.

But you’ll defend it. So, no, your comment is probably 80% exaggerated and 20% progressive spin. It’s like arguing with air.

So I’m not trying to prove anything. Proving something to you would be like trying to prove something to a potted plant. It doesn’t have the capacity to listen.

[Sarcastr0]

unethical, illegal behavior this is called begging the question.

How much credibility does that give you This is called ad hominem.

openly defying both of the other branches this is just wrong.
Loans are not yet forgiven. Biden is citing statutes and going to court. That is not what defiance looks like.

we were having fainting spells over our norms because of Trump. Look how fast things change when your team gets the ball.
I am treating different things differently. You like to treat different things the same so you can bothsides it up.

So I’m not trying to prove anything. Proving something to you would be like trying to prove something to a potted plant.
Proving != convincing. If it did, I'd be spending a lot less time here.

And you still didn't really engage with my list; just ranting about bothsides in general. Your favorite!

[hoppy025]

Yes, because the "people" aren't the ones those of us on the right chose, or ever wanted. They were not our countrymen, or people we adopted to become our countrymen, but people who were foisted on us, against our will.

[Don Nico]

WOW!
" to ignore the will of the people in the next Presidential election"
And you accuse Brett of telepathy!

I can see why don't look in too often.
"Discussions" immediately degenerate into the same tiresome blah-blah back and forth that I recall fro buss sessions at college decades ago. The only thing that seem different is that most of the bullshitters are drinking beer during the morning hours and all day long.

Have good long 4th of July weekend.
American democracy will survive all of this partisan nonsense.

[Sarcastr0]

I’m talking actions, not sekret intent.

I also provided examples, did you miss them?

Ed and then Bret have some grade-A nutso takes, but your issue is my response, which brings actual things one could look into and talk about.

Dunno what your baseline of what to be annoyed by is, but it’s skewed.

[Theendoftheleft]

Lying pig. You are a traitor to the United States Constitution, to America's republican form of government, to the rule of law, to the very idea of academic freedom, and to the basic notions and norms of freedom of conscience.

The left's 'long march through the institutions' is now manifesting in comprehensive efforts at thought and speech control, of policing legal and political narratives at all cost, and systematically lying to the American people and the world.

Go back to Russia, you tankie scum.

[Randal]

A ding against Russia! The plot thickens...

[Magister]

You're pointing at the wrong party. Extreme gerrymandering to hold power in the face of significant vote deficits? Republicans. Pursuing the independent state legislature theory so that those gerrymandered legislatures can pick the winner no matter the vote totals? Republicans. Suppressing votes? Republicans. Stripping governors of power in lame duck sessions to weaken a governor of the opposite party? Republicans. Obstructing everything they can with a minority (the Senate filibuster, mostly, but also blocking judicial appointments by the other party)? Republicans. Nakedly partisan rulings from their paid-for Supreme Court justices? Republicans.

Republicans have only two purposes: holding power and delivering tax breaks to their rich backers. The culture war things are just ways to achieve the first while distracting from their fundamental emptiness.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Exactly. And look at a graph of overall student loan debt by year—it’s a product of the weak Bush/Cheney economy in which prime age employment and labor force participation never reached Clinton levels even though boomers didn’t turn 65 until 2011. So young people made the rational choice at the time of waiting out a suboptimal economy thinking at some point the 1990s would return. Roberts and Kavanaugh and ACB should acknowledge they are in part to blame for this mess for supporting Bush/Cheney!

[Bwaaah]

"So young people made the rational choice at the time of waiting out a suboptimal economy."

Is that what you call that? A rational choice? Successful thinkers making their way like that?

BWAAAAHHH HAH HAH HAH!!!!

(You're serious. I know.)

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Look at the statistics numbnuts! Why do you think there was a law school boom during those years?? The law school boom was a product of a suboptimal economy and easy student loans and easy to staff graduate schools.

[Brett Bellmore]

Wait, are you under the illusion that Democrats don't gerrymander?

[bernard11]

And you ignore the rest of it?

[Sarcastr0]

Why is it that it's the GOP gerrymanders that even GOP courts are saying are out of lie, eh?

This is next-level gerrymandering. Required if you want to have authority as your minority status becomes more and more established.

[Magister]

Democrats gerrymander as well, may rationalizing it as self-defense, but Republicans do far more of it. Is there a state where statewide vote totals have more Republican votes than Democratic votes, but the state legislature is still firmly in Democratic control? That's been the case in several states, and is the main reason Republicans would support the Independent State Legislature Theory.

From the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/11/13/least-three-states-republicans-lost-popular-vote-won-house/

Democrats have been known to indulge in the occasional gerrymander when they’re in power, as the case of Maryland so vividly illustrates. Yet in the run-up to the 2010 Census, it was Republicans who realized that the pathway to power ran through the nation’s statehouses, where most districts are drawn. They weren’t exactly subtle about this — their redistricting initiative had a name (REDMAP), and a public website where, in 2013, they boasted that “Republicans enjoy a 33-seat margin in the U.S. House … having endured Democratic successes atop the ticket and over one million more votes cast for Democratic House candidates than Republicans.”

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Republicans have only two purposes: holding power and delivering tax breaks to their rich backers.

How did you forget the protection and promotion of superstitious bigots?

[Theendoftheleft]

Says the defender of the multicult equity global social re-engineering fanatics? You know, the ones who claim that their values track science, but lack any real, credible empirically-grounded knowledge or skills to back up their beliefs and agendas???

Carry on, AIDS. Till your American betters pull you out of your home and blow your brains out.

[Theendoftheleft]

'How did you forget the protection and promotion of superstitious bigots?'.

Imbecile, you forgot to accuse others of being 'Islamophobes' today.

[NOVA Lawyer]

That's just a means to the end of maintaining power and getting them to go along with the tax breaks. Most of them actually have as little regard for the superstitious bigots as you or I, they are just morally vacuous enough that they are willing to pander to them.

[Theendoftheleft]

Is that why Arthur (aka AIDS) keep calling people 'Islamophobes', even though he thinks (and he is on the record as stating) that's it's just barbarous, religious superstitious nonsense? Is that why he nonetheless wishes to normalize in the West that imperialist apartheid religio-legal normative order, one that is predicated upon the musings of a warmongering illiterate pedophile and slaver?

Is that why, when confronted with irrefutable empirical evidence about consanguinity rates and child marriage rates (which are a function of religious faith in that creed), the blue team and red team shills, either ignore it or try to silence public discussion thereof?

[bernard11]

The mistake the academic left has been making for the past 40 years is presuming that they will always be in power

Are you aware that we have had Republicans in the White House for about half of that time?

[ReaderY]

After the aytempt to use the HEROES Act as a basis was struck down, President Biden announced he would provide debt relief under the HEA.

Does that mean the individual plaintiffs in the companion case really had standing after all?

[David Nieporent]

No. This has been yet another episode of Simple Answers to Stupid Questions.

[Cheerio]

As a policy matter, I disagree with the forgiveness.

As a constitutional matter, Congress would have to authorize it.

As a statutory matter, the HEROES act doesn't authorize it...

...but, the HEA does.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Student loans are stupid. We encouraged 18 yo to go to college. We as a society should pick up the tab because we screwed up. More and more colleges are going tuition free for students from middle class families and that is the right way to structure college tuition. Max out state merit scholarships and max out Pell Grants and then that is all the college should need from middle class students other than they have to come up with some funds for room and board.

[mulched]

How can they get to college without cars? We must give them free cars too!

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Everything was going fine before Bush…you got your 7000 Gold Stars and $5 trillion in debt to slaughter innocent Muslims…all I want is $400 billion for people who tried to do the right thing.

[hoppy025]

That only works because those private schools are increasing tuitions on those who don't qualify for aid. College shouldn't cost $80k a year.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Good, jack it up!

[Krayt]

Schumer complained. You worthless pos, your actual job is to pass legislation. Clear legislation. No weasel behavior!

If you want that policy, pass the law directly! No weasels sneaking massive things through on a gossamer reinterpretation you clearly did not intend.

Moreover, you.. wait. Where are you going? Off to regulate AI?

Well, thank god that’s in good hands.

[Sarcastr0]

This is the second 'why doesn't King Schumer act' post.

Weird.

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

The law does, however, allow Biden (actually the secretary of education) to cancel the student-loan debts of borrowers who declare bankruptcy (I’m not a lawyer, but I can read, and the first sentence of the decision says that a president does have that power, as well as the power to cancel debts of severely disabled students, dead students, and a couple of other types. “The Act authorizes the Secretary of Education to cancel or reduce loans in certain limited circumstances. The Secretary may cancel a set amount of loans held by some public servants, see §§1078–10, 1087j, 1087ee. He may also forgive the loans of borrowers who have died or become “permanently and totally disabled,” §1087(a)(1); borrowers who are bankrupt, §1087(b); and borrowers whose schools falsely certify them, close down, or fail to pay lenders. §1087(c).”)

Biden should at least allow student-loan debtors to declare bankruptcy like other debtors.

[Brett Bellmore]

A pity the law explicitly makes federal student loans non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. But I suppose that this does provide a legit work around.

He isn't interested because it's not a big enough handout to move the needle on the 2024 election, and moving that needle is the only reason he'd do this.

[bernard11]

Republican politicians are all altruistic, seeking only the good of the country.

What a fucking joke you've become.

[I Callahan]

Where did he say that? Aren’t you progs EVER capable of addressing the point, instead of reacting to what you FEEL he’s thinking?

Brett’s point is valid. It has nothing to do with the altruism of Republicans or Democrats in general.

[Religion and Politics, my life]

Biden is stupid and lazy.

He knows that govt aid is the chief CAUSE of tuitions rising.
But maybe not. Remember, both stupid and lazy

And he knows that tuition is unhinged from education costs
Data shows the cost of attending college has soared by nearly five times the rate of inflation since 1970

Does he know that the Enrollment Cliff is coming in 2025
Over the succeeding four years, the number of 18-year-olds will decrease by 15%. How does that translate into enrollment figures? During that four-year span, colleges will lose approximately 576,000 students.

So, Pres Stupid ignores that he is making college far more expensive in 3 WAYS

[hoppy025]

Start from the premise that the Democrats hate America and want it destroyed, and all of his actions make a lot more sense.

[jimc5499]

"In 2019, Trump used a dubious emergency declaration to try to divert Pentagon funds to build a wall along the southern border. Trump's emergency declaration was bogus, and the statutes he cited didn't give him the power to transfer military funds…."

I did and still do disagree with this. One of the primary duties of the Federal Government is the security of the Country's boarders. The authority of the President's role as Commander in Chief of the military has never been defined.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Who cares…the wall is inconsequential because border land in Texas is mostly private property. Trump’s wall stopped a few Mexican turtles…but those were some bad tortugas! 😉

[blue-heron]

I too would like to protect these poor boarders. Where exactly are they being put up?

[NOVA Lawyer]

+1

[I Callahan]

Unserious.

[Brett Bellmore]

In fact, the National Emergencies Act has only one definition for an "emergency": The President declares there is one. That's it, nothing more. Somin is entitled to his opinion about whether there was an emergency, but his opinion on the question had no more legal significance than mine. Only one person's opinion has any legal significance in the operation of the NEA: The President's.

I think it's a very bad law, remarkably bad, but what Trump did was perfectly in keeping NEA practice, and Somin damned well knows that.

And the statute in question pretty unambiguously gives him the power to transfer military funds if he declared an emergency. So, Somin was limited to claiming that defensive fortifications on a border aren't a military use, which is actually kind of pathetic.

[Sarcastr0]

The National Emergencies Act has only one definition for an “emergency”: The President declares there is one. That’s it, nothing more.

And yet again you believe you have found a situation where there are no checks or balances on the thing you wanted to happen.

Do you see how authoritarian you are becoming? Like, you're getting worse.

[I Callahan]

Are you going to address what he actually said? Is there something in the law that says there are checks and balances when a President declares an emergency?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I continue to disagree with you on this point. The word "emergency" has to have some meaning independent of how it is defined by the president in any particular case. It's like arguing that the President can choose to define any word in the constitution any way he wants, if the constitution doesn't include a definition of that word.

[Toranth]

Well, the Act is a piece of garbage allows the President to declare an "emergency" for any reason at any time for any interval. It's why we have 'emergencies' that are ongoing for decades - the oldest current one is from 1979, and it's about international financial transactions with Iran.
The law is dumb, but that really is the way it works.

[jimc5499]

You might want to look into the interment of Japanese Americans in 1942. Roosevelt justified it by declaring an emergency. Historically most of these "emergencies" have been designated by Democrat Presidents. It's ironic how fast they try to throw this "power" away when it is used for something that they don't like.

[David Nieporent]

In fact, the National Emergencies Act has only one definition for an “emergency”: The President declares there is one.

That is not in fact the definition of emergency in the National Emergencies Act. In fact, there is no definition of emergency in the National Emergencies Act.

[I Callahan]

So, barring anything in the act, the president CAN define an emergency as he sees fit. Barring any law elsewhere.

What are you arguing? That no president should ever declare an emergency, unless all the other branches of government agree with him, just in case he doesn’t run afoul of what the consensus is?

[David Nieporent]

No, I am arguing that contrary to what Brett said, there's no definition of emergency in the National Emergencies Act.

[David Nieporent]

And, no, your first paragraph does not even resemble anything like the law.

If Congress does not define a term, nor grant the executive the power to define it, then it carries with it its ordinary meaning. And therefore, the courts can indeed review it.