Monthly Archives: May 2022

Not Entirely

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In the face of days of threatened violence—the active attempts to terrorize the families of Supreme Court Justices at their homes, which, just incidentally is a violation of Federal law regarding efforts to intimidate judges and force a particular judicial outcome—and actual violence—the firebombing of a pro-life facility in Wisconsin—White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, had this to say:

@POTUS strongly believes in the Constitutional right to protest. But that should never include violence, threats, or vandalism. Judges perform an incredibly important function in our society, and they must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety.

Via a tweet, yet, not even a formal statement.

It’s also an unbelievable claim under any guise. If President Joe Biden (D) really meant that, if he truly had the courage of his conviction, he’d come out and say so himself, formally, in front of the press and us American citizens, instead of hiding behind the skirts of his Press Secretary and using her mouth to pretend to mean these things.

Dodging a Bullet

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Think about the continued protests by abortion activists outside conservative Supreme Court Justices’ homes, protests nakedly intended to force those Justices to change their alleged votes on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, votes which might aggregate into significant alteration, if not reversal, of the Court’s prior ruling in Roe v Wade.

Keep in mind that those…protests…are intended to achieve their goal by terrorizing the Justices and, especially, their families.

Keep in mind, also, that both of those—protests to intimidate court officials into producing a particular outcome to a case, and terrorizing the targets of those so-called protests—are plainly illegal:

Whoever, with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty, pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States, or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer, or with such intent uses any sound-truck or similar device or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

The press is rife with videos of the protests and of the protestors. The protestors are easily identifiable in those videos. There are police present whose bodycams also would provide ample identification capability regarding those protestors.

The Department of Justice, though, is studiously silent and determinedly inactive on the matter. No arrests have been made. No indictment proceedings have been initiated. No one has been brought before a judge for arraignment.

Attorney General Merrick Garland is simply refusing to do his job and enforce the law.

We dodged a bullet when we managed to avoid having Garland on our Supreme Court. Imagine the destruction to law, to order, this man could have inflicted on our nation had he gotten that lifetime appointment. He’s being destructive enough in just one year and will wreak plenty of additional havoc on rule of law over his four-year term.

One Way to Make the Question Moot

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The US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing a case concerning whether the President personally has the authority to suspend new oil- and gas-lease sales. The particular case centers on climate change concerns as the rationale, but the authority is much broader than that, or it’s non-existent.

The State plaintiffs argue that

a 1987 law dictating the ways in which oil and gas leases will be sold stipulates that a sale must be held at least four times annually in states with eligible land. … “…President Biden put his campaign promises above federal law: By executive fiat, he halted oil and gas leasing on federal lands.”

President Joe Biden’s (D) government employee lawyers argue that

the US president is not an “agency” and therefore not subject to the Administrative Procedure Act.

Biden’s argument strikes me as a frivolous quibble, and the States should win, with the Appellate court upholding the district court’s ruling that, in essence, in this sort of context, a President is, too, an “agency,” and so he has no such authority.

The question can be made non-existent in future, though, with a straightforward fix (however politically difficult it might be to enact): at least on Federal property, make oil- and gas-leasing and -permitting a will-issue matter with licensing requirements, including environmental questions and leasing costs, explicitly barred from being used as barriers to leasing and permitting.

A Bit More on Student Debt

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I wrote a bit ago about what colleges and universities should be required to do regarding student loans and student debt.  Here’s a bit more concerning why college and university management teams’ feet should be held to the fire. Mike Brown, writing for lendedu, has some data that compares, by school, student salary expectations with salary reality. In general,

median expected salary after graduating was $60,000, but the PayScale data showed that the typical graduate with zero to five years experience makes $48,400.

Brown published salary expectation vs reality for 62 schools; here are those data for the first 15 schools in his table:

School Actual Early Career Pay (0-5 Yrs. Experience) Expected Median Salary (0 Yrs. Experience) Percent Difference
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale $49,100 $70,000 70%
Washington State University $54,600 $70,000 78%
Central Michigan University $47,000 $58,500 80%
University of Louisville $48,800 $60,000 81%
East Carolina University $47,200 $58,000 81%
University of California, Riverside $54,000 $65,000 83%
University of Tennessee, Knoxville $50,200 $60,000 84%
Binghamton University $58,900 $70,000 84%
University of Illinois at Chicago $55,000 $65,000 85%
Temple University $50,800 $60,000 85%
University of Alabama $51,200 $60,000 85%
University of Colorado Boulder $55,600 $65,000 86%
University of California, Los Angeles $60,000 $70,000 86%
Kansas State University $51,600 $60,000 86%
Oklahoma State University $51,700 $60,000 86%

 

Who sets these expectations? That’s not clear. Who allows these expectations to stand uncorrected? The management teams at those colleges and universities.

Allowing this distortion to stand uncorrected is one more reason colleges and universities should be required to publish

  • graduation rates for their students given
    • 1 year of attendance
    • 2 years of attendance
    • 3 years of attendance
    • 4 years of attendance
    • 5 years of attendance
  • by major, the average and median salary for their graduates one year after graduation and five years after graduation—note that these data are not for one and five years of employment

The data from Brown also demonstrate why colleges and universities should be required to play the decisive role in lending money to their students and prospective students. Colleges and universities should be required, with respect to borrowings taken in order to attend the college/university, to

  • be the lender for the majority of the money borrowed by each student or student’s parent/guardian and not allowed to sell or otherwise transfer the loan, or
  • be the co-signer with the borrowing student or student’s parent/guardian on loans the student or student’s parent/guardian originates, or
  • be the loan guarantor of such loans, or
  • any combination of those three

Colleges and universities must absorb the risk of students’ or parents’/guardians’ borrowing in order for the student to attend their school. It’s the colleges and universities that are misleading the students concerning the value of the degrees gained, whether that misleading is overt through their setting inaccurate expectations, or passive through their silence regarding inaccurate expectations.

First It Was….

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…the Progressive-Democrat ex-President Barack Obama and his minions dismissing vast millions of us Americans in “fly-over country” as nothing but bitter Bible- and gun-clingers—and racist in the clinging.

Then it was the Progressive-Democratic Party’s Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton dismissing vast millions of us Americans as nothing but irredeemable, deplorable, racists and misogynists—and not America.

Now it’s the Progressive-Democratic Party leader, our President, Joe Biden dismissing vast millions of us Americans as nothing but MAGA extremists.

This is the long-standing utter contempt the Progressive-Democratic Party’s politicians have for us average Americans.

This is what we need to keep in mind as we vote this fall