New York State’s governor, Andrew Cuomo (D), has taken to asking those who’ve left the State to return—especially the rich and especially to New York City.
New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio (D), has taken a more blasé attitude. He’s in the What, Me Worry? camp; folks will come back. Even the rich.
I have to ask, though.
Why would anyone want to return to New York City? De Blasio has made the place unlivable, and the Internet has made the place unnecessary.
In an article about Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s plan for reducing student loan-centered debt, The Wall Street Journal asked
What do you think would be an effective way to reduce student loan debt in the US?
Getting government out of the way of the economy so graduates can get jobs and pay their debts is the first and most critical step.
For the future, we need to require colleges and universities to publish the median and mean first-five-year annual incomes for their various majors.
In addition, we need to require colleges and universities, either individually or as consortia, to be the sole lenders of last resort to their students
We also need to remove government altogether from the student loan industry, as lender, as loan guarantor, and from any other role.
Finally, the only legitimate way for graduates to reduce their student loans short of repayment is through ordinary bankruptcy. We need to force our government to eliminate its ban on bankruptcy discharge of student debt.
Biden’s “plan” unfairly singles out private colleges/universities by not having their students’ debts ameliorated, a deliberate attempt to punish them; he’ll only mitigate the student debts for graduates of public schools and those who were cheated (under his definition of cheating) by for-profit schools.
Even worse, by making it so students don’t have to repay all of their debt through his forgiveness bit, Biden will greatly diminish, if not destroy, the student loan market, shifting the whole thing onto the backs of taxpayers, unless the methods outlined above are enacted.
Some economic news from the end of last week:
The latest jobless claims figures from the Labor Department, which cover the week ending August 1, show that more than 1.18 million workers sought aid last week….
Economists surveyed by Refinitiv expected 1.41 million new claims.
And
Continuing claims, the number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid fell by 844,000 to 16.1 million.
The data coincide with the expiration of the $600/week Wuhan Virus-related payments added to ordinary unemployment payments, so that’s not a driver of this sharp labor improvement; although the impending end of the addendum could have had some impact. The overall improvement in our economy is the driver.
This weakens the case Progressive-Democrats are making to continue paying folks to not work, and it emphasizes their blatant obstruction to getting any sort of relief into our economy.
The biggest relief, of course, would be for the Federal government as a whole to get out of the way of our recovery, to let businesses reopen unfettered. Progressive-Democrats, though, and too many Republicans are continuing to insist on interfering.
The editors at The Wall Street Journal expressed worry about President Donald Trump’s use of his “pen and phone” over the weekend to render the Congressional Progressive-Democrats’ obstructionism regarding Wuhan Virus relief for Americans irrelevant. They think he’s aping too closely ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) pen and phone.
It’s true that Trump is using his pen and phone. The differences between his actions and Obama’s, though, are two: Trump is undoing Obama’s pen and phone actions, not creating new things—with this exception, which is the other critical difference: Obama’s actions were largely illegal, struck down on legal challenge; Trump’s have proven legal, in the main, upheld on legal challenge.
The editors are worried about this use in particular:
Mr Trump’s FEMA order is a bad legal precedent that a President Kamala Harris could cite if a GOP Congress blocked her agenda on, say, climate change.
This is mistaken. For one thing, not doing a useful thing because a bad person (of either party) might misuse it later is simply foolish. If the thing is useful, it’s usefully done. Full stop.
For another thing, Obama already set the general precedent—Congress not performing to his satisfaction was his rationale for his own pen and phone use.
Finally, the question of precedent enabling a President Harris to use FEMA funds on her global warming agenda—to take a particular example—is plain wrong. Harris needs no precedent to use FEMA funds for her agenda; she’d do that anyway. And set her own precedent, without a care.
RTWT, though. Aside from this last item, it’s a generally soundly reasoned piece.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) says he’ll cut off the power and water to those homes and businesses
that are in violation of gathering regulations as a means to “shut these places down permanently.”
“By turning off that power, shutting off that water we feel we can close these places down, which usually are not one-time offenders but multiple-offenders[.]”
Never mind that draconian lockdowns damage the economy to the point of doing more harm than the Wuhan Virus. Garcetti, in addition to permanently destroying businesses—and the lives of those business’ owners, operators, and employees—fully intends to destroy homes and homeowners, also.
This is the tyranny we can expect from a Progressive-Democrat Federal administration, empirically demonstrated.