Insidious

I am appalled by the Biden administration’s blatant ploy to buy votes with taxpayer money. But I am not surprised.

FACT SHEET: President Biden Announces Student Loan Relief for Borrowers Who Need It Most

A couple of things to note:

a) The loan forgiveness program will provide “relief” for households making 3.7 times the median household income (a/o 2020) in the United States. Yeah; sounds like it helps poor people to me…

b) If you’ve been a  successful, responsible adult who chose a valuable degree and paid back your student loans – tough. And thanks for all the fish.

But  if you didn’t complete your degree or pay towards your student debt – debt that benefited no one but you – Jackpot! you WIN the student loan lottery (and you get to keep the car you bought instead of paying your student loans).

c) The loan relief will do nothing to lower the cost of college; it will simply shift its cost to others – including those who have not/will not attend college. This cost transfer will be direct via increased taxes, or indirectly via increase costs as tax increases are passed down to consumers. Colleges have no incentive to lower prices as long as the government is footing the bill as written. Similar to electric vehicle prices when sales are supported by government rebates, I expect college cost to rise, not fall.

But by far the most insidious element of the Biden administration’s debt forgiveness program is that students cannot apply for relief now; they instead must wait for the government to develop the program, ensuring that the relief comes after the election. From the White House fact sheet (a/o 8/29/22 5:52pm PDT):

The application will be available no later than when the pause on federal student loan repayments terminates at the end of the year.

This action by the Biden administration – announcing the relief before the process is available – confirms that this is a buy-the-vote effort meant to ensure that the 41 million students now lined up for “free” money will vote Democrat in November.

Sadly, this is not a new tactic by the Biden administration. Biden used a similar tactic in 2021 to campaign for Georgia senators Ossoff and Warnock, stating:

“If you send Jon and the Reverend to Washington, those $2,000 checks will go out the door … The power is literally in your hands.”

It’s becoming increasingly popular ploy, as other Democrat politicians use the same method to buy local elections – such as Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf:

Pennsylvania Gov. Wolf calls for $2,000 payments to help families ‘survive inflation’

His plan? Send $2,000 to families making less than $80,000/year (still 18% above the 2020 U.S. median income) in order to help them fight inflation(?!?). Wolf, however, is an even slyer fox than Biden; he knows that with a Republican-controlled state legislature he won’t actually have to send the money. And he’ll still be able to blame the Republicans for not putting such a bill on his desk. Promising money he won’t actually have to pay – brilliant!

We are on a slippery slope, with Democrats driving our population towards government dependence while destroying the economy through inflationary giveaways. I hope you all have the courage to vote them out of office this November – student loans or not.

Chicken Little’s election strategy

“The sky is falling! The sky is falling – if you elect Republicans to Congress!”

‘The US could lose the right to vote within months’: Top official warns on threat to democracy

How, exactly? By implementing voter ID to secure our elections? Something supported by 75% of the population? How is making sure that each and every vote is valid a “…threat to democracy…”?

I love this line:

In many of the most competitive races for offices with authority over US elections, Republicans nominated candidates who have embraced or echoed Donald Trump’s myth of a stolen election in 2020.

Are you speaking of the Republicans that Democrats helped get nominated – instead of actually leaving it to Republicans –  by interfering with primary elections? You’ve made sure Republican extremists won their primaries, and now you want to use their wins as a campaign tool for Democrats? What gall! (I like gall…) But, as the wise man (or woman, or non-binary) once said: Be careful what you wish for…

 

Coming from someone named “Reich”…

… (as in the Third Reich) this seems a bit strange:

Former Labor Sec. Robert Reich asks if Gov. DeSantis’ last name is ‘officially a synonym for fascist’

The comment is in character, anyway – Reich is a liberal tool. He thinks that anyone to the right of AOC is a fascist (as if AOC isn’t a fascist!). It’s typical for liberal far-left pundits: Label someone a fascist and hope enough people repeat it to make it (effectively) true. The truth be damned, don’t you know…

Here’s what Merriam Webster says about fascism:
A political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. (emphasis mine).

Now, who does that last part remind you of more: AOC-style liberals fighting for the government to control everything while suppressing opposition speech (for instance, via cancel-culture based protests and social media censorship), or Ron DeSantis fighting for free speech and the rights of individuals to be free of undue government influence?

Yeah; me, too.

Buying votes with YOUR money, Part II

That’s $300,000,000,000 in student loan debt forgiveness. This amounts to almost $1000 of debt to be absorbed by each and every man, woman and child living in America.

Biden announces student loan handout as national debt soars

This wasn’t “free” money; it was money taken from the treasury and given to students with the intent that it be paid back with reasonable interest. Never mind that only the student benefited from the loans that they took out. Never mind that this money – if/when repaid – could be used to send others to college. Never mind that this money was taken from the American taxpayers, and that without repayment they will have to pay the loss out of their own pockets – again.

What kind of message does this send about responsibility? Don’t worry; if you f**k up the government will bail you out? Your poor decisions will weigh heavily on the minds of your betters, as they sacrifice to pay for your failures? That your life is a check written against the productivity of others?

Sadly, it’s just business as usual in D.C.; buying votes with your money has become commonplace, and I don’t see it ending soon. Funny (or, actually, not so funny), the following paraphrased quote seems apropos – although I don’t know its source (it has multiple citations; not sure which is correct):

A democracy will to exist only up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves gifts from the public treasury.

Here’s my personal take along the same basic theme:

A democracy will to exist only up until the time that politicians discover they can buy votes using the public treasury.

Don’t think we’re there yet? Maybe this previous Biden quote from the 2020 election cycle will convince you that we are well on our way:

“If you send Jon and the Reverend to Washington, those $2,000 checks will go out the door,” Biden said Monday while campaigning in Atlanta on the eve of the election. “And if you send Sens. Perdue and Loeffler back to Washington, those checks will never get there. It’s just that simple. The power is literally in your hands.”

And so it continues, the slide into fiscal insolvency in the name of “democracy”. A slide towards a failed economy and eventual dependence on the government. A slide where productivity is punished (why should one work to line the pockets of others, when they can be moochers, looters and freeloaders themselves?) as we become ever more dependent on politicians for our daily alms via redistributed wealth. But what happens when the wealth runs out? This can only end in a despotic, “We know better than you” totalitarian oligarchic government whose power is obtained and held based on public dependence. And it is democrats/socialists leading the way – not Trump. Who’d have thought?

I find it interesting that some still claim it’s the conservatives who will lead us down the path of tyranny, of totalitarianism. Have we already forgotten that Hitler was not a conservative, but was instead a socialist (he was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, aka the NAZI party)? Have we already forgotten that Kim Il sung’s totalitarian state was named the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea? Or that the communist regime of East Germany was similarly named the German Democratic Republic (GDR)? Just as how Democrats have convinced Americans that it was the Republicans who fought for the oppression of African-Americans (it wasn’t – it was southern Democrats who fought for slavery, oppression and Jim Crow laws; it was Republicans fighting against them), Democrats are also implying that it is the Republicans and other conservatives who are leading us down the road to totalitarianism. But it’s not – it’s the progressive left, as usual.

I went to college. I did not incur debt. I reduced my costs by attending a community college for 2 years before transferring to a 4-year university; I also worked throughout my graduate education. I was a responsible adult who earned a useful degree in a STEM discipline without incurring debt so as to not be a burden on others. As a result I am now to be saddled with the debt of the irresponsible – the debt of students who earned a useless degree in a worthless field and who now don’t want to pay back the money they were loaned in good faith.

What a fool I am; I could have been a moocher! Maybe next time…

The New Founders

We need a new battle cry, one that reminds us of the promise that is America and our need to recapture its founding spirit. I think this is it.

A very interesting read (or listen) from Bari Weiss.

The New Founders America Needs

Bari Weiss reminds me of the classic liberals of lore – proponents of free speech, liberty, and individual rights (and responsibilities) – rather than the illiberals of today who masquerade as champions of “woke” causes as a means to gain political power. If I didn’t know better I’d call Bari a Libertarian. I wonder how she’d feel about that?

Scamming the system…

… al la AOC, but better.

AOC figured out that the magic formula to twisting America left was winning Democrat primaries in Democrat-only districts. But now they’re using a similar technique to push the right  left, too.

NEW POLL: Liz Cheney trailing Trump-backed primary challenger by more than 20 points

What’s interesting in this story is that Cheney is trying to hold onto her seat by having Democrats vote in the Republican primary. In states where this is permitted (cross-party primary voting) it allows the democrats to swing the primary such that the least-offensive Republican (RINO?) wins. Similar to AOC’s case, since these are Republican-only seats, whoever wins the Republican primary will win the election. Unfortunately, the Right has no defense. Even if they chose to do the same to the Democrats, it wouldn’t matter – Democrats can’t win, anyway (Republican-only district; remember?).

It’s not illegal, but still feels a bit underhanded – and yet seems so democratic at the same time…?