Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, it’s door #2)

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

T R E 4 5 O N

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

You are here: Home / Elections / Biden-Harris 2020 / Late Night Open Thread: More Good News About the Biden Transition

Late Night Open Thread: More Good News About the Biden Transition

by | 113 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Booga-booga, Mean Lady Senator-Professor Warren a-comin’! Actually, seems to me this is more of a wink-wink, don’t-worry-if-you’re-not-dirty story…

… President-elect Joe Biden’s agency review teams include several people who share Warren’s reputation for being tough on the financial industry.

It’s more evidence of the influence of Warren, a fierce opponent of big banks and the excesses of Wall Street — as well as an early signal that Wall Street will be under much greater scrutiny, especially compared to four years of President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle regulation and unshackle big banks…

Biden tapped about 500 people to work with government agencies, from the CIA to the United States Postal Service, and help shape the future of government policy and appointments.

Perhaps top on Wall Street’s worry list is Gary Gensler, who will lead the team working with financial regulatory agencies including the Federal Reserve, SEC and FDIC. Gensler led the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from May 2009 to January 2014.

Among the Obama-era regulators, Gensler was the most aggressive in implementing the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that Wall Street opposed.

Although Gensler is a former Goldman Sachs banker, he is now viewed as a tough-on-Wall-Street ally of Warren…

Meanwhile, Biden has a separate team overseeing the transition of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency that is a Warren brainchild of Warren.

That team is being led by Leandra English, the CFPB’s former deputy director. In 2017, English unsuccessfully tried to block Trump from installing as the agency’s acting director Mick Mulvaney — who once pushed to abolish the CFPB. While testifying as acting director, Mulvaney defended his tenure by saying, “I have not burned the place down.”

“Leandra English has deep experience, not just on the issues, but on how the mechanics of the CFPB works,” said Compass Point’s Boltansky.

He noted that the Trump transition met some “bumps in the road” because the president tapped some people who didn’t have much experience in government…

Today, Wall Street is not viewed as the top priority, with the Biden administration likely to focus instead on the pandemic, inequality and the climate crisis. And the fact that banks have withstood the turmoil of the health crisis (so far at least) suggests Dodd-Frank worked to strengthen the system.

But that doesn’t mean Biden-appointed regulators won’t put a stop to practices they view as unfair. Analysts are warning the Biden administration could crack down on overdraft fees, the banking industry’s $11 billion gravy train that critics say punish society’s most vulnerable.

And Biden’s regulators could take a much tougher stance on bad behavior like the laundry list of scandals at Wells Fargo (WFC).

“If you’re a bank that has a scandal, then you need to be worried,” said Mills, the Raymond James analyst…

… which would be very much in the Warren (and Biden!) mode.

Can’t blame the kleptocrats of the Trump-era kakistocracy for being frighened, though:

Reader Interactions

113Comments

  2. 2.

    jl

    Thanks for an informative post. As long as my great policy crush Elizabeth Warren is happy, I am happy. My ears perked up when Biden said he thinks we need an FDR style administration to get shit done (paraphrase). So, he’s aiming high, and it may be a big ******* deal! He’s certainly mixing it up, everyone seems to have a seat at the table.

    Edit: except no GOPers yet. Or did he nod to one and I missed it? I say, Arnold for the Department of Physical Fitness! Or, if there is a federal bohunk county out in the sticks commissioner position, he could tap Grassley for that.

  4. 4.

    Jean

    I could hardly get past:

    Biden tapped about 500 people to work with government agencies, from the CIA to the United States Postal Service, and help shape the future of government policy and appointments.

    That’s a lot of people!  People who know the agencies and can do the work–qualified people.  Amazing what can be done when you know how government works, when you have experts to call on, and when you have actual experience.

  5. 5.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Jean: Biden had ten thousand lawyers, mostly volunteers, ready to go to court to deal with whatever Trump might throw at them. Since Trump has chosen Rudy Giuliani as his champion, most of those ten thousand aren’t needed.

    There are other thousands who participated in the policy parts of his campaign. He has stacks of white papers. The organization is impressive.

    This is what you can do when you engage people to get the best ideas. I am optimistic.

  6. 6.

    SFAW

    I eagerly await Ken Vogel’s inciteful analysis of all the corporate shills and lobbyists who are included in the 500.

  7. 7.

    Leto

    @SFAW: did you know there was someone with ties to the plastic 6-pack soda can holder industry? Biden’s totally gonna fold on climate issues…. *vomit

  8. 8.

    SFAW

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Since Trump has chosen Rudy Giuliani as his champion, most of those ten thousand aren’t needed.

    President Biden could probably send in Steve Harris, Dylan McDermott, and Camryn Manheim, and Rudy would be outmatched. Hell, if Raymond Burr were still alive, he could do it by himself.

  10. 10.

    dmsilev

    @Cheryl Rofer: Gee, you mean long experience in government and a philosophy that’s even slightly more productive than nihilistic fascism might possibly be useful in building a governing team? I’m shocked.

  11. 11.

    Fair Economist

    In terms of getting things done, Biden can do end-runs around appointment blockages with recess appointments, since the House is friendly. The appointments won’t be permanent, but they’ve got the power to make the changes.

  12. 12.

    Wapiti

    @jl: @jl:  if there is a federal bohunk county out in the sticks commissioner

    That’s fairly obscure slang for a Czech (Bohemia) immigrant, I might have used podunk, but now I wonder what podunk is slang for.

  15. 15.

    dmsilev

    @Jean: As for the Post Office, I trust step one is for someone to requisition the biggest Return To Sender stamp they can find and then walk straight into the Postmaster’s office.

  18. 18.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Don’t laugh. We are going to have that happen. In nanoseconds, if not sooner.

    Why do you think I writed it? I expect “it’s out there” already, because the Jacobin crowd (or whoever) is unlikely to grow up.

  19. 19.

    SFAW

    @Leto:

    he’s in big sodas pocket!!!!! It’s a little sticky from all the sugar, but totally in there!

    I was trying to come up with a response that worked Hunter and Burisma into the soda company mega-industry shillery etc, but it’s late, and I’m old, so anything I come up with would be “WTF?”-inducing.

  20. 20.

    feebog

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Since Trump has chosen Rudy Giuliani as his champion, most of those ten thousand aren’t needed.

    Since Trump tapped Giuliani, most of them are rolling on the floor in incontrollable spasms of laughter.

  21. 21.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @SFAW: Try to work Capri Sun pouches in there.  I am sure that will help you seem hip and contemporary.  Or something.

  22. 22.

    Amir Khalid

    After she dropped out of the primary, Elizabeth Warren spent a lot of time consulting with Joe Biden’s campaign on economic policy. This was reported at the time. I doubt the fatcats are really surprised.

    Also, too, Warren was campaigning for her economic policies all along. Getting them adopted by the Democratic nominee was, I think, always her real goal. She didn’t win the presidency, but she got the win she really wanted.

  23. 23.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @feebog: Well, think about it.  How do you respond to some of their shit?  I’ve never written an answer to a complaint that just consisted of “Come on, man” or a brief that simply read “FFS,” but that’s where we are heading.

    ETA:  And I tend to be on the laconic side in the legal writing world.

  30. 30.

    Gretchen

    @SFAW: Vogel described Ron Klein as a venture capital executive.  So he’s going to sell us out to Wall Street, not handle the epidemic like he did Ebola.

  36. 36.

    jl

    @Wapiti: Thanks for info. I forgot where that word came from. Probably not PC. No reason to pick on Bohemians. Probably bumpkin is OK. I think that is from Dutch,  for a slob.

    But  Grassley is a narrow minded hypocritical hick, not a slob.

  37. 37.

    SFAW

    @NotMax:

    As opposing counsel to Rudy? Biden could send in Adam Sandler.

    But that would just be rubbing Rudy’s nose in it. Tempting though that might be, I don’t think it’s Joe’s style.

  38. 38.

    SFAW

    @Kristine:

    Based on what they were saying yesterday (after the Board of Canvassers voted the first time), I think the MI SoS and AG might have something to say about the racist/QAnon Rethugs switching their vote yet again.

    But I am not a lawyer etc etc, so who knows?

  39. 39.

    Ohio Mom

    I love Warren — for a while there, she was my favorite for the nomination — and I want to see every one of her “bold steps” happen, but that’s an awfully long list for Day One, even considering the extra time Biden will have since the usual Inaugaration Day festivities are sure to be very scaled down due to Covid (for one, I don’t imagine there will be any evening parties).

    I think we should give Biden a week or two.

    It’s very exciting to watch his administration take shape.

  42. 42.

    Jean

    @Cheryl Rofer: I forgot about the 10,000 lawyers!  It’s uplifting to see so much organization and mobilization.  Emily Murphy’s refusal to sign off on the rest of the transition has been met by the Biden Team of thousands:  Transition.  It is them.

  44. 44.

    Heywood J.

    Cancelling student loan debt would be a great place to start, and would give a massive injection into local economies. We found $1.7 trillion for tax cuts for billionaires, we found $4-5 trillion this spring and summer to bail out televangelists and cruise lines, so we should be able to find $1.6 trillion to get working families out from under institutionalized usury.

    Plus it’ll make Leon Cooperman cry some more, which is always a good thing.

  46. 46.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    Or even your suggestion of the succinct “FFS,” even as I’ve always been fairly formal. Even in the appellate brief in which I suggested that the defendant’s brutal attack on a prostitute was a price dispute that got out of hand during negotiations. I couched the (unsuccessful) argument in very formal language. A light moment in appointed appellate work, where the appropriate result prevailed.

  47. 47.

    frosty

    I have one quibble with cancelling student load debt. What about everyone who paid theirs off? What about the ones who’ve paid some portion of it? Do they get any relief? If so, how far back are we going to go?

    This is going to be the first talking point against it, and I’m wondering if anyone (Liz Warren for example) has got an answer.

  48. 48.

    SFAW

    @frosty:

    and I’m wondering if anyone (Liz Warren for example) has got an answer.

    “We have to start somewhere” and “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good-enough-for-now”

  49. 49.

    CaseyL

    @frosty:  What  @SFAW said, and also roll out meaningful financial programs that will extend to everyone.  Another stimulus package, reinstating reimbursements for ACA, that sort of thing.

  50. 50.

    burnspbesq

    @Jean:

    People who know the agencies and can do the work

    People who are currently in the private sector, and would be disqualified if Warren gets her way.

    As ideas go, “padlock the revolving door” is every bit as dumb as “defund the police.”

  53. 53.

    burnspbesq

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    The Justice Democrats are already complaining that Bernie and Sen. Warren aren’t getting cabinet positions.

    I guess it hasn’t occurred to them that Warren resigns from the Senate, the Republican Governor gets to appoint a Republican replacement, thereby rendering moot all of the work that is being done in the Georgia runoffs.

    Jeez, these people are fucking stupid.

  56. 56.

    smike

    @frosty:

    I think a good answer would be:

    “In this case, we are talking about forgiveness of current loans. But it you would like to discuss reparations for other societal ills as well, I’m all ears.”

  57. 57.

    hitless

    @frosty:  Yeah – I think canceling debt is a PR nightmare for the Dems. It alienates a lot of people who either paid off their debt or never went to college.

    It may be good policy, but it needs to be accomplished in a way that doesn’t look like a “handout”. They need to ask for service of some kind in return for debt cancellation…or something.

  58. 58.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Cheryl Rofer: Biden had ten thousand lawyers, mostly volunteers, ready to go to court to deal with whatever Trump might throw at them. Since Trump has chosen Rudy Giuliani as his champion, most of those ten thousand aren’t needed.

    But most of those ten thousand can still laugh their asses off at whatever Ghouliani decides to yell out of his facehole.

  62. 62.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: ” The Justice Democrats are already complaining that Bernie and Sen. Warren aren’t getting cabinet positions. ”

    If it is true that Warren is able to get her top choices into high places into the administration, not obvious she’d want to leave the Senate. Having her deep progressives work the executive, while she works the Senate, seems like a win win.

    I’ve read that Sanders wants labor, but I don’t put much stock in all the political gossip, since, to put it bluntly, too many of the sources for news stories, from every camp, lie their asses off for obscure tactical reasons.

  63. 63.

    Redshift

    @SFAW:

    Why do you think I writed it? I expect “it’s out there” already, because the Jacobin crowd (or whoever) is unlikely to grow up. 

    Oh, I already got an email today urging me to sign a petition against Biden appointing anyone who’s taken contributions from the fossil fuel industry…

  64. 64.

    Felanius Kootea

    @jl: The governor of Vermont is also a Republican.  No point having Warren and Sanders leave the Senate to be replaced by Republican governors who would fall in line with Mitch McConnell to block everything they stand for.

  67. 67.

    HumboldtBlue

    I’m a little brother six (seven if you count the kid who died in three days) times over with a younger sister.

    This video is a bit old but there is no better representation of being a little brother than these 61 seconds.

    This is Hall of Fame little brothering.

    First ballot. Unanimous.

  73. 73.

    frosty

    Thanks for all your responses. I hadn’t gotten to thinking about the people who never went to college. Particularly the ones who didn’t go because they couldn’t take on the debt.

    I’ll think about this some more. I hope the advocates are doing the same.

  74. 74.

    Sloane Ranger

    @oatler.:

     

    There’s a saying that everyone in Britain has a relative who died at Flanders, or Ypres.

    I have two Great Uncles who were killed and a Grandfather who was taken as a POW. So many died there, the saying is probably true (for a given definition of relative).

  79. 79.

    Sab

    So far I have gotten everything I had hoped for in this election except for flipping the Senate, and still hoping that we might get close on that. My preferred candidate is still in the Senate where she belongs, but influencing policy and personnel choices in the executive. My number two is VP-elect. Biden has shown that he learned a lot from every mistake he ever made. He knows everyone and will staff the executive branch with people with lots of experience, knowledge and contacts.

    I am bordering on gleeful.

    My county is contemplating a shelter in place order that will put a crimp on big Thanksgiving dinners. Good for them. Some of the more law-abiding covidiots might actually have intact surviving families next Thanksgiving.

  80. 80.

    topclimber

    @Gretchen: Vogel is actually trying to help by calming Wall Street fears. Stock market knows having a friendly VC in the review process is so much better than someone with pandemic fighting experience. Yay NYT!

  81. 81.

    Matt McIrvin

    @hitless:

    Yeah – I think canceling debt is a PR nightmare for the Dems. It alienates a lot of people who either paid off their debt or never went to college.

    Isn’t this an argument against any program that helps anyone? It’s not fair to the people who aren’t covered by it, or who lived before it took effect.

    The political danger you’re describing is real, but I don’t know how we get past this crabs-in-a-bucket mentality.

  82. 82.

    Geminid

    @frosty: I don’t favor student debt cancellation, for reasons others have brought up. But aside from the problem that debt is for individuals, it is a drag on the economy generally. So I would have no problem with a 33% or 50% reduction in student debt as an anti-recession measure. Or as the case may be, an anti-depression measure.

    McConnell and company  are hoping that austerity will be their path to regaining the White House in 2024. They tried this with Obama, limiting his stimulus package to half of what was needed. A reduction in student debt may be one of few counter-cyclical measures available to the new administration.

  83. 83.

    J R in WV

    @Wapiti:

    Podunk – Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Podunk

    Podunk was first defined in an American national dictionary in 1934, as an imaginary small town considered typical of placid dullness and lack of contact with the progress of the world.

    However, Podunk is also a real place:

    Podunk, New York – Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Podunk,_New_York

    Podunk is a hamlet located along Taughannock Creek in the town of Ulysses, just south of Trumansburg, New York.

    I’ve heard the work used to mean past bumf–k in the boonies here locally. But mostly we use bumf–k. Except in very polite company, which I avoid.

  84. 84.

    J R in WV

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I’ve never written an answer to a complaint that just consisted of “Come on, man” or a brief that simply read “FFS,” but that’s where we are heading.

    How about,”Get real, man!” I like that one!

  85. 85.

    J R in WV

    @Gretchen:

    Vogel described Ron Klein as a venture capital executive. So he’s going to sell us out to Wall Street, not handle the epidemic like he did Ebola.

    Vogel tries to make anyone associated with the Democratic party look like an evil buffoon, which insulating the criminality of the Trump party from public view. He deserves a good job with the NYC Sanitation Department on a truck scooping up dead things in August.

    Everyone needs a good job, and that’s a job Vogel is qualified for. Writing for a news outlet is NOT a job Vogel is qualified for. One more shining example of the best the N Y Times has to offer.

  86. 86.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: I also think a 50% reduction in medical debt, or outright cancellation, is justified. Unlike cancellation of student debt, I don’t think this would be so objectionable on political or equity grounds.

  88. 88.

    Procopius

    @frosty: I have one quibble with cancelling student load debt. What about everyone who paid theirs off? What about the ones who’ve paid some portion of it? Do they get any relief? If so, how far back are we going to go?

    Yeah, and how about the millions who didn’t go to college? “Wait, those guys get a gift of tens of thousands of dollars of school, which gives them a huge leg up? What do I get? Bupkis?”

  89. 89.

    J R in WV

    @frosty:

    I have one quibble with your quibble — if we can’t ever make an improvement in society without bribing everyone who suffered from the things we improved,  how can we grow and develop our society?

    Your issue exists for the ACA, what about the people who suffered from a lack of health care in the past?

    Your issue exists for ending segregation — how do we make those who suffered under Jim Crow whole?

    You issue exists for ending cannabis prohibition; cutting taxes on the working class; for cutting usurious interest rates charged by payday lenders / auto title lenders / etc.

    How can we cut college tuition when people who recently graduated paid the high costs? Come ON, man!! Get Real here!!!

    Making an improvement going forward is sometimes what we need to do, and if that makes you cry, get a tissue and try to grow up.

    ETA: I see also that you want things to improve, and for reformers to have a good answer ready for naysayers. I don’t have that speech ready, but I bet Senator Warren will.

  90. 90.

    evodevo

    @Sloane Ranger: Brit casualties from just a couple of the battles were in the hundreds of thousands, so I would imagine, given the British population in 1914 at ~40 million, that almost every family/village lost someone…

  91. 91.

    jonas

    I know the “cancel student debt” is a big applause line and, to be sure, lots of poorer people get saddled with debt, esp. at diploma mill schools that don’t really offer much in the way of support help people actually graduate. But “cancel all student debt,” were that ever to happen, also means ending all educational lending, period, or at the very least, ending lending to anyone except Ivy League STEM students who we can guarantee will have the earning power to repay it no matter what. Do we really want to go there?

    Under the Obama administration, students sold a bill of goods by lousy for-profit schools who loaded them up with debt were getting relief. That should be restarted. The DOE also needs to start following through again with debt forgiveness programs for people who go into public service like teaching. More broadly, repayment terms need to be flexible and tied to income. I’m less sure a Stanford grad with $25,000 in loans and $200,000 job at some private equity firm needs immediate debt relief.

  92. 92.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Kristine: IMHO the appropriate response from the MI SoS to those Thuglican arseholes would borrow one of Barbra Streisand’s lines from The Owl and the Pussycat. Never saw the flick, heard this 3rd hand, but to paraphrase:

    Would you please be so kind as to kindly fuck off!

  93. 93.

    Geminid

    @burnspbesq: When the Justice Democrats advocate for Senators Warren and Sanders to be included in a Biden cabinet, they know about the problem of possible Republican replacement. They just want to be able to trash Biden when he does not pick them. They do not advocate in good faith, but instead seek any and all opportunities to undermine confidence in the Democrats’ elected leadership.

  94. 94.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @SFAW: “We have to start somewhere” and “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good-enough-for-now”

    Yeah? Good enough for who? Just hand a free $50K to a disproportionately-upper-middle-class cohort and leave the ones who were too responsible to go into debt and ended up working 2 or 3 jobs (whether to fund college or not) or going straight to an assembly line or a dollar-store cashier’s job out in the cold. If there isn’t something substantial there for them, you’re just pouring gasoline on their smoldering resentment of their “betters.”

  95. 95.

    Dupe1970

    @frosty: This is exactly the debate Biden wants to have with Republicans. As soon as as Republicans ask “what about…” Biden should respond “I would love to help more people. So what are you Republicans willing to sign up for? Universal public healthcare option? Enhanced unemployment benefits? Universal basic income? Lower drug prices?”

  96. 96.

    tam1MI

    @Uncle Cosmo: Yeah? Good enough for who? Just hand a free $50K to a disproportionately-upper-middle-class cohort and leave the ones who were too responsible to go into debt and ended up working 2 or 3 jobs (whether to fund college or not) or going straight to an assembly line or a dollar-store cashier’s job out in the cold. If there isn’t something substantial there for them, you’re just pouring gasoline on their smoldering resentment of their “betters.”

     

    I still remember the person I talked to in 2016 who had flipped their vote from Obama to Trump because a black person in their office had their house saved through Obama’s HAMP program, but when she went to apply for help, she got turned down. We’re looking at the same thing when it comes to student loan forgiveness if we don’t handle it right.

  97. 97.

    Kropacetic

    @tam1MI: I still remember the person I talked to in 2016 who had flipped their vote from Obama to Trump because a black person in their office had their house saved through Obama’s HAMP program, but when she went to apply for help, she got turned down.

    Did she qualify? If she did, was it a situation like section 8 where there just isn’t enough money for all the people who qualified? Did she ultimately lose her house? And if she did, is it right to blame Obama when his effort to save people’s houses didn’t ultimately save everyone?

  98. 98.

    tam1MI

    @Kropacetic: Does it matter? Right or wrong, it added up to yet another voter who went for Trump and the Republicans because their personal experience convinced them that “Dems will bend over backwards to help lazy-ass black people and college pukes, but will gleefully leave hard-working white folk to twist in the wind.”

    This person used to be a loyal Democrat. She describes the HAMP incident as her “Road to Damascus” moment where the scales fell from her eyes and she “realized” that “Dems hate the white working class. All they ever do is take our hard-earned tax dollars and give it to leeches. They go out of their way to make us suffer.”

    And by the way, she did eventually be able to afford her house. Her husband, who had been holding down two jobs to help make the house payments, died suddenly and the insurance money went to get her back on her financial feet.

  100. 100.

    burnspbesq

    @Geminid:

    Assuming that’s the case (and it’s completely plausible), then Sanders and Warren could really help the country by unequivocally taking themselves out of consideration.

  103. 103.

    Kay

    This is just true and all the savvy sophistication about what they REALLY think shouldn’t muddy how bad it is. Unprecedented in US history. Day 13 of the the Republican Party holding the country hostage, in thrall to an authoritarian cult leader:

    What most Republican Senators and Members of Congress have decided to do is sanction a conspiracy to overthrow the legitimacy of American democracy. They should be remembered and studied along other conspirators. Our own Gunpowder Plot.

  104. 104.

    Miss Bianca

    @tam1MI: What’s amazing to me is how many white people will flip just as soon as it’s their ox that’s being gored, and how quick they are to seize on that “lazy black people are getting MY STUFF” trope that right-wing media – or maybe just their own unacknowledged racism – pushes on them to assuage their grievances. Just smdh

    ETA: This is why I think Kay is so right to insist that benefits programs NOT be means-tested. People will fight to support a program that they think benefits them, and fight to resist a program they think WON’T benefit them, but just Those Others. It’s just science!

  105. 105.

    tam1MI

    @Miss Bianca: Which is one of the problems with student loan forgiveness, the topic that started this whole tangent. By its very nature, student loan forgiveness will exclude vast numbers of people – people whose student loans have been paid off, or people who never went to college because it was financially unattainable. I can see doing student loan forgiveness as part of an overall stimulus type package. But on its own it’s going to have severe PR problems.

  106. 106.

    grandmaBear

    @Uncle Cosmo: I think it would make more sense for college to be free, but to take something like 10% of gross income from all sources for the next ten years in taxes, used to repay the university. Of course colleges would be more likely to accept students into fields that make more money, but they do that anyway, I think. More incentive to help their grads though.

  107. 107.

    Heywood J.

    As someone who worked 40 hrs./week while earning my degree (I went back to college as a 40 y.o.), and I still make about $15k less than the average person with my degree in my state, let me share an observation:  student loan cancellation is not a handout. It’s not a gimme. I’ve spent the last ten years paying interest on $200 textbooks, and I owe more than I did when I finished my degree in 2011. (In addition to paying for two of my grad school classes entirely out of pocket.) It’s a racket. It’s debt usury, pure and simple.

    Here’s an example:  I drive a 1995 vehicle. If I didn’t have $500/month of student loan payments, I would probably go to my local auto dealer — who may or may not have gone to college — and purchase a newer automobile from him, thereby injecting more cash into the local economy. I’d support the local struggling restaurants a bit more (safely, of course).

    When billionaires get their precious tax cut, they just hoard it more — or invest it in publicly-trade student-loan rackets. When working people catch a break, they break it up into thirds, roughly:  they same some, spend some, and put some into fixing up their house (or purchasing one). But it goes into local economies, not some already impossibly high stack of cash in a numbered account in Panama.

    As far as the what about meeeee, I didn’t go to college, or I did go to college and I paid down my debt argument, great. Cool. Fine. Maybe we transfer that selfish argument to the “health care” arena, another shameless racket designed to hose money out of the working class and into the pockets of hectomillionaires. I’m in great health for my age. I eat right, I work out regularly, I’ve never smoked, have no genetic markers for cancer or anything else catastrophic. So why should I pay for someone else to gorge on cheeseburgers until they need that quadruple bypass on my dime?

    Now, my personal answer is, we’re a nation, and either we hang together or we hang separately. I think socialized medicine is a great idea, because even though I’m healthy and I work at that, I also recognize that poor health is, in addition to the moral and human cost, a drag on the economy. People who can’t afford to take care of themselves are sick more often, and they can’t do nearly as much as they like. Look at all those folks in the early days of Obamacare who were able to leave jobs they didn’t like, and start businesses they were passionate about — all because they no longer had to worry about going bankrupt overnight from a medical bill.

    If people want to take that it’s not my problem approach, then have at it. Apply it across the board. I’ll figure something else out. But I don’t want to hear it when someone who refuses to move out Hurricane Alley loses their house again, or someone who smoked and drank and ate garbage all their life needs ICU treatment. Not my problem. I need this money to pay down the interest on $200 textbooks for the rest of my life. And when my health problems come, as they inevitably do for all of us, I’ll figure that out as well.

    The only thing that disgusts me more than billionaires using everyone else as cattle to milk endlessly, is how easily they can get the cattle to turn on each other, for things that wouldn’t even affect them. We found trillions of dollars this summer to give — flat out give — to fucking Carnival Cruises and Joel Osteen and other such completely frivolous things that no one would miss. But the very second someone starts talking about climate change or reducing debt usury, it’s this same goddamned song:  How we gonna pay for it? How we gonna pay for it? I hear the shrill, berating voice of George Costanza’s mom saying that, every time.

    Republicans want to give billionaires more money, they just do it. They say, here’s what we’re gonna do. Don’t like it? Tough shit. There is no tangible societal good in it, but they do it anyway, and they never ask permission or apologize for it. Democrats propose things that would help tens of millions of people and the local economies they live in, and there’s months of “preparation,” this tedious Stockholm syndrome posturing of how it has to means-tested and pitched just perfectly. Every single time, every single proposal.

    Never once does it occur to them that the haters are gonna hate ’em no matter what they do or how they do it, so they might as well do it as intended. Just once, it might be worth trying, instead of fretting over what some asshole in Kansas who was never gonna vote for you anyway is going to say.

    Frankly, this nation deserves everything it gets.

  108. 108.

    Heywood J.

    Sorry about all the typos. I tried to fix ’em all, but ran out of time in edit mode. Just profoundly disgusted and disheartened by all the what about me arguments. I’ll keep it in mind next time someone bitches about the cost of their insulin, since I am not diabetic.

    Looking forward to the inevitable pre-capitulation on student-loan debt, where it gets whittled down to some “Pell Grant recipients who start a minority-owned small business, and run it for three years while making on-time monthly student-loan payments, can get up to $10k of interest knocked off their total” bullshit.

  109. 109.

    Ruckus

    @Heywood J.:

    I like.

    Political progress comes relatively slowly and always, always, leaves someone, or a lot of someones holding an empty bag. It is the nature of humans having a beginning/middle/end of living and having lots of us.
    I like your way of saying this, in a personal manner.

  110. 110.

    Heywood J.

    @Ruckus: Thanks, I appreciate that. I kinda got off on a rant there.

    And I do get that, rather than attacking the basic premise, many people are simply stating reality — some folks are going to get upset. And that’s absolutely true.

    I guess my response to such arguments would be two points that I think are obvious:

    1. Some people are never going to support you, even if you propose smiling and waving more often. Recognize that and stop trying to cater to them.
    2. Student-loan cancellation (or at least a serious reduction) would have an immediate economic benefit specifically for smaller localized economies.

    The second point would be a solid approach for Dems to take, that the person who gets cut a break from crushing eternal interest will turn around and hire a local contractor or go out for a meal or purchase a car — all from people who may or may not have attended college themselves — there is a practical, material, universal benefit.

  111. 111.

    seefleur

    @Heywood J.:  Bravo! I have 4 kids who are all in the same boat as you. And since my husband and I have taken on part of their education loans as well, we are also that same boat. You have nailed it precisely on all points. When my oldest paid off her first big student loan, she was able to go out and buy a car. When I paid off two of the loans for my sons, I was able to have some disposable income that has gone towards improving our home, and so on and so forth. What all of our family was paying in loans (at ridiculous interest rates with the “private” loans) was immediately able to be put into our local economies. Having that ability to spend some extra $$ multiplied by thousands of former students and their parents could only be a boon to the economy, and might be one of those “raising all boats” events.

  113. 113.

    Heywood J.

    @seefleur: Yep. Two of my first undergrad loans were “private” loans, though actually through Sallie Mae. One was $4k, the other $2.5k. I started paying on those in 2009, when I finished my bachelor’s, usually round up the payments a bit, haven’t missed a payment in 12 years — and still owe about $2,600 on one, and $1,300 on the other. Even if I paid them both in full tomorrow just to avoid anymore interest screwage, I will have paid about $15k on less than $7k in loans.

    And those are, by far, my two smallest remaining loans. I’m 53 years old (as I mentioned, I went back to school at 40, finished my MBA at 44), and I have to start thinking about how (or if) to retire. And I really don’t see it happening, unless I use my nights and weekends to dial in some sort of side hustle or small business. Which I wouldn’t mind doing, if I had a clue what people might be itching to buy during a worldwide plague. Maybe more custom-logo masks.

    But even if I struck it rich tomorrow and paid all my loans down, I’d feel the same way about this issue. It’s a morally reprehensible racket these people are running, forcing people into a financial buzzsaw of expensive credentialism that is financed so as to keep the debtor on the hook permanently. I’ll figure something out. But I’ve read too many stories about people in far worse circumstances than mine. And it isn’t right.

    People whine about socialism, without understanding that we have socialism, but only for the wealthy. It might be interesting to give the peons a taste for once. Hell, much of it would trickle on up anyway.

    Student loans are difficult to pay down because they really don’t want you to pay them down. One great thing about pursuing a bidness degree is that it dawns on you pretty quickly that every debt is someone else’s equity. It’s a racket, just like the US health-care system is a racket.

Comments are closed.