BURNPIT: U.S. Politics, August 2022

And:

⚡️ “Florida's Maxwell Frost is the first member of Gen Z to win a congressional primary” by @NPR https://t.co/EXkz8GiOQN

— NPR (@NPR) August 24, 2022

Rebekah Jones is annoying AF

Not as annoying at Matt Gaetz, tbf.

Given my druthers I'd vote for annoying over Trump-enabling sexual predator any day.

well yes obviously, Gaetz is a criminal asshole. But she doesn't strike me as very truthful and seemed addicted to getting attention on twitter.

have a feeling Gaetz is untouchable in his district, but I don't know. he should obviously be in jail.

i'm taking the ignorant way out, but i assume that districts that ever knowingly voted for people like MJT, Gaetz, Boebert (to a lesser extent, Gohmert) will never make any correct decision, on anything, political or otherwise, for the rest of their lives

MJT = magic the gathering = MTG

(since literally all other words would have better than that)

in other words, gaetz cannot be defeated until there is another candidate that is even _worse_, somehow. i won't speculate on how that's possible, but i believe in the capacity of this country to be the fucking worst in more extreme ways every year beyond all imagination. when that worse candidate finally arrives, the voters of FL district 1 will finally be permitted to make an even worse decision than they did before, Gaetz will finally lose and we will move onto the next stage of total collapse, good morning

just to pretend like that never happened, here is some news

White House officials are planning to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for recipients of Pell Grants as part of their broader announcement on Wednesday of student debt forgiveness, four people familiar with the matter said.

The extra debt forgiveness for Pell recipients would be in addition to the expected cancellation of up to $10,000 in student debt for most other borrowers. The White House’s plans are only expected to apply to Americans earning under $125,000 per year, or $250,000 per year for married couples who file taxes jointly, the people familiar said.

Roughly 43 million federal student loan borrowers would be eligible for some level of forgiveness, including 20 million who could have their debt completely canceled, according to internal documents shared with The Washington Post. The White House estimates that 90 percent of relief will go to people earning less than $75,000.

The president is also expected to announce that he will extend a pandemic-era pause on federal student loan payments that was first implemented under the Trump administration. That moratorium will now be extended until Dec. 31, or beyond the midterm elections, the people said.

this seems fair. I know people will continue to complain he could have cancelled more, and he could have, but doing 20k for those who had pell grants is a decent compromise as I assume those who had need that took larger loans probably were eligible for those grants. Even I had one of those grants and we were solidly middle class, so I think that a lot of people will get 20k of forgiveness. Maybe that's wrong.

ya that's what's scary about Loomer getting so close, because that would represent the next evolution of the GOP, where they just drop the pretense and openly say that racism & genocide are the only way to Make America Great Again. which I'm guessing their base would follow, just like they follow everything else these idiots say. and yes I know that deep down this is what they believe already but it would still be a very big deal to have someone like her in Congress. she was so racist that she got banned from Uber Eats for Christ's sake!!

Fuck, it scares me to realize there is a potential future where MTG and Gaetz represent the relatively saner end of the GOP.

This is why the continuing presence of articles about how this is really about economic anxiety and coastal liberal elitism absolutely infuriate me— these people want genocide and fascism, and yet there are continued columns about how we need to be nicer to the fascists.

re: student debt: imho, anything short of seriously addressing the crushing problems with the system as a whole is not so much "decent compromise" as "well, at least some people will get something, and that will make a huge difference for them." because if you're, say, someone who started out with $25K of loans and it's magically ballooned to $50K or whatever other crazy number, then the $10K is certainly helpful, but isn't necessarily going to break you out of the self-sustaining prison of interest and fees. and there's still the outstanding problem of people getting started on the student debt life sentence now.

side notes: it seems clear this is going to take legislation, not just executive orders. and i think it's important to see this as a very small band-aid, not a landmark reform achievement.. because that affects the way people think/talk about possible next steps.

curious how the income thresholds will work --- based on 2021 tax returns, probably?

Very interesting. pic.twitter.com/cixd8HGr0b

— Marshall Steinbaum 🔥 (@Econ_Marshall) August 24, 2022

Apparently there's more to the student loan thing:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fa7_1pHUsAAqguw.png

xpost with Alfred

i hope that part will stand. that would be very helpful. i am one of those people with $70K debt. i will get $10K off, that will help. not having to pay the monthly interest for a while would be a huge help

i don't know want to learn about how easy it will be to destroy all of this, via courts, another EO, legislative, or otherwise

Can someone explain to me how some of these loans wound up being 3, 4, 5x the amount of the principal when people had been paying? How the fuck is interest calculated in these? Was the repayment amount not even enough to cover the interest that grew monthly? Did the interest accrue interest?

Interest is a hell of a drug.

Less jokey answer (and possibly dated since my student loans were taken out 25 years ago): Some (most?) loans have compounding interest. Some loans probably don't defer interest while you are in school. Some (many) people extend the payment period to reduce their monthly payments.

10 years at 7% is a doubling. Pretty soon we’re talking about real money.

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest."

--Albert Einstein

this seems fair. I know people will continue to complain he could have cancelled more, and he could have, but doing 20k for those who had pell grants is a decent compromise

oh I love compromises. who was he negotiating with? what did the other side get in exchange?

lobbyists

ah

The interesting thing about student debt policy is that the policy-makers themselves are a constituency for the policy. The constraints they set up are solely dictated by their own ideology.

— Marshall Steinbaum 🔥 (@Econ_Marshall) August 21, 2022

she was so racist that she got banned from Uber Eats for Christ's sake!!

― frogbs, Wednesday, August 24, 2022 8:46 AM

i want this to become the new "yo mama so fat"

YOU SO RACIST YOU GOT BANNED FROM CABELA'S

Joe might be 700 years old but he can still put one in the bleachers if you throw him an 85 mph meatball https://t.co/xcxc8Twc6f

— Screamer Jim (@HeheWaitWhut) August 24, 2022

I paid off most of my loans while laboring as a junior staffer at the Economist.

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) August 24, 2022

Today is like 9/11 for people with Harvard in their bio

— The Eorzea Mets (@MC_Nietzsche) August 24, 2022

i would consider taking megan mcardle being canceled instead of 10k of my student loans

Followup tweet even better:

When your question is so dumb and so transparently bad faith that the decaying President of the United States turns around on his way out the door to slam one home on you, idk man, you might need a new rhetorical gimmick

— Screamer Jim (@HeheWaitWhut) August 24, 2022

I paid off all my loans a couple years ago and actually shudder at the thought of being mad about that. There are two kinds of people in this world, those who see their friend win $50 on a bar slot machine and go "hey that rocks, good for you!" and those who go "fuck! that should have been me! I was thinking of playing that machine too so you should buy me several drinks!!"

Cue Matt Christman's "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP"

Anyway, having paid off $100k of student loans on a salary of much less than $100k, the reason I think others in that situation should also pay off their loans is not because I'm jealous of them and want them to suffer. It's because I know it can be done.

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) August 24, 2022

Narrator: She was jealous of them and wanted them to suffer.

Hey Megan, it costs zero dollars to not tweet that bullshit.

so, in addition to this forgiveness, they absolutely need to put guardrails and controls over student loans, eliminate compounding interest, treat it more like a mortgage, make it subject to bankruptcy, otherwise this problem is just going to persist.

but, I've now read that federal student loans and most private loans do not have compound interest. So stuff like this is just baffling to me. How does this happen? Do people have some other kind of shitty loans that were foisted on them, or did terms change on loans, or what?

As a pell grant recipient, $20k will forgive nearly all of my debt. I’ll still owe about $4k.

For context, I took out the same amount I still owe, and I’ve already paid $10k on them.

— Johnna ✨🧀 (@JohnnaCantWait) August 24, 2022

Years of delaying payment?

Megan McArdle’s Twitter avatar gives me the heebie jeebies.

interest is also not compounded from posting when you don't know anything about your subject xxp

I think this will forgive the $2700ish I owe from my last futile attempt to go back to school, I should make the dweebs' nightmare come true and buy something stupid.

i literally can't fathom being the kind of person who thinks like this (forgiving debt is punishing other people) and yet they're all around us.

Buy a Goldendoodle puppy and name it Thanks Joe Biden

spend it on cosplay

Donate to Beto.

That’s a bridge too far in terms of setting money on fire.

just in case anyone has been paying for the past couple of years and is about to get the full amount cancelled

Fun fact: You can be refunded any federal student loan payments you've made since the March 2020 pause. pic.twitter.com/TiqsuXUwXi

— Adam Kelsey (@adamkelsey) August 24, 2022

Newsom is definitely getting ready to run for president asap (bass is a middle of the road california democrat running against a anti-choice billionaire who was recently a Republican)

.@GavinNewsom dodges chance to endorse @KarenBassLA:

"I've tried to stay out of these Dem-on-Dem races"

— Jeremy B. White (@JeremyBWhite) August 24, 2022