The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.
When the new administration was looking for an attorney general, Ben Crump, the ultimate BLM lawyer who represented the families of George Floyd, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and nearly every BLM case, recommended Tony West. Al Sharpton also mentioned West.
West, Crump argued, had been the third-highest ranking official in the Obama DOJ, “led various efforts to reduce racial bias, improve procedural fairness, strengthen the relationship between communities of color and law enforcement, and hold police departments accountable.”
Or as the New York Times put it, West “launched an investigation into the 2014 shooting death in Ferguson, Mo., of an unarmed 18-year-old black man, Michael Brown, by a white police officer”. Michael Brown had assaulted a store clerk and then the police officer who shot him in self-defense, but West proved to be a crucial link in the chain that unleashed BLM on America.
The ‘Ferguson Effect’ and the lies around the shooting of Michael Brown would help cripple policing and lead to race riots and then a crime wave spilling across the nation’s cities.
West had helped start the fire that burned down the country and killed thousands of Americans.
Crump however pointed out that West had another major asset besides the Ferguson Effect, he was also “the brother-in-law of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.”
Big Government is indeed a small world.
While Biden’s inner circle proved wise enough not to bring in Kamala’s family into the cabinet, West wasted no time rushing in to consolidate Kamala’s position during the Biden palace coup.
The New York Times described West as her “secret weapon” who, coincidentally, was in Kamala’s residence when Biden ‘dropped out’ and ‘worked the phones’ helping “her reach out to would-be supporters” and “his own network of donors and business contacts”.
Since Kamala was in D.C. and West works for Uber in San Francisco (but also has a home on Martha’s Vineyard), thousands of miles away, he might not have just dropped by for a visit.
And West indeed worked fast.
Shortly thereafter, West pressed Kamala to bring in his former boss, Attorney General Eric Holder, to ‘vet’ vice presidential candidates. And West put himself on the 5-person vetting team. When Kamala picked Gov. Tim Walz, it was really the old Obama DOJ team that got it done.
Derek Anthony ‘Tony’ West, married to Kamala’s sister-in-law, Maya Harris, a radical ACLU activist, have been the power couple behind Kamala’s political career. Maya was the campaign chair of her sister’s 2020 presidential campaign. And when Kamala headed to her presidential campaign headquarters back then, Maya and her husband were by her side.
Maya was credited by campaign staffers with wrecking the campaign and this time around, Kamala’s campaign is officially being chaired by Biden’s old campaign chairwoman, Jen O’Malley Dillon, but West is very clearly acting as the unofficial chair of the 2024 campaign. West, who formerly co-chaired her transition team, has emerged as its number two.
The ‘slush fund’ amounting to between $1 and $3 billion was directed to leftist groups like ACORN and La Raza. And a House Judiciary Committee investigation obtained documents showing that West’s team had deliberately screened out conservative groups.
West’s deputy had emailed the Office of Legal Counsel asking, “[c]an you explain to Tony the best way to allocate some money toward an organization of our choosing.” Explaining the final settlement to the press team, West’s deputy wrote that the donation provisions require banks to “[m]ake donations to categories of entities we have specified (as opposed to what the bank might normally choose to donate to).”
Such a level of corruption is concerning. West has suggested that he will go back to working at his extremely lucrative position at Uber after the election, but Crump’s op-ed touting him for Attorney General suggests that he was interested in that role. And might be yet again.
While serving at the Justice Department, West had praised Al Sharpton, linked to years of racial violence in New York City, including the Crown Heights Pogrom against Jews, the assaults on Asian groceries and the Freddy’s massacre of Latino women, for his work on “reconciliation”.
Sharpton brought up West’s name during discussions about Biden’s next attorney general. He warned that there should be no hesitation in providing Tony West with a “waiver”. A possible reason for such a waiver would have been to exempt West from anti-nepotism rules due to Kamala’s position. While the Biden team did not listen to Crump and Sharpton, and did not pursue such a waiver, it is likely that Kamala would be more motivated to do so than Biden.
Tony West helped set America on fire by legitimizing BLM assaults on law enforcement and the justice system. He brokered some of the most corrupt settlements in the DOJ’s history.
And the next time you see him, he might be the attorney general.
In the three weeks since Joe Biden handed her the nomination, Kamala Harris spent a total of 70 seconds in front of reporters and issued one specific promise, which she stole from Donald Trump.
This is the first presidential campaign in history that appears to be guided by Nancy Pelosi’s line about Obamacare: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
At her brief stop before a handful of reporters while boarding Air Force Two, one of them oh-so-politely asked Harris when she’d sit down for a press interview.
Her answer: “I’ve talked to my team. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month.”
Staging rallies around the country is easy. Sitting down for an interview with a fawning reporter? That’s complicated business!
This is all in keeping with Harris’ completely content-free campaign, which she apparently hopes to ride until November on the wings of an adoring press.
To date, her website is utterly substance-free, consisting only of a bio of her and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a donation page, and a page selling sophomoric merch.
So far, the only specific promise Harris has made — other than to “defend democracy” and “freedom” — is to eliminate taxes on tips, something she only now embraces because it’s been a winning idea for Trump. (Never mind that she cast the tie-breaking vote for the criminally misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act,” which gave the IRS $80 billion to catch tax cheats, after which it quickly announced plans to crack down on tip income.)
Harris claims she’ll release an economic plan this week that will explain “what we need to do to bring down costs and also strengthen the economy.” We aren’t holding our breath.
To the press who are supposedly covering Harris, keeping her agenda vague and sticking with scripted remarks is a smart strategy. But that strategy only works if the press lets it. So far they are happily obliging.
When the New York Times reported on Harris’ lack of press access, it spent most of it defending her strategy. It’s “a cautious choice” and “political strategists” say is “exactly what she should be doing.” The Times quotes James Carville saying “Where is it written that you have to sit down for a press interview?”
Time magazine ran a sickly sweet paeon to Harris, even after she refused to sit down with them for an interview.
In a rare bit of honesty, The New Yorker magazine admitted that:
The task of filling in what Harris prefers to leave blank would usually fall to the press. But, to date, there have not been particularly loud or widespread calls for her to sit down and answer questions….I think it’s fair to say that, so far, the mainstream press has handled Harris quite gently.
You don’t say.
The press is — to the surprise of no one — bending over backward to help her win.
When the New York Times ran a headline that was the tiniest bit critical of Harris’ vacuous campaign, it quickly got revised.
Here’s the original:
And here’s the updated version that appeared later in the day.
But there’s a deeper reason for Harris’ hiding from the press. When she had to present a policy agenda in 2019, it was laughably amateurish. And when she talks off the cuff, she comes across as … well … stupid.
Early in Biden’s term, after putting Harris in charge of fixing the “root causes” of the border crisis, she sat down for an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, which was such an epic disaster that she basically avoided sit-down interviews for a year.
That didn’t prevent Harris from displaying her dim grasp on things whenever she spoke extemporaneously, repeating her “unburdened by what has been” line ad nauseam when not waxing philosophically about the “significance of the passage of time.”
Harris has no doubt spent three years preparing for this moment, so maybe she’s improved her skills. But when Americans held prisoner in Russia returned at the start of the month and a reporter asked her how she feels, Harris blurted this:
Issues & Insights @InsightsIssues · Aug 11 Kamala Harris On The Significance of Diplomacy @CSPAN
If she is so sharp and politically savvy and so full of great ideas, you’d think she’d be eager to show off all this off. Why keep her light under a bushel?
Having said all this, the real risk to the country isn’t electing someone who is stupid. It’s electing someone who’s been allowed to hide the fact that she is a hardcore leftist.
That’s what voters will learn about Harris if, God help us, she wins this November.
Biden was initially interested in Gretchen Whitmer – until the death of George Floyd.
A handful of Republicans have referred to Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, as a “DEI hire.” They were essentially saying that President Joe Biden picked Harris to be his running mate in 2020 because she was a person of color. Democrats have, of course, pushed back, calling the phrase “extremely offensive and dehumanizing,” in the words of former U.N. Ambassador and Obama and Biden White House insider Susan Rice. Some Republicans, like former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, pushed back, too, calling the accusation “totally stupid and dumb.”
The issue goes back to the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. In March of that year, when he had all but wrapped up the nomination, Biden explicitly promised to choose a woman as his running mate. “I commit that I will, in fact, appoint a, pick a woman to be vice president,” Biden said in a debate with Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Biden’s promise came in the same answer in which he promised to appoint “the first black woman” to the Supreme Court if he had the opportunity to nominate a justice. So, in that moment, Biden made a specific promise of race and gender for the court while promising only to pick a woman for vice president.
Later, during a July 20 appearance on MSNBC, Biden was asked, “Are you committed to naming a black woman as your vice presidential running mate?” Biden declined to say but said that among those under consideration at that moment, “there are four black women.” He then offered a few hints. Black women have long supported his career, he said, “and so they’re the ones, as that old saying goes, that brought me to the dance. I have been loyal. They have been loyal to me. … My administration, I promise you, will look like America, from vice president to Supreme Court, to cabinet positions, to every major position in the White House. It’s going to look like America. It’s critically important that that be the case. I can guarantee you that.”
It’s fair to say that Biden strongly suggested the pick would be a black woman. And three weeks later, Biden picked Harris. According to an Associated Press report, Biden was initially quite interested in Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. But after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the national nervous breakdown that followed, Whitmer withdrew from consideration and recommended that Biden choose a black woman.
“Forces in the country, and within the Democratic Party, were indeed pushing Biden toward a history-making pick,” the AP reported. “As protests over the death of Floyd and other black Americans filled the streets across the country, an array of Democrats urged Biden to put a black woman on the ticket — a nod to this moment in the nation’s history, to the critical role black voters played in Biden’s ascent to the Democratic nomination, and to their vital importance in his general election campaign against President Donald Trump.”
So Harris got the nod. In the end, Biden kept his woman-only promise for the vice presidency, and also made good on the strong hints he had given out that it would be a woman of color. And then he and Harris won the election. (In time, Biden also kept his promise to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court.)
Now, the issue is less how Harris got the job of vice presidential nominee — it’s not hard to understand the dynamics inside the Democratic Party — but what she would do on the DEI front were she to step up to the presidency. The short version is that she would be the president for DEI.
Immediately upon taking office, Biden issued proclamations and executive orders concerning equity, the “E” in DEI. It began on inauguration day, Jan. 20, 2021, with his “Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.” The order said, “Our nation deserves an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda.” On June 25, 2021, Biden issued another executive order, “Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce,” building on the earlier order.
When the 81-year-old president talked about “equity,” it seemed clear he meant something along the lines of the old idea of “equality of opportunity,” as opposed to “equality of outcome.” The former is universally accepted; the latter is the opposite of the American way of life.
Kamala Harris is different. When she talks about “equity,” she means “equality of outcome.” In February 2021, when Harris had been vice president a little more than a month, she took part in a virtual celebration of Black History Month. She took the occasion to say this:
“We have always fought for equality. But now we are also talking much more rightly about equity, understanding that we must be clear-eyed about the fact that, yes, we want everyone to get an equal amount — that sounds right — but not everyone starts out from the same place. Some people start out on first base; some people start out on third base. And if the goal is truly about equality, it has to be about a goal of saying everybody should end up in the same place. And since we didn’t start in the same place, some folks might need more equitable distribution.”
It is hard to imagine a major-party nominee for president of the United States saying that. But that is what Vice President Harris said. That is what she believes. Should she become president, she would, of course, have much more power to pursue her goal of equity across the country — a president for DEI.
In case you haven’t heard, the Mother Country is finished. Under their new Communist prime minister, COVID-era censorship of social media has been resurrected. It’s not just censorship; it’s imprisonment for writing anything online that the government dislikes. Do you think the British can vote this tyranny down next time? There is no next time.
Great Britain was never perfect, but it provided the intellectual and political basis for Western civilization that gave rise to the First Amendment and the United States. Our soon-to-be elected or selected Vice Puppet has already made it clear that censorship will be the policy of the United States, very soon.
America is not far behind. Tim Walz openly calls for censorship. He has said that the government must “push back” against “hate speech,” and he made it clear that the words of Trump supporters, whom he has called fascists, certainly do constitute hate speech (meaning: disagreement). What will “pushing back” mean in practice, after next January 20 — or even sooner, if they push Biden out of the White House?
The U.K. government has actually posted on X: “Think before you post.” People know it’s a warning, because Facebook jail has been converted to real jail, at least in the U.K. Can you imagine the Harris-Walz regime doing the same in America? I absolutely can.
“Government is organized crime,” says a meme on social media.
Actually, today’s federal government in the U.S. is much WORSE than organized crime. It answers to nobody. It controls the police, the military, the courts– and, as we’ve seen, gleefully and unapologetically weaponizes them against all innocent people they dislike. It prints money. It brainwashes children and sexually (as well as intellectually) mutilates their minds and bodies, with no consent from parents — and forces unwilling parties to pay for it all.
Tony Soprano faced much more opposition than today’s monsters in what we still call a government ever face. Mobsters are on the run. Today’s tyrants do not have to run from anything, because we have allowed them unlimited power, including a monopoly on the use of that power.
“In 1776, the British demanded we surrender our weapons.
We shot them,” says another meme on social media.
In her first, wildly unsuccessful campaign for President (where she faced actual voters), Kamala promised an executive order on day one in office, an order to confiscate the guns of all Americans.
Let us know how that works out for you, Kamala.
Too few Americans seem willing to take the threat seriously; to demonstrate recognition that they’re in for (at least) the biggest fight since 1776.
The waking up, when and if it happens, will not be pretty. If most never wake up, then it will be even uglier to the rest of us.
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Are Kamala Harris and Tim Walz just too weird to win election in November?
Or are they the two Democrats that America needs right now dammit, a special pair that have the unique ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been?
I just can’t say. I’m just a guy who spent his life working in the American news media, much of that time writing a political column at a well-known conservative Chicago newspaper. But after the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, the paper went woke and then broke and neo-Marxists took the newsroom. I hear them and what remains of the chattering class talking gibberish and jaberwocky about how “Democracy Dies in Darkness” with Harris avoiding any meaningful news conferences, and I’m just about as dazed and confused as the rest of you.
But nagging questions persist. Chief among them: Will Harris and Waltz continue to hide their true selves as what is left of a broken media covers for them?
For example, is is too weird to suggest Vice President Harris–a famous coddler of criminals and George Soros prosecutor zero who unleashed a national crime wave allowed masked thugs to smash-and-grab up t0 $950 in stolen goods a day–has now transformed herself into a stern border warrior who is tough crime? Or is her tough-on-crime pose and her feigned concern over the broken border simply more tapioca pudding shoveled at foolish infants?
And is her Democrat running mate Minnesota Gov. “Tampon Tim” Walz too weird for mandating tampons for middle-school boys at Minnesota schools?
Hmm. Are feminine napkins for schoolboys just too weird, or is all this in keeping with the pursuit of the new “fweedoms” Harris and Walz keep yammering about to their chorus at MSNBC? It’s just rather confusing now that the left wing corporate “mainstream media” (which is anything but ‘mainstream’ ) allows Harris’ and Walz’ true identities to remain masked and hidden. But if they win this election will they finally reveal themselves as did the Jacobins of the French Revolution? Of course. Because by then it will be too late.
Currently, the true nature of the Democrat Party remains hidden. The Jacobins could not win election if their first promise was to crush freedom and lop off the heads of the nobles. It all remains obscure, like their smiles.
And rather like the masks Americans were forced to wear in lockdown states with lockdown governors like Minnesota and Illinois, where we were discouraged from gathering together in our homes on the holidays. We were prohibited from attending church services on Sundays, and public schools were closed, but our political leaders allowed us to worship of sorts at box liquor store and get high on state-approved weed. Remember?
Today’s Democrat is not the Democrat Party I remember, that party of Richard J. Daley in Chicago, the party that loved America like Harry S. Truman. But this Democrat Party preparing to gather in Chicago on August 19 is a gathering of Jacobins. They are all about selling abortion and racial hate. And as such they are nihilists, as were the French Revolutionaries. This is the Democrat Party that is driven to destroy the political system, the party that destroys the old icons and statues, the party that changes the foundational dates, from 1776 to 1619, the party that whips up racial animosity as they did during the insurrectionary Black Lives Matter riots of 2020. The party that sells abortions as “freedom.”
Have you forgotten the BLM riots to glorify the criminal George Floyd, the thug who held a loaded gun to the abdomen of a pregnant woman? Those the leftist riots in his name destroyed Chicago and other cities like Minneapolis. Have you forgotten, even as the national news media wants you to forget? It was Gov. Walz who let Minneapolis burn, and he took days and days to call out the National Guard as his aides worried if the guard was diverse enough to handle the riots.
Legal battles over President Biden’s various schemes to forgive student debt continue. In July, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals indefinitely blocked the administration’s ultra-generous new student-loan repayment plan, which could have cost taxpayers $475 billion. Additional loan-cancelation initiatives—also certain to face legal challenges—are in the works.
But the high drama of loan cancelation has drawn attention away from a more pressing issue in the student-loan system. After the pandemic-induced student-loan payment pause ended last year, the Education Department implemented a one-year transition period to allow borrowers time to ease back into the habit of paying their loans. That so-called on-ramp is set to expire at the end of September—yet tens of millions of borrowers have not yet made a payment.
The federal repayment “on-ramp” is set to expire at the end of September, yet tens of millions of borrowers have not yet made a payment.FacebookTwitterEmailPrintShareThe Looming Student-Loan Nonpayment Crisis
During the payment pause, no federal student-loan borrower had to make a payment, and interest rates were set at zero. During the on-ramp, payments are due and interest accrues once again. But borrowers who don’t pay their loans can avoid the worst consequences of failing to do so: Delinquencies will not appear on their credit records, nor will loans be placed in default or sent to collections.
Since most student borrowers had not made a payment on their loans for over three years, the logic of a one-year on-ramp was to allow borrowers time to make financial arrangements to recommence payment. Missing a payment or two would be no big deal. After a year, the logic ran, most borrowers should be comfortably paying their loans every month.
That ideal couldn’t be farther from reality. At the end of 2019, prior to the payment pause, 3.1 million borrowers were more than 30 days behind on their loan payments. As of March 2024—the latest month for which data are available—the number of delinquent borrowers had reached 7.3 million.
Another feature of the post-pause transition was a program to allow borrowers who had been in default prior to the pandemic a one-time chance to bring their loans back into good standing. Yet most defaulted borrowers have not availed themselves of this option. In December 2019, 7.7 million borrowers were in default; as of March 2024, the ranks of defaulted borrowers stood at 5.9 million.
Other borrowers are taking advantage of legitimate options to avoid paying their loans. As of March 2024, two million borrowers had entered loan forbearance, a status in which payments are not due.
The number of borrowers not paying their loans exceeds 20 million.FacebookTwitterEmailPrintShareMany more borrowers are enrolled in an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan, which allows them to pay less than the standard monthly amount—and sometimes nothing at all. The most popular IDR plan is the SAVE plan, a creation of the Biden administration that allows borrowers with even relatively high household incomes to qualify for $0 monthly payments. As of February 2024, 57 percent of the 8 million borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan paid nothing towards their loans each month. (While the SAVE plan is currently on hold due to legal challenges, the Biden administration has placed all SAVE borrowers into interest-free forbearance while the court battle plays out.)
Add the 15 million borrowers who are delinquent or in default on their loans to the two million borrowers in forbearance and the four million who paid nothing under the SAVE plan, and the number of borrowers not paying their loans exceeds 20 million. Excluding those enrolled in school, there are around 35 million borrowers total. That means more than half of student borrowers who should be paying their loans are not.
What Happens to Borrowers Once the On-Ramp Ends?
All this is costly for taxpayers. It’s one reason the Congressional Budget Office expects the student-loan program to post a loss of $400 billion over the coming decade. But the nonpayment phenomenon also carries major implications for borrowers.
Think about the last few years from the perspective of a student borrower who doesn’t religiously follow the news. You’re allowed to make no payments on your loans for three and a half years, from the beginning of the pandemic until October 2023. During that time, you hear that student-loan forgiveness is coming. After October, your servicer starts sending you bills again, but you face no real consequences for missing your payments month after month. All the while, you continue to hear more promises from the president and media about loan cancelation.
It’s understandable that a borrower in this situation might assume that he can get away with not paying his loans forever—or at least until one of those loan-forgiveness promises comes true.
But things are destined to change after the on-ramp expires in October. First, loan delinquencies will be reported to credit bureaus, which generally happens when payments are 90 days overdue. That will adversely affect borrowers’ credit scores.
The Education Department has the power to garnish wages, withhold tax refunds, and seize Social Security checks.FacebookTwitterEmailPrintShareA borrower who goes nine months without making a payment will enter default. After that, the Education Department will have the power to garnish the borrower’s wages, withhold his tax refund, or seize his Social Security checks. Defaulted borrowers can also be responsible for enormous collection fees.
Even borrowers on an IDR plan may not be out of the woods. Recent research has found that borrowers who qualify for a $0 monthly payment often become disengaged from the student-loan system and neglect to reapply for IDR each year. This can lead to higher rates of student-loan delinquency in the long run.
The Biden Administration’s Plans for Student-Loan Repayment
Facing a potential nonpayment crisis in October, the Biden administration could opt to kick the can down the road by extending the on-ramp period. This may be the most likely outcome, as it makes the nonpayment crisis the next administration’s problem. But extending the on-ramp is not sustainable in the long run, as it means tens of millions of borrowers will continue to skip their payments—leaving taxpayers to pick up the cost.
Of course, many decisionmakers in the Biden administration are ideologically opposed to collecting the loans at all, so they may be fine with that. In the meantime, they will keep trying to forgive the loans outright. Though the administration’s highest-profile forgiveness plans are on thin legal ice, there are other ways to discharge debts. The Education Department has canceled $170 billion so far by bending the rules on other loan-forgiveness programs.
In addition, the administration has announced new proposals to forgive student debt by executive action. One proposal, announced in May, would forgive around $150 billion for 28 million borrowers. Another scheme, expected in October, could be even more consequential. These plans are still working their way through the regulatory process, but the White House has signaled it hopes to begin canceling debt this way before the November election.
Perhaps the administration will give up on actually collecting the loans in the hope that one of these forgiveness plans will survive legal scrutiny. Or perhaps officials figure that allowing the loan program to descend into chaos will leave no option but mass forgiveness. Either way, advocates of fiscal responsibility need to offer a better way forward.
A more responsible approach would send a clear signal that borrowers are expected to repay their loans.FacebookTwitterEmailPrintShareWhat Should We Do Instead?
A more responsible approach would send a clear signal that borrowers are expected to repay their loans. The on-ramp should end in October, as promised. Government officials should stop talking about mass loan cancelation to demolish any hint that borrowers should hold out for it.
There should be reforms to the repayment system, as well. A responsible policy would reverse the SAVE plan and institute a minimum monthly payment in remaining IDR plans, so borrowers remember they have a loan to repay. Long-term loan forbearance should no longer be an option, except in extreme cases.
But the government should meet borrowers halfway. Policymakers should make penalties for default less punitive and create simple pathways for defaulted borrowers to return their loans into good standing. Interest subsidies for lower-income borrowers who make a good-faith effort to repay their loans, as House Republicans recently proposed, would ensure borrowers can pay down their principal balances and eventually get out of debt.
Beyond changes to repayment, more fundamental reforms to student loans are necessary to prevent such a crisis from happening again. Congress should implement lower limits on student borrowing and require colleges to cosign the loans they foist on students. Privatization of the federal student-loan system (or at least portions of it) is also worth considering, as private lenders will make an apter assessment of prospective borrowers’ capacity to repay than does the federal government.
The political and legal wars over student-loan forgiveness are likely to stretch years into the future. By contrast, the end of the repayment on-ramp is an issue that demands attention today. More than 20 million student borrowers are not paying their loans, and the nation is about to discover what that means.
Preston Cooper is a higher-education policy expert based in Washington, DC.
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The Imminent Student-Loan Disaster We’re Not Talking About Aug 7, 2024Legal battles over President Biden’s various schemes to forgive student debt continue. In July, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals indefinitely blocked the administration’s ultra-generous new student-loan repayment plan, which …
In March 2022 I predicted some consequences of the sanctions imposed on Russia:
The first [map] shows the countries which banned Russian airplanes from their airspace. Russia in turn denied its airspace to operators from those countries. It will cost quite a bit for U.S. and EU airlines as their flight times and cost to and from Asia, which typically fly through Russian airspace, will now increase. Carriers from Asian countries will now easily out-compete U.S. and European airlines on these routes.
bigger As British media reported yesterday:
British Airways is temporarily scrapping flights to Beijing until at least next year. From October to at least November 2025 the carrier will not fly to the capital of China, although flights to Shanghai and Hong Kong will continue.
European carriers are not currently able to enter Russian airspace which makes flying to China more challenging as it takes a few hours longer than it used to.
Russia’s civil aviation authority introduced the restrictions in February 2022, in retaliation to a British ban on the country’s Aeroflot airline as part of sanctions for the war in Ukraine.
A spokesperson for British Airways said: “We will be pausing our route to Beijing from 26 October 2024, and we’re contacting any affected customers with rebooking options or to offer them a full refund. We continue to operate daily flights to Shanghai and Hong Kong.”
The route only resumed operations on the route in June 2023, following a three-year pause due to the coronavirus pandemic.
At the time, British Airways described London-Beijing as “one of our most important routes”. The airline did not provide a reason for the suspension.
It is one of many Western airlines avoiding Russian airspace, which is adding to their flight times, fuel costs and complexity over how they deploy crew and aircraft.
British Airways isn’t the only one.
A simple look on the map explains the issue:
bigger As I continued on sanctions:
The second map shows those countries which enacted sanctions against Russia. The secondary effects of sanctions are likely to hurt these countries as much as they hurt Russia. The absence of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Central and South American countries is quite telling.
It does not look like ‘the world’ or the ‘international community’ is backing the ‘west’.
bigger The U.S. also sanctioned all imports of oil products from Russia. President Biden has blamed Russia for the price increase that will inevitably follow. I don’t believe that mid-term voters will accept that reasoning. European countries can not follow that step as their economies depend of imports of oil and gas from Russia and will continue to do so for years to come.
Which fits to this other recent headline:
French imports of Russia’s liquified natural gas surge, and Ukraine supporters seek a stop
Shipments of Russian liquified natural gas to France more than doubled the first half of this year, according to new analyses of trade data, at a time when Europe has tried to pull back from energy purchases that help finance the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. Europe has restricted oil imports from Russia, but natural gas is still allowed. And while companies in France are importing the most, one analysis found EU countries overall imported 7% more Russian LNG, natural gas that has been chilled and liquified for easier ocean transport, in the first half of this year compared to the same period a year ago.
Meanwhile in Germany, which currently has a rather crazy government, industrial production is further declining while bankruptcies have reached a record height:
Germany, with its energy-intensive industry and shortage of raw materials, has been particularly affected by the rapid rise in energy prices. Large corporations such as BASF are closing factories because management no longer believes it can efficiently produce essential chemicals. There is a trend of deindustrialization. The volume of orders from German machine-building and engineering companies decreased by 12 percent in the first half of 2024, according to the industry association VDMA. year to year in real terms. Orders from Germany itself fell especially sharply – by 18 percent. Orders from foreign companies fell by 9 percent. Metallurgical corporations are also suffering, as demand for their products is also falling.
All this could be fixed with some sanity and the discarding of useless sanctions.
Yes, but only to a point. Once you start supporting people who endorse coercive medical experimentation, censorship, executive orders for gun confiscation, hyperinflation, wealth redistribution, race wars, weaponization of the police and judicial system against their own citizens, the end of due process, subsidized brainwashing of students, genital mutilation of children by the state, willful obliteration of the middle class, religious and racial persecution, handing arms to terrorists, emasculating and weakening the military, outlawing fossil fuels so the great majority will have to live in an 1800s lifestyle, and mass election fraud … well, I lose all respect for you. And if I cannot respect or trust you, I will not be your friend.
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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea will not seek outside help to recover from floods that devastated areas near the country’s border with China, leader Kim Jong Un said as he ordered officials to bring thousands of displaced residents to the capital to provide them better care.
Kim said it would take about two to three months to rebuild homes and stabilize the areas affected by floods. Until then, his government plans to accommodate some 15,400 people — a group that includes mothers, children, older adults and disabled soldiers — at facilities in Pyongyang, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday.
KCNA said Kim made the comments during a two-day trip to northwestern town of Uiju through Friday to meet flood victims and discuss recovery efforts. The agency gave Kim its typical effusive praise, saying the visit showed his “sacred leadership” and “warm love and ennobling spirit of making devoted service for the people.”
State media reports said heavy rains in late July left 4,100 houses, 7,410 acres of agricultural fields, and numerous other public buildings, structures, roads and railways flooded in the northwestern city of Sinuiju and the neighboring town of Uiju.
The North has not provided information on deaths, but Kim was quoted blaming public officials who had neglected disaster prevention for causing “the casualty that cannot be allowed.”
Traditional allies Russia and China, as well as international aid groups, have offered to provide North Korea with relief supplies, but the North hasn’t publicly expressed a desire to receive them.
“Expressing thanks to various foreign countries and international organizations for their offer of humanitarian support, (Kim) said what we regard as the best in all realms and processes of state affairs is the firm trust in the people and the way of tackling problems thoroughly based on self-reliance,” KCNA said.
Kim made similar comments earlier in the week after Russian President Vladimir Putin offered help, expressing his gratitude but saying that the North has established its own rehabilitation plans and will only ask for Moscow’s assistance if later needed.
While rival South Korea has also offered to send aid supplies, it’s highly unlikely that the North would accept its offer. Tensions between the Koreas are at their highest in years over the North’s growing nuclear ambitions and the South’s expansion of combined military exercises with the United States and Japan.
The North had also rejected South Korea’s offers for help while battling a COVID-19 outbreak in 2022.
During his recent visit to Uiju, Kim repeated an accusation that South Korea exaggerated the North’s flood damages and casualties, which he decried as a “smear campaign” and a “grave provocation” against his government. Some South Korean media reports claim that the North’s flood damages are likely worse than what state media have acknowledged, and that the number of deaths could exceed 1,000.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 