Tag: editorial

Team Biden’s shameless bid to dodge blame for school closure damage

Team Biden’s comment on news that school lockdowns cost America’s kids years of progress boils down to “Don’t blame us!”

Seriously: President Joe Biden’s Education Department late last week issued this absurdity: “When President Biden took office, most schools in America remained closed. President Biden got to work. He put teachers at the front of the vaccine line and got Congress to provide aid to improve ventilation and spacing in schools. This plan produced results: A few weeks after President Biden put these measures in place, a majority of schools were open for the first time since the pandemic started.”

What bull: The Biden administration without question slowed down school reopenings, in concert with Democrats nationwide who were rushing to please teachers unions that fought them.

It’s a known fact that schools reopened far sooner in Republican-led “red” states and cities than in Democratic-controlled “blue” ones. Teachers unions in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and other major cities kept schools closed far longer than in, say, Florida — which had in fact reopened well before Biden took office.

In February 2021, the White House pushed the Centers for Disease Control to accept the input of American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten, which led the CDC to adopt “advisory” language delaying reopenings.

The fact that most schools reopened after Biden took office had nothing to with him. In fact, local leaders had to ignore the Bidenites’ advice to realize that 1) kids were never actually at significant COVID risk, and 2) school shutdowns did enormous damage to children.

America’s children, particularly minority kids in major cities, needlessly suffered immense learning loss thanks to Democrats’ eagerness to satisfy a selfish special interest.

Now that the damage is obvious, all the villains from Weingarten to the White House are pretending they worked hard to reopen schools. It’s a shameful, self-serving lie.

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Think Biden’s student loan write-offs are unfair? Just take a look at the fine print

President Joe Biden’s plan to instantly write off up to $20,000 in individual loans is bad enough, costing the taxpayers north of $300 billion — but the rest of his idea is even worse: He wants to the public to eat most all future student debt, too.

Yes, “Part 1” is horrifically unfair: Folks who chose not to take out such loans, or got them paid off, or never went to college at all, will be picking up the tab for college-educated borrowers with excellent incomes. Yet the rest of the scheme would make this injustice permanent.

Biden would roll back borrowers’ maximum monthly payment on undergrad loans to just 5% of “discretionary” income — and cut the amount of earnings considered “discretionary.” Then he’d wipe out all remaining debt after just 10 years for many borrowers.

The payment limit by itself is huge: The White House boasts it means “no borrower earning under 225% of the federal poverty level … will have to make a monthly payment” at all. And even those earning more than $50,000 right after graduating would face trivial payments — barely denting the principal before Biden sticks taxpayers with the bill.

In short, this is a recipe for nearly free “loans” for an ever-increasing number of people, courtesy of the general public. Until the public goes broke, that is. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates the full plan could drive total future costs toward $1 trillion.

Here’s the key problem, as Reason’s Robby Soave explains: The arrangement gives both universities and students an incentive to “screw the taxpayers.” Students wouldn’t care how much they borrowed, since they wouldn’t have to pay back more than 5% of their “discretionary” income for just 10 years, no matter how high the balance. Universities could then jack up tuition, knowing students could simply borrow more to cover the upcharge, and incur no additional cost to themselves. That’s crazy.

One possible way to contain the damage: cap tuition. Taxpayers would still wind up paying a fortune, but the system might not go haywire so quickly. Alas, Biden’s plan barely pays lip service to this idea: “Colleges have [a moral] obligation to keep prices reasonable and ensure borrowers get value for their investments” is all the White House says.

What a knee-slapper: As the fact sheet notes, inflation-adjusted tuitions have tripled over the past 40 years, and that’s largely because of government aid: With Uncle Sam chipping in, universities simply jacked up prices.

As for borrowers getting “value for their investment” — ha! Instead, many just get liberal mush that fails to win them jobs paying enough to repay their loans.

It’s works great for the left: Schools full of liberal faculty and staff rake in ever more cash while brainwashing kids to think like leftists, all with taxpayers footing the bill. Their only problem: It’s unsustainable.

And when it all comes crashing down, everyone suffers.

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Biden screws the frugal, America’s real polarization and other commentary

Libertarian: Biden Screws the Frugal

The problem with President Biden’s student-loan forgiveness “runs far beyond finances,” fumes Fiona Harrigan at Reason: Consider the “many college graduates who made strategic choices to avoid taking on debt in the first place.” Her parents “convinced me that starting my adult life that far in the hole wasn’t worth the tradeoff.” So she “quietly retired the list of schools I truly wanted to attend.” With “$35,000 annually in merit aid” and “some strategic choices, my college education never cost more than $2,000 per year.” “I never lived on campus. I took on heavy course loads and cashed in on AP credits to finish school a semester early. . . . At times, I worked three jobs to afford travel to internship and conference opportunities, as well as the nontuition costs of my education.” Now she’s “wondering which opportunities I unnecessarily gave up in the name of saving and scrimping.”

Populist: America’s Real Polarization

Obsessing about “partisan polarization” misses “the real division” now, argues Michael McKenna at The Washington Times: “the chasm between those for whom society and its institutions are working just fine and those for whom society and its institutions are either not working at all or are actively working against.” That holds not just for the Biden “student loan disaster,” which makes “the working class pay for the education of the well-off,” but also “Inflation Reduction Act” spending: “Just about all of the $380 billion . . . will wind up in the pockets of company executives, stockholders and those well-off enough to buy electric vehicles (average price now more than $66,000), cutting-edge heat pumps, solar panels.” Add the bipartisan CHIPS “legislation in which Congress gave $75 billion to semiconductor manufacturers that, combined, have made nearly $250 billion in profits in the last five years.”

Pandemic journal: No Djokovic at US Open

Novak Djokovic is “arguably the world’s greatest tennis player,” but “tennis fans won’t see him on one of its biggest stages at the U.S. Open” as the feds won’t let unvaccinated noncitizens into America, complains The Hill’s Joe Concha. “And it’s all for nothing”: Djokovic has natural immunity from 2020 and 2021 COVID bouts. And “we’re seeing triple-vaccinated people contracting coronavirus.” If it’s “about public health and safety,” “explain why Djokovic, nowhere near anyone on a court, cannot play while more than 23,000 fans fill Arthur Ashe Stadium” without “showing the same vaccination card Djokovic is required to present.”

Elex watch: DeSantis Foe Must Want To Lose

Ron DeSantis’ Democratic opponent, Rep. Charlie Crist, “seems determined to lose” Florida’s race for governor, smirks Corey DeAngelis at The Wall Street Journal: As his running mate, he chose Karla Hernández-Mats, president of Miami’s United Teachers of Dade and America Federation of Teachers veep. She and the UTD opposed school reopenings in 2020, and the AFT “successfully lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to tighten school-reopening guidelines, which kept schools elsewhere closed.” She has also “publicly disdained parents” and opposed school choice. “Crist might have learned something from Virginia, where Democrat Terry McAuliffe last year failed to regain the governorship” after saying he didn’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach.

Historian: Dems’ ‘Fascist’ Confusion

“For the Left, Donald Trump is synonymous with ‘fascism’ ” yet did Trump “illegally” nullify $300 billion” in student-loan debt to shore up his base before the midterms? asks Victor Davis Hanson at American Greatness. Or “weaponize the IRS” — sic it on Joe or Hunter Biden, amid evidence of possible corruption on the son’s laptop? “Weaponize the FBI”? Did agents’ texts discuss how to stop Biden’s election bid? Did the ex-prez order a raid on President Barack Obama or Biden’s homes? “In fact, of the last three presidents, Trump was either the most inept or indifferent, or the most obstructed” in using government agencies “for his own partisan political advantage.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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WaPo’s gas-price oops, the NYT’s pro-Dem agenda and more

Diary of disturbing disinformation and dangerous delusions

This slur:

“Is it as obvious as it seems that domestic violent extremists are an important part of the voting coalition on the right?”

— MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, Tuesday — the day before a left-wing nut planned to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh

We say: Don’t write off Wallace’s reality-free slur as mere bad timing. With the Justice Department labeling parents “domestic terrorists” and the left hyping (and distorting) fringe “white replacement theory” (while ignoring left-wing extremists, antifa, etc.), partisans like Wallace really do see right-wing terrorists around every corner. 

This comparison:

“Watergate was a burglary of Democratic party offices. Nobody died. The violent assault on Capitol Hill ultimately claimed seven lives.” 

— Edward Luce, Financial Times, Wednesday

We say: The truth? Capitol rioters didn’t kill a single person. Not one. Yes, a Trump supporter was fatally shot . . . by a Capitol Police officer. Two protesters died of natural causes, and another OD’d. The next day, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick also died of natural causes, though for months left-leaning outlets and even President Joe Biden himself claimed protesters killed him. Two other officers later committed suicide. Was the breach of the Capitol an abhorrent stain on the democratic process, involving physical confrontations and terrorizing lawmakers? Absolutely. But isn’t that bad enough? Attempts to milk it for political gain by falsely painting protesters as killers are disgusting in their own right.

Spot the difference:

NY Post composite; istock/ Getty Images

We say: Oops. Back in November 2020, The Washington Post cited experts who pooh-poohed conservatives’ warnings about a then-looming spike in gas prices under President Joe Biden. Looks like the experts, and the WaPo, were a tad . . . off, as a New York Post report Monday shows.

This story:

On Wednesday, The Times made Fox News’ coverage of the Jan.6 hearings front-page news.
NY Post composite; istock/ Getty Images

We say: Since when is a network’s news lineup a front-page story? Fox News said its sister station, Fox Business, would cover the Democrats’ Capitol-riot hearing, while its prime-time hosts would address it “as news warrants.” That wasn’t good enough for the Dems’ “paper of record”: It notes that other (left-leaning) networks will devote “wall-to-wall” coverage to the hearing and tries to shame Fox for not climbing aboard. Yet the mass coverage is part of a partisan show staged by Dems in Congress; networks have every right to decide how they want to cover that. The Times, however, thinks viewers should have no options. Meanwhile, the Gray Lady ran its report on a left-winger’s plot to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on . . . page A20. Is there any doubt about its agenda?

This tweet:

We say: After a man was caught Wednesday outside Justice Kavanaugh’s home plotting to kill him, White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates flatly denied that former Press Secretary Jen Psaki encouraged protests near the jurists’ personal residences in response to the leak of a draft opinion on Roe v. Wade. Yet a transcript Bates himself posted shows Psaki clearly saying, “We certainly continue to encourage [protests] outside of judges’ homes, and that’s the president’s position.” Sure, she meant peaceful protests, but directing protesters to officials’ residences invites trouble, as the plan to kill Kavanaugh plainly shows.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board



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