The Morning Rant: Buck Shots (8/26/2022)

Can We Please Stop Issuing New Student Debt While Existing Loan Repayment Is Suspended?

Others have done an exceptional job of writing about Joe Biden’s unilateral, unconstitutional cancellation of student-debt, so I have nothing original to add regarding the vulgar transfer of wealth from the working class to the credentialed elite to pay for it.

But I do fear that we’re overlooking what may ultimately be the bigger story – the repayment freeze on student loans has been extended yet again, this time until 2023.

President Joe Biden announced Wednesday the cancellation of $10,000 in student debt for borrowers earning $125,000 or less per year and households earning $250,000 a year or less. The payment freeze on student loans will also be extended through Dec. 31.

In March 2020 the Department of Education paused debt repayment due to the initial Covid panic, while also setting interest rates at 0%. When Joe Biden became President, he immediately extended the moratorium until September 2021, which he then extended until February 2022, and then May 2022, then August 2022, and now until the start of 2023.

Student debt repayment is never going to resume, is it? Deferrals into perpetuity are effectively the same as canceling all student debt, and that is what is going on.

But the universities are still loading students up with new debt. Debt that will never be repaid.

Until student debt repayment resumes, it is a moral obligation that all new government-guaranteed student loan production be halted. And without a suspension of new debt issuance, the university cartel will not support the idea that their students should actually pay back their student loans.

This is an issue that Republican candidates need to grab hold of, and if elected, follow through on.

Scary Statistic – One in Six US Energy Bills is Late

While Joe Biden is buying the votes of affluent college grads with student loan cancellation, how are average folks handling runaway inflation and soaring energy costs? Not very well.

Things are getting really tough out there.

‘Tsunami of Shutoffs’ Looms With 1 in 6 Late on US Energy Bills [Bloomberg – 8/23/2022]

If you can’t get through the Bloomberg paywall, Zero Hedge has excerpts:

Adrienne Nice is one of those struggling Americans who is more than $3,000 behind on utility bills. Last month, she received a "final notice" from power company Xcel Energy Inc., who turned off the electricity to her studio apartment in Minneapolis as temperatures approached near triple digits.

Nice found it near impossible to save money for utility expenses that have doubled over the past year as food, shelter, and gas prices have also skyrocketed. Her low-paying job as a housecleaner has left her in energy poverty.

"I just don't understand how electricity can be so high," she said.

Across the country, power companies reported a surge in non-payment customers. California's PG&E Corp said there had been a 40% jump in the number of residential customers behind on payments since February 2020. New Jersey's Public Service Enterprise Group said customers at least 90 days late have risen 30% since March.

This is an emerging national catastrophe on par with the suffering during the Depression. Since President Biden now has unlimited, unilateral lawmaking powers conferred on him because of “the emergency,” expect there to be a utility payment bailout in the near future.

Don’t forget, it was President Obama himself who first promised us higher electricity bills. In a 2008 interview with the gentry, leftist editorial board at the San Francisco Chronicle, Obama stated “Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

The suffering going on right now is not a problem to our leftist ruling class, it’s by design, as part of their green re-organization of all human activity. The Sustainable Organic Church of the Carbon Apocalypse tolerates suffering and despair to bring about its green utopia.

Oh, by the way, doesn’t it seem a bit recessionary that if 16% of Americans can’t pay their utility bills, then they probably don’t have much money for other discretionary spending.

Why Might Minneapolis Rents Be Dropping?

What happens if you burn a city down, endorse crime, dismantle the police force, and replace hockey with carjacking as the favorite pastime? You get lower rents! Finally some good news.

Minneapolis Rents Drop, Bucking National Trends

Actually, what I’m surprised about is the rising rents in some blue areas, especially New York City. There is a mass exodus of New Yorkers for Florida and Tennessee, and it doesn’t look like Mayor Eric Adams is running the city any more effectively than Bill de Blasio did.

Are rents high In New York because the wealthy are hanging on to unoccupied apartments, constraining supply? Or maybe rents are rising from the effects of inflation, despite softening of demand?

Seriously, why are rents going up in a depopulating city? There is a rational economic reason, but I don’t know it.

Are Old Episodes of Sesame Street Suddenly Problematic?

First they came for Br’er Rabbit. Then they came for Dr. Seuss. And now…Sesame Street!?

HBO Max Removes About 200 ‘Sesame Street’ Episodes

Did Big Bird wear blackface?

Is learning to count now considered a form of white supremacy?

If Sesame Street is now in the woke cross-hairs, we should probably expect a big announcement from Bert and Ernie in the near future.

Speaking of Sesame Street, how ‘bout we head into the weekend with Alison Krauss and Union Station performing Sesame Jamboree. Have a great weekend.

(buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com)

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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