DL Open Thread: Thurs., July 18, 2024
If you’re looking for convention coverage or ‘Waiting For Biden To Come To His Senses’, look elsewhere. I don’t get paid enough (aka ‘anything’) to inflict either on myself.
Biden Cancels More Student Debt. This time, for 35,000 public service workers:
How it works: The Education Department said that the relief was made possible via its work to overhaul the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program.
- PSLF allows public employees, such as teachers, firefighters, members of law enforcement, and people who work for nonprofit organizations, to apply for forgiveness after making 10 years’ worth of payments on their federal student loan balance.
I think this will be one of Biden’s most notable legacies. Unless, of course, Rethugs sue to inflict misery on public service workers.
Private School Vouchers Blow Up Arizona’s Budget. Who could ever have predicted such a thing?:
In just the past two years, nearly a dozen states have enacted sweeping voucher programs similar to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account system, with many using it as a model.
Yet in a lesson for these other states, Arizona’s voucher experiment has since precipitated a budget meltdown. The state this year faced a $1.4 billion budget shortfall, much of which was a result of the new voucher spending, according to the Grand Canyon Institute, a local nonpartisan fiscal and economic policy think tank. Last fiscal year alone, the price tag of universal vouchers in Arizona skyrocketed from an original official estimate of just under $65 million to roughly $332 million, the Grand Canyon analysis found; another $429 million in costs is expected this year.
Advocates for Arizona’s universal voucher initiative had originally said that it wouldn’t cost the public — and might even save taxpayers money. The Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank that helped craft the state’s 2022 voucher bill, claimed in its promotional materials at the time that the vouchers would “save taxpayers thousands per student, millions statewide.” Families that received the new cash, the institute said, would be educating their kids “for less than it would cost taxpayers if they were in the public school system.”
But as it turns out, the parents most likely to apply for these vouchers are the ones who were already sending their kids to private school or homeschooling. They use the dollars to subsidize what they were already paying for.
Nobody thought of that?
Marathon Oil Predicted Climate Disaster In 1977. Did nothing:
The corporate predecessor to America’s largest refiner of oil, Marathon Petroleum, explained in a company periodical nearly 50 years ago that global temperature rise potentially linked to “industrial expansion” could one day cause “widespread starvation and other social and economic calamities”.
This decades-old description of climate breakdown is from a 1977 issue of the magazine Marathon World and is attributed in the article by an unnamed author to several experts including a scientist working for a top US agency.
“Although climatologists disagree on the underlying reasons, many see a future climate of greater variability, bringing with it areas of extreme drought,” said the magazine, previously published by Marathon Oil Company, which later split into Marathon Petroleum as well as the exploration and production company Marathon Oil.
RIP: Pat Williams–Delaware native who built the Sixers’ 1983 NBA Championship team:
In the summer of 1982, Williams traded for center Moses Malone, and the Sixers cruised through the entire season. They went an NBA-best 65-17 and swept their way past the Lakers in the Finals in four games.
“Our advertising slogan after that first (Finals defeat) was ‘We Owe You One,'” Williams told the News Journal in 2003. “We kept getting ourselves in bigger and bigger debt. So winning was like a huge burden off our backs.”
Williams then left to build the expansion Orlando Magic, who began play in 1989.
He was also very funny. Upon drafting Charles Barkley, Williams remarked:
My son asked me if he could play in the ocean. I told him ‘I’m sorry, Charles is using it.’
A fascinating person:
Williams had run in 13 marathons and climbed Mount Rainier in the state of Washington. He also wrote more than 100 books. He is survived by his wife, Ruth, and their 19 children, 14 of whom were adopted from foreign countries.
What do you want to talk about?
Seems the Democrats who have their knives out for Biden are mostly those who harbor long-standing gripes with his agenda.
Corporate Democrats who don’t like his anti-corporate agenda. You’ll notice that every one of these turncoats is a centrist.
The takeaway: Nobody is immune to propaganda.
If the “get rid of Biden” energy is coming from the GOP, it makes perfect sense that Senator Chris Coons and his ilk would be the most eager dupes.
As for me, two months ago I thought it would be tragic if Biden fell down in public. Now I’m not so sure.
Coons knows his bread is buttered by his proximity to Biden, so he has remained loyal.
Coon’s bread already had enough butter on it to last for several generations. Why can’t people ever have enough butter?
I think he’s still hoping for a cabinet post. A guy can wish, can’t he?
Coons would be perfect as the guy who answers the Diet Coke button.
Often people who complain and claim they are trying to fix a problem are really trying to distance themselves from a situation they themselves had a hand in creating.
An interesting take on Joe today from one of the outstanding team of News Journal reporters in the early ’70s.
https://mississippitoday.org/2024/07/17/curtis-wilkie-president-joe-biden/
Hope he reads it.
I read it.
I, too, hope that Joe reads it as well.
This whole enterprise depends not only on Biden doing the right thing, but the party doing the right thing afterwards. This is the Democratic Party we’re talking about. Are you so sure they won’t fuck it up? Because they’ve sure fucked up the part about convincing him to leave.
Don’t think any of us can be sure. All we can do is hope.
My hope for today is that this week’s COVID episode (or is it a condition?) is the intervention from God Almighty that he was talking about two weeks ago.
Mississippi Today, where Wilkie’s piece was published, does great work. It’s available free. Donations, of course, are welcomed. https://mississippitoday.org/
Even if you have faith in Biden doing the right thing, then Harris has to be a better campaigner, which has not been established. Then the electorate has to overlook her being a woman and Black besides, something I doubt the Democratic Party can overcome with its messaging. That’s more ifs than I’m comfortable with, and more chances for these royal fuck-ups to fuck it up.
I respect Curtis Wilkie, but if you read between the lines even he admits he’s projecting.
The only scenario that that doesn’t result in a complete cluster fuck is for Biden to endorse Harris, and Harris to become the nominee in the wake of that endorsement.
He can say, “I did this very difficult thing of for the country, now all you fuckers need to do the difficult thing and be a unified politician party for once.”
I agree with this. He also needs to stress that Covid-19, the disease that Trump fucked up dealing with, is what caused him to exit the race.
Jason,
Your hasty typing wound up expressing the sentiment pretty much as Joe probably would these days, with or without a Teleprompter. Precisely why he’s got to acknowledge his increasingly frail humanity.
I met Curtis in 1972 when he and Norm Lockman were covering the McGovern Convention in Miami. I was a McGovern Labor liaison at the ripe age of 20. We hung out and had libations and I stayed in touch with both men. I thought that both of them were wicked smart, and they both went on to distinguished national careers. Curtis pretty much nails it.
“Delaware opioid officials blast the AG, then award $2 million in grants.”
https://spotlightdelaware.org/2024/07/18/opioid-award-despite-ag-rebuke/
Bethany Hall-Long has been working on health care issues for like 20 years now, and Delaware’s standing on health care measurements could hardly be worse. We sure do have a shit-ton of commissions, though. These dots couldn’t be easier to connect, yet Delaware’s Democratic establishment can’t or won’t.
Even by her own standards she’s unqualified for the job.
Trump’s speech is scheduled to begin at 9p.m tonight. Biden should call the press corps to the White House and make this announcement at 9:05 so all the networks get to cut away from that bullshit for “breaking news”.
He should alert the networks that this will be a BFD
Lou Dobbs died and no illegal alien killed him but the Trump campaign will spin it that way. You know all reports on his ear is third hand information? Only the attempt is real.
Any way Lou can’t lie or divide our country any more. He’s going to hell where he can drink coffee with the Devil and cheer on the Devils son TRUMP as well as sweat his ass off.
Go by and good reddens and wait for Roger Stone and Steve Bannon when the prisoners get finished with him. Ruddy as well.
The coffee in hell is, ironically, always only lukewarm.