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?