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Open thread August 23, 2022

Dan Crawford | August 23, 2022 7:30 am

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26 Comments
  • Jim Hannan says:
    August 23, 2022 at 10:38 am

    If Barre Seid gives $1.6 billion to right wing causes, will there be any pushback from the other side?  Perhaps now is the time for MacKenzie Scott to get in the water?  Michael Bloomberg?  Warren Buffet?

  • Chris Herbert says:
    August 23, 2022 at 10:50 am

    We need to adopt severe restrictions on how much any individual or business can donate to a political campaign.   Restrictions that are severe enough to prohibit any ability to purchase a candidate’s loyalty.  Restrictions that prohibit the amount raised from large donors cannot be more than the amount raised from small donors.  All donors must be public.  Right now we have legalized outright bribery, courtesy of a corrupt ‘Supreme Six,’ libertarian politicians masquerading as SCOTUS justices.  The SCOTUS is, by definition, corrupt because they have legalized secret donations of unrestrained size.  This is the definition of a bribe.  This used to be illegal.

  • EMichael says:
    August 23, 2022 at 11:51 am

    Yes, it is an insane amount of money but what effect will it have on voters?  If they are not Magats at this point no amount of advertising will make them one.

    • Jim Hannan says:
      August 23, 2022 at 1:52 pm

      It’s more than voter outreach.  It’s a huge right wing infrastructure package.  Conservatives are now focusing on down ballot races, including local school board races.  That kind of money will have a huge impact for a generation.

      The other side can either pay up and meet the challenge or fall behind.  Soros, Wyss, Steyer have been stalwarts but this is a new game changer.

      • EMichael says:
        August 23, 2022 at 2:38 pm

        Agreed on the state and local level. However, there still have to be the votes, though it is beyond sad exactly how ignorant SC Judge Kennedy and the others were. Geez, it’s almost as if they were lying.

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    August 24, 2022 at 6:21 am

    Biden to Announce Decision on Student Debt, Affecting Millions of Borrowers

    NY Times – Aug 26

    President Biden will announce a decision on Wednesday about his plans for student loan debt relief, a highly anticipated moment that could affect about 45 million borrowers nationwide, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Although details of the plan were still being finalized, White House aides have said Mr. Biden was weighing a targeted plan that would provide $10,000 of debt relief for borrowers who make below a certain level of income.

    Mr. Biden also is expected to extend a pause on loan payments for all borrowers, a Trump-era program that has been in effect since the start of the pandemic. …

     

    Mr. Biden’s decision is likely to draw criticism from the left and the right. The amount of debt cancellation Mr. Biden is considering does not go nearly as far as many Democratic lawmakers and progressive groups, including racial justice advocates, have asked for. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, other influential Democrats and several civil rights organizations have pushed Mr. Biden to forgive $50,000 per borrower.

    Mr. Schumer spoke Tuesday evening on the phone with Mr. Biden, appealing to the president on moral and economic grounds to cancel as much debt as possible, according to a Democrat familiar with the conversation. …

     

    • Fred C. Dobbs says:
      August 24, 2022 at 6:26 am

      … White House aides say the president has agonized over the decision, questioning whether cancellation should apply to students of both public and private universities and saying he does not want the relief to apply to those earning high incomes.

      The decision will add fuel to debates raging in Washington — and within the Democratic Party — about economic fairness and the potential to exacerbate an inflation rate that has reached a 40-year high. …

      Administration officials say that the combination of eventually restarting payments for all, while forgiving debt for a targeted group, will not add to rising prices. They say the relief will help lower-income borrowers who are struggling to afford soaring food and rent.

      But Republicans and some Democratic economists say the policies will add to inflation by giving consumers more money to spend.

      • Fred C. Dobbs says:
        August 24, 2022 at 6:28 am

        … Republicans have called any debt cancellation a handout to largely high-income college graduates. Some economists warn it could lead colleges and universities to raise tuition prices, in anticipation of future loan relief. …

        • Fred C. Dobbs says:
          August 24, 2022 at 6:41 am

          Biden nears decision … as allies feud

          Wasington Post via Boston Globe – Aug 24

          …

          White House officials previously discussed limiting debt forgiveness to Americans who earned less than either $125,000 or $150,000 in the previous year, or less than $250,000 to $300,000 for married couples filing jointly. One person familiar with the matter said those thresholds had not changed, although implementing those caps in practice could be complicated. …

          … centrist Democrats have begun pushing back strongly. Lawrence Summers and Jason Furman — two prominent Democratic economists who served in previous administrations — have stepped up their case against broad loan forgiveness, arguing it would exacerbate inflation by increasing overall spending. Summers and Furman, critics of the president’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan last year, were outspoken supporters of the Inflation Reduction Act negotiated with Manchin. But in a Twitter thread Monday, Summers argued the administration should not contribute to inflation by offering “unreasonably generous student loan relief” or encourage colleges and universities to increase tuition.

          Furman added in an interview: “This is redistribution, and there’s nothing wrong with redistribution — if it was from the middle to the bottom. Much of this is redistribution from the middle to the upper-middle.”  

          • Fred C. Dobbs says:
            August 24, 2022 at 6:34 pm

            Biden to Cancel $10,000 in Student Loan Debt; Low-Income Students Are Eligible for More

            NY Times -Aug 24

            President Biden announced student loan debt relief on Wednesday for tens of millions of Americans, saying he would cancel $10,000 in debt for those earning less than $125,000 per year and $20,000 for those who had received Pell grants for low-income students. …

            Mr. Biden also announced that a pandemic-era pause on student loan payments, which has been in effect since March 2020, would expire at the end of the year. The debt relief plan will almost certainly face legal challenges, making the timing of any relief uncertain.

            Across the United States, 45 million people owe $1.6 trillion for federal loans taken out for college — more than they owe on car loans, credit cards or any consumer debt other than mortgages. …

            Students who received Pell grants will be eligible for $20,000 in debt forgiveness. Around 60 percent of borrowers have received Pell grants, and the majority come from families making less than $30,000 a year. The Education Department estimates that 27 million borrowers will qualify for up to $20,000 in relief. …

             

          • Fred C. Dobbs says:
            August 25, 2022 at 5:47 am

            Clearly, the way the media (or is it just the NYT?) is presenting this

            is It’s not just $10k of debt relief, it’s $20k of debt relief!

          • Fred C. Dobbs says:
            August 25, 2022 at 5:55 am

            The only people who I know who might benefit from this my nephew and his family who took out a substantial loan to pay for graduate school required to get a teaching certificate (required to become a teacher) and did so at a fairly pricey private university. And he is certainly solid middle class, spending his entire prior educational life in public schools, now teaching in same.

          • Fred C. Dobbs says:
            August 25, 2022 at 6:11 am

            Biden’s student loan debt plan injects more uncertainty into midterm elections

            Boston Globe – August 24

            President Biden said Wednesday that he will cancel up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt for tens of millions of borrowers and an additional $10,000 for people who had the greatest need for college financial aid, fulfilling a controversial campaign promise that some Democrats hope will boost them with young voters ahead of the congressional midterm elections. …

            “All this means that people can start to finally crawl out from under that mountain of debt and get on top of their rent, their utilities, to finally think about buying a home or starting a family or starting a business,” Biden said of the initiatives. “And by the way, when this happens, the whole economy is better off.”

            Biden said the plan targets low- and middle-income borrowers, with nearly 90 percent of the student loan relief going to people earning less than $75,000 a year. About 20 million borrowers will have their entire student debt canceled. Private student loans aren’t eligible for cancelation. …

            Biden’s decision falls short of the $50,000 in forgiveness per student that progressives have called for, making its galvanizing effects on liberal voters less certain. …

            (And the ‘private school loan’ exclusion may mean my nephew gets nothing from this arrangement at all.

            BTW, the $20k figure is not even mentioned.)

  • Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
    August 24, 2022 at 12:31 pm

    When one takes from Peter to pay Paul, then the gratitude bestowed to one by Paul will always be a mere trifle compared to the angst bestowed to one by Peter.

    • Fred C. Dobbs says:
      August 24, 2022 at 7:29 pm

      “Robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul” is Rudyard Kipling’s adaptation of the phrase, used to criticize the concepts of income redistribution and collectivism. Kipling included the expression in his “Gods of the Copybook Headings”, and proposed that it should be featured in “catechisms” of the Conservative Campaign Headquarters. The lesson of the phrase in his version, and of the poem in general, was that “only out of the savings of the thrifty can be made the wage-fund to set other men on the way to be prosperous. (Wikipedia)

      (Must have something to do with the ‘misguidedness’ of the well-to-do being required to pay off the debts of the not-so-well-off lower classes, I guess.)

      • Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
        August 25, 2022 at 7:00 am

        The benefits programs that get the least kickback are those where everyone contributes based on their income and everyone benefits either based on their need (e.g., Medicare) or past contributions (earnings up to the cap) combined with the luck of the draw (longevity).  Dunno exactly what shaped Kipling’s view of the political economy being both British and quite a ways back.  He was no fool with regards to human nature, at least that of others.  He was surely blinded by being raised in such privilege that his cultured sense of entitlement was inevitable regardless of the worldliness that was cultivated in him by his parents.

        I bless my own parents for having been of modest (median income and little education) means.  It nurtured self-reliance, rejection of mainstream materialist values, and independent thinking which in combination constitute the highest form of personal wealth.

      • Fred C. Dobbs says:
        August 25, 2022 at 12:55 pm

        Late in life, Rudyard Kipling ‘developed “strident, and increasingly repellent” political views, becoming a staunch Conservative and champion of white imperial federation, and an equally fervent enemy of Irish and Indian nationalism. He became, in the marvelously succinct judgment of George Orwell, “a jingo imperialist … morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting.”

        Rudyard Kipling became detestable late in life

         

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    August 25, 2022 at 7:11 am

    Pace of Climate Change Sends Economists Back to Drawing Board

    NY Times – Aug 28

    They underestimated the impact of global warming, and their preferred policy solution floundered in the United States. 

    Economists have been examining the impact of climate change for almost as long as it’s been known to science.

    In the 1970s, the Yale economist William Nordhaus began constructing a model meant to gauge the effect of warming on economic growth. The work, first published in 1992, gave rise to a field of scholarship assessing the cost to society of each ton of emitted carbon offset by the benefits of cheap power — and thus how much it was worth paying to avert it.

    Dr. Nordhaus became a leading voice for a nationwide carbon tax that would discourage the use of fossil fuels and propel a transition toward more sustainable forms of energy. It remained the preferred choice of economists and business interests for decades. And in 2018, Dr. Nordhaus was honored with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. 

     

    But as President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act with its $392 billion in climate-related subsidies, one thing became very clear: The nation’s biggest initiative to address climate change is built on a different foundation from the one Dr. Nordhaus proposed.

     

    Rather than imposing a tax, the legislation offers tax credits, loans and grants — technology-specific carrots that have historically been seen as less efficient than the stick of penalizing carbon emissions more broadly.

    The outcome reflects a larger trend in public policy, one that is prompting economists to ponder why the profession was so focused on a solution that ultimately went nowhere in Congress — and how economists could be more useful as the damage from extreme weather mounts.

    A central shift in thinking, many say, is that climate change has moved faster than foreseen, and in less predictable ways, raising the urgency of government intervention. In addition, technologies like solar panels and batteries are cheap and abundant enough to enable a fuller shift away from fossil fuels, rather than slightly decreasing their use. …

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    August 25, 2022 at 7:13 am

    Pace of Climate Change Sends Economists Back to Drawing Board

    NY Times – August 28

     

    • Fred C. Dobbs says:
      August 25, 2022 at 7:15 am

      Economists have been examining the impact of climate change for almost as long as it’s been known to science.

      In the 1970s, the Yale economist William Nordhaus began constructing a model meant to gauge the effect of warming on economic growth. The work, first published in 1992, gave rise to a field of scholarship assessing the cost to society of each ton of emitted carbon offset by the benefits of cheap power — and thus how much it was worth paying to avert it.

      Dr. Nordhaus became a leading voice for a nationwide carbon tax that would discourage the use of fossil fuels and propel a transition toward more sustainable forms of energy. It remained the preferred choice of economists and business interests for decades. And in 2018, Dr. Nordhaus was honored with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. …

      • Fred C. Dobbs says:
        August 25, 2022 at 7:16 am

        But as President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act with its $392 billion in climate-related subsidies, one thing became very clear: The nation’s biggest initiative to address climate change is built on a different foundation from the one Dr. Nordhaus proposed.

         

         

        Rather than imposing a tax, the legislation offers tax credits, loans and grants — technology-specific carrots that have historically been seen as less efficient than the stick of penalizing carbon emissions more broadly.

        The outcome reflects a larger trend in public policy, one that is prompting economists to ponder why the profession was so focused on a solution that ultimately went nowhere in Congress — and how economists could be more useful as the damage from extreme weather mounts.

        A central shift in thinking, many say, is that climate change has moved faster than foreseen, and in less predictable ways, raising the urgency of government intervention. In addition, technologies like solar panels and batteries are cheap and abundant enough to enable a fuller shift away from fossil fuels, rather than slightly decreasing their use. …

        • Fred C. Dobbs says:
          August 25, 2022 at 7:29 am

          Climate disasters are unfolding all over the planet. Here’s a look at some of them.

          Boston Globe – August 25

          Torrential downpours in Texas. Historic heat in China. Rising hunger in Africa. Europe’s worst drought in 500 years. Glacial melting in Antarctica.

          Each of these events bear the fingerprints of climate change, providing yet more evidence that this crisis isn’t some far-off threat — it’s here right now. …

          On Sunday, a deluge hit Dallas, Texas,.., leaving cars floating in the streets, and prompting dozens of high-water rescues. Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport reported 9.19 inches of rain in 24 hours, from Sunday to Monday afternoon — the most rain the city has seen in a single day since 1932. …

          Meanwhile, unprecedented extreme temperatures have beat down on a swath of central, eastern, and southwestern China for the past 73 days. It’s the longest and most widespread heat wave the world has ever seen.

          The record-shattering heat has set forests aflame, shriveled crops, and prompted factory closures. And it’s left the iconic Yangtze river dry, unleashing an array of cascading effects. …

          Meanwhile, Europe is experiencing its worst drought in at least 500 years, according to a preliminary analysis.

          There too, wildfires are sparking, hydropower generation is low, and crop yields are under threat. …

          The Horn of Africa, one of the most drought-prone regions in the world, has seen four consecutive years of dry conditions, making it nearly impossible to grow food or raise livestock.

          Up to 22 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia are facing severe hunger, and more than 7 million people have left their homes in search of food and water, according to the World Food Program. …

          Heavy rains have also triggered devastating flash floods across much of Pakistan this summer. This week alone, they’ve killed 126 people, the country’s National Disaster Management Authority said Wednesday. …

          Closer to home, the Colorado River Basin, which provides water to Colorado and six other states, is in year 23 of a historic drought. The conditions are “clearly connected to climate change,” …

          For the second year in a row, the federal government said this month that Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico will have to cut their water usage dramatically.

          Heat, again, exacerbates drought. Elsewhere in the US, the Climate Shift Index shows that much of the Pacific Northwest is experiencing temperatures that are at least twice as likely due to climate change, …

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    August 25, 2022 at 2:59 pm

    Putin enlarging the Russian army, apparently NOT by drafting more citizens.

    Putin expands his army by adding 137000 enlistees

    NY Times – Aug 25

    With his army struggling to make significant progress in Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia signed a decree on Thursday that increases the number of service members in the country’s armed forces by 137,000, starting next year. 

    The decree stipulates that the overall size of Russian armed forces will be raised to more than two million personnel, including more than 1.15 million service members. The rest are civilian workers. The decree also ordered the Russian government to allocate the money to pay for the increase. 

    … the Russian authorities have been luring recruits to join combat by offering them hefty cash incentives and other perquisites. At the end of May, Mr. Putin also signed a law that scrapped the age limit of 40 for contract soldiers.

    Pavel Luzin, a Russian military analyst, said that he was skeptical about Russia’s ability to increase its armed forces without major changes.

    He said that Mr. Putin’s decree would only increase the number of troops “on paper against the reality on the ground,” unless Russia is forced to increase the duration of compulsory service from one year to 18 months. …

  • coberly says:
    August 26, 2022 at 12:45 am

    why not nuclear power. (please note the government and private morality at work here.  there is no reason to expect that to change.)

     

    A Uranium Ghost Town in the Making 
    Mark Olalde and Maya Miller, ProPublica 
    Excerpt: “The ‘death map’ tells the story of decades of sickness in the small northwest New Mexico communities of Murray Acres and Broadview Acres.” 
    READ MORE

      

    • Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
      August 27, 2022 at 7:21 am

      Coberly,

      Exactly, in the near term at least.  Private and government immorality might change if the entire world changed in unexpected ways.  In science fiction that change is post-apocalyptic.  The small group of survivors thank their lucky stars and learn to work together constructively rather than at cross purposes.  Of course that follows a period of opportunistic barbarian strong men doing what they do.  But it is not nuclear power that is the problem; it is human nature rather than physics that vexes mankind.

      • coberly says:
        August 27, 2022 at 10:22 am

        Ron

        to be sure. spent the morning contemplaing use of force to get some people i know from stealing their grandmother’s money and forcing her into a home.

        have to reject the use of force because… first, i don’t have the force to use, and second, i am not prepared to take on the responsibilities.

        i copied a link to an article about the consequences of uranium mining on an AB open thread.  two threads ago.  no sign anyone read it.  recent Ukraine events might suggest some other ways “safe” nuclear can suddenly become unsafe.

        i don’t think we are ever going to see anything like enough change in human behavior to make us safe,  but i do think we need to die trying.

         

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