Performative shrieking at SCOTUS about student debt not terribly effective

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

It seems the Biden student debt cancellation plan now before the Supreme Court is causing a fair amount of heartburn in liberal GI tracts, especially with the direction the justices’ questions have gone.

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Of course, Bernie Sanders is on the steps. The man has never met a handout of other people’s money he couldn’t protest for, with un-calloused index phalange stabbing angrily for emphasis. The loathsome socialist sponge would probably be delighted should debt holders of a couple of worthless years of loans from the ritzy college his wife bankrupted have their balances wiped clean. With taxpayer funds, you know – goes without saying. Water under the bridge and no hard feelings.

In news headlines over all different platforms, no matter how fervent liberal exhortations are, the word “skeptical” is front and center.

NY Times

Supreme Court Appears Skeptical of Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan
The administration faced a conservative court that has insisted that government initiatives with major political and economic consequences be clearly authorized by Congress.

Etc.

The liberal frustration is both gratifying and understandable – after all, they had so much riding on this giveaway. For one, they sure suckered a buttload of voters. The lure of get-out-of-debt-free on freely taken tuition loans was enough to momentarily abandon their usual apathy in the face of self-interest. The Lefty-lemming tribe dutifully set down their game controllers, got off the basement couch, and voted blue this past November.

Aren’t they going to be miffed when they realize the con job? Nah. They’ll blame Republicans and illegitimate Supreme Court justices. Justices who, says the SCOTUS reporter for The Economist in some serious and deep journalism-ing, won’t be very popular.

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YGTBFKM

For another, the magical power of the Presidency through a completely manufactured ongoing national crisis is under attack. Biden has continually extended this “national health emergency,” complete with national emergency powers, even after saying the pandemic was over. Pretty slick.

Screencap KFF,org

He’s used those emergency powers like Harry Potter’s wand to wave away other things that annoy liberals. Why shouldn’t this count, too? *waggles stick furiously*

Because, in reality, Regular Joe’s wand is just a stick, not a cudgel. For something so massive? Sorry kids – actual law comes into play.

…The chief justice, joined by other members of the court’s six-member conservative majority, invoked the “major questions doctrine,” which requires that government initiatives with major political and economic consequences be clearly authorized by Congress.

There was something close to a consensus that the debt forgiveness program qualified as major.

“We’re talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans,” Chief Justice Roberts said, referring to the number of affected borrowers. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. indicated that the ordinary colloquial meaning of “major questions” encompassed “what the government proposes to do with student loans.”

Even Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal, said the sums involved were legally significant. “That seems to favor the argument that this is a major question,” she said.

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Enraged, they shriek “It’s JUST NOT FAIR!!!” to the heavens, gesticulating furiously at the seat of Constitutional Justice.

Yeah. Really. They do SHRIEK.

“Our students.” She cracks me up. She’s never really given a hoot about “our students” except as a vehicle to keep her and her union in their position of power. I can’t imagine what “our students” would be like today if she’d spent half this much energy advocating for opening schools and getting kids an education vice sitting home for a couple of years. All that damage was done, thanks to pressure from her and her union toadies working hand in glove with their Democratic accomplices.

Or is Weingarten screaming as a distraction from the real story, which is her union’s complete failure to educate America’s children? That horrific dereliction of a teacher’s primary function predates COVID, believe me. These reading scores are cumulative – they don’t suddenly appear. Reading is built on a foundation, year after year. Our children have no foundation.

Screencap Education Consumers Foundation

(NAEP on the chart is the National Assessment of Educational Progress.) And these scores are from 2019 – pre-COVID. Dear God, what do they look like now?

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Randi, DIS YOU?

Between their miserable collective classroom performance and COVID school obstruction, Randi Weingarten and her teachers’ union, for all her caterwauling concern about students when cameras are on, have potentially condemned how many American kids to a life of mediocrity simply because they can’t read?

…On average, over 2 out of 3 students who fail to reach the proficient reading level by third grade drop out or finish high school unprepared for college or the workplace. As a result, they are significantly more dependent on taxpayer funded healthcare, public safety, and welfare than their successful peers–a fact that has profound economic, cultural, and social implications for the future of the U.S. Interventions capable of altering this trajectory are often negligently delayed.

These kids grow up to be non-functioning members of society who need bailouts. The person who believes the Weingartens and Bidens of the world, when that kind of manipulative person tells them they have a right to whatever they don’t have and a right to have it free of charge.

That irony in those arguments before the bench wasn’t lost on Chief Justice Roberts, either.

…Justice Sonia Sotomayor said her fellow justices will be making a mistake if they take for themselves, instead of leaving it to education experts, “the right to decide how much aid to give” people who will struggle if the program is struck down.

“Their financial situation will be even worse because once you default, the hardship on you is exponentially greater. You can’t get credit. You’re going to pay higher prices for things,” Sotomayor said.

But Roberts pointed to evident favoritism.

He offered a hypothetical example of a person who passes up college to start a lawn service with borrowed money.

“Nobody’s telling the person who is trying to set up the lawn service business that he doesn’t have to pay his loan,” Roberts said.

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What Weingarten, Biden, and their ilk are telling the lawn service person is that he gets to pay his mower loan AND the student loans of all the overeducated slackers.

Skeptical is the word of the day.

Let them shriek.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | November 21, 2024
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David Strom 11:20 AM | November 21, 2024
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