Now is the time to find candidates

Power is what we give those we elect, though we don't call it that. We elect people to represent us, people who we think (hope) will truly represent what we believe. Once they are elected, it is our duty to make sure they know they represent us.

Sadly, most of them are quickly seduced by money from many different sources. How else do you explain people becoming multi-millionaires on the salaries they receive?

As a result, our elected officials no longer answer to us but to the lobbyists of special interests. To make it even worse, these elected officials work on passing laws making it even harder to vote them out of office. We saw this happen just this year here in Tennessee.

Now is the time to make sure our elected officials know they work for us, not special interests.

Now is the time to find candidates for the 2024 that will remember this simple fact.

Now is the time to help those candidates to be prepared for the election season.

Now is the time to fight. If we don't fight now, we won't have anything to fight for later.

Do not settle for the usual suspects to represent you. Seek out and recruit your candidates to represent you.

Studen Loan Forgiveness-Raw Deal for Taxpayers,Sending Wrong Message

The Biden administration has extended the “pause” on student loan payments for a seventh time. By the time the latest pause ends, those who took out student loans will have been able to go 33 months— almost three years—without making a single payment nor accruing any new interest.

It’s a raw deal for taxpayers. The Department of Education estimates that, each month, they are losing over $200 billion in repayments and another $5 billion in accrued interest. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the pause has cost taxpayers more than $130 billion in interest payments.

As if that were not sufficient largesse, President Biden gave an Executive Order outright “forgiving” of some portion of all student loan balances. Here, “forgiving" is a euphemism for a taxpayer-funded bailout. It’s bad policy from any angle.

First, it’s incredibly regressive. The Urban Institute found that “most outstanding student loan debt is held by people with relatively high incomes. … It is disproportionately concentrated among the well off.” While lower-income households make a up a larger share of borrowers, upper-income households make up a larger share of outstanding student loan debt. That’s because nearly half (48 percent) of student loan debt is held by households whose borrowers earned graduate degrees. Professional degree holders (doctors and lawyers, for example) earn a median annual salary of $96,772, far more than those who did not attend or graduate college.

The more generous student loan forgiveness becomes, the more it benefits upper income earners. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently estimated that 30 percent of loan forgiveness would go to borrowers from high-income neighborhoods. The University of Chicago finds that loan forgiveness would benefit the top 10 percent of income earners as much as the bottom 30 percent of income earners combined.

Second, it’s expensive. With forgiveness of $10,000 per federal student loan and an additional forgiveness of $20,000 per Pell Grant borrower the cost will be up to $519 billion. Loan forbearance will cost another $16 billion, while the new income-driven repayment could cost $70 billion. No one knows the exact cost, not even the Biden Administration. Or, they are trying to keep the taxpayers in the dark. Cumulative outstanding student loan debt currently hovers around $1.7 trillion, of which $1.38 trillion is federal. Already saddled with a $30.4 trillion debt, America cannot afford to gift hundreds of billions more to people who are comfortably off. It would only add to inflation. The average burden per U.S. taxpayer will be $2,503.22.

Finally, there is the moral hazard. Student loan forgiveness would likely encourage colleges to raise tuition even higher—particularly if graduates expect student loans to be forgiven again in the future. Indeed, if current student loan balances are forgiven, why wouldn’t today’s students borrow the maximum amount allowed to attend the most expensive school possible, with the expectation that their debt will also be forgiven in the future?

Student loan forgiveness is unfair to those who chose not to attend college, those who worked their way through college to avoid taking on debt, and those who paid off their debt as promised. Forty-four percent of students who began a four-year degree in 2009 did not borrow anything to attend, and one-quarter borrowed less than $10,000. Having chosen not to take on debt, they should not now be asked to repay a loan they never took out.

And then there are the broader economic impacts. Regarding inflation, both the moratorium and broader forgiveness are gasoline on the fire. Absolving people of a debt reduces the incentive to work and reduces participation in the labor market. That retards economic output and drives up prices. Furthermore, repaying student loans would help reduce the money supply, taking the oxygen away from the inflationary fire and helping to keep down prices.

For most borrowers, student loan payments are manageable. The median monthly payment is $222 per month. And income-based repayment plans already exist for borrowers who need help making their payments.

No other form of debt is so lenient. Your mortgage or rent payments aren’t automatically reduced if your income declines. And those holding large student loan balances are usually graduate students and those pursuing professional degrees—the people most likely to earn high incomes in the future. So why should we ask Americans who did not or could not attend college to pay the expenses of those who did?

It's not like college graduates have been hit especially hard by the pandemic. The vast majority remained in their jobs by virtue of remote work, and their unemployment rate is a mere 3.6 percent. Some 1.7 million more college grads have jobs today than before the pandemic.

When the pause on student loan repayments ends in December, it should not be renewed a eighth time. Our hope is that ther will be plenty of lawsuits to saddle the Biden administration misguided, regressive, expensive, inflationary, and morally hazardous pursuit of student loan forgiveness putting an end to this lameduck overreach. The president may think it politically expedient, but the long-term consequences would be disastrous.

Anyone applying for Student Loan forgiveness should check their moral compass.

Excerpts ripped from The Heritage Foundatiom, Fox News, and CNBC

Disinformation Board is gone...for now.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is shutting down the Disinformation Governance Board more than three months after announcing a pause on the Board’s work.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made the announcement in a statement on Wednesday.

“The Department welcomes the recommendations of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which has concluded that countering disinformation that threatens the homeland, and providing the public with accurate information in response, is critical to fulfilling the Department’s missions,” the DHS said in the statement.

“We thank the Subcommittee for its work, which required extensive fact gathering and analysis over a short period of time,” it added.

The Board’s work was paused in May after Republican Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares sent a letter co-signed by 20 GOP attorneys general to Mayorkas threatening legal action against the “un-American” Disinformation Governance Board.

“As the chief legal officers of our respective States, we the undersigned Attorneys General are tasked not just with enforcing the laws, but with protecting the constitutional rights of all our citizens,” the GOP leaders wrote.

“Today we write you to insist that you immediately cease taking action that appears designed exclusively for the purpose of suppressing the exercise of constitutional rights,” they added.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) also introduced a bill in May to ban federal funding from being used to launch President Joe Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board within the DHS.

Cotton was joined in the legislation with support from a team of 18 co-sponsors.

“The Biden administration wants a government agency dedicated to cracking down on what its subjects can say, an idea popular with Orwellian governments everywhere. This board is unconstitutional and un-American — my bill puts a stop to it,” Cotton said in a statement.

Nina Jankowicz, an author and “expert” on disinformation, resigned as the board’s executive director following the group’s pause.

Bye Marry Poppins-

“With the Board’s work paused and its future uncertain, and I have decided to leave DHS to return to my work in the public sphere,” Jankowicz said, Wall Street Journal reporter Dustin Volz reported. “It is deeply disappointing that mischaracterizations of the Board became a distraction from the Department’s vital work, and indeed, along with recent events globally and nationally, embodies why it is necessary. I maintain my commitment to building awareness of disinformation’s threats and trust the Department will do the same.”

“I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities,” Jankowicz shared in a recent NPR interview.

Many Americans expressed concerns over the government’s increased role to censor stories in coordination with Big Tech in an attack on free speech.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) called for the abolishment of the proposed board in a searing Twitter post in May.

“Congress must act now to abolish this censorship board and prevent any future President who doesn’t believe in the Constitution from ever trying it again,” he tweeted.

One would think that the Constitution should stop this form even getting started.

(Ripped from the Daily Wire)