Liberal Colleges Should Assume the Burden of Student Debt
Three Senate Democrats, who must face the voters next year in states that Trump won, have just voted with Republicans to reverse President Biden’s partial forgiveness of student loans. While Biden vows to veto that bill, which passed both houses under the streamlined provisions of the Congressional Review Act, the honeymoon with liberal colleges is over.
Recent generations of Americans have been told that a college degree was the path to prosperity, and worth borrowing for. But now $1.78 trillion in student loan debt suffocates 43.5 million Americans, while the good jobs needed to pay off the debt have mostly disappeared due to phony free trade.
The debt ceiling compromise applauded by the media requires a resumption of payments and interest on student loans by August 30. The deal also prohibits Biden from pausing student loans again, to the chagrin of progressive voters who want a free ride.
The Supreme Court is about to rule on whether Biden ever had the authority to cancel student loan debt without first getting congressional approval. At oral argument in February, a court majority expressed doubt that Biden’s student loan forgiveness was legal.
Student debt was not so much of a problem when manufacturing and other high-paying jobs were available to work it off. But the recent May jobs report, also praised by the media anxious to boost Biden, showed a loss of manufacturing jobs, while other employers were cutting hours and not increasing wages as fast as inflation.
Much of the blame for the student debt crisis belongs with liberal colleges that teach propaganda rather than skills useful to students after they graduate. Recently a University of Cincinnati professor gave a sophomore a grade of 0 out of 20 points for using the correct, but not politically correct, term “biological women” on an otherwise strong homework assignment.
A bill in Texas, SB 18, was intended to end tenure for college professors at state schools there, in response to their imposing the woke agenda. But pressure from Texas’ powerful state universities caused the legislation to be flipped around in the Texas House, to the point where the bill, as finally enacted, actually affirms college tenure although allowing for new additional oversight.
Universities hire failed liberal politicians and pay them fat salaries for little or no academic work. San Francisco’s disgraced District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was recalled by that city’s fed-up liberal voters, was just hired to direct a pro-criminal “justice center” at the University of California at Berkeley, while the leftwing Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the first mayor defeated for reelection there in 40 years, was hired by Harvard to teach about “racial equity” in public health.
There are 2.5 million fewer students enrolled in college today compared with more than a decade ago, when college enrollment reached its peak of 18 million. This decline, which is greatest among young men, accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic but has continued even after the virus subsided, resulting in a growing and harmful gender gap in higher education.
Called an “enrollment cliff” in imitation of the more familiar term “demographic cliff,” many more people have become disillusioned with what college fails to achieve. “There’s a broad-based drop in belief or trust in higher education as an institution,” according to an education specialist at the accounting firm Deloitte.
Tuition costs have increased many times more than inflation since 1970. Real wages have declined since then, and college education has diverged badly from what is needed in the marketplace.
To compensate for their sagging domestic enrollment, America’s universities have accepted a flood of foreign students, which helps colleges meet the liberal goal of ever-increasing diversity. The Biden administration then allows foreign students to snatch scarce good jobs after graduation, despite laws that require them to return home after completing their studies.
Downsizing of universities is long overdue, and those with bloated endowments should be required to help pay off the skyrocketing student loan debt that they helped to create. The largest debt burden is on black families, as liberal schools promoted diversity without regard for the enormous financial burdens that resulted from their liberal agenda.
It is still true that college can increase lifetime earnings, but primarily in lucrative fields such as engineering, and for students who graduate with at least a bachelor’s degree. Meanwhile millions have been burdened with debt without ever finishing their coursework or receiving a degree.
About one-fourth of American adults have attended college at enormous expense without earning a bachelor’s degree, and most of those (nearly 1 in 6 Americans over age 25) did not even earn an associate’s degree. Colleges themselves should bear some responsibility and financial liability for taking students’ borrowed money without giving them any real value in return.
Ambush Impeachment in Texas Stole from Voters
The ambush impeachment and removal of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was a shocking and undemocratic assault on the will of the voters. Paxton won reelection by 800,000 votes last November, yet merely one legislative chamber was able to override those votes with a scheme hatched in secret and sprung as a last-minute surprise.
Imagine if Congress could force the removal of a president by secretly plotting an impeachment, suddenly executed a few days later without a single public hearing. The American people would not stand for what the New York Times at the end of May called “unexpected — as of a week ago there was little public indication that an impeachment could be imminent.”
Who really plotted this unprecedented theft from voters remains a closely guarded secret. Donald Trump led the way by truthing his opposition: “Hopefully Republicans in the Texas House will agree that this is a very unfair process that should not be allowed to happen or proceed—I will fight you if it does.”
Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, who was elected by pandering to Democrats, “kept this under wraps until the end, there wasn’t a lot of time for Paxton’s defenders to react,” observes Rice University political scientist Mark Jones. It was obviously improper to deprive the voters of an elected official without first informing the public and hearing from them.
As pointed out during the brief debate on the Texas House floor, there was no justification for concealing the plot to remove Paxton from office until shortly prior to the vote. Paxton has been the leader in litigating against open borders and other unlawful policies of the Biden administration, and in March he opened an official investigation of Pfizer over its Covid-19 vaccine.
“For the last nine years, Ken has been the strongest conservative AG in the country. Bar none,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) stated in opposition to the ambush impeachment of Paxton. Texas Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi strongly defended Paxton and described the proceeding as a “sham” that was “led by a liberal speaker trying to undermine his conservative adversaries.”
A total of 23 Republicans courageously voted against removing Paxton, while none of the Democrats did although some criticized it. The most senior Democrat in the House, the African American Harold Dutton, Jr., eloquently spoke against how improper the impeachment was.
On TruthSocial Trump exclaimed to thunderous support by tens of thousands, “MISSING IN ACTION! Where is the Governor of Texas on his Attorney General’s impeachment?”
The silent Republicans share something in common. In addition to Abbott’s shamefully going AWOL, Trump’s presidential rivals have likewise been silent, as has the senior U.S. Senator from Texas, John Cornyn.
All these Republicans depend on heavy support by dark money donors, who are mostly globalist billionaires whose agenda includes an open border. DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, and wannabe Senate Majority Leader John Cornyn all depend on millions from this network to fuel their political ambitions.
Most of the 60 Texas Republicans who voted for Paxton’s removal probably feared retaliation by the dark money globalists, as there are no campaign donation limits in Texas. Gov. Abbott himself has been a frequent attendee to the Koch network donor confabs, whose members funnel money to those who back their agenda and try to punish those who get in their way.
The influence of globalist mega-donors is also reflected in how Texas Republicans enacted the Convention of States resolution to seek a new convention under Article V to change the U.S. Constitution. When the late Justice Scalia was asked in 2015 about the desirability of holding a new constitutional convention, he called it a “horrible idea.”
Yet to appease his ego-driven donors, Texas Gov. Abbott made the Convention of States one of his highest legislative priorities in 2017, ahead of border security and other more important issues. Republican legislators who would ordinarily oppose this were then bullied to vote for it, but on the condition it would expire in eight years.
Conservatives in ten other states have defeated this “horrible idea” of a Convention of States this year. Yet the dark money backing this deceptive attempt to change our Constitution insisted on tacking another 8-year extension to the 2017 Texas application to Congress for a convention.
Every Republican in the Texas legislature then voted this spring for a new 8-year extension on this horrible idea. These were not sincere votes, but rather the product of a campaign funding system driven by large donors.
The good news is that a Democrat state representative raised a point of order against the 8-year extension of the Convention of States, so it died when the Texas legislature adjourned on May 29. The other good news is the upcoming impeachment trial in the Texas Senate should flush out the dark money puppets seeking to overturn the election of Paxton.
The Leftist War on Self-Defense
The prosecution of an unarmed former Marine for acting in self-defense to protect passengers on the New York City subway has sparked a nationwide uproar. This latest salvo in the Leftist war on self-defense has liberals demanding additional charges against the hero.
Daniel Penny, only 24 years old, is a white ex- Marine sergeant from Long Island who wrestled down and restrained a troubled black man, Jordan Neely. With no police officers in sight, Neely was menacing multiple passengers on the moving subway train until Penny restrained Neely while asking others to call the police.
The dramatic rescue by a quick-thinking civilian is reminiscent of other recent episodes in which an ordinary citizen stepped up to save others from harm. The bystander who averted a massacre at an Indiana shopping mall last year, 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, was hailed as a hero then, as Daniel Penny should be applauded now.
Other passengers on the subway also viewed Neely as dangerous, and helped restrain him. Penny deserves the praise he’s receiving nationwide for acting in self- defense, and $2.5 million from 50,000 donors has poured in to support his legal defense.
We don’t know yet what legal or illegal drugs may have triggered frightening behavior by Neely, who has a long criminal record that included punching a 67-year- old woman in the face and breaking her nose less than two years ago. A toxicology report would ordinarily be necessary before declaring a cause of death, but the New York City medical examiner is a political appointee of its Democrat mayor.
The police who were called to the scene saw no reason to arrest Daniel Penny, and no charges were initially brought even after Neely was declared dead at a hospital. Self-defense and protecting others has never been a crime, and should not become one now.
But after days of street protests demanding that Penny be prosecuted for murder, the New York City medical examiner announced that Neely’s death was a homicide caused by “compression of neck (chokehold).” District Attorney Alvin Bragg, famous for his political indictment of Trump over non-crimes, mollified the Leftist protesters by charging Daniel Penny with manslaughter.
The failure of both Bragg and the medical examiner to await the results of the toxicology report proves that politics, not medical science, is the driving force behind the manslaughter charge. It is reminiscent of the George Floyd case, with Penny being made a scapegoat just as the bystander officers in that case were.
The fake medical science in the first jury trial in the Floyd case included a prosecution witness who bizarrely invited jurors to grab their own necks, as though that would prove anything scientific about the cause of death in a criminal suspect who was intoxicated by an illegal drug. Imagine a similar stunt if Penny goes on trial in a hostile venue in New York City.
There are 100,000 unexpected deaths caused annually by illegal drugs in the United States, which is more than double the number of gun homicides. Inevitably, some drug-related deaths will occur while an erratic intoxicated person is being restrained.
When the Leftist mob calls Daniel Penny a vigilante instead of a Good Samaritan, it undermines the rule of law necessary to attain justice. If there is a rush to prejudge or find a scapegoat every time someone on drugs dies while being restrained, then self-defense will no longer be safely available to anyone.
There has been an outpouring of support for this hero, but the jury pool in New York City is not representative of the rest of our country. The District Attorney’s office has far more resources than Penny can possibly raise, while protesters are still demanding that the charges against him be upgraded to include murder.
Despite the partisan divide over this case, one New York Democrat has publicly defended the subway hero. Former Governor David Paterson said on Sunday that Penny “did something because he saw danger for other people and tried to prevent it. He did not meet the threshold where you charge someone.”
Paterson suggested that District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a fellow African-American, may have charged Penny merely because other minorities have died under similar circumstances in the past. During his single term as governor, Paterson often used his pardon power to correct injustices.
An Army sergeant convicted of killing an armed Black Lives Matter protester in Austin, despite asserting that it was in self-defense, just received a harsh sentence of 25 years in prison. Penny could be imprisoned for 15 years if convicted of manslaughter, but reasonable self- defense should not face such punishment.
Donald Trump observes that Penny “was in great danger and the other people in the car were in great danger.” There should not be a prosecution of an unarmed Good Samaritan who acts quickly to defend others.
Court Rejects FDA’s Abortion Scheme
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the abortion industry pushed the FDA to approve the import and sale of the abortion pill dubbed RU-486 by its French manufacturer. The slang term “86” means to eject or throw something or someone away, so the pill’s trade name truthfully conveyed its demonic effect of throwing away a human life.
In the waning months of Bill Clinton’s presidency, the FDA responded to pro-abortion pressure by rushing its approval of this abortion drug, but only by falsely treating pregnancy as an illness, instead of a natural and healthy part of a woman’s life. Studies confirm that carrying a pregnancy to term, especially before age 30, is beneficial to a woman’s long-term health.
The FDA’s improper approval was promptly challenged more than a decade ago. But the FDA “postponed and procrastinated for nearly 6,000 days,” observed a federal court ruling in Texas on Good Friday.
Two days later, Biden’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, lashed out against the judge’s ruling, ominously declaring that “everything is on the table.” That kind of strong rhetoric is what liberals frequently criticize Trump for.
The court’s decision cited studies showing how physically and mentally harmful the abortion pill can be to pregnant women and girls. The pill was approved by the FDA for the benefit of the abortion industry, not to help women.
“Compelling evidence suggests the statistics provided by FDA on the adverse effects of chemical abortion understate the negative impact the chemical abortion regimen has on women and girls,” ruled Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. He added, “the abortionist that prescribed the drugs is usually not the provider to manage the mother’s complications.”
So chemical abortion is just another type of hit-and-run abortion that enriches the abortion industry, with much of that money plowed back into electing liberal politicians and judges. Tens of millions of dollars from out of state recently poured into Wisconsin to elect a supporter of the abortion industry to its state supreme court, tilting that court to 4-3 Democrat.
In states that permit ballot initiatives, such as Missouri and Ohio, the abortion industry will put initiatives to expand abortion on the ballot, and will spend many millions to pass them. That’s what the abortion industry did in Michigan last year, and as a result both houses of the state legislature flipped to Democrat control.
The author of the Good Friday decision against the abortion pill was appointed by President Trump. Biden’s appeal goes to the Fifth Circuit, which boasts more superb Trump-appointed judges, and from there to the Supreme Court, which last year consigned Roe v. Wade to the proverbial ash heap of history.
More than half the abortions in the U.S. today are chemical rather than surgical. To hide the harm caused by this chemical warfare against the unborn, more than 60% of emergency room visits after taking the abortion pill are miscoded as “miscarriages” rather than as adverse effects of abortion.
Democrats view abortion as a politically winning issue for them, but that requires concealing its harmful consequences. Judge Kacsmaryk did a tremendous public service by explaining the adverse effects that Biden and the Democrats conceal.
Some of the harm is emotional, as the abortion pill typically causes the mother to see the living being she just aborted. Such video images have been posted on TikTok, to the dismay of censorship-prone liberals.
“Eighty-three percent of women report that chemical abortion ‘changed’ them – and seventy-seven percent of those women reported a negative change,” wrote Judge Kacsmaryk, citing a scientific study. “Thirty-eight percent of women reported issues with anxiety, depression, drug abuse, and suicidal thoughts because of the chemical abortion,” he continued.
The Biden Administration is not transparent about this harm, and instead pushes a destructive drug on red states that do not want it. Corporate executives whose companies have benefited from other Biden mandates, such as the CEO of Pfizer, jumped in as though on cue to insist on what Democrats demand.
Under our Constitution, legalizing and promoting chemical abortions is something that would require extensive public hearings and a vote in Congress. It should not be enacted in secret by unelected FDA bureaucrats who are lobbied or captured by the pharmaceutical industry they are supposed to regulate.
Federal law “indicates a national policy of discountenancing abortion as inimical to the national life,” held Judge Kacsmaryk while quoting a legal precedent. Indeed, a specific federal statute prohibits use of the U.S. Mail or commercial services from delivering abortion drugs across state lines.
The legality of the FDA’s process for imposing an abortion drug nationwide is for the courts and Congress to properly decide in our Republic. Some complain that this decision undermines the FDA’s authority, but that is just what a good doctor would order.
