Tag: President Biden

The Fascination with Free College

By Charles Dervarics

For people of a certain age (read: young), the allure of free college is almost irresistible. At a time when some private universities charge more than $70,000 annually and top public institutions cost $30,000 a year, the entire process may seem daunting to students and their families.

And that’s before even reading about how the “sticker price” may differ from your final cost (like a car negotiation!) or the merits of online and “hybrid” learning during a pandemic.

One thing we do know: Americans already have a lot of college debt. According to the Federal Reserve, 20% of the U.S. population owes a combined $1.5 trillion in education loans. Not surprisingly, low-income students stand the most to lose. As the U.S. Department of Education notes, a low-income student is four times less likely than a wealthier student to earn a bachelor’s degree.

While free college is not in the massive $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, the issue looms as an upcoming flashpoint for Congress and President Biden. The president has proposed tuition-free public college for families earning up to $125,000 a year. In a recent CBS interview, Biden said he could provide that benefit for $1.5 billion, though his staff quickly backtracked and pegged the cost at approximately twice that level.

Part of the challenge is that, similar to K-12 schools, colleges rely not on the federal government but on state and local funds for much of their budgets. College costs also differ greatly by state. As reported by CollegeCalc, the average public college or university in Pennsylvania charged $23,167 last year. In New Mexico, the average was just $6,807. Does higher cost bring higher quality? And knowing the federal government would soon foot the bill for many students, would states cut their own contributions as a result?

Some lawmakers also want to help recent grads who wouldn’t reap benefits from this Biden plan. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, is proposing to forgive up to $50,000 of a student’s loans, while the White House says it’s open to forgiveness of up to $10,000. Help for graduates now navigating the job market is politically popular, with several polls showing strong public support. 

Still another alternative is free community college, so more low-income students might earn a technical credential or associate degree at lower-cost, two-year schools. Biden has talked about this, too, as has First Lady Jill Biden, a community college professor. But here recent data show the devastating impact from a year of COVID-19. Despite low tuitions, community colleges suffered a 10% enrollment decline in Fall 2020, far more than other areas of higher education. Most alarmingly, based on data from the National Student Clearinghouse, freshman enrollment at two-year colleges dropped by a whopping 21%.

When times are bad, community colleges usually do well as the unemployed return to school. But that’s not happening now, perhaps because prospective students lack child care and technology or just don’t like virtual learning.

What’s interesting here is that some states already offer free community college to many students. Tennessee, an early leader, saw an 11% enrollment drop in fall 2020 with African Americans showing notable declines. Leaders cited factors such as economic uncertainty and lack of connectivity and child care. All of which may indicate that, when it comes to education and so many other issues, free isn’t always free.

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Texas Goes Off-Grid

By David Amaya

Amid President Biden’s plan to boost America's dependence on renewable energy, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a retaliatory executive order. It directs “every state agency to use all lawful powers and tools to challenge any federal action that threatens” natural gas in the state. Only three weeks after Abbott’s attempt to strengthen the natural gas industry’s defenses against federal oversight, the state’s entire energy grid nearly collapsed. Sources reveal that Texas was minutes and seconds away from a complete shutdown that would have lasted for months. 

Several state leaders gave excuses as to why the state’s vulnerable power system failed millions of Texans. Gov. Abbott blamed non-renewables for the outage though 26 of the total 30 gigawatts lost in the blackout were traced back to natural gas. Former Republican Gov. Rick Perry stated that Texans would rather lose power than be part of the national grid system, as the state recorded several fatalities from hypothermia, including the death of 11-year-old Cristian Pavon. Despite being warned of the grid’s vulnerability in 2011, Texas took no action to weatherize the equipment. Texan leadership, in private and public sectors, failed us. 

It is time Texas reframe climate change policy as infrastructure policy. Infrastructure policy includes more than merely weatherizing energy equipment; It calls for the mitigation of the severity a polar vortex has on roads and property by reducing carbon emissions. Texas has its energy grid system to show off its exceptionalism, but those days are now over. Think of millions of Texans observing how the free-market failed them. Depending on what Texas does next, the federal government may need to intrude and be part of the solution that regulates the industry. 

Texas may well have looked at California to develop a Plan B for its constituents in the event of a blackout. California forces its energy providers to have a reserve of electricity for this exact reason. Not only that, but California is also part of a broader national energy-grid that allows them to borrow energy from other states. Texas has no such security. It relies on free-market competition to resolve these changes in energy demand. Texas, like California, must force the energy sector to come up with safeguards; the state has enforcement power for a reason. 

Texans survived nature’s cold shoulder and the folly of Texas leadership. Despite the differences in each state’s party politics, California and Texas both have experience with large-scale energy blackouts, which feel like the beginning of a new era of energy security for the entire country. When reality transcends the need for performative politics (i.e., focusing on the national anthem in football games instead of urgent issues), nature’s forces remind us that party ID alone won’t help us adapt to changing climate. Informed and responsible leadership will. A reconciliation between energy practices that sets aside cynicism for uniting cooperation is desperately needed. As Texas has come to understand, electricity is as important to our society’s foundation as democracy.

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•Read Stephen Macaulay’s commentary on President Biden’s supply chain review — Click on Forum above.

The School Opening Conundrum

By Charles Dervarics

A few years back, I visited a high-poverty middle school during a lockdown, with students confined to classrooms and the doors closed. It also was a 90-degree day in an old building without air conditioning. Observing a math class, I couldn’t help but notice how the teacher had strategically placed 19 small and medium-size fans around the room, generating air flow to take advantage of the one open window. Clearly, she had faced similar challenges before, probably using her geometry skills for the best fan placement.

While this visit took place before COVID, I sometimes think about that school – still open during any normal academic year – when considering how fast schools should reopen in 2021. 

With medical facilities and some colleges open for months now, conventional wisdom says it shouldn’t take that long for most K-12 schools to offer more than remote learning. With PPE, partitions, masks, and a goal to vaccinate teachers, it makes sense to offer in-person learning especially for low-income youngsters with the least technology access and the most chance of falling behind. But just as achievement among schools can vary greatly, so do the facilities and crowding that teachers and students have to deal with on a daily basis.

National debate on this issue has erupted anew now that President Biden has pledged to reopen the majority of schools during his first 100 days in office. But that plan is putting the president in crosshairs with some teacher unions, who warn of the risks posed by overcrowding, substandard ventilation systems and lagging vaccination rates. 

Similar debates are playing out across the country, as typified by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s long battle with the Chicago Teachers Union on school reopening. And in San Francisco, the city just sued its own school district, citing a lack of planning and vision to get back to in-person instruction.

Meanwhile, Republicans have remained largely unified in calling for schools to re-open. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, recently called remote learning a “pale shadow of proper schooling” and said the science shows that schools can offer in-person instruction. Earlier this month, the House GOP tried to require schools to provide a reopening plan before getting funds from last December’s COVID relief bill. Democrats rebuffed that idea.

This GOP message plays well with its base. In some communities, it’s not uncommon to see residents who have replaced their Trump 2020 signs with signs pushing for school re-openings. A Republican push on this issue also may help recapture the attention of suburban parents weary of the school-at-home trend.

According to Burbio, a research and data company, about 39% of schools are currently open for traditional, in-person learning. That leaves the administration until late April – the end of Biden’s first 100 days – to reach the 50% mark.

On Feb. 12, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also offered a possible way forward. The agency outlined a series of steps to promote safe school openings, including use of masks by students, teachers and staff, social distancing, handwashing, strong cleaning and maintenance practices and speedy contact tracing in response to COVID cases. With the school year more than half over, those guidelines may arrive just in time.

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The Final Steps to Trump’s Acquittal

By Todd Lassa

Once the votes were counted Saturday afternoon and Donald Trump was acquitted in his second Senate impeachment trial, both sides declared a victory. Because 10 Republicans joined 48 Democrats and the two independents who caucus with the latter party, lead House impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, could lay claim to the “most bipartisan” trial vote ever (click on Forum to read Stephen Macaulay’s commentary on the impeachment trial, “The Long Con”). 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, had it both ways, too, having been among the 43 Republicans in the minority who nonetheless snagged an acquittal because the 57-43 vote was 10 “guilties” short of the two-thirds needed to convict. 

“They did this because they followed the wrong words of the most powerful man on earth,” McConnell said on the Senate floor after the vote, in what pundits were describing as the most critical excoriation of Trump made by either side. “There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”

McConnell, who when he still was Senate majority leader before President Biden’s inauguration, told his caucus they could vote their conscious in the impeachment trial, said he voted “not guilty” Saturday because the trial of a president after leaving office is unconstitutional. Last Tuesday, the Senate voted 56-44 that trying an ex-president is indeed constitutional, in a decision that required only a majority decision. A major point in the House impeachment managers’ argument was that if an ex-president could not be tried thusly, it would risk the nation with a “January surprise,” with carte-blanche to commit high crimes and misdemeanors as a lame-duck. 

But McConnell forced delaying the trial until after the inauguration, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, said Saturday afternoon. The House voted for impeachment on January 15, while Trump was still in office.

Prior to the final Senate vote, Raskin moved to call a witness to give a video deposition in the case. Trump attorney Michael van der Veen objected, and Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-SC, threatened to call many witnesses for the defense, including House Speaker Pelosi, and draw out the trial to disrupt Biden’s agenda for weeks or even months to come.

In the end, the two sides agreed that the statement of Raskin’s intended witness, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-WA, would be admitted as evidence and that defense would stipulate to its veracity. 

Herrera Beutler’s statement is that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, had called Trump during the siege urging him to call off the violent protesters. Trump had replied that the violent protesters were Antifa and Black Lives Matter, not pro-MAGA. 

“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump replied, according to Herrera Beutler. CNN reported her description of the call Friday night, but according to various news reports, Herrera Beutler told about overhearing the conversation to a local Washington state newspaper and to constituents. 

In his closing arguments, van der Veen said the defense was not admitting to the statement’s truthfulness, though the House impeachment managers apparently were satisfied with the outcome.

The trial itself came down to House impeachment managers building a case that then-President Trump called for his supporters to rally on the Capitol January 6 to “Stop the Steal” of his November 3 “landslide victory,” a.k.a., “the Big Lie,” and did nothing to prevent members of Congress and vice president Mike Pence, from the danger of the mob. Trump’s defense attorneys argued that the impeachment was a continuation of Democratic and mainstream Republican “hatred” since before he took office January 20, 2017, and that the trial was unconstitutional.

But the nine House impeachment managers appear satisfied that the trial and its bipartisan verdict achieved their goal overall and are looking forward to investigations in New York for Trump’s business practices, and especially in Fulton County, Georgia, for his phone call with secretary of state Ben Raffensperger. In the meantime, however, Trump continues to maintain control of the GOP, especially on state and local levels. Rep. Herrera Beutler, for example, faces potential censure from Washington state’s GOP and a Trump PAC-funded primary challenger next year for her statement in the impeachment trial.

•Click on Forum to read Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s take on Trump’s impeachment trial.
•Address comments to editors@thehustings.news

Kill the Legislative Filibuster?

By Todd Lassa

Before last November’s election, Joseph R. Biden punted on the question of whether he supports killing the Senate legislative filibuster. It’s a move Senate Democrats have been considering at least since it won a majority by the slimmest of margins, with Vice President Harris the tie-breaker for when legislation is split down party lines 

The issue is not the first priority with Senate Democrats, who are moving President Biden’s $1.9-trillion coronavirus relief package via the arcane reconciliation process, which requires a simple majority vote rather than the 60 votes – including 10 Republican senators – necessary when the potential of a filibuster is involved. 

The question is, how much legislation can Biden’s Democratic allies in the Senate pass in the next two years without eliminating the legislative filibuster, which means most bills will require those 10 Republican votes? After January 2023, Democrats either will lose their wafer-thin Senate majority, or will build on it, though it is unlikely either party will gain at least 10 senators in the November 8, 2022 mid-terms. 

Filibuster reformation seems to come up every four years with the presidential election, if not every two years. 

In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, rallied Democrats to end the filibuster for federal judicial nominees and executive office appointments. Spiking the filibuster, called “the nuclear option,” requires only a simple majority vote. 

Republicans warned that triggering the nuclear option on appointing federal judges would come back to bite Democrats whenever they inevitably lost the Senate majority. 

And they were right. In 2017, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, led a majority of his party to end the judicial filibuster for U.S. Supreme Court nominees, paving the way for President Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch as replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Adding hard-core partisanship to injury, Gorsuch’s Senate approval came the year after McConnell prevented a vote on Obama’s nominee late in his term to replace Scalia, Merrick Garland, who now is Biden’s nominee for attorney general.

In the end, Trump saw his three Supreme Court associate justice nominees get Senate approval in his four years in office, compared with Obama’s two associate justices in eight years. 

The question for Democratic senators now is, how much more of Biden’s agenda could the Senate pass in the next 23 months if just 51 votes were needed? And would it be worth weathering the inevitable Senate and White House flip somewhere off in the future?

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Click on Forum for a new commentary by Stephen Macaulay
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Laws, Not Men

By Stephen Macaulay

The hand-wringing has been going on since, oh, about January 7, after Congressional Republicans, by and large, started thinking about their personal paychecks, which could be, they fear, taken away by Trump’s base. And so we begin to see the mewing about how the Trial of Donald Trump, the Sequel, will do nothing but tear the fabric of society still further.

Speaking of fabrics: that brings to mind the American flag. You know, that symbol of this country that was used by one of the insurrectionists at the Capitol on January 6 to beat a prone police officer.

MAGA, huh?

This country is predicated on principles. There is codification in the Constitution.

To paraphrase John Adams, this is a country of laws, not men.

And to quote someone who is probably more well recognized, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”

Did the man who said, on more than one occasion, “"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay? It's, like, incredible," ever believe that he wasn’t above the law?

But he isn’t.

Like all presidents Trump swore to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” 

Article II, Section One, of the Constitution is about the Executive Branch. In it, it states, “The Congress may determine the Time of choosing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.”

That day was January 6. The Congress was doing its Constitutional duty. 

And Trump, who had been claiming for months — even before the election was held —that it would be fraudulent, claims with not a scintilla of proof before or after, wasn’t having any of it.

Article II, Section One, also states, “The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed.”

So let’s see: Biden had the greatest number of popular votes. Biden had the greatest number of electoral votes.

Constitutionally he won the election.

So to go against that, didn’t Trump not “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”?

(Let’s not enter into some hypothetical where an election could be rigged and the wrong person wrongfully elected. Again, we are a country of laws, and so were there to be evidence that that happened, then it would be addressed. Rudy Giuliani waving his arms is not proof of anything.)

According to the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3, “No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” (Emphasis added)

Clearly there was an “insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution of the United States on January 6, given that the elected representatives were in the Capitol performing their Constitutional duties.

Trump, having whipped up the crowd on January 6, told the assembled that “After this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you.” That is walk down to the Capitol. He, of course, lied.

So they walked down. They broke into the Capitol. Some claimed that they were going to hang the Vice President of the United States.

And Trump said in a tweet (before his ability to tweet was rescinded due to his vague association with what most of us know as “truth”) to the throngs who were doing things like urinating and rubbing feces on the walls of the Capitol, “We love you, you’re very special.”

Sounds like “aid or comfort” to me.

Let’s not count the number of Republican senators who may vote to convict Trump.

Let’s count the number of elected officials who believe in the rule of law and who will uphold the Constitution of the United States.

If they give this a pass because they think it will cause more division, then isn’t that just giving in to the people who have broken the law?

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Click on News & Notes for details of the impeachment article against former President Trump.

Will Trump’s Impeachment Trial be a Waste of Time?

By Todd Lassa

Contrasting with the flurry of more than 30 executive orders being signed by President Biden in the last few days and his cabinet picks working their way through the Senate at a rapid pace, things aren't going as well between newly promoted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, and similarly demoted Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, and his caucus on how, when and even if to conduct the trial of former President Trump. It appeared the Senate was headed for Trump-style deal-making that would have pit Senate Democrats’ effort to kill the legislative veto and give their 50-plus-Vice President Harris-majority more teeth against Senate Republicans’ wish to delay Trump’s impeachment trial, if not to spike it indefinitely. 

Schumer has since agreed to delay Trump’s impeachment trial to the week of February 8. McConnell on Monday night gave in to Schumer’s demands for a vote to rescind the legislative filibuster that forces a 60-vote majority to pass bills, in exchange for an agreement on Senate organization. But the deal may prove empty if two centrist Democrats, Krystin Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia honor their promise to vote with Republicans and retain the filibuster.

In the middle of all this, various news outlets, regardless of alleged political leanings, reported either a.) there are nowhere near the 17 Republican Senate votes needed to accompany an assumed unanimous Democratic vote in order to reach the 2/3-majority necessary to convict; or b.) a sufficient number of Republican senators have privately, anonymously committed to help Democrats reach the 67 votes necessary. 

The least Democrats can count on for now is that Sen. Mitt Romney, R-UT, appears ready and willing to vote for conviction. The editorial We might assume Schumer is also counting on Republicans Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, Susan Collins, of Maine and Ben Sasse, of Nebraska. Throw in possibly Sen. Rob Portman, R-OH, who has just announced he will retire after three terms, and fellow 2022 retiring Republican Sens. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Richard Burr of North Carolina, perhaps add in McConnell, who has already said he will not whip the Republican caucus on how to vote, count on all Democrats including two independents who caucus with them, and you may be up to 58 votes to convict, nine short of the number necessary to convict. 

Some Republicans who have joined the anti-Trump and never-Trump unofficial sub-caucus and Democrats hope that a Trump conviction will be followed by a vote on whether to ban the former president from ever running for federal office again, which may only require a 51-vote majority depending on the rules set forth for the impeachment trial. 

Because the week of February 8 will mark the first-ever impeachment trial of a former president, Chief Justice John Roberts will not preside. Instead, that honor goes to President pro-tem Patrick Leahy, Democrat from Vermont.

What should happen? What will happen in this historic anomaly? Pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay tackles those questions for the left column, and contributing pundit Bryan Williams considers the questions on the right.

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Click on News & Notes for details of the impeachment article against former President Trump

Same as the Old Boss — Obama

By Andrew Boyd

President Biden’s slew of executive orders and proclamations are less practical and effective than they are an apparent attempt to enhance the Democratic Party’s image. Biden is particularly bent on reversing former President Trump’s immigration policy without proposing the sort of permanent policy that has evaded both parties for decades. 

Counting non-citizens in U.S. Census is a nakedly political effort to disenfranchise American citizens through reapportionment leveraged against illegals (sorry, non-citizens) by executive fiat. DACA part deux. Halftime show brought to you by SCOTUS and their denial of Trump’s authority to overturn part one. Farcical. 

There is one executive order I can support, to stop building The Wall. I’ve always been dubious on the efficacy of The Wall. On that basis, I’m good. As to walls being immoral, which was the rallying cry like 20 minutes ago, I’d call that complete trash thinking. Look no further than Wednesday’s inauguration ceremony. I await some reasoned argument from anyone on how to effectively manage and monitor inflows and outflows of peeps as do all other sovereign nations. See beloved progressive Canada.

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My take on the other major executive orders …

•Masking challenge and creation of a directorate for global health security and biodefense. What the hell is a directorate? Sound like something we can neither afford nor effectively contain. Watch to see the swell of SJW agenda items that get smuggled in through this baby. A ministry of funny walks would be more to my liking. It’s at least good for a laugh. [Note: SWJ is “social justice warrior” –Ed.]

•Rejoin the World Health Organization. The WHO proved itself utterly unreliable as an honest broker of information in this pandemic, which is putting it kindly. Lapdogs of the Chinese communist party is more on the nose. You can pretend this is a nod to the primacy of science and the critical importance of global coordination, but I suspect it’s more about the Dems unrelenting desire to be loved by their EU counterparts, which is most easily achieved by kneeling to a global bureaucratic hegemony that has anything but the best interests of the American people in mind.

•Extend eviction and foreclosure moratoriums. It’s easy to be humane when you’re doing it with other people’s money. It’s also, inconveniently, immoral. In principle, no different than “stimulus” via the accumulation of public debt, a.k.a. stealing from the future, only this one is on a shorter time frame and more directly tied to a specific group of people in the present, a.k.a. property holders. It’s all theft.

•Pause student loan payments through Sept 30. Why are we so focused on the particular slice of consumer debt that applies to college? It’s regressive in many respects, and again, stealing. Then, of course, there’s the moral hazard behind the notion that the government should have the power to step in and abrogate a legally constructed agreement between two private parties. But that’s just a matter of principle, so whatever.

•Rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. An agreement without teeth, and mostly another means of smuggling in global economic wealth transfers. Among first world nations, who reduced their total CO2 emissions the most, on an absolute basis, in 2019?. That would be the U.S., courtesy of technological innovation driven by the big, bad free market. Meanwhile, 80% of increases in global CO2 emissions in the same time period came from China, Asia and India, and future forecasts see the U.S. remaining relative stable while China, India and other developing economies will fuel their growth with ongoing increases in greenhouse gas emissions.  

•End Keystone XL Pipeline. The environmental impacts of a pipeline are minimal and, to my mind, substantially outweighed by the economic and national security benefits of America’s energy independence. I know, I hate polar bears and seals and life in general. Shame on me. Oh, and Canada is not so pleased either.

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