Just in time for the midterm elections, the Biden administration has announced that millions of college graduates don’t have to pay back their student loans.
This week, President Joe Biden announced a plan to cancel up to $10,000 in student debt for individual borrowers making less than $125,000 a year and two-income households making up to $250,000 a year. Pell Grant recipients would be eligible for up to $20,000 in debt cancellation.
This would completely eliminate student loan debt for millions. Yet, some progressives say it still doesn’t go far enough and have pushed Biden to cancel up to $50,000 in debt for most borrowers.
Even with an income cap, the vast majority of the benefits of Biden’s loan cancellation program will accrue to borrowers in the top 60 percent of the income distribution.
There are other problems too: The one-time plan would increase federal debt by at least $300 billion, and possibly more like $500 billion, effectively wiping out all the expected deficit reduction from the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed this month.
Additionally, Biden does not have the legal authority to cancel student debt without congressional authorization. But don’t take my word for it: That’s what Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said last summer. In her exact words: “The president can’t do it—so that’s not even a discussion.”
Just in time for the midterm elections, the Biden administration has announced that millions of college graduates don’t have to pay back their student loans.
This week, President Joe Biden announced a plan to cancel up to $10,000 in student debt for individual borrowers making less than $125,000 a year and two-income households making up to $250,000 a year. Pell Grant recipients would be eligible for up to $20,000 in debt cancellation.
This would completely eliminate student loan debt for millions. Yet, some progressives say it still doesn’t go far enough and have pushed Biden to cancel up to $50,000 in debt for most borrowers.
Even with an income cap, the vast majority of the benefits of Biden’s loan cancellation program will accrue to borrowers in the top 60 percent of the income distribution.
There are other problems too: The one-time plan would increase federal debt by at least $300 billion, and possibly more like $500 billion, effectively wiping out all the expected deficit reduction from the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed this month.
Additionally, Biden does not have the legal authority to cancel student debt without congressional authorization. But don’t take my word for it: That’s what Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said last summer. In her exact words: “The president can’t do it—so that’s not even a discussion.”
“Doomsday Scenario:” 70% Of British Pubs May Not Survive Winter As Power Costs Skyrocket
A troubling survey commissioned by trade publication the Morning Advisorrevealed the entire British pub industry could be on the brink of a tsunami of closures this winter if the government fails to intervene in power markets to ease cost pressures.
According to the survey, 70% of respondents say if electricity prices continue to soar, they will be unable to operate and forced to close up shop — this would dramatically alter the landscape of pubs by next spring.
More than 65% of the pubs surveyed said power costs rose more than 100%, 30% said utility costs jumped 200%, and 8% experienced 500% increases. Most pubs warned they couldn’t afford the exponential rise in energy costs.
One pub told The Guardian the utility company had quoted them a 600% increase in power costs versus their current contract.
Heath Ball, managing director of the Frisco Group, which operates three pubs across the southeast of England, offered an apocalyptic warning that pubs were facing a “doomsday scenario” in just a few months when the cold season begins.
“This energy bill crisis comes on the back of the most testing of times as businesses try to recover from the Covid crisis and I think it poses an even greater threat to the survival of pubs,” Ball told the Morning Advertiser.
He even said some pubs were being rejected new power contacts because utilities deemed them “high risk.” Ball said lawmakers need to resolve the energy crisis soon or “find a solution to this now or face mass pub and restaurant closures.”
There are more than 46,000 pubs across the UK in 2021, according to British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA), with about half of them being independents.
Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the BBPA, said:
“Rising energy bills are putting pubs in real jeopardy. Sudden, extreme price hikes are already forcing publicans to make tough choices, from reducing opening hours to cutting options on their menus.
“We are experiencing a perfect storm that is not only shrinking but eradicating profitability margins. We urgently need an energy price cap for small businesses before extortionate bills cripple pubs and we lose them forever in communities across the country.”
Then there’s the supply of British pubs’ life and soul: beer. A shortage in fertilizer production due to soaring natural gas costs has slashed the availability of carbon dioxide, an essential ingredient in producing carbonated drinks, including beer. This will undoubtedly make the situation worse for pubs:
“A guaranteed supply of CO2 is essential for operations across pub and brewing businesses and this announcement comes at a time when they are already facing extreme rising costs, threatening to close businesses and damage people’s livelihoods.”
Without government support, a large swath of the UK pub industry could be wiped out this winter. When will Europeans wake up that Western sanctions are completely backfiring and crushing their way of life at the expense of NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine?
Czech President Miloš Zeman has blamed “green madness” for the energy crisis and warned that the abolition of cars with internal combustion engines will only prolong the agony.
Zeman said the primary cause of the crisis was not the Ukraine war, but “green fanaticism” that has left European countries dependent on energy sources that cannot meet demand.
“Whether it’s called the Green Deal or whatever, I’m afraid. However, I won’t be here anymore when we find out where the green madness will take us,” said Zeman.
“The abolition of cars with internal combustion engines will lead to the advent of far more demanding electromobility. The biggest consumers of electricity will be electric cars with a short range and a high price,” he added.
The comments were made amidst controversy in the Czech Republic caused by new government regulations which mandate schools, hospitals, and households reduce their temperature by up to six degrees Celsius to save energy.
Owners of care homes for the elderly complained that old people cannot live in a 20°C environment without it posing a threat to their health.
“It is not permissible for the elderly to spend 100 percent of their time in spaces at 20°C and below. It is life-threatening to bathe frail seniors in a room heated to only 20°C when they get cold quickly,” said Daniela Lusková, vice-president of the Association of Social Service Providers.
However, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health insisted that regulations were made in consultation with professional scientific opinion.
Similar rules have already been enforced in Germany, where thermostats in public buildings are being limited to 19 degrees Celsius, and in Spain, where at the height of summer, non-residential buildings can set the temperature no lower than 27°C.
Back in May, Italy began rationing electricity to ‘support Ukraine’, with public buildings banned from running air conditioning at lower than 25°C or heating higher than 19°C.
As we highlighted earlier, Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles has warned that Europeans are about to endure a “winter of great suffering” as a result of Russia fully suspending gas supplies during the freezing months.
As we document in the video below, the disastrous pursuit of ‘net zero’ has partly caused the energy crisis because it has left many countries dependent on energy sources that are not fit for purpose.
While countries like Norway, Spain or the Netherlands have added to their unicorn portfolio in 2022, it will still be hard to close the gap to Germany, the UK and France, the latter of which added eight unicorns in the year to date. When looking at the overall market valuation, it still comes down to only two countries though: six and three of the top 10 highest valuated unicorns in Europe are from the United Kingdom and Germany, respectively, with British fintech Checkout.com in the clear number one spot with an estimated worth of $40 billion.
Investing in especially fintech startups isn’t exactly new, but it has only become a trend as recently as 2021. As CB Insights data shows, this year alone saw 457 new members gaining entry to the unicorn club, which encompasses 917 corporations overall. To put that number into perspective: In 2020, only 109 start-ups made the one-billion-dollar jump. The majority, or 70 percent, of highly valuated start-ups is situated in the US and China.
Video showed police in Suzhou, China, detaining a woman for wearing a Japanese kimono in public. “If you came here wearing Hanfu (a traditional Chinese dress), I wouldn’t say this,” an officer said. “But you are wearing a kimono, as a Chinese. You are a Chinese! Are you?” When she asked what law she had broken, an officer accused her of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” The woman, who wasn’t identified, was reportedly cosplaying as a manga character. She said the police held her for about five hours, searched her phone and took her kimono.
Video showed police in Suzhou, China, detaining a woman for wearing a Japanese kimono in public. “If you came here wearing Hanfu (a traditional Chinese dress), I wouldn’t say this,” an officer said. “But you are wearing a kimono, as a Chinese. You are a Chinese! Are you?” When she asked what law she had broken, an officer accused her of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” The woman, who wasn’t identified, was reportedly cosplaying as a manga character. She said the police held her for about five hours, searched her phone and took her kimono.
Many of my friends on the left fear [Trumpism] as much as many on the right feared Communism in the 1950s. And they may have a point. But not enough of a point to destroy a century of progress in civil liberties, free speech, due process, and the rule of law.
Articles are now frequently appearing in the mainstream media demanding compromises with important rights in the name of “Getting Trump.”
My former colleague Laurence Tribe, who taught constitutional law for half a century now seems willing to weaponize the Constitution to serve his partisan end of “Getting Trump.” Incredibly, he has advocated prosecuting Trump for the “attempted murder” of former Vice President Pence. To do so would require retroactively and unconstitutionally expanding the law of attempts to fit Trump’s ill-advised actions and inactions with regard to Pence. But apparently that doesn’t matter to Tribe and his followers who care more about achieving their “noble” ends than they do about the ignoble means they are willing to employ.
The ACLU, which has long objected to the overuse of search warrants instead of subpoenas, is silent about the search of Mar-a-Lago. As long as the goal is to get Trump, anything goes including hypocrisy, inconstancy and unconstitutionality.
I would give everyone “the benefit of law,” but not only “for my own safety’s sake,” but for the sake of future generations. Once the Constitution and civil liberties are “cut down” it is difficult to regrow them and the “winds that would blow them” might prevent us from “standing upright” against new tyrannies from the extreme left and right.
This important right [to vote ] should not be taken away by unconstitutional means, even if the result were to be the unlikely re-election of Trump. That is the price of democracy.
There is a movement afoot to “Get Trump,” at any cost.
The goal is to prevent him from running in 2024. Many in this movement are willing to use any means to attain what they believe to be a necessary and admirable goal.
“Democracy is at stake,” they claim. They are prepared to sacrifice constitutional rights, civil liberties, principles and the rule of law to stop Trump.
This is a familiar argument to me. I fought against it in the 1950s, when decent people who believed that Communism was a grave danger to democracy were willing to trample on the Constitutional rights of alleged communists and fellow travelers in order to prevent them from destroying our democracy.
Although back then the fear was more exaggerated than it may be now, there was genuine concern about the increasing influence of communism throughout the world. The Soviet Union controlled all of Eastern Europe and was making inroads in central Europe and Latin America. Communists controlled China. Khrushchev boasted “We will bury you.” There was concern, albeit exaggerated, about the influence of Communism in the American media, academia, and government bureaucracies. McCarthyism was intended to rout out these Communists and to prevent the spread of their anti-Democratic agenda. McCarthyites, and even some moderates, were prepared to trash the Constitution in order to achieve what they regarded as a noble pro-democracy goal.
Today the fear is Trumpism.Many of my friends on the left fear it as much as many on the right feared Communism in the 1950s. And they may have a point. But not enough of a point to destroy a century of progress in civil liberties, free speech, due process, and the rule of law. Articles are now frequently appearing in the mainstream media demanding compromises with important rights in the name of “Getting Trump.” Sam Harris essentially said he was willing to break democracy to save democracy. His dangerous words speak for the actions of many on the hard left. My former colleague Laurence Tribe, who taught constitutional law for half a century now seems willing to weaponize the Constitution to serve his partisan end of “Getting Trump.” Incredibly, he has advocated prosecuting Trump for the “attempted murder” of former Vice President Pence. To do so would require retroactively and unconstitutionally expanding the law of attempts to fit Trump’s ill-advised actions and inactions with regard to Pence. But apparently that doesn’t matter to Tribe and his followers who care more about achieving their “noble” ends than they do about the ignoble means they are willing to employ.
Leftists who railed against the breadth of the Espionage Act of 1917 now want to expand it to cover Trumps alleged misconduct. The ACLU, which has long objected to the overuse of search warrants instead of subpoenas, is silent about the search of Mar-a-Lago. As long as the goal is to get Trump, anything goes including hypocrisy, inconstancy and unconstitutionality.
A scene from the film “A Man for All Seasons” well illustrates the current debate:
William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
Today on the left, there are more Ropers than Mores. Today’s devil is Trump, and today’s Ropers are willing to “cut a great road through the law to get after [today’s] devil.” Like More, I would give everyone “the benefit of law,” but not only “for my own safety’s sake,” but for the sake of future generations. Once the Constitution and civil liberties are “cut down” it is difficult to regrow them and the “winds that would blow them” might prevent us from “standing upright” against new tyrannies from the extreme left and right.
There is a legitimate way to stop Trump from being elected in 2024, just as he was not elected in 2020: a fair election defeated him once, and it can do so again – without cutting down the Constitution and weakening the rule of law. But it will take hard work, not unconstitutional shortcuts.
I voted against Trump twice. If he is renominated, I plan to vote against him a third time. That is my right in a democracy, just as it is the right of Trump supporters to vote for him. This important right should not be taken away by unconstitutional means, even if the result were to be the unlikely re-election of Trump. That is the price of democracy.
China’s Water Crisis Could Trigger Global Catastrophe
China’s water crisis is nothing new, but it’s gotten worse – and is now on the ‘brink of catastrophe‘ and could trigger a global catastrophe, according to Foreign Affairs.
Given the country’s overriding importance to the global economy, potential water-driven disruptions beginning in China would rapidly reverberate through food, energy, and materials markets around the world and create economic and political turbulence for years to come. -Foreign Affairs
For starters, there’s no substitute for water – which is essential for food production, electricity generation and sustaining all life on earth.
In China, which consumes ten billion barrels of water per day (approximately 700x its daily oil consumption), decades of economic and population growth have pushed northern China’s water system to unsustainable levels.
According to the report, the per-capita water supply around the North China Plain at the end of 2020 was nearly 50% below the UN’s definition of acute water scarcity at 253 cubic meters. Other major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, are at similar (or lower) levels.
For comparison, Egypt had per-capita freshwater resources of 570 cubic meters, and has nowhere near as large of a manufacturing base as China.
Not fit for human consumption
Also worrisome, is that 19% of China’s surface water is not fit for human consumption according to China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Roughly 7% was deemed unfit for any use at all.
Groundwater was worse – with around 30% considered unfit for consumption, and 16% unfit for any use.
In order to utilize this water, Beijing will need to make major investments in treatment infrastructure, which will require a significant increase in electricity usage in order to power the equipment.
Working against progress is China’s farming and industrial industries, which dump contaminants into the country’s groundwater – potentially setting the stage for decades of additional impairments.
Data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization indicate that China uses nearly two and a half times as much fertilizer and four times as much pesticide as the United States does despite having 25 percent less arable land.
For decades, Beijing has generally chosen to conceal the full extent of China’s environmental problems to limit potential public backlash and to avoid questions about the competence and capacity of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This lack of transparency suggests that an escalation to acute water distress could be far closer than most outside observers realize—increasing the chances that the world will be ill prepared for such a calamity. -Foreign Affairs
The core problem is the overpumping of aquifers under the Northern China Plain – which according to NASA GRACE satellites, are more overdrawn than those of the Ogallala Aquifer under the Great Plains in the US – which is one of the world’s most imperiled sources of agricultural water.
In some instances, groundwater levels have gotten so low that underground aquifers have collapsed – triggering a phenomenon called Land Subsidence, which can cause the ground to cave in over large areas, which in some case renders the aquifer unusable in the future.
In 2003, Beijing launched a $60 billion “South-to-North Water Transfer Project” to use waters from the Yangtze River to replenish the north.
Meanwhile, China has deployed cloud seeding technologies to lace the clouds with silver iodide or liquid nitrogen in order to stimulate rainfall. It’s also relocated heavy industries away from dry regions.
In April 2022, Vice Minister of Water Resources Wei Shanzhong estimated that China could end up spending $100 billion annually on water-related projects.
It might not be enough, however.
Despite highly innovative programs to improve water availability, some scholars estimate that water supply could fall short of demand by 25 percent by 2030—a situation that would by definition force major adjustments in society. Experiences to date on the North China Plain enhance concern and illustrate the scale of additional needed hydraulic intervention. Despite nearly a decade of importing Yangtze valley water supplies to high-stress areas such as Beijing, large-scale depletion of stored groundwater continues in other nearby areas, such as Hebei and Tianjin. -Foreign Affairs
The result of a worsening drought will, of course, mean less food.
60% of China’s wheat, 45% of its corn, 35% of its cotton and 64% of its peanuts come from the at-risk North China Plain – where, in the example of wheat, their annual production of more than 80 million tons is on par with Russia’s annual output, while their 125 million tons of corn is nearly 3x Ukraine’s prewar production.
In order to sustain these harvests, water is being pumped to farms faster than nature can replenish it. According to satellite data, between 2003 and 2010, Northern China lost as much groundwater as Beijing consumes annually – leaving farmers struggling to find new sources.
If the North China Plain suffers a 33% crop loss due to water insufficiency, China would need to import roughly 20% of the world’s internationally traded corn and 13% of the world’s wheat.
Although China has stockpiled the world’s largest grain reserves, the country is not immune to a multiyear yield shortfall. This would likely force China’s food traders, including large state-owned enterprises such as COFCO and Sinograin, into global markets on an emergency basis to secure additional supplies. This in turn could trigger food price spikes in high-income countries, while rendering key food items economically inaccessible to hundreds of millions of people in poorer countries. The impacts of this water-driven food shortage could be far worse than the food-related unrest that swept across lower- and middle-income countries in 2007 and 2008 and would drive migration and exacerbate political polarization already present in Europe and the United States. -Foreign Affairs
A shocking problem
China’s water woes go beyond agriculture – with around 90% of the country’s electrical grid reliant on extensive water resources – “particularly hydro, coal, and even nuclear generation, which needs large and steady water supplies for steam condensers and to cool reactor cores and used fuel rods” according to the report.
If China lost 15% of its hydropower production in any given year due to low water levels, it would have to increase electricity output via other means by an amount equal to what Egypt consumes in a year – something that only coal would be able to accomplish.
Except – the process of mining and preparing coal is also highly water intensive. And while seawater can be used to cool the limited coastal coal sources, much of the sooty resource is located inland and rely on groundwater, rivers and lakes.
The LA Homeless Services Authority has put out a call for the word ‘homeless’ to be dropped, claiming that the term is ‘outdated and dehumanising’, and leads to ‘othering’.
The Authority, which has the word Homeless in its name, wants to see it replaced with terms such as ‘people who live outside’ in order to “emphasize personhood over housing status.”
Our unhoused neighbors are human, and the language we use should reflect that.
Let’s abandon outdated, “othering”, and dehumanizing terminology- and instead, adopt people-centered language that emphasize personhood over housing status. pic.twitter.com/w3u2pfFbjf
— LA Homeless Services Authority (@LAHomeless) August 22, 2022
What other terms are off limits now?
How about “person who is addicted and mentally ill lighting fires in the brush outside my house and walking into traffic naked in the middle of the night”? (True story, thanks to the 344 Metro line)
Of course, none of this will actually do anything to improve the homelessness people living outside epidemic that is ravaging practically every city in the country and getting worse.
Figures from January 2020 show that more than 580,000 people were homeless in the U.S. on a given night, with an estimated 226,000 of them sleeping outside, in cars, or in abandoned buildings. The real number is likely to be exponentially higher.
in 2019, Los Angeles’ head of homelessness resigned after presiding over a 33% increase in homelessness over the course of just five years.
The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine in the U.S. has issued a new guide, advising hospitals and health carers to change their language to be more “gender-inclusive”.
The guide lists “traditional terms” such as ‘breast milk’ and then suggests woke alternatives including “human milk”, “parent’s milk”, and most ridiculously “father’s milk.”
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