illinilaw08

I'd be all for making student loans interest free as well! I'd think you might even be able to get all 50 D Senators to vote for that. But again, show me the 10 Republican votes you are going to get to pass that - because you need 60 votes in the Senate to get anything passed which isn't part of a reconciliation bill...

I mean, the system is what the system is right? Some Democrats don't support loan forgiveness at all (see Pelosi comments last week). And when you need all 50 of their votes in the Senate (based on the reasonable assumption you can't find 10 R votes in support) AND you need to get it done in a massive reconciliation bill to avoid the filibuster in the Senate, it isn't likely to happen in the legislature right now. Add to that the fact it is not clear Biden can wipe out any student loan debt at issue with the stroke of a pen (and even if he does, I'd assume that act would be tied up in court for awhile re: if he has that authority), and there just isn't a viable path to getting it done right now. If they can get forbearance continued in the interim, at least they are providing some tangible value to people struggling with student loan debt while the Democrats who are in favor try to convince the people who aren't to come to the table. I don't think there's any reason to question the sincerity of the vocal Reps and Senators who are pro- cancellation of student loan debt. They just don't have the votes for it yet. If you are in favor of cancelling student loan debt, you need to help convince the votes against cancellation that it is in their political best interest to support forgiveness.

Personal guess based on following this over the last several months. Here's how I get to that: I don't think Biden's admin is going to conclude he has authority to cancel debt without Congressional intervention - and even if they do, he's running out of time before the current freeze expires.* I don't think he will ever get any Republican buy-in on the issue, so it isn't going to pass in any regular bill (need 60 votes because of the filibuster, so you need 10 Rs to vote for it to pass). I don't think the entire Democratic caucus is convinced cancelling any portion of debt is a good idea, so you won't see it tacked on to a reconciliation type bill (which would need all 50 D Senators to vote for it). I think the one tangible thing they can get done is to continue the forbearance - which actually does provide tangible benefits to people struggling under the weight of their debt - either through the temporary relief from payments or by making payments which actually pay down principal. * There are some political concerns on cancelling student loan debt; we've seen some of that in this thread. Is this stimulus to people who don't really need it (anecdotally, I'm a person who would gladly take the cancellation of the last of my debt, but don't need it)? Will people who did pay off their loans complain about how unfair this is (some will do so loudly)? Does it leave out people who didn't get a degree? Etc.

You weren't promised one. Biden campaigned on it - but he needs Congress to pass it (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/27/student-loan-forgiveness-schumer-warren-pressley-urge-biden-to-extend-payment-pause.html). Some Senate Democrats are pushing for up to $50k by executive order (same article as the last one). The Department of Education has allegedly been working on a memo for a number of months on whether the Biden administration has authority to do that without Congressional consent (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/white-house-promised-memo-biden-s-authority-cancel-student-debt-n1268681). Republicans don't seem particularly interested in student loan forgiveness (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/us/politics/biden-student-loans.html; https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-congress-student-loan-forgiveness-110034729.html). So, if you want student loan forgiveness (I certainly do for the last little bit I have), you either need to (a) hope the Department of Education memo concludes Biden can do it unilaterally (and Biden actually goes ahead and does it); or (b) hope a couple Republicans decide student loan forgiveness would be a good thing. Personally, I think the can is going to be kicked down the road - interest and payment forbearance continues through March of 2022...

https://www.al.com/news/2021/07/im-sorry-but-its-too-late-alabama-doctor-on-treating-unvaccinated-dying-covid-patients.html This is absolutely tragic.

We know there is a lot of vaccine hesitancy out there, and it isn't just from anti-vaxxers (https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/09/politics/marines-coronavirus-vaccines/index.html; https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/25/republicans-are-more-likely-get-vaccine-after-hearing-trump-supports-it-they-havent-heard-it/). We also seem to be seeing the better people are informed, the more likely they are to take the vaccine (https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/978407316/how-do-you-reach-trump-voters-who-say-they-dont-want-the-vaccine-try-doctors). Giving people who are already hesitant to take the vaccine an excuse to not take it is potentially bad. I completely understand why the FDA acted as it did. But there's certainly potential for unintended consequences here - particularly when headlines say "US Calls for Pause on Johnson & Johnson Vaccine After Blood Clotting Cases" (NYT); and "US calls for a pause on Johnson & Johnson vaccine" (CNN). If you read the article, you see the blood clot issue is very, very rare. If you just read the headline, you could come away with confirmation that vaccines aren't safe. People who are vaccine hesitant and who only read the headlines could have a disincentive from taking any vaccine, which potentially leads to fewer shots in arms, which is a bad result.

I'm getting J&J at a CVS in Colorado this week. Definitely good news to see the one shot option showing up with a greater degree of frequency.

Tex, the bolded is garbage. I suspect you know it is garbage. But it's something a "liberal" on the Tucker Carlson show would say. Liberals all hate America guys! More to the point, if there were a "things you like about America" thread, I suspect people in this thread would have plenty of positive things to say. But this is a COVID thread, dude. And we haven't been doing great in that arena. Hopefully with an administration in place who wants to tackle this crisis, there will be more positive news in this thread and you can stop complaining about this thread not being sunshine and roses.

You started the comment by saying "This public health stuff is difficult" which sure seems to be excusing the objectively terrible response to the vaccine rollout in the US. This stuff is tough guys! Mistakes are going to happen! You then set the standard for a response as "third world countries." So long as the US is outpacing countries with significantly less wealth and resources, we're doing A-OK! Finally, the response to criticism of how the US is handling things is "where would you rather be living?" The implication here is, and continues to be, that if you criticize the US COVID response, maybe you should leave. And if your point here is to just say, "guys, I think the US is great notwithstanding its flaws!" it really isn't particularly on point for a thread specifically about COVID...

Tex, come on. The Trump administration had no plan for a vaccine rollout period - and the Biden administration has to start from scratch (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/report-biden-admin-discovers-trump-had-zero-plans-for-covid-vaccine-distribution; https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/19/health/trump-biden-covid-19-vaccine-numbers-bn/index.html) In the final days of the Trump presidency, the HHS Secretary announced the government would begin releasing vaccines which had been held in reserve for second shots... when that reserve simply didn't exist. The federal government straight up lied to the states. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/15/trump-vaccine-reserve-used-up/ https://denver.cbslocal.com/2021/01/15/jared-polis-federal-government-covid-vaccines-lied-to/ Excusing this stuff because some countries have worse, more corrupt, governments is absurd. We're over 400,000 lives lost. Not screwing up the vaccine rollout would have saved lives. How can you hand wave this away by saying "public health stuff is difficult?"

I'm just waiting for interest rates to be re-instated to pay of the last of my loans (and also to see if Biden does some sort of forgiveness by executive order). With that being said, I'm a bankruptcy lawyer, and IMO, the fix on student loans in bankruptcy is to make them dischargeable over time. Most people who do well with their degrees are able to accumulate assets over their first several years after graduation while also paying down their debt. Those people - depending on the state they live in - will find bankruptcy to be a not particularly viable option - not without giving up assets. Those are the people who don't really need a discharge of student loan debts, and it prevents the issue of people graduating and immediately filing which would completely screw up the lending market. If you make them dischargeable over time, people who didn't get the benefit of their degree have an opportunity to get out of debt that they can never get on top of (note, if we were to make public education free in college, I'd be less concerned about "over time" on dischargeability of existing student loan debt). That's the fix - in my opinion - on loans in existence now. Regardless of the fact that I have paid off the vast majority of my existing loans, and that I have no kids and never plan to do so, I'm all for free public education in college - even if it means a greater tax burden on myself. The fact that I dealt with the yoke of student loan debt for a decade makes me want younger people to avoid going through what I've gone through, rather than making me mad that younger people will get a benefit which I did not receive.

The reason we are in the mess we are in today is because the conservative media apparatus, the President of the United States, and the majority of Republicans in the House and the Senate spent the time since November 7, 2020 amplifying conspiracy theories that the election had been stolen from Trump with no actual evidence of that fact. And when the courts overwhelmingly rejected those claims, continued to amplify and push remedies outside the framework of the Constitution to prevent Biden from being seated as President. So yes, it is more than just Trump being Trump - as Mitt Romney said on the Senate floor, if the majority of Republicans had told the American people the truth from the word go - that Donald Trump lost the election - we might not be in the mess that we are in today.

The Senate is a bigger problem from a representation standpoint though because it simply has more power than the House. The Senate confirms judges with lifetime appointments, treaties, etc. The current Senate split is 50/50, but the half with D senators represents 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half. So even if you increased the House to make it more small d democratic (more representative of the US population at large rather than by party), you still have a system which allows a minority party to control the Senate, which in turn controls who controls the federal judiciary.

This isn't "rigging things." Give every American a representative voice in the House and the Senate. "No taxation without representation" was the rallying call the American Republic was founded upon. Republican policies seek to make it more difficult to vote (voter ID laws, no vote by mail, limited ballot drop-off locations in heavily Democratic areas of red states) because of a statistically irrelevant fraud concern (or more cynically because they know greater participation is bad for them). Democratic policies seek to make it easier to vote and give every American citizen who wants it* a voice in the House and Senate. If the Republican Party is convinced that greater participation in our republic is bad for them politically, perhaps they should embrace policies which can earn them votes among a greater share of the population. * If PR, DC, Guam, American Samoa, etc. don't want to be a state, fine. But saying, "you can't make them a state because they will vote a certain way" is silly. ** If Maryland or Virginia were willing to take DC, that's fine. But if they aren't, an urban area with a greater population than Wyoming shouldn't be left without representation solely because they are going to vote in a way you don't like.

There's also the problem of the entire conservative media structure amplifying bad faith objections to Democratic policies. Two easy examples: 1) Death panels and the Affordable Care Act; and 2) The Green New Deal means the Democrats want to ban hamburgers.

I'm a lawyer. Like SB, I take the profession very seriously. Believe me Greg when I say that Giuliani has spent the last several years acting exactly like a yokel on the street. And you can take that to the bank because I wrote it on the internet!

At North Carolina, what percentage of revenue sport athletes are steered toward majors that require less of their attention on the academic side so they can spend more of their time on football or basketball? I'm not making a point that most of these athletes go on to play professionally - every NCAA tournament, we get commercials about how most athletes are going pro in something other than their sport. I'm making a point that the universities are profiting off their labor while not even allowing the kids to profit off their own likeness by pushing the argument that they are students first and athletes second. Conferences could create college football bubbles, but the very first step is pulling all the athletes out of the general college population and that undermines the amateurism argument that these kids are students first and athletes second.

It can work - but only if you acknowledge that these guys are athletes first and students second. On-line classes, their own residences, strict no interaction with campus at large - basically, they would need to be bubbled off from the rest of the university. But that obliterates every bad-faith argument in favor of the NCAA's amateurism model.

This. Restaurants, bars, breweries, etc. need a bailout badly. State and local governments need a bailout badly (because the pandemic is crushing tax revenues). Without either of those things, state and local governments are going to continue to operate as if dining indoors is safe, and the hospitality industry is going to continue to operate indoors with distancing. The reason the US can't get on top of this thing is because on policy, the party in power is more concerned with getting people back to work than they are with providing the resources for industries that are not safe to operate - and the people employed by those industries - to stay home until it is safe to reopen. This issue is only going to get worse when winter hits. Nothing in the last 6-months gives me any hope that we won't see major flare ups this winter. And I don't see many people wanting to eat and drink outside in December in Chicago.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/deciding-to-go-out.html CDC says inside is riskier than out. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/health/virus-aerosols-who.html WHO on how long the virus can linger inside. I think there's a false equivalence in your post - that if nothing is safe then everything is equally risky. Everything I have read recently is that inside is riskier than out - that doesn't mean outside + crowds isn't risky, but the virus spread is worse inside.

To me, it seems like you have to start over. Lock down again to get the current wave under control, pass a giant round of stimulus that allows non-essential workers to stay home and non-essential businesses to stay afloat while shuttered, and this time, instead of debating opening the economy vs. fighting the virus, use that time to set up the procedures other countries implemented to stay on top of the virus. Right now, in CO, test results are taking 5+ business days to come back (and I think that's consistent around the country) - you can't effectively contact trace if you have to wait 5 or more days to get your results. Once virus numbers are down to manageable levels, if the infrastructure is in place, you have a chance to trace the virus in the community and limit spread. There's no political will to do that, so it's never going to happen. But the above seems to be the only real option...

I don't disagree with this. There are obviously companies and industries that are essential to people living. People have to eat, and the food comes from somewhere. Everyone in that supply chain is essential. The feds needed to intervene early to make those conditions safer, however. At least 8 workers at a meatpacking plant in Greeley, CO died from COVID. That's just unacceptable. Mask up the employees, enforce as much social distancing as you can, and furlough your at-risk employees who are taken care of by a beefed up unemployment system, and whose jobs are waiting for them when it's safe for them to return to work. The solution to this problem is not insulate the meatpacking plant from any liability for COVID deaths - it's make it safer for them to operate. We also have to come to terms with the fact that there are industries which are essential - like the food supply chain - and there are industries that are not essential, and in fact as designed are set up to be spreaders (looking at you bars and clubs). I love bars. I spend a lot of time at bars. But there isn't a safe way to sit at a barstool inside right now. Businesses shouldn't fail because of a pandemic - so how do you balance public health and the bar/restaurant industry? You get massive stimulus on a federal level. Long story short. We need to make working conditions as safe as possible for the industries that need to work for society to function. And we need to provide funding to the industries who are not essential to the functioning of society so that people don't lose their business because of a global pandemic.

Colorado hasn't seen a huge spike - though we have seen an uptick - and Polis shut the bars (defined as no food) back down, a mere 12 days after they were reopened (still can do carryout and delivery). The feds have to step in with some serious additional stimulus. The choice should be the feds pay businesses to stay closed and workers to stay home (bmags stated it perfectly above) - not we lose businesses that equal 10% of GDP or we have constantly renewing outbreaks. Extend the $600 UI benefit indefinitely, target direct grants to businesses that have been shutdown, and let's have a national, across the board, strategy for containing the virus going forward. Because the first try at reopening... hasn't worked.

I've been on the trails around Denver the last couple weekends. Getting to trailheads around 7, so we have the trails to ourselves early, and then pass crowds near the end of the hike. I'd say 50% mask usage? Most people with masks have bandannas or buffs they can pull up when you cross paths with somebody and back down when you are back by yourself.

Saw Jordan live three times. Once a pre-season game against the Bucks at Chicago Stadium (1988 I think; I apparently talked about how many dunks Jordan had in the game incessantly - I was 5). SRO to win 53 (Bucks again!) during the '95-'96 season. And the home loss to Utah on Super Bowl Sunday in 1998 when my cousin won tickets.