Hey dude, doing a one-time forgiveness of loans without figuring out why tuition costs are exploding beyond what is sustainable and leaving student loans as non-dischargeable in bankruptcy isn't a fucking solution.
Making student loans dischargeable via bankruptcy is.
The increase in Republican majorities in the Senate and House after the 2004 elections breathed new life into the bill, which was introduced in its current form by the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa. According to George Packer in his book The Unwinding, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, and Hillary Clinton helped pass this bill. (Of the three, however, only Biden voted for the final bill. Dodd voted against, and Clinton did not vote.) The bill was supported by President George W. Bush. Tom DeLay also championed the legislation. The bill passed by large margins, 302–126 in the House and 74–25 in the Senate, and was signed into law by President Bush.
Biden was one of 18 Democrats who broke with party to pass this bill in 2005 that made it so you can't discharge your student loans in bankruptcy. Biden in particular, was pretty loud about supporting the creditors on this bill. I remember because I had just left college and had loans at this point in my life, and I was pretty frustrated by it, and Biden in particular.
The fact that he doesn't want to undo the biggest issue with student loans as they stand, considering it's a bill he voted for himself, speaks loudly to how he wasn't actually interested in solving the problem. Think about how much of a non-issue this would be if you could just file bankruptcy and make these loans go away.
But sure, it's scary Republicans blocking his worthless fucking joke of a plan, not that his plan was a joke and his work in the senate is literally the reasons that students can't just... file for bankruptcy to get out from under their student loans.
But fuck me for actually knowing the history of this issue, right??
Despite being the stuff of nightmares, Santa continues to be the world's most popular home intruder.
Charlie Brooker and Diane Morgan fucking kill me whenever they work together. His writing and her delivery as Cunk just kill me.
Yes, folks, all the Cunk specials are written by Black Mirror head writer and creator, Charlie Brooker.
Looking forward to Cunk's Quest for Meaning (which looks like it got renamed Cunk on Life in the last 10 months), looks like it's hitting BBC's iPlayer on December 31st and Netflix on January 2nd. Ringing in the new year with Cunk sounds grand to me.
In general, people have got to stop voting with just their wallets and start voting with their labor.
Guess what, if Amazon had no workers, it couldn't generate money to donate to Republicans.
Did everyone forget that Biden was one of the chief engineers of making it so that student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy?
He never gave a flying fuck and that's why his solutions were all shitty bandaids instead of addressing the real issues.
Edward Snowden is a prime example of how to handle it.
Only communicated via encrypted channels.
When revealing himself and his leak, he had already left his home country. He was trying to make it to South America when the US canceled his passport. US went so far as to bring down a sovereign nations Presidential plane to search it for Snowden.
I'm sure he has still had to worry about his personal safety after getting stuck in a country he wasn't planning on getting stuck in.
But the reality is you have to meticulously plan and basically abandon your entire life and move somewhere they cannot touch you. When it comes to US companies, you generally will have to do like Snowden and avoid US-allied nations.
See also: Steven Donziger and Chevron
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger
Donziger was placed under house arrest in August 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of criminal contempt of court, which arose during his appeal against Kaplan's RICO decision, when he refused to turn over electronic devices he owned to Chevron's forensics experts. In July 2021, US District Judge Loretta Preska found him guilty, and Donziger was sentenced to 6 months in jail in October 2021. While Donziger was under house arrest in 2020, twenty-nine Nobel laureates described the actions taken by Chevron against him as "judicial harassment." Human rights campaigners called Chevron's actions an example of a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). In April 2021, six members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus demanded that the Department of Justice review Donziger's case. In September 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the pre-trial detention imposed on Donziger was illegal and called for his release. Having spent 45 days in prison and a combined total of 993 days under house arrest, Donziger was released on April 25, 2022.
US corporations can and will bring the weight of the US "justice" system on whistleblowers. The US is not unique in this regard. Whatever giant company you're whistleblowing against, you better GTFO of the country they are based in.
I always somehow miss when it stops working and by the time I go to YouTube again it's already working again.
Blessings to Gorhill
The internet is fragmenting and healing. It was never supposed to be so centralized.
It's like the AI was trained on Neil Hamburger. I can hear it in his voice.
Yes more articles like this please to drive Donald to ragefully do something stupid.
The ~~lady~~ Batman doth protest too much, methinks.
They should have to wear body cams so we can see their dinner conversations with lobbyists. All body cam data is livestreamed and saved for citizens to view. The only time they get to disable it is to go to the bathroom and when they go home to their family at night.
They shouldn't be allowed personal devices for communications, instead being forced to use government-provided devices that also track and post everything they do on their device to the public internet for the voters to see.
If we're in a democracy and we've voted to entrust you with the safeguarding of our democracy, you deserve more public scrutiny, not less.
If they wanted a world where we didn't feel like we had to do this to our representatives, maybe they shouldn't have thrown all those years of norms and decorum and gentlemans handshakes out the fucking window three decades ago. Maybe if they were operating in good faith we wouldn't feel the need to demand every sliver of their lives to prove they're actually working for the people.
Those non-violent protests shook them so bad they wanted to charge non-violent Quaker protestors with terrorism.
America 2025: Women begin to buy chartreuse flamethrowers for "feminine protection." Proving once again Breathed is actually a modern day Nostradamus.
This one's been on my mind the last few days. Also, those commercials aren't vague anymore.
I can't shake this vision from my head when looking at Tim Walz and all the "Are you employed, Mr. Lebowski" energy his look brings.
Hope this isn't seen as too political or endorsing a specific candidate. It has more to do with how much Tim Walz looks like The Big Lebowski. Not trying to upset anyone as much as be a dork, hope the Achievers see it for that. If its not appropriate, removing it is fine. No real loss.
Hey, at least we got the Antiviral Wipe during the pandemic!
I actually really miss his police procedural sendup series A Touch of Cloth starring John Hannah.