All posts tagged "Student Loan Debt"

Former Bush White House ethics czar Richard Painter once coached Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts on ethics ahead of their confirmation hearings. Now, he is disgusted with the state of the court whose nominees he helped advise.

He appeared on MSNBC to rage against their inability to follow basic ethics, following a controversial term of decisions against a backdrop of scandal, with multiple Republican justices caught accepting luxury gifts and travel, and their families accepting paid commissions, from billionaires and interest groups with litigation before the court.

"The justices, I am sure, are off on their yachts and planes with the billionaires, and fishing expeditions and the like," said Painter. "We've had a number of decision from this court the past few years that benefit the very, very well-to-do and continue to put the disadvantaged, women, minorities, those struggling with student loans."...

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was one of the conservative justices who struck down Biden's loan forgiveness plan, but her explanation as to why included talk of babysitters and amusement parks left some people scratching their heads in confusion.

Barrett used the opinion, which ruled that the Biden administration didn't have the authority to authorize the forgiveness, to push for the "major questions doctrine," according to CNN.

"The so-called major questions doctrine says that executive branch agencies only have authority to take aggressive unilateral action of significant political or economic importance if Congress explicitly gives it such power," the news network reported. "The Supreme Court’s use of the major questions doctrine to throw out Biden’s loan forgiveness program struck a nerve that went beyond educational policy – with the conservative justices and liberal justices sparring over how the controversial legal theory that has been used, with increasing frequency, to strike down unilateral acts of executive branch authority."...

One of the biggest obstacles to a healthy U.S. economy continues to be student loan debt, which an increasing number of people are defaulting on. Millions of people had not made a payment on $137 billion in federal student loans for at least nine months in 2016. That’s a 14 percent increase in defaults from the previous year.

Income inequality has become so prevalent in the U.S. that examples of its negative impact on the middle class are as common as Kanye West saying something cringeworthy in the media. The latest jarring example reveals that while most students are either drowning in student loan debt or reconsidering going to college all together due to high costs, wealthy kids are boarding jets just to tour the country's top rated schools.

If a magazine proudly lables itself "The Economist," you would expect that publication to understand the economic burdens of today's youth. But when a tone deaf writer at the magazine tweets an article asking "Why aren't millennials buying diamonds" it pretty much sums up how oblivious some can be in matters they're supposed to be experts in.

Only 55 percent of Bernie Sanders supporters plan on voting for Hillary Clinton according to a June Bloomberg poll. Although Sanders has been clear about how he intends to vote for Clinton to avoid the equivalent of a blobfish becoming the next leader of the U.S., the DNC and the establishment media are pushing hard to get Sanders to officially end his campaign and convince his young base to support Clinton.