Tag Archives: Democrat Party

The next bubble that Democrats will burst on taxpayers: student loan debt

Student loans became a huge problem when the Obama administration decided to take the decision about whether to grant the loans away from private sector loan managers and put it into the hands of politicians. Nationalizing student loans allowed Democrats to buy the votes of college students who wanted to get funding for degrees in Why Your Religious Parents Are Evil, which actually turn out to be Four Years of Drunken Hook-Up Sex. The trouble with this vote-buying plan was always how to deal with the loans after the four years are up. Well, how about continuing to buy the votes by passing the cost of the non-STEM degrees onto taxpayers? After all, working families don’t need the money, and it’s much better spent on beer and contraceptives, right? Responsible people don’t vote for Democrats anyway, so let’s just take their money and buy the votes of drunk promiscuous college students.

Here’s the story from the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

Virginia Murphy borrowed a small fortune to attend law school and pursue her dream of becoming a public defender. Now the Florida resident is among an expanding breed of American borrower: those who owe at least $100,000 in student debt but have no expectation of paying it back.

Ms. Murphy pays just $330 a month—less than the interest on her $256,000 balance—under a federal income-based repayment program that has become one of the nation’s fastest-growing entitlements. She plans to use another federal program to have her balance forgiven in about seven years, a sum set to swell by then to $300,000.

The promise of forgiveness is “the only reason I would have ever considered” amassing so much debt to attend Tulane University Law School, says Ms. Murphy, 45 years old. She earns $56,500 a year as an assistant public defender in West Palm Beach.

The doubling of student debt since the recession, to $1.19 trillion, has stoked a national discussion over how to rein in college costs and debt and is becoming a major issue in the 2016 presidential race.

$300,000? That’s no problem. it was so good that we got Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to spend more money in 2007:

Taxpayer money useful for buying the votes of dependent people
Taxpayer money is useful for buying the votes of dependent people

(Click for larger image)

More:

Federal programs allow grad students to borrow essentially unlimited amounts—whatever their schools charge—while requiring only a scant credit check and no assessment of their ability to repay. Other government loan programs, such as those for undergraduate students and home buyers, set loan limits to prevent borrowers from getting too deep into debt. Undergraduates are capped at $57,500 total in federal loans.

As graduate-school enrollment swelled over the past decade, the number of Americans owing at least $100,000 in student debt more than quintupled to 1.82 million as of Jan. 1, New York Federal Reserve data show. The number of all student borrowers nearly doubled to 43.34 million.

[…]The federal student-loan programs are designed to generate revenue for taxpayers, and they do. But surging enrollment in the debt-forgiveness programs recently prompted the government to increase by $22 billion its estimate of the long-term costs of the provisions. And a recent move to expand the most generous repayment program to millions more borrowers will cost an estimated $15.3 billion.

Critics say offering unlimited loans to students, with the prospect of forgiveness, creates a moral hazard by allowing borrowers to amass debts they have little hope or intention of repaying, all while enriching institutions and leaving taxpayers to pick up the tab.

Moral hazard? What’s that? Maybe Hillary Clinton knows.

She has announced an interesting plan about how to deal with people doing useless degrees that are really just a lot of drinking, partying and promiscuity. More spending to buy more votes – transfer well from responsible working families to drunken promiscuous students studying non-STEM degrees, because STEM degrees that will actually get them jobs are too hard.

Excerpt:

The hard truth on the student-loan crisis is that the problem is not being caused by a lack of money. It’s quite the opposite. A recent study by the New York Federal Reserve validated the long-held concerns of many economists and policy analysts alike when it found that “on average, for a $1 increase in the subsidized-loan cap, tuitions rose by as much as 65 cents.” In short, there is too much money available for the taking by colleges and universities because of generous government loans. This is driving up tuition prices. If the government just keeps increasing how much it is willing to lend students, where is the incentive for schools to control costs? Universities are currently engaged in an amenities arms race to attract students and their loan dollars. One need not look any further for evidence of this than ESPN on a Saturday afternoon in the fall or a student-life brochure. Texas Tech University has a waterpark on campus for goodness’ sake, and LSU is racing to finish one as well. How is $350 billion more dollars for universities to waste a solution of any sort? Mrs. Clinton’s preferred channels for delivering these funds are problematic as well. First, the plan calls for a cut in loan interest rates. Is this seriously something we’re willing to let politicians continue to get away with? Did we learn nothing from the housing crisis? Interest rates aren’t arbitrary figures without purpose — they are supposed to measure the risk of the borrower’s not being able to repay the lender. Judging by the severity of the present student-loan crisis and the number of defaulters, it’s safe to say interest rates are already too low. Additionally, interest rates are the price of borrowing money. Let’s think back to Economics 101 and remember what happens to demand when prices go down. How do we solve the crisis of rampant student loan debt by making it easier and more attractive to get into? It doesn’t matter if the interest rate on $150,000 is zero percent when you still owe $150,000 and you’re unemployed. Students don’t need a lower interest rate. They need colleges to constrain spending. Further, they need high-paying jobs. Of course, the Clinton plan only makes the latter problem worse as well. Under the Hillary’s plan, states will be encouraged to offer “no loan” tuition at four-year universities and free two-year community college through the promise of federal tax dollars. Of course, those tax dollars will have to come from somewhere. This is yet another drain on private business whose resources could otherwise be creating jobs for existing unemployed and underemployed students and graduates. Some will say this part of the plan helps students, but on net the economic drag remains the same, with the burden of education inflation simply shifted from students to their potential employers.

She is obviously well-versed in how economics works, and not just some talentless clown who married a hot male slut and then turned a blind eye to his philandering so that she could get affirmative action appointments on her way to an affirmative action presidency. Most sexually-transmitted diseases don’t affect your judgment at all. So stop worrying, America. Everything is going to be fine.

Why is it that whenever we have elections, people on the left have nothing more to offer us than schemes to buy votes by shifting money from winners to losers? They have no idea how to grow the economy, create jobs, promote marriage and families, and disincentivize irresponsible, reckless behaviors. It’s all about borrowing from people in the womb, to pay for free stuff for losers, in order to get their votes. This inter-generational theft is evil. It is enslaving the unborn to serve the whims of new masters. Slavery is wrong.

Democrats launch investigation of pro-life group that filmed Planned Parenthood videos

Here's Democrat Elijah Cummings with his good friend Lois Lerner
Here’s Democrat Elijah Cummings (left) with his good friend Lois Lerner

The Democrats won’t investigate Planned Parenthood, they want to investigate the group that revealed the truth about Planned Parenthood to the public.

Life News reports:

Just one day after Planned Parenthood was exposed cutting up a live baby for body parts for sale, Democrats in the House of Representative are launching their own investigation after the Planned Parenthood abortion business. Instead of looking into the abortion giant, they are probing the pro-life group behind the series of expose’ videos.

The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into the Center for Medical Progress, the pro-life organization that spent years recording the undercover videos and tracking information to expose Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry and biotech industry’s involvement in the abortion of unborn babies and the sales of their body parts to top universities for research.

While House Republicans are investigating Planned Parenthood and more than a dozen states have either taken steps to de-fund Planned Parenthood or launch their own investigations, Democrats in Congress are going after the pro-life advocates responsible for the undercover sting operation. The Hill has more:

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) sent a letter to the Center for Medical Progress on Thursday, demanding details to show whether the group broke state or federal laws when it secretly recorded videos of Planned Parenthood staff without consent.

The Center, led by the anti-abortion activist David Daleiden, established a fake company to gain entry into clinics and meetings with Planned Parenthood officials — a move that Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), have blasted as potentially illegal.

The group has also been asking for donations as a nonprofit charitable organization for the last two years, which Cummings said contrasts with its current self-identification as a group of citizen journalists.

Cummings warned that if Republican leaders of the committee decide to hold hearings on Planned Parenthood, he will ask Daleiden to testify as well.

“Any legitimate and balanced congressional investigation must also address your group’s role in these activities,” Cummings wrote.

[…]Meanwhile, two committees in the House of Representatives have already launched investigations of Planned Parenthood. One committee is looking into whether or not the abortion business is breaking federal law by altering abortion procedures to better obtain aborted baby body parts for sale. Another committee, among other things, is investigating the Obama administration and whether there is any connection between it and the abortion giant.

The differences between Republicans and Democrats could not be more clear on abortion.

Now, you might be wondering why I put a picture of Elijah Cummings next to a picture of IRS fascist Lois Lerner at the top of the post.

Here’s why:

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sent tax documents on a targeted conservative group to Democratic staff on the House Oversight Committee, newly released emails show, despite previous denials by ranking Oversight Democrat Elijah Cummings (D., Md.) that such contact had occurred.

Emails released by the GOP-led Oversight Committee show Democratic staff requested information from the IRS’ tax-exempt division on True The Vote, a conservative group that monitors polling places for voter fraud.

Republicans and conservative activists say the IRS tax-exempt division, led by former official Lois Lerner, targeted dozens of conservative groups because of their politics while ignoring similar progressive organizations.

Cummings publicly requested information from True the Vote in October 2012 on its volunteer activities and training.

Five days later, the IRS sent True the Vote a letter requesting the group provide the agency with copies of its volunteer registration forms and additional information on its volunteer activities.

Cummings’ staff requested more information from the IRS about True the Vote in January 2013.  The request was channeled from the IRS’ Legislative Affairs office to several other IRS officials, including Lerner.

[…]In a February 2014 Oversight Committee hearing, Cummings denied allegations by True The Vote attorney Cleta Mitchell that his staff had worked with the IRS in targeting the group.

“We want to get to the bottom of how these coincidences happened, and we’re going to try to figure out whether any—if there was any staff of this committee that might have been involved in putting True the Vote on the radar screen of some of these Federal agencies,” Mitchell said. “We don’t know that, but we—we’re going to do everything we can do to try to get to the bottom of how did this all happen.”

“What she just said is absolutely incorrect and not true,” Cummings replied.

Cummings has staunchly opposed the Oversight Committee’s months-long investigation of the IRS targeting scandal, arguing it is a waste of time and money.

Oversight chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) and five subcommittee chairmen sent a letter to Cummings Thursday demanding an explanation for his staff’s activities.

“Although you have previously denied that your staff made inquiries to the IRS about conservative organization True the Vote that may have led to additional agency scrutiny, communication records between your staff and IRS officials—which you did not disclose to Majority Members or staff—indicates otherwise,” Issa wrote. “As the Committee is scheduled to consider a resolution holding Ms. Lerner, a participant in responding to your communications that you failed to disclose, in contempt of Congress, you have an obligation to fully explain your staff’s undisclosed contacts with the IRS.”

It’s not out of character for Elijah Cummings to use government to persecute people he disagrees with, it’s just business as usual.  This is the Democrat Party – what they are really about.

Seventh Planned Parenthood video: cutting through living baby’s face to get intact brain

A pre-born baby delivered intact so they could take his brain
A baby delivered intact so they could cut open his face and and sell his brain

Blogging has always been a challenge for me, because it takes up my time for leisure. But recently, I’ve had a new problem where what I want to write about is so depressing that it makes it even harder to write than normal.

Well, here we go again, with the seventh video:

Anika Smith writes about it at The Stream:

O’Donnell tells the story of a woman seeking an abortion at the Alameda Planned Parenthood clinic who was very upset. “Finally she calmed down and the doctor went in to perform the abortion. It takes a little while, and I’m in the hallway. I see the jar come out, goes into the path lab, and Jessica [her coworker] I can hear is preparing it, rinsing out the jar, rinsing out the linen … then I hear her call my name… ‘Come over here, I want you to see something kinda cool, this is kinda neat.’ The moment I see it, I’m just flabbergasted. This is the most gestated fetus and closest thing to a baby I’ve seen.”

Then her coworker takes an instrument, “just taps the heart, and it starts beating.”

[…]Those who harvest these baby parts seem unashamed. One lab official, the executive director of Novogenix, is recorded saying matter-of-factly, “There are times when after the procedure is done the heart is still beating.”

O’Donnell’s coworker’s response to a still-moving child was merely clinical: “OK, this is a really good fetus and it looks like we can procure a lot from it…. We’re going to procure brain.”

O’Donnell clearly struggles as she describes a coworker ordering her to cut open the child’s head. “I remember picking it up and finishing going through the rest … and Jessica picking up the brain … and I’m just sitting there, like, what did I just do? And that was the moment I knew that I couldn’t work for the company anymore.”

[…]“It had a face. Its nose was very pronounced. It had eyelids. And its mouth was pronounced.”

Today’s video made Amelia Hamilton cry, and she explains why at The Stream:

After six videos from the Center for Medical Progress, I have heard and seen such horrifying things that I made it almost 6 minutes into this seventh video, third in the Human Capital series, without reaction.

The descriptions of a “huddle” in which the employees look at a list of abortions to be done that day to determine what to harvest didn’t surprise me. When Procurement Manager Perrin Larton described a baby that “just fell out” because it was already in the vaginal canal, I was disgusted, but I didn’t cry. I made it through Melissa Farrell and Dr. Nucatola talking about altering the process to ensure that the brain is saved. I was angry that they would turn a baby in the womb, forcing it out breech to serve their bottom line, but I wasn’t surprised. I listened with growing horror as former StemExpress employee Holly O’Donnell described the first time she saw an aborted baby with a heartbeat.

I made it through things that would have made me cry in earlier videos, but that I’ve now come to expect.

But, at 5:59 I cried.

At 5:59, I saw footage of a living baby in a pie plate, waiting to have its life ended. I saw a baby with a heartbeat, a baby who was moving. I saw its little legs stretching and kicking as it would have done in the womb. I thought about how the mother must have felt her baby moving inside the womb, and probably didn’t know it would still be moving after the abortion. She can’t have known that they would put scissors through the baby’s chin to end her life while preserving the parts that would yield the most profit. And, so, I cried.

The people who did this were once babies the same size as this little baby, but they cut through his face and took his brain so they could sell it. His future – all that he would ever be, and all that he would ever do – wasn’t as important as the money they could make by selling his brain. They were strong, and he was weak, and they didn’t think that God was watching. They didn’t think that they would have to explain what they were doing to anyone on Judgment Day. Atheism is a necessary pre-condition to perform barbaric acts like this one.

Anyway, in light of these videos, I think Planned Parenthood should be investigated, and de-funded if necessary. And if they are found to be breaking the law, then they should be prosecuted criminally. The Democrats from top to bottom disagree with me on this – they want this business to continue, with taxpayer funding, no questions asked. That’s Barack Obama’s view, that’s Hillary Clinton’s view. There’s money in selling these baby parts, and the Democrat Party gets a cut through political donations.

This post at Newsbusters has all the videos in one post, if you haven’t seen them, including this new one.

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