Biden to College Students: 'Drop Dead;' Biden Kills Loan Forgiveness

Joe Biden is clear on one issue: College students do not deserve loan forgiveness.

Biden made his anti-student comments in an interview with the New York Times on Memorial Day weekend.

"President Joe Biden pushed back at student loan forgiveness plans from his party’s progressive wing during a published interview Friday," Forbes reports.

This follows Biden's hostile comments against students made in February at a CNN Town Hall.

Biden shot down the popular forgiveness proposal to eliminate $50,000 (and more) in student debt, saying, "I will not make that happen," emphasizing the word, "not," after assuming his tough-guy pose at the choreographed Milwaukee forum, (Mal Contends, NBC News).

Total student debt of 43 million Americans: $1.8 trillion

Total wealth of 719 billionaires in America: $4.56 trillion

Our job: Cancel student debt, make public colleges and universities tuition free and have the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 23, 2021

Biden and Dems Setting Party up for Mid-term 2022 Shellacking

Middle-class Americans must be sacrificed for the
glory of corporatism and Party. Unity is strength.
The Flight of Moloch - by William Blake

At a CNN faux townhall at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee last week, Joe Biden was passionate and clear about one issue: He will oppose student loan forgiveness.

Shooting down the popular proposal to eliminate $50,000 (and more) in student debt, Biden said, unequivocally, "I will not make that happen," emphasizing the word, "not," after assuming his tough-guy pose at the choreographed forum, (NBC News).

This wasn't really a townhall. Questions submitted by the invite-only audience were screened and approved before attendees were allowed to read their questions out loud.

This is classic Biden though: Boasting his antipathy to popular programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and now student loan forgiveness that actually help working-class families.

Biden loves to highlight positions that directly inflict harm onto people — building more prisons, longer sentences, more police, escalation of the War on Drugs, war against Iraq, and dark people, and his longstanding distaste for social earned insurance. He thinks this makes him tough and decisive.

There were no follow-up questions on the total student loan forgiveness question. 

But Biden did manage to renew concern about his cognitive decline after he falsely concluded that he has the authority to forgive $10,000 in student debt, but does have not the "authority" to forgive $50,000 in student debt, (NBC News).

Meanwhile, rightwing Democratic Party interest groups and donors are reportedly conducting an autopsy that will reach the predetermined conclusion that the Democratic Party needs to become more rightwing, more beholden to special-interest donors and more like Joe Biden, (Burns, New York Times).

Reports Alexander Burns in the Times:

Four major groups are backing the effort, spanning a range of Democratic-leaning interests: Third Way, a centrist think tank; End Citizens United, a clean-government group; the Latino Victory Fund; and Collective PAC, an organization that supports Black Democratic candidates.

Actually, the range of Democratic-leaning interests is not well-represented in this sham autopsy, and progressives are being shut out in this effort, as well, of course, in administration appointments.

Other groups working with the big-money corporatists include the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the New Democrat Coalition, reports Burns.

These Democratic groups are stacked with more corporatist with the Congressional Black Caucus leading the charge to destroy black, brown and white working-class lives for the glory of being part of the corporatist coalition working against progressive and populists.

Henry Barbour, a member of the Republican National Committee, agrees with the Democratic corporatists' criticism of progressives who Barbour and rightwing Dems say are running too far to the "left."

To be clear, the left, progressive platform the Republican National Committee and Democrats hate includes the $15 minimum wage, social insurance, healthcare, defense of black lives, and a reduction in the obscene defense budget, among other popular policy positions.

America is 22 months from the mid-terms, and if Biden and the Dems make good on their aspiration to become functional Republicans, there will be electoral blood that will make Dems long for 1994 and 2020.

Working Families Eviscerated as Biden, Democrats Hold Fundraisers amid Silence on Stimulus

Horror stories from coast to coast abound as families are devastated by lack of healthcare, jobs, safe water, and food.

But that was before COVID 19.

Now, Democrats and Republicans are playing games to kill major stimulus relief.

And there is no Medicare for All, Green New Deal, Student Loan Forgiveness or any major jobs programs in the political offing in 2021.

That's because Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden are all committed to killing progressive legislation, and for the same reasons — Wall Street, health insurance companies and other huge donor interests such as real estate. Google "Biden holds $1000,000 fundraiser" and scan the voluminous results.

Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore are warning Biden's handlers not to shaft American families again.

Their warnings fall on deaf ears.

How out-of-touch is Joe Biden? Consider healthcare.

Biden and his consultants believe that because the former senator and vice president received free, tax-payer-financed healthcare for his family through the Federal Employees Health Benefits program, it follows that the American people should not be obtain the same tax-payer-financed healthcare for their families.

Explains Joe Biden in his healthcare spot that seems to run as often in Wisconsin as Mike Lindell's My Pillow ads: "HealthCare is personal to me."

Joe Biden does not have to live with the same worries of working families. 

Biden doesn't stress about deductibles, exclusions, massive debt and bankruptcies.

He just takes in corporate America's millions and screws American families, as Democrats say, thank you.

In his ad, Biden ironically takes a dig at health insurance companies, the same companies that finance his campaign for president and every elected office he has sought, more than any other Democratic Party candidate in 2019-2020, (In These Times).

Biden's dishonest and ridiculous stance on healthcare evokes defeated Gov Scott Walker's (R-Wisconsin) infamous "I care too much about the people of this state" to allow them to enroll in Medicaid, federal money already allocated.
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COVID 19

Joe Biden has been in office for several decades so comparisons with the Trump administration should be formulated as Trump resembles Biden in considering policy stupidity in COVID 19 response.

In late Oct, Trump issued a sweeping moratorium on residential evictions through the Centers on Disease Control and Prevention.

The moratorium seems a rare bold, public health initiative. It's not and it exemplifies policy not even approaching half-measure value on a still-growing crisis.

What a massive stimulus bill should do to address this swath of policy is send federal money directly to landlords to pay for tenants in need of help. 

The subsidy could can be free, or payback without interest or whatever. This would solve the problem for the tenants, the landlords, the banks and the coming worst-yet liquidity crisis. 

In context, the moratorium is dishonest. Tenants in need are just pushing off eviction until after Jan 1 because after that they’ll be expected to come up with a pile of money for back-rent, penalties and they won’t have it.

If Trump were smart, he'd push, as he is able, a major stimulus legislation that includes a residential landlord stimulus.

But comprehensive public policy solving crises is not what Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden do.

They all play political games and likely Democratic Party officeholders will receive a new memo advising Dems to blame everything on the Russians.

Democracy Not Democrats; Liberation Not Liberalism

'When people tell you who they really are, believe them'
— Saagar Enjeti

The Democratic Party has become irredeemably awash in corporate money, permanent-war interests and the baleful vacuity of identity politics; it should be blown apart and left to scatter.

Reformers such as Bernie Sanders and the Squad are marginalized, censored and defamed by corporate networks so thoroughly that Joe Biden does not even pretend to address their overwhelmingly popular policy platform. 

So ideologically brainwashed in identity politics is the Democratic Party and allies that I recently could not elicit an admission from two local Madison, Wisconsin activists that the racist conception of human beings that classifies homo sapiens into discrete races and sub-species is nonsensical raciology.

The Democratic Party is corrupt and ideologically steeped in pseudoscience.

The Biden administration will eviscerate the American people and do nothing for the concerns of people v Wall Street.

By the way, Senate Democrats killed a stimulus bill today that could have been a negotiating starting point for another round of stimulus checks.

From The Hill comes news shows Biden's giving away the game already, news you will not hear on MSNBC and CNN, or anywhere near the shelters of identity politics safe zones:

Bernie Sanders Is Head and Shoulders Above Everyone

Madison, Wisconsin — In Wisconsin during the Democratic presidential primary campaign, voices  cautioned repeatedly on social media that a Hillary Clinton nomination imposed by Party commissars ran the risk of giving the state to a Republican in the general election.

So did RealPolitics. So did Bernie Sanders supporters the nation-over.

Democratic super-delegates didn't listen. State parties didn't listen. The Hillary Clinton campaign didn't listen.

So, the nation ended up with the corporatist Clinton as nominee and the rest is sordid history that we live today.

What do 1,000s of activists in northern and western Wisconsin know anyway?

For one thing, Wisconsin activists know a President Sanders is preferable to a President Trump.

This knowledge is spreading across the nation, and Bernie Sanders is now the leading voice for a progressive and effective alternative to the lunatic in the White House.

From Deirdre Fulton in CommonDreams:

As he tours the country hoping to give the Democratic Party an energy boost, yet another poll has shown Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to be extremely popular among the U.S. electorate.

A Harvard-Harris survey found that 57 percent of registered voters view Sanders favorably, according to The Hill, which reported exclusively on the poll this week. In fact, 'Sanders is the only person in a field of 16 Trump administration officials or congressional leaders included in the survey who is viewed favorably by a majority of those polled,' The Hill wrote.

Sanders fared particularly well among voters aged 18-34, who give him a 62 percent approval rating. And, reflecting—or supporting—his influence within the party, 80 percent of registered Democrats said they view the Vermont senator favorably.

On Tuesday night, Sanders reiterated to MSNBC's Chris Hayes that he does not consider himself a Democrat.

Neither do I, Bern. Neither do most Americans.

A new book out, Shattered (Allen, Parnes; (Crown), reveals the world had every reason to fear a Clinton nomination. Writes Michiko Kakutani in the Times review:

After a planned appearance in Green Bay with President Obama was postponed, the authors write, Clinton never set foot in Wisconsin, a key state. In fact, they suggest, the campaign tended to take battleground states like Wisconsin and Michigan (the very states that would help hand the presidency to Trump) for granted until it was too late, and instead looked at expanding the electoral map beyond Democratic-held turf and traditional swing states to places like Arizona.

Clinton was so full of herself she and Party functionaries neglected the potential damage they were willing to inflict on the world.

Bernie has not forgotten.

Health Insurance Parasites

Update: Fight for the public option.

As everyone gets back to work on Tuesday and awaits President Obama's national address on healthcare on Wednesday, seen by some as a "make-or-break moment in his young administration (Peter Baker NYT)," writer Corrente points out what should be axiomatic: Health insurance companies are parasites, a rogue industry.

Perhaps a more apt description is the grubworm: We are the grass and the worm is the health insurance industry:

Grubworms are the larvae of beetles, attacking the roots of turfgrasses and ornamental plants. Damage first appears as drought stress such as wilting and drooping. ... Grub populations also attract predatory mammals such as skunks, raccoons, opossums and moles that can hear the grub activity and dig into the turf in search of a meal- causing further damage to the turf.

"I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. It will be hard. But I also know that nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."
– President Barack Obama, February 24, 2009

"No More Mr. Nice Guy"
- Alice Cooper, 1973