They can be challenging for students and parents alike. As the fascist judges on SCOTUS rail against President Biden’s plan to help people handle this onerous burden, let’s consider some details of the case.
First, the main issue here, the most important one, in fact, and what those fascist judges seem to be willingly ignoring, is whether the six states from the Fascist States of America and the two plaitiffs who are trying to stick it to Biden have any right to sue the federal government about how it’s handling a federal program. If SCOTUS allows that, we might as well return to the anarchy reigning when the country’s law of the land represented by the Articles of Confederation. Killing that relief would mean in fact that the US is nothing more than the EU, a collection of separate governmental entities called states instead of countries, bound together so loosely than any member entity can destroy progress. We need more federal government, not less, and less states’ rights if the US is going to survive the twenty-first century. Fascist elements, and those include those aforementioned SCOTUS judges, seem determined to tear down that federal government and replace it with chaos.
Second, those fascist judges, Neil Gorsuch being the loudest proponent, claim that Biden’s program would be unfair to those who got loans and paid them off, or those who got no loans. This myopic viewpoint reminds me of those many stupid arses I’ve had the displeasure of meeting whose view on life is that “I suffered, so everybody else must suffer.” These attitudes run the gamut from a desire to “harden the steel” of our young people (veterans are affected too, so their steel is already hard enough!) to outright nefarious willingness of the privileged to inflict pain on those who are less privileged. I’d put SCOTUS’s fascist judges in the last category because they’re old and priveleged SOBs who never had to worry about getting an education.
Third, those judges will turn the federal government into an “Indian giver.” (Before the PC radicals out there chide me for saying “Indian” instead of “Native American,” let me quickly remind them that the fascist SCOTUS judges don’t give a rat’s ass about being PC—otherwise, they’d reject this case in a second!) The loans are from the federal government’s programs. Loans are forgiven all the time, especially during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Is forgiving any of these student loans any different than rent forgiveness and other pandemic programs? The only other fair alternative would be to keep them on the books to wait and see if the recipients reach an income level where they can begin to repay them, which would be like the sword of Damocles hanging over students and parents’ heads. (Again, there are veterans who’ve never managed to pay off their federal loans and will probably die still in debt as a consequence. Talk about being unfair!)
Fourth, Biden et al aren’t completely without sin here. The forgiveness program is at best only a band-aid, a mere beginning. Why is this program needed? Because the costs of higher education are too damn high! A more general solution is required for the future of our country. Expensive private universities represent the worst offenders for high costs. Because we can’t seem to get rid of them (Europe leads the way in doing just that), the federal government should stop sending them taxpayers’ funds! Think about it: Funding for the Harvards, Yales, and MITs of the private-university sector mostly lifts up the upper ten percent of American students and their families, when just the opposite needs to be done, help the lower ninety percent. One reason Europe leads the US so much in eliminating income inequality (Denmark should be our model, but not for Bernie Sanders’s reason—that country loves capitalism as much as socialism) is that higher education is fairer—you don’t have to be privileged there to go to college or get an advanced degree, only intelligent enough to benefit you and society from your studies.
Higher-education costs make the US ill-prepared to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. Conservative elements, most notably fascist personalities like the SCOTUS judges, want to keep it that way. They don’t want an educated population. They’d prefer to be the lords and keep the uneducated rabble as their serfs. People will only have so much patience with that fascist program. When they rise up, those conservative elements better have their sweats and running shoes on. Or, have at hand George Santos’s “national rifle”? They’ll need escape mechanisms because they’re in the minority, and the majority want a fair, national government not controlled by a bunch of fascist states or fascist individuals. Marjorie Taylor Greene might just get her civil war, but it won’t be pretty for her or the other MAGA-maniacal fascists like Gorsuch and company.