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@persagen sigh, of course this is more ProPublica muckracking.

No, Leonard didn't remake the Supreme Court. That's not how the US government functions, but governmental procedure doesn't make for the clickbait headlines ProPublica lives on selling.

PP is always selling these conspiracy theories, and they need to knock it off.

@Sable_Shade

The fundamental concept of all insurance--no matter what's being insured--is that the insurer takes on some risk, taking it off the hands of the insured.

Instead of your gambling that you might experience a loss, the insurer ensures that you won't and accepts that they might experience your loss instead.

Meanwhile the employees of a professional insurer work to gather capital, seek reinsurance, and do whatever else they need to do to professionally manage that risk that you probably don't have time to manage anyway.

Folks don't realize that insurance is a form of economic specialization. It's a pretty valuable thing to manage risk for others!
@violetmadder @Hex

@Chesi if they were already paid off then there wouldn't be anything to forgive.

In your example you still have 60k that you haven't paid off.

That's quite a lot that's not paid off!

@pkraus @QasimRashid

@Chesi if they were already paid off then there wouldn't be anything to forgive.

In your example you still have 60k that you haven't paid off.

That's quite a lot that's not paid off!

@pkraus @QasimRashid

@madrobin Well I think the 8th grade student you mentioned really illustrates what I've been hearing: a whole lot of people being really afraid because they've been really misinformed about how the US government actually functions.

By the 8th grade I would hope that a kid would have enough civics education to know that presidents don't have the authority to ban books like that.

But, a lot of people really don't understand how their own governments work, and that leaves them susceptible to all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories and other fear-mongering, so they end up falling for this stuff.

On the other hand, there is a good bit of the country that goes the complete opposite way, and it's amazing how wide that divide is with people having such opposite ideas about how the government works.

But then, that's how we got this election result.

@GottaLaff @jaykuo @aaron.rupar

@ATLeagle it doesn't, though. That's not how any of that works, despite so many special interests misleading the public about how the economy actually works.

You're buying into a lie. I'm sorry.

@pkraus @QasimRashid

@pedrobizbikedu The bulk of student loans that we discuss for giving at the federal level are federally funded, that's why we talk about forgiving them at the federal level.

The privately funded loans aren't under the jurisdiction of the federal government, they're a completely different matter.

@pkraus @QasimRashid

@sjb honestly I think it's a little worse than that.

So often it seems like Trump can't even come up with his own excuses, so his apologists make up excuses for him and then he says, yeah! That! Obviously that was my plan! while just parroting the excuses that his followers came up with for him.

I think it bears so much emphasis that Trump himself is such a spineless moron that he pretty much does what people tell him to do and then says what people tell him to say, so he does stupid things that people tell him to do and then he says the stupid excuses that people make up, while he himself is just a blob of jello.

@Ponygirl Don't look at me. The federal government decided to tap you to fund federal programs.

Yeah I think that's pretty shitty of them, but it's what we're left with. And you know a lot of the people that were involved in that, we keep reelecting them.

So that's where we are. The federal government is relying on you paying that back because you're a source of revenue to pay for the federal government.

If they let you off the hook then Federal funding goes away.

Again, I thought that was a bad idea at the time. I spoke out about it being a bad idea. But we elected these people, they did it to us, and we reelected them later, so I guess we're cool with it.

@QasimRashid

@pkraus The federal government treats the loans as a source of revenue, effectively as a tax.

It's not about whether you pay any other tax, it's about saying they don't have to pay their taxes in this case even though the government was relying on those revenues to fund government programs.

@QasimRashid

@pkraus The federal government treats the loans as a source of revenue, effectively as a tax.

It's not about whether you pay any other tax, it's about saying they don't have to pay their taxes in this case even though the government was relying on those revenues to fund government programs.

@QasimRashid

A fantastic sign that so many people cheering the murder of the are really off base is that so many describe that role as parasitic.

Factually that is wrong.

A parasite doesn't ask for permission to take, it just takes. In stark contrast, we pay for insurance. And these employees are paid, they don't just drain bank accounts unilaterally.

There's plenty of room to criticize insurance, insurance companies, the healthcare system, the political systems that support that, and on and on, but anyone buying into that entirely false perspective of parasitism is losing the argument flat out.

Because right from the start they're showing they don't know what they're talking about, and it only makes it worse that they're jumping from there into killing people.

They don't make a compelling argument for anyone not already in their echo chamber.

@georgelakoff Well the other thing you need to consider is that maybe you're simply wrong about the economic benefits?

I see that sort of thing all the time, progressives insisting that something is economically against so and so, but when you sit down and work through it, the progressive simply has their analysis wrong.

Question your priors. Don't assume that you're right just because the other side doesn't agree.

@QasimRashid It's absolutely not, though.

That's not how the government works, that's not how government finance works.

To say that those students don't need to pay for their share of the government budget isn't about letting them eat cake or whatever you think that means. It's about defunding government programs that our democratic process decided needed to be funded in that way.

No, you have that completely backwards.

@ArchaeoIain

That was about an AG, not a judge, right? At least the post was.

@w7voa

@violetmadder

Just pointing out why your story is so ridiculous.

You're jumping through more holes than a flat earther here, and so I don't know why you believe that stuff, but what you're saying there really isn't convincing.

@Hex

@maeve ha, they are calling for more frequent appointments to the bench and they say that will cause LESS political turmoil?

Anyway, to be clear for those who don't click through, this is proposing a constitutional amendment, so it's not going anywhere anytime soon.

As it, arguably, shouldn't as it wouldn't have the results they're selling.

Many supporters take the stance that he was never ACTUALLY going to impose tariffs, that they were mere negotiating threats, and anyone who doesn't know that is an idiot.

Meanwhile was criticized for not laying out specifics of what she would do in office.

Funnily, then, that was a contest between someone who **wouldn't** say what they **would** do versus someone who **would** said what they **wouldn't** do.

What a time to be alive.

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