Stacy Cowley, Finance Reporter - The New York Times
Stephan:
The Biden administration has found another route to forgiving student debt, so this is excellent good news. What I don’t understand is why the Democrats can’t seem to figure out how to get the many good things they have done to foster wellbeing clear in the minds of voters.
Demonstrators calling for the cancellation of student debt in Washington in June. Credit: Kenny Holston / The New York Times
One-time credits will wipe out loans, fixing mistakes made by loan servicers when collecting payments under income-driven repayment programs.
More than 800,000 borrowers will have $39 billion in federal student loan debt eliminated under a government effort to remedy years of mistakes by the loan servicers that collect payments on the government’s behalf.
Millions more people will have their loans adjusted as part of the program. That process will continue into next year.
The relief will go to those who have federal loans owned directly by the Education Department and who enrolled in income-driven repayment plans or would have qualified for loan forgiveness if they had done so. Those plans cap the payments that borrowers owe to a percentage of their income. Under those plans, borrowers must make payments for a term that is typically 20 or 25 years. At the end of that period, any remaining balance is forgiven.
More than eight million people use income-driven repayment […]
This is some excellent news about contraception if it endures. However, if Clarence Thomas has his way it won’t He has made it explicit and clear that he would like to see your right to contraception made unlawful, and I expect that the rest of the christofascist cabal that controls the Supreme Court may concur. Alito, for one. certainly seems to be indicating that he would. Here is a fact-based assessment of where contraception stands today.
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
The most commonly prescribed contraceptive in America is getting easier to access, if you can afford it or live in the right state.
The FDA’s approval of the first over-the-counter birth control pill, Opill, in the U.S. on Thursday is a “a game changer in terms of access,” Dr. Julia Cron, chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, told Axios.
But similar progress has buckled in the U.S. thanks to lengthy regulatory processes and limited research in reproductive heath, Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosley, the CEO of reproductive wellbeing nonprofit of Power to Decide, said.
Opill was the first birth control pill to be considered by the FDA as an over-the-counter option, and it could now […]
A few days ago I published a report by the Associated Press on their investigation into the corruption of the Supreme Court indicating that liberal justices were also involved although not to the same degree. Well, here is a closer look at that side of the court. It makes me very sad.
U.S. Supreme Court Justices Credit: Ohio Capital Journal
Scrutiny of visits to colleges made by Supreme Court justices has now drawn attention to the court’s liberal wing as calls for stronger ethics rules for those who sit on the bench grow louder.
Investigative reporting by The Associated Press, published Tuesday, detailed how schools courted donors to attend the events, enabled encounters between justices and elected officials and provided opportunities for the justices to luxuriate in places like Hawaii and Europe for agreeing to light teaching responsibilities.
The report found the visits were made by justices across ideological lines, most notably including accusations that Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s staff pushed colleges to purchase her books when she traveled to their schools.
Justices’ speaking engagements at universities are nothing new, but their travels have faced increasing scrutiny in recent years as stories emerged about wealthy activists’ efforts to buy access.
The United States simply is not oriented to making the wellbeing of Americans, particularly children, a first priority, and so we have hundreds of thousands of children in problematic situations. If you were an already traumatized 8-year-old how would you like to be taken to a jail because there was no place else to look after you. Or placed with some evangelical Christian family that beat you with a rod or a paddle when they thought you misbehaved, and tried to convert you. Do you think that might haunt you for the rest of your life?
Fencing and razor wire surround Clark County Juvenile Detention on June 23, 2021, in Las Vegas, Nevada. How would you like to be sent there when you were 8 years old? Think that might be a little traumatic? Credit: Bonnie Jo Mount / The Washington Post / Getty
By age 17, more than half of youth who are removed from their homes will have an encounter with the legal system through arrest, conviction or detention. Critics describe this process as the foster-care-to-prison-pipeline.
But for many foster children, the pipeline is activated the moment they enter care. This is because child welfare authorities in several states are placing kids in juvenile detention facilities — as well as in hotels, casinos and offices — due to a shortage of foster homes. They literally have not found other places to send them.
According to National Public Radio, more than half of U.S. states have seen a decline in the number of licensed foster homes since 2021. Child welfare advocates blame several factors for the decline: people’s reluctance to take strangers into their […]
Jake Johnson, Staff Writer - Raw Story / Common Dreams
Stephan:
While the Republicans are cutting social support for their constituents, from education to food programs, to child and elder care they are promoting raises for themselves. You cannot be an ethical person and a Republican.
MAGAt Representative Mark Amodei of Nevada Credit: Wikimedia commons
After taking the global economy hostage to secure painful cuts to aid programs and other federal spending, House Republicans are proposing a pay raise for themselves and other members of Congress for the coming fiscal year.
Roll Call reported Thursday that under spending legislation approved by the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee last month, members of Congress “would stand to receive a 4.6%, or $8,000, pay increase” in 2024. Most members of Congress currently make an annual salary of $174,000, putting them in the top 10% of U.S. earners.
“Lawmakers last received a cost-of-living increase in 2009,” the outlet noted, “but House Republicans left out the traditional language blocking a cost-of-living increase for members from this year’s Legislative Branch bill.”
House Legislative Branch Appropriations Chairman Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) told Roll Call that it is “not exactly greedy” to pursue a pay raise for lawmakers after more than a decade of no cost-of-living increase, but he acknowledged the optics are horrible.
