FT's Ed Luce joins the group to discuss campus protests and whether Biden is losing.
highlights / lowlights:
Mona: Country Music, a film by Ken Burns
Ed: The Colombia student asking that the protestors be brought food in their encampment.
Linda: MTG's bizarre defense of her anti-Semitism vote.
Bill: Netanyahu: Israel will invade Rafah — regardless of hostage deal
Damon: The new Steve Martin documentary.
Today, May 4th, is the anniversary of the National Guard firing on Kent State students with live ammunition, killing 4. Even though there were the usual campus outside agitators, and students with preposterous demands for catering, I’m glad that didn’t come to pass again. As Mona spoke, I wondered if universities could develop their own Hyde Park-type debate spots as a way for engaged students to thrash out their differences.
Mona said that Biden was “always telling people what he had done for them”, and it sounded like a complaint. Yet Trump was CONSTANTLY telling people all he had done for them, “Best economy for black people! Best economy for the middle class! Isn’t your 401K wonderful under me?”, and Trump’s base says Biden is hiding in his basement again doing nothing. It’s like Biden can do no right.
Tomorrow is Orthodox Easter. (Yes, we're five weeks behind everyone else this year.) So, over the past few days, I've heard the story of Christ's Passion from all four gospels read multiple times. Linda is just wrong. The gospels clearly blame "the Jews" for Jesus' death. They depict Pilate as a weakling who caved to a Jewish mob in ordering the crucifixion of Jesus.
This is historically plausible. While Pilate had been previously harsh with the Jews, his situation had changed with the fall of Sejanus about a year and a half earlier. Pilate, who had been appointed by Sejanus, had carried out Sejanus's anti-Jewish policies. When Tiberius returned to Rome in AD 31 and deposed Sejanus, he promptly ordered officials to ease up on the Jews. That would have made Pilate more sensitive to demands from the Jewish leaders. He didn't want to share the fate of his patron.
If one wants to interrogate the gospels on this point, I think the key is to consider what is meant by "the Jews". In current English usage, the term can refer to religious belief or practice, ethnic identity, or some combination of the two. But Jesus and his disciples were all Jews in both those senses of the term. So, when the gospels set "the Jews" in opposition to Jesus, the term must mean something else. In the gospels, the term also has a geopolitical valence - i.e., "Judean". According to tradition, Jesus and 11 of the disciples (all but Judas) were from Galilee. The Judean elite were jealous of their status as leaders of the broader Jewish community, and many of them regarded the diaspora as second-class Jews. That also gave it implications of what we might call "class". The Judean establishment regarded Jesus as a threat to their status.
That Judean establishment, including the Sadducees and the priestly class, fell during the First Jewish War (AD 66-74). So, "the Jews" referred to in the gospels were already history by the time Luke and John were written. It does not make sense to read "the Jews" in the gospels as pertaining to all people who might be classified as Jews in the modern understanding of the term.
Nashville native here! (I moved away from there 2 years ago). When you go-definitely visit the Ryman and Statin Inn. (Downtown isn’t that great-little trashy honestly). They are two very iconic music venues. Enjoy your time there! I miss the music scene a lot.
Station Inn
BREAKING NEWS[just now on Haaretz feed] :-
Israel-Hamas War Day 211
Report: Hamas Accepts Gaza Cease-fire Deal; Israeli Officials Deny Prospect of War Ending
This gave me a good chuckle
“Marijuana is a dangerous drug”….tell me you’ve never smoked weed without telling me you’ve never smoked weed. Listen, Linda!!!
Current recreational marijuana is definitely a dangerous drug. It is many times stronger than the stuff my contemporaries smoked in the 1970s. That greatly increases its addiction potential. It affects the brain development of regular smokers up to age 25. It can also serve as a trigger for various mental disorders, including schizophrenia.
Believing marijuana is safe because you and all your friends came away apparently unscathed is like believing Covid is like the flu because you don't know anyone who died from it.
I’m not sure “safe” is the baseline standard for legalization. Excessive alcohol use kills about 170,000 Americans annually and we celebrate it constantly. Police resources could probably be put to better use if we redirected them toward more dangerous substances.
looks like a offical status of "famine" will be declared tommorow for the north of gaza on Meet the press tommorow with Cindy McCain - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNJv9yzxjuM
Great show. Ed Luce is a great guest. Man, Damon and Bill just careened into the thickest darkness. I think I'm more with Mona-- that the numbers will improve as Biden and Dems really shift the focus onto Trump and the really crazy stuff he's been saying. This battle will be won on negative campaigning. It is what it is.
If you look at Xitter, there are arguments everywhere that say January 6 doesn’t matter because of the BLM protests. I see them every day.
A couple of thoughts:
With respect to ed, Mona and Linda’s conversation about marijuana and student loans, I can’t quite follow your advice. In the first part of the conversation I think Mona said stop telling voters how great you are and now you are telling him to not do things his voters want because it looks like he is pandering. I mean, I may be missing something here, but he can’t talk about what he did nor what he is going to do for his voters?
I believe the polls directionally. I believe it the election were held today Biden would likely lose. However, there is absolutely zero, ZERO, chance that Trump wins the popular vote.
trouble with democrats that to please them, you have address multiple issues,of which each part might have dear to there heart,and each must be addressed to get their support.....to keep republicans happy, all you have to do is say"close the border" and you will have full support as they line up behind their leader? :(
i disagreed with a fair proportion of mona's other piece [written the otherday], I could mention how she didnt mention about the pro-israeli mob that attacked one of the campus [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KLa5JkU3is] or some of the pro-zionist calls for police [https://www.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/1cetw4r/to_claim_to_the_cops_that_student_protestors_were/] [whilst not being surrounded or the israel supporter who shouted called the police on them and [https://www.thedailybeast.com/pro-israel-agitator-shouts-kill-the-jews-gets-everyone-else-arrested] who then got the protesters arrested,although they did not start the chant or join in, so i think monas take is less nuanced and more for readership of oneside?
the one thing i will say about the left and maga right, is that both dont want american involved in another external war...they dont want american dollars going into it[where ever it is abroad]- for the MAGA right, they want to pull back to america"America first", and with the saving of those dollars give themselfs a taxcut...the left is more anit-war , anti american involvement and equally would want american to pullback...but to them use that war money for self investment for public good....yes, in that the MAGA and far right agree? :(
Having lived in England for several years I am reminded of another term to describe Biden's reelection campaign- "A Bloody Shambles". I voted for him in 2020 and will do so again in 2024, but he is currently on a glide path to losing, and neither he nor his ultra cautious campaign team seems to have the faintest clue what to do. First of all he needs to get the border under control immediately. Why he hasn't done this yet by executive order is incomprehensible. And why isn't he reaching out to Christie, Pence, and Romney? I think Biden and his re-election team are in completely over their heads. They need to get it in gear immediately.
i say this words both to the progressives[for after the election], the democrat party[biden][[before the election] and even to the media that with this new [cant say israel] bill, and your response to these protesters, "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind" :( equally both the progressives and the democrats need to get together and biden needs to solve this gaza issue,if they dont, then for trump, all it will needs is somesort of media "email" scandal [fake or even contribed] a few weeks before the election to tip things over with independants into trumps camps :(
its good to hear Ed luce again, us english tend to have a lesser view of what the american called the "far left", americans call a far leftish a person who wants a single player heath care scheme[and then look upon him as a communist ,socialist eating baby killer], where as in england we look at that as a centre-left person, and a far left person who is more a marxist[someone like corben]...its a different scale of view...equally when we see a protest, with our police its just given a more cautious "isolation them and let it die down " approach, as per the long standing american police/media view of "it must be putdown and let us show strenght that we have public law and order in control" view of things[usually with violence which we were with some irony considering their supposed views of free speech etc].......a great comedy sketch in england[on tv], once had a hill street blues type of theme, where a hoodie person ran into a dead end with a wire fence as the two american cops ran after him catching up with the shout from one "freeze dont move", as the criminal relaxed,turn around and held his hands up, as the policeman then shoot him, the other cop says "hey , great shot", and the other finishes the sketch with "yeah , i know, but i cant hit them when they move", as a great indictor of our views about american policing :(
i could go on about mona's narrative of addressing the protesters as between yogurt eating hippies[which the right hate] to hamas loving supporters[which everybody hates] as a more than a little bit extreme [shrugs] but in this heightened state of her views, i will let it pass, just reflecting i think damon has the smarter more nuanced take here[seen as he is on campus], with broad agreement with my fellow englishman :)
I am so sick of the ignorance of the arguments about the student loan forgiveness. The argument that they should forgive mortgage loans that are underwater just screams that person has no understanding of how student loans work and the issues.
Let’s look at who is actually receiving student loan relief and how much:
* Cancel up to $20,000 in interest for all borrowers who have accrued or capitalized interest on their loans since entering repayment.( INTEREST!!!)
* Automatically cancel debt for borrowers who would otherwise be eligible for loan forgiveness under income-driven repayment (IDR) plans, like the SAVE Plan, or Public Service Loan Forgiveness but are not enrolled in those programs.
* Cancel student debt for borrowers with undergraduate loans who entered repayment at least 20 years ago and debt for graduate school borrowers who entered repayment at least 25 years ago. (20 and 25 Years!!!)
* Cancel student debt for borrowers who previously enrolled in low-financial-value programs.
* Cancel student debt for borrowers experiencing hardship in their lives that prevent them from fully paying back their loans now or in the future.
Wow! What a bunch of rich elitists! ::eye roll so big I fall over:: Also, if y’all bothered to do any research on this topic at all you will find tons of stories of people that have followed every tiny rule and how the loan companies simply don’t in regard to administration of low income and hardship programs.
Canceling student loans is definitely pandering. It is a giveaway. It does NOTHING to address the actual causes of the student loan crisis - e.g., excessive tuition rates, or inability to discharge student loans via bankruptcy. Politicians care more about keeping failing colleges afloat than fixing our predatory student loan regime.
Okay, so you basically want the people that have been paying 25 years on their loans, haven’t made a dent in their principal, have been qualified for the low income/disability programs that the loan managers like NelNet have refused to administer to just continue drowning because CONGRESS (I,e, Republicans) won’t do their jobs.
At least Biden is doing something because what you are saying is the only option will never happen or maybe on the same day Congress actually thinks about dealing with the immigration issue.
This is the conundrum. What needs to be fixed (I.e. your list) absolutely needs to be fixed but you, me and everyone else knows that Congress will never do it. So I am glad that Biden is doing something, anything.
But it's not a conundrum at all. Once you start forgiving student loans without fixing the system, student loan forgiveness will become an endless commitment - a bottomless pit into which money will be dumped forever. It will become just another unsustainable entitlement.
The main beneficiaries of such a program are not college students. The main beneficiaries are colleges, which are given a reprieve from reform. Students are just the unfortunate middlemen in a government subsidy program for colleges. To refrain from reforming the program is to continue abusing students in this corrupt transaction. Instead of compensating students for enduring this abuse, we should just stop abusing them.
So your answer is to do nothing and let the problem continue to grow and fester. Unless you can point to any group trying to implement the changes you think are necessary.
No, you are the one who wants to let the problem grow and fester. The sort of program you are advocating helps past victims, but it encourages ongoing exploitation of new victims. A lot of money will be spent, but the exploitation will continue. And the taxpayers - including the majority, who did not benefit from a college education - will also be exploited.
Point to any politicians actively working on fixing the issue the way you want it fixed first.
I can't. But that's an irrelevant comment. Your proposed program would not fix the problem, either, no matter how much support it might have - and it would waste billions of dollars in failing to fix the problem.
The people who are demanding a handout should be demanding reform if they want to take the high ground.
It’s not irrelevant in what I am saying. Regardless of the merits or problems with the current Biden program, what I am saying, is at least he is doing something to try to deal with the student debt. I am saying that your answer is to do nothing because your preferred solution is not being implemented.
1) Me: Biden is doing the debt relief. It’s not awesome but he is at least doing something
2) You: this is bad and should not be done even though my preferred method (which I agree is the better answer) is not and will not be done.
That is why I am saying your choice is to do nothing and just let the problem grow. Your view is that unless your method is done, then no other options such as debt relief should be tried. I don’t know that we can say 100% that the current debt relief program will result in what you imagine will happen. Maybe. But I think someone that has paid on their loans for 25 years, only paid interest and had their owed debt actually increase due to the predatory structure of the loan and has zero hope of ever paying off the loan should get relief. Once again, I think you should actually take the time to examine exactly who the relief program applies to vs making assumptions since you have such a strong view about it.
Your supposed "solution" is not a solution to the actual problem. It does absolutely NOTHING to solve the problem. It permits - even encourages - a continuation of exploitive student loans going forward.
It just takes money from one group of people and transfers it to another group of people who are whining louder. And it is a *regressive* wealth transfer - i.e., it transfers money from poorer people to richer people. Regressive transfers are generally contrary to the professed principles of every ideology, from far left to far right. Your proposal is absolutely unprincipled.
Why won't Biden propose any solutions to the student debt problem? Because the beneficiaries of the current system are the bloated administrations of universities, which are filled uniformly with progressives. Democrats are corruptly pandering to one of their constituencies by averting their eyes to the actual cause of the student debt crisis.
I’d like to add a few points to this excellent post.
1. Nobody has funded their elite degree in liberal naval gazing with the piddling maximum amount of $57,000 (or thereabouts) one can borrow for undergraduate education. There are yearly limits in addition to that four-year limit.
2. People who go to trade schools may also have federal loans.
3. Related to the above, Biden has forgiven billions for those who attended scam for-profit schools, some of which were trade schools.
Excellent added points!
Exactly, PSLF and the 20 & 25 year repayment plans were legislation passed by Congress & signed into law by George W. Bush. Biden’s administration just streamlined the process to where they operated as intended. Car loans, mortgages and most consumer debt can be discharged in bankruptcy. Only way out before Biden was death. How many real dollars has the government actually spent on forgiveness? I had my loans forgiven last year with PSLF after 15 years in the non profit sector. In reality, these are affecting more middle aged voters than under 35.
It’s also a bit crazy to think when Mona went to college at Columbia it cost 3k a year. It’s now a 100k.
If you have a college degree and a 401(k) (or equivalent), you are elite. Not an "elitist", necessarily, which is a different thing. But definitely part of the elite.
I work for an institute that does research on, among other things, substance abuse. I do not know any researchers in the field who favor legalization of marijuana. Today's recreational weed is MANY times stronger than the stuff they smoked in the 1960s and '70s. Once might make a case for decriminalization, or for medical marijuana. But legalizing recreational marijuana will be bad for the future of the country.
Shouldn’t politicians be pandering for votes? Isn’t that why people vote for them?
“Build the Wall” is pandering for votes. Enabling Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices is pandering. “Pandering” is a loaded word that makes giving people a reason to vote for you sound illegitimate.
Yeah, I think their age really shines in these conversations.
There was report yesterday regarding the price fixing of Big Oil, that was apparently flagged by the FTC...Here in the Great White North we had a bread price fixing scndal last year, so this inflation issue seems a failure of free markets more than Government Policy.
Ed & Damon make great points about interest rates being a factor of consumer-experienced inflation that the fed doesn't account for. The fed looks at core PCE-PI as its primary measure of inflation, but the consumer experiences the CPI + interest rates. Sheltering costs (housing) now accounts for 2/3rds of year-over-year inflation (the rest mostly coming from services), and then you have to add interest rates on top of housing for homebuyers. Interest rates are taxes on consumers just like tariffs are. The fed can print money, but it can't print houses, which is why it's going to have a really hard time getting this last 1% of inflation down to its 2% target through interest rate policy, and all the while consumers are going to be feeling that pain on big ticket purchases.
And yes, massive deportations of immigrants from the workforce under Trump would only add to the service-side of inflation that would increase costs on products and services just like tariffs would.
The perception that current interest rates are high is, in part, an effect of our 15-year policy of zero interest rates. In reality, rates are now returning to normal, but consumers got hooked on the drug of unsustainably low interest rates and are now suffering from withdrawal.
Politicians have still not begun to address their own addiction to low interest rates. As an economist, I know that tariffs are the worst kind of tax. But I'm also wondering whether they are the only kind of tax that politicians think they can sell to a self-indulgent electorate. They seem to be the only kind of tax that Biden and Trump like.
It's not a question of whether or not democracy will be a salient issue in this election, it's a question of how high in the median voter's priority stack will democracy be? That's a question that also comes down to what type of voter we're talking about around the dividing lines of education and financial security. The less-educated and less financially secure households are going to have economics a lot higher up on their priority scale, which means inflation is going to mean more to them than democracy. The higher-educated, more financially well off households will have things like democracy and abortion rights higher up on their priority scale. Now look across the handful of districts in the 4-6 swing states that this election will come down to and you'll find a mix of those households in those districts, which means that *both* of those issues matter a great deal. One cannot focus on one while ignoring the other and vice versa. Time for Biden and dems to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time.
And as far as polling goes, none of them matter until we get into late August. Polling in general has gotten less and less accurate since the 2010's as elections have gotten tighter and tighter. Margins of Error (MOEs) now routinely encapsulate both outcomes, which make the predictive models less and less useful over time. Voters will not solidify opinions until October, and even when they do the polls have MOEs that straddle both outcomes (see the polling for 2016, 2020, and 2022 for examples of this).
I understand why voters are concerned about inflation, but not why they think it's an electoral issue. There's not that much difference between the economic policies of Biden and Trump. Trump's economic policies are closer to those of Biden than to those of earlier Republicans.