@eoten: Countries that treat higher education more as a public good due tend to see a lot of benefits. I suspect you don't care about this though.

You are unlikely very to pay anything for this particular program however. The money is already out the door; this is a matter of the federal government passing on future revenue. That revenue would equate to 300 billion, collected over a decade, if not longer. The actual amount may be lower than 300 billion given that some would never be paid back due to default/other forgiveness plans. So in all, >$30 billion on an annual basis, which is a trivial amount compared to the $4 trillion collected in annual revenue.

I really don't believe Conservative objections to this come down to a concern for fiscal responsibility or a concern for fairness in taxation though. I seem to remember a lot of celebrating after Trump passed a tax cut that netted individual billionaires hundreds of millions of dollars...

@Stevo_the_gamer: I agree with the sentiment of your post. It's hard to not imagine Biden is not hoping to see some gains with Millenials and Gen Z with this.

On the other hand, I do think it's legitimately a moral victory that I have a hard time being cynical about. The federal government, by making subsidized loans widely available while also doing nothing to control the growth of tuition costs, is at least partially responsible for the current mess. And now it's at least doing something to redress that error. I could list ten reasons why it's inadequate and imperfect but right now I feel like any progress is worth celebrating.

@sargentd: You really should try to make your posts more concise. No one wants to work through your wall of text.

As I already said, the article you are referencing is impugning an entire FBI division because of an investigation being carried out by a Trump appointee. Durham's 2 year investigation has uncovered zero proof the FBI acted improperly in the Russia investigation.

Moreover, the idea that anyone who expresses a political preference via a donation or a text message e.g. Strzok, is necessarily too biased to perform an objective investigation is ludicrous. Good luck finding someone qualified to investigate a former president who also has zero opinions on politics.

@sargentd: I don't see the point of listening to a Youtube comedian when the actual article he is poorly recapping is available to all of us.

The article in question is implying the entire FBI counterintelligence division is corrupt because they are under investigation regarding Russiagate by a special counsel appointed by... the Trump administration. That investigation has found nothing in its two-year run. I'm gonna file this one under "the party of 'law and order' once again making accusations against law enforcement just to see what sticks.

To underline the importance of this and given the espionage act being invoked in the warrant, that means the judge thought there was good evidence to be concerned that Trump not only took documents related to national defense but also that he showed them to people who should not see them. Of course that doesn't mean charges will be filed but clearly Republicans reducing this to "some missing files" are BSing.

I guess I have learned nothing from the last 6 years but I am actually surprised that Republicans are sticking with him through this.

I don't see the point in discussion with someone who supports or tolerates overturning a legitimate election. Productive discussion presupposes some sort of common principles. That used to be possible with Republicans but seeing as democracy is now up for debate, I see this thread as about as useful as conversing with a brick wall.

Thankfully the die-hard MAGA folk remain a minority. With the exception of potentially prosecuting Trump for his attempt to commit fraud in Dec 20/Jan 21 I do hope the Democrats re-focus their discourse away from Trump and toward the economic issues that concern the middle 33% of voters.

America really is a country of navel-gazers.

The extent to which this discussion (on this forum and in American media in general) is re-centering around our typical Trump vs. Biden debate is maddening. The idea that Putin is mainly reacting to America inherently plays into Russian propaganda that this was is built upon legitimate grievances resulting from abuses committed by the west and specifically the US. The reality is that Putin has an unshakable belief that Ukraine belongs to Russia. He would believe this if NATO had never moved beyond its 1990 borders. There is nothing Biden, Trump or even Obama did to alter this.

I'm actually mostly satisfied, thanks.

Funny, I don't remember Democrats attempting to pass legislation that limited access to voting based on the idea that Trump got help from Russia.

Maybe there was an increase in marijuana-related calls to 911 in the period following legalization but that's a pretty incomplete metric if we want to evaluate the impact of legalization on public health. There's been lots of research on traffic injuries and fatalities and their link to legalization and the results so far are pretty mixed. Federal agency research says legalization is dangerous (no surprise there; institutional bias?) and plenty of other researchers say legalization has no impact on road safety. I would also be curious how many 911 calls were from new users who perhaps consumed too large a dose and were experiencing unpleasant side effect that nonetheless had no chance of becoming fatal.

At any rate, as someone who apparently would self-label as conservative or at least, not liberal, I would assume you would agree with me that the government should have some pretty compelling evidence of harms it's reducing if it wants to limit human freedom. With cannabis, there's just really very slim evidence that prohibition does anything to improve people's lives.

@sirleothelion: I could quibble with your idea that universal healthcare would amount to oppression or taxation without representation but I will just say that generally as Americans we place too much faith in the Founding Fathers or at least what the traditional interpretation of their ideas has been. At they end of the day they were humans influenced by their era. They owned slaves. They drank cider all day (as they wrote the Constitution!). And the document they drafted is a product of political compromise, maybe as much as it's a product of enlightenment ideas. And as a result we have had to amend it 27 times. Clearly there are limits to their wisdom.