Many Students had to take out loans this month for a new school year, just as they will next fall. How long will it be before this new group of indebted students demands forgiveness, just as President Biden gave their older brothers and sisters?
A comment I made during a recent appearance on KUED’s The Hinckley Report seems to be resonating on social media. It was to the effect that federal student loan forgiveness solves nothing because it doesn’t tackle the real problem, which is the high cost of higher education.
Many Students had to take out loans this month for a new school year, just as they will next fall. How long will it be before this new group of indebted students demands forgiveness, just as President Biden gave their older brothers and sisters?
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All you have to do is look at them; a little girl with braided hair and a pink outfit, two young men admiring jackets donated to them, a mechanic who tells a reporter in Spanish that he’s grateful for the help he has received.
These are human beings, no different from any others, except they come from Venezuela, a place the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom lists as the 32nd freest economy among the 32 nations of the Americas. It is a nation, the index says, struggling with hyperinflation, repression, huge public debt and a general lack of confidence in the rule of law. “I came here walking,” a man named Eliase told the Vineyard Gazette, which covers Martha’s Vineyard. “We went through 10 different countries until we got to Texas.” How far would you walk for freedom? I don’t remember the exact day, or even which high school class it was. All I remember are the words.
A teacher singled me out in front of the class as someone who was likely to succeed at anything I put my mind to. Me, a goofy teenage kid who wondered, as I imagine many kids do, whether I could measure up to others. It couldn’t have made a bigger impact if it had been chiseled in my forehead. Not everything California does gets copied by other states, unless it has to do with Hollywood or automobile emissions.
The federal Clean Air Act lets states adopt California’s environmental standards instead of Washington’s, if they choose. So far, 16 have done so, including Utah’s neighbors Nevada and Colorado. So, if California carries out a decision made recently by some of its bureaucrats to ban the sales of any new gas-powered vehicles within the state by 2035, other states are likely to follow. That, in turn, would put pressure on manufacturers to switch to mostly electric cars. And that, in turn, would (unless something drastically changes in 13 years) solidify China’s hold on the auto industry, which is not a good thing. The times I can legitimately say I told you so are few. In this case, however, I take no delight.
After many Republicans began claiming the 2020 election was “rigged,” I knew ranked-choice voting, if adopted, would just throw gasoline on that fire. “Ranked-choice voting has its virtues,” I wrote in April or 2021, “but when voters throw the phrase ‘rigged election’ around as if they lived in a tinhorn dictatorship, this is not its moment in history.” No sooner had Alaska announced the results Wednesday in its special election to fill the seat of the late Rep. Don Young, a Republican, than one of the losers, Sarah Palin, blamed ranked choice voting. It was convoluted and confusing, she said, according to the Wall Street Journal. That was mild. Other, more extreme voices in the Republican Party took a harsher, more predictable tone. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., tweeted, “Ranked-choice voting is a scam to rig elections.” |
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The author
Jay Evensen is the Opinion Editor of the Deseret News. He has more than 40 years experience as a reporter, editor and editorial writer in Oklahoma, New York City, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. He also has been an adjunct journalism professor at Brigham Young and Weber State universities. Archives
October 2024
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