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I want to talk about the recent
Biden efforts, the new sort of revived

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Biden efforts to cancel student loan debt
for college students, not because I actually

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care about the policy all that much. It's kind of a red and meat

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political issue for people that I don't
think has quite as much genuine on the

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ground importance as people think. Just
my two cents on the whole student loan

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issue, I would be totally fine
with the federal government for giving everyone's student

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loan debt if it was accompanied by
actual meaningful reform of the federal student loan

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sort of our federal student loan policies
where basically there's a limitless supply of federal

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funny money just available for college students
to get loans to go to college or

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worse, to go to graduate programs
with very questionable return on investment for that

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college student. But the federally subsidized
banks know that they're not going to lose

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any money. So yeah, we'll
give you the loan. We know we're

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not going to lose the money.
We know we're going to get this money

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back because it's the federal government,
is you know, guaranteeing it. Uh

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So, they are pumping out tons
and tons and tons of dollars, and

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the universities realize, oh, they're
not putting any caps on this, so

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we can just keep jacking up tuition
costs nationwide at all the colleges and universities,

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and these dumb kids will keep taking
out bigger and bigger and bigger and

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bigger loans. So every year we
can increase our tuition by five percent and

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just make more money than God.
And that's what a lot. A lot

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of these elite universities now have more
money money than God. Okay, they

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are sitting on billions and billions and
billions of dollars in endowments, so there's

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no motivation to change. Like we
always everyone talks about the problem of the

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massive increase into it, the unsustainable
increase intuition costs. Well, the reason

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why there's an unsustainable increase intuition is
because the federal government is allowing so much

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money in federal student loans. So
I honestly don't care that much about forgiving

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all student loan debt. If you
simultaneously fix the problem, which is stop

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the never ending supply of funny money, put restrictions and limitations on the colleges

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and universities who have just been making
absolute bank that have been just engaged in

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highway robbery of American eighteen year olds
and worse yet, have been making tons

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of money handover fist through. Some
of the worst examples of these programs where

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universities are making a ton of money
for valueless degrees is with graduate programs,

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these different graduate programs that will put
an applicant one hundred thousand plus dollars into

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debt for some kind of master's degree
that is really not very valuable and it's

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not going to lead to a very
valuable job. That's the real killer.

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It's not so much people getting undergraduate
degrees, it's people getting these graduate degrees

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that are totally flippin' useless. And
why do I say I don't mind it

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as much? Well, listen,
everyone, like I understand the antipathy of

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I didn't go to college. I
chose to pursue another path so I wouldn't

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have student loan debt, or I
paid off all my student loan debt.

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Why should I be forced through my
taxes to pay for the student loan debt

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of a bunch of these improvident idiots
who took out these huge loans and don't

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have a way to pay it back. That's not fair. Why am I

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being forced to that? They took
out the loans themselves. I understand that

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reasoning. I share some of that
sentiment. What I'm telling you is that

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you're already gonna have to do that
anyway. Specifically for the worst of those

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loans. The moron who took out
the one hundred thousand dollars loan for a

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master's program in some artsy flartcy degree, you know, underwater lesbian filmmaking or

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whatever. That person is never gonna
pay that loan back. Right, that

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person's never gonna pay that back.
We're we're covering that like that unquestionably,

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so the worst of these loans we
already have to pay back. I wouldn't

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mind paying off student loan debt if
it were accompanied by meaningful reform of how

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student loans work. Now, there's
another way of looking at this, which

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is, why are we paying off
student loan debt? What is it about

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college students, or what is it
about college graduates or master's program graduates or

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doctoral program graduates. Why are they
so special and so deserving of debt forgiveness

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as opposed to holders of other kinds
of debt. Why not forgive credit card

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debt? Why not? It's debt
People similarly with credit cards, made improvident

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choices that put themselves into debt.
Maybe they were taken advantage of the same

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way that a lot of people are. You know a lot of people argue,

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Look, you're eighteen years old,
you're applying for college. A whole

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generation of baby Boomers has told you
that the path to success is college.

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You feel like you have to do
this, so you take out when you're

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really not very mature and really not
very understanding, you take out this big

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fifty thousand dollars loan so you can
go to college. Without thinking all this

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through. Well, credit card companies
take advantage of young, stupid people too,

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put them in debt. Also,
why aren't we paying off credit card

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debt? Why aren't we paying off
any other kind of category of debt medical

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debt? Medical debt is heartbreaking.
It's essentially always for people who didn't do

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anything wrong, people who had the
bad luck to get sick. The reason

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why Democrats are so focused on student
loan debt is because it's a political favor

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to their constituency. The young,
the relatively young, basically millennials, people

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in their thirties, the oldest of
whom is maybe around forty. Basically the

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forty and undercrowd are the holders of
all the student loan debt in America,

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and that cohort of people tends to
be more liberal. So the Biden administration

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is basically it needs to, you
know, it needs to kind of gin

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up its base to turn out to
vote. Biden administration is trying to find

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a way. Hey, maybe I
can forgive all those people student loan debt.

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All these young people stop being angry
at me over Gaza, over the

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Biden administration supporting Israel too much.
Although at this point I feel like the

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Biden administration has made exactly zero people
happy. I think the pro Israel side

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is thinking Biden is being disastrously not
pro Israel, and the pro Gaza side

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thinks it still thinks that Biden is
basically a war criminal and a genocide enabler.

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So I think he's perfectly made both
sides angry. Anyway, Biden has

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this real problem with young voters because
of the Gaza situation, and he's trying

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to find a way to ingratiate himself
with them. So he's back at it

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with the student loan thing. Now, the real debates that have been happening

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over Biden's student loan efforts have not
been so much. I mean, there's

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been some about the policy merits and
demerits of forgiving student loan debt, which,

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as I've said, I am somewhat
ambivalent towards. I wouldn't mind forgiving

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student loan debt if you are meaningfully
reforming the system. Of course, Biden

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is not meaningfully reforming the system,
so in that sense, I'm more opposed

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to it. The real debates,
though, over Biden's attempts to reform the

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student loan debt have been at the
level of constitutional law. The Biden administration

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has been unable to pass an actual
law and actual statute through Congress that would

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forgive student loan debt. That would
be the appropriate way of going about it.

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That is how laws are written in
the United States America. The House

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rights, you know, the House
or the Senate, write of law.

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Then the other house within Congress votes
on that same law. So the House

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agrees to something, the Senate agrees
to something, and the president signs it.

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That's a law. That's how we
make laws in America. The Biden

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administration is just trying by hook or
by crook because they know they can't get

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enough popular support to actually pass legislation. Even when they had the House.

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In the Senate for the first two
years of Biden's presidency, they couldn't get

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sixty votes in the Senate to do
anything, which with the filibuster rule in

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the Senate, to advance most pieces
of legislation, you actually need sixty votes

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in the Senate, not just fifty
plus one. And now Republicans control the

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House, so Democrats know there's no
way they're going to get any debt forgiveness

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through the House. So Biden has
to resort to trying to find some way

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through executive action, through an executive
order, or through some federal executive agency

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doing some kind of rulemaking in order
to forgive student loan debt. So effectively,

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the exercise that the Biden administration has
been engaged in is to go through

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the United States Code and look at
every random statute that's ever been passed in

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human history and try to find a
statute that if you squint at it and

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you interpret it in this really broad
sense, could be interpreted in such a

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way as giving President Biden the authority
to forgive student loan debt President Biden or

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an executive official under him. So
the first round of attempting to forgive student

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loan debt was looking at this bill
called the Heroes Act, which was passed

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right after nine to eleven. It
was basically this realization Congress had after nine

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to eleven. Okay, we have
all these people signing up for the military

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after this national disaster, this national
emergency event like nine to eleven. It's

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putting these new military members. Actually, the way it was happening, it

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was putting military members in almost like
a worse debt position than they would be

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had they not signed up for the
military. So basically, the Heroes Act

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allowed the Secretary of Education, a
federal executive official appointed by the President under

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the president's authority. And you know
President is the head of the Department of

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Education. Okay, he's at the
top of its org chart the Secretary of

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Education and answers to him. Secretary
of Education was authorized to forgive student loan

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debt for certain categories of people in
order to not make them worse off in

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response to some kind of national emergency. The Biden administration took that act,

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that that post nine to eleven Act
that was clearly responding to an emergency like

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nine to eleven and the military response
afterwards, and said, well, COVID

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was a national emergency, so the
Secretary of Education has authority to forgive pretty

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much everybody's debt. It wasn't something, so it wasn't really following the statute.

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Certainly, that's what the Supreme Court
determined when the Supreme Court struck down

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that Biden executive action. The Supreme
Court basically was like, look, you

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can't just take some random statue that
you just squint at and interpret it as

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broadly as you can in order to
sort of, you know, put a

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camel through the eye of the needle, basically to try to put the square

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I'm using metaphors like crazy over here, put the square peg of student loan

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debt forgiveness into the round hole of
some random prior federal statute that really wasn't

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designed for broad based national student loan
debt forgiveness. Well that's what the Biden

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administration is doing now with a different
federal statute. So the Higher Education Act

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is According to this editorial from National
Review, the Biden administration has instead made

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the Higher Education Act the object of
its motivated reasoning and proposed multiple programs within

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the Department of Education to transfer student
debt piecemeal. A few billion for public

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employees here, another few billion for
people who graduated from bad programs there.

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The administration's announcement contains no total cost
estimate. In many cases, the debt

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will be erased automatically, with no
requirement that the recipient even applied for it.

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And it's just as unconstitutional as the
previous efforts. Okay, now,

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when we return, I'm going to
dig a little bit more into this,

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and I'm gonna dig a little bit
more into this again I sort of find

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the policy goal. You know,
Yeah, debt is really bad problem.

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A lot of these people got taken
advance, taking it for a ride when

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they were eighteen years old. Wouldn't
be the craziest thing in the world to

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forgive debt and reform the system.
But that's not what the Biden administration is

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doing. And let's also when we
return, I'm going to talk about how

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this group of people is actually,
in some ways the least needing of student

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loan of debt forgiveness. There are
all kinds of other categories of debt holders

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that need forgiveness far more than college
graduates. That's next on the John Gerardy

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Show. Student loan debt is maybe
the last kind of debt that we should

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be forgiving as far as the hardship
of the people who have it. Now,

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I'm not saying student loan debt is
fun. I know it is not.

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My wife and I worked for a
long time payoff for student loan debt,

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and it was a very satisfying feeling
when we made the last payment and

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gave each other a high five and
got something good for dinner that night.

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It's a very satisfying feeling to do
that, and we recognize not everyone has

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the stability and has way more debt
than we had. Debt is a really

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bad thing, okay, And having
student loan debt sucks, and having that

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anchor, that kind of economic anchor
around your neck when you enter the workforce

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sucks. But it's also the case
that holders of student loan debt have better

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jobs and higher incomes than most cohorts
in society. So the policy reasons for

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wanting to forgive debt. Yeah,
they're good policy reasons for wanting to forgive

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debt. There are all kinds of
young people been saddled with debt because of

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various different kinds of bad things that
exist within the economy within a federal policy.

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People hold credit card huge amounts of
credit card debt, or big home

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loans, or there's all kinds of
debt that people have. But this idea

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that student loan debt is this uniquely
important thing that we have to eliminate.

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It's not the focus of it.
The focus on it is basically because President

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Biden needs to get reelected. He
needs this historically liberal leaning block of people

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to vote for him. If they
don't come out and vote for him,

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he will lose. So he is
basically bribing them to go vote with this

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Save program, which is basically looking
at he's again trying to sort of look

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at He's just sort of created this
program to look at different sort of categories

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of debtholders, So people who were
in bad programs, people with hardship,

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people in this category of people in
that category. And it's gonna cost something

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like four hundred and seventy five billion
dollars over the course of ten years,

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like forty five billion dollars per year. That's a ton of money. Now,

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you know, maybe in the grand
scheme of the current size of our

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federal budget is so immense that maybe
forty five billion a year is just to

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drop in the bucket at this point. Nonetheless, it's it's not just though

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that he's giving out this money to
people. He's also not fixing the root

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problem. Now where is this going
to end up. I think it's gonna

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end up back at the Supreme Court
again, and I have to imagine it's

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going to have the same end result
of the Justice as saying, hey,

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you can't just take some statute,
some old statue that didn't have something to

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do with broad based national federal student
loan debt forgiveness and interpret it in such

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a way to fit this goal that
you want. I think the Supreme Court's

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probably going to slap it down.
I think the Supreme Court's probably going to

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get ticked off that Biden is very
Biden's rhetoric, by the way, about

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talking about the Supreme Court is you
know, for Democrats who have been ranting

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and raving about President Trump's violation of
norms so much over the last five or

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six years. Biden's way of talking
about it is very norm violative that he's

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basically just saying, well, we're
going to show the Supreme Court. No,

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when the Supreme Court says it,
that's the law of the land.

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You can't just ignore Supreme Court decisions
and just keep doing the thing you want

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to do. That's a very norm
violative thing. If Trump were doing it,

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people would be talking about this grave
threat to democracy. But Biden does

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it and it's totally fine. But
this is the problem. Obama discovered this.

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Obama cracked this code, and I
think presidents are just going to follow

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this example for the rest of time. Obama was trying for years to get

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the Dream Act passed. Congress would
not pass the Dream Act Dream Act,

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which would give legal status to people
who came into the country unlawfully but while

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they were children. And Obama said, look, we shouldn't be penalizing these

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people who came over because they were
children when their parents brought them over,

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Like, we shouldn't be penalizing these
people. We should give them some path

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to legal status or citizenship or whatever. And Republicans wouldn't play ball. The

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Republicans wanted other immigration concessions, and
Democrats and Republicans couldn't agree. So Obama

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just got f up and decided to
just do the Dream Act via an executive

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action. He created the DACA program, and Biden. Obama himself had said

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repeatedly he didn't have authority on his
own to create the DACA program, to

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create basically the Dream Act via executive
order. Obama had reiterated that several times,

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and then all of a sudden,
he just does it via executive order.

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And when Trump comes into office and
tries to get rid of the DACA

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program because he thinks it's not constitutional, it gets challenged and the Supreme Court

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set actually upholds the DOCA program because
they said Trump didn't follow appropriate procedure for

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getting rid of it, in spite
of the fact that DOCA was probably unconstitutional

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to begin with. DACA is still
on the books, guys. Obama did

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that in what was I think it
was twenty fifteen, sixteen, I believe

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like right before he left office.
It's still on the books eight or nine

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years later. So I think presidents
are incentivized to I have, if he

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authority to accomplish this goal, I
have via an executive order. It's very

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iffy whether I actually have the constitutional
authority to do this myself versus whether Congress

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needs to do it. So I'm
just gonna do it, and I'm just

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gonna throw this spaghetti against the wall
and I'm gonna see if it sticks,

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and if the Supreme Court strikes it
down. Okay, the Supreme Court strikes

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it down, but I get to
brag to my supporters I did this.

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And guess what. You don't know
how the court cases are gonna go.

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Maybe I can design it in a
way that the Republicans who are angry about

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it don't have standing to sue.
Maybe I can get it tied up in

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the courts for years and years and
years. In the meanwhile, it's accomplished

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the thing I want. So that's
what Biden's. Biden's just decided, that's

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what I'm gonna do. I'm just
gonna keep issuing these executive orders where I

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have very flimsy, iffy legal justification, legal grounding to do what I'm doing.

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I'm just gonna throw this spaghetti against
the wall and I'm gonna see if

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it sticks. And I think more
and more presidents are gonna feel and probably

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it's gonna happen with I hope it
happens with Republican presidents. I mean,

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if this is what Democrats are gonna
do, why the hell shouldn't Republicans do

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it? I think this is just
gonna be what president how presidents govern.

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More and more, Congress can't agree
on anything. The Philibuster rule in the

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Senate basically prevents Congress from agreeing on
most anything substantial. So why not issue

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executive orders? See what happens when
we return? Why do liberals care so

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much about Palestine Gaza specifically but don't
care about Armenia? I will I want

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to examine the psychology behind it.
Next on the John Girardi Show, I

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want to talk about the psychology of
why liberals are so dedicated to the cause

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of Gaza and Palestine but not so
dedicated to other causes of other people groups

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who are being invaded and or colonial
colonized. Okay, now, and with

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Gaza, let me see if I
can lay out my somewhat complicated John Girardi

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thoughts and feelings about it. I
don't see why with the Israel Gaza conflict,

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the United States needs to provide federal
funding to Israel for military stuff.

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They seem to be doing just fine. I feel like I also don't know

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that we need to be providing funding
for the other side. I obviously I

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don't like the idea that there are
civilians dying, or that there is a

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humanitarian crisis happening. Is it America's
responsibility to fund humanitarian aid for every single

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conflict zone in the world. We
clearly don't think so. I'd rather give

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humanitarian aid than military funding. Am
I confident that humanitarian aid going to Gaza

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is used? Well? No,
not necessarily. Am I confident that the

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about anything I hear about the humanitarian
crisis in Gaza? Am I confident about

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anything I hear about casualty figures among
civilians and non combatants in Gaza? No,

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The only source of info we have
for civilian deaths in Gaza is from

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Hamas, a horrible, evil terrorist
organization. More and more I sort of

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wish that the United States just had
nothing to do with Israel and Palestine whatsoever.

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That it seems to me to be
an almost intractable and well nigh insolvable

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problem that I just don't know that
decades of American interaction with the issue has

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actually improved the situation at all.
So it's not to say I don't care

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about the lives of people there.
But guys, guess what. There are

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plenty of horrific war zones and humanitarian
crises that happened all over the world that

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for some reason we don't care about, but for some reason we do care

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about Gaza, Palestine, Israel.
So I guess I'm I question whether why

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America needs to be involved in it
at all. And this instinct that we

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have in American politics that you know, Democrats really support the cause of Ukraine.

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Therefore we got to give them fifty
billion dollars of military funding. Can

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we just say good for you,
you know, good for you, Ukraine,

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but we're not gonna give you fifty
billion dollars. Similarly, Republicans,

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we stand with Israel. Here,
we stand with Israel, and so we

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got to give them, you know, ten billion whatever it is in military

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funding. Do we have to give
them ten billion dollars? Why does our

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support for a country necessarily mean giving
spending tens of billions of American taxpayer dollars

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on weaponry? Because guess what happens
when you do that? Now you're involved

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now it's not just a vote to
give another country weapons is basically a vote

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that America is declaring a proxy war. We're not gonna fight, but we're

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gonna give you all the money and
materiel so that you fight. Which,

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by the way, Russia notices that
America is waging a proxy war against it

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via its proxy Ukraine. The Islamic
world notices that America is waging a proxy

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war against the innocent victims of Palestine, the noble freedom fighters Hamas. That's

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the way it gets described in the
Arab street so called. That's the way

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it gets described throughout the Middle Eastern
world. They notice that America gives Israel

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weaponry and they get super angry about
it. So, I guess I just

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don't understand this instinct of we support
you. Therefore, here's a bunch of

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military aid. Well that is now
involving you in the conflict in ways that

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can have impacts on your long term
national security, your foreign relations with all

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these countries in ways that it wouldn't
if you said, hey, we are

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calling for diplomatic resolution of the problem. We think this is wrong. Maybe

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we need to have trade embargoes or
whatever. That's different from We're gonna give

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you weapons and tanks. You can
kill these sons that you know what now.

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Anyway, that's the Joan Juraradi attitude
towards this is. I don't want

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America to be involved in more proxy
wars around the world. If we are

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going to be involved in proxy wars, though, I have often asked,

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why aren't we fighting a proxy war
for Armenia. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians

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have been displaced from their homes,
thousands of Armenians have been killed by Azerbaijan.

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This is a topic of serious concern
to thousands of people who live in

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the San Joaquin Valley who are of
Armenian descent, who are seeing their homeland

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threatened. And Azerbaijan is clearly sick
knowing that it wants to invade Armenia more.

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It's already invaded then Gorno Karabac region. It has destroyed. It's engaged

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in cultural genocide, destroying churches that
have been around since the twelve hundreds.

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It's engaged in this horrific destruction of
life of property. It is a completely

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unprovoked, unjustified attack where the United
States government has given military weaponry to Azerbaijan

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as it's engaged in this horrible in
this horrible invasion. It's terrible, it's

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a terrible thing. No one gives
a rat's rear end about it other than

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members of the Armenian diaspora in America
and Europe, and people like me.

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I guess who I care about Armenians
because I have friends and neighbors who are

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Armenian. Nobody cares about it,
And I guess this is the thing I

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don't understand. There is obviously emotional
and an affective connection on the part of

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certain political groups in America for certain
kinds of conflicts, and it seems to

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shift depending on how old you are
and your political affiliations. Older boomer liberals

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are totally dedicated to the cause of
Ukraine. They've been waving Ukrainian flags,

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They've been putting Ukrainian flags on their
Twitter bios, They've they've been very dedicated

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to the cause of Ukraine. Young
liberals totally dedicated to the cause of the

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Palestinians, and they have this deep, effective connection to what they perceive as

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the horrible suffering of the Palestinian people
against the ruthless, brutal Israeli occupier regime,

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and it's this mindset that, Look, I'm not saying Israel hasn't done

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bad things in its past. When
Israel got the land in nineteen forty eight,

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Now, in fairness, a lot
of Jews were already living there.

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Jews have been living in that region
for thousands of years. Palestine was not

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even really a political entity. It
was part of It had been part of

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the Ottoman Empire, it was part
of Jordan, et cetera. Okay,

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so yeah, I would feel bad
for Palestinian settlers who got kicked off their

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land or you know, Muslim persons. I guess Palestinian as a category didn't

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necessarily exist in nineteen forty eight.
I feel bad for anyone who got kicked

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off their land and out of their
house in nineteen forty eight when the Jews

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took over. I guess I just
don't understand the affective connection to modern day

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from modern day American young liberals to
the cause of those people from nineteen forty

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eight, and the idea that that
historical wrong must guide all of our policy

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going forward, and that Israel can
never lay legitimate claim to any of the

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land that they occupy militarily I mean, I don't know how many conflicts all

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over the world, how many nations
have their borders defined by wars of questionable

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legitimacy, settler or annex agreements of
questionable legitimacy. After a certain number of

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decades, people just make different arrangements
and decide to move rather than wage the

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00:33:00.480 --> 00:33:08.519
war of sixty seventy eighty ninety one
hundred years ago. And I don't understand

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why it is that young liberals so
care about the cause of Palestinians as opposed

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to the cause of anyone else in
the world who's been unjustly treated. Look,

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if you want to make an argument
to me, the Palestinians have been

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unjustly treated, Okay, I'm open
to listening to it. Why do you

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care about that twenty times more than
the plight of Armenians? Why do you

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care about that eighty times more than
the plight of I mean, how many

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00:33:37.839 --> 00:33:43.720
shifting allegiances and political setups have there
been in Africa that have resulted in thousands

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of people dying in horrific, bloody
conflicts. Why do we care about this,

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especially for Again, I'm not saying
the Israeli record is spotless, but

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look at who's running Gaza. What
is it about Hamas? These Islamic fundamentalist

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00:34:09.719 --> 00:34:20.480
lunatic terrorists who, if they met
the average woke American super left wing college

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00:34:20.519 --> 00:34:31.760
student, would want to execute him
or her Like how many how many LGBT

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00:34:32.159 --> 00:34:37.760
identifying American liberal college students who are
waiving the Palestinian flag on their college campuses,

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how many of them might genuinely be
executed by Hamas if they went to

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Gaza and said, Oh, I'm
here with I'm a guy, I'm here

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with my boyfriend. Hi Hamas.
I know that fundamental Islam is so notoriously

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accepting of same sex couples and definitely
don't execute gay guys. Why this effective

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connection when we return? I think
I might have something to explain it,

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and I think it all has to
do with colonialism. That's next done the

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John Girardi Show. I've been struggling
with this question of why do young liberals

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have such a deep affective connection to
Palestine in the cause of Palestine, specifically

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Gaza right now, over and against
the gazillions of other conflicts that have happened

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in the world over the last thirty
years, where groups of people have been

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colonized or oppressed, or militarily invaded, or treated unjustly. I don't understand

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it. I have suspicions about two
reasons. One, Palestine is an example

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of Western colonial settlement. Are perceived
to be Western colonial settlement when the British

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own territory was given over to create
a new state of Israel in nineteen forty

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eight. Yes, a lot of
the people living there already were Jews,

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but a lot of Jews came there
in the wake of World War II,

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after the horrors of what had happened
to European Jews during World War Two,

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and the perception among there's nothing worse
for young American college students and the college

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professor crowd than Western colonialism. Colonialism
is evil, not just the actual colonialism

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of European powers controlling areas and governing
areas, but also even intellectual colonialism,

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as they call it. They want
to decolonize the curriculum. Don't study Aristotle

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and Plato, those dead white guys, as if with an ancient Greek we're

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going to be talking in categories of
black or white. No, you should

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00:37:04.960 --> 00:37:10.079
read you know this person, you
know this far less important person than Plato

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or Aristotle, who happens to be
a modern person of color. All Right,

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When Azerbaijan invades Armenia, well it's
not Western colonialism, so they don't

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care about it as much. When
Russia invades Ukraine, well they're both kind

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of Western in some broader sense.
It's not really Western colonialism. It's just

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too you know, it's two Western
powers sort of duking it out. Palestine

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is sort of the last instance of
the British West supported, and there's some

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sort of race thing, white European
Jews coming and colonizing brown people's land,

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although really I don't know that there's
that big of a difference as far as

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skin color between Jews who live in
Palestine and Palestinians. The other reason is

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maybe there's some lingering antipathy for Jewish
people. That'll do it for John Girardi

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show. We'll see you next time
on Power Talk