Thursday, September 28, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.
I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.
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Invitation from the White House.
Join us Thursday, September 28th at 2:30pm ET for a briefing hosted by Senior Advisor to the President and Director of Public Engagement Steve Benjamin, with special guest Senior Advisor to the President Anita Dunn, to discuss the potential impacts of an Extreme Republican Shutdown. Please see more event details below and be sure to register.
WHAT: White House Briefing on the Impacts of an Extreme Republican Shutdown
WHO: Senior Advisor to the President and Director of Public Engagement Steve Benjamin, Senior Advisor to the President Anita Dunn
WHEN: Thursday, September 28th at 2:30pm ET
WHERE: Register on Zoom https://pitc.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_f0FVZk3rRCKtDRw5qZqlcw
—
A MAGA shutdown would be a colossal mistake — jeopardizing our economy and devastating working families: from disruptions in military pay, Social Security checks and school funding; to 7 million women and kids dropped from food assistance; and air travel delays.
— Nancy Pelosi (@TeamPelosi) September 27, 2023
Don't do it! -NP
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Some stories which show why Biden-Harris deserve re-election. 👇
Their policies make a kinder, better nation.
Student loan debt erased for 804K people who paid for decades. Then came tears, disbelief.
Katrina Mosler.
A while back, Katrina Mosler set up a barrier around the trash cans outside her rural northern California home. Bears had been invading the bins and tearing through bungee cords meant to keep them shut.
But at about 3 a.m. on a Tuesday in August, she heard a commotion. The motion detector lights outside lit up. A persistent bear wanted to get at the trash despite the enclosure.
Wide awake, Mosler decided to check something before returning to bed. She logged on to her student loan servicer website.
What she saw was a smiley face and a balance of zero.
Mosler, 47, is one of about 804,000 people who found themselves in the same enviable situation this summer. Her outstanding student loan balance, which she had been paying down for roughly 20 years, was gone.
A while back, Katrina Mosler set up a barrier around the trash cans outside her rural northern California home. Bears had been invading the bins and tearing through bungee cords meant to keep them shut.
But at about 3 a.m. on a Tuesday in August, she heard a commotion. The motion detector lights outside lit up. A persistent bear wanted to get at the trash despite the enclosure.
Wide awake, Mosler decided to check something before returning to bed. She logged on to her student loan servicer website.
What she saw was a smiley face and a balance of zero.
Mosler, 47, is one of about 804,000 people who found themselves in the same enviable situation this summer. Her outstanding student loan balance, which she had been paying down for roughly 20 years, was gone.
Mosler, of an area called McKinleyville, California, said the $27,000 she owed hung over her life. Now, as one of the 804,000 whose debts have been erased, there’s room to think about saving for a down payment on a house, instead of the rental surrounded by redwoods, and bears, where she lives with her husband.
Others with student loan debt whose balances were cleared report paying what they originally borrowed, or twice that, and still staring down thousands of dollars to repay.
Mosler started college in 1995 at what was then Humboldt State University, taking out student loans to finance a physical therapy degree. But she dropped out two years later and put her loans into forbearance, meaning she didn't make payments but interest accrued. The size of what she thought was a manageable amount of debt ballooned.
“When you drop out, there’s no guidance,” she said. “I was 20 and struggling and just pretty aimless.”
Student loan interest: Never making a dent in the debt
Mosler returned to school a decade after her first go, only to graduate with a degree she realized wouldn’t lead to her dream career as a physical therapist. And while the income-based repayment option allowed her to stay afloat as she worked a low-wage retail job, the interest – combined with confusion over whether her payments counted – made it feel like a balance of zero was moving further and further out of reach. Even when she eventually found success in massage therapy, the debt continued to haunt her.
That relief happened overnight feels surreal for Mosler and many others who got that smiley face. These “golden emails,” as student loan expert and advocate Betsy Mayotte describes them, came after decades of sacrifices made to keep up with the payments. Borrowers including Mosler shared some of their tales of forgiveness on Reddit, on what Mayotte labeled the "Mega-thread for the golden emails."
Their experiences leading up to the erasure of their balances, and the basic expenses they can now afford as a result, show the extent to which the student loan system has affected hundreds of thousands of older low- and middle-income borrowers. Amid debate over who should pay and be accountable for the country’s spiraling student loan crisis are borrowers who lived up to what they signed up for and did as told but still haven't shed their debt.
Student loan borrowers protest the GOP outside the Republican National Committee for denying student loan relief to 40 million borrowers in Washington, D.C., last November.
“They’re promising that you’re going to have it retired in 20 or 25 years,” said Christopher Gaunya, who, at 61, thought he would never be able to buy a home or save enough to retire comfortably.
Then a few weeks ago, Gaunya eagerly refreshed his inbox and there it was – an email notifying him, essentially, that he was off the hook. Off the hook for the nearly $150,000 he owed on $63,000 student loans dating back to the 1980s, an amount that snowballed thanks to interest locked in at more than 8%. Off the hook for debt that at one point had Gaunya contemplating suicide.
Falling ‘through the cracks of a broken system’
Gaunya persevered, getting an acupuncture contract job at a hospital and eventually a full-time gig with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Signing up for income-driven repayment – years after completing acupuncture school and only after he did lots of his own research – allowed him to get his payments under control. Under income-driven repayment, however, many borrowers’ monthly bills are so low they don’t touch or barely graze the principal. Their debts can mushroom.
That was the case for Mosler, whose loan payments never seemed to reduce her debt. “You look at your bill. Your payment is for $113, and $8 of that goes to the principal. The rest goes to interest. It just feels really defeating.”
The Biden administration had for more than a year been working on an adjustment to recalculate the number of payments some borrowers made, which Education Secretary Miguel Cardona framed as a fix to “past administrative failures.” The outstanding debt of affected borrowers was what remained on their loans after the equivalent of 20 to 25 years’ worth of payments.
“For far too long, borrowers fell through the cracks of a broken system that failed to keep accurate track of their progress toward forgiveness,” Cardona said in a July statement announcing the news.
The 804,000 borrowers whose loans were discharged through the adjustment mark one of the largest groups of former students who’ve seen relief under the Biden administration this year. An additional 1.1 million borrowers have had their debt forgiven through defense to repayment, in which students who were defrauded by their colleges are eligible for relief.
An additional 175,000 borrowers who worked for more than a decade in public service finally got the relief they were promised back when they chose to go into these modestly paying careers.
The wait until 'everything says zero, zero, zero'
When he got the first email notifying him of his prospective relief, Gaunya nearly cried. “I got shaky and welled up and was like, ‘Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.’” Vibrating with excitement, he forced himself to “not act like this is real.” He wanted to wait until he got the official email, until “everything says zero, zero, zero.”
Like pretty much all of Biden’s efforts to relieve student debt, this one-time adjustment was almost immediately met with a lawsuit. A couple weeks after the adjustment’s announcement, two right-leaning think tanks – the Cato Institute and Mackinac Center for Public Policy – sued the administration, arguing it lacked the authority to forgive the outstanding debt.
But a federal judge quickly dismissed the lawsuit.
Now that it’s reality, Gaunya is allowing himself to celebrate. Even if more lawsuits challenge the adjustment, he’s convinced any relief already doled out will be impossible to recuperate.
Student loan debt forgiveness, once an idea limited to progressive circles, moved into the mainstream. Biden, once seen as a centrist Democrat, made it a campaign promise.
Some members of Congress, particularly those on the right, have argued student debt relief is a Band-Aid and that pressure instead ought to be on colleges for reducing tuition costs. Many Americans believe relief for borrowers is a handout at the expense of taxpayer dollars.
“It makes me mad when people are like, ‘I’m a taxpayer. I don’t see why I have to pay for your mistakes,'” said Lisa Frisby, 52. “I’m telling you, I’ve been paying on that student loan.”
Lisa Frisby.
When Frisby started college in 1993, she was on her own to finance a degree. She borrowed money to pay for housing, tuition and books, and got a job so she would have health insurance.
A pair of degrees in computer science and management information sciences from her New Jersey university, at first, seemed to pay off. The salary from her first job was enough to cover her rent and make student loan payments.
But 25 years after graduation, the debt wasn’t gone – even though Frisby signed up for an income-driven repayment option and paid consistently for all that time.
Somewhere along the way, she said, a record of some of her payments was lost. There was no proof of nearly a decade’s worth of them.
Fast forward to this year: After about $70,000 worth of payments on a $40,000 loan, the golden email means she’s now finally free.
“I can’t tell you how relieved I am,” said Frisby, who bought the first new car she’s ever owned since her balance was erased. Frisby returned to school to become a nurse, avoiding additional loans by getting help from family to pay tuition and shopping for the cheapest program she could find. She’s actually due a refund because of all the payments she made, and if that money materializes, she said she will pay off all her credit card debt.
“I’ll just have my car and my mortgage,” she said. “I don't need to be rich. I just want to be at zero."
Free to focus on the things that matter
Emmy Yoder, 62, and her husband spent their careers in public service, he in social work, and she in public school teaching. But they never managed to qualify for public service loan forgiveness (PSLF), apparently the result of bureaucratic lapses.
Her husband, who has an autoimmune disease, ended up having his student loan debt forgiven because of his illness. Yoder, unable to secure PSLF, had to sign up for income-driven repayment. Yet relief always felt fleeting, especially with the $40,000 in interest that accrued since she took out her loan in 1997 – not to mention the costs of raising their twins, now 29.
Yoder made payments for more than two decades, though at times had to go into forbearance. “Life isn’t cheap,” said Yoder, who before retiring last year worked at a high-poverty school in Missouri. “Trying to balance it all was so difficult.”
“It was a little embarrassing to admit that I wasn’t able to pay them off, but it wasn’t for lack of trying,” she said, noting she was told twice that she couldn’t get PSLF because her school district wasn’t low-income enough. (PSLF does not have such rules.) “I never did understand how I didn’t qualify for that. It’s such an impossible situation, trying to understand.”
Emmy Yoder, 62, holds her granddaughter, whom she can now watch full-time thanks to the relief she received through the one-time adjustment. The now-retired teacher in Missouri was denied forgiveness despite being eligible for it through various programs. Hefty interest made it difficult to shrink the debt.
A little over a month ago, she got the initial email explaining she might be eligible for relief through the one-time adjustment. “I’ve never played the lottery; I’ve never won anything in my life,” said Yoder, one of the other signatories on the Change.org petition. “This was amazing.”
While they’re already retired, now Yoder and her husband finally have “a lot of breathing room.” One of her daughters, also a teacher, asked if Yoder can help with child care and now, Yoder feels comfortable saying yes. She doesn’t have to get a part-time job to keep up with her student loan payments. (USA Today).
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Overview of two current strikes.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) Strike.
Earlier this month, the United Auto Workers went on strike against Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, also known as The Big Three. Last week, the strike expanded to include 38 parts distribution centers. Biden is the first sitting president in U.S. history to join workers on a picket line. His presence spoke both to his economic priorities as well as the growing power of labor unions. |
↓ What is the strike about? The striking autoworkers have three core demands: fairer wages, better benefits, and greater job security. In 2022, CEOs at the Big Three each made more than $20 million, while autoworkers earned $18 to $32 an hour. The workers' wages have not kept pace with inflation.
Technically speaking, Barra’s compensation is based on stock performance. That is not the same as company performance. Stock performance can be artificially inflated through stock buybacks, a common practice in the automotive industry. The UAW is also demanding reinstatement of pensions, better health care for retirees, and guaranteed job security as the industry transitions to producing more electric vehicles. |
↓ Where do Republicans stand? On Wednesday night, former President Donald Trump will hold a campaign rally in Detroit. In a "Meet the Press" interview, Trump said, “The autoworkers are being sold down the river by their leadership, and their leadership should endorse Trump.” He also falsely asserted that the strike was precipitated by Biden’s push for more electric vehicles. Fain criticized Trump’s visit and said, “Every fiber of our union is being poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers.” As president, Trump aggressively pursued anti-union policies. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said workers who go on strike should be fired. In response, the UAW filed a National Labor Relations Board complaint against Scott. The UAW has not yet endorsed a 2024 presidential candidate. Former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, who is running for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, said he supports the strike. But in Congress, Rogers consistently voted against the UAW’s interests. |
↓ The UAW is continuing to negotiate with the Big Three. We’ll see if having a sitting president in their corner gives them any added leverage. .(The American Independent). |
One more thing.
“The autoworkers picketing factories across America aren’t just seeking higher pay. They are also, audaciously, demanding the end of the standard 40-hour workweek. They want a full week’s pay for working 32 hours across four days. And we'll all benefit if they succeed.
While unions have lost much of their power to set standards in the workplace, they can still play a useful role in pioneering changes. Though the 40-hour week may feel like an immutable law of nature, it’s barely a century old.” (New York Times)
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) Strike and the Screen Artists Guild (SAG-AFTRA) Strike.
Placards are gathered together at the close of a picket by members of The Writers Guild of America outside Walt Disney Studios, Tuesday, May 2, 2023, in Burbank, Calif.
The 148-day Hollywood writers strike is finally over, thanks to a new three-year deal the Writers Guild of America made with major Hollywood studios. Film and TV writers in the union still have to ratify the contract, but they're allowed to get back to work.
"The deal is exceptional in that it is something that will protect writers, not just now, but in the future," WGA West President David Goodman told NPR. Last week and over the weekend, he and the union's negotiating team met with the top executives of Disney, Netflix, NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery to hammer out the new three-year contract.
"There's a bunch of things the companies told us they would never do: minimum staff size is one of them. Preserving the writer's room: that was a key gain. Residuals in the success of streaming: another thing they said they'd never do. They couldn't figure out success. They did it here," said Ellen Stutzman, WGA's chief negotiator. "And really key to writers: some real A.I. protections."
The studios agreed to use writers for screenplay and teleplays, not material generated by or incorporated by artificial intelligence. And for the first time, streaming companies such as Netflix promised to be transparent about their viewership data. Successful shows would generate bonuses for writers.
Goodman says the studios finally made all these ground-breaking changes because the WGA and the actors' union SAG-AFTRA demanded them. Members of both unions have been on the picket lines in front of studios in Los Angeles, New York City and elsewhere.
"Two major unions were out on strike, the business was shut down and there was no end in sight. That's what convinced the heads of those companies to sit down at the table and try to make this deal," Goodman said. "Once they did, they realized that everything we were asking for was not only reasonable but affordable."
According to the WGA, the deal's total value was $233 million. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers initially offered the guild $86 million.
Goodman and Stutzman say they're so confident writers will seal the deal by ratifying the contract in October that they're allowing them to resume writing now. But the saga's not over yet; SAG-AFTRA remains on strike until the AMPTP makes a deal with them. (NPR).
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Thought you might like to know.👇
Eliminating Electoral College favored by majority of Americans | Pew Research Center.
The Electoral College has played an outsize role in some recent U.S. elections. And a majority of Americans would welcome a change to the way presidents are elected, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults (65%) say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency. A third favor keeping the current Electoral College system.
Public opinion on this question is essentially unchanged from last year, though Americans’ support for using the popular vote to decide the presidency remains higher than it was a few years ago.
Explore Americans’ views of the political system
This article draws from our major report on Americans’ attitudes about the political system and political representation, conducted July 10-16, 2023. For more, explore:
The report chapter on Americans’ views of proposed changes to the political system
The current electoral system in the United States allows for the possibility that the winner of the popular vote may not secure enough Electoral College votes to win the presidency. This occurred in both the 2000 and 2016 elections, which were won by George W. Bush and Donald Trump, respectively.
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A victory for voting rights at the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court tells Alabama to shut up and obey its voting rights decision.
Justice Elena Kagan laughing (during her confirmation hearing.)
The Supreme Court handed down two very brief orders on Tuesday, informing the state of Alabama that no, it is not allowed to defy one of the Court’s decisions on gerrymandering.
In June, in one of the most surprising decisions the Court has handed down in years, the justices voted 5-4 to affirm a lower court decision striking down Alabama’s congressional maps. The courts ordered the state to draw new maps that include at least two districts where Black voters can elect their candidates of choice.
African Americans make up about 27 percent of the state’s population, and Alabama has seven congressional districts. So, if the state has two Black districts, that will give Black voters representation that is roughly proportional to their population.
Both the lower court decision and the Supreme Court’s decision affirming it, in Allen v. Milligan, were uncontroversial under longstanding precedents interpreting the federal Voting Rights Act. But the Court’s Republican-appointed majority has historically been very hostile toward voting rights plaintiffs generally, and toward the Voting Rights Act in particular.
Alabama’s lawyers litigated this case with that history seemingly front and center in their minds — acting as if they had the Supreme Court in their back pocket. The first time the Milligan case was before the justices, the state’s lawyers proposed several ways to read the Voting Rights Act that would effectively eliminate its safeguards against racial gerrymandering.
But five justices rejected this effort to rewrite the law in their June opinion, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing that Alabama’s proposed rules run “headlong into our precedent.”
Nevertheless, Alabama refused to comply with the Court’s order, drawing a new map that contained only one district where Black voters could elect a candidate of their choice. The state then asked the Supreme Court to allow these new maps to go into effect because, while the state did not comply with the Court’s order, it did make some changes to the maps that touched upon some minor issues in the case that the Court mentioned in its June decision.
On Tuesday, the Court told Alabama that it wasn’t going to accept this defiance. Because there are technically two separate lawsuits challenging Alabama’s maps, the justices handed down two identical orders informing Alabama that it must comply with the Court’s June decision. Both orders are only one sentence long — “The application for stay presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied” — and no justices publicly dissented from this order.
It is still unclear whether this represents a meaningful shift in the Court’s approach to voting rights. In a separate concurring opinion attached to the Court’s June decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that he thinks the Voting Rights Act’s protections against racial gerrymandering should have a sunset date. So it is still possible that Kavanaugh will flip his vote and join the four justices who dissented in June in some future case.
The Court also plans to hear another racial gerrymandering case, Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, in October. The Court’s decision in that case is likely to offer another window into whether the justices are shifting toward a more pro-democracy posture, or whether the June Milligan decision was a one-off.
At the very least, however, Tuesday’s orders suggest that the justices understand that they cannot allow a state to openly defy the Court’s decisions once those decisions are handed down. (Vox).
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Menendez has lost the support of more than half of his fellow Democratic Senators.
They continue to ask him to resign.
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Last chance in 2023.
Last supermoon of the year begins to rise Thursday evening.
People watch a supermoon rise above Lisbon, Portugal on August 30.
There's a full moon risin'.
Starting Thursday evening, a brilliant supermoon will be visible in the sky.
Supermoons occur when a full moon reaches perigee, or the nearest point to Earth on its elliptical orbit around our planet.
They can appear as much as 14% larger and 30% brighter than the faintest moon of the year, according to NASA.
The moon will begin to appear full Thursday evening, and reach the peak of its full phase around 6 a.m. ET Friday.
Missed last night's supermoon? Check out these stellar images from around the world
SPACE
Missed last night's supermoon? Check out these stellar images from around the world
Since it's occurring close to this year's autumnal equinox on Sept. 23, it's also known as a harvest moon. That's because historically farmers harvesting their summer-grown crops were helped by the bright moonlight shining shortly after sunset, according to The Old Farmer's Almanac.
Harvest moons typically take place in September, though they can also happen in October depending on the lunar calendar.
This week will be your last chance to see a supermoon this year, Space.com reported.
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