The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1467433
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, May 11, 2022 C-5 OPINION Submit Letters to the Editor: Letters must be signed and received by noon on Mondays. Email: editor@pressdispatch.net or bring in a hard copy: 820 E. Poplar Street, Petersburg Students must take responsibility for their debt Lending money is not, as they say, rocket science. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, in the last quarter of 2021, of the total of all outstanding busi- ness loans from all commercial banks, 1.08 percent were delinquent. Per the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as of second quarter 2021, a little over 2 percent of the $1.4 tril- lion outstanding in auto loans were de- linquent. Yet in the student loan market, total- ing around $1.6 trillion, not that differ- ent from the total size of the auto loan market, an average of 15 percent are in default at any given time, per the Edu- cation Data Initiative. It should be clear what the problem is. Auto lenders make sure that those to whom they lend can and will pay back the loan. They are careful because if the borrower defaults, the lender loses. But if, tomorrow, President Joe Biden or Sens. Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders decides that it is not fair that there are Americans without new cars and managed to get govern- ment guarantees for auto loans, is there any doubt that there would be a dramat- ic rise in defaults on car loans? Those lending wouldn't care who they lend to because they wouldn't take the loss on a default. You and I, we tax- payers, would, as we will if Biden and his party have their way to wipe out stu- dent loans. Of course, "wipe out" is not the right terminology. Debts don't get wiped out. They just get transferred to someone else. In the case of government guar- antees, that someone else is taxpayers. The concept of student loans backed by the government is another child of the allegedly compassionate 1960s. Doesn't it make sense to help the less fortunate obtain funds to pay for college? But as many theologians and philos- ophers have noted, the greatest char- itable act is to help another individual take control of their own life. Teaching personal responsibility is the most valu- able gift that one can provide another. Our American compassion, our mor- al compass, has gone awry. A child growing up in America today looks around and finds himself or her- self in a nation where debt is larger than the entire economy, and still growing. But just as inflation shows that the costs of fiscal irresponsibility cannot be hidden, so the costs of teaching our youth that personal responsibility is ir- relevant cannot be hidden. It manifests in the destructive behavior we see now. The Wall Street Journal report- ed that one student loan adviser told them, "I'm seeing them say, 'I'm going to take out more loans now and go buy GameStop stock with it because it's go- ing to get forgiven anyway.'" A new Gallup survey reports "32 per- cent of currently enrolled students pur- suing a bachelor's degree report they have considered withdrawing from their program for a semester or more in the past six months." Thirty-six percent attribute this to financial reasons. But 76 percent attri- bute to "emotional stress." Of course, the universities love this. What business wouldn't think the gov- ernment subsidizing purchase of its product is a great idea? Per the American Enterprise Insti- tute, from January 2000 to December 2021, college tuition costs increased 175 percent and college textbook costs increased 150 percent. Over the same period, the consumer price index for all items increased 65.5 percent; prices of cars, household furnishings and cloth- ing remained relatively unchanged; and cellphone services were down 40 percent, computer software down 71 percent and television sets down 97 percent. Per Education Data Initiative, high- est default rate — 26.33 percent — is among arts and humanities majors attending nonselective schools. Can anyone really think such loans make sense? We need to help our youth who want education to get it. But it must be do- ne prudently. Teaching our youth that they don't need to pay back debts is not a good start. Misguided efforts by Biden and his party to cancel obligations on student loans should be vigorously opposed. Home theft Did you know that in some states, if you miss one tax payment, local politicians will take your home, sell it and keep all the profits? Really. Tawanda Hall was behind on her taxes. She was on a payment plan but had missed $ 900. She didn't ex- pect Southfield, Michigan, to take her entire house because of that. It was worth $286,000 more than what she owed. "I'm still in shock," says Tawanda Hall in my new video. "They took my whole house, my whole family's live- lihood." John Bursch, a lawyer for the coun- ty, says while this practice may sound unfair (yes, it sure does), "It's also unfair to force those who pay their taxes to subsidize those who don't." "I pay taxes! " Hall responds. She works as a nursing assistant. "I lift people. I bathe people. I work hard." When Hall found out she was go- ing to lose her home, she tried to pay off the debt. "I went to the mayor's office, I went down to the city county build- ing," she says. "They didn't want our money. They said no." They wanted her house. Taking it should be illegal. "I think it's unconstitutional," says Christina Martin, senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation. "The government can't take more than it's owed." The Foundation is suing local gov- ernments in six states for this type of home theft. Martin won one case in Michigan's supreme court. Oakland County had taken an entire home over an $ 8 debt. Matthew Hodges, the county's lawyer, argued, "There couldn't be anything more fair than informing property owners of what is going to happen, giving them time to act and then letting them make an informed choice." Martin's response: "Do you think if he knew he owed $ 8, he would have paid it? Of course! He didn't know, and there wasn't the proper incentive to let him know." In fact, the town has an incentive not to let him know. Officials rarely tell people: "Pay! Or we'll take your home! " Towns that do this write no- tices in legalese: "a tax lien acquired under a certain Instrument of Tak- ing from the Collector of Taxes for the city ... said instrument of Taking covers a certain parcel of land ... " Hall doesn't remember receiving "anything other than, 'Get out.'" Despite the Michigan Supreme Court ruling, a judge dismissed Hall's case because the government itself did not make the profit. In her case, the town gave her home to a private business. That business, the Southfield Neighborhood Revital- ization Initiative, sold the house and kept the money. The business says it uses the town's donations to maintain attrac- tive, safe neighborhoods, protect and raise property values. "Government shouldn't be able to steal from its own people and then give it over to their friends," says Martin. I ask her how she knows South- field Neighborhood Revitalization of- ficials are "friends" of the politicians. She replies, "The company is lit- erally run by the mayor and the city administrator! " I wanted to interview them. Nei- ther would agree to talk to me. I'm surprised how common this kind of government home theft is. If you are behind on taxes, even just $10 behind, 11 states allow local gov- ernments to sell your home and keep all its value. In Massachusetts, a 66 -year-old grandmother is "sleeping in her car right now," says Martin. "The city took her property, turned around and sold it within days of evicting her." Although her debt was just $ 30,000, they sold her house for $242,000 and kept the difference. The Pacific Legal Foundation has gotten three states to stop engaging in this home equity theft. Good. Eleven more to go. John Stossel is creator of Stossel TV and author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media." It might be the biggest giveaway in American history. President Joe Biden wants to cancel more than $1 trillion of outstanding student loan debt. Biden has already delayed for more than a year student loan repay- ment, and under his new rules, most delinquent and deadbeat borrowers would never have to repay. What a deal for the people who never paid a dime back of the tui- tion money they owe to Uncle Sam. This plan makes suckers out of the millions who have felt honor-bound to pay off their debts. My wife spent years after graduating from college diligently writing checks to pay off the tens of thousands of dollars of loans. That's the way it works when you borrow money and you've signed a commitment to pay the money back. Think about what would happen if this loan repayment policy were to be implemented. Who would ever pay off a student loan ever again after this blanket forgiveness program? Who would benefit? The most re- cent Federal Reserve Survey of Con- sumer Finances found that only 22 % of families had student loan debt and that "student debt has consis- tently been disproportionately held by higher-income families." So this is a giveaway to the fi- nancially successful students and families paid for by middle-class workers, millions of whom didn't go to elite universities in the first place. Once student loans move to "free college" for everyone, universi- ty tuitions, which are already soaring at two to three times the inflation rate, would race further ahead of all oth- er consumer prices. When I attended the University of Illinois in the ear- ly 1980s, the tuition was $1,000 a se- mester. Now, it's closer to $12,000 a semester. Where'd all the money go? The Biden administration has mis- diagnosed the fundamental problem here. To wit: Colleges and universi- ties have become fat, flabby and in- efficient money burners with no ac- countability. No oversight. No get- ting rid of bad teachers and profes- sors. No looking under the hood to see where extraneous costs could be axed. No demand on tenured professors to teach one or two classes a year. If student loan debt has to be retired, why should taxpayers pick up the tab? Why not force universi- ties with massive endow- ments, in many cases in the tens of billions of dol- lars, to use that money to pay off the debts students incurred while they re- ceived virtually worth- less, useless sociology, gender studies and psy- chology degrees? This would incentivize schools to cut their tuitions and their costs, something the academic elites are desperately trying to avoid. Democrats think that buying votes this November by making col- lege essentially free will win them elections. But there is no free lunch, and there is no free college. It's just a question of who pays the piper. And it shouldn't be YOU. Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at Freedom Works. He is also author of the new book: "Govzilla: How The Re- lentless Growth of Government Is De- vouring Our Economy." Politico published a bombshell story late on May 2 that five Supreme Court justices had voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Shockingly, the story even con- tained a link to an authenticated full draft opinion written by Justice Sam- uel Alito, which he apparently circu- lated to the other justices almost three months ago. This isn't a final opinion and the votes can still change. Why else leak it, though, except as a last-ditch effort to bully at least one of the justices in- to changing his or her vote or to influ- ence the political process in some way? While leaks from the Supreme Court have happened in the past, they have historically been few and far be- tween, and never this egregious. And it's hard to remember any other time where someone leaked a complete draft opinion. While leaks in the court's history have been rare, there is some prec- edent for prosecuting a justice's law clerk who leaked information to the press—though the Department of Justice ultimately dismissed the case. In 1919, Ashton Embry, Justice Jo- seph McKenna's law clerk, resigned to become a full-time baker. It was an odd career change, but one that made more sense when just "a few months after this resignation, the Department of Justice indicted him for sharing the court's decisions with Wall Street trad- ers before the decisions were official- ly released." Still, with "no explicit prohibition on insider trading [at the time], the DOJ charged Embry with conspiring 'to deprive the United States of its law- ful right and duty of promulgating in- formation in the way and at the time required by law and at departmental regulation.'" His case never went to tri- al, and the DOJ dismissed the charges approximately 10 years later in 1929. While Embry leaked, presumably for financial gain, a scheme to get rich off of trading on insider knowl- edge doesn't seem like the likely cul- prit behind this leak. For all the handwringing about the court's institutional legitimacy, this leak clearly seems to be a cal- culated political move de- signed to harm that legit- imacy—which makes it all the worse that some on the left are cheering the move. Sadly, we have seen this before. In 2020, for exam- ple, current Senate Majori- ty Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., stood on the steps of the Supreme Court just as it was about to hear oral arguments in an abortion case and said, "I want to tell you, [Jus- tice Neil] Gorsuch; I want to tell you, [Justice Brett] Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions." This shows the lengths to which some on the left will go in order to tar- nish the Court in the service of their extreme positions on abortion (see, for example, here, here, here, and here). As to the leak itself, one Supreme Court news site said, "It's impossible to overstate the earthquake this will cause inside the Court, in terms of the destruction of trust among the Justices and staff. This leak is the gravest, most unforgivable sin." It's definitely a sin and an unpardon- able one. But is it a federal crime? Maybe. Professor Orin Kerr, a noted crim- inal law scholar, succinctly summa- rized his initial thoughts by saying, "It's not clear, I need to go read all the cases and it may depend on the cir- cuit." That's an unsatisfying answer on a visceral level, but it may be the cor- rect one. There's just too much we don't know right now. First, there are no laws that would explicitly cover the unauthorized re- lease of a draft opinion; they're not classified or national security mate- rials. Maybe Congress could pass a law allowing them to be designated as such, but nothing like that current- ly exists. As Kerr points out, obviously, if someone obtained the copy through a hack—a remote but not impossi- ble proposition since Po- litico's national security correspondent placed his name on the story's byline—or stole a phys- ical copy of the draft opinion, those are clear- ly crimes. But what if someone who worked for the Supreme Court and had access to it (like a law clerk) released it without permission? There are a few possibilities for prosecution but nothing that guaran- tees success. One remote possibility is prose- cution for so-called honest services fraud. As the Congressional Research Service has said, Congress amended 18 U.S.C. §1346, "which defines the crimes of mail and wire fraud," to make clear that this statute extends "to con- duct that deprives a person or group of the right to have another act in ac- cordance with some externally im- posed duty or obligation, regardless of whether the victim so deprived has suffered or would suffer a pecuniary harm." Moreover, Supreme Court law clerks clearly take an oath pledging to main- tain confidential information that they learn about as a result of their jobs in their justice's chambers. But the Su- preme Court has pared back that stat- ute's reach to cover "only those who, in violation of a fiduciary duty, participate in bribery or kickback schemes" and that seems an unlikely outcome here. Another remote possibility is prose- cution under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, which is codified at 18 U.S.C. §1030. The act makes it a crime "to access a computer with au- thorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the com- puter that the accesser is not entitled Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Canceling student loan debt would make college more expensive Heritage Viewpoint By Zack Smith Could Supreme Court Leaker be criminally prosecuted? Maybe See COURT on page 6