1) Nebraska Jumps Aboard the School Choice Movement
Nebraska's first-ever school choice bill passed the legislature yesterday and it is headed to the governor's desk. He will sign it in the days ahead.
Here is the bill summary from the American Federation for Children:
The Opportunity Scholarship Act, LB753, creates a $100 million tax credit scholarship program
Students from lower-income families and with special needs are eligible for scholarships to attend private schools
Families with incomes below 300% of the federal Free Lunch rate will be eligible for a voucher equal to 75% of state per-pupil funding, roughly $9,200 per year.
Congratulations to lead sponsor Senator Lou Ann Linehan and Governor Pillen.
Instead of celebrating this victory for better education opportunities for children, here is the snide headline from the Associated Press:
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska lawmakers passed a bill Wednesday that will channel public money to scholarships for private school tuition, despite critics who say the measure hurts public schools, benefits wealthy taxpayers and helps mostly parochial schools that can discriminate against LGBTQ+ students.
This is a new one for us: school choice hurts LGBTQ kids?
2) Biden’s $6 Trillion Spending Spree Is What Has Escalated Interest Rates
This is rich: the Biden Administration is spreading panic about higher interest rate costs due to debt ceiling gridlock. Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors has put out an analysis suggesting that interest rates paid for insurance on government bonds have risen by roughly 100 basis points (or 1%), because of investor worries about paying the bonds due to debt ceiling gridlock. Now credit rating agency Fitch is threatening a downgrade on some U.S. bonds.
Cost of Insurance on Government Bonds
But these short-term small spikes in interest rates are minuscule compared to what has happened to interest rates under Biden thanks to his $6 trillion spending spree. The Fed funds rate has risen from close to zero to 5.25 percent – in one year. That steep rise in rates was triggered by the 9% inflation rate under Biden last Summer.
Federal Funds Rate
Then look at what has ALREADY happened to interest rate expenses under Biden. For Biden to complain about interest rate expenses would be like Kamala lamenting our out-of-control border.
The bottom line: slashing government spending and bringing the trajectory of debt down could have a much bigger impact on lowering interest rate costs for Uncle Sam and private borrowers (for example, on mortgage rates) than the Biden plan of a deal with no cuts at all.
3) Nearly Every House Democrat Voted for Taxpayer Bailout of Student Loans
Virginia Representative Bob Good sought and received a favorable opinion from the GAO that Biden's decree using COVID as an excuse for a $400+ billion transfer of student loans from borrowers to taxpayers can be blocked using the Congressional Review Act. That set up yesterday's House vote on HJRes45 and means that the bill cannot be filibustered in the Senate.
All House Republicans but only two House Democrats voted yes. This means that virtually every Democrat in Congress is in favor of transferring a near half-trillion dollars of costs from deadbeats who didn’t pay their student loans for college – and in most cases have higher incomes than those who DIDN’T attend a fancy-schmancy $50,000 a year college - onto the backs of construction workers, plumbers, electricians, restaurant workers, and bus drivers.
And THESE are the same people who lecture us about “fairness” and reducing income inequality?
4) More Evidence That COVID Lockdowns Were a Test Case for Stalinist Climate Change Restrictions
We’ve warned about this MANY times in these emails.
Now that governments have had their dictatorial/ham-handed experiment in locking down businesses, churches, and schools with curfews and stay-at-home orders to stop the spread of the virus, similar controls, and restrictions will soon be coming to stop climate change. California has already done this with rolling electric power brownouts to bring economic activity to a screeching halt.
So we were alarmed, but not too surprised, to read that Germany’s “Advisory Council on the Environment” says lessons learned from the government’s response to the pandemic will help “the obligation of policymakers (in) facilitating environmentally friendly behavior” in fighting the next crisis: climate change.
Here is one of the spooky passages from the report. Lockdown measures “demanded a lot from people” and “proved controversial… in their unequal impact on different social groups.” But the pandemic and energy crises “show that political measures to carefully restrict the behavior of citizens are possible” and that they can be “designed and communicated in such a way that the majority support them.”
Wake up people: There is no basic liberty or civil right that the left will not snatch away in their quest to "save" the planet.
