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Why 2021 Will Be A Banner Year For Renewable Energy In The U.S.

Why 2021 Will Be A Banner Year For Renewable Energy In The U.S.

Editor OilPrice.com                       

A Joe Biden administration is bound to usher in a 180-degree pivot on climate change from the outgoing presidency. But with control of the Senate hanging in the balance with the battle set to go down to the wire in Georgia, Biden’s plan to squeeze $2 trillion from the federal purse to pursue his ambitious Climate Plan could end up severely hamstrung.

But with the global shift to renewable energy in full swing, the American political landscape might not matter that much in the long run.

Indeed, Goldman Sachs has predicted that global capital spending on renewable energy will surpass fossil fuel Capex for the first time ever in 2021.

According to the investment banker, renewable power will reach 25% of the total energy supply capex in 2021, beating out hydrocarbons for the first time ever. According to Goldman’s Carbonomics Report, renewables will reach 25% of the total energy supply capex in 2021, beating out upstream oil and gas investments for the first time in history.

The report says that cleantech has the potential to drive $1-2 trillion per annum in green infrastructure investments and could hit $16 trillion by 2030. This could create 15-20 million jobs worldwide (green infrastructure is 1.5-3.0x more capital- and job-intensive than traditional energy).

Source: Goldman Sachs

Falling cost of capital

Goldman Sachs says a big factor that will help clean energy achieve the remarkable feat is a major bifurcation in cost trends, with renewables recording a big fall in the cost of capital vs. rising costs for fossil fuel investments. According to GS, the weighted average cost of capital (WACC), aka the hurdle rate for renewables, currently clocks in at 3-5% compared to 10-20% for oil and gas investments.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) Renewable energy costs declined rapidly over the past decade, with solar photovoltaics (PV) falling 82% while onshore wind generation costs declined 39%. These trends are expected to continue in the coming years.

Source: IRENA

The situation could not be more different for the fossil fuel sector.

The global oil and gas sector has recorded the biggest Capex cuts in history: Oil and gas companies focused on the North American market have cut capital expenditure by 49% in 2020; Independent Oil Companies (IOCs) by 29% while National Oil Companies have lowered Capex by 24%.

The North American market has been particularly hard hit, with the sector expected to record a staggering $530 billion reduction in capex over the next 5 years. 2020 upstream oil & gas spending is tracking to fall 60% from its 2014 peak.

Source:The Duff & Phelps Capex Cut Tracker

A lot of the ongoing risks in the oil and gas sector are closely related with the growing danger of stranded assets and massive asset writeoffs.

The unprecedented destruction in energy demand has triggered a wave of asset devaluations, with Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) announcing that it will writedown $22B of its assets while ExxonMobil (NYSEXOM) has warned it might write off $30B.

Those figures could get a lot bigger as the quarters roll on, with nearly a third of their assets worth nearly a trillion dollars doomed to be declared worthless. Indeed, the average oil reserve life has already fallen by 20 years due to stranded assets.

A slew of potential Covid-19 vaccines have improved the oil and gas outlook somewhat by offering hope for a recovery in 2021. However, a lot will still depend on how committed OPEC+ will remain to its production cuts. The coalition held a ministerial committee meeting on Tuesday but failed to reach a formal agreement on quotas even as Saudi Arabia urged members to consider delaying a boost to output by two million barrels per day come January. With the majority of oil producers struggling to balance their budgets amid historically low oil prices, it’s going to become increasingly hard to convince everyone to keep toeing the line.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

Trump Swiftly Blows Up His 1 Decent Conservation Action

HuffPost

Trump Swiftly Blows Up His 1 Decent Conservation Action

Chris D’Angelo, Environment Reporter         

The Trump administration wasted no time proving what was clear from the get-go: that its support of a major public lands bill was nothing more than pre-election greenwashing for President Donald Trump and two Senate allies.

In August, Trump signed the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act into law, falsely portraying himself as a conservationist on par with President Theodore Roosevelt. The measure, widely considered the most significant conservation legislation in a generation, allocates $9.5 billion to fix crumbling national park infrastructure and permanently funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund at $900 million per year. The decades-old LWCF uses offshore fossil fuel revenues to establish and protect parks, wildlife refuges, forests and wildlife habitat.

But Trump and his team are longtime foes of the LWCF. The administration tried repeatedly to gut the program’s funding. And days after the 2020 presidential election, which Trump handily lost, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed an order that kneecaps LWCF and undermines the new law that Bernhardt previously argued would not have passed without Trump’s “strong and bold action.”

The order, dated Nov. 9, gives state governors and local jurisdictions the power to veto federal land acquisitions made through LWCF. “A written expression of support by both the affected Governor and local county or county government-equivalent (e.g. parish, borough) is required for the acquisition of land, water, or an interest in land or water under the Federal LWCF program,” it reads.

Once the election was done, it was open season on land protection.Aaron Weiss, deputy director, Center for Western Priorities

The move is a parting gift to the anti-federal land movement that has enjoyed extraordinary access to top administration officials but that never convinced the administration to embrace wholesale transfer or sale of public lands. In fact, the requirement in Bernhardt’s order mirrors an amendment that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced when the Great American Outdoors Act was being debated in Congress, as E&E News highlighted.

Lee strongly opposes federal control of public lands in the West. “Our long-term goal must be the transfer of federal lands to the states,” Lee wrote in a 2018 tweet. William Perry Pendley, the highest-ranking official at Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, shares those extreme views, once writing that the “founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold.”

Democratic lawmakers, environmentalists and outdoor sporting groups have slammed Trump’s Interior chief for trying to circumvent Congress and restrict how LWCF funds are allocated.

“I urge you to immediately rescind this anti-public land order,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a longtime champion of LWCF, wrote in a letter last week to Bernhardt. “This undercuts what a landowner can do with their own private property, and creates unnecessary, additional levels of bureaucracy that will hamstring future land acquisition through the Land and Water Conservation Fund.”

In a release  announcing Bernhardt’s order, the Interior Department said the action “honors Interior’s commitment to be a good neighbor by giving states and communities a voice in federal land acquisition.”

President Donald Trump signs the the Great American Outdoors Act at the White House on Aug. 4. The public lands law aims to fix crumbling national park infrastructure and permanently fund The Land and Water Conservation Fund.  (Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI via Getty Images)

 

For those paying attention, Trump’s about-face on LWCF felt like little more than a political favor for two Republican senators facing tough bids for reelection in states where protecting public lands is a key issue among voters. Along with showering praise upon himself, Trump credited Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who both previously voted in favor of slashing LWCF funding and supported Trump’s anti-conservation agenda at nearly every turn.

“This landmark legislation would not have been possible without the incredible leadership and hard work of two outstanding senators, in particular, and two fine people ― Cory Gardner and Steve Daines,” Trump said at a signing ceremony for the Great American Outdoors Act.

On the campaign trail, Daines and Gardner touted their work on the Great American Outdoors Act. Daines ultimately defeated his challenger. Gardner did not.

As soon as the 2020 election was over, Trump’s team took aim at one of its only conservation achievements. First, the departments of Interior and Agriculture missed statutory deadlines for submitting lists of projects to receive LWCF funding. Then came Bernhardt’s order undermining the program altogether.

The Great American Outdoors Act is no doubt a major victory for America’s public lands and for LWCF, which has been plagued by funding shortfalls all of its 50-year history. The administration’s claimed support for it, on the other hand, was “a ruse” and a “bald-faced lie,” Aaron Weiss, deputy director of Colorado-based conservation group Center for Western Priorities, told HuffPost. He expects Bernhardt was always planning to undercut the law, whether or not Trump won a second term.

“Once the election was done, it was open season on land protection,” Weiss said by email, adding that Bernhardt is “going to throw as much sand into the gears as he can on his way out.”

The Interior Department and other federal agencies are rushing to finalize numerous environmental rollbacks before President-elect Joe Biden assumes office. Those include selling oil and gas leases in Alaska’s pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and permanently slashing protections for hundreds of species of migratory birds.

Trump May Need to Be Impeached and Removed Before Inauguration Day

Trump May Need to Be Impeached and Removed Before Inauguration Day

Jack Holmes                                    November 19, 2020
Photo credit: Tasos Katopodis - Getty Images
Photo credit: Tasos Katopodis – Getty Images

 

Now that Donald Trump, the President of the United States, is personally “reaching out” to members of a Michigan election board as part of a larger plot to simply throw out the results of an election he lost by a comfortable margin, maybe we can stop pretending this is just a public tantrum we can allow to burn out until he falls into a fevered nap. That his allies believe the president must be approached like a spoiled toddler is itself an indication of our national decline, and of all the lackeys who’ve worked so hard to make this state of affairs possible. But his campaign is also in court asking a judge to simply nix the election in Pennsylvania and give him the Electoral Votes. This is not just another meltdown to be managed, as we all try to dodge the toys he’s throwing out of the crib. He should be removed from office for crimes against the American republic.

I have said in private for some time that I believe Trump, if he is to actually leave office, may have to be impeached in the lame duck period. It’s often been met with eye-rolls, but there are a number of reasons to believe he simply will not leave willingly, even if it’s useful and necessary to call on him to resign. The first is that he may well face criminal jeopardy in multiple jurisdictions once he loses the immunity protections of the presidency. This guy has been crooked for a long time, and while a staggering number of the people around him have faced prison time, he has yet to see any real consequences. He does not intend to. He also owes a lot of people a lot of money, and it’s not clear he could make good even if he wanted to. (He does not.) Beyond the practical, there is the specter of his towering ego and his crippling fear of humiliation. His impulsive and shameless behavior, often bordering on nihilism, is driven in no small part by a primal urge to avoid paying the piper. It’s worked for him his whole life. This guy never pays his bills—to contractors or to the bank—and nothing ever comes of it. Why should that stop now?

Photo credit: Tasos Katopodis - Getty Images
Photo credit: Tasos Katopodis – Getty Images

 

Some allies have brushed his antics off as a presidential coping mechanism, which again places the American republic in the position of existing to serve one man’s fragile psyche. America First! His aides will occasionally leak some horseshit to the media about how this is about Fighting For His People, as if Donald Trump genuinely engages in altruistic behavior, and as if even that would justify undermining American democracy itself and delegitimizing the coming presidency of Joe Biden.

Which is part of the point: even Trump’s more reluctant allies in the Republican Party are interested in using the lame duck to turn Biden’s entire presidency into the same. Trump’s destructive impulse has been highly useful in that regard: on the foreign-policy front, he is reportedly in the process of setting “so many fires that it will be hard for the Biden administration to put them all out.” He is also hard at work ransacking the federal bureaucracy to prevent Biden doing much of anything at all. Meanwhile, he’s not doing the actual job in any sense. His regime is doing nothing about the pandemic even as it explodes in severity. There will be no relief bill for businesses or local governments.

All of these consequences are pretty much baked in now. Trump’s base will refuse to recognize Biden’s legitimacy as president, having been served a steady stream of disinformation on Facebook and the teevee. He’ll be Birtherized. Along with that damage to the republic, the actual government itself will be thoroughly crippled, and many people will die unnecessarily from COVID-19. But the longer this is allowed to go on, the more Trump himself may believe that he has the backing and support to actually steal the election. After all, his allies have not stood up to him on anything except the prospect of pulling troops out of the Middle East. In his time in the big chair, the president has steamrolled the separation of powers that undergirds our Constitution and faced zero consequences. He has rejected the notion Congress has subpoena power. He has flouted federal court orders. But we’re supposed to believe The Law or The Norms will stop him now? He will do whatever he can get away with, just like he’s always done.

Photo credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI - Getty Images
Photo credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI – Getty Images

 

There is some chance that, if the Electoral College actually meets and votes as the American public has instructed on December 13—that is, if the 306 votes Biden looks to have won are awarded to him—that Trump will slink away to Mar-a-Lago and stay there through the Inauguration. (The prospect that he will show up on January 20 to graciously engage in a time-honored tradition that reinforces the health of American democracy, and signals allegiance to something greater than himself, seems genuinely absurd.) But how much damage will he do while he still holds the powers of the presidency—which he can wield from anywhere—as he tells himself he has nothing to lose?

In a sane country, he would be nowhere near this position. But in a moderately less sane one, he would be removed from office—via the impeachment power of Congress or the 25th Amendment—before he can do more damage. If the Senate Republicans who would need to convict him were not such craven fools, they might realize they don’t need him anymore, and that if he is swiftly removed—if they repudiate him—he may not turn out to be the zombie kingmaker all have assumed he will be in his political afterlife. He has only risen so far because they have allowed it at every moment.

Another 1 million Americans entered poverty in the last few weeks as coronavirus pandemic drags on

Another 1 million Americans entered poverty in the last few weeks as coronavirus pandemic drags on

Poverty keeps growing  in the U.S. as COVID-19 cases reach record highs, forcing shutdowns, and the last of government support disappears this winter.

In October alone, 1 million more Americans fell below the poverty threshold, a study from the University of Chicago found. A total of 7 million Americans have entered poverty since May, with Black Americans falling into poverty in the greatest numbers.

That number is likely to grow as more relief provisions are set to expire at the end of this year and the chances for more stimulus before the next administration takes hold look grim.

“For a few months you can get by drawing down savings, borrowing from friends, not paying the electricity bills so quickly,” Bruce Meyer, a University of Chicago economist, told Yahoo Money. But “the longer the recession continues and the more people are below the poverty line, the more troubles people are going to face.”

‘This all goes back to structural racism’

Like many of the effects of this pandemic, poverty has affected some communities more than others. Around 3 million of the 7 million who entered poverty since May — or 43% — were Blacks. But Black Americans only make up 13% of the overall U.S. population.

Read more: Here’s what you need to know about unemployment benefits eligibility

“This all goes back to structural racism where there are barriers throughout the economy that limit economic opportunities for Black Americans,” Gbenga Ajilore, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress, a non-profit for public policy research and advocacy, told Yahoo Money. “Many policymakers and economists are talking about how the economy is doing better than what was expected, but that thought process completely ignores the plight of Black Americans.”

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 16: A view of a child as she stands in line with her family as Food Bank for New York City distributes turkeys and Thanksgiving fixings with support from Stop & Shop and WBLS' The Steve Harvey Morning Show on November 16, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Food Bank For New York City)

 

While the overall unemployment rate has fallen to 6.9% from its 14.7% peak in April, the Black unemployment rate is still at 10.8% after reaching 16.8% in May. The overall job market recovery is also slowing down, with an unexpected week-over-week rise  of 742,000 Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits last week.

Poverty also rose noticeably among children and people with a high school education or less.

“Until there’s a solution to the continued spread of the virus or a vaccine is widely distributed, we’re facing a bad labor market that is not going to solve this problem,” Meyer said.

‘We will see a more pronounced increase in deprivation’

Poverty in the U.S. unexpectedly declined at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, thanks largely to generous government support from the CARES Act. Since then, there has been no second round of checks, the extra $600 in weekly unemployment benefits expired in July, and the extra $300 for jobless workers under the Lost Wages Assistance program expired in September.

An even bigger cliff is coming at the end of the year when the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation programs are set to expire. That will leave up to 12 million unemployed workers with no benefits at all, according to a report  from the Century Foundation.

(201112) -- NEW YORK, Nov. 12, 2020 (Xinhua) -- People line up outside a food pantry in Brooklyn, New York, United States, on Nov. 12, 2020. The number of initial jobless claims in the United States fell to 709,000 last week, as the labor market continues to recover at a slowing pace, the Labor Department reported on Thursday. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua) (Xinhua/Michael Nagle/Wang Ying via Getty Images)
People line up outside a food pantry in Brooklyn, New York, United States, on Nov. 12, 2020. (Photo by Xinhua/Michael Nagle/Wang Ying via Getty Images)

 

The combination of a slowly recovering job market and lack of more government relief will likely mean more financial hardships for Americans. While a big increase in poverty may not be immediate because it’s measured as cumulative income over the past year, deprivation will rise sharply while the poverty rate continues to increase slowly, according to Meyer.

“We will see a more pronounced increase in deprivation than poverty,” he said. “But people’s available money to pay for food and rent will drop sharply.”

Denitsa is a writer for Yahoo Finance and Cashay , a new personal finance website. 

Trump asked for options for attacking Iran last week, but held off – source

Reuters – Middle East & Africa

Trump asked for options for attacking Iran last week, but held off – source

By Steve Holland       November 16, 2020

ReutersA view of a damage building after a fire broke out at Iran’s Natanz Nuclear Facility, in Isfahan, Iran, July 2, 2020. Atomic Energy Organization of Iran/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump, with two months left in office, last week asked for options on attacking Iran’s main nuclear site, but ultimately decided against taking the dramatic step, a U.S. official said on Monday.

Trump made the request during an Oval Office meeting on Thursday with his top national security aides, including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, new acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller and General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the official said.

Trump, who has refused to concede and is challenging the results of the Nov. 3 presidential election, is to hand over power to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 20.

The official confirmed the account of the meeting in The New York Times, which reported the advisers persuaded Trump not to go ahead with a strike because of the risk of a broader conflict.

“He asked for options. They gave him the scenarios and he ultimately decided not to go forward,” the official said.

Trump has spent all four years of his presidency engaging in an aggressive policy against Iran, withdrawing in 2018 from the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, and imposing economic sanctions against a wide variety of Iranian targets.

Trump’s request for options came a day after a U.N. watchdog report showed Iran had finished moving a first cascade of advanced centrifuges from an above-ground plant at its main uranium enrichment site to an underground one, in a fresh breach of its 2015 nuclear deal with major powers.

Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York, said Iran’s nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes and civilian use and Trump’s policies have not changed that. “However, Iran has proven to be capable of using its legitimate military might to prevent or respond to any melancholy adventure from any aggressor,” he added.

Iran’s 2.4 tonne stock of low-enriched uranium is now far above the deal’s 202.8 kg limit. It produced 337.5 kg in the quarter, less than the more than 500 kg recorded in the previous two quarters by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In January, Trump ordered a U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad’s airport. But he has shied away from broader military conflicts and sought to withdraw U.S. troops from global hotspots in keeping with a promise to stop what he calls “endless wars.”

A strike on Iran’s main nuclear site at Natanz could flare into a regional conflict and pose a serious foreign policy challenge for Biden.

Biden’s transition team, which has not had access to national security intelligence due to the Trump administration’s refusal to begin the transition, declined comment.

Reporting by Steve Holland; Additional reporting by Michael Martina and Michelle Nichols; Editing by Mary Milliken, Cynthia Osterman, Leslie Adler and Lincoln Feast.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

One Writer’s End of Term List: 10 Things I Now Hate Because of Trump

One Writer’s End of Term List: 10 Things I Now Hate Because of Trump

Nell Scovell                      November 17, 2020

Sorting through old papers, I’ll sometimes come across a note signed by my mother. She’s been dead 15 years and the sight of her signature triggers a rush of emotions. Autographs are more than scratches on paper. They are a legal representation of a person. For 50 years, I’ve viewed signatures on a scale that ranged from “necessary” to “heartwarming.” It never occurred to me that I could hate a signature.

I hate Donald Trump’s signature. I hate it aesthetically with the odd peak at the end that makes it seem like he’s signing his family’s original surname, “Drumpf.” I also hate the cruel bills and executive orders that he has signed to ban Muslims, roll back environmental protections, and protect Confederate monuments.

This anger extends beyond his signature. Trump has taught me to hate things that never seemed worthy of hatred, items like:

1. The number “45.” There are no photos of John F. Kennedy wearing a football jersey with the number 35. Historians and journalist sometimes use Bush 41 and Bush 43 to distinguish the two, but most presidents aren’t recognized by their sequential number. Still, Trump has embraced “45,” putting it on his golf hat and embroidering it on his cuffs. Many elevators skip the “13th floor” because it’s considered bad luck. In the future, we will skip from 44 to 46.

Photo credit: Tasos Katopodis - Getty Images
Photo credit: Tasos Katopodis – Getty Images

 

2: The color orange. Orange still doesn’t rhyme with any words, but it’s now synonymous with Trump whose nicknames include Agent Orange, the Mango Mussolini, the Cheeto in Charge, and Tangerine Jesus. Orange is now off-color forever. Sorry Howard Johnson’s. Sorry Princeton.

3. “Bring Your Daughter to Work Day.” Founded by the Ms. Foundation for Women, this day kicked off in 1993 and used to happen once a year in April. At the White House, every day is “Bring your daughter to work day” thanks to senior adviser and filler-enthusiast Ivanka Trump whose “work” drew eye rolls from world leaders and Christine Lagarde.

Photo credit: Drew Angerer - Getty Images
Photo credit: Drew Angerer – Getty Images

 

4. Words like “sir,” “hoax,” “sad,” and “huge.” How one man could ruin so many monosyllabic words is both sad and huge.

5. Phrases like “When you look at X…” or “When you think about it…” Trump uses these phrases as rhetorical tics, the filler between lies. I now cringe when I hear them. Even cliches that were already disliked—“It is what it is”—I now hate even more.

6. Escalators, stairs and ramps. Trump has issues with between-floor conveyances. He truly can make the most ordinary things seem weird.

Photo credit: Christopher Gregory - Getty Images
Photo credit: Christopher Gregory – Getty Images

 

7. Solar eclipses. I will always associate solar eclipses with Trump so it’s a good thing they don’t occur very often.

8. Mario Kart. In her book Full Disclosure, Stormy Daniels described Trump’s sexual apparatus: “It has a huge mushroom head. Like a toadstool… I lay there, annoyed that I was getting fucked by a guy with Yeti pubes and a dick like the mushroom character in Mario Kart.” If you can hear “Mario Kart” and not envision Trump’s penis, I am jealous.

9. True story: Trump ruined my friend Susie’s vagina. After Trump won in 2016, my friend Susie’s cervix spasmed and required medical attention. Susie wasn’t alone. In an article for The Cut, Emily Gould concludes her story about Gawker with a visit to the gynecologist. Gould explains she first felt pain in the area of her reproductive organs after watching Trump steamroll Hillary Clinton in a debate. The doctor responds, “Yeah, I’m seeing a lot of this lately. Women who haven’t had problems in years coming back in. People have all kinds of different reactions to trauma.”

10. Flushing twice. On the occasions when I have needed to flush a toilet twice, I never thought about it. Now that Trump regularly brings up bathrooms and the need for multiple flushes, I think of him as I watch the waste swirl into the sewer. To be fair, of all the associations, this one makes the most sense.

‘Betsy DeVos made a mess’ of the U.S. student loan system, teachers’ union boss says

‘Betsy DeVos made a mess’ of the U.S. student loan system, teachers’ union boss says

Aarthi Swaminathan            November 16, 2020

 

Fixing the U.S. student loan system goes beyond just debt forgiveness, according to one teachers’ union leader, and the current administration hasn’t done much to help borrowers.

“Look, Betsy DeVos made a mess of this,” Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “We have sued DeVos several times. We sued Navient. … But ultimately, just like mortgages, and just like other things, student loan debt needs to be transparent.”

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos listens during a visit to Florida Virtual School in Orlando on Monday, Oct. 26, 2020. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos listens during a visit to Florida Virtual School in Orlando on Monday, Oct. 26, 2020. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

 

The burden of the financial aid “needs to be clear,” Weingarten added. “People need to know what their choices are. And then we need to try to mitigate it to actually make [sure] student loan debt is not a death sentence for people.”

‘There’s a lot that you can do’

Currently, roughly 44 million Americans hold nearly $1.7 trillion in student loan debt.

Multiple lawmakers have proposed — through various bills and even on their respective campaign trails — cancelling debt for 37 million borrowers holding federal student loans. These loans are owed by Americans to the U.S. Department of Education.

(Graphic: David Foster)
(Graphic: David Foster)

 

Most recently, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called for President-elect Joe Biden to use executive action to cancel “billions of dollars in student loan debt,” which she argued could be the “single most effective executive action available to provide massive consumer-driver stimulus.”

Weingarten stressed the same: “There’s a lot that you can do, executive action to clean this up.

Aarthi is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. She can be reached at aarthi@yahoofinance.com.

Column: Just when you thought the president could sink no lower….

Column: Just when you thought the president could sink no lower….

Jonah Goldberg                 November 17, 2020
U.S. President Donald Trump leaves the stage after addressing a plenary session on the last day of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 26, 2018. (Laurent Gillieron/Keystone via AP)
President Trump leaves the stage after speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2018. (Laurent Gillieron / Associated Press)

 

“Despite the Left’s attempts to undermine this Election, I will NEVER stop fighting for YOU,” President Trump assured me in a fundraising email.

I don’t take campaign fundraising emails seriously (never mind literally). They’re all pretty stupid.

But this one was obviously different, for the simple reason that the election is over. Indeed, this note — one of a great many sent by the Trump campaign recently — was a plea for money to pay for the legal effort to reverse an election Trump lost by the same margin of electoral votes he once claimed amounted to a “massive landslide.” And if you read the letter’s fine print, you’ll discover that “fighting for you” actually means “fighting for me.” Most of the money from small donors will go not to the legal effort, but rather to pay down campaign debt.

In a sense I’m grateful that Trump is doubling down on everything wrong about his presidency in its final chapter. Yes, this is embarrassing for the country. Yes, Trump’s radioactive conspiracy theory of a stolen election will have a long, poisonous half-life. But Trump is removing all doubt that his narcissistic presidency was always entirely about him.

The country is in the midst of a health and economic crisis, but Trump’s primary focus is licking his own wounds, not tackling the country’s. He has largely abandoned formal intelligence briefings and hasn’t met with the coronavirus task force in months. Instead, with the exception of a Veterans Day visit to Arlington National Cemetery and a Friday night statement on the pandemic, he’s conducted his post-election presidency doing precisely what he’s always done — subordinating the office to his own wants, desires and petty grievances.

He punctuates his brooding and sulking with pathetic tweets brimming with conspiratorial or otherwise deranged hogwash, including the repeated claim “I won the election.” He continues to insist, as he has throughout his presidency, that proof for his lies is just around the corner. On Sunday, he promised a new lawsuit showing the “unconstitutionality” of the 2020 election.

“Nixon’s real tragedy is that he never had the stature to be a tragic hero,” Gary Wills wrote in “Nixon Agonistes.” “He is the stuff of sad (almost heartbreaking) comedy.” I think that’s a little unfair to Nixon, but it’s dead on with Trump.

It would take a heart of stone not to laugh, as he finally turns on the real Judas in his eyes, Fox News (where I am a contributor). The network, he tweets, “forgot what made them successful, what got them there. They forgot the Golden Goose. The biggest difference between the 2016 Election, and 2020, was @FoxNews!”

Never mind that Fox was No. 1 in every time slot more than a decade before Trump descended that escalator in 2015. Never mind, that for four years, he began his day with his Presidential Daily Brief — “Fox and Friends” — and ended it with the primetime gang. And never mind that Trump and the opinion side of the network remain in a deeply codependent relationship.

He still didn’t get the full-throated, unwavering praise he needed, so now he finds joy in thinking about creating a new competing network, one without all the obvious anti-Trump bias!

Most presidents, if they’re remembered at all, get summarized with a single sentence. Whatever Trump’s sentence might have been before the election, he managed to rewrite it after the election: “A one-term president who was the first in American history to refuse to concede or recognize the election results.” Talk about scoring after the buzzer.

George H.W. Bush, the last incumbent president to lose a reelection bid, left office (after graciously conceding) in fairly bad odor on the right. After eight years of Bill Clinton, however, nostalgia for Bush was so strong, his son parlayed his patronymic name ID into a winning presidential bid.

If Trump had followed a similar course, he (or perhaps his sybaritic scion) might have cashed in on similar nostalgia after four years of a Biden presidency almost certain to be seen as disastrous by those on the right. Instead, he has chosen to prove that those of us who said “character is destiny” were right all along.

Let Trump continue insisting he didn’t really lose — it’s impossible to stop him after all. Let those who believe him — or pretend to — continue to march and tweet and rant, including the many highly compensated media personalities who’ve gotten rich off the Trump train.

But for the rest of us, the one thing we won’t ever feel about the Trump presidency is nostalgia — not least because he won’t really be gone. Even after he leaves the White House, he’ll be fighting for himself — and making sure we hear him — for the rest of his days.