Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, is a very passionate person. Sometimes, she allows those passions to run free, and the result is not only amusing but also a little frightening.
The Supreme Court was hearing oral arguments on whether or not $400 billion in student loans should be disappeared with a wave of Joe Biden’s magic wand. This brought out the passion in Weingarten when she spoke at a rally in front of the Supreme Court edifice.
“And frankly, and this is what really pisses me off,” she said. “During the pandemic, we understood that small businesses were hurting, and we helped them, and it didn’t go to the Supreme Court to challenge it. Big businesses were hurting, and we helped them, and it didn’t go to the Supreme Court to challenge it.”
“All of a sudden, when it’s about our students, they challenge it, the corporations challenge it, the student loan lenders challenge it,” she continued, screaming and jumping up and down. “That is that not right, that is not fair, and that is what we are fighting as well when we say cancel student debt. This is about the people, and it is about the people’s future, and it is about all of your futures.
Yes, Weingarten is a very passionate person — even when she’s laughably wrong. That makes her performance at the Cancel Student Loan Debt rally something of a comedy sketch.
When they have nothing solid to stand on, they just shout and bully, hoping you'll give them what they want to stop the hysteria. https://t.co/LYXtxxMcCr
— Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) February 28, 2023
The lack of self-awareness is what gets me about these people.
Who told Communist John Denver that she should be a public speaker? https://t.co/dnkCny71ab
— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) February 28, 2023
Student loans are not a government benefit. They are not and never were meant to be a handout for college students. And as far as I know, no student ever had a gun put to their head and was forced to sign for a loan.
So where’s the “morality” in not paying it off? I would think it would be immoral to use other people’s money to pay off an obligation taken on by oneself.
But there appears to be a real disconnect between the reality of personal responsibility and the fantasy of using someone else’s money with no thought of the consequences.
Related: Teachers’ Union Boss Admits Teachers Have Become ‘Social Justice Warriors’
Niara Thompson, a student at the University of Georgia, “grew up watching her parents struggle with student loans and will graduate with about $50,000 of her own student debt,” according to AP.
How in God’s name can someone watch their parents drown in student debt and then take out 50K in student loans? Amazing.
“It felt like people who could never understand why we would want something like this,” she said. “I wanted to be like, ‘Y’all don’t understand. Y’all are focusing on this, but there are people out here who are struggling to find food for their families.’”
Much of the discussion in Tuesday’s hearing centered on whether states had the legal right to sue over Biden’s student loans plan. But the justices also were scrutinizing whether Biden had the authority to waive hundreds of billions of dollars in debt without the explicit approval of Congress, which decides how taxpayer money is spent.
It’s not unusual for Supreme Court cases to hang on legal technicalities, even in cases of great public interest. Yet to borrowers following Tuesday’s arguments, it felt isolating to hear such a personal subject reduced to cold legal language.
That “legal language” makes us a civilized society instead a mob of screaming, raging hooligans demanding they are given what they want.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member