his extensive network of connections with establishment GOP heavyweights, wealthy financiers, technology executives, the prestige press, and fellow graduates of Yale Law School—precisely the elites he rails against.
More than 200 people appear on Vance’s Venmo “friends” list. Among them is Amalia Halikias, government relations director at the Heritage Foundation—the conservative think tank coordinating the controversial Project 2025. … So are Jeff Flake, the famously anti-Trump former Arizona senator and current ambassador to Turkey; lobbyists from organizations like the Government Strategies Group; people affiliated with other conservative think tanks like the Hoover Institution and the American Enterprise Institute; journalists and media personalities like Bari Weiss and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson; and tech executives from Anthropic and AOL. (None of these people responded to requests for comment.)
This points to one important caveat—being friends on Venmo does not mean two people have transacted together, or even know the payment app has designated them as friends.
According to Venmo, when someone first uses the app, they are prompted to allow it to access their phone contacts. If they agree, Venmo will find any contacts already using the app and automatically populate the user’s friend list. Users can also intentionally add or remove friends. Along with the user’s transactions, their friends list is public by default. This means it’s likely that Vance’s list of friends was largely populated by the contacts in his phone when he set up his account in December of 2016.
If I’m not mistaken, the connection can be as remote as that Vance and the other person were both recipients in the TO: field of the same email at some point in the past.
Any time I’ve signed up for any app or website and gave it permission to read my contacts, that was where the loosest connections it made came from, the head scratchers. When I searched for them in my contacts I found no direct contact, but when I searched for them in email I found that once long ago we were both recipients of a big group email for whatever reason.
On the other hand, I don’t look kindly upon this Vance fellow and I’m happy to suppose that he’s directly connected to turds like Carlson et al.
Wow. The popups on Forbes are bad. I had one covering the lower third until another ad popped up, covering the whole screen of my phone. I literally had one ad blocking another ad.
It makes you wonder if it even matters if you stay on the page for the ads to pay. If it’s just page load, then they don’t care if you read the article, in which case the system is incentivized to have them only focus on headlines that will drive click-through.
Because I’ve noticed similar things, where it’s functionally impossible to read the content on phones, which you’d think would be a primary demographic, if you cared about presenting reporting.
I wonder if marketers realize I’m so desensitized to ads that I have no idea what any given one is even for. I’m just looking for a way to close the damn thing. If I can’t, I leave the site entirely, still with no idea of what product or service they were trying to shove down my throat.
Vance has frequently positioned himself as anti-elite, writing in Hillbilly Elegy: “Sometimes I view members of the elite with an almost primal scorn.” In an April post on X, Vance, who graduated Yale Law School in 2013
Ngl, the more this happens the more servicers are confused about what they should be collecting and from whom, and that’s actually a win for the borrowers (not as much of a win as this shit going through but still).
For example, due to the slew of challenges, I’m still on $0 repayment through October and don’t even have to certify income for that. And who knows if they will actually move forward with resuming charges for it; this is the second time it’s been delayed for me.
I hope the system does get thrown into complete chaos if it doesn’t all get forgiven or at least restructured. That would be better than people having to pay for worthless and/or overpriced degrees, and not being able to do shit with their lives.
Someone has to pay. Whether that is distributed to many or a few, a lot of people lose a little or a few people lose a lot. Someone has to lose something for someone else to gain it in this scenario.
Ok, how about people with more money they could possibly spend multiple lifetimes??? How about we tax billionaires so everyday citizens can have a decent education without being indebted for the rest of their god damn lives!?
You need better sources before arriving at a conclusion on this one. This is a topic that has been discussed at great lengths by people from nonprofits and activist organizations on many podcasts. I’m sure their info exists in written form if you look for it.
The money came from banks and went to the colleges via the students. If you take the money from the colleges, they will be "hurt." They will lose something they had before. If you take it from the banks, the same. If you pay it from government coffers, then the government has less to spend elsewhere. If you raise taxes, then the money is reaped from whomever has their taxes raised. If you print the money, then everyone pays a little through inflation.
Someone gets hurt. I already said the hurt could be distributed. It could also be levied on people with vast resources who would notice it the least.
Can you summarize the podcasts and writings that suggest no one loses money when a loan is forgiven?
Separately, why is a clear statement of fact controversial? You don't have to believe that loan forgiveness hurts no one to think it's a good policy to put in place. So why the weird reaction?
I understand your point but there are many other things that factors at play besides where the loans originated. For example interest rates are appalling on many of these loans. These are arbitrary factors that don’t hurt the lenders. They can still make a profit.
If you pay it from government coffers, then the government has less to spend elsewhere.
Not true in the US (and a few other countries). The US has economic sovereignty. This means that the federal government primarily owes it’s debt to itself, and only a very small percentage is owed to other countries. The fed also relies on a fiat currency, meaning that money has value because the federal government says it does. These 2 facts mean that the only limit to US spending is the amount of labor and resources available to the government at any given moment (please note that this is not true for state/local government). Haven’t you ever wondered why we have unlimited funds for the military but it’s austerity for everything else? It’s because conservatives in government want to hide these facts to continue pushing their agenda.
No one is suggesting the colleges lose the money. They already got it. So what does their gouging have to do with it? Even if they had to pay off the loans, it would hurt them. Maybe they deserve to be hurt, but giving back money you thought was yours still hurts anyway.
Everything. The point you seem to be missing is that college doesn’t actually cost as much as U.S. institutions are charging. They’re robbing people blind, and that needs to stop.
Actually, no: it’s an investment that pays off in term of expansion of the whole economy. Literally everyone is wealthier at the end than they would’ve been for not doing it, so in net terms nobody had to pay anything.
The lengths people will go through to stop something that hurts nobody, but helps many always astounds me.
I have to credit some rando Redditor for the insight that helped me understand why these people do this. I’ll paraphrase because I can’t remember the exact prose.
Nearly all actions of Conservatives can be explained by their two implied core principles:
All policies are zero sum. For you to gain something means I am losing something.
There is a naturally occurring societal class-based hierarchy system, and you are required to stay at your level, never rising.
So the reason conservatives oppose student loan relief applies to both rules.
If student loan borrowers are having debts forgiven (they are getting something) that MUST mean the conservative is losing something.
If they had to take loans for school because they couldn’t afford to pay for it outright, then they should stay in their economic station. Forgiving these loans may allow them to advance beyond their current class, which cannot be allowed.
Which number 2 blows my mind as they constantly vote for things which benefit those well “above their station” because they think they’ll be there someday.
Or they think that the people above their station deserve those benefits–they genuinely think and support the rich getting richer is a good thing, regardless of whether they’ll see any benefit themselves. It’s the mirror image of the progressive mindset of voting to raise their own taxes to help the needy.
I don’t think it’s even that anymore. I think it’s just genuine fawning sycophancy towards their “betters.” They think privileged people deserve even more privilege by virtue of having “won,” even at their own expense. It’s sick and psychotic and completely foreign to my way of thinking, but I don’t think I’m wrong.
You are wrong though. The reason we can’t understand it is they are being manipulated. Christians in particular have made themselves vulnerable, purposefully. Just go back to your Sunday school days and if you didn’t have them listen to the TV preachers in earnest. They are the sheep, they are being led. I’m not trying to be offense it’s just the facts. Even the trumpers who are church adverse fall for similar structures. Usually satellites of the church at large. Biggest facet I can think of is the gun nuts. It’s basically religion. In the 2A they trust. The overlap of the church gives them the same structure. Making them vulnerable to manipulation.
You and me too though. We just kinda sweep it under the rug. We let our phones run our lives. We feed on dopamine hits all day everyday.
Sadly, I think its even worse than you’re describing. They think they are at that higher station now and its rule #1 that is preventing them from actualizing it. As in “I’m not experiencing a luxurious lifestyle because Group X is taking my share”.
Not really as much as I feel we think. Having read more about Authoritarian mindsets, which includes the rank and file authoritarians, not just the leadership, they’re actually happy to be reinforcing the hierarchy regardless of their position in it. They’re happy to know their place and to ensure the ranks are kept in place. It brings comfort to many people to know that their position, regardless of how awful it is, is being maintained properly.
This means that they’re entirely okay with a dictator and/or an oligarchy as long as the people on the top are “supposed” to be there.
Fun fact, in the 1920s a high caste Indian man sued the US for the right to naturalize arguing that he was white. Arguing that he was verifiably genetically pure because of his caste and descendant from the Aryans.
The Supreme Court, 9 old white dudes, decided that he didn’t look white enough to be white. And so he wasn’t white, and denied him the right to naturalize.
Biden’s domestic policies have been great for the American people. His international ones have been a major mix bag. Palestine is his internment of Japanese moment. Biden’s legacy will be an interesting one. Just like FDR, he will be a polarizing figure.
That dock never worked right and they’ve removed it. For the record, if the US military did a standard aid operation it would be fine. It’s his insistence on this special system that fucked it.
Other than that, he’s completely blocked any actual Leahy Law or Foreign Assistance Act Human Rights reviews and consistently repeats IDF propaganda that’s quickly debunked by literally every other stakeholder.
Every cease fire he’s pushed, he blames Hamas for the failure, even though Hamas publicly says they want it and Israel publicly says they don’t. When Hamas actually refuses, you find out the “deal” is to release the hostages in return for not starving to death.
You left out the part about sending more bombs to Israel, to replace the ones used to kill civilians, knowing full well they’d be used to kill more civilians.
Except in this case it’s actually against the law to continue supplying military aid
Except under circumstances specified in this section, no security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.
The un ambassador reports to the president and the secretary of state. Though many foreign policy decisions are made by congress, the UN is not one of them. The choice to directly oppose the the two-state solution in the UN is entirely a choice of biden’s executive branch.
It’s odd to see you put so much of Palestine on Bidens lap. It’s been an issue for at least 40-50 years.
I remember what Obama said in his memoir about Isreal, how that is such a tricky issue for Dems. Isreal is the only consistent military ally in the region. A President has an obligation, as commander and chief of the military. You have into major consideration in the area of the region that’s is most likely to commit act of foreign terrorism against the US.
Remember, the president is absolutely above the law and can commit a coup or order political assassinations with impunity. But he can’t make decisions about how to implement policies, even when congress gives him that authority.
The seems like the perfect chance to use that immunity. He should use it to sign an executive order to cancel all student debt based on the supreme court decision. Let the republicans object and force the court to either allow it or rule that the president doesn’t actually have immunity.
The problem is that you have to find a way to cancel it before anyone can say no. But if it takes any time at all, they can tell those agencies to stop.
To sort out a legal mess two circuit courts made with contradictory rulings about the nature of student loan repayments, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit issued an order to halt the SAVE program’s implementation entirely, temporarily, until they issue a final ruling.
The order is likely legally binding in all subordinate Federal Circuit Courts with jurisdiction over: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
I think a lot of us are but the news never seems to point it out. They will report about a survey on what people think before reporting on what actually happened.
She’ll be eligible, but not qualified. But after tRump, I guess anyone is qualified. She could handle it… but it won’t be her this time around. I’d rather her get it in the 2030s.
Good. This cop will get what they deserve… time served, paid time off, and the inconvenience of having to move two counties to the left to get a job as the local chief of police.
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