Polling Potpourri---April 29, 2024 Ediiton

We are six months away from the general election in the United States.

I thought I would start a new feature in BeeLine focused on the most interesting data I am seeing in polling surveys that I come across in my research.

Polls are not always completely accurate. However, they are generally good barometers to discern major trends.

Here are a mixture of data points in various polls I have seen lately that might provide some perspective on what is currently on the minds of American voters.

The Youth Vote

There is no age demographic that is more important for Joe Biden in the 2024 election than that of age 18-29 voters.

I wrote a blog post several weeks ago that asked the question,  "Is Biden in Trouble With Younger Voters?", that focused on some polling data that showed young voters becoming increasingly disillusioned with Biden.

Biden won the 18-29 youth vote in 2020 by 24 points over Trump  (60%-36%). It was an even larger margin than Hillary's 19 point margin in 2016.

A recent poll by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School that was exclusively focused on age 18-29 voters provides further confirmation that Biden faces a struggle with the youth vote this year.

The poll found that Biden is only up 8 points with all 18-29 year olds although his margin improves to 13 points with registered voters and 19 points with likely voters.

The youth numbers also reveal the large gender gap we have become accustomed to seeing between Republican and Democrat candidates.

Among likely young voters, Biden is +33 points with women but only +6 with young men.

This result is not surprising when you consider the large number of single women in the 18-29 age group and the large divide in voting patterns we have been seeing in recent years between those who are married and unmarried. 

For example, in the 2020 midterms, exit polling revealed these splits between men and women, married and unmarried.

Married men and women and unmarried men voted Republican.

Unmarried women voted Democrat by a 2;1 margin.

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/1787170/no-one-benefits-more-from-the-destruction-of-the-american-family-than-the-democratic-party/

This is a pattern we have been seeing for some time.

It almost goes without saying that there would be few Democrats in elected office if it were not for unmarried women.

There is also a significant enthusiasm gap with youth voters between the two candidates. Just 44% of Biden voters say they are enthusiastic for their candidate compared to 76% who support Trump.

Underlying these poor results for Biden is the most interesting data point I found in the poll.

Only 9% of young voters say the country is headed in the right direction.

To put that in perspective, 21% of this age demographic expressed confidence the country was headed in the right direction in the midst of the Covid lockdowns in Spring, 2020.

I found another interesting insight in the poll in the answer to this survey question that Harvard has been tracking in its youth poll for the last decade.

How often do you trust the President to do the right thing?

Notice that confidence was relatively high with Obama, plummeted immediately when Trump took office and immediately rebounded with Biden in 2021. However, confidence in the President then steadily declined throughout the Biden term to where it is now lower than at any time in the Trump years.

Source: https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/47th-edition-spring-2024

This is not an encouraging sign for Biden six months before the election.

Considering this polling data you can be assured that the Biden campaign is going to do everything it can to retain the youth vote. That is why Biden is again attempting to cancel student loan debt, will keep pounding away on the abortion issue and is not doing anything about criticizing the anti-Semitic protests on college campuses.

Biden simply cannot win unless he has large vote margins with 18-29 age voters.

The Immigration Issue

Donald Trump would have never defeated 17 other candidates for the GOP nomination in 2016 or won  the general election that year over Hillary Clinton without his strong stand against illegal immigration.

It was the signature issue that separated Trump from the pack in 2016 and will likely determine his final prospects in 2024.

The good news for Trump this year is that Joe Biden's open borders policy has made it one of the top issues this cycle.

A couple of months ago it was actually the #1 issue on the minds of most voters according to a number of polls.

It has recently fallen to #2 behind the economy as the border crisis has gotten less media attention due to Israel/ Iran, the campus protests and the Trump trial.

That trend in itself is instructive as it shows the extent to which the media shapes the news agenda which in turn has a major influence on the minds of voters.

What will the big news stories be in six months? 

That is why it is so difficult to forecast the final results of the 2024 election no matter what the polls say today.

Recent polls are looking favorable to Donald Trump.

For example. a Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll released last week of the seven key swing states (AZ, GA, MI, NV, NC, PA, NC) had 34% of respondents state that the Economy was the most important issue followed by Immigration at 15%.

When asked who they trusted more to handle the Economy, Trump had a 51%-36% advantage over Biden.

On the issue of Immigration, Trump has a 52%-32% advantage.

Considering the importance of these issues in the minds of voters, it is not surprising that  Trump is leading in six of the seven swing states surveyed in the poll.

Credit: https://twitter.com/IAPolls2022/status/1783202450297565352

To get an idea of the depth of concern that voters have about the Immigration issue, a recent Harris poll found that a majority of voters say they actually support the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

This action is even supported by 42% of Democrats.

Illegal immigration has been a major political issue in the United States for at least the last 30 years. 

However, I have never seen a hardline policy such as mass deportations find majority support in the electorate.

Given these views, you can expect Trump to hit the Immigration issue over and over again during the next six months.

Joe Biden has to hope that news coverage of chaos at the southern border will fade.

Biden and the Democrats also have to be living in fear that a terrorist event or high profile crimes from illegals will not capture the headlines over the next six months.

Immigration is a winning issue for Trump. It is a losing issue for Biden in every way.

Can I Get Off Work To Vote?

An Emerson College poll released last week has a fascinating breakdown of voter preferences for Trump and Biden correlated with the average number of hours that those voters report working each week.

Trump has a huge margin with voters who work at least 40 hours per week.

In fact, the more someone works the greater the odds are that they support Donald Trump.

Voters who average 60+ hours of work per week favor Trump by an astounding 80%-9%.

Biden is favored by those who work part-time hours.

Those that do not work at all are evenly split between Trump and Biden.

My guess is that this is only the case because older retirees who usually support Republican candidates are offsetting the Democrat bias in those who do not work at all and are relying on government programs.

Source: https://emersoncollegepolling.com/april-national-poll-3-in-4-us-voters-say-cost-of-living-is-rising/

Does this data not speak volumes about the Makers and Takers society that author Peter Schweizer first wrote about in 2008 and that increasingly reflects very differing political views among those paying the bills and those relying on government?.

All of this should also suggest that when the takers outnumber the makers we are in very big trouble in the United States.

Unfortunately, we are getting closer to that point every day.

Better To Be A Governor

Joe Biden has an abysmal net Presidential approval rating.

His average net approval rating right now is -17 points (39% approve, 56% disapprove) according to 538.com.

Trump was -8 net approval at a similar point in his Presidency during the initial Covid lockdowns.

Gallup shows that Biden has the lowest approval scores at this point in his term compared to any President they have surveyed for since they began tracking this metric with Eisenhower.

Trump has a negative favorability rating overall (-11) but it is still better than Biden's -14 or the -17 of VP Kamala Harris in the RealClearPolitics poll average.

The bottom line in this election is that many voters would rather not have to choose between Trump and Biden.

In fact, a Pew Research poll released last week indicates that about half of all voters would like to see both Trump and Biden replaced on the ballot.

That view is held by 62% of Biden supporters!

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/24/in-tight-presidential-race-voters-are-broadly-critical-of-both-biden-and-trump/pp_2024-4-24_biden-trump_0-03/

The unfavorable view that many voters have of both candidates is further driven home when you see the latest Morning Consult poll of approval ratings of the 50 state governors.

All 50 state governors have a higher approval/favorability rating than Biden or Trump.

Only one governor, Tina Kotek, D-OR, has a net negative approval rating. Kotek is -2.

Credit: https://twitter.com/IAPolls2022/status/1782530052799734019

I thought it was interesting to see both Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Kim Reynold (R-IA) at the lower end of the net approval rating list.

How do you explain that?

I think it shows the power of Trump in the Republican Party.

Reynolds snubbed Trump and endorsed DeSantis in the GOP primary races.

Of course, DeSantis challenged Trump for the Republican nomination.

Many Democrats already did not approve of DeSantis and Reynolds in their home states. Add in some Republicans who do not look kindly on the challenge to Trump and it shows in the approval rating.

When Donald Trump first ran for President many said he did not represent the Republican Party.

Even when he beat Hillary Clinton many establishment party members continued to echo that claim.

After the 2020 election the volume of those claims increased.

However, most of those who were vociferous about that are fading from the scene.

If Trump wins in 2024 he will be the Republican Party as much as Ronald Reagan became the total embodiment of the Republican  Party in the early 1980's. 

The lesson here is that it is the people who decide what their party stands for and who represents them.

It is not the politicians.

Politicians who do not understand this principle do not remain in politics for long.

Does The Road To Riches Run Through Washington, D.C.?

I recently came across an interesting website that tracks the net worth of members of Congress.

The website, Quiver Quantitative, also has a Congress Trading Dashboard that tracks all stock trades made by our elected representatives in Congress.

Source: https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/

 

On the Net Worth page of the website the daily increase/decrease in each representatives investment portfolio is also  calculated.

For example, here is a screen grab from a recent day sorted by the gain/ loss for each member of Congress.

Note that in that one day Nancy Pelosi saw investment gains of more than $1 million.

For context, her Congressional salary is $174,000 per year.

Credit: https://twitter.com/RedsRepair95/status/1782806065681203236

Pelosi is also the second wealthiest member of Congress with a current net worth approaching $250 million.

There are a number of members of Congress who came to Washington with substantial fortunes from their lives in the private sector. Senator Rick Scott (#1 in net worth) and Mitt Romney (#3) are examples.

However, it is rather incredible how wealthy Pelosi has become at age 83 considering that she has been in Congress since 1987 (37 years). To the best of my knowledge she also has never had a private sector job. Pelosi was Chair of the Northern California Democrat party and then Chair for the state political party in the seven years previous to coming to Congress.

Pelosi and her husband had a reported net worth of $3.5 million when she first came to Congress.

It is also stunning the amount of wealth that Pelosi has accumulated in the last ten years.

In 2014 Roll Call (as cited in Wikipedia) estimated Pelosi's net worth at $29 million.

This means that Pelosi has increased her net worth by over 8-fold in the last 10 years.

It might be easy to give credit to Pelosi's husband, Paul, for this gigantic increase in wealth if he was running a massively successful business. Paul Pelosi does own a venture capital firm but he is now 84 years old. Most of the wealth of the Pelosi's in the last decade seems to have come from extremely well-timed purchases of stocks in the tech sector.

Wouldn't it have been great if Nancy Pelosi had been as adept at balancing the federal budget as she was increasing her net worth over the last 37 years?

Perhaps the country would have been better served if Pelosi and her husband had been put in charge of investing the Social Security Trust Funds over the last decade instead of letting them be totally invested in U.S. Treasury securities?

Another name that caught my eye on the Quiver Quantitative website was that of Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

McConnell, age 81, has been in the U.S. Senate for the last 39 years (since 1985).

He is listed as the 23rd richest member of Congress with a net worth of $46 million. That is more than double what his net worth was reported to be in 2014.

Before McConnell was elected to the Senate in 1984, he worked in the U.S. Justice Department in the Ford administration beginning in 1974 and was the County Executive in Jefferson County, Kentucky  (Louisville) for seven years.

This means that McConnell has worked and collected a government paycheck for the last 50 years but has still been able to accumulate a personal fortune of almost $50 million.

It is quite remarkable.

Does the road to riches run through Washington, D.C.?

It apparently does.

Unless you are Donald J. Trump.

Remember how much we heard that Donald Trump was using The White House to enrich himself?

How did that work out exactly?

When Trump first announced he was running for President in 2015 Forbes magazine estimated his net worth to be $4.5 billion. 

Just before the 2020 election Forbes estimated that Trump's net worth had dropped to $2.5 billion.

There has been no President in my lifetime who saw their wealth suffer after serving in office---except Donald Trump.

Barack Obama and Bill Clinton got enormously wealthy after serving as President. Joe Biden cashed in big time after being Vice President.

As of the fall of 2023 Forbes estimated Trump's net worth at $2,6 billion but he was no longer on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans. In 2015 he was #121. 

In ten years since first getting involved in politics Trump has seen his net worth almost cut in half.

Over those same ten years Nancy Pelosi has increased her net worth 8 times and Mitch McConnell has doubled his.

The final scorecard on wealth over the last 10 years or so.

Pelosi              up  700%

McConnell     up  100%

Trump            down 50%

Who has enriched themselves in public office and who has not?

You may or may not like Donald Trump, but the fact is that it is likely that no man who has been President has ever sacrificed so much, for so so little personal benefit, than Donald Trump.

If you don't believe that, go ask him while he sits in that New York City courtroom today.

Then go to the Quiver Quantitative website and see how a couple of Washington insiders who have inhabited the swamp for decades are doing.

This Is Justice?

The New York trial of Donald Trump began this week on criminal charges that he falsified business records in connection with payments to his former attorney Michael Cohen.

Anyone who looks beneath the headlines on these charges can readily see how absurd this case is.

I wrote a blog post almost three years ago where I assessed the possibilities that Trump would be a viable candidate for President in 2024. I listed three factors that would be positives for Trump and three that would harm his prospects.

High on the list of negatives were legal problems for Trump that would cause voters to lose trust in him.

Allegations of wrongdoing by Trump that go beyond what is perceived as more than a witch hunt. Democrats have long claimed that Trump is a crook or has been involved in nefarious activities. However, we have heard this for five years and they have not been able to turn up anything on the man. 

The latest charges involving his company and its CFO by New York state looks to be politically motivated. If there was wrongdoing with the Trump organization's taxes why was this not found by the IRS? Why is a Manhattan Democrat District Attorney involved? Trump has also been out of the active management of the business for over five years. Why now? Perhaps there is something there but it looks like a political hit job to me right now.

There is little question that the Democrats are going to turn over every rock and throw everything they can at Trump and his family the next few years  They clearly live in fear of the man. They may get something that sticks and get people to believe that it is more than political retribution. If they do, Trump will not be viable in 2024 as his political brand will be permanently damaged. Once you lose trust you don't get it back.

I think it is ironic that the fact that the Democrats have weaponized the justice system in their efforts to prevent Trump from regaining office has actually ended up strengthening his electoral prospects. 

In fact, nearly 60% of voters in a Harvard/Harris poll in February stated they believed that Democrats were using the government and legal system in biased ways to take out Trump.

This view was even held by 42% of Democrats!

Source: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/HHP_Feb2024_KeyResults.pdf

Let's look deeper at the New York charges.

The case involves payments that Trump made to his former in-house attorney Michael Cohen that are alleged to have been made to reimburse Cohen for "hush money" payments made to Stormy Daniels regarding a supposed sexual tryst between Trump and the adult film actress. Trump has denied there was a relationship and stated that the payment was made to Daniels to prevent her from speaking about him negatively.

Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in 2016 and later billed Trump that and other amounts (including a tax gross up and a fee to Cohen) for a total of $420,000. The payments was remitted from Trump Organization funds in 2017 (after Trump had been elected and taken office) and classified as legal expenses (which is how Cohen had categorized the charges on his invoice).

The charges in this case are that Trump falsified his business records by listing this payment as a legal expense. This is despite the fact that this is how the invoice from Cohen was characterized.

Falsification of a business record would be considered, at most, a misdemeanor.

In New York the statute of limitations for falsifying a business record is two years. We are more than seven years beyond the alleged falsification charge.

However, in the Trump case the prosecution is trying to make the case that this is a felony because under New York law falsifying s business record when there is intent is to commit another crime or conceal a crime rises beyond a misdemeanor.

However, in this case the DA has produced no evidence of what the other crime is.

It appears that the DA is going to argue that there was some conspiracy involved to promote Trump's election and the falsified business records were used to conceal the crime. However, the so-called falsification of the business records occurred AFTER Trump was already elected and in office.

How could "falsified" business records created after the election have anything to do with a conspiracy to get Trump elected when he had already been elected?

It should also be noted that the statute of limitations on the felony charge is five years. Again, these charges were brought after that five year period expired. However, the DA went ahead and charged Trump on an exception to the five year limit where the defendant can be charged if they have been CONTINUOUSLY out of the state or their whereabouts are unknown during the five year period. 

Trump was living in Washington, DC as President of the United States before establishing a permanent residence in Florida during the five year period. It is true he was not living in New York.

However, he was not continuously out of the state.

Trump visited New York while he was President at least 19 times. For example, just in the last year of his Presidency he visited the states at least four times. He was in New York five times in 2019, four times in 2018 and six times in 2017.

He did so even more regularly after he left office.

As was reported by The New York Times in 2021 (which would have been within the statute of limitations), Trump was visiting  New York City at least once a week to work at Trump Tower. How is it argued he was CONTINUOUSLY out of the state?

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-tower-work-travels-new-jersey-nyc-summer-2021-6

The New York City DA had numerous opportunities to indict and arrest Trump within the five year statute of limitations if it was really warranted.

Why was it not done? It was decided to file criminal charges against Trump only when it was clear that he was running for President again. This charge was intended to keep Trump from becoming President. If he was not running for President you can be sure that he would not have been charged.

What does that say?

It is also important to understand that this payment was not made from Trump's campaign funds. It came from his personal funds.

The Federal Election Commission already looked at this case in 2017 and found no wrongdoing. Thus, there was no federal crime that the DA could point to that was connected to the business records.

Contrast this case with Hillary Clinton's campaign reimbursing her outside law firm for payments to those who perpetrated the Russian collusion narrative and the creation of the Steele dossier that were also recorded as legal expenses.

Of course, no charges of any kind were brought by any legal authority on that apparent case of fraud and election interference by Clinton and her campaign.

It is just one more example of a two-tiered justice system when it comes to Trump compared to Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden or other Democrats.

Looking beyond the facts of the case is the question of whether it is even possible for Trump to get a fair trial in New York City on these charges.

The 6th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that a defendant be given an impartial jury.

How is it possible for Trump to get a fair trial in New York City where 88% voted against him in Manhattan where the jury pool in this case was drawn from?

This is a New York State indictment not a New York City indictment

Why was a change of venue to another county in the state which had an electorate that was more balanced not approved?

The obvious bias in the case extends to the judge---Justice Juan Merchan.

His daughter, Loren, is President of a Chicago-based political consulting firm, Authentic Campaigns, that works to promote progressive leftists candidates such as Adam Schiff from California.

The firm has raised $93 million off the case according to this story in The New York Post.

Source: https://nypost.com/2024/03/30/us-news/dem-clients-of-daughter-of-judge-in-trump-trial-raised-90m-off-case/

Can you imagine the hue and cry if the judge in this case had a son and daughter who was working to promote conservative candidates such as Marjorie Taylor-Greene or Matt Gaetz?

You can get a sense of the degree to which bias might be involved in the judge's decision in this case by looking at how jury selection in this case unfolded.

Jury selection in criminal cases involving high profile celebrity defendants is very difficult as it is incumbent on the judge to insure a fair and unbiased jury. You could not have a higher profile celebrity defendant than Trump. You also could not have a defendant in which more people would have inherent biases one way or the other.

Consider the following.

It took 11 weeks to seat a jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial of two people.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-12-09-mn-7036-story.html

O.J. was well-known but not as famous as Trump. He did not elicit the strong feelings that Trump does. In fact, before being charged with the murder of his ex-wife and her friend, Simpson was very popular with most of the American public.

It took 11 weeks just to seat a jury in the O.J. trial.

Trump's jury selection took 3.5 days!

What does that say?

Did Judge Merchan really work hard to insure that there would be a fair and impartial jury to hear the Trump case?

These are the 12 jurors in the Trump trial as identified by NBC News.

My guess is that there is a 98% chance that Trump will be convicted by this jury given the obvious electoral bias of Manhattan voters.

There is a 0% chance he will be acquitted. Of course, we know that was the verdict in the O;J. trial.

There is a 2% chance that the trial will end with a hung jury. That was the result with respect to the most serious charges in the John Edwards trial.

It will require that at least one juror refuses to vote for a conviction and be able to stand up against the wrath of 11 other jurors to arrive at a hung jury in this trial.

Trump's best hope for that occurring may rest with Juror #2.

Below are the answers to a questionnaire given to the Trump jurors on where they get their daily news.

Note that the very liberal and Trump hating New York Times is the most cited news source by a large margin.

Only one juror states that they read the more conservative New York Post. Only one juror states that they watch Fox News. However, both of those jurors also read The New York Times.

Juror #2 is the outlier. He doesn't read The New York Times or watch MSNBC or CNN.

He gets his news from X and Truth Social.

Juror #2 may be the only person standing in the way of perhaps the greatest miscarriage of justice in the history of the United States.

It is incredible to see all of this happening before our very eyes and a large portion of the country views this as "justice".

This is justice?

Student Loans--Choices Have Consequences

Progressive Democrats  Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren made cancellation of student loan debt one of their signature policy issues when they were running for President.

Of course, they did not state that they would push for legislation to accomplish that student loan cancellation. They stated they would do it through executive orders if elected.

They knew that this fringe idea would have no hope of passing into law.

Consider the fact that more than half of the workforce in the United States has no college degree

How is it fair that you cancel student loans but not other debts?

How is it fair to cancel student loans for those who have debt currently but there is no consideration for those who sacrificed to pay for college on their own or who previously paid off their loans?

Once you cancel current student loan debt today what happens in the future? Does college become free for everyone going forward? Why would anyone pay their own way? Why wouldn't everyone just take out a loan and wait for the next cancellation?

These are the major reasons why legislation to cancel student loans in Congress is dead on arrival.

You can add that to the fact that only about 12% of the U.S. population has student loan debt.

Joe Biden did not initially endorse the student loan cancellation idea but after he obtained the Democrat nomination in 2020 he saw that he needed to do so to maintain the support of the progressives in his party.

As a result, Biden's final position in the campaign was that he would use his executive authority to cancel student loan debt albeit not the total forgiveness that progressives wanted.

After he was elected, he did use executive authority to announce he was cancelling $400 billion of student debt for nearly all 43 million student loan borrowers with many borrowers getting up to $20,000 in debt relief.

A year ago the Supreme Court struck down this program in a 6-3 vote holding it was an unconstitutional use of executive power. It ruled that any major modification of the terms of the student loan program had to be passed by Congress.

Rather than accept that decision, Biden immediately attacked the Court.

He called the decision "wrong" and promised that "this fight is not over".

Since then we have seen Biden issuing order after order over the last year attempting to nip at the edges of student loans by forgiving or cancelling the loans for certain smaller groups.

Last week Biden proved that this is really all just political grandstanding  by announcing another executive order to cancel a larger amount of student loan debt thereby ignoring the Supreme Court decision and any thoughts of working with Congress. This plan is directed at over 30 MILLION borrowers (70% of those with student loan debt).

The major feature of this loan cancellation plan is that it would cancel up to $20,000 of student loans if the balance has grown due to unpaid interest after repayment begins. 

25 million of the 43 million who have student loans are supposedly in this category.

It will apply irrespective of the income or means of the student borrowers.

Do you know how a loan balance can grow to a larger amount than what you originally borrowed?

This can only occur if you simply were not paying on the loan at all OR the amount you were paying was so minimal each month that it did not even equal the interest cost on the loan.

Let's put this in context.

Almost 60% of those who have taken out student loans have made such minimal payments on their loans that they have not even come close to covering the interest on the loans?

Keep in my mind as well that all student loans borrowers got a four-year moratorium during the Covid "emergency" when they did not have to pay on their loans (although they could have) and did not have any interest accrue.

Biden's proposal blames the student loan mess on "the interest rates on Federal student loans" implying they were too high.

However, the interest rates were established by the federal government. 

Almost all student loans were nationalized by the federal government in 2010 in the Obama-Biden administration in legislation related to Obamacare titled "The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010".

The rationale of nationalizing the loans was that the federal government could earn interest on the student loans and the receipts of interest on those loans (instead of going to private banks) could instead be used to   fund Obamacare.

In fact, Barack Obama claimed that nationalizing the student loan program would save the taxpayers $68 billion over the next decade while also making it easier for  graduates to afford their loan repayments.

Click here if the video does not play in your browser.

The Congressional Budget Office did an analysis shortly after the legislation passed that the interest rate on the student loans could be 1.5% lower but for the requirement to fund Obamacare.

In that same bill, most student loan repayments went from a fixed repayment schedule (such as your mortgage or car loan) to an income-based repayment program where payments would not exceed 10%-15% of the borrower's discretionary household income---generally defined as the amount exceeding 150% of the federal poverty guideline (this would be about $23,000 for a single individual and about $31,000 for a two person household).

In other words, the entire system that Biden is criticizing as causing students to not being able to pay their  loans was created by the federal government and has been controlled by it since 2010.

The student debt market was nationalized from private banks. The federal government set the interest rates to subsidize Obamacare. It established the repayment parameters.

93% of all student loans today are held by the federal government.

It hasn't worked out anywhere close to what Obama was selling in 2010.

All in all, Biden has issued executive orders to cancel more than $1 trillion in student loans since taking office as outlined in this analysis by the House Budget Committee.

There are about $1.7 trillion in current student loans outstanding.

Source: https://budget.house.gov/press-release/bidens-student-loan-scheme-breaking-down-the-costs-of-the-presidents-loan-forgiveness-plans

Does anyone believe we would be in this mess if private banks had continued to be the lender with fixed payment schedules and the federal government continuing as a guarantor for student loans as it was before 2010?

Biden's latest plan, that would cancel accrued interest, would alone cost $84 billion according to an analysis done with the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

This would apply irrespective of the household income of those who hold the student debt.

The Penn Wharton analysis found that roughly 750,000 households making making over $312,000 in annual household income would be eligible for longer-term student debt cancellation under the Biden proposal.

Let's look at a real life example of someone who should be able to pay their student loan debt but has chosen not to.

Transportation Secretary's Pete Buttigieg's federal financial disclosure form that he filed in 2022  (I could not find a more current form online) shows students loans outstanding of between $100,000-$250,000.

Fourteen student loans apparently were taken out in the name of his spouse between 2010 and 2017 at interest rates between 3.4% and 6.8%.

The current interest rate on new loans for undergraduate study in 2024 is 5.50%. In fact, that is very close to the amount an investor could earn from a 6-month T-Bill right now,

These are hardly onerous interest rates. I paid a higher mortgage interest rate than the Buttigieg student loans on every home I ever owned until the last one.

Here is a photo of Buttigieg and his spouse Chasten who he married in 2018.

This is the first page of the liabilities section of that loan disclosure form that shows student loan debt of between $100,000-$200,000. During his Presidential campaign Buttigieg stated that $130,000 was owed in student loan debts.

Source: https://extapps2.oge.gov/201/Presiden.nsf/PAS+Index/F5A19DC2DE73EF4A852588CA002ECD59/$FILE/Peter-P-Buttigieg-2022-278.pdf

An article in Forbes from 2021 provides a lot of background on Buttigieg's finances, his relationship with Chasten and how the student loans came about.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2021/06/14/how-pete-buttigieg-cashed-in-on-his-candidacy/?sh=4ad856a47301

Chasten started taking out the student loans to attend community college and continued taking out loans as a nursing student after transferring to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee before flunking out.

He then enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and changed his major to Theater.

It should come as no surprise that an education in Theater did not lead to attractive employment opportunities so Chasten ended up working at Starbucks, an Eddie Bauer, a gay bar and a position at a children's theater.

He ultimately transferred from a Wisconsin Starbucks to a Chicago location and took out more loans to get a Master's degree in Education from DePaul University. 

Chasten and Buttigieg met via a dating app in 2015 while the former must have still been attending DePaul as the financial disclosure shows two student loans taken out in 2016 and 2017.

At that time, Buttigieg was the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana which he assumed in 2012 and continued in office until he became Secretary of Transportation in 2021.

In January, 2019, six months after they were married, Chasten quit his teaching job to support Buttigieg's political career in his run for President. He effectively became a "house husband".

Any repayments of the student loans would also be on Buttigieg after the marriage.

During his years as Mayor, Buttigieg earned a salary of over $100,000 each year.

Buttigieg wrote two books in the last several years of which he received a $75,000 advance on "Shortest Way Home" and $225,000 on "Trust".

Buttigieg earns over $221,000 per year as Secretary or Transportation.

His financial disclosure form showed that he also had between $50,000-$100,000 in cash in a brokerage sweep account.

The Forbes article reveals that Buttigieg and Chasten purchased a $415,000 lakeside vacation home in Traverse City, Michigan in July, 2020 taking out a $332,000 mortgage in the process. That means that they put down almost $100,000 in a cash down payment on the second home.

The financial disclosure form also reveals that Chasten received between a $15,001-$50,000 advance on his own book in 2021. It also reveals that Chasten had gamboling winnings of $5,000 at the Grand Traverse Resort and Casino during 2021.

In addition to all of this, Buttigieg and Chasten adopted twin babies (a boy and girl) in 2021.

After the adoption, you may recall that Transportation Secretary Buttigieg took two months of parental leave at the same time as the U.S. was going through the chaos of the supply chain crisis in late 2021.

Any adoption is not an inexpensive proposition.

Consider all of the above and ask why was it not possible for  Buttigieg and Chasten to somehow find the money to pay off the students loans over the years?

No money to repay the loans from the six-figure incomes?

From the book advances?

From the gambling winnings?

From forgoing the vacation home?

By delaying the adoption until the loans were paid?

There are undoubtedly cases where the individual carries student loan debt that was incurred fraudulently from diploma mill colleges.

There is little doubt that many colleges have taken advantage of the student loan program to enroll students who should not be there in the first place.

Or allowed students to enroll in programs that had minimal prospects for students to gain jobs that would pay enough to repay their loans. Theater? Gender Studies?

It is also unquestionable that the student loan program is the principal reason for college cost inflation.

Colleges could simply have not raised their tuition and fees to the extent they have without the gigantic pot of federal student loan money.

College costs would have stopped rising long ago due to the fact that it was unaffordable.

What is the lesson in all of this?

Choices have consequences.

Obama and Biden made a choice to nationalize student loans in 2010.

They made a choice to use the interest income on student loans to subsidize Obamacare and claim that their healthcare takeover would not raise the deficit.

Now that their choices have resulted in disaster, Biden wants the consequences to fall on the 300 million Americans who do not have student loans debt.

Students make choices to attend college, learn a trade or go straight into the workforce.

Some students who go to college make a choice to attend an expensive private schools and take on more debt. Others opt for a state school to minimize their debt load.

Students make choices about their college studies. Some choose a course of studies that promises better job prospects (nursing, accounting, engineering, etc). Others choose to enjoy college while studying Theater, Gender Studies or the like that have less than promising future job prospects.

Those who leave their school years behind with student loan debt have a choice to prioritize paying that debt back or paying the bare minimum they can in order to enjoy life to the fullest without any sacrifices.

Choices have consequences and yet there are too many student loan borrowers who don't want to take responsibility for their choices and the fact they signed a loan document promising to repay their loan in full with interest.

The United States was founded on the idea of freedom of choice.

It was never contemplated that the federal government would be expected to insure that the consequences of those personal choices would be transferred to other Americans if a bad choice was made.

I have written before how James Madison wrote in the Federalists Papers about the manner in which the Constitution was designed and drafted in order to protect the country from the development of dangerous factions in society.

James Madison in Federalist Paper #10 also enumerated those things that were most likely to result in the development of dangerous factions that government (and the people) should be protected against.

Madison called them "Improper or Wicked Projects". It could not be much clearer what the Founders thought of these potential risks and the need to avoid them at all costs because of the danger they posed to the nation at large.

We are in the midst of what Madison referred to as the three big improper and wicked projects right now in the United States.

He referred to them as "rages".

Note #2 on his list.

What were they?

1. A rage for paper money

2. A rage for the abolition of debts.

3. A rage for the equal division of property.

I could not say it better than Madison.

The entire effort to abolish or forgive student loans is "improper and wicked" to use Madison's words.

The fact that Joe Biden is attempting to do it after the Supreme Court has already ruled it unconstitutional is even more "improper and wicked".

All of this says all you need to know about the student debt issue and a whole lot more.

What In The World Is Going On?

During the Covid pandemic I often went to the web site Worldometers.info to obtain the latest world statistics on cases and deaths due to the virus.

I found this site to be the most reliable resource for worldwide statistics on Covid and a number of other subjects. Worldometers has been voted by the American Library Association to be one of best free reference sites for obtaining such data.

Worldometers accumulates data on a variety of topics principally from government and other official sources and in many instances converts it into real-time data using proprietary algorithms. For example, it provides a real-time projection of the worldwide births today by knowing the births last year and the projected trend.

There is a wealth of data available on the Worldometers site.

For example, did you know that there are twice as many overweight people in the world as there are undernourished people?

1.8 billion overweight people compared to 900 million who are undernourished.

How about the length of time that proven reserves of various energy sources will last assuming current usage?

Perhaps there is a reason that China and India are building all of those coal-fired electric generation plants?

Energy use in the world today comparing renewable vs. non-renewable sources.

We have a long way to go if we believe we are going to plug in all of those electric cars and trucks to reduce carbon emissions.

Worldometer announced as of April 13, 2024 it was no longer updating its worldwide Covid data as the majority of countries in the world have now stopped reporting this information.

I thought it was interesting to look back on the charts of worldwide cases and deaths involving Covid from the beginning of the pandemic to April 13. The Worldometer charts are below.

I have added a line to indicate the point that the Covid vaccines were introduced with the promise that they would end the pandemic.

I find it interesting in looking at the data that worldwide deaths spiked rather considerably after the introduction of the vaccines.

Deaths remained elevated after the introduction of the vaccine for most of the next 18 months.

When the Omicron variant emerged in January, 2022 cases exploded but deaths did not follow that trend.

Was this due to the vaccine or the milder Omicron variant?

Did the milder Omicron variant lead to broader-based natural immunity that was the real reason the virus ultimately reached endemic status?

Don't you think that if someone from Mars came to earth today and was shown these graphs and told that a vaccine had been introduced to stop the pandemic they would state that it must have been introduced in late 2022? Two years and many, many boosters later than was actually the case.

All in all, Worldometer reports that there have been just over 7 million worldwide deaths compared to 705 million reported Covid cases over the last four years.

Source: Worldometer.com

However, the number of Covid cases are clearly massively underreported in that there are over 8 billion people in the world today.

That case total would suggest that less than 10% of the humans on the planets were ever infected by Covid over the last four years.

How many people do you know that did not have at least one bout with Covid?

At the same time, the number of worldwide deaths is undoubtedly exaggerated in that an untold number of these deaths were WITH Covid rather than FROM Covid.

Here is another statistic from the data that is interesting.

The United States reported 1,219,487 deaths from Covid. China, where the pandemic began, reported 5,272. 

That works out to 3,642 deaths per 1 million /population in the United States and 4 per million in China.

A stark lesson that any statistic is only as reliable as the source that is providing it.

In any event, four years later, there is a lot to think about in all that was done in the name of Covid, isn't there?

Of course, 7 million deaths attributed to Covid over the last four years is a sobering number.

However, let's put that in context compared to a couple of other statistics that Worldometers.info tracks.

61 million people died globally in 2023.

That means about 245 million people died in the world over the last four years. The Covid death tally was less than 3% of that.

Even more sobering is the Worldometers.info citation from the World Health Organization (WHO) data that 73 million induced abortions take place globally each year 

Source: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/abortion

Consider the data I cited above on the number of abortions and the number of deaths globally in a year.

Have you ever heard this?

The number of abortions in the world each year exceeds the number of people worldwide who die from all causes.

To put it into better context, there are seven times more abortions annually than those who die from heart disease and six times more than die from cancer.

During the last four years, there were 42 times as many induced abortions globally than were reported as Covid deaths.

What is a major difference in our perceptions of these issues? In one case we saw a tabulation of deaths every day for the better part of three years. In the other case the actual numbers are never mentioned.

What in the world is going on?

A lot...if you look at the data and pay attention to the conclusions that you can drawn from basic facts.

Is Biden In Trouble With Younger Voters?

One of the important factors to watch in the 2024 Presidential election is the amount of support that Joe Biden can count on from younger voters.

Younger voters have reliably voted for Democrat candidates with higher percentages than the electorate at large since the early-1990's. This has been particularly true compared to older voters (age 65+).

Source: https://theconversation.com/us-election-two-graphs-show-how-young-voters-influence-presidential-results-as-biden-gets-poll-boost-226350

According to exit polls, Joe Biden won the 18-29 age vote 60%-36% (24 point margin) over Donald Trump in 2020.

NBC News Exit Poll
2020 General Election

That was better than the 19 point margin that Hillary Clinton had over Trump in the 2016 election.

However, a number of polls that I am watching right now are showing that Biden is having trouble with younger voters in a 2024 rematch with Trump.

For example, an NBC News poll in January, 2024 of age 18-29 voters showed Biden was only up 8 points on Trump in the upcoming election.

NBC News poll, January, 2024

A Fox News poll in March actually showed that Trump was up 18 points on Biden among 18-29 year old voters.

Fox News poll, March, 2024

Those polls are showing marked differences. Neither may be reliable individually.

However, they do point to a trend showing a significant erosion in Biden's support with younger voters.

If Biden is in trouble with younger voters he is in big trouble in November considering the margins he had with this voting group in 2020.

Underlying that trend is a very strong dissatisfaction among 18-29 age voters with the job Joe Biden is doing as President.

An NPR/PBS/Marist poll in March found that 61% of the 18-29 age group disapproved of Biden's job performance. That was the highest among any of the age groups surveyed.

Keep in mind that this poll showed Biden up overall by +2 over Trump.

Source: https://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/NPR_PBS-NewsHour_Marist-Poll_USA-NOS-and-Tables_202403291554.pdf

What is interesting in the Trump-Biden polling for 2024 is that Trump appears to be winning younger voters over but losing older voters who have traditionally been the most reliable Republican voting bloc.

Trump is +2 with Gen Z/Millennials in the NPR/PBS poll but is -8 with Baby Boomers. Trump was +5 with age 65+ voters in 2020 in the NBC exit polling.

The interplay of the voting preferences of those two groups will be interesting to watch as the election cycle unfolds. 

You can be sure that a lot of attention is going to be paid by both camps into getting their traditional voters back in the fold.

Biden's problem with younger voters appears to be rooted in a great deal of disillusionment about the economy, inflation, housing and rent prices, wars and Biden's failure to deliver on key promises such as student debt cancellation.

A USA Today article last week talked to a number of young Biden voters from 2020 who are rethinking their vote. Some say they will not vote at all considering their choices this year.

"We feel like we've been ripped off by the 'American dream' idea ‒ we've seen the financial repercussions of our parents' and grandparents' generations multiple times over, seen a lot more violence and war than we were originally told would happen, and we feel ripped off," he said. "The lack of voting is probably a little bit of a middle finger to those who passed that to us." 

 

A recurring theme in many of those young people in the article is that they believe that they have little hope to get ahead and frustration with the older generation and their elected representatives.

"The people we elect don't speak for me," she said. "I try to be a mature person. But it's hard not to be angry when you were left with multiple situations where the older generations have literally messed up so much for us."

She said older voters refuse to change society because it works for them, even if it means dooming young people to a subsistence existence without homeownership, savings or affordable cars, groceries and gas.

The views that this young lady has on the costs of homeownership, cars, groceries and gasoline are not ill-founded. 

Consider the costs of homeownership for a young person wanting to get out of the rental market.

Homebuyers need to earn 80% more today than they did in 2020 to afford a home due to rising house prices and interest rates.

The median asking price for rent in the United States is now almost $2,000/month.

Look at the increases in rents since 2020 in a recent report by Redfin.

Source: https://www.redfin.com/news/redfin-rental-report-march-2024/

That 25% increase is still modest compared to what it takes to buy a home.

As a result, over much of the country, it has become much more affordable to rent vs. buy. That was not the case in 2020 as this chart shows.

Of course, buying a home is a discretionary purchase. However, every one needs shelter.

Therefore, rising rents are much more harmful to the young and those with lower incomes.

Homeowners are generally not affected by rising home prices or interest rates unless they want or need to move.

This chart shows the extent that renters are being squeezed with increasing rents with those with the lowest incomes feeling the most pain. Owners are more insulated from inflation cost increases except when it comes to home owners insurance and property taxes.

What about car prices?

Here is the CarGurus.com price index for used cars.

It has declined from where it was but prices are still up 25% since the beginning of 2020.

Source: https://www.cargurus.com/research/price-trends?entityIds=Index&startDate=1577768400000&endDate=1712807999999

The average price of a new vehicle is now almost $50,000.

Source: https://www.financialsamurai.com/average-new-car-price/

Let's also consider car insurance. This is particularly costly to younger drivers.

The latest CPI numbers indicate that car insurance was up 22.2% over the last 12 months.

The Wall Street Journal recently did a study and found a basket of typical grocery store items costs almost 40% more than they did in 2019.

Gasoline prices are up 38% since December, 2019.

Source: https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_gas_price

This is despite Biden emptying half of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve that was supposed to be used in a national emergency. Biden claimed that it was necessary because Russia invaded Ukraine.

Source: https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_ending_stocks_of_crude_oil_in_the_strategic_petroleum_reserve

What was the real emergency? Biden and the Democrats wanted to buy votes.

Biden said he would refill it at a "profit". 

So far only 4% has been replenished and oil prices are going the wrong way to think about any "profit".

The price of oil has risen from around $70/barrel to $87/ barrel sine January.

Source: https://ycharts.com/indicators/wti_crude_oil_spot_price

All of the talk about cancelling student loan debt by Biden in 2020 was also to buy votes.

How could any thinking person believe that the President could sign an executive order to cancel up to $1.7 TRILLION in student loans and have the U.S. Constitution mean anything?

Last June, in a 6-3 decision the Supreme Court ruled that anything as far-reaching and broad-based as providing student loan cancellation or forgiveness must be done by an act of Congress.

Did Joe Biden accept the decision and decide to work with Congress to attempt to persuade them to get what he wants?

No.

He called the decision "wrong" and promised that "this fight is not over".

Since then we have seen him issuing order after order attempting to nip at the edges of student loans by forgiving or cancelling the loans for certain smaller groups.

Last week Biden proved that he really is concerned about the youth vote by announcing another executive order to cancel student loan debt thereby ignoring the Supreme Court decision and any thoughts of working with Congress. This plan is directed at 30 MILLION borrowers. 

Source: https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/04/08/biden-says-hell-move-forward-with-student-debt-relief-despite-supreme-court-decision/

This is the United States of America?

The Supreme Court definitively ruled that attempting to substantially modify or cancel these student loans was beyond the power of the Executive Branch to do so. That was only within the power of Congress.

The Executive Branch is supposed to enforce the law. Not ignore it or do whatever they please.

Biden obviously is going to move forward knowing that his latest plan will not be struck down by the Court until after the election.

Does he care if he deliberately misleads those young voters? He clearly could care less as long as it gets him re-elected. In any event, he will just blame Republicans for failing to agree to cancelling the student loan debt in the end anyway.

The same problem exists with immigration law.

Biden and the Democrats may not like the law but it is their job to enforce it.

What if Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump had decided they did not like the Roe v. Wade decision and just ignored it and started issuing orders on restricting abortions?

How would that have gone?

Young voters are feeling the effects of the voting decision they made in 2020.

I feel their pain.

However, I suggest they look a little beyond what is happening to them financially.

Or how they are upset Biden is not doing enough to help Palestine.

Or how unfair it is that they have to repay a loan that Joe Biden told them they would not have to.

That student loan debt might be the least of their concerns if they stop and consider the $34.6 trillion of federal debt (and counting) they are on the hook to pay in the future.

They are also going to be dealing with the compounding effects of the illegal immigration that Biden has encouraged every day for the rest of their lives unless it is reversed.

They might want to consider the importance of the rule of law.

They might want to consider whether the U.S. Constitution means anything or not.

They might want to consider what he means to live in the United States which is literally the last beacon of freedom left on earth.

They might want to consider that if they lose those freedoms they are unlikely to ever get them back.

Donald Trump and the Republicans are a threat to democracy?

The good news is that young voters are starting to ask questions and have doubts.

However, it is time they start thinking a little deeper and voting with their heads rather than their hearts.

The quote below is often attributed to Winston Churchill but fact checkers refute that.

I don't know who first said it but I don't know if the country can wait for those younger voters to reach age 40.