The Morning Roar: President Obama Signs Executive Order To Cap Student Loan Payments, TN Sheriff Calls Homeland Security On Man Requesting Public Records, CO Cop Faces Prison Time For Shooting Elk
Welcome to your Monday editions of The Morning Roar!President Obama To Sign Executive Order Capping Student Loan PaymentsPresident Obama will be issuing an executive order today that will cap student loan repayment amounts at ten percent of monthly income. The New York Times was the first news outlet to provide the details of President Obama’s latest venture into legislating with the stroke of a pen.
Before an East Room audience, Mr. Obama is scheduled to announce “new steps to further lift the burden of crushing student loan debt,” said a White House official, who declined to be identified describing the actions in advance of the president’s event. Despite past actions by the administration, borrowers’ debt load is growing and retarding the ability to buy homes, start businesses or otherwise spend to spur the economy, economists say.Mr. Obama’s main action will be to expand on a 2010 law that capped borrowers’ repayments at 10 percent of their monthly income. The intent is to extend such relief to an estimated five million people with older loans who are currently ineligible — those who got loans before October 2007 or stopped borrowing by October 2011. But the relief would not be available until December 2015, officials said, given the time needed for the Education Department to propose and put new regulations into effect.Also, Mr. Obama will announce that the department will renegotiate contracts with companies that service federal loans to give them additional financial incentives to help borrowers avoid delinquency or default.
Hopefully you were able to tune in for last week’s episode of the Lions of Liberty Podcast. Host Marc Clair interviewed / exchanged rants with Aaron Calafoto on the student debt crisis. Calafato is an actor and activist who performs a one-man play titled “For Profit.” He’s a self-proclaimed progressive, so the interview provided a good overview of how some outside the libertarian movement view the student debt crisis and what actions they would propose to help the situation.Progressives love government intervention and their idea to “ease” the burden of those with student loans is no different. As per usual, the Obama administrations idea to mitigate the student debt crisis focuses on the short term and neglects long term impacts. Do they really think that altering contracts between banks and individuals that total billions of dollars won’t produce an unintended consequence that make an already bad situation worse?One example of a possible consequence which could be created is the incentive for individuals to hide income from the federal government’s view in order to reduce payments further. From a libertarian perspective, the reduction of money going to the federal government via taxation would a good thing. I only point this issue out to highlight the unintended consequences that always follow from coercive central planning.TN Sheriff Calls Homeland Security On Man Requesting Public RecordsThis next story is a perfect example of why it is a bad idea to give monopoly control on justice and prisons to the State.WSMV in Lewisburg, Tennessee reports:
Alex Friedmann, editor for the Prison Legal News, has been working on a piece about complaints coming out of the jail. He's now suing Sheriff Normal Dalton for refusing to release public records of alleged questionable practices in the prison system."It included policies regarding medical care for inmates, the contract with the jail to provide phone calls to inmates, the grievance procedure process for inmates who complain," Friedmann said.Not only did the sheriff's office deny him those requests, but Dalton admitted on the witness stand to ordering background checks on Friedmann, calling the Department of Homeland Security and even going to Friedmann's house.
The sheriff in this case is not being charged with a crime. The proceedings in front of the judge are only to determine if Mr. Friedmann should gain access to the records. The mafia style tactics used by the sheriff in this case are inherent to a judicial system that is not accountable to the people it is intended to serve. The current structure does not allow for a correcting punishment by way of a market reaction that would deter this sort of behavior. As a result, we are forced to live with a system that answers to itself, and therefore answers to nobody.CO Cops Faces Six Years In Prison For Shooting ElkI must admit the reason that I chose this story for the roar was so the below picture of a massive elk could be included. The Elk was shot by police officer Sam Carter. Carter is now going to serve some serious time in prison as a result of his kill.
On Jan. 1, 2013, former Boulder police officer Sam Carter fatally shot “Big Boy,” a domesticated elk that had become a beloved member of the community. He was charged and recently found guilty on nine counts. Carter said the elk had become dangerously domesticated and was aggressive, but prosecutors said he killed it for the trophy aspect, NBC News reports.According to Daily Mail, defense attorney Marc Colin defended his client, saying Carter was only trying to protect the public.“Sam Carter is not guilty of anything but trying to protect the citizens of Boulder from a nuisance elk,” Colin said.But according to Boulder County prosecutor Stanley Garnett, there was more to it than that. Garnett said Carter had turned off the GPS in his squad car before he shot Big Boy, then later falsified a tag that claimed the elk was road kill.Carter also swapped text messages with a fellow officer about “hunting” for elk, texting one message that said, “He’s gonna die.”Garnett said the community took the death of Big Boy hard, but added Carter’s covering it up was equally bad.“The fact that somebody would use the uniform and badge of a police department in such a case was equally disturbing to the community,” Garnett said.
Once again we have an occurrence of an officer placing himself above the laws that govern the rest of society. Fortunately, the justice system is actually going to make an example out of this cop.It's a shame the criminal justice system does not have similar reactions to officers gunning down human beings or killing harmless dogs. Officers in those instances seem to always get off easy. The standard operating procedure is for the cops to receive a few months on a paid suspension (vacation) while an investigation occurrs, then they are returned to the streets to continue to wreak havoc without ever paying for the crimes they commit. But if you kill a trophy elk that is a prized member of the community, then you go directly to jail.Read The Morning Roar every weekday Monday-Friday!The Lions of Liberty are on Twitter, Facebook & Google+Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!
