Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors?

    In 2017, I met someone in Key West, who did documentary films. He interviewed me several times on camera, and he interviewed other people in Key West, who knew me. After I moved back to Alabama in the fall of 2018, Corey and I became Facebook friends.

    About a month ago, I published on my Facebook page links to The Golden Flake Clown's Tale, written from the perspective of my father's oldest presumed son, the family black sheep, skeleton keeper and mystic- the other Bashinsky who had learned Golden Flake from the ground up. Corey private massaged me about perhaps doing a documentary on that topic, he could come to Birmingham. I suggested he read the book and see if that subject matter interests him. I sent him links for an internet library that carries the book and a Google blogspot I had created to hold the book. Corey said he had started reading the book at the blogspot.

https://archive.org/details/goldenflakeclownstale/page/17/mode/2up

https://goldenflakeclowntale.blogspot.com/

    Yesterday, Corey posted on his Facebook page:

Corey

Can someone explain to me why the states were suing on behalf of the student loan companies? Can’t they afford their own lawyers?

Sloan Bashinsky
I don't understand how the states had legal standing to bring that lawsuit. Does that mean. the states now have legal standing to bring federal lawsuits about anything the US Government does that the states don't like? 

Corey

What’s their ostensible motivation even, operating on behalf of debt collectors? How is that a matter for the state?

Sloan Bashinsky
I imagine only a Republican can fathom why. 

 

I'm a lawyer who clerked for a United States District Judge in Birmingham, Alabama. On the SCOTUS student debt case, it was ruled Biden did not have legal authority to forgive the student debt, even though the Act in question allows the president to take extraordinary action in a national emergency. President Trump declared Covid-19 a national emergency. Covid-19 put a lot of people out of work, including students who had taken out student loans. I think the historical kink is student loans were really popular, then Congress passed an Act that prevented students bankrupting student loans. I know his, because I represented an optometry student in his bankruptcy, and he won before the Bankruptcy Judge, but he lost before the U.S. District Judge. The other part of the SCOTUS decision that makes no sense to me, as you point out, is how did Nebraska have legal standing to bring the lawsuit? It looks to me that this SCOTUS decision opens the door to states filing federal lawsuits about any and every thing that hurts their feelings. I think the 6 Justices who opened that door should be tarred and feathered, then keel-hauled, and put on Elon Musk's next rocket.

Sloan Bashinsky
I've thought more about this. The Federal Bankruptcy Act was passed to save people from going crazy, killing themselves, turning to crime, losing their homes, because they could not repay their debts. Before US District Judge Clarence Allgood, for whom I clerked, was appointed to the Federal Bench, he pioneered the Federal Debtors Court in Birmingham, and then he wrote the legislation that Congress passed, which established the Federal Debtor's Court nationally.

That Court was where where debtors could seek relief from debt payments they could not afford, which the Debtors Court Judge adjusted to make the payments affordable and save their credit and/or save them from filing straight bankruptcy and be freed from their debts and ruin their credit. For that work, Judge Allgood was appointed to the Federal Bench, even though his law degree was from the unaccredited Birmingham Night School of Law, which was taught by Birmingham lawyers, and even though he had never practiced law. 

When student loans started being made, it was possible to go bankrupt and be freed of those loans. When that was stopped by Congress, a lot of people owing student loans they could not repay, nor bankrupt, were put under great stress, while people who incurred other kinds of debt could go to Debtors Court or to the Federal Bankruptcy Court. 
Covid-19 was out of the blue, nobody was prepared for it, including President Trump. Many people with student loans were put under unprecedented, unfathomable stress. The olden days of the debtor's courts and prisons were upon them, except they could not be put into physical prisons. Only someone without a heart, without any compassion, who never heard of Jesus, could wish that on someone else, But, the Republicans and their 6 Justices on the US Supreme Court wished it on those people described above, without any concern for what would happen to those people, or what they might do because of so much stress.

Judge Allgood didn't attend church, he swore and he used to drink moonshine, until his stomach gave out on him. He lost two legs above the knees as a teen, when he hopped off a freight train he was riding and fell onto the tracks. He was the most Godly man I have known in my lifetime. I flew from Colorado to Birmingham for his funeral at Elmwood Cemetery, attended by more people than I had ever seen at a funeral. 

Clarence W. Allgood was was God's Judge, and I hope the 6 Supreme Court Justices and the Republicans who laud those Justices' decision to revoke President Biden's executive order reducing student loan debt, stand before Judge Allgood when their roll is called up yonder.

Sloan Bashinsky

In the news later last night and this morning, President Biden now is trying to use the Department of Education to mitigate and even waive student loans, looks sort of like a hybrid of Debtors Court and straight bankruptcy. Heck, Trump says, if he's reelected, he will pardon the Jan 6 insurrectionists, why can't Biden pardon people who took out student loans they cannot repay? How many times did Trump go bankrupt and stiff his creditors?

sloanbashinsky@outlook.com