mdsinclair

Last week we suggested the outcome of the 2022 mid-term elections as a possible topic for tomorrow’s meeting. Among the many possible questions we might talk about are the following:

“Is this the end of Little Rico?” (Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar (1931), but you know who I’m talking about.)

Which side won, if any?

Were the polls wrong again? If so, how and why?

Here are links to a few opinion pieces published over the last week or so that I found interesting:

A Republican opinion writer in the Washington Post about what he got wrong (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/09/midterm-predictions-wrong-republican-underperform/) in his pre-election predictions (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/07/midterm-elections-2022-prediction-house-senate-forecast/)

Another Republican opinion writer, this time in The New York Times, getting his pre-electon predictions wrong (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/06/opinion/politics/republican-midterms.html)

One more article that might be of interest in case we decide to discuss this topic tomorrow: here’s an analysis from Wharton of the likely cost of the program.

Another question about the Biden student loan forgiveness program is whether the President has the legal authority to implement it by executive order, particularly after Congress has refused to enact such a program for more than a decade.

If the President has that authority, is it wise to do so for this purpose in light of the risk that the Supreme Court will overturn the executive order and further limit the President’s authority? Is the Supreme Court likely to uphold the use of executive authority in this case, given its stance on a moratorium on residential evictions based on the Covid pandemic, OSHA’s attempt to impose Covid vaccination requirements on employees of large private businesses, and the limits the Court has recently imposed on the EPA to regulate what the Court has deemed to be a “major question” that has a broad impact on the economy? Here’s an article from Boston University discussing some of these questions.