2022 Midterms

[SCLaxAttack]

Anybody know the level of US paper (debt) the Chinese hold at the moment?

..

According to this, #2 behind Japan’s $1.21T in May 2022. $981B.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/246 ... sury-debt/

[kramerica.inc]

This specific problem isn't helping the Democrats:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/14/politics ... index.html

White House assurances on inflation spark backlash from frustrated swing-state Democrats
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 12:10 AM ET, Thu July 14, 2022

Meh. You better get on your knees and pray that Republicans don't win the midterms.

You've got two tools in the tool chest for inflation, and your team despises either.....

-cut spending
-raise taxes

Those are your two choices to pull money out of circulation, reducing inflation.

So what is your team gonna do when the dog catches the car, Kram?

Because you have haven't done either for 20+ years and counting......


My guess? If they win, they'll keep right on spending, pass zero bills, beat Biden in 2024.....and then make Trump's spending look like a joke.

Borrowing ever penny, naturally.....

You're right. The right ain't gonna stop spending. And the Trump and Biden admins didnt have the money they were giving away. It was all smoke and mirrors.

This is what happens when you give every person in the US thousands of dollars to stay home.
Because, you know, "flatten the curve."


Then give them thousands more to keep staying home.
Because "we gotta avoid ANY virus surge so we can get back to normal??"


Those checks were able to help some people buy a few more groceries in 2020 and 2021. Now the entire country can't afford milk and cereal in 2022.

All thanks to the many, many politicians who kept this country locked down much more severely and longer than needed.

[dislaxxic]

Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame

Ignorance is a dangerous thing.

Saying "the entire country can't afford milk and cereal in 2022 because the government took steps to help Americans through a pandemic" qualifies at best as an ill-informed attitude. Better we had plowed through it by keeping everything open and acting like it's just no BFD?

Bottom line: trumpublicans have NO governing concept whatsoever...they simply whine about what's wrong and play the blame game. Eternal victims.

..

[cradleandshoot]

Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame

Ignorance is a dangerous thing.

Saying "the entire country can't afford milk and cereal in 2022 because the government took steps to help Americans through a pandemic" qualifies at best as an ill-informed attitude. Better we had plowed through it by keeping everything open and acting like it's just no BFD?

Bottom line: trumpublicans have NO governing concept whatsoever...they simply whine about what's wrong and play the blame game. Eternal victims.

..

Bottom line: trumpublicans have NO governing concept whatsoever...they simply whine about what's wrong and play the blame game. Eternal victims.

Wow, quite the statement Dis. DemocRATs and RepubliCONs have the same thing in common... they both whine about what is wrong and play the blame game. So the solution is... ELECT ME!!!! I will fix what is wrong in DC. Sure they will... IN A PIGS EYE.... The sorry ass lame excuse from BOTH PARTIES... ELECT ME SO I CAN GO TO WASHNGTON AND FIX WHAT IS BROKEN. You folks are ALL responsible for breaking chit in the first place. What sane person would suddenly expect you dumb asses to be able to fix anything???

[dislaxxic]

Tell us what you think of the new bill just signed into law by President Biden, Cranky.

By the way, you're not on ObamaCare, are you?

..

[HooDat]

I'd love to hear from someone more connected to China than I am, but the sense I get is their economy is in more trouble than ours. Which is why Xi is so twitchy and puffing up over Taiwan.

And it's also why filling orders for Export are key, so long at they are able.

I don't see China being the problem. And I know NOTHING about China......but they want money as much as the next guy.

Anybody know the level of US paper (debt) the Chinese hold at the moment?

..

China has plenty of money - what they are running out of is (oddly enough) people. At least that is what I think is going on. Their one-child policy is starting to rear its head, and they have an aging population with a shrinking labor pool. I think we are about to witness another major turn inward by Xi. They don't need money (see dis's post) they need resources and they have set themselves up as (essentially) the only manufacturer in the world. Now they need to keep everything they make in order to support the aging population - because pretty soon, they won't be able to make enough to share.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/14/china/ch ... index.html
https://www.ft.com/content/17314336-b7d ... a58e26ca3e
https://www.thinkchina.sg/china-turning ... to-its-own

[PizzaSnake]

I'd love to hear from someone more connected to China than I am, but the sense I get is their economy is in more trouble than ours. Which is why Xi is so twitchy and puffing up over Taiwan.

And it's also why filling orders for Export are key, so long at they are able.

I don't see China being the problem. And I know NOTHING about China......but they want money as much as the next guy.

Anybody know the level of US paper (debt) the Chinese hold at the moment?

..

China has plenty of money - what they are running out of is (oddly enough) people. At least that is what I think is going on. Their one-child policy is starting to rear its head, and they have an aging population with a shrinking labor pool. I think we are about to witness another major turn inward by Xi. They don't need money (see dis's post) they need resources and they have set themselves up as (essentially) the only manufacturer in the world. Now they need to keep everything they make in order to support the aging population - because pretty soon, they won't be able to make enough to share.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/14/china/ch ... index.html
https://www.ft.com/content/17314336-b7d ... a58e26ca3e
https://www.thinkchina.sg/china-turning ... to-its-own

China and India have a surplus of young men and a marked shortage of women of reproductive age. In the past, a little land war would have reduced that imbalance…

Enough with modern frippery like guided missiles and other “stand-off” weapon systems. They need to embrace good old traditional manual wet-work.

[a fan]

You're right. The right ain't gonna stop spending.

'
Which leaves one choice: raise taxes to cover the spending. You get that, yeah?

All thanks to the many, many politicians who kept this country locked down much more severely and longer than needed.

No...we're still paying interest on the spending spree and tax cuts from George Bush, Kram.

This issue didn't just arrive 24 months ago, Kram. You know better than this.

If we had reasonable (Clinton-era) taxation for the last 20 years, Kram? We'd have had a balanced budget rolling into 2020.

And then Covid would have been a nothing burger.

Your team hasn't raised taxes in a material way in 20+ years, Kram. This simply isn't sustainable when you keep increasing spending.

[DocBarrister]

New York of all places just gave us solid proof that there will be no red wave in November. Doesn’t mean Democrats will hold the House or Senate, but it does suggest that the election will be much closer than political pundits thought it would be earlier in the year. Turns out women and others are p*ssed that a far-right Supreme Court is threatening their rights while protecting the profits of the gun industry over the lives of children.

The Democrats have held onto NY-19 in a House special election, which both candidates tried to nationalize. The Democrat, Pat Ryan, basically made it a referendum on reproductive rights. This is a true swing district that both Trump and Biden have won. The fact that Ryan won argues against a red wave that will sweep Democrats off the map.

Even more compelling is the result in NY-23, a heavily Republican district where the former GOP incumbent used to win by 9 to 16 points (the 9 point-win taking place in the blue wave 2018 election). The Republicans held onto the seat in a special House election, but by less than 7 points. That follows other Democratic over-performances in special elections since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Of course, we can’t forget the dominating pro-choice victory in conservative Kansas several weeks ago … looks like that overwhelming victory was not a fluke.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/election ... e-main-t-2

Republicans are still favored to take the House, but I think the Democrats have a real fighting chance. Democrats also have a real chance of holding the Senate, and maybe even net gain a seat or two.

Thing are looking up for our country and the Democrats.

DocBarrister

[Brooklyn]

I guess Herschel Walker's hero must have been Reagan. Both had some misgivings about trees. Reagan said they cause more pollution than do automobiles. Walker feels we have enough to combat climate change and shouldn't spend more money to improve the environment. ""Since we don't control the air, our good air decided to float over to China's bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then -- now we got we to clean that back up," Walker said last month at a local GOP event."


https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/23/politics ... index.html


Another mindless Repukeblicon. Just pathetic.

[DocBarrister]

New York of all places just gave us solid proof that there will be no red wave in November. Doesn’t mean Democrats will hold the House or Senate, but it does suggest that the election will be much closer than political pundits thought it would be earlier in the year. Turns out women and others are p*ssed that a far-right Supreme Court is threatening their rights while protecting the profits of the gun industry over the lives of children.

The Democrats have held onto NY-19 in a House special election, which both candidates tried to nationalize. The Democrat, Pat Ryan, basically made it a referendum on reproductive rights. This is a true swing district that both Trump and Biden have won. The fact that Ryan won argues against a red wave that will sweep Democrats off the map.

Even more compelling is the result in NY-23, a heavily Republican district where the former GOP incumbent used to win by 9 to 16 points (the 9 point-win taking place in the blue wave 2018 election). The Republicans held onto the seat in a special House election, but by less than 7 points. That follows other Democratic over-performances in special elections since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Of course, we can’t forget the dominating pro-choice victory in conservative Kansas several weeks ago … looks like that overwhelming victory was not a fluke.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/election ... e-main-t-2

Republicans are still favored to take the House, but I think the Democrats have a real fighting chance. Democrats also have a real chance of holding the Senate, and maybe even net gain a seat or two.

Thing are looking up for our country and the Democrats.

DocBarrister

NEW YORK — A victory in a bellwether House district in Hudson Valley gives fresh hope to Democrats ahead of a daunting 2022 midterm election and raises questions for Republicans who have been expecting a "red wave" this fall.

Democrat Pat Ryan won the hotly contested special election Tuesday, defeating Republican Marc Molinaro, NBC News projected.

The outcome reveals the power of Democratic messaging on abortion: Ryan had put the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade front and center to try and galvanize his party's voters to the polls, drawing on his military service to argue that fighting for American freedom means protecting reproductive rights.

It was pitted against the Republican message, carried by Molinaro, that the election is a referendum on President Joe Biden, economic pain through inflation and crime. Molinaro ran as a check on "one-party rule" by Democrats in Washington, which Republicans have long seen as a winning pitch. On Tuesday morning, Molinaro urged voters to show up and "send a message to Washington."

It wasn't enough.

The district in Hudson Valley has tracked the national mood for years — it voted for Joe Biden by about 2 points in 2020 after voting for Donald Trump and Barack Obama in their successful presidential campaigns. It was a Republican-held House district until it flipped to Democrats in the 2018 wave election.

In 2010 or 2014 — the last two midterm elections when a Democrat held the White House — Democratic candidates would likely have had no chance in this district. Ryan overcame the headwinds and won.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-e ... -rcna44541

DocBarrister

[dislaxxic]

Women are registering to vote in Pennsylvania in numbers far exceeding men since the Supreme Court abortion decision

..

[jhu72]

Fascist Governor and would be fascist Senator show what they are.

MAGA

[MDlaxfan76]

Fascist Governor and would be fascist Senator show what they are.

MAGA

yup. Fascist.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.livescience.com/57622-fascism.html

[DocBarrister]

Democrats again overperformed the 2020 presidential election results in a pair of special elections in New York on Tuesday. That means they’ve now overperformed 2020 in all four special elections decided since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.

And that’s not including a fifth special election last week in Alaska, where votes are still being tallied and Democrats have a real shot at picking off a statewide seat where voters favored Donald Trump by 10 points.

Any single race — even a few races — can provide a misleading picture, and we often oversell the results of an individual special election. But they’re one of the best indicators we have of the current political environment, because they involve actual voters showing up to cast actual ballots. What’s more, the 2022 election cycle has given us an inordinate number of late special elections to glean clues from.

And the picture across these races is pretty consistent in some key ways. It involves Democrats overperforming Biden’s 2020 numbers by a handful of percentage points, and doing so thanks to turnout in more Democratic-leaning areas.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... -momentum/

DocBarrister

[Seacoaster(1)]

HCR:

"Yesterday’s elections suggest that American voters are concerned about the past year’s radicalization of the Republican Party. In a special election for a seat in the House of Representatives in a New York state swing district, the 19th congressional district, Democrat Pat Ryan beat his Republican opponent. Pundits looked at the race as a bellwether (named for the wether, or castrated sheep, fitted with a bell to indicate where the flock was going), and most thought the Republican would win, as he was a strong candidate and the midterm election in a president’s first term usually goes to the opposite party.

Ryan’s opponent emphasized inflation and crime, but Ryan told Greg Sargent of the Washington Post: “We centered the concept of freedom…. When rights and freedoms are being taken away from people,” Ryan told Sargent, they “stand up and fight.” The Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision of two months ago overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that protected abortion rights was a key sign of the erosion of freedom. Ryan told Sargent that “ripping away reproductive rights from tens of millions of people” was “visceral.”

So, too, are gun safety and threats to democracy. “There’s sort of this power grab of the far, far right,” Ryan told Sargent. “It’s just wildly out of step with where the vast majority of Americans are.”

This is the fourth special election since the Dobbs decision that has shown at least a two-point movement toward the Democrats. A referendum on preserving abortion rights in Kansas also went to those in favor of them.

Tom Bonier, who runs the political data firm TargetSmart, noted that women have outregistered men to vote since the Dobbs decision by large margins: 11 points in Ohio, for example. And a Pew poll released yesterday shows that 56% of voters say that the right to abortion is very important to them for their midterm votes, up from 46% before the Dobbs decision.

The trend is clear, but so is the reality that a number of states are operating under extreme Republican gerrymanders—some, like those in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Ohio, still in force although the state judges have said they are illegal—that will give Republicans a structural advantage.

Biden administration officials are currently touring the country to call attention to how the administration is “Building a Better America.” In 35 trips to 23 states, they will “make clear that the President and Congressional Democrats beat the special interests and delivered what was best for the American people.” They are emphasizing the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the gun safety law, and so on. They are urging Americans to unite not by party, but against the extremism on display in the leadership of the current Republican Party. “Every step of the way, Congressional Republicans sided with the special interests—pushing an extreme MAGA agenda that costs families.”

Since the 1980s, Republicans have argued for cutting public programs because they cost too much money, while also arguing that tax cuts for the wealthy would pay for themselves by expanding the economy, thus increasing tax revenues. It has never worked—when government computers showed that President Ronald Reagan’s first tax cut would explode the deficit, the budget director simply reprogrammed them—but that has not stopped the Republicans from passing repeated tax cuts for the wealthy, one as recently as December 2017.

Republicans have warned that the massive investment the Democrats have made in the country during Biden’s term would rack up enormous deficits. But, in fact, today the Office of Management and Budget forecast that this year’s budget deficit will decline by $1.7 trillion, the single largest drop in the deficit in U.S. history. (The record deficit was $3.13 trillion in 2020, during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic.) This number is simply a benchmark, and the deficit remains at $1.03 trillion, but it suggests that numbers are currently moving downward.

Today, Biden announced another key change in American policy, this time in education. The Department of Education will cancel up to $20,000 of student debt for Pell Grant recipients with loans held by the federal government and up to $10,000 for other borrowers. Pell Grants are targeted at low-income students. Individuals who make less than $125,000 a year or couples who make less than $250,000 a year are eligible. The current pause on federal student loan repayment will be extended once more, through the end of 2022, and the Education Department will try to negotiate a cap on repayments of 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income, down from the current 10%.

The Department of Education estimates that almost 90% of the relief in the measure will go to those earning less than $75,000 a year, and about 43 million borrowers will benefit from the plan.

Opponents of the plan worry that it will be inflationary and that it will not address the skyrocketing cost of four-year colleges. But its supporters worry that the education debt crisis locks people into poverty. They also note that there was very little objection to the forgiveness of 10.2 million Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans issued as of July 2022, with $72,500 being the average dollar amount forgiven.

The administration’s plan is a significant pushback to what has happened to education funding since the 1980s. After World War II, the U.S. funded higher education through a series of measures that increased college attendance while also keeping prices low. Beginning in the 1980s, that funding began to dry up and tuition prices rose to make up the difference.

A college education became crucial for a high-paying job, but wages didn’t rise along with the cost of tuition, so families turned to borrowing. Many of them choose the lowest monthly repayment amounts, and some put their loans on hold, meaning their debt balances grow far beyond what they originally borrowed. The shift to “high-tuition, high-aid” caused a “massive total volume of debt,” Assistant Professor of Economics Emily Cook of Tulane University told Jessica Dickler and Annie Nova of CNBC in May. Today, around 44 million Americans owe about $1.7 trillion of educational debt.

Because of the wealth gap between white and Black Americans—the average white family has ten times the wealth of the average Black family—more Black students borrow to finance their education.

Canceling a portion of student debt is a resumption of the older system, ended in the 1980s, under which the government funded cheaper education in the belief it was a social good. In his explanation of the plan, White House National Economic Council Director Bharat Ramamurti told reporters today that “87% of the dollars…are going to people making under $75,000 a year, and 0 dollars, 0%, are going to anybody making over $125,000 in individual income.” He told them it was “instructive” to compare this plan “to what the Republican tax bill did in 2017. It’s basically the reverse. Fifteen percent of the benefits went to people making under $75,000 a year, and 85% went to people making over $75,000 a year. And if you zoom in even more on that, people making over $250,000 a year got nearly half of the benefits of the GOP tax bill and are getting 0 dollars under our [plan].”

[Farfromgeneva]

HCR:

"Yesterday’s elections suggest that American voters are concerned about the past year’s radicalization of the Republican Party. In a special election for a seat in the House of Representatives in a New York state swing district, the 19th congressional district, Democrat Pat Ryan beat his Republican opponent. Pundits looked at the race as a bellwether (named for the wether, or castrated sheep, fitted with a bell to indicate where the flock was going), and most thought the Republican would win, as he was a strong candidate and the midterm election in a president’s first term usually goes to the opposite party.

Ryan’s opponent emphasized inflation and crime, but Ryan told Greg Sargent of the Washington Post: “We centered the concept of freedom…. When rights and freedoms are being taken away from people,” Ryan told Sargent, they “stand up and fight.” The Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision of two months ago overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that protected abortion rights was a key sign of the erosion of freedom. Ryan told Sargent that “ripping away reproductive rights from tens of millions of people” was “visceral.”

So, too, are gun safety and threats to democracy. “There’s sort of this power grab of the far, far right,” Ryan told Sargent. “It’s just wildly out of step with where the vast majority of Americans are.”

This is the fourth special election since the Dobbs decision that has shown at least a two-point movement toward the Democrats. A referendum on preserving abortion rights in Kansas also went to those in favor of them.

Tom Bonier, who runs the political data firm TargetSmart, noted that women have outregistered men to vote since the Dobbs decision by large margins: 11 points in Ohio, for example. And a Pew poll released yesterday shows that 56% of voters say that the right to abortion is very important to them for their midterm votes, up from 46% before the Dobbs decision.

The trend is clear, but so is the reality that a number of states are operating under extreme Republican gerrymanders—some, like those in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Ohio, still in force although the state judges have said they are illegal—that will give Republicans a structural advantage.

Biden administration officials are currently touring the country to call attention to how the administration is “Building a Better America.” In 35 trips to 23 states, they will “make clear that the President and Congressional Democrats beat the special interests and delivered what was best for the American people.” They are emphasizing the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the gun safety law, and so on. They are urging Americans to unite not by party, but against the extremism on display in the leadership of the current Republican Party. “Every step of the way, Congressional Republicans sided with the special interests—pushing an extreme MAGA agenda that costs families.”

Since the 1980s, Republicans have argued for cutting public programs because they cost too much money, while also arguing that tax cuts for the wealthy would pay for themselves by expanding the economy, thus increasing tax revenues. It has never worked—when government computers showed that President Ronald Reagan’s first tax cut would explode the deficit, the budget director simply reprogrammed them—but that has not stopped the Republicans from passing repeated tax cuts for the wealthy, one as recently as December 2017.

Republicans have warned that the massive investment the Democrats have made in the country during Biden’s term would rack up enormous deficits. But, in fact, today the Office of Management and Budget forecast that this year’s budget deficit will decline by $1.7 trillion, the single largest drop in the deficit in U.S. history. (The record deficit was $3.13 trillion in 2020, during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic.) This number is simply a benchmark, and the deficit remains at $1.03 trillion, but it suggests that numbers are currently moving downward.

Today, Biden announced another key change in American policy, this time in education. The Department of Education will cancel up to $20,000 of student debt for Pell Grant recipients with loans held by the federal government and up to $10,000 for other borrowers. Pell Grants are targeted at low-income students. Individuals who make less than $125,000 a year or couples who make less than $250,000 a year are eligible. The current pause on federal student loan repayment will be extended once more, through the end of 2022, and the Education Department will try to negotiate a cap on repayments of 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income, down from the current 10%.

The Department of Education estimates that almost 90% of the relief in the measure will go to those earning less than $75,000 a year, and about 43 million borrowers will benefit from the plan.

Opponents of the plan worry that it will be inflationary and that it will not address the skyrocketing cost of four-year colleges. But its supporters worry that the education debt crisis locks people into poverty. They also note that there was very little objection to the forgiveness of 10.2 million Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans issued as of July 2022, with $72,500 being the average dollar amount forgiven.

The administration’s plan is a significant pushback to what has happened to education funding since the 1980s. After World War II, the U.S. funded higher education through a series of measures that increased college attendance while also keeping prices low. Beginning in the 1980s, that funding began to dry up and tuition prices rose to make up the difference.

A college education became crucial for a high-paying job, but wages didn’t rise along with the cost of tuition, so families turned to borrowing. Many of them choose the lowest monthly repayment amounts, and some put their loans on hold, meaning their debt balances grow far beyond what they originally borrowed. The shift to “high-tuition, high-aid” caused a “massive total volume of debt,” Assistant Professor of Economics Emily Cook of Tulane University told Jessica Dickler and Annie Nova of CNBC in May. Today, around 44 million Americans owe about $1.7 trillion of educational debt.

Because of the wealth gap between white and Black Americans—the average white family has ten times the wealth of the average Black family—more Black students borrow to finance their education.

Canceling a portion of student debt is a resumption of the older system, ended in the 1980s, under which the government funded cheaper education in the belief it was a social good. In his explanation of the plan, White House National Economic Council Director Bharat Ramamurti told reporters today that “87% of the dollars…are going to people making under $75,000 a year, and 0 dollars, 0%, are going to anybody making over $125,000 in individual income.” He told them it was “instructive” to compare this plan “to what the Republican tax bill did in 2017. It’s basically the reverse. Fifteen percent of the benefits went to people making under $75,000 a year, and 85% went to people making over $75,000 a year. And if you zoom in even more on that, people making over $250,000 a year got nearly half of the benefits of the GOP tax bill and are getting 0 dollars under our [plan].”

Understand the differences in legislative or fiat rule (student loan cancellation) outcome/impact but what still ain’t understood is the price to go to college is the same for the rich kid and the poor kid. The sticker price. That’s what the money is predicated off of. So you’re still subsidizing the university and the rich kids who go to schools with lower income kids. It’s really not hard to understand. It’s one price point for all. Untying career training from education is ideal but impossible to unwind at this point.

This argument is the same dollars should flow to higher Ed just in different form. That’s highly problematic. As pointed out int he axios piece, there has to be INCENTIVES for higher Ed administrators to manage costs. This does nothing to solve that, they still get theirs and no cost containment occurs. We will be back in 15yrs with another larger cancellation proposal as it’s now $125k/yr at private schools and average debt is up to $100k/graduate. And…at a time when demographics demonstrate a smaller college aged and enrolled population coming. These f**kers (colleges) are supposed to be right sizing for this, the ones with MBA programs should be ashamed of their on management, not continuing to grow and expand.

[Farfromgeneva]

Intentions aren’t enough to justify action. That’s my sole point. Agree the intention is right in attempting to solve a problem. But if I kill 100 people felling a tree trying to save a cat in it I still killed 100 people.

[HooDat]

what still ain’t understood is the price to go to college is the same for the rich kid and the poor kid.

depends on where you go to school. My experience (5 kids) - is the schools do a rectal exam of your finances and charge what they think the parent can eek out - including dumping debt on the parents. If I was smart, I would have had all my kids emancipate themselves - give up my dependent tax deduction and let them apply as wards of the state. I probably would have saved a solid 6 figures in higher ed costs