Obama-era rule leads to $150M in student loan forgiveness

The U.S. Education Department says it will start forgiving federal loans for 15,000 former students whose colleges closed before they could graduate.

Department officials say the $150 million in loans will automatically be wiped clean, including about $80 million for former students of the defunct Corinthian Colleges for-profit chain, which collapsed in 2015.

The loans are being forgiven under an Obama-era rule that recently took effect after a federal judge ruled that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was unlawfully delaying it.

DeVos has said the rule is "bad policy" and still aims to replace it, but it could be 2020 before any new rule takes effect.

I demand restitution. Where’s my hour?

In the traditional fall-back, spring-forward time change set up — you know, ol’ trusty that’s been effect for lo these 63 years — we lost an hour in the spring that we got back in the fall.

That was the social contract: you commit to feeling like you’re on cold medication for a week in March because you know a glorious extra hour of sleep will be returned to you in November. (Unless, of course, you have little kids, but look: we all make our choices.)

Well, that transaction, flawed as it was, isn’t happening this year. That hour you sacrificed to the sun gods in the spring? Gone. Not coming back. We’ve sprung forward and we shan’t be falling back — not in November, and (possibly) not ever. The scale shall remain unbalanced and the loop shall remain unclosed as Manitoba has adopted permanent daylight time.