ThinkProgress Logo

Education

House Education Chairman Takes Big Donation From For-Profit Colleges, Vows To Undo Proposed Regulations

By Pat Garofalo on Feb 3, 2011 at 8:10 pm

The for-profit college industry — which is composed of schools like the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University — has been going all out to prevent new regulation proposed by the Department of Education from ever coming online. They have bought a phalanx of high-profile lobbyists and have been running a slew of ads.

But no public policy offensive is complete without some allies in the halls of Congress. And as the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported, for-profit schools have found a friend in House Education Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN):

In the 2009-2010 election cycle the industry donated millions of dollars to the campaigns and political action committees of nearly 100 Democratic and Republican congressional candidates. More than $100,000 went to Rep. John Kline of Minnesota’s Second District, the new Republican chairman of the House Education Committee. “Congressman Kline is deeply involved in these issues,” said Kent Jenkins, communications chief of Corinthian Colleges Inc., a publicly traded for-profit college group that gave $15,750 to Kline’s political action committee. [...]

Kline vows to pass legislation with bipartisan support to undo or neuter gainful employment regulations if the U.S. Department of Education implements them. “We’ve looked at the regulations, and they’re not just aimed at bad actors,” he said. “They’re aimed at everyone.”

The proposed regulations would cause for-profit schools to lose their access to public money if their graduates fail to meet a certain debt-to-income ratio or have high rates of student loan default. The proposals arose because students who attend for-profits are using an increasing amount of federal student aid, while accounting for a disproportionate amount of student loan defaults (even as the schools reap profit margins of 30 percent and pay their executives huge salaries).

Evidence suggests that the schools mislead students with outsized promises of future earnings, while actually leaving them buried in debt and with bleak job prospects. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) even put together a report finding that for-profit colleges scammed $521 million from U.S. taxpayers “by recruiting armed-services members and veterans through misleading marketing.”

A new report released this week by the National Consumer Law Center also notes that for-profit schools are making in-house loans to students, even though the schools know will never be repaid, as a gambit to keep federal funding flowing:

Many for-profit (or proprietary) schools have begun making costly private student loans knowing in many cases that more than half of these loans will never be repaid...The schools seem to view these “institutional loans” as loss leaders to keep the federal dollars flowing. Among other reasons, proprietary schools must show that at least 10% of revenues come from sources other than Department of Education federal student assistance. Schools make unaffordable loans as a way of filling up the 10% category with vapor revenues derived from loans that will never be repaid.

The NCLC said that these in-house loans are essentially predatory. The regulations propose by the Department of Education would require this industry to clean up its act, but instead of simply complying, they’re attempting to push the levers of power in the Capitol to prevent the regulations from being enacted.

Climate Progress

New Scientist’s Fred Pearce jumps the shark

By Joe Romm on Feb 3, 2011 at 7:15 pm

Part 1: NASA’s Gavin Schmidt explains how “Pearce includes a statement about me that is patently untrue.”

Shark2

Many people said to be jumping the shark — “the point in a television program’s history where the plot spins off into absurd storylines” — were not serious to begin with.  Fred Pearce was, however, having written a climate book as far back as 1989, Turning Up the Heat: Our perilous future in the global greenhouse.

Last year, however, RealClimate eviscerated Pearce’s 12-part series about the stolen CRU emails, identifying myriad “errors and misrepresentations.”  Now Pearce has thoroughly misrepresented the views of one RealClimate writter, NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, and repeated a variety of anti-science myths, in a truly dreadful piece in New Scientist.

The entire premise of the piece, “Climate sceptics and scientists attempt peace deal,” is beyond absurd.  It’s about this fossil-fuel funded confab in Portugal between the post-normal confusionists (led by Judith Curry) and the extreme disinformers, including … wait for it … Steven Goddard, a guy so extreme that Anthony Watts gave him the early gold watch at WattsUpWithThat (see Fastest disinformer retraction: Watts says Goddard’s “Arctic ice increasing by 50000 km2 per year” post is “an example of what not to do when graphing trends”).    Also attending were Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick and Steve Mosher.

Serious climate scientists would not knowingly attended a meeting with Goddard, let alone many of the others.  These folks aren’t interested in a serious debate, let alone a ‘peace deal’.  They just desperately want the credibility of the mainstream media so they can continue their campaign of anti-science disinformation and anti-scientist smears.

And that brings us to the “made-up quote” that blatantly misrepresents Schmidt — whom Pearce did not even interview for this piece.  This quote should be retracted as soon as possible (along with most of the rest of the piece):

Read more

Health

The Problems With Searching For An Alternative To The Individual Mandate

By Igor Volsky on Feb 3, 2011 at 7:08 pm

Brian Beutler reports that some Senate Democrats who face a tough re-election bid are now proposing alternatives to the individual mandate, in hopes of stumbling upon some more popular way of getting healthy people to purchase health insurance coverage. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) is considering a plan that would create “an open-enrollment period for people who want to buy health insurance, and assess a penalty on anybody who tries to enter the insurance market after that window closes”:

As put it at a press conference Tuesday, “Take the word ‘shall’ out and say ‘if you don’t it’s really gonna cost you a bundle.’”

There was once bipartisan support for this structure — though there was also once bipartisan support for the mandate itself. The question is whether Republicans would be willing to play ball on fixing the law when their goal is to bring it down completely.

“We did look… when we were trying to look at alternatives during the debate, at a defined enrollment period, which allowed people to sign up, but didn’t make them sign up, but where there were penalties if they didn’t sign up during that period,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN). “We had studies done that said that that in fact could well solve the problem of people enrolling after the fact.”

In today’s political climate, this idea sounds better than the individual mandate — although that had bipartisan support as late as August 2009 — but what makes for good politics doesn’t translate into better policy. As far as I can tell, and from what health economists who study these things told me, giving individuals a defined period of time to purchase insurance would cover far fewer people than mandating it (that’s because lower participation would lead to higher premiums since healthy people would stay out of the risk pooil.) Or at least, that’s what economists say — nobody has really scored the alternatives. One big advantage with the mandate is that we have experience in Massachusetts where, because of that policy, 98 percent of Massachusetts residents now have health insurance.

I understand why vulnerable senators like McCaskill, Bill and Ben Nelson, and Webb would want to find another option, but I fear that by searching for one so publicly they’re tacitly accepting the GOP’s premise that there is something inherently wrong or terribly coercive about asking able individuals to take personal responsibility for their health care expenses. Instead of playing defense, senators should be reminding the public of the long history of Republican support for the idea.

LGBT

State Marriage Watch: Republican Support For Marriage In Maryland, Another Bill Introduced In Rhode Island

By Igor Volsky on Feb 3, 2011 at 6:30 pm

The fight for marriage equality in Maryland received an endorsement from an influential Republican, while a Utah lawmakers continues to try and write discrimination into that state’s constitution. That’s in today’s State Marriage Watch:

- RHODE ISLAND: Rep. Jon Brien (D) will introduce a bill “calls for a 2012 ballot question to give voters a chance “to approve or reject a constitutional amendment specifying that ‘only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in the State of Rhode Island.” The measure is expected to fail. The House Judicial Committee was scheduled to hold a hearing on Wednesday on a separate bill that would allow same-sex marriage bill, but it was “postponed one week due to the weather.”

- MARYLAND: After stepping down from the leadership position over his support for civil unions, State Sen. Allan Kittleman (R) has announced that he will support legislation to allow same-sex marriages. “The decision came just one day after the Senate Republican Caucus -made up of those Kittleman used to lead – decided to oppose the same bill.” In a statement Kittleman said, “While my faith may teach that marriage is between a man and a woman, our government is not a theocracy. Therefore, while my spiritual life is extremely important to me, it cannot be the sole basis for my decisions as a state senator.” Meanwhile, Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown also told the Washington Blade Wednesday “that he supports marriage equality for lesbians and gays and favors the approval of a same-sex marriage bill pending in the Maryland Legislature.”

- UTAH: State Representative LaVar Christensen (R), who pushed through the state’s same-sex marriage ban, has introduced HB 270, a bill that would require state law to say “married heterosexual families are the ‘fundamental unit of society.’” The measure also says, “marriage is “consistent with the laws of nature and nature’s God, The Creator and Supreme Judge Of The World.” LaVar Christensen has also reintroduced a bill he tried to run in 2006 which “prohibits same sex couples from making contractual arrangements such as wills and financial arrangements.” HB 182, slides in under the generic title ‘Voiding Transactions Against Public Policy’ but would “strip even more rights away from the same sex couples who desperately depend on contractual arrangements as Utah denies them any of the inherent protections afforded to any other couple.

- IOWA: Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal (D) is vowing to kill a House bill that would allow Iowa residents to vote on a referendum recognizing only marriages between one man and one woman. “I cannot cooperate in taking away the rights of a significant number of Iowans,” he said. “That is fundamentally what the Constitution is there to prevent — to make it exceedingly difficult for the majority to choose to discriminate against a minority.” The measure passed the House on Tuesday in a vote of 63 to 37.

For a complete overview of the latest developments in the marriage battleground states of Rhode Island, Maryland, New York, California, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wyoming, Iowa, and New Mexico, click here.

Politics

Former Sen. Norm Coleman: We Should ‘Absolutely’ Consider Gutting The Voting Rights Act

By Scott Keyes on Feb 3, 2011 at 6:08 pm

As state legislatures gear up for the decennial process of congressional redistricting, one of the few obstacles preventing excessive gerrymandering in a handful of southern states is the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Still, despite the legislation’s massive success in preventing racism, many conservatives are dead set on dismantling the longstanding civil rights law.

In December, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) sounded the rallying cry. During a press conference, Cuccinelli declared that Virginia had “outgrown” institutional racism, and therefore ought to be exempted from the Voting Rights Act. (Virginia is one of nine southern and western states that must get their new redistricting maps pre-approved by the Justice Department in order to prevent discrimination against minority voters.)

Now, one of the architects of the Republican redistricting efforts, former Sen. Norm Coleman, wants to “reconsider” the entire Voting Rights Act. In an interview with ThinkProgress, Coleman argued that it was “absolutely” the right move to loosen the Voting Rights Act’s provisions that prevent legislators from drawing redistricting maps with a clear racial bias:

TP: I know some of the leaders in states like Virginia said they feel like their state has outgrown the racism of the past that led to them being subject to the Voting Rights Act in the first place. Do you think that’s the case, that we don’t really need some states like Virginia and others to be subject to the Voting Rights Act and get pre-clearance for their redistricting plans?

COLEMAN: I think it’s very fair to reconsider that. I think it’s very fair to reconsider that. Absolutely. Absolutely. There should be no reason why there shouldn’t be a reconsideration.

Coleman also argued that as a result of new gerrymandered districts, Republicans would be able to pick up “more than 15 or 20″ seats in total:

TP: How many seats do you envision Republicans will gain [as a result of redistricting]?

COLEMAN: I don’t know. Others can give you that, but I can tell you the number if significant, the number if significant…

TP: You think more than 15 or 20?

COLEMAN: Yeah, I think more than 15 or 20 because in a couple states I think you’ll even see five or six seats. But the key is all we’re talking about is fair redistricting. We’re not talking about loading it up for our side, we’re simply talking about a fair reasonable plan I think that will result in working okay for us.

Watch it:

Though non-partisan analysts like Stu Rothenberg dismiss such predictions, Republican leaders like Coleman are doing their best to remove roadblocks to gerrymandering like the Voting Rights Act.

Yglesias

Why Subsidize Small Farmers?

By Matthew Yglesias on Feb 3, 2011 at 5:31 pm

Mark Bittman’s transforming himself into a full-time opinion writer instead of doing his “minimalist” cooking column, and I think his initial manifesto has a lot of good ideas. But this one strikes me as bad and it’s noteworthy that he doesn’t even really seem to try to argue for it:

Begin subsidies to those who produce and sell actual food for direct consumption. Small farmers and their employees need to make living wages.

Now the context here is a larger program in which we’ve already ended corn and soybean subsidies, begun to tax unhealthy foods, and outlawed environmentally destructive CAFOs. So the hypothesis is that we’re aligning the incentives correctly—farmers are farming food, for people, not subsidies. Taxes encourage people to buy healthy food and regulations dissuade farmers from unsustainable practices. Under those circumstances, why on earth should the government add on extra subsidies for farms that are small?

It seems to me that what we want from our farms is farms that are as efficient as possible in their use of resources like land, labor, water, etc. You don’t want to encourage a kind of narrow economic efficiency that simply reflects environmental destruction. And of course if a smaller farm can produce a better product, that’s excellent for them and they should find a market niche on that basis. But there’s no more reason for public policy to put its thumb on the scale of smallness than to put its thumb on the scale in favor of corn. Personally, I like going to the farmer’s market when the weather’s nice and so do a lot of other people. In the more prosperous America of tomorrow, I bet even more people will enjoy paying a small premium for the premium wares available at such markets. And if we ever managed to curtail subsidies to agribusiness corn and soy producers, I bet those farmers would be in even better shape. But what’s the case for smallness as such supposed to be?

LGBT

Where Is The Nondiscrimination Policy In DADT Repeal?

By Igor Volsky on Feb 3, 2011 at 5:29 pm

Equality Matters’ Kerry Eleveld has a smart piece about the Pentagon’s reluctance to implement a nondiscrimination policy in the wake of DADT repeal. If you recall, the measure was included in the original repeal bill offered by former Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA), but was eventually dropped in an effort to (presumably) win support for repeal from the Pentagon and Congress:

Last week, headlines suggested that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal implementation was on the move even though Pentagon officials gave no target date for when it would be complete.

But here’s what the reports missed: President Barack Obama and Defense Department officials are preparing to provide lesbian and gay service members the space to serve openly without risking expulsion while simultaneously affording them absolutely no legally enforceable anti-discrimination protections once they are visible.

Sure, they may not be at risk for being discharged after implementation, but they will have no means of sustainable legal recourse if they are discriminated against in any other way (or if the political environment shifts) on the basis of their sexual orientation.

Eliminating discharges is only part of the battle in terms of protecting gay service members, and candidate Barack Obama was extremely clear on this point.

Obama was supportive of instituting a nondiscrimination policy as a candidate, but recently dodged the question twice during a recent interview with Eleveld, refusing to say if he would issue an executive order implementing the measure. Obama’s elusiveness is somewhat surprising because, in May, Murphy had suggested that he had received assurances that the government would implement a nondiscrimination policy once DADT is repealed.

“I’m fully confident in the public testimony of both Secretary of Defense Gates of Chairman Mike Mullen and our current Commander in Chief, Barack Obama, that they have been very clear that they want to have a nondiscriminatory policy in place,” Murhpy told me. “Having a nondiscriminatory policy in place was impossible because U.S. law for 17 years was that we’ll continue discrimination that we currently do as under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman could put clearly a policy in place that would not discriminate against men and women because of their sexual orientation. And I have full confidence that they will.” Well, we’re still waiting.

Politics

Manchin Claims Coal ‘Doesn’t Get A Penny Of Subsidies’

By Brad Johnson on Feb 3, 2011 at 5:05 pm

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), the newest member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, claimed today that the coal industry doesn’t receive any government subsidies, unlike every other form of energy. The former governor of coal-state West Virginia, who famously fired a rifle at clean energy legislation in a campaign ad, argued that the Obama administration has “villainized” coal. In a hearing on energy markets, Manchin went on to criticize the Environmental Protection Agency — which has issued regulations to limit the catastrophic impact of mountaintop removal mining and the existential threat of global warming pollution — for putting up “roadblocks” on the “greatest source” of energy in the nation:

What I don’t understand is the subsidies. The subsidies of energy, whether it be to oil, gas, wind, solar, biofuels, ethanol. The only energy source — which is the greatest source that we have so far as we’re dependent on — is coal. It doesn’t get a penny of subsidies. But it’s been villainized by this administration and so many people and it’s the one we depend on the most. It gives back more than it takes. I can’t figure it out.

Watch it:

In reality, the coal industry is heavily subsidized by the federal and state governments, enjoying explicit subsidies of billions of dollars a year. The coal industry enjoys the freedom to emit pollution that poisons and kills 10,000 Americans a year, destroys the land and water of mining communities, and destabilizes our climate.

See a listing of over $17 billion in coal subsidies at the Wonk Room.

Climate Progress

Obama’s ‘climate eyas’ moment today: “Carbon pollution” is contributing to “climate change”

By Joe Romm on Feb 3, 2011 at 4:50 pm

The President was widely criticized last week for omitting certain words critical to explaining the State of the Union (see “Obama calls for massive boost in low-carbon energy, but doesn’t mention carbon, climate or warming” and Brulle: “By failing to even rhetorically address climate change, Obama is mortgaging our future and further delaying the necessary work to build a political consensus for real action”).

This weekend, his climate hawkish science adviser, John Holdren, was not so reticent.   Today, in a Penn State speech on energy efficiency, Obama reemerged as a ‘climate eyas’, an unfledged young climate hawk, with these remarks:
Read more

Older

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up