America’s colleges and universities spend far more money per year on athletes than they do on students, according to a new issue brief from the Delta Cost Project. At public colleges and universities, college sports were “a $6 billion enterprise” in 2010, according to the study, and expensive coaching contracts, facilities upgrades, staff additions, and larger scholarship commitments are driving those costs even higher. Athletics expenses are eating into school budgets, as athletic departments at colleges and universities often require subsidies to cover all their expenses.

Athletic departments spent three to six times more per athlete than colleges and universities spend educating the average individual student, the study found. In the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), college football’s top division, athletic departments spent roughly $92,000 per athlete in 2010, compared to less than $14,000 per full-time student. And the gap between the amount spent on each athlete (blue line) and the amount spent on each student (green) has grown substantially in the last five years:

The study also found that athletic departments were increasingly depending on subsidies from their colleges and universities to cover expenses. As the chart above shows, the average amount institutions subsidize per athlete has grown nearly $7,000 in the last five years. And as the chart below illustrates, athletic departments as a whole are relying on bigger subsidies, with the bottom tier of FBS schools (those that rarely compete for a championship but participate in the top division anyway) relying more on subsidies from their colleges and universities than the big-name schools at the top:

Athletic spending has grown twice as fast as academic spending at these schools, and even as academic spending slowed when university budgets were crunched by the Great Recession, athletic spending continued to grow in most divisions (incidentally, FBS was the exception). In the six biggest conferences, per athlete spending tops $100,000 a year.

The study notes that winning athletic programs are often tied to increases in revenues, from increased donations and ticket sales to higher enrollment rates (and thus more tuition and student fees). Those affects, though, are often “quite modest.” And the study does not answer whether the increased subsidization of athletics provides substantial benefits to the university, or to the success of the athletics program. What is clear, as The Atlantic’s Jordan Weissmann notes, is that the rapid growth of athletic budgets is costing taxpayers millions of dollars a year.

79 percent of workers in the food industry and a whopping 90 percent of restaurant workers report having no paid sick days, despite the obvious hazard posed by food workers coming to their jobs while sick. According to a new survey commissioned by the National Consumer League, Americans believe that should chang.

57 percent of respondents said it is “very important or important that the restaurant they frequent provide workers with paid sick days.” (In a slight disconnect, fully 92 percent of those polled said “it’s very important or important that the servers and cooks in the restaurants they frequent do not cook or serve while sick.”)

“Without having the benefit of paid sick days, restaurant workers can’t afford to be sick and are forced to come to work — and handle consumers’ food — when they should be at home resting,” said NCL’s Michell McIntyre. “Providing paid sick days is very clearly in the interest of consumers and the workers who handle their food.”

But lack of paid sick days is a problem that extends beyond the food industry. Overall, 40 percent of private sector workers and 80 percent of low-income workers do not have a single paid sick day. 20 percent of workers report either losing their job or being threatened with dismissal for wanting to take time off while sick.

The U.S. is currently experiencing the worst flu season in a decade, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that workers exhibiting flu-like symptoms stay home from work. But for a huge number of workers — including those handling the food that untold numbers of Americans will eat — staying home simply isn’t a possibility. (HT: Joe Satran)

Republicans anxious to avoid a debt default without actually raising the nation’s debt limit have proposed a scheme that would, in their eyes, allow the government to prioritize debt payments, paying off holders of U.S. bonds first and other programs after. The Bipartisan Policy Center has called such a plan “essentially impossible,” noting that Treasury’s computers aren’t capable of prioritizing payments and that, even if they could, such a scheme would prevent the government from making large portions of its payments, which is still a default on legally owed obligations.

Still, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the chairman of the House Budget Committee, endorsed such a plan today at the House GOP’s annual retreat in Virginia, Slate’s Dave Weigel reports:

“We believe they have the ability to prioritize,” he said. “I’m speaking for myself — I believe Pat Toomey would say the same thing. There’s disagreement about whether that’s true or not.”

Republicans proposed a similar plan during the 2011 debt ceiling debate, but such a plan simply isn’t feasible. Not only is Treasury incapable of prioritizing, but most of the government’s largest bills are due early in the month even though revenues often come in later. And prioritization wouldn’t change the government’s obligation to make those payments — it would simply delay them until Treasury had enough money to make them.

The conservative American Enterprise Institute says prioritization is unworkable, and multiple Republicans who worked in the Bush administration agree. If “there’s disagreement” over the feasibility of such a plan, it exists solely because Republicans like Ryan and Toomey refuse to acknowledge its impossibility.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rolled out new rules today to clean up the mortgage servicing industry, which has been at the root of several scandals, including the use of the now-infamous “robo-signers.” The new rules will provide important protections for homeowners, no longer leaving them subject to the most pernicious mortgage servicing practices. Here’s what the rules will do:

– End dual tracking. This practice involves banks starting foreclosure proceedings on a homeowner at the same time that the homeowner is being evaluated for a mortgage modification. The end result is many homeowners lose their homes when they think they are receiving a modification. Under the rule, “Servicers cannot start a foreclosure proceeding if a borrower has already submitted a complete application for a loan modification or other alternative to foreclosure, and that application is still pending review.”

– Force balance transparency. The new rules call for clearer monthly mortgage statements and more advance warnings of changes like interest rate hikes. Servicers must also “promptly” credit payments that homeowners make.

– Limit “forced place” insurance. “Forced place” insurance is the insurance that lenders purchase on behalf of borrowers if they think there has been a lapse in coverage. The policies are often far more expensive than standard home insurance, and servicers receive a cut of the payments. Abuse of forced place insurance became a big industry during and after the buildup of the housing bubble: “From 2006 to 2011, direct earned premiums for lender-placed insurance more than tripled, to $3.1 billion from $954 million.” As the New York Times noted, “the cost [of forced place insurance] more or less ensures foreclosure for a household on the brink; it can also hurt a borrower’s chances for a loan modification.” Under the new rules, servicers must warn borrowers that a forced place purchase will occur and “If servicers buy the insurance but receive evidence that it was not needed, they must terminate it within fifteen days and refund the premiums.”

However, the new rules do not create a single point of contact for borrowers (who often get the runaround at banks by being passed off between different bank employees). The California Homeowner’s Bill of Rights includes a mandatory point of contact, as does a new bill Minnesota Democrats are trying to enact. The rules will not be implemented for another year, leading one housing advocate to say that the CFPB is just “providing mortgage servicers advance notice to do their dirty work.”

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) became the latest Republican to propose the elimination of state income taxes during his State of the State address last night, adding that he would make up lost revenue by maintaining what was supposed to be a temporary increase in the state’s sales tax. Republican governors in Louisiana and Nebraska, along with GOP lawmakers in North Carolina, have also proposed replacing their state’s income taxes with increased sales taxes, a regressive plan that will raise taxes on the poor while cutting them for the wealthy.

Brownback proposed an initial cut to the state income tax, which he wants to eventually eliminate altogether, the Kansas City Star reports:

Amid the depths of the recession, legislators approved a 1-cent increase in the state sales tax in 2010. That was to be a temporary boost, with six-tenths of a cent scheduled to go away this summer on the expectation that other revenue would trickle in with an improving economy.

Now Brownback suggests rethinking the sales-tax rollback.

He wants to use it as a lever to further reduce income tax rates, piling on more cuts to those passed by the Legislature last year. Brownback wants to lower the rate in the highest income tax bracket to 3.5 percent from 4.9 percent. The rate for the lowest bracket would drop to 1.9 percent from 3 percent.

In 2012, Brownback signed a massive tax cut for the wealthy into law over the objections of Democrats and even some Republicans. That plan, which initially included provisions that would hammer the poor, would reduce state revenues by $800 million by 2014, according to the Kansas Legislative Research Department, and would likely lead to rollbacks in funding for schools and other vital programs. The plan made Kansas’ already-regressive tax code — the poorest 20 percent pay 9 percent of their income in taxes compared to less than 6 percent for the top 1 percent of earners — even more regressive. This proposal would make it even worse.

Replacing income taxes with sales taxes has become a cause du jour of Republican governors and state legislators, who are being urged to take such action by groups like Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and Americans for Prosperity, the anti-tax group founded by the Koch brothers. In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R) plan would give the wealthy a tax cut while raising taxes on the bottom 80 percent of residents, while in Nebraska, the plan could mean a tax cut for the rich at the expense of tax breaks that benefit the poor.

In 2005, the levees of New Orleans famously buckled during Hurricane Katrina, contributing to the devastation of that city and surrounding communities. Officials were warned that the levees were a problem before the storm, yet did nothing to ensure that they could hold through the strongest of storms.

New Orleans’ levees may have been improved (and mostly held through Hurricane Isaac). But according to an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, hundreds of levees around the country are in need of “urgent repair“:

Inspectors taking the first-ever inventory of flood control systems overseen by the federal government have found hundreds of structures at risk of failing and endangering people and property in 37 states.

Levees deemed in unacceptable condition span the breadth of America. They are in every region, in cities and towns big and small: Washington, D.C., and Sacramento Calif., Cleveland and Dallas, Augusta, Ga., and Brookport, Ill.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has yet to issue ratings for a little more than 40 percent of the 2,487 structures, which protect about 10 million people. Of those it has rated, however, 326 levees covering more than 2,000 miles were found in urgent need of repair.

By some estimates, more than half of Americans reside in counties “that contain levees or other kinds of flood control and protection systems.” Even leaving out the billions of dollars in damage cause by Katrina, levee failures have cost the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars in the last few decades.

The American Society of Civil Engineers said in a report this week that America faces an infrastructure deficit of $1.6 trillion, which will grow to $2.75 trillion over the next decade, costing the country 3.5 million jobs. But public investment in infrastructure, which was already too low, has plunged since the Great Recession.

Business executives like to portray the Obama administration as the “most anti-business” in history, creating an “increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation.” However, the data tells a far different story. According to a Bloomberg News analysis, corporate profits have grown by 171 percent under Obama, the most in the post-war era:

U.S. corporations’ after-tax profits have grown by 171 percent under Obama, more than under any president since World War II, and are now at their highest level relative to the size of the economy since the government began keeping records in 1947, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Profits are more than twice as high as their peak during President Ronald Reagan’s administration and more than 50 percent greater than during the late-1990s Internet boom, measured by the size of the economy.

Average annual corporate profit growth under Obama is the highest since 1900, whereas profit growth declined during both Bush presidencies. As a share of the economy, corporate profits have never been higher.

Unfortunately, this profit deluge has not been shared by workers, whose wages as a percentage of the economy have fallen to all-time lows. Workers also got dinged by the recent increase in the payroll tax, which was large enough to wipe out a minimum wage increase in some states.