Eight U.S. Senators today sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calling on him to investigate tactics used by some major for-profit colleges to circumvent rules aimed at reducing student loan defaults. A report issued in July by Senator Tom Harkin’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee documented that several big for-profit colleges were misleading and harassing students to convince them to place their loans in “forbearance” or “deferment” status so that the schools would not have to report their student loans as in default. Federal law takes away a school’s eligibility for student financial …
The controversial for-profit college industry, threatened by the Obama’s Administration’s efforts to hold it accountable for a torrent of waste, fraud, and abuse at the expense of students and taxpayers, bet heavily on a Romney and GOP victory in 2012. The industry, which gets $32 billion a year from taxpayers and whose biggest players get 86 percent of their revenues from federal funds, gave millions of that money to Republican candidates and Super PACs. This was on top of the tens of millions the industry has spent on lobbying, lawyering, and advertising to defeat the Obama reforms.
So, having bet …
In July, then-Republic Report bloggers Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani taped an interview with Congressman Heath Shuler, Democrat of North Carolina. Shuler had announced he would retire from Congress at the end of the current session. Concerned about the revolving door culture and its corruption of our politics, our reporters asked Shuler whether he was planning to become a lobbyist after retiring. Shuler flatly told them no.
Yesterday, Duke Energy announced that it “has named Heath Shuler as senior vice president of federal affairs, effective Jan. 4, 2013…. Shuler will be based in Duke Energy’s Washington, D.C. office.” In other …
Since last week’s election, the Fox News Channel has featured several corporate executives complaining about the results. But it’s likely that few are as upset as CEOs of the troubled for-profit college industry. This sector, which is deeply dependent on the federal government, bet heavily on a Republican victory.
Mitt Romney, who has a financial stake in the industry, went out of his way to praise for-profit colleges, and he pledged to undo Obama reforms aimed at holding these companies accountable for fraudulent practices and poor quality schools. Sparked by Romney’s apparent eagerness to let them off the …
Greenpeace has posted these stark images of the destruction Sandy brought to the New Jersey shore. The devastation on the ground is heartbreaking, and Americans are grateful for the courage and determination of people responding to the crisis. At the same time, it’s imperative that we start asking why we have seen so much extreme weather lately — and what kind of leadership it will take to truly address the crisis.
In the wake of the disaster, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, “There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement. That is …
Huffington Post published this piece by me yesterday, as part of its Shadow Conventions series:
To grasp the harms caused when money dominates politics, start with for-profit colleges. This industry tripled in size during the last decade, spurred by deceptive recruiting practices, after its lobbyists loosened federal rules aimed at protecting students and taxpayers from fraud. It has become a monster, a league of Wall Street corporations and private equity-owned firms that get 86 percent of their revenues — $32 billion a year — from taxpayers.
While some for-profit colleges are honest and work to educate their students, many charge sky-high …
While his House GOP colleagues are getting publicity for spouting bizarre ideas about rape and pregnancy, or jumping into the Sea of Galilee, Representative Marlin Stutzman of Indiana was planning to head today to the Fort Wayne campus of National College for an event promoted as a chance to inform unemployed veterans about new federal education benefits.
That sounds way more productive. However, as Fort Wayne’s JournalGazette noted in an editorial yesterday, National College is a for-profit school, and its record is controversial. The paper reported that Fort Wayne mayor Tom Henry, slated to attend, was no longer coming. The editorial asserted that Stutzman’s …
Yesterday, House Democrats held a press conference outside of the capitol building along with Public Campaign, a campaign finance reform group. Their goal was to issue a D.A.R.E to Congressional Republicans encouraging them to act on campaign finance reform.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Rep. James Clyburn, and Rep. Chris Van Hollen all joined Public Campaign in calling for a constitutional amendment overturning the 2010 Supreme Court case Citizens United.
D.A.R.E is intended to highlight key areas that need to be addressed when trying to ameliorate the U.S. campaign finance system: disclosing donors, amending the constitution, reforming campaign finance …
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