One of Senator Jim Inhofe’s (R-OK) most fervent supporters may soon end up behind bars. Yesterday, former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was indicted by a federal grand jury for a range of alleged criminal acts relating to the disaster at Upper Big Branch mine, a 2010 explosion that killed 29 of Blankenship’s employees. Blankenship is
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In the 2o12 election campaign, when a reporter asked GOP candidate Mitt Romney what he planned to do about higher education and college affordability, Romney praised for-profit colleges, and particularly one school, Florida’s Full Sail University, for its ability to “hold down the cost of their education.” It was eventually exposed that: (1) Full Sail was perhaps the third most
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It wasn’t long ago that coal executives were openly discussing their dream of Republicans seizing the White House and making Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe — who believes climate change is a “hoax” concocted by greedy scientists — the head of the EPA. Now, they have a second chance. As dark money groups and SuperPACs backed by millions of
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A federal grand jury has indicted the former owner-CEO and three other ex-staff of Miami-based FastTrain College, a for-profit school that had ties to Florida Members of Congress before the FBI raided its campuses in 2012. The South Florida Business Journal reported late this afternoon that the former CEO, Alejandro Amor, 56, (pictured above), was arrested and appeared
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At an event in Washington DC this morning, speaking alongside Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), financial guru Suze Orman at first seemed to deny what is a documented fact: that she teaches a personal finance course at the nation’s biggest for-profit college, the University of Phoenix.  Then Orman admitted it, but offered a wholly unconvincing explanation.
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For a couple of years now, I’ve argued that Corinthian Colleges might be the worst predator of all the big for-profit college companies, a remorseless giant engaged in endless abuses of students who needed career help, not more problems. But now that Corinthian, which was taking in as much as $1.4 billion a year in taxpayer
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In a single week, two of America’s best comedic truth-tellers — John Oliver and Bill Maher — hit hard against the predatory for-profit colleges that rip off taxpayers and ruin students’ lives. On his HBO show “Last Week Tonight,” Oliver attacked these profit-making colleges for their sky-high prices, meager spending on instruction, and deceptive and coercive
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Louisiana Senator David Vitter made headlines with conservative websites in the last few days by releasing a report called Chain of Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA. Below the lengthy title is a report that claims breathlessly that environmental and public health foundations are part of
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