March 13, 2013

Before Rubio, Before Luntz: Meet A Founding Father of Climate Change Denial

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Republican consultant Frank Luntz, a master of words, made clear in a 2002 GOP strategy memo how conservatives would address the growing threat of climate change: They would simply deny it was happening. According to the memo: The scientific debate remains open. Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community.
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February 28, 2013

Who Built Senator-Turned-Dirty Energy Lobbyist Trent Lott? You Did

Trent Lott trained in the ways of Washington on your dime. Now he uses that knowledge as a paid lobbyist for dirty energy companies.

Far too often in Washington, policy decisions are influenced by big money — wealthy corporations spend millions on lobbying, public relations, and campaign contributions to get their way. Big money helps explain why your cell phone and cable TV bills are so expensive, why small investors are still unprotected from Wall Street abuses, why taxpayers
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February 27, 2013

For-Profit Colleges’ New Report on Troops and Vets: Real Change or More Whitewash?

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Last year, President Obama warned our military servicemembers that some for-profit colleges “aren’t interested in helping you…. They are interested in getting the money.” He called the schools’ conduct “disgraceful” and told the troops that these schools are “trying to swindle and hoodwink you.”  Holly Petraeus, who directs service member affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection
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February 21, 2013

Aided by Fox News, For-Profit Colleges Use Shameless Propaganda to Mask Shameful Conduct

Several years of public scrutiny have exposed that many of America’s for-profit colleges are playing a cruel joke on students and taxpayers — high-priced, low-quality programs, sold through deceptive recruiting practices, that often leave students without good jobs and deep in debt. This scam has cost taxpayers as much as $33 billion in a single year. Worse, it
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February 6, 2013

Rep. Foxx Invokes Holocaust in Describing Obama Rules That Affect Her For-Profit College Donors

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Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) yesterday paraphrased a well-known quote about the Holocaust to describe the Obama Administration’s regulation of for-profit colleges. Foxx, who has staunchly defended the for-profit college industry despite its blatant record of abusing students and ripping off taxpayers, apparently didn’t mention in her remarks that she is one of Congress’s biggest recipients
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February 4, 2013

As Mass. AG Probes Vanished For-Profit College, Senators Call for Broad Review

Maryland's Senators, Benjamin Cardin and Barbara Mikulski, are asking  the Dept. of Education how a college could collapse before our eyes.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley says she’s expanded her investigation of whether for-profit colleges have deceived students in her state about their prices, graduation rates, and job placement records. “The more we look, the more we see it as a real problem,” Coakley told the Boston Globe. Coakley identified one school she’s probing — American Career Institute (ACI),
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December 13, 2012

Senators Demand Probe of For-Profit College Circumvention of Student Loan Default Rules

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
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November 27, 2012

For-Profit College Industry’s Phony Pitch to Obama: Now We’re BFFs!

  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
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