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The Perfect Lobby: How One Industry Captured Washington
David Halperin
This article is adapted from David Halperin’s new e-book, Stealing America's Future: How For-Profit Colleges Scam Taxpayers and Ruin Students' Lives, available at Amazon.
Many of America’s for-profit colleges have proven themselves a bad deal for the students lured by their enticing promises—as well as for US taxpayers, who subsidize these institutions with ten of billions annually in federal student aid.
More than half of the students who enroll in for-profit colleges—many of them veterans, single mothers, and other low- and middle-income people aiming for jobs like medical technician, diesel mechanic or software coder—drop out within about four months. Many of these colleges have been caught using deceptive advertising and misleading prospective students about program costs and job placement rates. Although the for-profits promise that their programs are affordable, the real cost can be nearly double that of Harvard or Stanford. But the quality of the programs are often weak, so even students who manage to graduate often struggle to find jobs beyond the Office Depot shifts they previously held. The US Department of Education recently reported that 72 percent of the for-profit college programs it analyzed produced graduates who, on average, earned less than high school dropouts.
Today, 13 percent of all college students attend for-profit colleges, on campuses and online—but these institutions account for 47 percent of student loan defaults. For-profit schools are driving a national student debt crisis that has reached $1.2 trillion in borrowing. They absorb a quarter of all federal student aid—more than $30 billion annually—diverting sums from better, more affordable programs at nonprofit and public colleges. Many for-profit college companies, including most of the biggest ones, get almost 90 percent of their revenue from taxpayers.
So why does Washington keep the money flowing?
more
http://www.thenation.com/article/179161/perfect-lobby-how-one-industry-captured-washington-dc
Ever Wonder Why Your Local TV News Stations Run the Same Damn Stories?
Everybody knows that most local TV newscasts kind of suck. On television, if it bleeds it leads, and if it's cheesy and trite it wins the night. Local news is a reliable source for late-night comedians—and The Simpsons has been lampooning it forever. Yet despite all of the genre's shortcomings, local TV news still manages to reach 9 in 10 American adults, 46 percent of whom watch it "often." It may come as a surprise to you internet junkies, but broadcast television still serves as Americans' main source of news and information. Which is why it matters that hundreds of local TV news stations were swept up in a massive new wave of media consolidation: It means that you, the viewer, are being fed an even more repetitive diet of dreck.
In terms of dollar value, more than 75 percent of the nearly 300 full-power local TV stations purchased last year were acquired by just three media giants. The largest, Sinclair Broadcasting, will reach almost 40 percent of the population if its latest purchases are approved by federal regulators. Sinclair's CEO has said he wants to keep snapping up stations until the company's market saturation hits 90 percent. (And that's not a typo.)
Now here's where things really get sketchy: Media conglomerates such as Sinclair have bought up multiple news stations in the same regions—in nearly half of America's 210 television markets, one company owns or manages at least two local stations, and a lot of these stations now run very similar or even completely identical newscasts, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. One in four local stations relies entirely on shared content.
On Monday, the Federal Communications Commission finally took steps to curb the practice. The commission's rules have long prohibited companies from owning more than one of the four top-rated stations in a given market. But there was no rule preventing a single company from managing more than one station per market. Companies exploited this loophole by controlling stations through "joint operating agreements"—essentially shell companies formed just to hold the broadcast license. "Removal of the loophole helps ensure competition, localism, and diversity in local broadcast markets by preventing a practice that previously resulted in consolidation in excess of what is permitted under the Commission's rules," the FCC said in a press release.
more
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/04/fcc-pew-local-tv-news-consolidation
Pro-Pot, Pro-Gay, Anti-NSA… and Running for Senate
http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2014/04/04/pro-pot-pro-gay-anti-nsa-and-running-for-senate/jcr:content/image.crop.800.500.jpg/1396604734986.cached.jpgMeet Shenna Bellows, Maine’s former ACLU chief who’s looking to unseat Susan Collins with a mix of left and right issues that might appeal to millennials.
The baby boomers had John F. Kennedy—young, charismatic, and TV ready.
Forty years later, Barack Obama was supposed to herald in a new generation, one globalized and beyond the narrow box-checking racial and ethnic categories, and, as he put it, beyond the cultural-war campus debates from the ’60s.
Now those hashtag lovin’, meme generatin’, self-obsessin’ millennials may have found a political candidate of their own.
Shenna Bellows is 39. “I just look 18,” she says. She spent the last eight years as executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, and, prior to that, ran up a résumé familiar to many community-minded millennials: Middlebury College, Peace Corps in Panama, Vista Corps in a housing project in Nashville.
more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/04/pro-pot-pro-gay-anti-nsa-and-running-for-senate.html
Paul Krugman- Holy seven million, Batman!
Holy seven million, Batman! The Affordable Care Act, a k a Obamacare, has made a stunning comeback from its shambolic start. As the March 31 deadline for 2014 coverage approached, there was a surge in applications at the “exchanges” — the special insurance marketplaces the law set up. And the original target of seven million signups, widely dismissed as unattainable, has been surpassed.
But what does it mean? That depends on whether you ask the law’s opponents or its supporters. You see, the opponents think that it means a lot, while the law’s supporters are being very cautious. And, in this one case, the enemies of health reform are right. This is a very big deal indeed.
Of course, you don’t find many Obamacare opponents admitting outright that 7.1 million and counting signups is a huge victory for reform. But their reaction to the results — It’s a fraud! They’re cooking the books! — tells the tale. Conservative thinking and Republican political strategy were based entirely on the assumption that it would always be October, that Obamacare’s rollout would be an unremitting tale of disaster. They have no idea what to do now that it’s turning into a success story.
So why are many reform supporters being diffident, telling us not to read too much into the figures? Well, at a technical level they’re right: The precise number of signups doesn’t matter much for the functioning of the law, and there may still be many problems despite the March surge. But I’d argue that they’re missing the forest for the trees.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/opinion/krugman-rube-goldberg-survives.html?_r=0
The Price Of Human Life, According To GM
by Michael Moore
I am opposed to the death penalty, but to every rule there is usually an exception, and in this case I hope the criminals at General Motors will be arrested and made to pay for their pre-meditated decision to take human lives for a lousy ten bucks. The executives at GM knew for 13 years that their cars had a defective ignition switch that would, well, kill people. But they did a "cost-benefit analysis" and concluded that paying off the deceased's relatives was going to be cheaper than having to install a $10 part per car. They then covered up their findings and continued to let millions drive around with the defective part in their cars. There would be no recalls. There would only be parents and the decapitated body parts of their dead children. See the USA in your Chevrolet. In 2007 a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration official recommended a formal investigation but was overruled by others in Bush's "business-friendly" Transportation Department.
Only now, under the newly-configured GM -- owned, essentially, by you and me from 2009 through last year -- has the truth come out. And my guess is that it has to do with the fact that a mother now runs General Motors. A few months ago, Marry Barra, a former resident of Flint, the daughter of GM union autoworker, was named its CEO. And it looks like she isn't one of the good ol' boys. She stepped forward, announced the truth of what GM did, ordered one massive recall after another, and now is showing up to face Congress in a few hours.
The Washington Post, in an otherwise good article, blames the whole sad affair on the "corporate culture" at GM. What a user-friendly term! To even have to read the words "culture" and "General Motors" in the same sentence is enough to make anyone gag. No, the cause of this tragedy is an economic system that places profit above everything else, including -- and especially -- human life. GM has a legal and fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders to make the biggest profits that it can. And if their top people crunch the numbers and can show that they will save more money by NOT fixing or replacing the part, then that is what they are going to goddam well do. F*** you, f*** me, and f*** everybody they sent to their deaths. That pretty much sums up their "culture". They knew they wouldn't get caught, and if they did, no one would ever serve any time.
I hope someone in the Obama administration will get out the handcuffs, the SWAT teams, or the U.S. army if need be, march into GM headquarters in downtown Detroit and haul away anyone who is there who had anything to do with this. And if they already left town, hunt them down and bring them in to face justice.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/02-3
Chili's Is Fundraising For A Notoriously Anti-Vaccine Charity
In honor of National Autism Awareness Month, Chili's is planning to donate 10% of customers' checks on April 7 to the National Autism Association, a charity with controversial views about vaccinations.
More than 1,200 Chili's restaurants will participate in the fundraiser for the group, which writes vaccinations can trigger or exacerbate autism in "some, if not many, children" on its website.
That's not the case, as the Centers for Disease Control explained after its most recent study of the issue in the Journal of Pediatrics. "There is not a causal relationship between certain vaccine types and autism," it writes. This follows at least nine other studies into immunization safety and autism that also found no link.
The NAA, however, notes anecdotal data — i.e. parents claiming vaccines caused a change in their children — rather than scientific data.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/chilis-autism-2014-4
Health Department Shuts Down Rat-Infested NYC Dunkin' Donuts
The New York City Health Department has reportedly shut down a Dunkin' Donuts in Manhattan after a video was posted to YouTube showing what appeared to be a rat crawling all over the store's bagels.
A sign hung in the window of the 8th Avenue and West 37th Street store on Thursday that read, "CLOSED by order of the Commissioner of Health and Mental Hygiene," according to NBC New York.
The agency confirmed the closure in a statement to Gothamist.
"Dunkin’ Donuts was closed by the Health Department yesterday because of a public health hazard that could not be corrected at the time of the inspection," the agency said. "In this case, the restaurant had a severe pest infestation that will require professional pest control services. They were also cited for other critical violations, including inadequate hand washing facilities and food not being protected from contamination."
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/rat-infested-dunkin-donuts-closes-2014-4#ixzz2xudbZ4af
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