The White House giving in to corporate interests? Who could believe such a thing?
A year ago, the Obama administration crafted a set of proposed regulations aimed at limiting abuses by the swiftly growing for-profit college industry.
The initial draft threatened severe consequences for institutions that churned out large numbers of graduates with outsized debts and meager job prospects: Schools would quickly lose access to the multi-billion dollar pool of federal student aid dollars that supplies the vast majority of their profits.
But when the Department of Education delivered the final rules earlier this month, they were substantially weakened from the initial draft, adding a three-year grace period before severe sanctions will kick in — a major triumph for the industry’s lobbyists and their relentless pressure campaign on the Obama administration.
Those familiar with the deliberations say the industry successfully convinced the Obama administration to soften the rules by sowing fears that a stricter approach would prompt Congress — also the target of intense lobbying — to step in and revoke the regulations altogether.
This article was in Huff-Po tuesday:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/13/obama-campaign-arm-advise_n_875986.html
“Obama Campaign Advised White House Staff To Give Top Donor Sense Of Access”
Hoping to keep the support of a key Florida supporter, the president’s political team suggested that top White House aides give him the sense that his voice was “being heard” inside the administration.
The donor, Ed Haddock, the CEO of Full Sail University, a for-profit technical college in Orlando, was set to meet with top aide Pete Rouse, according to the memo title, though when that meeting would take place is not clear. Haddock served on the Obama for America National Finance Committee and was a “bundler” for president during his 2008 run for the office, helping raise more than $200,000. He was viewed by the memo’s author Jessica Clark, the Obama campaign’s finance director in Florida, as a key figure for the Obama campaign in that critical state.
We’ve been talking about Obama, aka “Bush Lite”, since shortly after he came into office, and I’m not looking to see a different prez whether he/she is thug or dem regardless of who is elected in ’12.
I personally get sick every time anyone—including Suze— posts something expressing annoyance of an ‘everyday’ politician who has lied again———–that’s what all those fuckers do, always have been doing, and always will do.
My notion is that our ‘democracy’ is a system that—-if it allows something as outragious as slavery, especially from the ‘Founders’, then, debate all you want, it will allow immigrants to be deported, citizens to be herded into camps, same sex folks to be harassed, and only those with property and means will be granted a pass—if they are lucky!