For-Profit College Lobbying Group Sues Obama Administration Over Regulations

More than a month after the Obama administration issued weaker-than-expected regulations aimed at reining in abuses at some for-profit colleges, a trade association for the industry filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to strike down the new rules governing excessive student debt.

The lawsuit is a perplexing move for the for-profit college industry, which aggressively fought the Obama administration’s crackdown for more than a year, and ultimately succeeded in getting final regulations last month that were universally regarded as being substantially weakened from those proposed a year earlier.

Bernie Sanders Gets Sarcastic, Rips Gang Of Six Plan

WASHINGTON -- Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has been driven to sarcasm as Congress and the White House continue to move forward with plans to cut Social Security, Medicare and other social programs in the name of deficit reduction. In a statement entitled "Congratulations Coburn, Crapo and Chambliss," Sanders, a member of the Senate Budget Committee, offered false praise to the Republican members of the so-called "Gang of Six" for winning in a "major victory" in debt negotiations with the White House.

Coming at a crucial time in debt reduction negotiations between President Obama and GOP congressional leadership, Sanders' comments reflect growing frustration among some members of Congress with what they view as too much willingness on the part of the White House to compromise with Republicans on key progressive issues.

Pembina Oil Spill In Alberta Draws Energy Resources Conservation Board Investigation

THE CANADIAN PRESS -- SWAN HILLS, Alta. - Alberta's Energy Resources Conservation Board is investigating a spill from an oil pipeline 200 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

The pipeline is owned and operated by the Pembina Pipeline Corporation (TSX:PPL).

An official at the Calgary-based company says 1,300 barrels of oil were released on Tuesday into an area of muskeg and a creek about five kilometres north of the Town of Swan Hills. But the company and the ERCB also say the exact size of the spill was under investigation.

China National Offshore Oil Corp To Pay $2.1 Billion, Revive Troubled Long Lake Oil Sands Project

THE CANADIAN PRESS -- CALGARY - China's largest offshore energy producer is preparing to snap up Opti Canada Inc. in a $2.1-billion deal announced Wednesday, a week after the Calgary-based oil sands developer filed for court protection from its creditors.

If the deal goes as expected, China National Offshore Oil Corp., or CNOOC, will get a 35 per cent stake in the troubled Long Lake oil sands project, which has fallen well-short of production targets since its late 2008 startup.

NASA To Privatize Space Travel After Last Shuttle Lands

HOUSTON -- How America gets people and stuff into orbit is about to be outsourced in an out-of-this-world way.

With the space shuttle's retirement Thursday, no longer will flying people and cargo up to the International Space Station be a government program where costs balloon. NASA is turning to private industry with fixed prices, contracts and profit margins. The space agency will be the customer, not the boss.

At least when it comes to the routine part of going to and from the space station, NASA hopes to rely on companies that will be the space version of FedEx and Yellow Cab.

Rice Prices Up 70% Make Asian Inflation Tough for Central Banks to Digest

Asian cuisine may be too much of a good thing for some of the region’s central banks as policy makers grapple with the challenge of responding to spikes in the cost of staples from rice and pork to onions and chilies.

Pork prices jumped 57 percent in June in China, leading Premier Wen Jiabao to vow to curb inflation even as growth slows. Rice, the staple food for more than half of the world population, has surged about 70 percent in the past year. A wider variety of diet and greater purchasing power for non-food items leave wealthier nations less vulnerable to food-cost spikes.

Food makes up more than 30 percent of inflation indexes on average in Asia, compared with about 15 percent in Europe and less than 10 percent in the U.S., according to Rabobank Groep NV. The sensitivity of their economies to swings in meat and vegetable costs means emerging-market policy makers need to raise interest rates more to stem inflation when global agriculture prices soar.

Justice isn't Harperized

It is now conventional wisdom that the Harper Conservatives are transforming Canadian criminal justice, a fact which many pundits cite as evidence of the incremental Harperization of Canadian society. It's pretty hard to disagree.

The Conservatives have passed a slew of punitive legislation, with more to come, and on Tuesday news stories noted that the cost of the federal correctional system was expected to grow more than 80 per cent between the time the Conservatives came to power and 2011-2012. I suppose I could say "I told you so." For more than a decade, I've been writing about the catastrophe wrought by so-called tough on crime policies in the United States and warning Canadians not to make the same mistake. But I won't, at least not yet. Because I think the conventional wisdom is misinformed.

Start with that figure about rising prison costs. It uses a baseline of 2005-2006, which is misleading since the Conservatives didn't come to power until February, 2006. With the more accurate baseline of 2006-2007, prison costs under the Conservatives will rise 57 per cent, not 80 per cent, and that has to be compared to the 23-per-cent rise under the Liberals in the six years before Harper took office. Clearly, the Conservatives have greatly boosted the rate of growth of spending, which is alarming at a time when crime is falling and the federal budget is in the red. But let's not exaggerate.

In conversation: Shawn Atleo

On moving beyond residential schools, overcoming cynicism and trusting the Tories

AFTER TWO YEARS as national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Shawn Atleo is cautiously optimistic about the relationship he is forging with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. On Tuesday, at the assembly’s annual meeting in Moncton, N.B., he proposed replacing the federal Aboriginal Affairs Department with a system that allows bands more autonomy and lessens the heavy federal intervention required under the Indian Act. “The patterns of the past have to be essentially smashed,” he told Maclean’s. Atleo, a hereditary chief in the tiny B.C. island community of Ahousaht, reads vindication in the recent report by now-retired auditor general Sheila Fraser. It warns, as Atleo and successive national chiefs have said, that the quality of life on reserves is worsening and the existing system of financing and accountability must be overhauled.

Top five Ford truthiness fact checks of the week

There's a lot of truthiness going around the Ford camp these days—but here's a collection of some truths.

 

When politicians speak off-the-cuff, they occasionally don’t have all the facts quite nailed down, and it’s only fair to clarify the specifics when their words are being reported (or after they’ve been reported). But sometimes the remarks are so far from the actual facts—and so underscore the point the politician is trying to make—that one suspects the speaker either lives in a fantasy land or is being intentionally misleading. Their cited mis-facts have the ring of truth, corroborating as they do the gut feeling represented by the politician’s message, but are completely misleading, and often outright false. This is what Stephen Colbert famously defined as “truthiness” a few years back.

This week, the brothers Ford have had a particularly bad week with fact checkers. Here’s a rundown, in no particular order, of their greatest misses:

1. Toronto spends 80 per cent of its budget on payroll

ROB FORD SAYS: “The last thing we want to do is lay off, Johnny, but when [payroll] makes up 80 per cent of your budget, there’s a lot of gravy there.”

THE TRUTH: Labour costs account for 48 per cent of the city’s budget.

FACT CHECKER: Margus Gee, in the Globe and Mail.

2. Ford has already cut the Toronto budget by $70 million

ROB FORD SAYS: In his first six months in office, “We have saved over $70-million… And so if we can find 70 million, I’m sure we can find 700 million”

THE TRUTH: $64 million of that money was not cut from spending, as Ford seems to claim, but cut from revenue, in the form of the elimination of the Vehicle Registration Tax. This does not save the city money, it costs the city money—the exact opposite of his claim.

FACT CHECKER: Gee, in the Globe.

3. Libraries in Etobicoke outnumber Tim Horton’s Franchises

DOUG FORD SAYS: “I’ve got more libraries in my area than I have Tim Hortons.”

THE TRUTH: Tim Hortons franchises outnumber public libraries in Etobicoke—where Doug Ford lives—by a margin of three to one. There are 13 public libraries in Etobicoke, and 39 Tim Hortons franchises.

FACT CHECKER: Maureen O’Reilly, Our Public Library

4. Toronto has more libraries per capita than any other city

DOUG FORD SAYS: “We have more libraries per person than any other city in the world.”

THE TRUTH: Vermont has more than seven times as many libraries per capita as Toronto. Halifax has 4.3 libraries per 100,000 people, while Toronto has 3.9.

FACT CHECKER: Maureen O’Reilly, Our Public Library

5. Labour costs should make up no more than 1/5 of an enterprise’s spending

ROB FORD SAYS: “In business the first thing you look at is the labour. Your labour should be making up maximum 20 per cent…”

THE TRUTH: The ideal labour cost as a percentage of total spending varies wildly depending on the industry the company is operating in. As KPMG—a consulting firm Ford presumably trusts, since he hired them to investigate the city’s spending—notes in their Competitive Alternatives study, “For manufacturing operations, labor typically represents 46 to 60 percent of total location-sensitive costs, while for non-manufacturing operations this range is typically 74 to 85 percent.” Meanwhile, in the construction equipment industry, in 2008 average payroll costs were about 58 per cent, according to this report. Second Wind consultants say that a lot varies by industry, but that 30-38 per cent of revenue is “a good place to be.” Apparently celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay says restaurants should aim to have labour costs be about 1/3 of the total budget.

FACT CHECKER: Me. With help from the sites linked above.

Origin
Source: the Grid TO 

Sorry, Elizabeth Warren, Wall Street Said No

So much for the meritocracy. Despite an elite education, effusive charm and brilliant wit, Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, has ended up betraying his humble origins by abjectly serving the most rapacious variant of Wall Street greed. They both talk a good progressive game, but when push comes to shove—meaning when the banking lobby weighs in—big money talks and the best and the brightest fold.

The defining moment of Clinton’s capitulation was his destruction of Brooksley Born, the one member of his administration with the courage and prescience to warn him about the unregulated derivatives trading that ultimately led to the housing collapse. For Obama, it is his decision not to nominate Elizabeth Warren to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she fought so hard to create.

Obama’s refusal to take the fight to Senate Republicans by nominating Warren should be taken as the vital measure of the man. This gutless decision comes after the president populated his administration with the very people who created the financial meltdown.