nelnet

• How Green is your candidate? Grist will let you know with a new election '08 series and widget to deliver news directly to your blog of SocNet profile.
• Think Progress reports that Fox's Daily Show knock-off, The Half-Hour News Hour, is getting canned:
  

  The reviews for the program were consistently dismal. Its very first review, from the Orlando Sentinel, decried the “[l]aughter, of an awfully canned variety, greets all the gags. Nothing happening on screen justifies these outbursts. … If we’re lucky, we’ll never hear of this dreadful show again.” “Sometimes the humor is so heavy-handed that it seems almost like self-parody,” said the New York Times. “The 1/2 Hour News Hour is slow torture all by itself,” said the Philadelpha Inquirer.

  What the right-wing failed to grasp is Jon Stewart is funny not because he spins falsehoods but because he tells the truth.

• Student loan shenanigans continue. Nelnet is being forced to pay a $1million fine (peanuts, really) for deceptive marketing practices. This after Nebraska Attorney General Jim Bruning, who had originally "forgiven" Nelnet's fine, was revealed to have received campaign contributions from NelNet employees. The Higher Ed Watch article is ugly. Bruning goes to bat big-time for the corporate lenders, going so far as to call NY AG Cuomo's investigations into the industry (which have revealed major corruption) as an "embarassment." Bruning is the real embarassment. For any Nebraska FM readers: what can y'all do to get this joker out of office?
• The Washington Blade profiles David Hardt and Chris Anderson, the new heads of the Young Democrats, who had this to say about the future of YDA:
  

  “Right now I want to grow the organization,” he said. “We need to have better organization and communication between the national organization and local chapters. Young people make up the largest voter block and we need to raise money to reach young voters.”

  Amen.

• A blogger at Campus Progress notes that Senator Pat Leahy just wrapped up a bit piece in the new Batman movie. The blogger "doesn't know what to do with" the information, but I do - applaud it. Leahy is on the front lines right now in fighting Republican corruption in government. Yay on him for realizing that popular culture is a tool to embrace in that fight, not a pariah to attack (as some other Democrats seem to think *cough*Hillary and Lieberman*cough*).
• "Fair and Balanced" Fox News got caught editing Democratic candidate Al Franken's Wikipedia entry.
• Finally, what if the last five years were a giant Batman episode, and Dennis Kucinich a Superhero? Keep your eye out for Teen-Wolf Blitzer:
  

Cross posted at MyDD and Daily Kos.

Another update on Nelson-Burr (aka the corporate lender welfare amendment). Word is that the vote is going to be around noon today and it is going to be tight. Yesterday, Rick Enzi, ranking Republican on the Senate Education committee declared that he would vote against the amendment, potentially bringing a number of Republicans over with him. A number of Senators s are on the fence - particularly Tester on the Democratic side and Smith on the Republican side - but many of the Senators listed below don't really know anything about the amendment or how it would impact students.

Give them a call before noon today. Tell them why they should vote yes on the bill and no on the Nelson-Burr amendment. The Capitol Switchboard can be reached at (202) 224-3121.

Update:
Here's the list of swing votes who might side with Nelson and the corporate lenders over debt-ridden students:

Alexander (R - TN)
Bayh (D - IN)
Carper (D - DE)
Coleman (R - MN)
Collins (R - ME)
Hatch (R - UT)
Landrieu (D - LA)
McCaskill (D - MO)
Murkowski (R - AK)
Nelson, Ben (D - NE)
Nelson, Bill (D - FL)
Roberts (R - KS)
Tester (D - MT)
Webb (D - VA)

Call their offices and urge them to vote YES on S. 1762, and NO on the Nelson-Burr Amendment. The Capitol Switchboard can be reached at (202) 224-3121.
---------------------------------------

Cross posted at Daily Kos and MyDD. Please recommend.

Last week, most student organizations rejoiced as the Democrats shepherded the Cost of College Reduction Act through the House of Representatives. The Bill represented the largest increase in student aid since the G.I. Bill. It accomplished this in part by cutting excess government subsidies to corporate lenders, who were fattening their wallets on the backs of debt-ridden students. Republicans tried unsuccessfully to kill the bill in the House. The Gavel had an excellent post about that fight and the bill’s passage.

The Senate version of the bill – The Higher Education Access Act of 2007 - is set to provide $17 billion in student aid to college students and recent graduates, among other provisions to further protect students. But Ben Nelson (D-NE), whose home state is also home to Nelnet, one of the biggest corporate lenders, is trying to weaken the Senate version of the bill and return $3 billion of that to the lending industry so they can continue to line their pockets on with corporate welfare.

What I’m hearing is that the cloture votes on Iraq and the DOD reauthorization are going to fail, and the Higher Education Access Act of 2007 will be brought to the floor instead, with voting to be scheduled for today or tomorrow. Right now, Republicans supposedly have 3-6 Democrats willing to side with lenders on the Amendment, so they are likely to see it pass.

Here’s what you can do:

• Call your Senator and urge them to vote YES on S. 1762, and NO on the Nelson-Burr Amendment. The Capitol Switchboard can be reached at (202) 224-3121, and the operators can tell you both who your Senators are and connect you.
• Also ask which way your Senator plans on voting. If we can find out who those 3-6 Democrats are that are supporting lender subsidies over students we can ratchet up the pressure on them.

If you find out which Democrats (besides Nelson) are in favor of the Nelson-Burr Amendment, contact me and I'll keep an updated list and post around the blogosphere.

The lenders (and Nelson’s) argument is that cuts in subsidies need to be scaled back so that lenders can offer students benefits, and that subsidy cuts will cause the loan market to consolidate and there will be less choice for students. This is bunk. The loan market is already consolidated, and less than 10% of students ever see a dime of those supposed “benefits.” Meanwhile, groups like NelNet and Sallie Mae have used those government subsidies to give outrageous benefits packages to CEOs, reap hundreds of millions in additional profits, and improperly wine and dine university officials who should be protecting the interests of students.

$3 billion could fund 588,000 Pell Grants at the maximum level of $5100. As millions of students are getting priced out of college, or saddled with unmanageable levels of debt, our government should be voting to protect and aid students, not funnel more money to corporations already reaping hundreds of millions in government subsidies and profits.