student loans

Check out this handy map posted at the new YDA blog. It tells you on average how much students stand to save in each state based on the new interest rate drops on student loans I blogged earlier this morning:

I've got a few big posts in the hopper, but they probably won't start rolling out until later this afternoon or tomorrow. Today appears to be a slow news day (unless you are still interested in Rev. Wright or the latest obscenity McCain called his wife). Nevertheless, these are worth checking out:

• Rockt the Vote issues a new handbook for reaching young voters: Winning Young Voters. I'll have more about this later this weekend. - Rock the Vote
• Young--and in Charge: Under-30 Dems Set to Have Big Impact - Hispanic Business Wire
• Parsing the Generational Divide for Democrats - NPR
• Voting Rights Are Too Important to Leave to the States - New York Times
• Senate Passes Student Loans Bill - The Politico
• Is FaceBook the Hub of the Internet World? - DIY Marketing

Youthy things left on the wayside of the information superhighway:

• Rock the Vote reminds us that early voting has started in Indiana and North Carolina. -Rock the Vote
• Conservatives are attempting a takeover at Dartmouth College. - Daily Kos
• Why the Democrats need all young voters, college and non-college, if they are to win in November. -The Nation
• Students for a New American Politics - a great organization that fundraises to place young activists on campaigns - is holding a fundraiser. -Daily Gotham
• Bush is pushing for legislation that will allow the government to buy-up student loans an ensure that loans will continue to be available to students. The article I read is vague, but it sounds like this might be an end run to bulk up the lender-friendly FFEL (Family Federal Education Loan Program) at the expense of the more efficient Direct Loan Program. -The Politico
• Just what is it that kids do on social networks? Danah Boyd Explains in her lecture "Teen Socialization Practices in Networked Publics." -Apophenia
• Adam B has much more on the Indiana voter ID ruling by the Supreme Court. -Daily Kos

As of this writing, Stephen Colbert has become the first presidential candidate to actually pass the 1 million strong mark, with 1,005,608 members in his Facebook group.

In other news, Chris Dodd, who has been a strong progressive voice on the campaign trail lately, is coming out strong against overpayment to corporate lenders by the government on student loans. Dodd wants the total costs of those over-payments recouped and funneled back into the Pell Grant program, which would raise the maximum grant by another $100 per semester.

Also worth checking out this morning - the Missoula Independent has an in-depth profile of Matt Singer, CEO of Forward Montana.

Jesse Lee over in Speaker Pelosi's office wrote up a fabulous post for The Gavel about Student Loans. Today, the House passed the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007, H.R. 2669, which will provide the single largest increase in college aid since the GI bill in 1944.


From The Gavel:

The House has passed the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007, H.R. 2669, by a vote of 273-149. The bill will provide the single largest increase in college aid since the GI bill in 1944. The legislation invests about $18 billion dollars over the next five years in reducing college costs, helping millions of students and families. It comes at no new cost to taxpayers, and is funded by cutting excess subsidies paid by the federal government to lenders in the student loan industry.

That means 149 goons voted against it. Let's look at the names of shame. In an update, [Below the fold]I'll compile the competitive races among these conservative anti-student goons with links to the Democratic challengers.

Attention House Challengers, if one of the Nay votes is your congressman, they voted against students. Talk to young voters in your district about that. And note Rep. Miller's tone...

Which brings me to today's reminder that, yes, Margaret, there is a difference between the parties:

Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA) went abso-effing-lutely ballistic against a Republican amendment aiming to kill the bill:

First of all, Mike and I have decided that our "quick hit" or "daily digest" pieces are now going to be called "Around the Tubes". I'll try and tag the older digest pieces when I find them, but for now, here's what I've been looking at in the series of tubes this morning:

• Kid Oakland has a really nice post up at both MyDD and Daily Kos that uses a conversation with a young elected official and a young activist that helped get him elected to talk about the Millennial Generation. There's also a few really good conversations in the DKos comments. Though Kid Oakland isn't really much of a kid, he consistently writes great pieces on both Millennials and politics in general, so I've placed his blog on the blogroll.
• Forex News takes a look at the practice of Redlining student loans that I pointed to the other day. The article gets someone from the loan industry to say in plain language what they are doing, and why:
  

  He said default rates are used along with other data about a school, including anticipated income after graduation and dropout rates, to help set rates that protect the interests of the lender.

  Dean used the example of a student attending an Ivy League college as opposed to another at a small trade school.

  The industry would view the Ivy League student as clearly "on the path to success," while the other student presents greater risk, he said.

  "Should both of those students get the same rate?" Dean asked.

  No, you're right, we subsidize student loans in this nation to benefit mainly the upper class and the upwardly mobile, which is how it should be. Those plebes should stick to playing video games, or whatever it is those poor fools do, and leave the learning to those who can really use it!

• For some strange reason that Chris Dodd guy (you know, the one whose running for President) wants to do something about the cost and efficiency of student loans. This is from a press release he put out last week:
  

  "As the average student leaves a four-year institution with $20,000 in debt, it is essential that we do all we can to ensure that students are securing their loans on the best terms possible," said Dodd Campaign Spokesperson Christy Setzer. "By requiring banks to compete for the right to make or own government-guaranteed student loans, students can be assured they are get the best rates on loans while the program provides significant savings to taxpayers as government subsidies are driven down by market competition."

  Dodd, who will be unveiling details of his plan in the coming weeks, announced that under his plan the government would force student lenders who participate in the Federal Family Education Loan program to compete for the right to make or own federal student loans through a government-run auction. As a result, an additional $20 billion will be available to be directed back to student aid and other federal education programs.

  Last week Dodd announced he would introduce legislation that would require private lenders to provide more accurate and timely information to customers about interest rates, terms and conditions of their loans in order to ensure students better understand their debts and obligations.

  Dodd has also put forward a National Service Plan, which includes a video from a live video chat he did. I guess Senator Dodd hasn't gotten the memo that young people don't vote, and they really should be ignored.

  Senator Dodd will officially announce his National Service Plan via a live video feed on Saturday at 5pm.

• Meanwhile, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions approved a package of legislation to renew the Higher Education Act that would basically transfer about $18-billion dollars of profit from the college loan industry to students. At least that's theoretically what it would do, though I still think direct loans from the government would be a much better use of our resources.
• TechPresident sends a memo to the non-Obama campaigns: There's This Thing Called "Facebook". Apparently that little John Edwards FaceBook app that Mike higlighted the other day was actually created by techPresident's Fred Stutzman, who is going to open source the app for any campaign to use and abuse.
• Apparently Michael Moore's new movie Sicko paints a pretty unflattering picture of Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton, who apparently gets the most money from the health care industry of any Senator, now that Rick Santorum has been sent packing. I know those 30 second ads are expensive, but are you fucking kidding me? Can we get a real leader for President, please?
• Barack Obama still doesn't get "blogging" or the "netroots". Uh, Barack, you have a blog. Does that make you a blogger? Next.
• But, some people still would love to see a Gore-Obama ticket (From Young Turks via Tennessee Guerrilla Women.
  
  I personally would prefer a Gore-Dodd ticket, but it would be nice to get all the cultists Obamiacs on Gore's side, so there's that.

And for those of you who don't remember the brilliant, rambling, incoherent rant in a bottle that is Senetor Ted "grumpy grandpa" Stevens (R-Alaska and R for Retarded) here's grumpy grandpa's explanation for why we should charge companies a fee to use the interwebs.

He's right, the internet is not a truck you can dump your stuff into. The quote about his staff sending him internets that take all night to arrive is so funny, I would swear it was a Jon Stewart skit. It's sad when our elected officials provide more hilarious caricatures of stupid and inept politicians than our best comedians can ever hope to.

Jennifer S. Pae is the president of the United States Student Association, the country’s oldest and largest national student association representing millions of students across the country in the Capitol, the White House, and the Department of Education. Jennifer recently ended her term as the primary student negotiator for the student loan committee for the Department of Education.

Right now, a corrupt college official and student loan lender may be purchasing a round of mojitos with your student loan check. Unfortunately, we have come to learn through Attorney General Cuomo’s recent investigations that this is not as absurd as it may sound.

Deceitful student loan practices have festered for years without federal oversight. Now that widespread corruption has been revealed, college students and their families must increase the pressure on Congress and the U.S. Department of Education to restore integrity to the nation’s higher education system.

Recently, Education Secretary Spellings testified before the House Education Committee and, once again, students are left behind in the debate over regulation and enforcement of the growing problems within the student loan industry. Chairman Miller grilled Secretary Spellings on the lack of enforcement by the Department with the student loan industry for unethical behaviors. While the Secretary explained that the “hurdle is too high” for enforcement due to unclear regulations and claimed that she was already taking large strides in oversight.

• Not at all shockingly, a whistle blower in the Dept. of Education tells the New York Times that political appointees in the Dept. shut down his investigations into exploitation of student loan programs by corporate lenders:

  When Jon Oberg, a Department of Education researcher, warned in 2003 that student lending companies were improperly collecting hundreds of millions in federal subsidies and suggested how to correct the problem, his supervisor told him to work on something else.

  Ya gotta love conservative government.

• This is interesting. From an article about Obama's youth support:
  

  The Obama campaign said the students are also an increasingly important source of cash, particularly through the Internet. While they wouldn't give specific numbers, Obama officials said students make up one their largest donor groups.

  Students are ``getting into being donors,'' said Billy Wimsatt, executive director of the League of Young Voters, a political organization in New York. The new technology ``is what's putting it over the top.''

  More than a little fishy that they wouldn't give specific numbers. How do you know, and why wouldn't you say if the numbers are high? I think it would be really interesting to get some hard numbers on student donations. The number of donors is only likely to grow each quarter for Obama. The campaign has an opportunity to set some positive trend lines for youth campaign support - they should set that bar. It would make a great story to bolster the narrative about growing youth engagement.

Attention Democratic Presidential campaigns and assorted grassroots youth groups. In light of recent scandals, and as part of their Debt Hits Hard campaign, Campus Progress has created a guide instructing students on how to organize for fair lending on campus:

Honest Lending, Fair Lending: A Guide to Exposing Conflicts of Interest in School Financial Aid Offices (pdf)

The guide is fairly comprehensive; it includes step by step instructions for navigating your school’s financial aid system and rooting out shady lending practices on campus, talking points on student debt, and links to related articles that could provide posts and posts worth of blog material.

Cross-posted at MyDD. Recs appreciated.

In 2004, John Kerry made a huge mistake. While touring colleges and universities,he delivered long-winded speeches about medicare and social security to audiences of teens and twenty-somethings whose main concerns were rising student debt, shrinking employment opportunities, and their friends, busy fighting an ill-conceived land war in Asia. As a result, one of the more popular sites during the ‘04 election was called John Kerry is a douchebag but I’m voting for him anyway.

And we did vote for him. We didn’t sit it out, we weren’t apathetic. Young people gave John Kerry a 10 point margin over Bush - the only age demographic to choose Kerry. But we weren’t happy about it. He was still a douchebag, and nothing showed that more than his indifference to the issues that we cared about so deeply.

What I want to know is this - are the Democratic candidates going to repeat that mistake in 2007 and 2008? Will they take our votes for granted, or will they respect us enough to address our issues and engage our generation in a substantive conversation? What will they say this time when they hold their “college tours?” What will they say when they meet young voters who are working their first jobs, or starting families, and struggling with a mountain of debt? Or to those who are priced out of college? What will they say to those of our generation who continue to fight and die in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Right now we have a chance to find out.