|
7/16/07- Student Loan Nonprofit a Boon for CEO |
|
Two decades ago, a young accountant pioneered the now-$17 billion-a-year private student loan industry through a tiny nonprofit company with a noble goal: helping students pay for college.
The nonprofit company also has become a financial boon for the accountant, Catherine B. Reynolds, and her family. The McLean-based company bought a Gulfstream jet worth about $30 million that she sometimes uses to fly friends and relatives around the world. It has given more than $9 million to a separate nonprofit company run by her husband and paid her $1 million in annual compensation. And the nonprofit donates millions to her favorite charities, including $400,000 to her daughter's private school. Click here to read the story from the Washington Post. |
|
|
7/16/07- Child Health Insurance Bill Faces Veto |
|
The Bush administration said Saturday that senior advisers would recommend the president veto Senate legislation that would substantially increase funds for children's health insurance.
The legislation calls for a 61-cent increase in the federal excise tax on a pack of cigarettes. The revenue would be used to subsidize health insurance for children and some adults with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford insurance on their own. Members of the Senate Finance Committee brokered a bipartisan agreement Friday that would add $35 billion to the program over the next five years. The Bush administration had instead recommend $5 billion. Read the AP article here. |
|
|
7/16/07- Antiwar Forces Take Aim at GOP Lawmakers |
|
With the war in Iraq roiling Congress, antiwar groups are targeting dozens of lawmakers – many facing tough reelection races in 2008 – in a bid to peel off enough Republicans to force President Bush to end the war there.
Organizers claim that breaks in GOP ranks over war strategy in recent weeks are a result of more heat from home – and that they helped to generate it. As debate resumes this week, they predict, more defections will occur. Click here to read the article from The Christian Science Monitor. |
|
|
7/16/07- Cheney Pushes Bush to Act on Iran |
|
The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.
The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo." To read the story from the Guardian Unlimited, click here. |
|
|
7/16/07- New Populism Is Spurring Democrats on the Economy |
|
On Capitol Hill and on the presidential campaign trail, Democrats are increasingly moving toward a full-throated populist critique of the current economy. Read the article from The New York Times here. |
|
|
"I've had the rare opportunity to live my life in the company of a remarkable group of women," Dr. James Holsinger, the former chief medical director of the Veterans Health Administration, told a Senate committee yesterday morning. The soft-spoken Kentucky cardiologist, who President Bush has nominated as surgeon general, gestured toward his 98 year old mother, his wife, and their four daughters, all in attendance. Click here to read the article from The American Prospect. |
|
|
7/16/07- Wal-Mart Restraints Sought in Ventura |
|
Wal-Mart's desire to build a store in Ventura faces stiffening opposition as a grass-roots group is urging city leaders to pass an ordinance controlling big-box development and vowing to press the issue during this fall's city election. Click here to read the article from Ventura County Star. |
|
|
7/16/07- Interpreter for News Agency is Slain in Iraq |
|
An Iraqi interpreter for Reuters was shot to death in Baghdad, an apparent victim of sectarian death squads, the third Reuters employee killed in the Iraqi capital this week, the news agency reported Saturday.
London-based Reuters news agency did not identify the interpreter at the request of relatives, apparently to avoid publicizing the family's link to the company. The announcement of his death came a day after an Iraqi journalist who worked for the New York Times was killed by gunmen. Read the AP story here. |
|
|
7/16/07- Congress Pushing Sanctions for Iran |
|
Gordon Smith (R-OR) has introduced an amendment based on his Iran sanctions
bill. It could come to the floor on Monday. Here is the language (thanks
to coucil for a livable world):
Sen. Smith (R-OR) filed amendment No. 2166 to expand and strengthen
sanctions on Iran and countries that deal with Iran. Read the article from After Downing Street here. |
|
|
7/16/07- Next Target: Iran; Democratic Senators Haven’t Learned a Thing |
|
As you may know — unless you rely on the corporate media for your news, of course — yesterday the U.S. Senate unanimously declared that Iran was committing acts of war against the United States: a 97-0 vote to give George W. Bush a clear and unmistakable casus belli for attacking Iran whenever Dick Cheney tells him to. Read the article from Atlanta Free Press here. |
|
|
7/17/07- 85 Dead in Iraq Suicide Bombing |
|
At least 85 people were killed on Monday by a suicide truck bomb in the volatile Iraqi city of Kirkuk, some of them trapped on a bus where they burned to death, a witness said. Click here to read the article from DAWN. |
|
|
7/17/07- GOP Candidates Fear Iraq War Fallout |
|
Election day is more than a year away, but Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is already facing a barrage of attack ads, protesters at her local offices and a strong Democratic challenger. It's a far different environment than in her last race for reelection, when her popularity was soaring and she won a commanding 58% of the vote. Read the LA Times article here. |
|
|
7/17/07- No Magic Bullets For Iraq |
|
Leave Washington in the winter, return in midsummer. First you'll be surprised by the heat, then by the humidity. Then you'll be surprised by the certainty.
Out in the world, there are shades of gray. Here inside the Beltway, there are black-and-white solutions. And everybody who is anybody has a plan for Iraq. Read the article from Washington Post here. |
|
|
7/17/07- Pace: U.S. Troops in Iraq Could Rise |
|
The U.S. military is weighing new directions in Iraq, including an even bigger troop buildup if President Bush thinks his "surge" strategy needs a further boost, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday. Read the AP article here. |
|
|
7/18/07- Water Find 'May End Darfur War' |
|
A huge underground lake has been found in Sudan's Darfur region, scientists say, which they believe could help end the conflict in the arid region.
Some 1,000 wells will be drilled in the region, with the agreement of Sudan's government, the Boston University researchers say. Read the BBC News article here. |
|
|
7/18/07- Is the Right Really Rising Up Against the Iraq Occupation? |
|
Getting Republicans to jump ship is central to the anti-war movement's strategy to get out of Iraq. But activists need to be wary of their intentions and not let them co-opt the message that it's time for withdrawal. Click here to read the AlterNet article from Phyllis Bennis. |
|
|
7/18/07- Neocons on a Cruise: What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren't Listening |
|
The Iraq war has been an amazing success, global warming is just a myth and Guantanamo Bay is practically a holiday camp. The annual cruise organized by the 'National Review,' mouthpiece of right-wing America, is a parallel universe populated by straight-talking, gun-toting, God-fearing Republicans. Read the AlterNet article here. |
|
|
7/18/07- Birth Control Is Back |
|
Birth control is back. Not that it ever went away, despite the ardor with which conservative culture warriors have pushed their antediluvian attitudes about women and sex—and notwithstanding the official sanction the Bush administration has given this retro-think. Read the article form Truth Dig here. |
|
|
7/18/07- Child Marriages Rife in Nations Getting U.S. Aid |
|
Hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid goes to countries where girls as young as 12 are forced to marry, a rights abuse that is the focus of legislation to be introduced in Congress this month.
In 2006, $623 million in U.S. funds went to 16 of 20 countries with the highest child-marriage rates, including Bangladesh, Mali and Mozambique, according to the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), a Washington non-profit group that works with governments on development and women's issues. Read the article from USA Today here. |
|
|
7/18/07- Higher Ed Is in the House |
|
This is crunch time in Congress, the point in every year when lawmakers seem to realize how much they have yet to accomplish and how comparatively little time is left in the legislative year in which to do it. And so it was that on Tuesday, issues important to colleges and students were hashed out in several bills on the floor of the House of Representatives, and college lobbyists and leaders prepared for the possibility that the full Senate could take up the granddaddy of higher education measures — budget cutting legislation that would shift billions in lender profits to student aid — as soon as today. Click here to read the article from Inside Higher Ed. |
|
