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Cosmetology schools argue they need a break from new federal rules. State attorneys general worry the Trump administration will side with for-profit colleges.

February 28, 2017, 10:07 AM EST

In the early weeks of the Trump administration,beauty schools made anattempt to undoObamas career-college crackdown. Law enforcement just fired back.

After a multi-year crackdown on for-profit colleges by the Obama administration, the Department of Education under President Donald Trump is expected to be comparatively friendly to theindustry. But after a cosmetology trade organization challenged a rulethat punished certain career colleges, more than a dozen state attorneys general vowed to keep for-profit collegesaccountable, signaling that afight over how closely such schoolsare regulated may be ahead.

Earlier this month, the American Association of Cosmetology Schools suednewly-confirmed Education Secretary Betsy DeVosoverthe so-called gainful employment rule, whichmandates that a typical career program's graduate's annual loan payments notexceed one-fifth of discretionary income or eight percent of total earnings.The group argued that the rule shouldn'tapply to beautyschools, because graduates tend to underreport what they earn. The suitwas seen by many as the firstchallenge to a rule that the administration might end up doing away with altogether.

The skirmish escalated last week, after a group of 18 Democratic state attorneys general urged DeVos and congressional leaders to uphold the rule. They argued that the ruleprotects federal taxpayers and prospective students from predatory colleges, citing daily complaints from "hopeless" former for-profit college students with unaffordable debt and their own investigations into alleged school misconduct. "We are deeply concerned that rollbacks of these protections would again signal 'open season' on students for the worst actors among for-profit post-secondary schools," the state prosecutors said.

The Trump administration has not yet answered the beauty school group's complaint, and Education Department spokesmenMatt Frendewey and Jim Bradshaw didn't respond to messages seeking comment. But during DeVos's confirmation hearing, when Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) asked DeVos whether she'd enforce the gainful employment provision, DeVos said simply that she'd "review" the rule to determine if "it is actually achieving what the intentions are."

The Obama administration had hoped that the so-called gainful employment rulewhich for-profit colleges have tried to overturn in court multiple timeswould force schools to cut their prices and reduce the number of programs they offer that dont help graduates in the workforce. For-profit colleges enroll relatively few students when compared to nonprofit and public schools, yet they produce an outsized share of student debt and defaults(PDF).

The rule requires career programs whose graduates earn too little in relation to their student debt to warn prospective students of that fact. After a few years of failing to meet the threshold, the programsbecome ineligible for federal aid. About 40 percent of the AACS's more than 500 member schools have at least one program that either failed the gainful employment testor isin danger of failing itin the next few years, said Anthony Civitano, a vice president of the group, in a court filing. Schools worry that the warning alone could scare off enough students that the resulting drop in revenue could force them to shut down.

The governmentrelies on Social Security Administration data to determine whether schools meet gainful employment thresholds, and the AACS says those data probably dont capture cash tips, making the income figures ofbarbers and beauticians artificially low and unfairlypenalizing beauty schools.

"Basically, our graduates are tax cheats, so give us credit for the income they dont report, is how Barmak Nassirian, a policy expert atthe American Association of State Colleges & Universities, summed up the lawsuit.

Beauty schools arent opposed to being held accountable for their students outcomes, said Edward Cramp, a partner with the law firm Duane Morris LLP, which serves as outside general counsel for the beauty school group. The problem is were just using garbage data, he said. Cramp said the cosmetology groups members have told him that internal surveys of former students show annual earnings that often are twice the level reported by the Education Department. Such surveys can be used to appeal official figures reported by the feds, and more schools would commission surveys of their former students, Cramp said, if only they could afford them.

The cosmetology group has asked a federal judge to immediately halt a looming federal requirement that beauty schools warn current and prospective students that some of their programs failed to meet the Education Department's gainful employment standards.

But theres a flaw in the group's argument, said Ben Miller, senior director for postsecondary education at the Washington-based advocacy groupCenter for American Progress. The problem for beauty schools isnt that their graduates are earning too little; its that some of the schools are producing graduates who are taking on too much debt.

Graduates of cosmetology programs that failed the gainful employment rule's standards reported annual earnings of just 8 percent lessthan those from schools that passed, but their loan payments werenearly triple, according to Miller's analysis of federal data.

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Federal data suggest that beauty school alumni have trouble repaying their student loans. At most schools overseen by the main beauty school accrediting body, the National Accrediting Commission of Career Arts &Sciences, less than half of recent former students paid down even $1 of student loan balances five years after their bills came due. Few earn as much as a typical high school graduate$25,000 a yeara decade after enrolling in their programs.

"We cannot overemphasize the harm to students and taxpayers that a rollback of federal protections would cause," the state attorneys general said.

See the original post here:
A Bitter Fight Begins Over an Obama Education Legacy - Bloomberg

Nighttime photographs of the United States from space are at first surprising and, upon reflection, dismaying. In rural stretches of North Dakota and Texas, where youd expect to see dark swaths, you instead see bright splashesof light from the burning of uncaptured methane, a naturalgas that can bereleased as a byproduct of oil drilling. Not all of the unused methane produced by oil extraction is flared, as the industry calls that burning process. In addition, massive amounts of methane which is a more dangerous contributor to short-term global warming than carbon dioxide are simply released and spewed into the atmosphere. Both processes the burning and the release of wasted methane are bad for the environment.

Last summer, the Obama administration enacted new regulations to sharply curtail the release or burning of methane from all current and futurewells on federal lands.(Similar rules govern all futurebut not existingwellson non-federal lands.) Naturally, the oil and gas industry arguedthat the new regulationsadded a fresh burden on them and increased consumer costs. That may well be true, but there are more important things than making work easy for drillers or keeping oil prices low. One of those is the protection of the environment.

The risk of climate change from global warming has long since moved from abstract theory into reality, even if the ostriches surrounding President Trump wont see it. Recently appointedEnvironmental Protection Agency AdministratorScott Pruitt is joined at the wallet to the industry, as a trove of recently released emails from his work as Oklahoma attorney general confirms, so dont expect much from him. Conservative members of Congress also buy into the nonsenseas do Trump and Pruitt that human activity has little to do with rising global temperatures, more severe weather patterns, stressed flora and faunaand what scientists believe is a looming mass extinctionthat is unfolding ata much faster pacethan the five previously identified mass extinctions in history.In terms of Earths evolution, that is a split second.

But, oh, the jobs! We need the jobs! And the cheap fuel! The adage of missing the forest for the trees comes to mind. The overwhelming consensus by scientists is that the world needs to move away from fossil fuels andtoward renewable sources such as wind and solar. In the meantime, we need to be even more aggressive, not less, in limiting the burning or release of methane and other harmful emissions.

To that end, the Obama administration regulations were a step in the right direction. Which brings Newtons Third Law of Physics into play:For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. Earlier this month, the Republican-led House of Representatives invoked the Congressional Review Act to kill the Obama regulationsgoverning wells on federal land, and the bill is now before the Senate, with a vote possible this week.

The Senate should refuse to join the House in passing this irresponsible bill. The methane regulations, which are to be phased in, are good, sensible policy. The federal Bureau of Land Management estimated that between 2009 and 2015, the oil and gas industry wasted, through emissions or flaring,462 billion cubic feet of methane enough to supply natural gas for 6.2 million households for a year from wells in public and tribal lands. Not only was the gas lost, the unburned methane went directly into the atmosphere. And taxpayers missed out on $23 million a year in royalties that would have been due had the methane been captured and sold.

Fortunately, the EPA rules governingnon-federal land wells are less likely to be rescinded.The rules were adopted long enough ago that they are no longer subject to the Congressional Review Act, which means that toroll them back, the Trump administration would have to go through a lengthy regulatory review process. Unfortunately, those rules only cover future wells, not existing ones. (The federal land rules cover both.) Instead of attacking the federal landrules, Congress should extend the same regulations to the existing wells on non-federal land. But dont hold your breath.

The world should be weaning itself from fossil fuels as quickly as possible. ThatTrump and the Republican Congress disagree isnot only disappointing, but dangerous.

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Senate should stand up for environment and not block Obama methane regulation - Los Angeles Times

PARIS Could France elect Barack Obama president?

Not really but thats not stopping the organizers of Obama17, a guerrilla campaign trying to entice the former U.S. president to head to Paris.

Its totally crazy, but the cool thing is that once you get past that, you start thinking that maybe its possible. Who cares that hes not French? Hes Barack Obama, one of the campaign organizers told CNN.

Theyve launched a web site and they put up 500 posters of Obama around Paris last weekend, said the organizer. He asked to be identified only as Antoine.

Theyre hoping to get 1 million people to sign a petition urging Obama to run.

Yes, its a joke, he admits but one with a serious purpose.

We want to show that people are fed up with the politicians here. People are tired about it and they like this joke. It gives people a little fun amid all these scandals, he said.

French voters go to the polls April 23 in the first round of voting for a new president. If no one gets more than 50% of the vote, the top two finishers go to a runoff on May 7.

Someone to vote for, not against

Polls suggest that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front party, will top the field in the first round, but wont get the absolute majority a candidate needs to win outright.

Antoine isnt a fan of the frontrunner.

We are so fed up with what Marine Le Pen is doing, and with the fact that we werent able to find a candidate to vote for, only one to vote against, said Antoine. We started talking about that and it came up that Obama is free so why not hire him?

Antoine knows theres not much chance Obama will play along with his joke.

But he says people have been getting in touch with serious suggestions for example, how to get around the problem that Obama isnt French.

Weve had some funny e-mails from lawyers telling us how it could be possible. He would have to be naturalized by the president of the French Assembly, Antoine said.

Its not clear whether Obama is aware of the project, but Antoine is hopeful.

I think if Barack Obama answers this, there will be a huge amount of reaction. I think he might like this kind of thing, said Antoine. People in France would get crazy, especially young people. But he wont say yes to our proposal.

Read the original here:
Voters call on Obama to run for president of France - Fox17

Were all well acquainted with the fake news phenomenon. But the good news is, Facebook has started to fight back, working with a coalition of fact-based media outlets.

Better late than never. The 2016 campaign was festooned with phony scoops like Pope Francis shocks world, endorses Donald Trump for president and FBI agent suspected in Hillary email leaks found dead in apartment in murder-suicide and Hillary sold weapons to ISIS. Credulous social media users clicked and shared and were happy to get suckered.

Its no surprise that the con lives on. My new favorite bit of fakery, which has already been shared tens of thousands of times, and re-posted on dozens of websites with names like Angry Patriot and Trump Media, features this eye-candy headline:

BREAKING. Congress Moves to STOP Obamas Treasonous Coup Attempt Against Trump

Last I saw, Obama was photographed on a boating vacation, wearing cool shades and flashing a grin. He sure didnt look like somebody plotting a coup and seething with treason, but hey, maybe his vacay vibe was just part of the conspiracy. Maybe that explains why not a single Republican in Congress, or Spicer or Kellyanne, has breathed a word about what Obama has afoot.

Anyway, I bring all this up because ABC News - working with Facebook - has posted a deconstruction of the fake-news story, explaining how the infauxmation process worked.

Basically, this was the fake-news logic: Trump is plagued by government leakers; many government officials are civil servants who stay on the job from one administration to the next; some leakers might be officials carried over from the last administration; therefore, the leakers are partisan Obama loyalists; therefore, Obama is directing his loyalists; therefore, Obama is plotting a treasonous coup.

ABC News dryly concluded that, aside from the people making stuff up, no one is alleging that former President Obama is connected to the leaks or has committed treason because of these revelations.

But the most noteworthy true info comes at the bottom of the post: ABC News has launched The Real News About Fake News powered by Facebook data in which users report questionable stories and misinformation circulating on the platform. The stories will undergo rigorous reporting to determine if the claims made are false, exaggerated or out of context. Stories that editorial partners have also debunked will then appear flagged in your News Feed.

Facebook announced this project earlier this winter. The social network had long prided itself as a neutral bulletin board, but its leaders had come to realize that allowing sewage to flow unchecked was a negative.

So Facebook hooked up with ABC News, the Associated Press, FactCheck.org (housed at the University of Pennsylvania), Politifact and Snopes. Users can now flag stories they suspect to be fake, and stories that draw enough flags are typically steered to these fact-checking media sites. The Obama slime job met the specs for scrutiny.

Its nice to see some kind of pushback, even if these efforts dont really make a dent. The users who guzzle fake stories about Obama certainly wont accept a thumbs-down verdict from ABC News, which they probably dismiss as part of the conspiracy.

But theres hope for the reality-based community. A new Quinnipiac poll says when Americans are asked whom they trust to tell the truth about important issues, 52 percent choose the media, and only 37 percent tilt to Trump. No doubt he would dismiss those stats as fake news. I call it good news.

Dick Polman: can be reached at dickpolman7@gmail.com.

Original post:
Obama not planning coup - The Star Beacon

U.S. environmental chief Scott Pruitt has unveiled plans to roll back at least three Obama-era rules at the EPA while vowing to give businesses regulatory certainty.

Those policy reversals, set to start this week, will empower the Environmental Protection Agency to focus on its core mission of protecting the air and water, Pruitt said Saturday in a speech and question-and-answer session on the final day of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.

The previous administration was so focused on climate change and so focused on CO2, some of those other priorities were left behind, Pruitt said in his first detailed remarks since being sworn in to lead the EPA on Feb. 17. I really believe that at the end of eight years, were going to have better air quality, were going to have better water quality because its going to be vested in a partnership with states.

As soon as Monday, President Donald Trump is slated to sign documents compelling the EPA to begin undoing recent regulations, including the Clean Power Plan that slashes greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation and the Waters of the U.S. rule that defined which waterways are subject to pollution regulation.

Documents drafted by the Trump administration would direct Pruitt to begin dismantling those measures, helping fulfill the presidents pledge to eviscerate rules he describes as hampering U.S. energy development.

There are some regulations that in the near term need to be rolled back in a very aggressive way, Pruitt said. In the next week, you may be hearing about some of those.

We know what those are: The previous administration took the Waters of the United States rule and transformed the Clean Water Act and made puddles and dry creek beds across this country subject to the jurisdiction of Washington, D.C., Pruitt said. Thats going to change.

Pruitt described another high-priority target: an EPA rule imposed last year that limits methane gas emissions from oil and gas wells. He took aim at the measure while he was Oklahomas attorney general, with the urging of oil and gas producer Devon Energy Corp., according to recently disclosed e-mails.

Pruitt built his political career fighting federal regulations he said usurped states power, joining more than a dozen lawsuits challenging EPA actions.

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EPA set to ax Obama policies - Minneapolis Star Tribune