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Trump 'Historic' Defense Increase Is Barely Above What Obama Planned -- And Faces Similar Obstacles Forbes Monday's media coverage of President Trump's proposal for what he calls a "historic increase in defense spending" was a bit overdone. Although Sen. John McCain quickly put out a press release complaining that Trump's Pentagon budget for 2018 is only ... and more »

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Trump 'Historic' Defense Increase Is Barely Above What Obama Planned -- And Faces Similar Obstacles - Forbes

The Financial Times reports that the former first couple are selling two books as part of a package dealand that bidding has reached $60 million, which is an insane amount of money. Thats the equivalent of roughly 17 Lena Dunham book deals, six Amy Schumer book deals, or four Bill Clinton book deals.

Clinton got $15 million for My Life, perhaps the dullest book ever written; George W. Bush got $10 million for the almost as boring Decision Points. The point is that books by former presidents sell copies, even though theyre rarely very good. Ulysses S. Grants memoirs are the gold standard, and theyre only good because he was dying and broke and needed to make sure his family had money after he died, which he did shortly after he finished writing. But Obamas track record as a writerhis previous books were both bestsellerssuggests that his book could get a boost from actually being good. Similarly, people are nostalgic for Obamas presidency already and his book will tap into that energy as long as it comes out in the next three and a half years.

The Financial Times notes Obamas book earnings: Mr Obama earned $8.8 million from The Audacity of Hope, a 2006 bestseller, and the childrens book Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters, according to a report by Forbes. Sales of his first memoir, Dreams from My Father, published in paperback in 2004, brought in a further $6.8 million in royalties, according to Forbes. Though the FT seems to be suggesting this is an indication that the Obamas are being overpaid, his hefty royalties in fact suggest his sales record is strong enough to maybe kind of sort of justify paying $60 million.

Still, sixty million dollars sounds like a lot! But its for two books and it includes world rightsso you can figure that one book is going for $15 million for North American rights. If the books are sold for $30 each at a standard 50 percent discount, the two books would have to sell four million copies worldwide to hit $60 million in revenue. (Obviously there are production and other costs, so the number is probably slightlybut not significantlyhigher.) Thats a lot of copies, but its not an outlandish number of copies. (I wrote about how advances work and why a publisher would pay tens of millions for a book back in 2015, if you want more context.)

According to the report, Penguin Random Housethe publishing industrys largest corporation, which was essentially created for the purpose of doing deals like thisis leading the charge, but lesser giants such as Simon & Schuster (which has been in the news a lot lately!), Macmillan, and HarperCollins are contending. Finally, the fact that the deal is for both books is a bit weirdit inflates both advances, despite the fact that they are different books about different things. Similarly, if you want to publish Barack, you have to publish Michelle. (To be fair, Im pretty sure every major publisher would be perfectly happy to publish either.)

But the money is not the most important thing about this deal. The most important thing is that it is definitely exponentially more money than Donald Trump got for Crippled America, or any of his other books. And that means that this deal will make Donald Trump extremely mad.

Update: Penguin Random House announced it would be publishing Barack and Michelle Obamas books, for an undisclosed sum.

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Barack and Michelle Obama are about to get paid. - New Republic

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.

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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.

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Voters call on Obama to run for president of France - Fox17