Professor Obama's Higher Education Plan

President Obama yesterday unveiled his plan for containing college costs, and as Ezra Klein notes, it's applying Obamacare's "bend the cost curve down" theory to college tuition inflation.

The core of President Obama’s plan to cut higher-ed costs is “pay-for-performance.” The idea is to use federal financial aid to move colleges away from the current pay-for-enrollment model and toward a model in which they make more money if they graduate more students, hold tuition costs down, etc. (This is, in a sense, bringing the cost-control theories of Obamacare to the higher-ed sector.)

So how does it work?

The fact sheet is pretty clear on this: “Before the 2015 school year, the Department of Education will develop a new ratings system to help students compare the value offered by colleges and encourage colleges to improve.” Look ma! No Congress!

Linking the new ratings system to financial aid does require congressional action. But it doesn’t come till much later. “The President will seek legislation allocating financial aid based upon these college ratings by 2018, once the ratings system is well established,” the fact sheet continues. That’s two years after the end of Obama’s second term. That means that even if Obama did get legislation passed to link aid to performance, the law could be altered or undone by the next president before it even went into effect.

So what Obama is really promising to get done in his second term is to create the infrastructure necessary for a pay-for-performance system: the definition of performance and the routine collection of the underlying data. He doesn’t need Congress for that. When that’s are done, Obama can try to get legislation passed through Congress to tie them to financial aid by 2018. But even if he fails, he will have set the next president up to finish the job, as the technically hardest and most time-consuming task will be complete.

Seems like a good plan to me, especially when the big losers in the plan are those profiting off of college loans.  Going to a pay-for-performance, "Race To The Top" program approach puts the responsibility on colleges, universities, grad schools and trade school to turn out people who actually graduate, not drop out.

Naturally, Republicans are going to trash the plan.  And as usual, they've got nothing better.

A High Stakes Game Of Texas Hold 'Em

Texas GOP Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst apparently has a no problem with Texas Hold 'Em...especially when the person being "held" is his niece, in Collins County, for shoplifting.  He's got no problem going all in when it comes to throwing his weight around.

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R) reportedly called 911 when a relative was in jail and tried to use his influence to convince officials to release her. According to CBS Dallas-Ft. Worth, Dewhurst made the call on August 3, four hours after his niece was arrested for shoplifting at an Allen, TX Kroger grocery store.

“This is David Dewhurst, the Lieutenant Governor of the State of Texas, and I want to talk to your senior officer who is there at your department right now,” Dewhurst said at the beginning of the call.

When the Republican got a police sergeant on the phone, he proceeded to insist that his niece, Ellen Bevers, is “the sweetest person in the world,” and that she should be released as quickly as possible.

“What I would like to do is if you would explain to me, sergeant, what I would need to do to arrange for getting her out of jail this evening,” he said. “You can proceed with whatever you think is proper.”

Allen police say they handled the case just as they would any other case of a relative calling about an inmate. The sergeant on duty explained that Bevers was charged with a Class B misdemeanor and would be transferred to the Collin County Sheriff’s Office for arraignment.

Yeah, you're a precinct sarge, and the Lieutenant Governor calls YOU up and says he wants to get his niece out of the pokey ASAP for a shoplifting charge.  Whatever YOU think is proper.  The cops played it by the book, apparently.

A spokesperson for the Allen Police Department, Sgt. John Felty, said that neither his department nor the lieutenant governor did anything wrong, “He didn’t threaten anybody. He didn’t demand anything. He didn’t ask for anything that was above and beyond what a normal citizen would.”

Dewhurst’s office released a statement that said, “David acted as a concerned family member in an attempt to acquire information on how to post bail for his niece while reiterating multiple times in the full conversation that law-enforcement follow their normal protocols and procedures.”

Sure.  Except this "normal citizen" asking for "normal procedures" happens to be the Lieutenant Governor of Texas.  Maybe what Dewhurst did was legal,but it sure as hell wasn't moral.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama acknowledged "an accelerated time frame" for decisions involving a US response to events in both Syria and Egypt this week.
• Texas is losing the battle with a rapidly growing feral pig population in the state, with damage now being reported as far north as suburban Dallas/Fort Worth.
• House Republicans have scheduled a hearing on climate change in order to grill over a dozen executive agency heads on implementing President Obama's announced June agenda.
• New planning documents show the Pentagon may fire more than 6,000 civilian contractors if additional sequestration cuts take effect in 2014.
• After hundreds of users reported GPS and touchscreen issues with the 2013 version of Google's Nexus 7 tablet, a new update this week is expected to fix the issue.

Last Call For 501(c)(4) Mystery Meat

House Democrat Chris Van Hollen of Maryland comes through with a novel approach to suing the IRS:  doing so to get them to adhere to federal law and stop allowing dark money PACs to play the anonymous donor game.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee whose office announced the action, will serve as lead plaintiff in the case, joining campaign-finance watchdogs Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center and Public Citizen.

The lawsuit will address one of the main concerns that surfaced with the recent IRS targeting controversy: Differences between federal law and the IRS rules on eligibility for 501(c)(4) candidates.

Current law says the organizations must engage “exclusively” in so-called “social welfare” activities, while IRS regulations require that their “primary” purpose fall into that category.

The distinction means that 501(c)(4) groups could no longer be tax-exempt at all, and would be subject to reporting requirements for donors.  That's going to be a real damper on GOP groups, which overwhelmingly use these groups compared to Democrats in fundraising hundreds of millions of dollars.

It ought to be interesting where this goes.  I hope it's the end of these dark money PACs for good.

The Big Red Line In Syria Means Squat

We've seen "chemical weapons" attacks in Syria that later turned out to not be chemical weapons attacks before, or at least there was enough doubt that chemical weapons were involved that the UN's only real action was to send in a team of chemical weapons experts.  But Wednesday's attack in the East Ghouta suburbs of Damascus may have removed all doubt, as the experts are now already on the ground, and their initial reporting has been horrifying. From Foreign Policy magazine's blog, The Cable:

U.S. intelligence officials and outside experts are looking into claims of a new and massive chemical weapons attack that's left hundreds dead. From the limited evidence they've seen so far, those reports appear to be accurate. And that would make the strike on the East Ghouta region, just east of Damascus, the biggest chemical weapons attack in decades.

Tthe early analysis is based on preliminary reports, photography and video evidence, and conclusions are prone to change if and when direct access to the victims is granted. Over the past nine months, the Syrian opposition has alleged dozens of times that the Assad regime has attacked them with nerve agents. Only a handful of those accusations have been confirmed; several have fallen away under close scrutiny. But Wednesday's strike, which local opposition groups say killed an estimated 1,300 people, may be different.

"No doubt it's a chemical release of some variety -- and a military release of some variety," said Gwyn Winfield, the editor of CRBNe World, the trade journal of the unconventional weapons community.

While the Obama administration says it has conclusive proof that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons in the recent past, the White House has been reluctant to take major action in response to those relatively small-scale attacks. ("As long as they keep body count at a certain level, we won't do anything," an American intelligence official told Foreign Policy earlier this week.) But this attack appears to be anything but small-scale. If allegations about this latest attack prove to be accurate, the strike could be the moment when the Assad regime finally crossed the international community's "red line," and triggered outside invention in the civil war that has killed over a hundred thousand people.

In other words, US involvement in Syria now may be inevitable, and all this is happening with Egypt falling down around our ears, too.  Things just got real, as the kids say.  But the problem remains Russia, spinning so hard for the Asaad regime that keeps paying them a crapload of money for weapons, that no UN Security Council action will be forthcoming, period.

Russia's Foreign Ministry called for a thorough investigation on Wednesday into reports that Syrian government forces had launched a chemical attack, suggesting that rebels could have staged the assault to provoke international action.

Syria's opposition accused President Bashar al-Assad's forces of gassing many hundreds of people - by one report as many as 1,300 - on Wednesday in what would, if confirmed, be the world's worst chemical weapons attack in decades.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said that its sources in Syria said that a homemade rocket carrying unidentified chemical substances had been launched from an area controlled by the opposition.

"All this cannot but suggest that once again we are dealing with a pre-planned provocation," Lukashevich said in a statement.

"This is supported by the fact that the criminal act was committed near Damascus at the very moment when a mission of U.N. experts had successfully started their work of investigating allegations of the possible use of chemical weapons there," he said.

Translation:  the Syrian terrorist rebels did this, and we're sticking with that story as long as Asaad's money is good.  It also means that with veto over any UN Security Council resolutions, precisely not a damn thing will be happening.

Well, other than thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing and hundreds dying daily.  That will keep happening, and Russia is more than cool with it.

Katrina And The Waves Reunion Tour

How insane/hateful/willfully stupid are Louisiana Republicans towards President Obama?  Apparently their collective rancor has manifested in the form of a Presidential time machine, able to whisk the Weather Dominator-in-Chief to 2005, where apparently he's now partially or totally responsible for Hurricane Katrina.

According to a Public Policy Polling survey, 29 percent of Louisiana Republicans say President Obama is more to blame for the botched executive branch response to Hurricane Katrina while just 28 percent blamed George W. Bush. A plurality of 44 percent said they were unsure who was more responsible, even though Hurricane Katrina occurred over three years before Obama entered the presidency when he was still a freshman Senator.

So yeah, a total of 63% of Louisiana GOPers think President Obama at least possibly responsible for the White House response to a natural disaster that happened three years before he got into the White House.

Sure, your abject hatred of the President makes perfect sense, guys.  Keep it up, he may not win a third term.

StupidiNews!

• WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning has received 35 years in prison, with possibility of parole in 10, minus the three and a half years of time served.
• Venezuela's government will install 30,000 surveillance cameras, mostly in the capital of Caracas, to combat the country's high violent crime rate.
• An Egyptian judge has ordered former strongman Hosni Mubarak to be released from prison and sentenced to house arrest after facing two years behind bars without formal charges.
• In China, the trial of former Communist Party star Bo Xilai is underway, as he face charges of bribery, corruption, and accessory to murder.
• Phone maker LG showed off a new high-water mark for a phone display, a whopping 5.5-inch, 2560×1440 pixel screen with over 500 pixels per square inch.

Last Call For, Well, Actual Watergate

The last batch of Nixon's secret Watergate tapes are due out today from the National Archives, covering the last few months in 1973 before Nixon resigned in disgrace.  Should be...illuminating stuff.

The final installment of secretly recorded phone calls and meetings from President Richard Nixon’s White House will be released Wednesday, marking a final chapter in a campaign for public access that continues as memories of Watergate fade.

The recordings cap the chronological release of 3,000 hours of tapes Nixon recorded between February 1971 and July 1973 that have been released by the National Archives and Records Administration. The final installment covers the tumultuous three months when Watergate was closing in on the 37th president. Still, he forged ahead with Soviet peace talks, worked to cement Chinese relations and welcomed home Vietnam prisoners of war.

“This is a really big release in volume and importance, because of the time period it covers,” said Luke Nichter of Texas A&M University-Central Texas in Killeen, who runs a website cataloging Nixon’s secret recordings. “This is the end of taping and this is Watergate really beginning.”

The recordings released Wednesday from the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Calif., cover April 9, 1973, to July 12, 1973, the day before the existence of the covert recording system was revealed to a Senate committee probing Watergate.

So, some 40 years later we finally get to hear what Nixon said as the walls closed in on him (well, not all of it, a bunch still remains classified.)  The good news is we also get thousands of White House documents, including some 30,000 on the Vietnam War alone.

All my history major friends are going to have a field day, I think.  And we get a nice reminder of what a real "American dictatorship" actually looks like.

More On The I-Word

The dark secret about the GOP is that Republicans are eventually going to have to deliver on the threats of impeaching President Obama, or the base will replace them with people who will.

Rep. Kerry Bentivolio this week said he's consulted with lawyers about impeaching President Obama.

The Michigan Republican on Monday said it would be “a dream come true” to see the president forced from office over criminal misconduct.

“If I could write that bill and submit it, it would be a dream come true,” Bentivolio said in a video from a Monday town-hall meeting uploaded on YouTube and first discovered by BuzzFeed. “I stood 12 feet away from the guy and listened to him. I couldn’t stand being there, but because he is president I have to respect the office. That’s my job, as a congressman, I respect the office.”

Bentivolio said that after the encounter with Obama, he returned to his office and summoned lawyers to discuss the impeachment process.

“These are lawyers, Ph.D.s in history, and I said, ‘Tell me how I can impeach the president of the United States.’”

But the Michigan Republican said that until he could produce hard evidence, such as a directive from Obama to the IRS demanding that the agency target conservative groups, he didn’t have the legal means to pursue impeachment.

Gosh, why would we want legal means to pursue impeachment when Republicans can just make stuff up?

Eventually the Tea Party Beast Slouching Towards Washington is going to demand impeachment happen, and woe to Republicans that don't deliver in 2014 or 2016...

America Will Not Make The GOP Pay The Price In 2014

Because liberals upset with Obama sat out the 2010 elections and gave the Republicans at state level the keys to redistricting, in 2014 Republicans will continue to control the House.  That is simply reality.

Greg Sargent has two tremendous overviews today: the first an overview of the upcoming budget wars, and the second on immigration.

Both posts, especially combined with this sobering, smart take from Chait on the Dems' small chances of taking the House in 2014, reinforce something I've been saying for quite some time now: Republicans are mostly electorally immune to their extremism for the next long while. To be sure, the Republican Party faces increasingly long odds in Presidential elections, and the 2020 census may be devastating blow in the 2022 elections after the current wildly gerrymandered lines are replaced. But for most Republican legislators staring down the next few election cycles, the biggest threats still come from the right rather than the left or the middle. Extremism, in short, will be rewarded.

You can post this article again in 2015, 2017, and 2019 too.  It'll be equally valid.  We screwed ourselves over for a decade...unless...and this is a huge unless, we get out there in record numbers to vote.  All liberals.

The only way to get rid of extremist Republicans in the House is to vote them out.  But if you have a  Republican for a Representative, odds are better than 95% they will win re-election.  And if your reaction is "well, I'm going to stay home" then that 95% becomes 100%, and then they win the Senate too.

Literally, your choice.

StupidiNews!

• Syrian rebels are claiming more than 650 are dead after a chemical weapons attack by the al-Asaad regime on a rebel stronghold, charges vehemently denied by the Syrian government.
• The US Air Force says it can't keep up with demands for training new aerial drone pilots due to lack of volunteers.
• The 1972 Miami Dolphins got a 40th anniversary welcome to the White House that they never received for their perfect season initially due to Nixon and Watergate.
• Immigration legislation approved by the Senate would made H-1B work visas considerably more expensive, the bulk of which go to India.
• Google is launching Helpouts, a help-for-cash video chat service that matches people with qualifications in a variety of subjects to people looking to pay for assistance.

Last Call For Kentucky Fried Turtle

Mitch "The Turtle" McConnell apparently tastes like Mitch "The Chicken" McConnell according to his Senate primary challenger, Matt Bevin, and his growing list of Tea Party backers and donors.

As he battles a conservative primary challenger for his 2014 re-election bid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been getting hammered by the right for resisting the quixotic strategy to defund Obamacare or shut down the government.

The Brent Bozell-run conservative activist group ForAmerica and its allies in the movement are this week pushing a video comparing the Republican leader to a chicken, “or gallus gallus domesticus, a common domestic fowl.”

“The chicken is also representative of a new breed of Republicans in Washington,” the video says, showing footage of chickens. “They tend to say one thing … But when confronted with an opportunity to act, they often run, far away, without a sense of direction. … Take Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. On the issue of Obamacare, he says, ‘This law is a disaster. And I want you to know we’re not backing down from this fight.’ But when he has the chance to defund Obamacare, some say he’s chickening out.”

“Senator McConnell,” the video continues, “conservatives don’t need a chicken when it comes to Obamacare. Leaders lead. But if you fund it, you own it.”

Now, Bozell and his clowns may be, well, clowns, but they understand that Mitch the Turtle Chicken is an inherently political creature, and he'll do and say whatever is necessary in order to get elected.  Bozell is trying to make that level of necessary "stopping any Senate budget resolution that funds Obamacare" or even "refusing to raise the debt ceiling without full repeal".  The former is bad enough, but the latter would trigger a financial meltdown for sure.

And yet, these guys are literally calling McConnell chicken because they don't think he has the guts to follow through on these threats.

We'll see if he does or not.  But I guarantee you, if the GOP does go down this road, it won't be Mitch who is the only one getting Kentucky Fried in 2014.

The Ballot Of North Colorado, Or It's All Away From Boulder Dash

And the overwhelmingly conservative, rural, and (ahem) white population of Colorado's northern counties apparently have had enough of this "being attached to this Mork & Mindy driving a Subaru state crap" and are proceeding with Operation We're Leaving, Suckers.

To secede or not to secede from Colorado? That is the question that residents in Weld County will face in November after county commissioners voted unanimously Monday in favor of putting a 51st state initiative on the ballot, the Greeley Tribune reports.

The initiative, which calls for the creation of the state of North Colorado, has already made it onto the ballot in Cheyenne, Sedgwick and Yuma Counties. Logan, Phillips, Washington and Kit Carson Counties have also set dates to vote on the initiative.

“Si se puede -- yes, we can,” said Weld County Commission Chairman Bill Garcia, echoing one of President Barack Obama's campaign slogans, before commissioners voted on the initiative.

Several rural, predominantly Republican counties of north and and northeastern Colorado announced their plan to create a 51st state back in June. Supporters have cited a number of laws -- including gun control measures, an increase in renewable energy standards in rural areas, the curbing of perceived cruel treatment of livestock and expanded regulation of oil and gas production -- that the Democratically-controlled state legislature passed this year, as the impetus for the secession movement.

"Rural residents are now a disenfranchised minority of Colorado," Phillips County Administrator Randy Schafer told The Denver Post last month. "National and urban values and needs are trumping rural values and needs."

The argument is these counties, home to Colorado's fracking boom, are where all the money is, and if they leave, the rest of those people are just screwed.

Only one problem:  the same Colorado state legislature, Gov. John Hickenlooper, and the Congress these morons despise would all have to approve this little divorce beforehand.  And gosh, I don't see this happening.

But it sure is cool to vote petulantly to leave the government you're a part of just because you lost in a representative democracy, huh?  Nice to know that instead of working with Colorado, or working to even expand your party's power base, you guys are just going to cut and run in a symbolic waste of taxpayer money.

Clowns.

The Fetid Tang Of Desperation

Greg Sargent recaps the latest "grassroots" effort to go after "vulnerable Obamacare Democrats" during the congressional summer recess and finds it sorely lacking in both effectiveness and relevance:

Today Heritage Action for America is launching a nine-city tour designed to drum up support for the push for defunding. The White House-allied Americans United for Change is vowing to match Heritage’s events with its own, in an effort to demonstrate at least as much or more energy on the pro-Obamacare side. We’re already seeing little evidence to suggest that the great and fearsome conservative backlash to immigration reform is materializing. Will the same happen on the great defund-Obamacare crusade?

Those who want a shutdown confrontation are themselves framing the battle in these terms, arguing that the recess is the time for the grassroots to speak up and demand that the squishy GOP establishment stiffen its spine and do what it takes to halt Obamacare before it’s too late. Indeed, National Journal reports that the movement to defund Obamacare is falling “on hard times,” and even defund-Obamacare ringleader Ted Cruz seems uneasy.

Indeed, the big Republican plan is to somehow terrify Dems who voted for Obamacare to run away from the plan.  If there's any Dem who should be vulnerable to that tactic, it's Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas.  But Pryor isn't biting:

“It has been a success,” Pryor says of Obamacare, citing a number of health insurance reforms and other benefits taking effect. “Probably we did get 80 percent [right], we have to go in and work on the 20 percent.”

Seems somebody has learned the lessons of Blanche Lincoln's complete meltdown in 2010.

StupidiNews!

• The US is holding military aid to Egypt "under review" over hundreds being killed in a bloody crackdown by the country's military government.
• Scientists have discovered evidence of the earliest humans in Northern China that dates back 1.6 million years. 
• Tens of thousands of Kurdish Syrian refugees have fled the country into Iraq as heavy fighting in northern Syria between Kurdish militia and Arab rebels became open warfare.
• Tesla Motors says its Model S electric sedan has received the highest NHTSA crash-test scores in US history, with unprecedented across-the-board five star ratings in every category.
• Gamemaker Electronic Arts is offering a seven-day refund policy from its Origin online game purchase platform in an effort to compete with rival online game service Steam.