St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Steve Burd in St. Louis Post-Dispatch | 'Loans Feeling Credit Crunch'

Communications — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:59:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Student loans feeling credit crunch, too (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Those students, though, paid interest rates of up to 20 percent to finance their educational dreams. Stephen Burd, senior research fellow at the New America Foundation who blogs about higher education, says the lending practices got out of hand. "We actually think that this is a positive development that subprime lending in for-profit education is being curtailed, because we don't think students should have been stuck with these high-interest, high-cost loans in the first place."

Plan for a New Missouri Nuclear Weapons Plant is Premature

adminn — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 10:23:00 -0500

Late in October, plans by the U.S. Department of Energy to construct a new, $500 million nuclear weapons plant in Kansas City came closer to fruition: The White House Office of Management and Budget signed off on a novel private financing arrangement for the deal.

The plant would replace an existing facility, known as the Kansas City Plant, that makes roughly 85 percent of the components that go into building a nuclear warhead. Key members of the Missouri congressional delegation -- from Sens. Kit Bond and Claire McCaskill to Rep. Ike Skelton -- applauded the decision on the grounds… more

Student Loan Scandal

Articles — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:32:00 -0400

Student loan banks and their allies are trying to spin away the public’s outrage over the discovery that private lenders have been bribing college aid officials to steer student business their way. The banks want to change the subject by criticizing the government’s separate direct loan program instead of looking at where all that bribe money comes from: You.

The government spends billions each year on unnecessary subsidies to banks that make student loans. It’s these excess taxpayer subsidies to private student loan banks that are the root cause of the college loan scandal. They ought to be eliminated.

There are… more

St. Louis Post Dispatch Quotes Michael Dannenberg on MOHELA Deal

Communications — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:25:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Twenty-five years ago, far-sighted Missouri officials recognized that a college education gave people more control over their destinies, more options to improve their own lives, even the tools to break themselves and their families out of the cycle of poverty. They also recognized that the high cost of college could keep a lot of ordinary folks from getting such an education.

So Democrats and Republicans in state government created a non-profit, public-private corporation and gave it the mission of supplying college loans at favorable terms to Missourians who meet college admission standards but didn't have enough money to attend.

The founding legislation named this body the Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri — MOHELA. A quarter of a century later, MOHELA estimates it has helped more than 500,000 students through its various loan programs.

A year ago, Gov. Matt Blunt tried to destroy it.

On Jan. 26, 2006, Blunt announced that he planned, in effect, to seize and liquidate MOHELA's assets and shut the place down. He wanted to use the money to pay for construction projects on various college campuses and pump funds into an obscure non-profit technology development company he controls through board appointments. Although state law created MOHELA and established the broad outlines of its operations, Blunt claimed he didn't need to change state law to plunder and dismantle it. He backed off when a somewhat less extreme proposal emerged, one that would have bled off MOHELA assets but left it in existence. But that plan went down in the flames of political bickering last spring...

— In exchange for the diversion of MOHELA assets to fund college construction projects, Missouri universities are expected to steer more of their student loan business to MOHELA. In a commentary published on this page in September, education specialist Michael Dannenberg, who as a congressional staffer helped revise the federal Higher Education Act, characterized that arrangement as "an illegal bribe" that violates Section 435 of the statute...

For the complete article, please visit the St. Louis Post Dispatch website.

Get Out of the Way, Drivers

Articles — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 03:22:00 -0500

You might think that holiday shoppers driving on the nation’s highways would have enough to worry about with bad weather and high gas prices. But unless there is a sudden about-face on the part of the Federal Highway Administration, Americans are about to receive an unwelcome gift that, unlike a wrong-color necktie or bad-fitting socks, could literally kill them.

The FHA, which oversees our nation’s highway system, is about to issue a regulation allowing 97-foot-long multi-truck monstrosities to roar up and down our highways. These vehicle combinations, called "saddlemount vehicle transporter combinations," or simply "four-ways," consist of four trucks linked… more

Missouri's Catch 22

Articles — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 01:16:00 -0400

Missouri’s pending plan to sell its student loan non-profit’s assets in order to pay for $350 million in college construction is doomed to fail. What seems like a great arrangement for everyone has two major problems:

First, the deal depends on an illegal bribe. Second, it’s actually not that great for either students or taxpayers. Even so, there are ways to turn it into a good deal, if Washington and Jefferson City work together.

The plan calls for Missouri’s Higher Education Loan Authority to sell hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of existing student loans -- most likely to the… more