Category: What We’re Reading

The House adjourned for the August recess last week and the Senate did the same this week, but there are still a few compelling articles that the Federal Relations have been enjoying this week.

Crosshairs – Colleges and college costs are going to be a central focus as Democrats want to make college cheaper, or free and Republicans want to break down the current regulatory structure. Read more in Politico.  

Kick the Can – After a rough summer, lawmakers pushed a number of critical political fights and must pass issues until September. Read more at The Hill. 

Location, Location, Location – Where you live can influence what your political affiliation. Certain areas are regions are reliably Republican and Democratic. Read more from Politico.

Pell in Prison – The Obama Administration is reversing a 1994 Clinton decision which would allow prisoners access to Pell grant funding. The move is a central part of the Administration’s prison reform agenda. Read more at The Guardian.

Textbook$ – In what could be an issues for the HEA reauthorization, college textbooks have 1,041 percent since 1977. Read more at NBC News.

But Where Will Millennials Get Their News? – Jon Stewart retires from The Daily Show after 16 years. Read more at the NY Times. 

The Debate – The long heralded Republican presidential debate was interesting for several reasons, but most of all because the moderators did not shy away from tough questions for all the candidates. Read more at the NY Times. 

Political Animals – From Cecil the Lion to Smokey the Bear, there has been a long national connection to animals as political symbols. A photo essay from Politico.

Here’s a sampling of articles the Federal Relations team have been enjoying this week.

Senate Meltdown – It’s hot in DC but it’s hotter in the Senate Republican caucus. The Senate was in session last weekend to get the highway trust fund reauthorized, but that session broke down as Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) attempted to attach an Obamacare repeal to the bill. Behind the scenes, it was much, much worse with the Senators breaking internal protocol and attempting to engage outside groups in an attempt to make fellow Republicans look bad. Senators are M-A-D. Read more at Politico.

Green Meltdown – The bipartisan Energy Innovation Act bill sponsored by Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) is drawing the ire of environmental groups, most notably the Serra Club and the League of Conservation Voters. Read more at National Journal. 

Cutting Student Debt – Indiana University has come up with a creative way to keep students from over borrowing student loan funds; each year, they tell them how much they already owe in debt. Students are taking out 11 percent less, which is admittedly not a huge dent, but a dent nonetheless. Read more at Vox.

Taking Advantage – It’s long been a question/accusation that for-profits schools taking advantage of veterans for GI benefits. The PBS NewsHour goes in depth on the engagement between the University of Phoenix and the US Army. Watch the segment at PBS.

China’s Slowing Economy? – The world’s second largest economy has hit some fairly large bumps this week as the CSI300 index of the largest listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen plunged 8.6 percent, to 3,818.73, while the Shanghai Composite Index .SSEC lost 8.5 percent, to 3,725.56 points. It is the biggest one day crash in the Chinese market since 2007. Earlier this month, the Chinese government took unprecedented intervention and support measures at the speculation of a full-blown market crash crash. There seems to be no reason for the investor souring on the market and overall has  raised questions over the viability of government efforts to prop up prices as an economy slows. China’s industrial profits fell 0.3 percent in June from a year earlier. The International Monetary Fund has urged China to eventually unwind its support measures. Ultimately, this slow down will impact American imports.  Read more from Reuters, NPR, and Bloomberg.

The 1% – With the first Fox News debate to air August 6th, Republican presidential nominees are scrambling to up their poll numbers. Fox has long stated that it will invite only the top 10 candidates per the polling data.  Fox will use five, yet to be named polls, and their data as of 5 pm August 4th. There is two weeks to go and a lot of people on the bubble (polling anywhere from 2.8 to 1.8 percent). Read more at The Hill. However, Fox News has recently changed the criteria, opening access to the debates to more candidates, by requiring participants reach at least 1 percent in polls. However, Fox will bifurcate the process by holding a debate at 9 pm of the top 10 candidates and a “forum” at 5 pm of those not in the top 10, but with at least one percent in the polls. Read more at Politico.

You Can’t Sit With Us – The powerful, Republican Koch brothers are decidedly not on team Donald. Despite a long-standing cordial relationship, the Kochs are denying Trump access to their state-of-the art data and refusing to let him speak to their gatherings of grassroots activists or major donors. The Koch brothers have one of the most broad-reaching, well-funded, and powerful conservative operations currently operating. While Trump is currently triumphing in the polls, access to the Koch network would give him a huge boost.  Read more at Politico.

My Better Half – Meet the spouses of all those people running for president. See them at National Journal.

TSA has an instragram account. 

Here’s a selection of articles the Federal Relations office is reading this week.

Aliens – Stephen Hawking and Russian entrepreneur and VC, Yuri Milner, have announced a $100 million effort to search for alien life called Breakthrough Listen. Recent discoveries have shown the building blocks to life exist in abundance elsewhere in the universe. Milner’s also footing the whole bill. Read more at the Washington Post. 

Trump Unifying – Presidential candidate appears to be a great party unifier and uniter of political parties…because neither one wants to be associated with him. Read more in the Washington Post.

Questionable GI Benefits – VA Secretary Robert McDonald has been asked by several Senators to investigate allegations that a number of questionable unaccredited educational institutions have received GI Bill benefits despite federal regulations to prevent it. The Center for Investigative Reporting recently published a piece that said veterans were using the benefit to attend unaccredited sex, Bible and massage schools. The VA did not respond to a weekend request for comment. The request from the senators comes as veterans who attended for-profit Corinthian Colleges that collapsed seek to have their GI Bill benefits reset, and as the Senate begins to focus more on reauthorizing the Higher Education Act. Read the report here.

Paying More for College – Student loans and debt may be dominating higher education policy debates, but six in 10 families didn’t borrow to pay for college in 2015, and parents’ out-of-pocket spending surpassed scholarships and grants as the top source of funds for the first time since 2010. However, an annual Sallie Mae report found that when families did borrow, the student took on nearly three-fourths of the debt. Read the Sallie Mae report here. 

Are You In? Or Out? – As yet another presidential hopeful throws their name into contention this week, there are now a significant number of people running for the presidential nomination, last count 16. So many are running that Fox News has said they will only invite the top 10 candidates in the polls. How do you calculate the top 10 is giving some candidates concerns. Read more in the New York Times. 

Harper Lee – While Harper Lee’s recent publication, Go Set a Watchman, has been controversial (and heartbreaking) for a number of reasons, the book has spurred great conversation about the duality and conflicts of Atticus Finch. How do you resolve the Atticus of To Kill a Mockingbird with the Atticus that joins the Citizens Council in Watchman? Politico has a long form story on why, yes, this conflict makes sense for a white man living in the South of the 1930s. 

Making Lemonade – Lindsay Graham makes a video on how to destroy a cell phone. 

Here’s a selection of articles the Federal Relations staff are enjoying this week.

The BIG One – The Cascadia Subduction zone has experienced a tremendous earthquake approximately every 245 years. It’s been 315 since the last major movement…we’re long over due. Scientists at UW and OSU are working to determine when, how and what the impacts will be (preview: really, really bad). It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.  Read more at the New Yorker.

Toot, Toot – UW has a superlative freshman class this year. Read more in the Seattle Times. 

Here’s a selection of article the Federal Relations team is reading this week.

Takes a Village – Because politics makes strange bedfellows, David Brock, the conservative reporter who pushed Paula Jones into the media spot light, is now integral to Hillary’s run as part of Clinton’s shadow campaign, Having seen the light and switching teams to become a Dem, Brock now guides a network of pro-Clinton ‘super PACs,’ mega-donors and opposition researchers via Media Matters, his decade-old nonprofit group that meticulously monitors and counters conservative media. Read more at the LA Times. 

21 Million – OPM has revised the number of individuals who had their information stolen during the second hack. The number first reported was 4.5 million, which is now being revealed to be 21 million. Those who had their information stolen are not limited to applicants for federal positions, but to spouses and family members. The hack apparently collected information going back for 15 years. Read more at USA Today.

All About the $$$ – Republicans are using the federal appropriations process to undermine Obama’s legislative and policy priorities. Not a new idea or method, but the New York Times has a story about how it’s fairing this year.

Not Really – In the hotly contested patent reform bills going around Capitol Hill, a recent essay on the Senate’s PATENT Act reveals that it won’t actually help the IP offices at Iowa or Iowa State even though Senator Grassley’s (R-IA) wrote the bill. Read more at IP Watchdog.

GO BOOM!!! – With the federal fiscal agreement due in short order (Sept 30), Republicans and Democrats are locked in a battle of wills to influence the final outcome of the appropriations process and, hopefully, avoid a continuing resolution or another shutdown. Read more at The Hill. 

Doh! – Donald Trump has been asked to tone it down by the GOP for the good of the GOP. In true Trump style, Donald doubled down on recent comments. Read more in the Washington Post. Additionally, Trump says that the RNC party chair called to congratulate him. Read more in the New York Times. 

John Oliver takes on 15 topics in one minute.