Here’s a selection or articles the Federal Relations team is reading this week.
Meet the New Guy – John B. King Jr., Obama’s pick to lead the Dept. of Ed through final year of the Administration, is not well known in higher-education circles. Like his predecessor, Arne Duncan, King is most famous (or infamous, depending on whom you’re talking to) for his efforts to remake elementary and secondary education. Read more at the Chronicle of Higher Education or take a look at Politico.
Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing? – Several for-profit colleges have recently restructured as nonprofit entities. But a new report argues that some of them now act like “covert for-profits” and that their backers profit in ways that are not standard at traditional universities. Read more at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Loan Game Plan – Fall semester is well underway for America’s 13 million full-time college students, many using federal grants and loans to pay for tuition, room and board, and other costs of school. Read more at Politico.
To the Mattresses – Key players in the US alcohol industry are coalescing behind tax reform legislation that could end a long-running dispute between beer industry titans such as Miller and Budweiser and rising craft brewers like Dogfish Head and DC Brau.The Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act has a little something in it for the wine, alcoholic cider and distilled spirits industries, but its creation was driven primarily by a prolonged battle between two beer trade groups. Read more at The Hill. Also, find out what beer is made closest to you (or where beer is made around the country) with this handy map, at the Washington Post.
GOP PPA Headache – The House of Representatives plans to defund Planned Parenthood and force votes are causing major headaches for moderate Senators in Democratically-leaning or toss-up states. Read more at The Hill.
Gallup Gives Up – The gold standard in political polling for the last several decades (since 1936 predicting Roosevelt’s first win) isn’t planning any polls for the presidential primary horse race this cycle. Moreover, Gallup will not commit to tracking and polling the general election last year because of how badly its polling went during the last presidential election cycle (where it predicted a Romney win). Even following an internal probe into what went wrong in 2012, Gallup will not commit to tracking the general election. In 2012, many national polls underestimated President Obama’s standing leading up to election, but Gallup’s failure was especially visible because the Obama campaign had pushed back publicly against Gallup’s surveys…several times. Gallup’s final survey showed Romney leading Obama by 1 point — 4.9 points off from the final result, in which Obama prevailed by 3.9 points. It also misidentified the winner. That led to a lengthy and expensive effort by Gallup to retool its methodology, something Gallup still is not confident about apparently. Read more at Politico.
Whoops – A new study funded by an anti-vaccination group, Safeminds, has found that there is no link that vaccinations cause autism. Hurray for public health, sucky for the anti-vaxx cause. Read more at IFLScience. Also, the Supreme Court has decided it will not hear a challenge to New York’s law requiring all students to be vaccinated before starting school (and all kids have to go to school!) or be barred from attending school when there is an outbreak of a contagious communicable disease that is preventable from vaccination. The challenge was brought that the requirement violated religious freedom. In effect the court has held, the state has a reasonable interest in protecting public health that is greater that protecting an individuals religious freedom. Read more at the New York Times.
The Prospect of Joe – The Draft Biden movement continues to escalate and the super PAC will go to the airwaves this week. Even though Biden has not declared, is not raising money, and has weak polling, the potential of a Biden challenge is something the Clinton camp is taking very seriously. Read more at the New York Times.
Excellent Loss – Harvard’s champion debate team lost to a group of prison inmates in the Bard Prison Initiative. What’s more the inmates had to defend the position that public schools should be able to deny enrollment to undocumented students, a topic position they strongly disagreed with. Read more at the Wall Street Journal.
How quickly we forget mass shootings via The Washington Post.
