Recently, the Administration and Education Secretary Arne Duncan proposed that career colleges and other for-profit educational institutions, be governed by the so-called “gainful employment rule” – a rule that limits or ends federal grant and student loan money for students at for-profit institutions with low graduation rates or low post-graduation employment. Although for-profit schools face essentially the same problems as not-for-profit institutions, students at for-profit schools tend to be lower-income and minority communities, who rely heavily on government assistance to earn the kind of education and skill level necessary to succeed in today’s harsh economic climate.

The rule has met with overwhelming opposition from a number of organizations and communities, and much of that criticism has been leveled at how the Administration came up with the “gainful employment rule.” Recently, it’s become apparent that Steve Eisman’s testimony motivated the Administration’s actions, even if he’s reticent to admit it.

From Business Week:

On April 16, Eisman met with Education Department officials, including acting deputy assistant education secretary David Bergeron, according to Justin Hamilton, a department spokesman. He sent multiple e-mails to a number of Education Department officials, including Duncan, on May 28, two days after airing his views at the Sohn conference in New York. He warned against the watering down of gainful employment, according to the documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request…

‘He shared a PowerPoint that he intended to use for a speech he was planning to give in May,’ Bergeron, the acting deputy assistant education secretary, said in a telephone interview. “It would have been inappropriate for us not to meet with someone that indicated that he had done serious research on the industry.’”

That Power Point contained some very important suggestions, designed to target the problem Mr. Eisman believed for-profit education was causing. One of those suggestions was a very coincidentally named “gainful employment” rule on slides 33 and 34 of his extensive presentation.

Despite this evidence, Eisman told both the Wall Street Journal and Business Week that he never suggested regulation – in fact, he explained to both news organizations that while he met with DOE officials, his meetings were purely to discuss the problem.

“Eisman informed the Education Department and Harkin’s staff that he had a short position, he said in a telephone conversation. In an e-mailed statement, Eisman said there was nothing wrongwith his contact with the Education Department. ‘I have never had communications with the DOE of any kind with respect to any existing or pending regulations,’ Eisman wrote, declining to disclose his current short position or comment further.”

It seems strange, though, that Eisman’s words were put into action only shortly after the series of meetings. It seems to be the question as to how closely tied the Administration is with Wall Street power-players and how closely such power-players are allowed to come to the legislative process. Huge numbers of American students are relying on Congress to take the correct path in regards to for-profit education, but Congress seems to be relying on friends with alternative agendas.

A government audit says the advocacy group ACORN should reimburse the government $3.2 million for failing to adequately show that lead removal work was performed at a reasonable cost.

The auditors also say some grant money was spent inappropriately, including for political campaigns and fundraising.

Congress already has cut off ACORN’s federal funding after allegations of voter registration fraud and embezzlement.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general looked at spending designed to eliminate lead poisoning.

About $2 million was questioned because the group didn’t document open competition by contractors. Another $1.2 million was found to have been spent on ineligible activities.

Check out my new book, Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation. If we have to live through ObamaNation, we might as well laugh at it…and try to understand it.

By putting enormous price controls (cuts) in the Medicare Advantage program, many seniors will be forced to look to the other Medicare supplemental offer, MediGap.   It just so happens that AARP sells MediGap coverage to its members.  The income generated from those sales accounts for 60.3% of AARP’s revenues, ten years ago, this income only accounted for 10% of their budget.

So, in short, the Obama Health Care Scheme puts hundreds of millions of dollars in AARP’s coffers by forcing seniors off of Medicare Advantage and into MediGap programs.  You would think that this was enough of a payback to the AARP for their support.  But Big Government now reveals another little prize that has been awarded to AARP in time for their recent official endorsement of the Senate Bill.

The AARP Foundation will have received over $100, 000, 000 dollars in Federal grants by the end of this fiscal year.  Last fiscal year they received less than $80,000,000.  That is a hell of an increase in this economy.  But would AARP sell out their membership for a mere $20,000,000 increase in Federal Grants?  It’s not quite as simple as that.  The bigger question is:  “Why does AARP continue to back a Health Care Scheme which seems to work directly against the interests of their members?”

The answer is:  At this point, the AARP doesn’t NEED to care about their members.  Frankly, they don’t NEED their members at all.

Let’s look at the numbers:

• The AARP annual membership fee is $16.00.
• In 2007 AARP earned about $500 million in MediGap royalties
• In 2008 it earned $652 million in MediGap royalties
• The 2009 numbers have not yet been released, but given the trends, it’s looking pretty good for AARP.
• Add to that the $100 million in federal grants (that’s your money they are getting for free)

When you look at those numbers and you realize that those MediGap royalties will go through the roof when MediCare Advantage is clamped down by the new system and you can see that all of that income just can’t compare with AARP’s membership’s measly sixteen bucks per geezer.

With this in mind, so much about the AARP’s recent activities makes sense.  This is why they jumped so hard on board with Obama’s scheme.  This is why they worked so hard against President Bush’s Social Security reforms (there’s no money in a Republican plan that REDUCES the role of government).

This is why they ask “How High?” whenever the administration tells them to jump.  Look at their uncharacteristic and peculiar support for the Entertainment Industry Foundation’s participation in President Obama’s “Call to service” on network television programming this Fall as exposed on the pages of Big Hollywood.  AARP went so far as to set up its own search engine chock full of volunteer opportunities including phone banks at Planned Parenthood (just what grandma wants their $16.00 to pay for, right?)

It seems that with MediGap income rapidly reaching a billion dollars and with hundreds of millions of dollars in grants, the real constituency for AARP is not the vulnerable seniors they claim to service, but the Big Government fat cats who push cash their way and force through regulations that put their competitors out of business.  Kind of makes that 20% discount at Hometown Buffet really worth while, doesn’t it?

Though Congress voted to kill federal funding for ACORN in September, funding for the disgraced group could resume as early as December 18th, when the Continuing Resolution, which provides funds to run government while the final budget is complete and contains the funding ban, expires.

The question isn’t whether federal funds will flow again to the ethically-challenged group, but possibly when and how much money will flow.  If cap-and-trade legislation now making its way through Congress becomes law, the flow could be enormous.

In June, the U.S. House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (better known as Waxman-Markey), ostensibly to alleviate global warming by mandating an 83% reduction in U.S. carbon emissions by 2050.  A similar bill, introduced in the Senate by Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA), has been approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  Buried in both bills are provisions that would allocate vast amounts of federal money to community development organizations such as ACORN.

Members of Congress who played to public outrage by vociferously objecting to ACORN’s abuses may now want to take the time to read some of the more obscure provisions of the proposed climate bills.

Section 264 in the Waxman-Markey bill provides up to $300,000,000 in funding for “community development organizations” so they can assist businesses and others in low-income neighborhoods with “conservation strategies, supplies, and methods to improve energy efficiency.”

Stephen Spruiell and Kevin Williamson, writing for National Review, help put this funding in perspective: “Think federally-subsidized consultants paid $55 an hour to tell businesses to turn down their AC in the summer.”

The Kerry-Boxer bill contains similar language in Section 156, allocating up to $200,000,000 to “promote green development in distressed communities.”

The bill makes no mention of who would oversee such programs, but the intention is clear: community development organizations such as ACORN.  In the time between the passage of Waxman-Markey bill in the House and the introduction of the Kerry-Boxer bill, reports of multiple ACORN scandals were front-page news.   Seemingly recognizing how politically explosive it would be to include funding for “community development organizations,” Kerry and Boxer apparently deliberately obscured that fact.

One can debate the wisdom of spending hundreds of millions of dollars of “green development” in economically-distressed communities–and how effective this spending would be–at a time when the deficit is already $1.4 trillion and many Americans face financial uncertainty, with the official unemployment over 10% and black unemployment 15.7%.

What we shouldn’t debate is whether it is a wise idea to outsource these programs to community organizers.  We shouldn’t.  In the past such groups have misused federal funding, skirted tax laws, and strayed beyond their missions.

As Big Government readers know, ACORN has become the poster-child for scandal.  During the last election cycle, a number of its members were charged with turning in thousands of false voter registration forms.  Last year, the New York Times reported that Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, had embezzled nearly $1 million dollars from the organization Most recently, multiple ACORN housing workers were caught on film apparently facilitating prostitution and tax fraud.

ACORN hopes that if its headline-grabbing transgressions become distant memories, it, as the largest community-organizing group in America, would likely become a major beneficiary of cap-and-trade, should some version of Waxman-Markey or Kerry-Boxer become law.  Such funding is even more probable given the large number of ACORN affiliates now promoting themselves as experts on environmental justice.

ACORN will likely also benefit from its close association with key players in the federal government, including President Barack Obama, who once worked closely with ACORN and has shown his continuing loyalty to the group by refraining from criticism, even while reports of its alleged unethical conduct headlined the news.

Groups across the ideological spectrum have rejected the cap-and-trade legislation as a misguided endeavor, likely to impede economic growth while delivering minimal environmental benefit.  Polls show a mere 17% of the public supports federal funding for ACORN.

If sound public policy is the goal, either of these facts alone should consign the cap-and-trade proposal to a richly-deserved death.

These two facts combined should keep cap-and-trade in the grave.  Permanently.

Harvest time: The Washington Apple Commission receives federal funds to educate retailers in China, Russia and other countries how to handle apples and other perishable products

NASA wants you to know that the world won’t end in 2012; U.S. space agency launches Web resource to counter fictional new movie

Tens of billions of dollars provided by TARP to bail out corporations unlikely to ever be repaid to taxpayers

Obama administration expects this year’s deficit to reach $1.5 trillion