Rambling ‘Round The ‘Net: Obama Wants To Pay For YOU To Go To College

Posted by J. Alexander Mitchell on 05.05.2009

College student assistance to be overhauled, Forced smoking in China, Republican Image Consulting, and Europeans Wanna Control The Internet, too!

A lot of the media focus of the last few months concerned the President's initiatives in economic recovery and bailing out of businesses, but less attention has been given to one of his key campaign promises: an overhaul of our comparatively-underachieving education system. Amazingly, he believes that a populace that is educated enough to fill skilled positions in the workforce will more easily find and create jobs. Go figure. The latest budget proposal includes an overhaul of student aid in the United States which, like many of the initiatives thus far, is unprecedented its size and amount of control given to the government. Again, go figure.

The new proposals will give colleges incentives to implement cost-saving moves (and as such lower overall costs), make the Pell Grant an entitlement (which will raise the amount given to keep up with inflation), and modify both the amounts and distribution of Perkins loans to provide more money to more students, specifically those that are more needy. To fund this, the government will by terminating the Federal Family Education Loan program, which, despite the name "Federal" in the title, is a private entity, and shifting all loan power to the Direct Loan program which, despite the lack of "Federal" in the title, is a government program. As most FFEL loans are guaranteed by the government (and, indeed, have recently been bought back by the government in the cases of some bad loans), the functional change is eliminating a private-sector middleman that would save the government $94 billion dollars over ten years. This is an amazing shift from some past policy changes; this time, there is an actual plan to explain where the money will come from for these spectacular new initiatives. At this rate, Obama may even be able to do something fanciful and unusual, like leaving a budget surplus… or maybe not.

Other news around the ‘net:

The European Union wants to have more control over your news around the ‘net. More specifically, the European Union has called for international oversight over the not-for-profit company ICANN, which controls top-level internet domains such as .com and .net, and whose agreement to oversee these domains ends on September 30th of this year. The Internet, as an American-based enterprise, has been functionally controlled by the United States; the United Nations attempted to persuade the US to cede some control over the Internet to other countries in 2005, but was met with howls of laughter was rebuffed by US arguments that the government has been mostly hands-off in this matter. A European commission will meet this week on the matter and will again be met with howls of laughter from the United States.

President Obama has also announced plans to close a number of tax loopholes involving corporations leaving money in offshore accounts. There are three main parts of this plan:

• Corporations may currently deduct business expenses accrued overseas, but do not have to pay taxes on overseas profits until this money returns to the US (if it ever does); under the new plan, the deductions will also have to wait the profits return to the US.



• Companies receive credit for taxes paid to other countries, and the new guidelines will make this process more stringent



• Companies can currently shift money from subsidiaries to foreign tax havens; the new guidelines will require the foreign subsidiaries be treated like independent corporations for tax purposes.

For more fun with this topic, please read the MSNBC version of this news article, followed up with the FoxNews version of this news article. My favorite part is how the MSNBC article ends by saying that the deferring of tax payments by companies is "indefensible", then reading FoxNews' immediate defense of doing so. To anyone that wants to see how tone and word choice shift the meaning of two statements that "say the same thing", this is it.

Officials in the Hubei province of China have been ordered to smoke 230,000 packs of cigarettes or face fines. All cigarettes are local brands, and the move has been cited as a way to get the officials to "set an example", as well as help stimulate the local economies. I cannot relate to having to smoke cigarettes, but if the city of Shiner, Texas had an absolute need for people to be forced to drink their locally-produced beer (specifically, the rather tasty Shiner Blonde), I would have to find it in me somehow to sacrifice myself for the good of my state.

Finally, several prominent Republicans began a series of "town hall rallies" Saturday as part of an initiative to rebuild the party's image. This initiative, the National Council for a New America, brought former Florida governor Jeb Bush, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor to a restaurant in Northern Virginia to discuss the party's direction. Representative Cantor cited that the party actually has an advantage, stating "When a party has the White House, communication comes top down, and there's a strategy that everyone has to march behind", then following that they can draw their strategy from the grass roots". "We don't have to come up with all the answers today… Certainly by 2010, we better". Anyone that can shift "They actually have a plan, and we have seemingly forgotten whether the word ‘plan' begins with a ‘p' or a ‘j'" into a positive message is definitely the person that you want putting spin on the things you have to say.