This morning the U.S. Department of Education convenes what may finally be the last session of its negotiated rulemaking on a proposed "gainful employment" rule, a measure aimed at cutting off federal aid to career college programs that fail to...

America's for-profit colleges are receiving as much as $33 billion in a single year from your tax money, and billions more from the pockets of students, a lot of whom are left deep in debt and jobless from their encounters with...

It's a busy time for APSCU, the trade association of America's for-profit colleges.  The group spends its time trying to block reasonable measures to hold the worst actors in its industry responsible for their systematic abuses...

The Wall Street Journal today published an op-ed by former Senator Bob Kerrey and private equity man Jeffrey Leeds attacking the U.S. Department of Education's new "gainful employment" rule, which is aimed at reducing taxpayer aid to career colleges that consistently leave students with insurmountable debt. The piece...

This morning, in a packed room on the 8th floor of a K Street building, the U.S. Department of Education resumes talks in pursuit of a "gainful employment" rule aimed at penalizing for-profit colleges that leave students deep in debt and...

The lobbying group of America's for-profit colleges, APSCU, announced today that Michael Dakduk is its new Vice President of Military and Veterans Affairs. Dakduk had just left the job of executive director of the Student Veterans of America...

This morning, my co-counsel from the ACLU of Ohio and I filed a motion asking a federal court to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed by Robert Murray, CEO of the coal company Murray Energy Corp., against our client Mike Stark. Murray has sued over this article that Stark wrote...

The Federal Trade Commission may be ready to get tough with America's for-profit colleges. That makes sense.

The agency's core mission is "to prevent business practices that are anticompetitive or deceptive or unfair to consumers."  The business model of many for-profit...

After a chemical plant explosion in West, Texas, killed 15 people in April, President Obama ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to create a plan to reduce the risks of more deadly chemical disasters. But with the president's October 31st deadline for action coming up fast, it's not clear that the EPA will take decisive steps.

In 2003, the government's National Infrastructure Protection Center warned that chemical plants in the United States could be targets of terrorism. Media investigations have highlighted lax or nonexistent security at these facilities, with gates unlocked and chemical tanks unguarded. According to the EPA, more than 470 chemical facilities in the U.S. each put 100,000 or more people at risk of a poison gas disaster. The Homeland Security Council projects that a major attack would set off a deadly gas cloud that would kill 17,500 people, seriously injure 10,000 more people, and send 100,000 more people to the hospital.

In 2006, Senator Barack Obama called these hazards "stationary weapons of mass destruction spread all across the country."  Senator Obama called for rules to require chemical companies to move to safer technologies where it's feasible to do so. So have many other leaders in Congress, as well as President Bush's EPA head Christine Todd Whitman and President Obama's former EPA head Lisa Jackson.

Many companies, such as Clorox, have voluntarily switched to safer chemicals, demonstrating that it can be done. But hard-line chemical companies, led by the Koch brothers, have lobbied relentlessly in Washington to prevent reforms.

I work with the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, a united group of environment, environmental justice, and labor organizations working for the changes we need. We just released a video highlighting the need for prompt action. Please watch and share with others. The video tells how to contact the White House and demand action.

The more people see this video, the more they will be motivated to tell the EPA and President Obama to act. It shouldn't be a hard decision. A recent national poll showed that only 7 percent of likely voters oppose such a policy. And it's the right thing to do for our national security, for the safety of our...

On Friday, prosecutors in Miami charged the politically-connected CEO of for-profit Dade Medical College, Ernesto Perez, with the felony charge of providing false information through a sworn statement, plus two misdemeanor counts of perjury. When Perez was named to Florida's...

The lobbying group of for-profit colleges, APSCU, today released a report, "Best Practices in Recruitment and Admissions." State and federal authorities, and private lawyers, have been investigating for-profit colleges, and winning settlements,

Representative John Kline, Republican of Minnesota, chairs the House Education and the Workforce Committee. He also is a living symbol of the Republican Party's shameful loyalty to big for-profit colleges that have added to the corruption of U.S....

Last Thursday, California's attorney general, Kamala Harris, sued Corinthian Colleges, one of the country's biggest -- and worst -- for-profit college companies, for "false and predatory advertising, intentional misrepresentations to students, securities fraud and unlawful use of military seals in advertisements." Harris's lawsuit...

The for-profit college industry is under pressure. Many of its biggest companies are being investigated by federal agencies and state attorneys general for fraud and misrepresentation -- deceiving students, regulators, and investors about job placement rates, costs and quality of...

The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, or APSCU, is the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group for America's for-profit colleges. APSCU has opposed a wide range of reasonable efforts by the Obama administration and members of Congress...

After several years of startling revelations about its predatory abuses of students, the for-profit college industry faces growing skepticism from the public. Thousands of students across the country have complained that they were deceived by for-profit college recruiters about...

Earlier today I posted a piece with images of Arthur E. Benjamin of Delray Beach, FL, and Dallas, TX, posing and socializing, mostly at charity events, with the likes of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Flo Rida, J.R. Ewing, some socialites, and a dog that Mr. Benjamin seems to like...

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What connects all of these terrible events -- the 1984 pesticide plant disaster at Bhopal, India, which caused 20,000 deaths; the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the U.S.; and the recent deadly chemical plant explosions in West, Texas, and...

Because the media loves discussing Donald Trump, it wasn't surprising to see heavy press coverage of a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman accusing the unlicensed Trump University of "persistent fraudulent, illegal and deceptive conduct."  Trump responded by...