Why The Student Loan Deal Is Bad News For Students ...

College students and their families are set to enjoy lower borrowing costs this fall at the expense of future borrowers under a measure approved by Congress and to be signed into law by President Barack Obama.

The proposal overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday with nearly 400 votes. The Senate version on July 24 garnered more than 80 votes. The bill was sent to Obama on Thursday. He's likely to sign it into law this month.

But as the Obama administration and congressional leaders celebrate what they tout as a victory for students, a Huffington Post review of projections and figures compiled by the White House, Congressional Budget Office, College Board and other sources suggests that the legislation may end up doing more harm to household budgets than Washington officials acknowledge.

Beginning as early as two years from now, students and their families are projected to pay more for government loans to fund higher education than they paid in this most recent academic year. The government's profit from student loans is set to increase. And the growing gap between rising college costs and stagnant student loan limits may exacerbate the economic problem posed by student debt.

With overall student debt at $1.2 trillion and counting, U.S. households are increasingly putting off home and car purchases in favor of paying down student debt -- a development that has officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Treasury Department and Federal Reserve worried about the current economic recovery and future growth.

Raising the cost of future loans is likely to make this problem even worse.

Infographic by Jan Diehm for The Huffington Post.

Also on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/02/student-loan-deal_n_3685199.html

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AP Interview: USPS eyes alcohol deliveries

Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe poses with next to a portrait of Benjamin Franklin, the first postmaster general, after an interview with the Associated Press at his office at U.S. Postal Service Headquarters in Washington, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2013. Donahoe has a wish list for raising cash for his financially ailing agency. High on it is delivery of beer, wine and spirits. In an interview with The Associated Press, Donahoe also endorsed ending most door-to-door and Saturday mail deliveries as cost-saving measures. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe poses with next to a portrait of Benjamin Franklin, the first postmaster general, after an interview with the Associated Press at his office at U.S. Postal Service Headquarters in Washington, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2013. Donahoe has a wish list for raising cash for his financially ailing agency. High on it is delivery of beer, wine and spirits. In an interview with The Associated Press, Donahoe also endorsed ending most door-to-door and Saturday mail deliveries as cost-saving measures. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Charts show U.S. Postal Service operating losses and total mail volume since 2001; 2c x 4 inches; 96.3 mm x 101 mm;

Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe poses with a mailbox from the early 1900's during an interview with the Associated Press at his office at U.S. Postal Service Headquarters in Washington, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2013. Donahoe has a wish list for raising cash for his financially ailing agency. High on it is delivery of beer, wine and spirits. In an interview with The Associated Press, Donahoe also endorsed ending most door-to-door and Saturday mail deliveries as cost-saving measures. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe gestures during an interview with the Associated Press at his office at U.S. Postal Service Headquarters in Washington, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2013. Donahoe has a wish list for raising cash for his financially ailing agency. High on it is delivery of beer, wine and spirits. In an interview with The Associated Press, Donahoe also endorsed ending most door-to-door and Saturday mail deliveries as cost-saving measures. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe is interviewed by the Associated Press at his office at U.S. Postal Service Headquarters in Washington, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2013. Donahoe has a wish list for raising cash for his financially ailing agency. High on it is delivery of beer, wine and spirits. In an interview with The Associated Press, Donahoe also endorsed ending most door-to-door and Saturday mail deliveries as cost-saving measures. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Special delivery from the post office ? beer, wine and spirits, if Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has his way.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Donahoe said Thursday delivery of alcoholic beverages is on his wish list as the agency considers ways to raise revenue and save money after losing $16 billion last year. He also said he endorses ending most door-to-door and Saturday mail deliveries as a way to help stabilize the service's finances.

Donahoe said delivering alcohol has the potential to raise as much as $50 million a year. He mentioned how customers might want to, for example, mail bottles of wine home when they tour vineyards. Donahoe said his agency has looked at the possibility of using special boxes that would hold two, four or six bottles and ship for a flat-rate anywhere in the country.

"There's a lot of money to be made in beer, wine and spirits," Donahoe said. "We'd like to be in that business."

The Postal Service says mailing alcoholic beverages is currently restricted by law. Customers are even told to cover any logos or labels if they use alcoholic beverage boxes for shipments.

The agency is also urging changes in how it delivers the mail. A House committee has passed legislation to stabilize the Postal Service's ailing finances that would cut letter deliveries to five days and phase out door-to-door deliveries over 10 years. The bill does not include a provision to allow the agency to deliver alcohol.

The Senate passed a postal reform bill last year that included a provision allowing the agency to deliver alcohol. The bill would require that such shipments would have to comply with any state laws where the shipment originated and was delivered. The measure also said the recipient would have to be at least 21 years old and would need to provide valid, government-issued photo identification upon delivery.

The agency faces $15 billion in losses this year and is working toward restructuring its retail, delivery and mail processing operations.

"We don't want to take any more debt on," Donahoe said. "We want to be able to get profitable, pay it down, just like any other business would, so that you stay strong for the future."

The service's losses are largely due to a decline in mail volume and a congressional requirement that it make advance payments to cover expected health care costs for future retirees. About $11.1 billion of last year's losses were due to the health care payments.

Donahoe said over the last decade, the mail volume at his agency's trademark blue boxes has dropped 60 percent.

"That's our most profitable mail," he said. "That will continue to drop off because people pay bills online. And we understand that, it's easy, it's free, and so we have to continue to make changes."

On a bright note, Donahoe said the volume of packages the service handles has grown considerably in recent years, a trend he expects to continue.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee recently approved a plan for the service to gradually shift from door delivery to cluster box and curbside delivery, which includes mailboxes at the end of driveways. The agency has been moving toward curbside and cluster box delivery in new residential developments since the 1970s.

About 1 in 3 mail customers has door-to-door delivery. Some lawmakers have complained that ending home delivery in many densely developed urban areas would be difficult and pose hardships for many people, including the elderly and places where the weather can be harsh.

"We'd work with the communities," Donahoe said, adding there would be special hardship exemptions for those physically unable to get their mail at centralized locations. "We want to figure out how to do it so people don't get mad."

Donahoe said there are ways to install centralized mail boxes that fit in well with the neighborhood and also don't cause a lot of hardship for customers.

Some 30 million residential addresses receive delivery to boxes at the door or a mail slot. Another 87 million residential addresses receive curbside or cluster box delivery.

Door-to-door delivery costs the agency about $350 per year, on average. Curbside delivery costs average $224 per year for each address, while cluster box delivery averages $160.

The service earlier this year backpedaled on its plan to end Saturday mail delivery after running into opposition in Congress. It has tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully over the past several years to persuade Congress to approve ending Saturday mail delivery.

The National Association of Letter Carriers has said ending Saturday delivery would in particular hurt rural residents and the elderly who depend more heavily on the mail for prescription drugs and other goods. Donahoe said there would be a six-month implementation period to help smooth out any problems and that medicines would still be delivered on Saturdays.

The Senate last year passed a bill that would have stopped the Postal Service from eliminating Saturday service for at least two years and required it to try two years of cost-cutting instead. The House didn't pass a bill.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-08-01-Postal%20Delivery-AP%20Interview/id-b7c5860048f546c79f27471537868329

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The AMA Says Obesity is a Disease; Now We Need to Inform Them ...

My first reaction to hearing that the American Medical Association (AMA) had voted to classify obesity as a disease last month was a positive one. That was until I heard the excited comments from those who will profit most from the increased use (and payment for) bariatric surgery and weight loss drugs.

Right away these individuals and organizations began campaigns to gain more reimbursement for their treatments of this new-found disease. My concern is that pushing the same old overpriced treatments on patients is more likely to benefit the wallets of surgeon?s and pharmaceutical companies than the health of Americans. There must be a better way to deal with this newly labeled disease called obesity.

Unfortunately, obesity is a nebulous diagnosis that is most often defined by body mass index (BMI), which is simply one?s body weight divided by the square of their height. This measure does not take into account a person?s body composition and therefore extra muscle will raise BMI in a similar fashion to extra fat. Using BMI as a measure of obesity labels more than one third of Americans and 56% of NFL football players with a chronic disease. This hardly makes sense, and it is a stretch to think that assigning such a label is going to improve health outcomes when it is widely acknowledged using BMI as the gauge for obesity is fraught with error.

If obesity is now a disease, clearly we need a better way to diagnose it.

More concerning to me is the fact that there are currently only three funded medical treatments for obesity: bariatric surgery, weight loss drugs and nutritional counseling. It is interesting to note that the most expensive obesity treatment by far (bariatric surgery) is also the one most often covered by health insurance. Is stapling the stomachs of obese Americans really the best way to spend our healthcare dollars? I certainly don?t think so. Given the proven effect of exercise in preventing obesity and more importantly mitigating its harmful effects, why is it not funded as a medical treatment at all?

The problem lies in the fact that the American healthcare systems answer to dealing with most any disease is to prescribe a pill or a procedure. As a physician, I have seen first-hand the limited utility of weight loss pills and surgery ? while they may help in the short run, the long-term effects are rarely significant. I have also observed the utter failure of the public health messaging around obesity over the past 20-some years. Efforts to inform the public just how fat they are, blaming the food companies, or pushing short-term feel-good solutions like bans and taxes have gotten us nowhere.

And there is another important factor to consider. At this year?s (and past) American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) Annual Meeting, there were compelling state-of-the-evidence presentations on the ?Obesity Paradox? and the ongoing debate about the importance of ?Fitness vs. Fatness?. It is becoming increasingly clear that the best way to combat the harmful health effects of obesity is to get these patients to be more active, rather than just getting them to lose weight.

Exercise is medicine for obese patients and getting more active is a much more positive and easily achieved goal than losing weight. Let?s face it, while not everyone can lose weight, almost everyone can go for a walk. I believe we have got to shift the public health focus off of obesity and on to physical activity. We must give Americans permission to be fat and still be healthy. This is possible and the way to do it is by getting them more active and whether or not they lose weight may not be that important.

Now there could be some positive effects from this new disease label for obesity. Perhaps it will open up doors to introduce more teaching about exercise and diet in medical school, since these are the major determinants of obesity. If obesity really is a disease affecting more than a third of the population with another third being pre-obese (or overweight), shouldn?t this disease be a prime target for medical school teaching? I would certainly think so.

Another positive effect of this move could be reimbursement for exercise prescription and nutrition counseling. Currently, physicians are not able to get reimbursed for counseling in this area, certainly not to the degree they are paid for performing bariatric surgery or prescribing weight-loss drugs.

So I hope that all ACSM members will use this AMA announcement as an impetus to become stronger advocates for the best treatment we have for this new-found disease called obesity ? Exercise! There are few others around the world who are better positioned to advocate this message.

Unfortunately, no ?Big Pharma? or device company funding exists to lobby for exercise as the primary treatment for obesity and to push public health messaging away from just weight loss and toward increasing physical activity. Exercise is the best medicine for an overweight and obese America, and we need to ensure everyone knows it. We are the ?Big Pharma? reps for exercise!

Robert E. Sallis, M.D., FACSM, is a past president of ACSM and chair of the Exercise is Medicine Task Force. He originated the EIM concept and has been its leading advocate from the beginning. Dr. Sallis earned an M.D. from Texas A&M University and completed his residency in family medicine at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fontana, CA. He has continued his medical career with Kaiser and now co-directs their sports medicine fellowship training program. Dr. Sallis is the founding editor-in-chief of ACSM?s Current Sports Medicine Reports journal. Exercise Is Medicine was launched in partnership with the AMA, and continues to work with AMA to find solutions to the obesity epidemic.

Source: http://thesportdigest.com/2013/08/the-ama-says-obesity-is-a-disease-now-we-need-to-inform-them-how-to-best-treat-it/

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Police offer safety if Egyptian protests end

CAIRO (AP) ? Authorities offered "safe passage and protection" Thursday for thousands of supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi if they end their two large sit-ins in Cairo.

The Interior Ministry's offer appears to be the first step by Egypt's new leadership to clear away the Morsi supporters from where they have been camped since shortly before he was toppled by the army July 3.

The move came as an influential ultraconservative cleric warned that any violence to break up the protests will lead to more bloodshed.

The organizers of the sit-ins outside the Rabaah al-Adawiya Mosque in eastern Cairo and a smaller one across the city near Cairo University's main campus in Giza point to the protests as evidence of the enduring support for Morsi's once-dominant Muslim Brotherhood. But mass rallies called out July 26 by the military leader, Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, showed that a large segment of the Egyptian population backs the armed forces' actions against the ousted president.

On Wednesday, Egypt's military-backed Cabinet ordered the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the police, to disperse the sit-ins, arguing that they posed a threat to national security and terrorized citizens.

"The Interior Ministry ... calls on those in the squares of Rabaah al-Adawiya and Nahda to listen to the sound of reason, side with the national interest and quickly leave," Interior Ministry spokesman Hany Abdel-Latif said in a televised address.

"Whoever responds to this call will have a safe passage and protection," he added.

The offer raised the possibility of another round of violence if security forces move on the Morsi supporters.

By Thursday afternoon, there were no significant actions against the protesters in either camp. An army helicopter flew low over the eastern Cairo sit-in, where protesters ? many wearing helmets and carrying sticks ? spoke of being ready for martyrdom. At one end of the camp, sandbags and bricks were erected against a possible attack.

Shortly before sunset, the demonstrators chanted "Execute el-Sissi!" and loudspeakers blared songs supporting Morsi.

"A revolution until victory ? Morsi is back to the palace," one song went as men danced to the music.

Egyptian police have a track record of deadly crackdowns on street protests, and Wednesday's Cabinet move effectively gave security forces the mandate to act as they see fit. At least 130 Morsi supporters have died in such clashes since his ouster.

Al-Jazeera broadcast an emotional appeal by influential cleric Mohammed Hasaan, who warned the military that a bloody confrontation would plunge it into conflict with Egypt's Islamists.

"The right of life is great, and no one has the right to take it away, except God," Hasaan said in a 17-minute address. "Don't let your brothers be slaughtered because they differ with you politically or because they went out to defend what they think is right."

The military overthrew Morsi in a coup following protests by millions of people demanding that he step down after a year in office as Egypt's first democratically elected president.

He has been in detention since, along with several leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi's Islamist supporters demand that he be reinstated and refuse to join the military-sponsored political process.

Senior Brotherhood leader Essam el-Erian was defiant in the face of the growing pressure, saying on his official Facebook page that "the people will be victorious."

At the Giza sit-in, Brotherhood protester Saad Mohammed sounded another defiant note, claiming that the number of protesters there grew after the government's warning.

"We are not afraid," he said.

Earlier, the Interior Ministry had said it would not clamp down on the protesters but will take gradual measures including warnings, water cannons and tear gas to minimize casualties.

Privately, the Rabaah protesters acknowledge that their sit-in is their last bargaining chip against the military and loyal media that label the encampment as a launching pad for terrorists. Islamic militants also have been stepping up attacks against security forces in lawless areas in the Sinai Peninsula, raising fears that extremists could exploit the anger over Morsi's removal to spread insurgency.

The Brotherhood has long been one of the most powerful political forces in Egypt, even during its decades in the opposition to autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak, himself ousted in a popular uprising in 2011.

But after a series of election wins, including Morsi's narrow victory last year, the group has fallen from popular favor.

Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei sought to end the debate whether Morsi was ousted by a coup or a popular uprising.

After talks with Germany's foreign minister, ElBaradei said Morsi was forced from office because millions demanded it.

"We have moved beyond discussing this issue," said the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-offer-safety-egyptian-protests-end-153255664.html

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Hollywood Hillbillies: The rise of redneck TV

Hollywood Hillbillies: A new reality TV show features a Georgia 'hillbilly' family that moves to Hollywood.

By Associated Press / July 30, 2013

Michael Kittrell responds to a South Park episode that claimed 'red heads' or 'Gingers' don't have souls. His sometimes profane YouTube video has now spawned a reality TV show: 'Hollywood Hillbillies.'

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Honey Boo Boo is getting some competition.

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Another family from rural Georgia is coming to reality television, with "Hollywood Hillbillies" set to debut in January on cable TV's ReelzChannel.

The show follows Michael Kittrell and his grandmother Delores Hughes, known as "Mema," as the family moves from Grayson, Georgia, to Hollywood. Along for the ride are Kittrell's aunt, Dee Dee Peters, her boyfriend Paul Conlon, and Kittrell's uncle John Cox.

Kittrell is known as "The Angry Ginger" on YouTube, where a video he made to protest a "South Park" episode that claimed redheads have no soul gained attention.

"I made a lot of money on my YouTube channel, and I saved it all from the past four years," Kittrell said. "I got my family with me to support me and help me while we all look for our place out here."

Alana "Honey Boo Boo" Thompson, her mother and their rural Georgia family are the subjects of a hit TLC cable TV show that focuses on their lives in a small town.

As The Christian Science Monitor reported, redneck TV is on the rise.

As the popular ?Duck Dynasty? (A&E) wrapped up its third season it boasted an average of 8.5 million viewers an episode. A quick review of program lineups reveals the appetite for self-described reality ?redneck? shows is only growing: ?Buckwild? (MTV), ?American Hoggers? (A&E), ?Moonshiners? (Discovery), and ?Hillbilly Handfishin? ? and ?Call of the Wildman? (Animal Planet) are just a sampling of programs reveling in the adventures to be had in rural, southern America.
Why are these shows captivating TV audiences? It could have something to do with the Southern tradition of good storytelling, or the invitation to gawk at a culture vastly different from one?s own.

Eric Deggans, television and media critic for the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, says there are two types of audiences drawn to these kinds of shows: one group that ?feels like they?re from that world, and another that likes to mock them.?

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/2D1SLCmonf8/Hollywood-Hillbillies-The-rise-of-redneck-TV

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