Rapid Fire Reading Around The State

Toohil appointed to leadership post in state House- State Representative Tarah Toohil who trounced then House Majority Leader Todd Eachus evicting him from his 116th Legislative District seat earns the deputy House Majority Whip post announced by House Majority Whip Stan Saylor, R-94, York. ( Read More............) What's that naysayers about losing seniority? If he had won he would have been in the minority anyway, same for Kanjorski, so don't buy into the typical election rhetoric about seniority. It's really about chutzpah..

Towns’ secession won’t be easy, commissioner says- Municipalities are looking to secede from Luzerne County and join Columbia County, one selling point, lower taxes (Read More...........)

Congressional race loser wins Corbett’s nomination- Pride Mobility Owner Dan Meuser's $60,000 campaing contributions to Governor-Elect Tom Corbett parlays into a $135,000 position. Last month, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette reported that members of Corbett’s transition team and their employers gave almost $5 million to Corbett’s campaign, or 19 percent of his total contributions. ( Read More.........)

Grants OK'd by Rendell rapped- During his last three months in office, Gov. Ed Rendell approved almost $488 million worth of projects financed through state borrowing, about a third of them in Philadelphia, where Rendell was mayor.

The largest grant was $20 million to refurbish Lackawanna County Baseball Stadium, where a New York Yankees farm team will play. Three Philadelphia projects each received $10 million, including a corporate headquarters for brokerage firm Janney Montgomery Scott LLC. Smaller projects included $3 million for the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender senior housing center in Philadelphia and $500,000 for a Kohl's store in Lycoming County. ( Read More............)

Gov. Ed Rendell signs execution warrants, including Middletown man's(Read More..........)
Rendell: Streamline executions or scrap them
Gov. Ed Rendell says the state's death penalty needs to be reviewed by the Legislature and either be fixed so that more murderers are executed or replaced with life sentences without the possibility of pardons.
(Read More..........)

Gov. Ed Rendell Has Meltdown On 60 Minutes, Suggests Lesley Stahl Is A “Simpleton” In case you missed it, Governor Ed Rendell was interviewed by Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes and he demonstrated his apparently “infamous temper” over a harmless question about casino gambling (Read More.........)

Did anyone notice Sallie Mae is lowering interest rates on student loans? Isn't this the agency that Paul Kanjorski touted about becoming one of the top ten employers in our region? From May, 2010- Sallie Mae, the USA's largest private student lender, will announce today that starting May 10, rates on its Smart Option Student Loan will be 2.88% to 10.25%, based on the current London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), the benchmark for the variable-rate loan. That's down from a range of 4.38% to 12.88%. And they picked on the mob???!!! Oh and....The rates for borrowers attending non-degree granting institutions will range from LIBOR + 7.75% to LIBOR + 12.50% (8.13% APR to 13.88% APR

Here is a link on how to refinance a Sallie Mae loan for those in need. By the way you can save money by paying back Sallie Mae while you are still in school...duhhh..Sallie...who can afford to pay back while still in school??? Would they be borrowing the money in the first place??

Mayor Lou Barletta Takes On Todd Eachus

Sam Lesante sits down with Lou Barletta Mayor Lou Barletta of Hazleton discusses healthcare reform and bogus claims by Representative Todd Eachus that he helped the City of Hazleton.

Kanjorski VS. Obama

Kanjorski's statements about the college student loan vote:

"Currently, students have the option to choose between private and public lenders, and I am a firm believer that such choice and competition among lenders is the best proven method for reducing costs and improving services. By omitting private lenders, we would create a monopoly within the federal government regarding student loans.

"Additionally, in April, I joined Sallie Mae CEO AL Lord to announce the return of 600 jobs from overseas to Sallie Mae's lending facility in Hanover Industrial Park, almost doubling the number of employees at Sallie Mae in the region, and I will continue to work to enhance employment in the area. If this legislation is enacted, Sallie Mae would no longer originate loans which would greatly impact the company, and could cause the loss of jobs. Since I joined Congress, I have worked first and foremost to create jobs in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Especially in these difficult economic times, we must work to ensure that the jobs we have stay in the area and that more jobs are created.

"I agree with the intent of H.R. 3221 to allow as many students as possible to go to college, while also investing in community colleges, but I do not believe that this bill was the correct method to accomplish these goals."

Obama's statements on the same issue:

"These are reforms that have been talked about for years, but they're always blocked by special interests and their lobbyists," Obama said Thursday during a rally at the University of Maryland.

"Well, because you voted for change in November, we're going to bring change in the House of Representatives today," the president said.

Ending loan subsidies and turning control over to the government would save taxpayers an estimated $87 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Lawmakers would use that money to help make college more affordable, increasing the maximum Pell Grant by $1,400 to $6,900 over the next decade.

"The choice before us is clear. We can either keep sending these subsidies to banks or we can start sending them directly to students," said the bill's sponsor, California Democratic Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

Contributions From Sallie Mae to Paul Kanjorski From FEC data

----------------------------------------Image Number
SALLIE MAE INC. PAC 05/04/2007 1000.00 27990160450
SALLIE MAE INC. PAC 06/04/2007 1000.00 27990333881
SALLIE MAE INC. PAC 12/13/2007 1000.00 28930265405
SALLIE MAE INC. PAC 03/12/2008 2000.00 28931216997
SALLIE MAE INC. PAC 03/19/2008 -1000.00 28931216997
SALLIE MAE INC. PAC 03/20/2008 1000.00 28931216998
SALLIE MAE INC. PAC 04/02/2008 1000.00 28991027207
SALLIE MAE INC. PAC 06/12/2008 2500.00 28932276018
SALLIE MAE INC. PAC 07/25/2008 1500.00 28991877254
SALLIE MAE INC. PAC 03/18/2009 2500.00 29991987857
SALLIE MAE INC. PAC 05/26/2009 1000.00 29992255854

Sallie Mae Announces 600 Jobs, Formerly Overseas, For NEPA-

Call me synical but what the hell was Sallie Mae doing sending 2,000 jobs overseas in the first place. The dog and pony show by Paul Kanjorski and Bob Casey today detracted from asking that question which is germane to any discussion about "BRINGING BACK JOBS". You don't mean to tell me that Sallie Mae was exploiting the cheap labor overseas. Nahh...that would never happen. Kanjo and Casey should have thought this one through a little more. Why did they let the jobs go overseas?

Let's take a few highlights from the SEC filings for SLM-stock ticker symbol for the private firm, Sallie Mae.

Our primary business is to originate, service and collect student loans. We provide funding, delivery and servicing support for education loans in the United States through our participation in the Federal Family Education Loan Program (“FFELP”) and through our non-federally guaranteed Private Education Loan programs.

At December 31, 2008, we had approximately 8,000 employees.(Note-According to their Form 10-K filings for years 2005 through 2007 they had 11,000 employees.)

Our primary marketing point-of-contact is the school’s financial aid office.

To sum up ,although all of their business is derived in the United States one quarter of their work force is overseas and will continue to be for the near future.

If you look here you will find the principal facilities owned and leased by Sallie Mae. Are any of those facilities overseas? I don't see a one.

I went down their corporate structure and clicked on every entity. Not one listed an overseas address.

In 2004 their Form 10-K listed 9,000 employees. As previously stated the number was increased from 9,000 to 11,000 in 2005 and remained there through 2007. In the 2008 filing the number was decreased to 8,000 employees.

So basically they fired 3,000 employees in the U.S. Evidently they replaced them with 2,000 people overseas in India etc. Now they want to bring them back. Magnanimous of them isn't it? Instead of hailing them for gesture they should be chided for the first act because all of their loans originate in the U.S. according to their filings.