POLITICS: PRES. OBAMA NOMINATES SUPREME COURT JUSTICE

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT & INFLUENTIAL DECISIONS ANY PRESIDENT WILL EVER HAVE TO MAKE WILL BE ANNOUNCED THIS MORNING AT 10:15 ET BY OUR 44^TH PRESIDENT, BARACK OBAMA. THIS DECISION IS THAT OF THE NEST SUPREME COURT JUSTICE. THIS STORY IS EVER DEVELOPING, & WE WILL FOLLOW IT INTENSELY.

A senior White House official tells CBS News that President Obama will nominate Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court pick.

Mr. Obama will announce his pick to replace the retiring Justice David Souter at 10:15 a.m. ET.

If confirmed by the Senate, the 54-year-old Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic justice on the court. She is currently a federal appeals court judge.

CBS News political director Steve Chaggaris reports that Mr. Obama made his decision this past weekend, according to a senior White House official.

POP CULTURE: NEW SOUTH AFRICAN PRESIDENT INAUGURATED

A BIG CONGRATS TO SOUTH AFRICA AS THEY RECENTLY INAUGURATED A NEW PRESIDENT, JACOB ZUMA.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) -- Jacob Zuma was inaugurated as president of South Africa in an exuberant ceremony Saturday filled with heads of state and former presidents.

Jacob Zuma has been sworn in as South Africa's president after the ANC won a landslide victory.

The large crowd at Union Buildings -- the president's residence -- in Pretoria broke out into song many times before and during the ceremony.

Zuma was elected president Wednesday by the parliament after his party won a landslide victory in nationwide parliamentary elections last month.

Zuma's African National Congress party won about 66 percent of the vote in the elections.

Zuma is an ethnic Zulu whose flamboyant style sits in contrast to more staid predecessors Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. Mandela was one of the guests at the event.

The ANC has been dogged by allegations of corruption and has been accused of failing to deliver services to the poor.

The country's prosecuting authority dropped fraud and corruption charges against Zuma two weeks before the elections, citing alleged political interference in the case.

A self-described "farm boy" known to don traditional garb -- including leopard skins and a spear -- at ceremonial events, Zuma, 67, would put a different face on the party than Mandela, the attorney imprisoned under segregationist apartheid rule, and the Western-educated Mbeki.

POP CULTURE: FORMER DETROIT MAYOR HAS TO SELL HIS PERSONAL ITEMS TO PAY BACK THE CITY OF DETROIT

Disgraced Detroit mayor kwame Kilpatrick has turned salesman. However, it is far from his desire to do so, rather HE’S BEEN FORCED TO SELL BACK MOST OF HIS LUXURY ITEMS TO BACK PACK MONEY HE STOLE FROM HIS CITY. READ ON TO UNCOVER THE DETAILS. ENJOY

Judge: Kilpatrick must scrimp to pay city back

By M.L. ELRICK

Free Press Staff Writer

Kwame Kilpatrick will have to scale back his lifestyle instead of his restitution payments, a judge ruled today.

Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner rejected the ex-mayor’s bid to avoid paying the city of Detroit $6,000 per month to help defray the $1 million he agreed to pay the city as part of a plea deal to resolve the text message scandal.

Kilpatrick attorney Michael Alan Schwartz had argued in a March 24 court filing that Kilpatrick could only spare $6 a month from his $120,000 annual salary after paying for expenses like his Cadillac Escalade and the home his family is renting in a posh suburb of Dallas, Texas.

But Groner, who ordered Kilpatrick to make the payments after learning about the ex-mayor's high living since being released from jail in February, wrote that the former mayor “must realize that he is a convicted felon, and will have to balance meeting all the conditions of his probation, including restitution payments, with the lifestyle to which he has grown accustomed.”

“In other words,” Groner added, Kilpatrick “may not be able to sustain an upper middle class existence while he still owes a debt to society and a substantial financial debt to the citizens of Detroit.”

Groner invited Kilpatrick to request a restitution hearing, but Schwartz instead said he would take his case to a higher court.

“That’s why we have a Court of Appeals,” he said, “to correct the errors of the trial court.”

Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, said Kilpatrick “presented no legitimate grounds to modify his restitution. We agree with the judge’s order.

POP CULTURE: PRES. OBAMA PROPOSES BILLION DOLLAR BAILOUT TO BLACK FARMERS

MY UNCLE, PRES. BARACK OBAMA HAS AGAIN PUT A SMILE ACROSS MY FACE, AS ONLY THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD CAN. HE HAS JUST PROPOSED A 1.25 BILLION DOLLAR BAILOUT FOR THE CORNERSTONE OF THE GREAT MAJORITY OF THE VERY CROPS, I.E- FRUITS & VEGETABLES, THAT WE ENJOY TODAY, THE BLACK FARMERS. IT IS TRAGIC ENOUGH THAT THEIR LAND WAS STOLEN FROM THEM BY AN ORDER SIGNED BY THEN PRES. LINDEN B. JOHNSON, EVEN AFTER THEY WERE PROMISED 40 ACRES & A MULE. NO, APPARENTLY THAT WASN’T ENOUGH. IT WAS COMPOUNDED BY PREDATORY LENDING BY BANKS FOR FARMERS WHO WERE BARELY SCRAPING BY, WHEN ALL THEY WERE TRYING TO DO WAS SURVIVE, & PROVIDE FOR THEIR FAMILIES. SO, AS A RESULT, MANY FARMERS & THEIR FAMILIES, WHO LIVED ON THE FARMS WITH THEM, WERE FORCED TO GIVE UP THE RIGHTS TO THEIR LAND, & BE FOREVER IN SOMEONE’S DEBT. I COULD GO ON & ON ABOUT THIS, AND PERHAPS I WILL DEDICATE AN ENTIRE POST TO THIS VERY DEAR TOPIC TO ME, BUT IN THE MEANTIME, READ THIS ARTICLE, & DO YOURSELF A FAVOR & HEAD TO YOUR NEAREST BLACK HISTORY MUSEUM & VIEW EVERY EXHIBIT, AS A MATTER OF FACT, BUT SPECIFICALLY ANY EXHIBIT ON THE HISTORY OF THE BLACK FARMER.

Obama to propose $1.25B for black farmers

By BEN EVANS

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is proposing that the government provide $1.25 billion to settle discrimination claims by black farmers against the Agriculture Department.

The White House said the money would be included in the president's 2010 budget request to be unveiled Thursday.

Obama had taken criticism earlier this year from black farmers and lawmakers who said the federal government was neglecting the need for more money to fund claims under a decade-old class-action lawsuit against the government.

In a statement, Obama said the proposed settlement funds would "close this chapter" in the agency's history and allow it to move on.

"My hope is that the farmers and their families who were denied access to USDA loans and programs will be made whole and will have the chance to rebuild their lives and their businesses," he said.

John Boyd, who has spearheaded the litigation as head of the National Black Farmers Association and has been particularly critical of Obama recently, called the proposal a "step in the right direction."

But he said more money would be needed.

"We think this is a good step in the negotiating process. We're glad to know this issue is on the president's radar screen and we commend him for taking this step," he said. But "we need to make sure that none of the black farmers are left out."

At issue is the class-action Pigford lawsuit, named after Timothy Pigford, a black farmer from North Carolina who was among the original plaintiffs. Thousands of farmers sued USDA claiming they had for years been denied government loans and other assistance that routinely went to whites. The government settled in 1999 and has paid out nearly $1 billion in damages on almost 16,000 claims.

Since then, other farmers have pushed to reopen the case because they missed deadlines for filing. Many said they didn't know that damages were available.

Last year, Congress passed a proposal sponsored by then-Sen. Obama and others to give more farmers a chance at a settlement. But the measure included a budget of only $100 million — far short of what is likely needed. With an estimated 65,000 additional claims, some estimate the case could cost the government another $2 billion or $3 billion.

While Obama's proposal represents a marked shift from the Bush administration, which had fought paying new claims, it was unclear how the plan might be received on Capitol Hill. Many lawmakers think the payments should not be capped and that the government should pay however much it costs to resolve successful claims.

Earlier this week, Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Kay Hagan, D-N.C., introduced legislation that would allow access to an unlimited judgment fund at the Department of Treasury to pay successful claims

"I don't know other fields of litigation where there's a limit on the payments," Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., said Wednesday, speaking before the White House announced the proposal.

Most claimants in the original case opted to seek expedited payments that required a relatively low burden of proof. The payments were $50,000 plus $12,500 in tax breaks.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserv

I WANT EVERY COLLEGE STUDENT, OR PROSPECTIVE COLLEGE STUDENT (WE SHOULD ALL BE ONE OF THE TWO) TO CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE OUTLINING PRES. OBAMA’S NEW PROPOSAL FOR ALLOCATION OF FUTURE COLLEGE FINANCIAL AID. UNDERSTAND THAT MY STATEMENT ABOUT EVERYONE BEING ONE OF THE TWO DIRECTLY CORRELATES TO HIS NEW PLAN, IF IT IS IMPLEMENTED. I AM IN NO WAY JUDGING ANYONE WHO ISN’T IN COLLEGE, PLANNING TO GO TO COLLEGE, OR HAVE ALREADY GONE TO COLLEGE. CHECK OUT THE ARTICLE & LEAVE ME YOUR THOUGHTS.

Proposals would transform college aid

Proposal sees Pell Grants as entitlement akin to Medicare, Social Security

By Shailagh Murray

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON - President Obama's health-care goals may be garnering attention, but his higher-education proposals are no less ambitious.

If adopted, they could transform the financial aid landscape for millions of students while expanding federal authority to a degree that even Democrats concede is controversial.

At stake is a plan to expand the Pell Grant program, making it an entitlement akin to Medicare and Social Security. Key to the effort is a consolidation of student lending that would give the U.S. Department of Education a near monopoly over the practice -- a proposal that has mobilized the private loan industry, which lent $55.3 billion to 6.4 million students in the 2007-2008 school year.

Obama outlined his initiatives, which also include incentives for colleges to cut costs and to raise graduation rates, in the fiscal 2010 budget that Congress approved Wednesday, and Democratic leaders said they hope to make them law by October.

The aim is to improve access to post-secondary school for those who need it most: lower-income students for whom college or vocational training can be the decisive factor in their economic future. The president has said he wants the United States to lead the world by 2010 in the proportion of college graduates, a position the country had long held; it now ranks seventh for the 25 to 34 age group. He has also called for every American to attend a post-secondary institution.

Neither goal will be met if students can't afford the cost.

The administration's plans are "the most fundamental rewriting of federal student aid policy in 35 years," said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education. "These are big changes. They are painted with a broad brush. . . . It's easy for this to be overshadowed by health-care proposals, but for many families, these discussions will be equally important."

Status quo unsustainable
Even critics of the plan say the status quo is unsustainable.

Students are amassing debt on a scale that approximates a home mortgage. The economic downturn has meant rising rates for defaults on loans, as well as for students dropping out. Private schools face shrinking endowments, and public universities face state budget cuts.

The tuition crisis has built over many years, however, and until recently Congress did little to address it. The maximum Pell Grant award was frozen at $4,050 from 2003 through 2007. When Democrats came to power, they laid the groundwork for many of the changes on the table, including raising Pell Grants to the current amount of $4,731. They also began to curb federally subsidized private loans.

But Obama would go much further. He wants to terminate the private Federal Family Education Loan program, the primary source of student loans. Advocates say the move is a formality: The government already effectively controls the program by guaranteeing the loans, paying a special allowance to lenders, and in recent months, buying back loans by the billions from struggling firms.

Shifting all lending authority to the government through its Direct Loan program would save $94 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Obama would use that windfall to expand the Pell Grant program, created in 1965 to cover most tuition costs for low-income students.

Creating another mandatory spending program during a recession, with a record high federal deficit, leaves many lawmakers uneasy.

Rep. Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, decried Obama's Pell Grant proposal as "an autopilot entitlement immune from congressional oversight at precisely the time when we should be reforming existing entitlements."

Revamping the Perkins loan
Obama also is seeking to overhaul federal Perkins loans, administered by schools to bridge gaps between other loans, grants and scholarships. The revamped Perkins program would provide $6 billion in loans a year, compared with the current level of $1 billion, and participation would be expanded beyond the current 1,800 institutions to all 4,400 colleges and universities. An additional 2.7 million students could receive the loans.

In a potentially significant shift, the administration has suggested it wants to change the distribution formula for Perkins loans, to give priority to needier students and to reward schools that control costs.

The private lending industry is fighting to preserve its role, but Obama asserted last month that he saw the choice as stark.

"In the end, this is not about growing the size of government or relying on the free market -- because it's not a free market when we have a student loan system that's rigged to reward private lenders without any risk."

Industry officials contend that private loans provide stronger default protections and better serve smaller schools, and some institutions have suggested that they may be content to play a more limited role. Industry officials are urging lawmakers to convene a summit of industry leaders to search for middle ground. But they also acknowledge that the prospect of capturing $94 billion and directing it to Pell Grant assistance could prove hard for Congress to resist.

"The only reason they're doing this is the government can make a lot of money," said Kevin Bruns, executive director of the trade group America's Student Loan Providers. "Private-sector lending built this entire industry, and now the federal government has piggybacked off of it."

Lack of strong resistance
White House officials, along with veterans of financial aid debates, have been surprised by the lack of strong resistance to the Obama plan so far, even among Republicans.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), House education committee chairman, said the recent credit market turmoil "pretty much makes the case" that private lending is an unstable source of college aid. But he said lawmakers from both parties are bombarded with complaints about college costs, and they know something must change.

"It's a very significant amount of savings and will be very beneficial to families," Miller said.

The most vocal naysayer is Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who voted against the budget in part because of the student loan proposal. Nelson's state is home to Nelnet, a Lincoln-based corporate loan provider that employs 1,000 people and that has contributed generously to his political campaigns.

"It's not just thinking about your state," he said. "I have a fundamental difference in opinion thinking that all student aid ought to come from the government."

But other Democrats with large private lending operations in their states, including Rep. Allen Boyd of Florida and Sen. Robert P. Casey of Pennsylvania, supported the 2010 budget, with the student loan reforms intact.

As the legislation advances, Democratic lawmakers are anticipating a far more forceful opposition. "The lobbyists are very active on this one," Miller said.

Rep. Timothy H. Bishop (D-N.Y.), a former college provost and a member of Miller's committee, said the lending proposal "goes to the very heart of one's perception of what is the role of the federal government. And I think there will be a significant fight over it."

But he added, "If you just look at it from the practical aspects of how the program functions, it's really hard to justify. Why do we need a middleman?"

© 2009 The Washington Post Company

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30556276/