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The president's student aid reform plan will save tens of billions over the next decade. We'll use these savings to make college more affordable for the next generation of engineers, teachers, and scientists who will become the backbone of the new economy. The House has passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act. This legislation will end bank subsidies and invest in students directly. The Senate is still working on its bill. The House bill will increase Pell Grant scholarships to $5,710 in the next fiscal year. It will guarantee that Pell Grants keep pace with the rate of inflation. It will eliminate unnecessary questions from the financial aid forms, making it faster and easier for students to qualify for federal grants and loans. This legislation also promises an historic investment in community colleges, helping these essential schools take Americans from all backgrounds and equip them to succeed. Finally, it will improve the quality of early learning programs, which are critical to America's educational success. All of this will be possible by eliminating the student loan subsidies. We will end the loans under the Federal Family Education Program and make them directly to students -- just as economist Milton Friedman proposed 50 years ago, and just as the Department of Education has been doing since 1993 through the Direct Loan Program. For future lending, we have hired experienced companies to service all new student loans and collect them for us. We selected these companies through a competitive process. The shift is underway, and it is proving to be a remarkably smooth transition. In the past two years, our Department has issued more than $50 billion in student loans. Over 2,300 colleges and universities participate in the direct lending program -- an increase of 1,300 over the past three years. It's time to do what's right for taxpayers -- move our money from bankers to students.

However, tax experts say that if you want to really annoy the IRS, you could do one of three things: Fail to file a return completely; loudly maintain that the tax code doesn’t apply to you; or cheat on employment tax filings for your workers. Stack appears to have done all three. And if the tone of his letter is any indication, he not only hit all of these IRS hot buttons, he hit them with a belligerent attitude that could have further exacerbated his tax woes. “The IRS is toughest on people who reject the whole concept and authority of the system, who are not accepting that we do have income tax laws that we are all subject to,” said Philip J. Holthouse, partner at the Santa Monica tax law and accounting firm of Holthouse, Carlin & Van Trigt. “If the anger expressed in this posting is consistent with how he interacted with the government representatives, it would not have enhanced their compassion.” Stack’s note refers to meeting with “a group” in the early 1980s who were holding “tax readings and discussions” that zeroed in on tax exemptions that make “the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy.” He said in the post that he then began to do “exactly what the ‘big boys’ were doing.” “We took a great deal of care to make it all visible, following all of the rules, exactly the way the law said it was to be done.” Since Stack wasn’t a church, this is like waving a red flag at a bull. The IRS apparently considered this foray into tax avoidance the real corruption. Stacks letter says: “That little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000.” Incidentally, the notion that anyone (other than a legitimate charity) doesn’t need to pay income taxes is one that’s well familiar–and refuted–by not only the IRS but every legitimate tax preparer in the country. So-called tax protestors or “tax defiers” take bits and pieces of the law, string them together in incomprehensible ways to come up with arguments that they say exempt them from tax. They can sound convincing, so the IRS publishes a long list of “frivolous” tax arguments on its web site, explaining when and where each argument was refuted, in an effort to keep innocent taxpayers from drinking the tax protest KoolAid. But that wasn’t all. Stack also says in his letter that he drained a retirement account and didn’t pay tax on any of that money–didn’t even file a return. The penalties for not filing a tax return are roughly ten times worse than for not paying your taxes. That’s one of the reasons that accountants tell their clients to file returns, even when they don’t have the money to pay, said Holthouse. Finally, Stack rails about independent contractor rules. Experts said the only way this rant could make sense is if Stack started a company that employed other people, who he maintained were independent contractors rather than employees. If an employer maintains he’s hired only independent contractors, he doesn’t need to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes on their wages. But the IRS audits these claims carefully. When an employee is improperly classified as an independent contractor so that the employer can avoid these taxes, the IRS prosecutes aggressively because it considers it tantamount to stealing from workers Social Security and Medicare accounts. Notably, the IRS has a Taxpayer Advocate’s office that helps resolve disputes when taxpayers have a legitimate problem with the agency. People who can’t pay tax bills promptly; have a dispute over the validity of a deduction or think they’ve been improperly penalized are often given some slack. But these are not areas where you’re going to get a lot of sympathy.

Solar-powered drip irrigation enhances food security in the Sudano–Sahel documents a field research project which found that: "solar-powered drip irrigation significantly augments both household income and nutritional intake, particularly during the dry season, and is cost effective compared to alternative technologies" Over the decades, irrigation has been shown to greatly increase agricultural productivity. Drip irrigation is spreading rapidly in Africa, with significant benefits. "Drip irrigation delivers water (and fertilizer) directly to the roots of plants, thereby improving soil moisture conditions; in some studies, this has resulted in yield gains of up to 100%, water savings of up to 40–80%, and associated fertilizer, pesticide, and labor savings over conventional irrigation systems" The solar-powered systems, however, look to offer the potential for even better results. From the study on impacts of PVDI systems it was reported: "The women’s agricultural group members utilizing the PVDI systems became strong net producers in vegetables with extra income earned from sales, significantly increasing their purchases of staples, pulses, and protein during the dry season, and oil during the rainy season. Finally, survey respondents were asked how frequently they were unable to meet their household food needs. Based on the frequency and most recent incident, households were assigned a food insecurity score ranging from zero (no problems during the previous year) to one (perpetually unable to meet food needs). This score changed significantly for project beneficiaries, as they were 17% less likely to feel chronically food-insecure. In short, the PVDI systems had a remarkable effect on both year-round and seasonal food access."

Proponents of comprehensive regulatory reform hope for sweeping measures to protect consumers from predatory lending, rein in high-stakes Wall Street trading in arcane derivatives, boost capital requirements for banks that want to bet big with depositors' money and spread some regulatory sunshine on the dark pools of the “shadow banking system” that caught regulators flat-footed when the market spiraled into the abyss in the fall of 2008. “We cannot afford to let the status quo continue,” Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., told a meeting of business economists in Washington. The final law is still in doubt. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., has pressed for reform during a year of intensely partisan bickering. On Friday, Dodd — a lame duck who announced his retirement after disclosures that he accepted favorable terms from subprime lender Countrywide Financial — claimed that the Senate Banking Committee he chairs was “days away” from wrapping up a bill. Any resolution faces a major political hurdle that has drawn the most public attention: a proposal to create a new agency to protect consumers from predatory lending and other abusive financial practices. While the "systemic risks" to the financial system may represent a bigger threat in dollar terms, voters might be more focused on the consumer impact.Dodd said that’s not hard to understand.“The subject matter of derivatives and swaps and the issue of systemic risk and too-big-to- fail seem somewhat removed from the general public,” he told CNBC after the Senate compromise was reached. “Watching my credit card go to 32 percent rates and huge fees, watching prepayment penalties on mortgages, these are things that millions of people understand.”