Broken American Higher Education System Encourages Illegal Activities

Jeremiah Mondello was a damn good software salesman. While he was still in college, he started a backyard eBay business that earned  him some $300,000 in three years, mostly shipping Intuit's Quicken financial software at the rock-bottom price of about $30 a pop.

His secret? He pirated the software, burned it onto counterfeit discs and laundered his profits through a series of PayPal accounts established under stolen identities. This week a federal judge sentenced the 23-year-old to four years in prison for identity theft, copyright violation and mail fraud, in a prosecution hailed by the Justice Department as a warning shot to software counterfeiters.

"I just sold a few to pay for gas and lunch. I was on financial aid. I didn't want to take out any more student loans," he said. "That was the starting motivation. Later, I guess I kind of decided I thought it would be a good idea to save some money and start my own business and do some travel."

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College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007

We also have exciting news to report from the Democratic Congress. Earlier this month, Congressman George Miller (D-CA) and Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) led the fight to pass the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007! The bill will provide more than $18 billion over the next 5 years to help students with college tuition. Now it’s up to President Bush to sign the bill.

I would highly recommend that the Republican Party request that the president sign the bill. It's political suicide for him and his party for the new generation if he doesn't sign it. Contrary to popular belief, the youth do follow politics, and we will outnumber non-youth before you know it. Time to shape up...or be left behind.

Collegiate Housing and Infrastructure Act of 2007 (H.R. 643/S. 638)

The Collegiate Housing and Infrastructure Act would allow tax-deductible charitable contributions given to educational foundations (such as the national educational foundations for fraternities and sororities) to be used to make improvements to housing owned and operated for the benefit of college students. This bill would make it substantially easier for students nationwide to raise the money needed to install critical life-safety improvements in student housing, expand housing capacity, and otherwise modernize the housing students are delegated to.

This one should be a no-brainer.