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VIDEO: Olympia Snowe to Retire. Blames Partisanship.

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Maine, Republicans, Video

This interview with the outgoing Republican Senator from Maine is pretty awesome.

Take a look.

Personally, I’m excited to see what Snowe is planning next. We need more politicians like her to be parting ways with what currently passes for government so we can figure out how we can work together to solve these problems.

Bravo Olympia!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 29th, 2012 and is filed under Maine, Republicans, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “VIDEO: Olympia Snowe to Retire. Blames Partisanship.”

  1. mw Says:
    March 1st, 2012 at 1:52 am

    Very noble. I am sure this has nothing to do with her decision:

    …in Maine, a few newspapers have speculated that her husband’s legal entanglements had a role in Snowe’s sudden and surprising decision, which left her with more than $3 million in her campaign coffers and her party without a Senate candidate less than three weeks before the filing deadline for Maine’s June 12 primary.

    According to the senator’s most recent financial disclosure form, she and her husband, former Maine Gov. John McKernan Jr., have investments worth between $2 million and $10 million in Education Management Corp., a Pittsburgh-based company that operates for-profit higher education institutions. McKernan is chairman of the board of directors of the company, now embroiled in a lawsuit in which the federal goverment, 11 states and the District of Columbia are seeking to recover a portion of the $11 billion in federal student aid that the education firm has received since July 2003.

    Originally filed in April 2007 by a pair of whistleblowers, the lawsuit alleges that the company violated a federal law that prohibits schools from paying admissions officers based on the number of students they recruit and enroll. Those numbers can affect a school’s revenues because more students mean a school is potentially eligible for more federal aid dollars. The whistleblowers alleged, and provided documents indicating, that they were paid bounties for the number of students they enrolled…

    According to the company’s most recent proxy statement, McKernan, who was briefly named as a defendant in the suit but removed, owns more than 835,000 shares in the company, worth more than $14.9 million at current prices. That was up from the 128,000 shares he owned when he became CEO in 2003. He joined the company in 1999, and stepped down from the CEO position in February 2007.

    …The company’s most recent annual report filed with the SEC shows that 74.3 percent of the company’s revenues–some $2.6 billion–came from programs under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, which requires recipients to certify that they don’t offer incentives to admissions officers based on the number of students they enroll.

    When news of the lawsuit was released, political opponents of Snowe’s raised the issue, the Lewiston (Me.) Sun Journal reported. Scott D’Amboise, a Republican challenging her in the Senate primary, called on her to resign, while Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesperson Shripal Shah charged that Snowe and her husband may have personally profited while defrauding low income students.

    At the time, Snowe dismissed the charges, citing the care the company took in developing its compensation policies. Her office did not respond to requests for comment.”

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