The Crucial Federal Pell Grant Eligibility Requirements

The Crucial Federal Pell Grant Eligibility Requirements

Article: A Pell Grant allows you to have some or all of your college expenses paid for by the Federal government. The best thing about a Pell Grant is the fact that it is not a loan, so you never have to pay it back. Having free money to reduce or eliminate the need for student loan payments in the future is wonderful, so anybody who qualifies for this program should take advantage of it.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to know if you meet the requirements necessary to receive a Pell Grant. The fact of the matter is, it really isn’t possible to know if you are eligible for a Pell Grant unless you fill out a Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. The FAFSA returns a number known as your Expected Family Contribution, which is used to determine your eligibility and how much money you can receive, if any. Still, there are some factors to think about that can contribute to whether or not you are likely to be eligible.

First off, if you are a dependent of a family with an annual income of more than fifty thousand dollars, you can expect not to qualify. Most of the people who do qualify come from families with an income of less than twenty thousand dollars each year. Several other factors can play into this, and to list them all would be exhaustive. However, you can expect that if you live independently of your parents or legal guardians that you are more likely to qualify. This is especially true if you care for children of your own. Essentially, the more difficult it would be for you to pay for college, the more likely it is that you qualify for a Pell Grant.

In addition to financial considerations, the Pell Grant is only offered to legal residents of the United States, and it can only be applied toward undergraduate degree programs. If you have already earned a degree in another field, you might not be eligible, depending on the field. You also cannot be in default on a federal student loan, and you must use the proceeds of your grant for education at a legitimate college or university. You will be required to meet specific academic benchmarks that will be set by your school in respect to your grades and the number of classes that you drop. Finally, if you have ever sold illegal drugs while receiving federal financial aid, you will most likely not qualify.

The author is a financial aid counelor at a prominent university, and writes about how to gain Pell Grant eligibility, and the various Pell Grant requirements.

Timber industry suffers as loggers blame federal regs for lost jobs

The Rough and Ready Sawmill was an institution in southern Oregon for 91 years. Its lumber helped fuel the post-World War II building boom and settle the rural West. Now, it sits empty, the last of 22 mills in Josephine County to shut down for good, signaling the end of an era. 

For Ivan Cross, it's the end of the only job he's ever had.

"I haven't drawn an unemployment check in 43-and-a-half years," said Cross. "Now, that's what I do for a living."

While Rough and Ready sits in the middle of America's richest timber country, the federal government owns 80 percent of the land. Many in these decimated small towns blame The Endangered Species Act, which paved the way for a flood of lawsuits blocking federal timber sales, because of an endangered species in the region.

"You just can't run a business, no matter how you adapt, if you don't have the raw materials and the log supply to run that business," said Link Phillippi, owner of Rough and Ready.

In the last two decades since the spotted owl was listed as an endangered species, more than 200 sawmills have closed in the Pacific Northwest directly killing 40,000 good-paying jobs. It has turned Josephine County, once Oregon's fastest growing, into its poorest with 30 percent of the residents using food stamps. One out of every five adults in Cave Junction, the closest city to Rough and Ready, is unemployed. When voters shot down a tax increase last year, the sheriff released most inmates and cut two-thirds of his department.

"You've lost the jobs that used to be here," said Oregon Republican Rep. Greg Walden. "You've lost the economy that used to be there, therefore you've lost the revenues for the basic services. It's becoming a lawless county."

Walden and House Republicans have offered a solution: H.R. 1526, Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act. It would take 1.8 million acres of federal land in Oregon currently being managed by the Bureau of Land Management and put it into a trust to be managed under Oregon's environmental laws for timber harvest.

While the bill has bipartisan support, notably from Oregon's Democrat-controlled state  legislature and Democratic Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio, environmental groups have lined up against it.

"This would be a giveaway of public lands that would be managed exclusively for timber with all the damage that would come from clear-cutting on steep slopes, the loss of salmon and the loss of public values," said Dominic DellaSala of the non-profit Geos Institute.

DellaSala acknowledges the bill would provide a short-term economic benefit for Oregon's rural timber counties, but he says eventually the large trees would run out and the sawmill jobs will leave again. Left behind, he argues, would be a permanently damaged ecosystem.

H.R. 1526 passed in the House last week with support from 22 Democrats and all but one Republican. The final vote was 249-166.

But if the bill were to pass in the Senate, it could face a presidential veto. Senior advisers signaled they would recommend President Obama veto it. The Statement of Administration Policy, issued last week, says the bill would "accelerate commercial timber harvests without appropriate environmental review and public involvement."

In other words, it would be far tougher for environmental groups to sue to block future timber sales on those 1.8 million acres.

Ivan Cross feels like he and the other now-unemployed mill workers are being left out of the equation.

"I'm starting to feel like the endangered species," Cross said.

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NAACP ripped for demanding federal probe of rodeo clown dressed as Obama

Calls by the Missouri chapter of the NAACP for a federal investigation into a rodeo clown who donned a President Obama mask at the state fair last week are misguided and hypocritical, a Texas Republican congressman told FoxNews.com on Thursday. 

U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, who has invited the clown who wore the mask to perform in Texas, said the request for probes into the incident by the Justice Department and Secret Service are “silly” and should be ignored. 

“A rodeo clown is really a nominal thing and it hurt no one,” Stockman told FoxNews.com. “They didn’t speak out when George Bush was being portrayed as a murderer. To become relevant again, they need to become more of an honest broker and not have contrived anger.”

Stockman said the NAACP would better serve its constituents by focusing on ways to decrease unemployment among the black community. He also noted that the national civil rights group was silent after a July incident on a Florida bus where three black teens beat a fellow white student. Though Gulfport Police Chief Robert Vincent told Fox News the attack did not appear to be racially motivated, former Florida Rep. Allen West, who is black, chided Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, noting they condemned Florida's laws in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting yet remained mum on the bus attack.

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“We can’t get the Justice Department to look at Benghazi, so it would be ironic that the Justice Department would investigate a clown."

- U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas

“It’s really patently false that they’re angry at this, but not angry at other issues,” Stockman continued. “There has to be some consistency.”

Stockman said he thinks it’s unlikely federal officials will investigate the matter.

“We can’t get the Justice Department to look at Benghazi, so it would be ironic that the Justice Department would investigate a clown,” he said. “They should focus on their member’s needs rather than theatrics.” 

Still, the rodeo clown has been widely condemned for his off-color act. 

On Wednesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the rodeo clown incident was “not one of the finer moments” for The Show-Me State.

“I haven’t heard about the president’s reaction or if he had one,” Earnest told reporters. “I can tell you as a native Missourian, it was certainly not one of the finer moments for our state and not the way I like to see our state depicted in the news.”

Stockman said widespread reports of Saturday’s bull riding event at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia was an example of what he calls “pop news,” distractions from serious issues facing the country. 

The performer, meanwhile, has been permanently banned from future state fair events and subsequent performers must undergo sensitivity training.

Messages seeking comment from Justice Department and NAACP officials were not immediately returned Thursday.

Jehmu Greene, a Fox News contributor and Democratic strategist, said she agreed with Stockman’s take that the call for a federal probe was unwarranted. It’s far from the first time a sitting commander-in-chief has been mocked, she said.

“Absolutely it is misguided,” she said during an appearance on Fox News. “The NAACP has jumped the shark on this one.”

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