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Last year 117 members of the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate accepted $263,227.10 in gifts from 195 different givers, from ExxonMobil and the Virginia state AFl-CIO to the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund and a host of so-called "payday lenders."

See the gifts your legislator accepted now in the DataSphere.

Everyone has their opinion, but from a news reporter like me, there's not a lot here that's really gross, but there's stuff that'll raise your eyebrows. And if nothing else, this list of 725 gifts provides an intriguing look into part of the way government works.

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From an Indiana University study of student loan default rates:

Measures of academic momentum and degree completion and the
combination of debt load, number of dependents, and income—factors that
influence one’s ability to repay a loan—exert the greatest influence on the
likelihood of default. Other factors that influence the odds that students may
default include students’ family income, parental education, academic ability,
ethnicity, and age. We found no evidence that the type of institution attended is
a good predictor of the loan repayment behavior of students.

Thanks for that to alert reader Jeff Arthur, who also happens to be vice-president of information systems and financial aid at ECPI College of Technology. Jeff referenced the study in a comment last week, and kindly passed on that and a bunch of other info to inform the discussion of the federal student loan default rates now viewable in the DataSphere.

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