This Is What Taking A Stand Looks Like

On Wednesday, The New York Post posted an article about a speech given by Senator John Fetterman at Yeshiva University in New York City.

The article reports:

Sen. John Fetterman told Yeshiva University graduates Wednesday that he was “profoundly disappointed” in Harvard University’s inability to address antisemitism on campus before removing the ceremonial crimson academic hood representing his alma mater.

The Pennsylvania Democrat expressed his disapproval of the Ivy League school during his commencement address at the private Orthodox Jewish university, which bestowed on him its “Hero of Israel” award, the institution’s highest honor. 

“I have been profoundly disappointed [in] Harvard’s inability to stand up for the Jewish community after Oct. 7,” Fetterman, 54, told the new grads at Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens. 

Senator Fetterman has openly condemned the attacks of October 7th and supported Israel in its efforts to defend itself.

The article concludes:

Fetterman received his undergraduate degree in 1991 from Albright College in Pennsylvania and obtained an MBA from the University of Connecticut in 1993.

The senator graduated from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 1999 with a master of public policy degree. He has previously said he doesn’t “recognize” the school as the same place he once attended. 

“As an alum of Harvard — look, I graduated 25 years ago, and of course, it was always a little pinko,” he told Semafor in January. “But now, I don’t recognize it.”

Last month, Fetterman endorsed former Massachusetts Gov. and current US Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) to take over the presidency of Harvard, which is currently being held on an interim basis by Alan Garver, the university’s former provost.

Senator Fetterman has a rather questionable sense of decorum–if you look at the pictures in the article, you notice that he is probably wearing his signature gym shorts under his robe. However, I must say that some of his statements as a Senator have impressed me. He is not afraid to speak his mind when he disagrees with his fellow Democrats. He was elected in 2022 and will be in office until 2028.I wonder if the Pennsylvania Democrats will run a candidate against him if he decides to run for another term.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

On Tuesday, The Daily Caller noted that Harvard President Claudine Gay will remain at her job after accusations of plagiarism. This action does not seem to be consistent with the University’s Code of Honor.

The article reports:

The Harvard Corporation, which is one of Harvard’s governing bodies, announced Tuesday that they would remain supportive of Gay after a contentious Congressional hearing and accusations  of plagiarism, although the Corporation admitted that a review of her work found “a few instances of inadequate citation.” Harvard University has disciplined students for similar violations of its honor code, which prohibits turning in work that is “not their own,” The Harvard Crimson reported

I like the term “inadequate citation.” That term is further proof that he who controls the vocabulary controls the issue.

The article notes:

The Honor Council heard 138 cases of “academic integrity cases” during the 2020-2021 school year and 99 of those resulted in an “academic dishonesty violation,” in which 27 students were forced to withdraw from the school, according to the Crimson. There were 47 reported violations regarding plagiarism during the academic year.

“Students who, for whatever reason, submit work either not their own or without clear attribution to its sources will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including requirement to withdraw from the College,” Harvard’s plagiarism policy reads.

An approximate average of 18 students per year were forced to withdraw from Harvard between the 2015-2016 academic year and the 2020-21 academic year, according to the Crimson.

The article concludes:

Along with Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth faced calls for removal after refusing to say whether calls for genocide against Jews violated the schools’ codes of conduct. Gay and Magill both backtracked their comments, and the latter resigned on Dec. 9.

Harvard and Gay did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

The following was pasted on Facebook by a friend of mine who does very good research:

Just the Facts:
Before you attack anything in this post please understand that I did research at the Smithsonian Institute and the US Census Bureau. I also researched from several historical publications, Harvard university, Oxford university, the transatlantic slave trade database, slavevoyages-org, and a few others.
Information regarding the current slave trade came from the US Department of Defense, the US State Department, the united nations, amnesty international, and a confidential paper on Russian mining.
——
History:
The historical African slave trade operated from the discovery of the New World until 1808 with a recorded exception being the slave ship “Clotilda” in 1860. There were more than 32,000 voyages that delivered more than 10 million captive slaves to the Americas.
Of the more than 10 million captive African slaves, less than 310,000 were brought to North America in what is now the USA and Canada. The vast majority went to South America and the Caribbean. More than 900,000 went to Jamaica. The first delivery of captive slaves in North America was in 1619 but slaves had been brought to the Caribbean for about 100 years before that time.
The largest slave importer in Jamaica was an ancestor of Senator Kamala Harris. Ms. Harris, contrary to her claims, does not have any verified American slaves in her ancestry. But she has at least five slaveowners in her ancestry.
Of all the Black people living in America who were born here, less than 6% can document their ancestry to people who were slaves in the United States. That is less than 1% of the current US population.
More than half of black Americans claiming to be descendants of slaves trace their slave history back to the Caribbean, including to Kamala Harris’s Jamaica.
——-
In today’s world the countries exporting the most slaves are North Korea and China. North Korea sends about 20,000 people to Russia every year to work in the Russian mines. China sends about double that amount. Of all of the people sent every year to Russia from North Korea and China the only documentation I could find showed less than 10 people (eight) ever returned to China.

The Need For Civility (And Sanity)

Yesterday Townhall posted an article about some recent remarks by Elie Mystal on MSNBC Thursday night.

According to Legal Talk Network:

Elie Mystal is the Managing Editor of Above the Law Redline and the Editor-At-Large of Breaking Media. He’s appeared on MSNBC, Fox, and CNN, and pretty much any network that will invite him. He’s written editorials for the New York Times, the Daily News, and would make a good character in a Billy Joel song. He graduated from Harvard University in 2000, Harvard Law School in 2003, and was an associate at Debevoise and Plimpton.

Townhall reports:

Earlier this week Rep. Joaquin Castro in Texas “named and shamed” San Antonio supporters of President Donald J. Trump in what he says was an effort to get these Americans to think twice before being “complicit in white supremacy.” Anybody with common sense understood the move was dangerous, especially coming from a public official, as it could paint a target on these individuals’ backs regardless if the information was already public or not. On MSNBC Thursday night, guest Elie Mystal took the hysteria over supporting President Trump one step further, saying that protesters should form literal mobs outside the SoulCycle and Equinox chairman’s home in the Hamptons due to his support for the commander-in-chief.

“People of color are already targeted under this administration,” Mystal said Thursday night regarding Rep. Castro’s actions. “I have no problem with shining the light back on the donors who fund this kind of racialized hate.”

“I mean I go further, I want pitchforks and torches outside [Stephen Ross’] house in the Hamptons,” Mystal continued. “I’ve been to the Hamptons, it’s very nice. There’s no reason why it has to be. There’s no reason he should be able to have a nice little party. There’s no reason why people shouldn’t be able to be outside of his house and making their voices peacefully understood.”

I am amazed that such a well-educated man would say something that stupid. Just for the record, people of color are not being targeted under the Trump administration. First of all, let’s take a detour here to look at some actual facts. President Trump signed the First Step Act into law, a bipartisan measure to give prisoners getting out of jail a chance to find jobs and contribute to their communities. Since 38 percent of prisoners at the state level are people of color, that law will have a positive impact on people of color.  Unemployment for people of color is at historic lows under President Trump. Second of all, pitchforks and torches? Really?

Whatever happened to the calls for civility?

Another Democrat Candidate

Recently Tom Steyer announced that he was running for President as a Democrat. The millionaire is running on a ‘5 Rights’ agenda. According to The Washington Times, the ‘5 Rights’ are:  “unencumbered access to voting, clean air and water, education, a living wage and healthcare to be constitutionally protected for every American.”

Tom Steyer portrays himself as an environmentalist who opposes the use of coal for energy, but his history tells another story.

Yesterday Breitbart posted the following:

Despite marketing himself as an “environmental justice” advocate combating “climate change,” billionaire Democrat presidential candidate Tom Steyer oversaw the funding of coal plants in Australia, China, and Indonesia during his tenure as CEO of hedge fund Farallon Capital Management.

Steyer also bought and sold coal stocks during the Obama administration’s “war on coal,” explained Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and senior contributor at Breitbart News, in episode four of the Drill Down.

There is nothing wrong with funding coal plants, but the hypocrisy is another example of the ‘rules for thee, but not for me’ attitude held by so many in the political class.

The article concludes:

Steyer also circumvented conflict-of-interest regulations prohibiting American advisers from investing in countries they were assisting following the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent privatization of Russian industries. Larry Summers, former president of Harvard University and economics adviser to the Obama administration, was tasked with overseeing Russian industries’ presumed shift towards free market operations. Steyer worked with Summers’ wife, possibly gleaning insider information upon which to make investment decisions.

“It’s a classic maneuver of crony capitalism,” said Schweizer of Steyer’s evasion of the aforementioned conflict-of-interest regulations.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Tom Steyer is not someone we want in the White House.

Going Against Public Opinion In An Attempt To Gain Power

Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about whether or not the citizenship question should be on the 2020 census. The article cited some interesting poll results.

The article reports:

Two-thirds of voters approve of a citizenship question on the 2020 census, and that includes a majority of Hispanic voters — despite claims by Democratic lawmakers that the inquiry would discourage participation in Latino communities.

A Harvard University Center for American Political Studies/Harris poll found that 67% of all registered U.S. voters say the census should ask the citizenship question when the time comes. That includes 88% of Republicans, 63% of independents and 52% of Democrats.

Most notably, the poll found that 55% of Hispanic voters favor the idea.

Also in agreement: 74% of rural voters, 59% of black voters, 58% of urban voters and 47% of voters who backed Hillary Clinton in 2016. At 44%, liberal voters were the least likely to favor the citizenship question.

At the other end of the scale, 92% of Trump voters and 90% of conservatives back the question.

The article concludes:

On Tuesday, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway challenged why the citizenship question should even be an issue on the census — which makes a variety of personal household inquiries. She faults Democratic critics.

“We’re asking people how many toilets in your house and you don’t want to know who’s using them? It’s absolutely ridiculous — and this is why the president is fighting for the question’s inclusion,” Ms. Conway told Fox News.

“The census is important, and as President Trump has mentioned, we spend about $20 billion on it. We have said it’s an important exercise. So why not get it right? The census in the past has been increasingly responsive to changes in American demography,” she continued.

“I would ask the Democrats —I hear they’re screaming rhetoric — I would ask what are you afraid of? Why wouldn’t you want to know who’s living in this country, and who’s a citizen and who’s not a citizen?” Ms. Conway asked.

The concept to keep in mind here is that there are a limited number of members in the House of Representatives. The number of Representatives a state has is determined by how many people in that state. Congress is supposed to represent Americans. States who have a large number of non-citizens are not entitled to more Representatives because they have a larger population. If that happens, American citizens are not fully represented. That is the reason the citizenship question needs to be on the census.

Why You Should Bring Your Children With You To Church

On Thursday, Townhall posted an article about the impact of church attendance on children.

The article reports:

According to a new study, children raised in a religious environment are more likely to grow up to be happy and well-adjusted adults.

The study, conducted by Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was published last week in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Titled “Associations of Religious Upbringing With Subsequent Health and Well-Being From Adolescence to Young Adulthood: An Outcome-Wide Analysis,” the study’s results indicate that both children and adults who engaged in regular religious or spiritual practices were at a lower risk of developing mental health issues and substance abuse problems during their lives.

Roughly 5,000 participants engaged in the study, which followed children for a time period of between eight and 14 years. Researchers looked at the frequency with which children and teens attend church services with their parents, in addition to how often those same young people prayed and meditated on their own. As the children entered their 20s, researchers then evaluated their physical and mental health.

Children who attended church once a week with their parents were more likely to be happy. Children who prayed or meditated were emotionally stronger and less likely to engage in destructive behaviors. They also had a lower number of STD’s.

The article concludes:

The study’s senior author Tyler VanderWeele added, “While decisions about religion are not shaped principally by health, for adolescents who already hold religious beliefs, encouraging service attendance and private practices may be meaningful avenues to protect against some of the dangers of adolescence, including depression, substance abuse, and risk taking.”

“In addition, these practices may positively contribute to happiness, volunteering, a greater sense of mission and purpose, and to forgiveness,” he added.

The results of last week’s study confirm previous studies which have also linked adults’ religious involvement to “better health and well-being outcomes, including lower risk of premature death.”

When prayer was taken out of the schools, children learned that they were not accountable to anyone higher than themselves. That wasn’t what we meant to teach them, but it was what they learned. A child with a perspective that includes accountability is going to be more secure, behave better, and be happier. The framework of religion helps provide the security our children need.

I Guess It All Depends On Who You Are Discriminating Against

Yesterday The New York Post posted an editorial about Harvard University’s discrimination against Asian applicants.

The editorial states:

Harvard University records unveiled Friday show the school engages in blatant, egregious racism in the name of diversity.

The info came out thanks to the lawsuit by Students for Fair Admissions over admission policies that discriminate against Asian-Americans. Perhaps the most damaging revelation was a 2013 internal Harvard study that concluded exactly what the suit charges — and the only action the school took was to suppress the research.

The documents also show how Harvard discriminates. To counter Asians’ tendency to do extremely well on traditional measures (test scores, grades and extracurriculars), it routinely rates them lower on soft categories like “positive personality,” being “widely respected,” likability, kindness, etc.

An analysis by the plaintiffs’ experts of Harvard data on more than 160,000 applicants show how skewed the process has grown: A male Asian-American with a 25 percent chance of admission would have a 35 percent chance if he were white, 75 percent if he were Hispanic and 95 percent if he were black. (The legal brief didn’t outline a similar breakdown for females.)

This is not only unfair–it is unwise. By discriminating against students with strong academic skills, the college brings down the overall skill level of the students, resulting in a higher drop-out rate and lower grades in general. If the school wanted to maintain their reputation for excellence, they would be better off to admit the students with the highest academic achievement levels. This policy is not only wrong, it is detrimental to the academic achievement of the students.

 

Where Are The Fact Checkers?

On Saturday, John Hinderaker at Power Line posted a story about one of Hillary Clinton’s recent stories. For whatever reason, the mainstream media never bothered to fact check the story. The article at Power Line pointed out some of the more obvious errors.

The story had to do with Hillary Clinton taking the LSAT (the exam required to get into Law School). She claims that she took the LSAT at Harvard where she encountered a barrage of male chauvinism. The first obvious problem with the story is that Hillary attended Wellesley College. Did Wellesley students take the LSAT at Harvard? Maybe. Maybe not.

The second problem with the story is that she claims that she and her friend were some of the only women in the room and were subjected to heckling by the men in the room.

The article reminds us:

Hillary was a senior during the 1968-1969 school year, and presumably took the LSAT in the fall of 1968. Women were not exactly pioneers in the law business at that time. Seven percent of the first year law class of 1969 was female, a percentage that rose rapidly over the next few years.

She included the following statement in her story:

One of them even said: ‘If you take my spot, I’ll get drafted, and I’ll go to Vietnam, and I’ll die.’ And they weren’t kidding around. It was intense. It got very personal.

Either the man was misinformed or she is lying. Take your pick. This is the background:

Her senior year began in autumn, 1968. She says she was a senior during this harrowing experience, which is when the LSAT is normally taken. But the LBJ administration ended all graduate school deferments on February 16, 1968, except for medical, dental and divinity students, when Hillary was still a junior in college.

Hillary also told this story to New York Magazine in 2016.

Hillary Clinton’s relationship with the truth is even more questionable than her relationship with Bill Clinton.

 

Punishing Achievement While Rewarding Mediocrity

Today’s Wall Street Journal posted an editorial about an area of discrimination we rarely hear about. It seems that our elite universities have been discriminating against Asian-American students.

The editorial reports:

The percentage of Asian-American students at Harvard and other elite universities has held suspiciously steady for two decades at about 18%, while the number of college-age Asian-Americans has increased rapidly. In May the coalition (a coaltion of sixty-four organizations) asked the civil-rights arms of the Education and Justice Departments to investigate why Asian-Americans, who make up about 5% of the population but earn an estimated 30% of National Merit semifinalist honors, aren’t accepted to Harvard in numbers that reflect these qualifications.

Sixty-four organizations filed a complaint with the Education Department. The Education Department dismissed the complaint, stating that there is pending litigation on the matter. (One suit was filed by Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and the University of North Carolina).

The editorial further points out:

A similarly narrow ruling next year could give Harvard and other top schools license to maintain de facto quotas. Asian-Americans need to score 140 points higher on the SAT than white students to be considered equal applicants on paper, and 450 points higher than African-Americans, according to independent research cited in the complaint.

Why are we preventing our best and brightest from entering our best schools simply because of their race? I thought there were laws against discrimination based on race. This kind of activity does not help anyone. Students with the lower scores may not be equipped to handle the academic workload at these elite schools.This really must be discouraging to the students who have achieved the high scores.

The editorial concludes:

Meantime, the Asian-American coalition says it will continue to push back, potentially broadening the complaint. Quota-like admissions also seem to exist at Yale, Princeton and elsewhere, and the feds won’t have litigation as an excuse to look the other way. But if the Obama Administration finds another excuse, as it probably will, Asian-Americans will need the Supreme Court to end their exclusion.

Racial discrimination should never be acceptable regardless of who it is aimed at. I hope the Asian-American students sue the pants off the schools that are doing this and then use the money to provide scholarships to Asian-American students in their communities.

Sometimes Irony Is Just Fun

This week we heard stories about the faculty of Harvard University being upset that the ObamaCare Health Insurance that they supported affected them in a negative way. Yesterday The Chicago Tribune weighed in on the subject. The article reminds us that MIT economist Jonathan Gruber boasted that one of the reasons ObamaCare was passed was that the American voters were stupid (uninformed would have been a kinder word, but he said stupid).

The article illustrates that even smart Americans got caught in the ObamaCare trap:

Turns out, however, that some smart people at Gruber’s alma mater, Harvard, also are flummoxed by the health care overhaul that many of their fellow Harvard brainiacs championed into law. They believed the whopper from President Obama, Gruber et al. that Obamacare would spend billions to cover millions and tame health care costs. And, oh yes, if you liked your coverage, you could keep your coverage.

…Harvard profs are learning, extremely belatedly, what smart people knew from Day One: Obamacare is disruptive and expensive. All of that free care is not free. Someone has to pay. Make that: Everyone has to pay. No exceptions for Harvard professors.

There is a lesson here all Americans need to learn–there is no free money. The government has no money of its own. All the money the government has it has taken from either individuals or businesses. Actually, there are really no taxes on businesses or corporations–taxes put on businesses or corporations become business expenses and are passed along to the consumer in the form of  higher prices. There is no free lunch. Most Americans who have to keep to a household budget have figured that out; evidently Harvard professors have a different learning curve.

The article has a suggestion for the Harvard professors:

A modest proposal: Harvard profs helped lead the charge to ram Obamacare into law. They should now lend their fierce intellectual firepower to a Republican-led effort in Congress to roll back some of the law’s most pernicious and costly effects.

The article has a few suggestions as to things that could be done to fix ObamaCare and change it into a reasonable law. Personally, I would like to see ObamaCare replaced with health insurance that includes three things; tort reform, portability of health insurance across state lines, and insurance that stays with the persont regardless of job changes. We need to get the government out of the insurance business and let the people who understand actuary tables run their business,. Health insurance companies have one of the lowest profit margins of all American businesses. They are not the money-grubbing control freaks Congress and the Obama Administration have accused them of being. Actually, if ObamaCare is indicative of anything, it illustrates that the money-grubbing control freaks seem to be located in government–not in the insurance business.

Bias? What Bias?

Brent Bozell posted an article at Townhall.com today contrasting the reporting on Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren during the Senate budget debate. The contrast is amazing.

The article reports:

Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Elizabeth Warren are polar opposites, a Tea Party conservative and an Occupy Wall Street socialist. Then there are the similarities: Both were elected in 2012, both have Harvard on their resume and both are mentioned as presidential material. But the media’s read of the two demonstrates an unquestionable slant.

Both senators have shaken up the Senate over heavy spending and regulation. When Warren does it, she’s promoted as a profile in courage, standing up for fairness. When Cruz does it, he’s a selfish brat causing meltdowns.

The article reminds us to look for this type of reporting as the 2016 Presidential campaign begins.

The article cites an example of bias in The Hill:

William Jacobson at the blog Legal Insurrection found another example in The Hill newspaper, reflecting the Capitol’s own tilt like a funhouse mirror. His examples were less than 24 hours apart. Warren drew the Dec. 12 headline “Warren makes her mark,” and on Dec. 13, the headline was “Cruz center of Senate meltdown.” The articles even had the same author, a hack named Alexander Bolton.

The article concludes:

All this provides a precise GPS location for our liberal media. To them, Ted Cruz is a dangerous extremist, but Warren is their heroine — compassionate, professorial and politically and economically correct. Anyone who expects objectivity from the press is badly out of touch.

Look for this pattern throughout the 2016 campaign.

Following The Money

Jimmy Carter was not one of our better presidents. He was the architect of the 1979 Camp David accords, but has somehow lost his way since.

An article posted at Forbes Magazine last week reminds us:

Once upon a time, the architect of the 1979 Camp David accords had some credibility as an observer of the Middle East. Yet the depth of his anti-Israel prejudice was already on display eight-years ago when he insisted that the Israeli occupation of the West Bankperpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa.” His book on that subject was naturally called Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid.

Jimmy Carter has called for the recognition of Hamas’ “legitimacy as a political actor” because they represent a substantial portion of the Palestinian people. He made no suggestion that they lay down their weapons first. So what in the world is this about? Alan Dershowitz has the answer.

In a 2012 column in Israel and Stuff, Alan Dershowitz explains:

Recent disclosures of Carter’s extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I was first told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it. How could a man of such apparent integrity enrich himself with dirty money from so dirty a source?

And let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than $2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School received from this source. Initially I was reluctant to put pressure on Harvard to turn back money for the Divinity School, but then a student at the Divinity School — Rachael Lea Fish — showed me the facts They were staggering. I was amazed that in the 21st century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up – a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son – hosted speakers who called Jews “the enemies of all nations,” attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States’ own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a “fable.” (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not.

Jimmy Carter was, of course, aware of Harvard’s decision, since it was highly publicized. Yet he kept the money. Indeed, this is what he said in accepting the funds: “This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan.” Carter’s personal friend, it turns out, was an unredeemable anti-Semite and all-around bigot.

Jimmy Carter has been making anti-Semitic statements for years. That is very unfortunate. He was admittedly a horrible president, but most people felt that he was an honorable man. It is sad to find out that he is not.

 

 

Behind The Scenes In The Student Loan Battle

Today’s Wall Street Journal posted an editorial about the current debate over student loan interest rates.

Today the Senate voted on student-loan subsidies. The news just reported that an attempt to roll back the interest rate increase has failed a procedural hurdle. One proposal suggests that the interest rate on the loans be tied to the 10-year Treasury rate. The advantage of this idea is that the taxpayers do not have to guarantee the lower rate to borrowers while the cost of the loans to the government goes up.

The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated taxpayer losses on student loans to be $95 billion over the next ten years. Remember that the government takeover of student loans was part of ObamaCare. (see rightwinggranny.com)

The article in the Wall Street Journal reports:

Liberals apologize for the price hikes imposed by their friends in the faculty lounge by pretending that universities are starved for revenue. Rep. Frank Pallone (D., N.J.) claimed on MSNBC on Saturday that “the federal government is not making the investment in higher education.” Perhaps he’s forgotten that annual Pell grant spending of $34 billion has roughly doubled in the Obama era, or that Uncle Sugar now originates more than $100 billion in annual loans.

In October 2011, I wrote in rightwinggranny.com:

The article also points out that under the proposed changes, the government would be entirely responsible for college loans. Students would borrow directly from the government and pay the government back. What happens when students default? The taxpayers pick up the tab. Aside from the fact that the benefits to the students of this program are minuscule, we need less government in all aspects of our lives–not more.

In a New York Post article quoted in the above article, John Podhoretz wrote:

One federal study found that between 1982 and 2007, tuition costs rose 432 percent while family income rose only 147 percent.

As taxpayers, we are subsidizing inflationary spending on the part of higher education. There is no incentive to cut costs if you know that the money will keep pouring in and that the government will enable the students to afford the rising tuition. Until parents refuse to pay the rising tuition at some of the prestige schools, we will continue to have this problem.

The Harvard University website reports:

The complete budget at Harvard College (exclusive of transportation) for 2012-2013 is $57,950. Tuition – $37,576; Room and Board – $13,630; College Facilities Fees (for use of library and other University facilities including the Health Services) – $3,290; Minimum for extras (books, clothing, dues, recreation, etc.) – $3,454.

In some parts of America, you can buy a house for that amount.

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Jurassic Park Revisited

Yes, I realize that what I am about to report does not have to do with the Jurassic Era–it has to do with the movie. Fox News reported yesterday that Professor George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard’s Medical School, wants to bring Neanderthal man back to life. He is looking for an ‘adventurous woman’ to help him in his quest.

The article reports some of Professor Church’s previous comments:

“We have lots of Neanderthal parts around the lab. We are creating Neanderthal cells. Let’s say someone has a healthy, normal Neanderthal baby. Well, then, everyone will want to have a Neanderthal kid. Were they superstrong or supersmart? Who knows? But there’s one way to find out.”

Last year, researchers finished sequencing the genome of another extinct human relative, the denisovan — based solely off a piece of fingerbone and two molars.

I guess I am hopelessly old fashioned, but I really would prefer that Neanderthal man continue to rest in peace.

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Who Is Teaching Our Children and What They Are Teaching Them ?

I have spoken before on this website about Reza Kahlili. The Daily Caller describes him as follows:

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the author of the award winning book, A Time to Betray. He is a senior Fellow with EMPact America, a member of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA).

His website, A Time To Betray posted an article today about Abbas Maleki, the Iranian regime’s former deputy foreign minister and adviser to the Supreme Leader. Mr. Maleki is set to begin his academic career in America at Harvard and MIT.

The website includes a video:

It’s time to think about what our ‘best and brightest’ are learning in college.

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The Race For The Fourth Congressional District

There will be a Republican Primary for the nomination in the Fourth Congressional District in Massachusetts. The two major candidates are Elizabeth Childs (I wrote about her on May 16) and Sean Bielat. I had the pleasure of meeting Sean Bielat tonight at Fitzy’s Pub in Plainville. The Republican Primary will take place on September 18, 2012.

Sean Bielat‘s website is SeanForCongress.com. Sean is well qualified to serve in the House of Representatives–his educational background includes a Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown University. Sean currently serves as an officer in the United States Marine Corps Reserve.

Sean’s carreer highlights are listed on his website:

Major, U.S Marine Corps Reserve

Independent Consultant. Helped client companies build market strategies

Program Manager, iRobot Corporation. Led $100 million, 100 person business line providing life-saving defense robots used to destroy roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan

Chairman, NATO Industrial Armaments Group. Led an international team studying the potential for use of advanced reconnaissance technology in urban warfare

Management Consultant, McKinsey & Company

Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps (active duty)

Both candidates for the Republican nomination are well-educated, smart, articulate people. I am impressed by the quality of the candidates the Republican party is fielding across the state. The main difference that I see between the candidates is on social issues, and if you understand that social issues impact fiscal issues, saying you are a fiscal conservative and a social moderate makes no sense. I support Sean Bielat because I believe he understands the linkage between social and fiscal issues. Just in case you have forgotten, the name of this website is rightwinggranny. I am a conservative and will tend to work for and support the more conservative candidate. However, I will support the winner of the Republican primary in the race against Joseph Kennedy III.

 

 

 

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Some Changes To RomneyCare You Might Have Missed

As the presidential campaign continues, there will be much discussion about the differences between RomneyCare and ObamaCare. The major difference, of course, is that the state has the power to try to deal with its healthcare challenges as it sees fit. It becomes a different issue when the government tries to take over the healthcare section of the American economy. However, there have been some subtle changes in RomneyCare that have occurred since Governor Patrick took office in Massachusetts.

On Monday night, I had a chance to see a presentation by Mike Stopa in Northborough on the subject of ObamaCare and the impact it will have on healthcare in America if it is not repealed. Mike Stopa is a Physicist specializing in computation and nanoscience in the Physics Department at Harvard University. He is the director of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network Computation Project and a recognized expert on nanoscale electronics and computation. He has over 75 publications and over a thousand citations to his work in the physics literature. His homepage at Harvard can be found here. Mike is a life-long, fiscally conservative Republican, which is not a popular ideology at Harvard. He was recently a first-time candidate for Congress in the third district of Massachusetts.

In the course of his discussion he repeated some aspects of the Massachusetts healthcare law that he had discussed in an article at the MetroWest Daily News in April of 2011.

This is a direct quote from his article:

“…because the terminally ill often are hospitalized and may be candidates for the intensive care unit (ICU), and because the ICU is particularly resource-intensive, reducing use of the ICU among such patients appears to present unique opportunities for cost reduction.”

Nevertheless, a recently released report by the Expert Panel on End of Life Care organized under Governor Patrick’s Health Care Quality and Cost Control Council emphasizes that many more of us would rather die at home; that we want that familiar view out our bedroom window instead of those cold, faceless hospital rooms with all those complicated machines. Many of us are willing, nay eager to let slip the mortal coil if we can only do so in a more caring, dignified environment. In short, in the words of panel co-chair Lachlan Forrow: “our expert commission actually wanted people not to think about cost. That’s not the point.”

The report by the End of Life Experts suggests many carrots to entice the terminally ill to get out of the hospital, but it also contains one simple, all-encompassing stick. Specifically, the Experts recommend that “any Commonwealth payment reform initiative should be designed to ensure that, for all patients with serious advancing illness…payment for medical services requires adequate documentation that they are based on the well-informed wishes of patients (or appropriate surrogates), including understanding of life-prolonging and palliative care or hospice alternatives.”

As ObamaCare is implemented, one of the things that will occur is that younger Americans will be asked to subsidize the healthcare costs of older Americans. It is a pretty safe bet that once they figure out what is going on, younger Americans are not going to be thrilled with that concept. Add to that the fact that a large part of the generation they will be asked to subsidize will be the generation that legalized abortion–the killing of their generation. Because of legalized abortion, there will not be enough of the younger generation to shoulder comfortably the burden of caring for their elderly parents. The irony of this is amazing. At some point, our younger generation will become the first generation to kill their parents legally (euthanasia) just as their parents were the first generation to kill their children legally (abortion).

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Free ObamaCare Seminar March 12

Free Seminar

 ObamaCare

an American Catastrophe

                                        Monday, March 12, 2012, 7:00 p.m.

Northborough Free Library

_______________________________________________________

 

    Forcing ObamaCare (OC) on Americans

    Losing Your Choice of Doctors        

    Infringement on Religious Freedom

    “Death Panels”

    Collapse of the R&D for Life-Saving Drugs

    What if the Supreme Court Upholds OC?

_______________________________________________________

 Presented by Mike Stopa, Harvard University

~ Sponsored by the Northborough Tea Party ~

Public Welcome ~ Free Admission

   Information: John O’Mara, 508.393.2044

 www.northboroughteaparty.com

               

                “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil   is  

                    for good men to do nothing” Edmund Burke

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March 12 In Northborough Massachusetts

Free Seminar

 ObamaCare

an American Catastrophe

 Monday, March 12, 2012, 7:00 p.m.

Northborough Free Library

_______________________________________________________

 

    Forcing ObamaCare (OC) on Americans

    Losing Your Choice of Doctors        

    Infringement on Religious Freedom

    “Death Panels”

    Collapse of the R&D for Life-Saving Drugs

    What if the Supreme Court Upholds OC?

_______________________________________________________

 Presented by Mike Stopa, Harvard University

~ Sponsored by the Northborough Tea Party ~

Public Welcome ~ Free Admission

   Information: John O’Mara, 508.393.2044

 www.northboroughteaparty.com

               

                “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil   is  

                    for good men to do nothing” Edmund Burke

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