Higher Education Will Struggle Through the Recession

Yours is the second post that has said it's an unfair comparison - but I don't think you offer a very compelling case to prove your case.



Are there differences? Of course. Above, I noted where grade and high schools have a TOUGHER time teaching than universities, so I won't repeat them again.



The schools (6 have kitchens) have to provide lunches. Since not all kids buy lunch, they have staff and facilities, but low utilization. Meals are partially subsidized by state and school taxes. Even in my semi-affluent suburb, there are plenty of kids that get free meals at school (and they're probably the only meals some of these kids get!).



So there is overhead in that regard in local public schools, invalidating your implicit contention that college meal provisions are a unique burden to them.



REGARDLESS... I'm not comparing colleges to urban or rural schools. I'm comparing the author's suggestion that the 'real costs' of a college education are more than double the $30k+ tuition to the costs for education in MY school district. My district has known costs (readily available through the state and district). It has almost 5,000 kids. I think that's a reasonable enough basis for a very fair comparison indeed.



I would welcome your posting of links to recommended studies on this subject - provided they aren't self-serving studies inked to help colleges justify or obfuscate their budgets and spending practices.
About Recession
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Chris Matthews Eviscerates Neocon Frank Gaffney: "4,000 People Are Dead Because Of The Way You Feel" (VIDEO)

What cheney and this douche gaffney are essentially admitting is that they are as stupid and illogical as they are evil. The arrogance needed to go into the public eye and say these things after so many facts have materialized is just shocking.



Even though we know there are evil people in the world, it's still absolutely stunning to see it - and have it demonstrated with such indignation and vulgarity just never seems to lose its punch.
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'Fairness Doctrine' Advocate Identified

Sorry, but I don't think your plan can work. I think the answer is to provide some program with benefits such as press credentials to Federal facilities (including military), first responder, and national events. Laws should force elected/appointed officials to grant interviews to reporters in the program. Lapdog reporters get interviews by lobbing softballs. Somehow we need to force officials to face the press with no preconditions.



To qualify, an organization wishing to join must commit to things like:



* No convicted felons as on-air personalities,

* References for all stories published/broadcast must be displayed for reasonable time,

* Erroneous or incorrect details in any story or editorial will result in fines (paid by the reporters) and the publisher/station must run a corrected version of the story 4-times as often and as long as the frequency of the original (if fix news repeats a lie 30 times, they have to tell the truth in a corrected story 120 times).

* Editorials and "in-depth analysis" can never be associated with "news." Any program, like oreilly, hannity, et. al., must be correctly labeled as editorials - and the amount of time and space allotted to it must be limited to a small percentage.



The latter will effectively kill off the neocon lapdogs.



Not a be-all, end-all, but I think these steps are a better start than a ratings system because a ratings system will take a monstrous amount of effort to manage and referee.
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On Healthcare Reform Stimulating the Economy: The Massachusetts Example

Yes, but you can conjure a list of 'people won't want to give up "x"' when you talk about ANYTHING that is in one condition today and there is a suggestion to change it tomorrow.



Simple example - people didn't want to "give up" SUVs until about a year ago - even knowing the wasteful and uneconomical design. Then when they finally get a snootful of reality in the form of $3 per gallon gas, they can't get rid of them fast enough.



In other words, we can't skip over the only real solution that addresses the external stresses on the health care system because there are people too f00lish to realize that they are f00lish.



Given the fact that many people have learned some lessons the hard way recently, the mood of some stalwart naysayers may be different today. So I think you over-exaggerate the 'danger' of people not "wanting to give up" their health care system. For those who kick and scream, too bad. When my kids were 2 and screamed in the store, I dragged them along with me. This is how we have to deal with immature folks who can't grab hold of reality.



Build the right system that will be most cost-effective. In the end, we need the grownups to come through with a new structure that will transition us away from almighty "capitalism" (i.e. corporations vs. consumers) which has proved to be an utter failure for Americans.
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Democrats Supporting, GOP Ready To Fight Obama's Public-Works Initiative

Obama's making me nervous with this. Demanding that states rush into spending money on infrastructure is a horribly bad idea. It's a practice that has resulted in massive waste already over the last 6 years.



We've sunk hundreds of millions into slapdash "solutions" for national security by way of federal grants after the homeland defense color code system was adopted (priorities...). If some actual planning and thought occurred, it would have been FAR FAR more effectively spent. As it is, whatever ideas were on the table when the money wagon rolled down the street were funded - and many had virtually nothing to do with security.



Bridges should be repaired/replaced - not blindly added to. More lanes = more maintenance and upgrade costs in the future. It is a purely unsustainable approach that was ignored before because we were told that future technology innovations would SURELY reduce these costs over time. After 40 years, it's still oil and stones or concrete... and more expensive than ever.



EVERY reasonable rail and light rail project should take precedence over highway projects. Only exception are bridge repairs.



This is the time to truly FIX transportation problems - not continue doing the same "planning" and building that has fed unsustainable sprawl development and destruction of urban centers. Let's not just throw $500 billion in the air for the sake of the economy, we can't keep throwing more lanes at people complaining about traffic. It's good money after bad.
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What Obama's New CTO Should Do

Well, all that high-minded generality - though loaded with completely groundless assertions like "Sophisticated use of technology in education would boost student achievements and reduce the drop out rate" - makes for stirring classroom banter, but fails to address the problems that have prevented access to technology in the US and the world.

Let's see, we have frivolous patent management and enforcement ("one-click purchasing" via a web page is one of the spectacular examples of this insane hubris), network infrastructure is owned by carriers in the US who charge significantly more for the privilege of using it than almost any other industrialized country (even though billions of tax breaks drove its construction), and megalithic corporations exercise anti-competitive tactics (forced obsolescence by abdicating "support" among others) to help extract usurious license fees for software "upgrades" which deliver virtually no value at all to the owners - all of which absolutely crush innovation, exact the equivalent of a "technology tax" on the public, and is massively geared almost exclusively toward stockholder enrichment and, therefore, intrinsically opposed to your altruistic aspirations.

Much has been written about these issues so I won't even try to encapsulate in a 250-word comment.

In short, you ignore reality with your toast to technology.

Or are you a paid shill for the entrenched industries' interests?
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