Harvard Clipping Coupons

Harvard University is cutting its budget due to hard times in its endowment investment returns. This could cripple the potential of the school being the richest in the world academic higher education facility. Students will have to bring their own Cross pens, or dare I say supply their own Neiman Marcus stationary for class notes.

Maybe we should all petition the new President Elect Barack Obama for a bailout plan for the gold mine mother load alma mata of the future President. Why not, Bush gave tax breaks to oil companies making billions per quarter? Over at Reuters they have this to say on Harvard and their budget cuts…

Harvard freezes salaries as recession bites
Tue Dec 9, 2008 2:02pm EST

By Jason Szep

BOSTON (Reuters) - Harvard University's largest faculty plans to freeze salaries for professors and non-union staff next year as the world's richest university grapples with a funding shortfall brought on by the financial crisis.

A letter from deans of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to department heads said at least $105 million must be cut from the budget, which is strained by a projected 30 percent drop in the Ivy League school's endowment in the year to June 30.

Snippet… Don’t cry yet, it gets better

Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences will also postpone almost all current tenure-track and tenured searches, the letter said, a setback for one of the world's most coveted academic prizes that confer a job for life.

Searches would resume when the financial situation turns around, the letter said.

Harvard reported on December 2 that its endowment had lost 22 percent, or $8 billion, in the last four months and was on track for its worst returns in 40 years.

The university relies on its endowment to cover about 35 percent of its operating budget. - Reuters

I’m not feeling we need a bailout for Harvard just yet. If they could lose $8 Billion in investments then I would not suggest sending your children there for an economics education. When it cost on average $35,000 tuition alone per year for that degree from Harvard I’m not to sympathetic. Then you have to consider that the school has an endowment that is in the tens of billions of dollars. The entire university could run on the endowment alone for decades. Tuition free as well! The Boston Globe listed the balance of the endowment at $34 Billion in January of 2008.

Harvard is an elite educational institution and they earned the right to that title. They give a great education and having Harvard on your diploma is the gold standard in education and when searching for future employers. However, ten or more years ago I watched a piece on the television where they were building a very small guard post on the campus. They spent $250,000 for the damn thing. You could buy the same structure at Home Depot for $1000 or less. Book smart, money stupid.

Hold the tissues, don’t grab the check book for a charitable donation to Harvard just yet. Do however feel free to donate to a much more worthy charity like the Salvation Army or your local homeless shelter.

Papamoka

Rove Calls it Dirty Politics on McCain?

For Karl Rove, the number one former GOP campaign operative of the Bush White House, to call John McCain on the carpet for dirty politics in his political ad’s against Barack Obama as going to far it wreaks of a rat. That would be like the Devil telling people that Hitler has gone too far? It just does not make sense from a die hard operative for the Republican Party.

Video Link



Even as a commentator on political events for CNN I just don’t believe these words came out of his mouth. The McCain campaign has gone so negative since the RNC Convention that it isn’t even funny and most of the negativity has been debunked on every political website out there. Is Karl Rove ahead of the curve in seeing that the strategy is not working? He has something he isn’t telling the media other than this little tid bit from his appearance on CNN…

updated 4:39 p.m. EDT, Sun September 14, 2008
Rove: McCain went 'too far' in ads

(CNN) -- Former Bush adviser Karl Rove said Sunday that Sen. John McCain had gone "one step too far" in some of his recent ads attacking Sen. Barack Obama.

Rove has leveled similar criticism against Obama.

"McCain has gone in some of his ads -- similarly gone one step too far," he told Fox News, "and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the '100 percent truth' test."

The Obama campaign immediately leaped on the quote.

"In case anyone was still wondering whether John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest campaign in history, today Karl Rove -- the man who held the previous record -- said McCain's ads have gone too far," said campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor, in a statement sent to reporters minutes after Rove's on-air comments. Rove masterminded both of President Bush's successful White House bids.

Rove said both candidates need to "be careful" about their attacks on each other.
"They ought to -- there ought to be an adult who says, 'Do we really need to go that far in this ad? Don't we make our point and won't we get broader acceptance and deny the opposition an opportunity to attack us if we don't include that one little last tweak in the ad?' " he said.

Obama on Saturday accused McCain and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin of avoiding the issues to "distort" his record. - CNN

Karl Rove is the new Teflon Don of politics and nothing sticks to him. I give him credit for a well timed comment on the facts that negative advertisements from both campaigns is not the way to go. I just wonder where the hell he and the divide and conquer politics of the GOP are going next. One fact is certain, they are not going to be talking about the issues. That is a path they can not win on and the Obama campaign would be wise to point that fact out.

Granted Rove is also calling on the Obama camp on the carpet for doing the same thing but his opinion in Democrat circles isn’t valued much when his boy is tossing tons of mud at the wall and hoping that just a few pounds stick to it. McCain tosses it, Obama has to scrape it off the wall as just mud. In the meantime, the McCain campaign is not forced to talk about the issues facing America and that is the intended goal. More of saying nothing and doing nothing that effects the common voter.

Papamoka

David Hazinski aka Real Reporter

All over the blogoshpere the weapon of choice is the keyboard on a personal PC in order to slay the mighty professor of “real journalism”. Somebody regarding this whole issue has a very high opinion of himself and frankly he just might have the credentials to speak. Dictators and Professors are like that. My way or the highway.

According to Professor Hazinski, we (Bloggers) are all hackers of the English language and we imagine facts and figures and propagate lies. When we are wrong, we never post a correction. Bloggers have a private agenda that needs to be regulated according to the distinguished Professor.


Having just anyone produce widely distributed stories without control can have the reverse effect from what advocates intend. It's just a matter of time before something like a faked Rodney King beating video appears on the air somewhere.

Journalism organizations should head that off. Citizen reports can be a valuable addition to news and information flow with some protections:

• Major news organizations must create standards to substantiate citizen-contributed information and video, and ensure its accuracy and authenticity.

• They should clarify and reinforce their own standards and work through trade organizations to enforce national standards so they have real meaning.

• Journalism schools such as mine at the University of Georgia should create mini-courses to certify citizen journalists in proper ethics and procedures, much as volunteer teachers, paramedics and sheriff's auxiliaries are trained and certified.

Journalists generally don't like any kind of standards or regulation. Many argue that standards could infringe on freedom of the press and journalism shouldn't be regulated.
But we have already seen the line between news and entertainment blur enough to destroy significant credibility. Continuing to do nothing as information flow changes will further erode it. Journalism organizations who choose to do nothing may soon find the line between professional and citizen journalism gone as well as the trust of their audiences. -AJC.com

Not long ago I was honored to be a contributing writer for one of the most realistic “Blog’s” on the entire internet. During my time writing there I got to know the owner of the site and frankly, I consider him to be my close friend and a brother. I’m talking about the site called Gun Toting Liberal. Where facts and opinions are drawn from and debated by many well written articles in the Main Stream Media (MSM). Many of the comments on the site are from very well versed readers and combined they debate the issues on their merits. Something you can not do with a television broadcast, newspaper or news magazine.

When it comes to political opinion, the GTL and I do not see eye to eye on all issues but that is half the fun of debating real issues. Has he changed my opinion on some issues, yes he has. Have I changed his opinion on some issues, yes, I like to think that I have.

Over at the Gun Toting Liberal he clearly states what he thinks about the Professors comments and I happen to agree with him…

We ARE the “Press” they spoke of, Mr. Hazinski — NOT you and your biased mainstream media. The town criers. The suspicious Citizens with a pen, sneaking around, playing “gotchya” with our government leaders — THAT’S what a “journalist” does, sir. When you and your multi-national, huge, biased corporations failed to do this, you not only forced our Founding Fathers to roll in their graves, you lost your status as the “Press” and “journalists” and the respect of the American People. You don’t like it, I’m sure. After all, your so-called “profession” is a shrinking and outdated one and your livelihood is in jeapordy. Why? Because the “Press” our Founding Fathers protected in the Constitution had little to do with the concept of people becoming fat, lazy, rich and biased while sitting on their pasty rear ends with a pen. - Gun Toting Liberal

Based on how I write here at Papamoka Straight Talk and from what I have learned from other great “Blog’s”, David Hazinski has probably only visited angry bloggers afflicted with anger management issues. Sites where opposing opinions are met with personal attacks and name calling.

Maybe he needs to visit reality and understand that the American people no longer trust the MSM because they are all biased and rightfully so. They are running a business and making a living from the written word they produce. That is where the difference becomes known between the MSM and bloggers like GTL and myslef. Most bloggers write and report as opinion journalist and never receive a dime for it. Raising my hand here. Three plus years of writing online and still no checks in my mail box.

While the revenue generating machines that are the MSM play to the advertisers and report accordingly they are swayed to slant the stories they provide. Fox swings from its side of the batters box and NBC swings from its. Somewhere in the middle is the general truth and that is what we as bloggers debate on a daily basis.

Sit down Professor, you my friend are yesterdays news and we will leave it at that.

Papamoka

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Virginia Tech Massacre

Picture courtesy of MSNBC

With the madness of one individual comes the endless horror of parents scrambling to find out if their babies are okay. I honestly hope and pray for the families of all that lost a child at Virginia Tech today. My prayers are with the families and for the innocence lost.

I am a firm believer in the second amendment but it is times like these that challenge my beliefs. All it takes is one gun to kill and yet no matter how many laws our nation passes to protect the innocent their will always be one nut job that will break those laws and commit such a horrendous crime. The Washington Post has this piece on todays tradgedy...

Students Recount Shootings
By Joe Holley
Washington Post Staff WriterMonday, April 16, 2007; 3:10 PM

Kristen Bensley, 18, a freshman who lives on the third floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall, just below the floor where the first shooting at Virginia Tech occurred this morning, learned of the violence when her resident adviser knocked on her door and instructed her and her roommate not to leave their room. Bensley, from Bel Air, Md., said police cars lined the road outside her room, and an amplified announcement blared across the campus urging students to remain indoors.

She, like many other students locked down in their rooms in Blacksburg, spent their morning receiving e-mails, contacting loved ones to let them know she was safe and watching the news about their own campus on national television. They traded rumors and bad news and eventually shared their grief.

"I have a few friends on the fourth floor," Bensley said. "They were all evacuated, and they weren't allowed to go back there."

Dustin Lynch, 19, sophomore, from Churchville, Md., north of Baltimore, was out on Drill Field at the time of the shootings, raising money for philanthropy with fellow fraternity brothers from Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He saw police officers carrying unresponsive students out of Norris Hall, a classroom building where most of the shootings took place. He also saw many students evacuated from the building.

"I had seen a bunch of cop cars and heard a lot of sirens," he said. "They were already booking it around Drill Field. I saw them all converge on this one building. The next thing I know, I see different spurts, it looked like different classrooms had gotten out. Hundreds of kids were running out with their hands up showing that they were harmless. There was a small wall that they had to jump over in the grass, and everybody was just running frantically in different groups. After most of the groups got out, I saw a lot of ambulances, probably three or four ambulances, go up as close to the buildings as they could.” – The Washington Post

In our society we prefer prescription drugs for our children to mask the sense of reality and when the prescriptions run out this is and probably will be yet one more incident of a child that has grown into an adult that did not know how to deal with life. That is just my assumption and I have no facts to back that up. I am simply stating as fact that so many of our children have been drugged up to not experience what real life is and when the medications are gone as an adult and post teen level progression into the real world they can not deal with that reality.

I absolutely hate to bring this discussion up but it is what it is. Parents across America are drugging the kids up because mental health professionals have declared war on kids that do not fit in the normal box. If you walk your child into a mental health clinic then that child will walk out of there with a prescription to not have to deal with reality. It’s the sixties generation of free love and free drugs gone mad.

If you think I am wrong then please say so. Do yourself a favor and call your local school nurse and ask her how many medications related to so called psychologically troubled children that need medication to function are dispersed every day in the school environment?. Let me know what you think after that phone call.

What happens to these children when they are fed up on being drugged? Reality is not a friend to anyone and if you can think of someone that has stopped their medication abruptly then you know what situations happen.

In the sixties and seventies this story about what happened today at Virginia Tech never happened. Reality and letting children grow up and function as a human being was meant to be and resulted in grown men and woman that functioned based on past life experience. It’s hard to do that if you are on a constant high from the age of six till eighteen when the med supply stops. That big learning gap on life was missed by many of our children today because the meds junior was on made everything fuzzy so junior was easy to deal with for mom and dad.

What do you think about this travesty of life?

Papamoka

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