Boston Globe: Colleges guard soaring endowments
Many resist congressional pressure to curb tuition hikes, offer more aid
Under growing pressure from Congress, the country's wealthiest colleges and universities are sharply resisting calls to spend more of their soaring endowments to expand financial aid and curb tuition hikes that critics say are putting college beyond the reach of ordinary families.
The pattern of deep-pocketed universities regularly raising tuition while amassing fast-growing fortunes has drawn unusual scrutiny from government leaders and higher education advocates over the past few months. They say elite colleges are hoarding wealth that could help open their doors to more poor and working-class families.
In Massachusetts, 13 institutions boast endowments of more than $500 million. The Boston area's eight wealthiest schools hold a combined fortune approaching $50 billion.
Through lobbyists and national education associations, colleges are fighting a handful of proposals rippling through Congress. Among the most controversial ideas: a requirement that schools spend 5 percent of their endowments each year to help defray costs for students and families.
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...76 institutions surpass[] the $1 billion mark, up from 39 in 2003.
Nowhere are colleges amassing more wealth than in the Boston area. Harvard University's $34 billion endowment is bigger than the gross domestic product of Montana. MIT's $10 billion cache could buy Facebook. Together, Boston College and Boston University could bankroll the entire city budget, with $500 million to spare.
Red Auerbach, the iconic coach and general manager who built 16 Celtics championship teams, was disdainful of cheerleaders, who he feared would distract from the game. The Celtics would have cheerleaders over his dead body, Red said. And so the suits waited. In February 2004, Auerbach told the Globe, "They're just waiting for me to die so they can get cheerleaders." He was right. Two and a half years later, Red was dead, and at the first available opportunity the girls took the court.
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As a fairly recent transplant from New York, I'm a little puzzled by all this. I thought that I was moving to the land of stiff collars and self-restraint. No one thinks of Boston as "sexy." Boston is classic. It's distinguished. It's Brooks Brothers and Bloody Marys.
Maybe that's why the Celtics Dancers' erotic interruptions feel so incongruous. And when I glance around at the game, I see plenty of baffled faces. There are suburban dads in attendance with preteen daughters, shrugging helplessly. They seem to be saying, "These aren't your role models!" There are respectable older gentlemen, like my father-in-law, who sinks deeper into his popcorn. Our eyes don't meet. There are also legions of teenage boys, their eyes like saucers, holding up their cellphones to get the perfect soft-porn picture to show off around school. I guess those are the customers the Celtics are hoping to please.
[A] review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.
My friend, a massage therapist, had this forwarded to him by a client. The kid in the video is her great-nephew. According to my friend, "it's hilarious that the only thing you can clearly make out is him saying "bullshit"".
Almost half of the world's oceans have been seriously affected by over-fishing, pollution and climate change, according to a major study of man's impact on marine life.
Although scientists continue to amass data and tease out the details, all signs in the search for a cause point to stronger winds associated with a warming planet.
Ms. Jacoby, [] the author of seven other books, [] was a fellow at the library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.
Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:
“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.
The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”
“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.
At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”
MILWAUKEE – Representative John Lewis, an iconic figure from the Civil Rights era and one of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most prominent black supporters, said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention.
“In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” said Mr. Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who endorsed Mrs. Clinton last fall. “Something is happening in America and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.”
Mr. Lewis, an elder statesman of the black civil rights establishment who carries great influence among other members of Congress and in the black community, disclosed his decision in an interview as the Service Employees International Union was on the brink of endorsing Mr. Obama. It also came as fresh signs emerged that Mrs. Clinton’s support was beginning to erode from some African American lawmakers who also serve as superdelegates. Representative David Scott of Georgia, who was among the first to defect, said he would not go against the will of voters in his district who overwhelmingly supported Mr. Obama last week.
* Repeatedly voted for (and cosponsored) the Federal Abortion Ban. After the court upheld the ban, he said, "Today's Supreme Court ruling is a victory for those who cherish the sanctity of life and integrity of the judiciary. The ruling ensures that an unacceptable and unjustifiable practice will not be carried out on our innocent children."
* Supported the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, a law that grants separate legal status to an embryo or fetus
* Voted in favor of four anti‐choice U.S. Supreme Court nominees. "I’m proud that we have Justice Alito and Roberts on the United States Supreme Court. I’m very proud to have played a very small role in making that happen." (May 3, 2007 Republican debate)
* Repeatedly voted to deny low‐income women access to abortion care except in cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment
* Voted to permit federally funded Title X family‐planning clinics to decline to counsel women on abortion services
* Voted against lifting the ban that forbids U.S. servicewomen from obtaining abortion services at overseas military hospitals with their own funds
* Voted to require Title X family‐planning clinics to notify a teen’s parent before providing abortion services
* Voted in favor of the Teen Endangerment and Grandmother Incarceration Act
* Voted against the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE)
* Voted to terminate the Title X family‐planning program
* Voted against funding teen‐pregnancy‐prevention programs and ensuring that “abstinence‐only” programs are medically accurate
* Voted to uphold the Global Gag Rule
* Voted for the domestic gag rule, which would have prohibited federally funded family‐planning clinics from providing women with access to full information about their reproductive‐health options
* Voted to de‐fund the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), an organization that provides family‐planning services – not abortion – for the world’s poorest women
* Voted to earmark one‐third of all HIV/AIDS prevention funds for abstinence-only programs
* Voted to take $75 million from the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant to establish a new “abstinence‐only” program
* Voted to impose a federal parental‐consent law on teens seeking birth control. Not abortion. Birth control
* Voted against legislation that would have required insurance coverage of prescription birth control, improved access to emergency contraception, and provided more women with prenatal health care
* Voted to allow medical residency training programs in obstetrics and gynecology to receive federal assistance even if they ignore abortion training requirements
Anecdotal evidence suggests that MSNBC hosts are already feeling the fallout.
To wit: On Tuesday morning, Tucker Carlson, the host of MSNBC’s talk show Tucker, was standing in line at the Palisades Recreation Center in Washington, D.C., waiting to vote in D.C.’s presidential primary. According to a source with knowledge of the situation, a middle-aged woman, standing in line in front of Mr. Carlson, recognized the on-air anchor and began berating Mr. Carlson about MSNBC’s coverage of Hillary Clinton.
According to the source, the irate Washingtonian told Mr. Carlson something to the effect that “when you pick on Hillary, you pick on all women.”
Later the uncomfortable conversation continued outside the voting hub. When reached on Tuesday afternoon at his MSNBC offices in the District, Mr. Carlson declined to comment.
"I have often said, when she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs."
Is he tough enough? That’s the question being asked of Barack Obama. To those who have known the candidate since boyhood, it’s not just those “dreams from my father” that make Obama a contender, but also his mother’s daring, his grandmother’s grit, and his own relentless drive.
[d]espite representing an overwhelmingly Democratic district, [] voted for the Iraq War, for pro-bank bankruptcy legislation, for massive fossil fuels subsidies, for repealing the estate tax, and for letting the likes of Verizon and Comcast have untrammeled control over the Internet.
Just voted....and it was more emotional than I would have guessed, to pull the lever (or in this case touch the screen) next to a woman's name for President of the United States.
Cognitive side effects like memory loss and fuzzy thinking aren't listed on the patient information sheet for Lipitor, the popular cholesterol-lowering drug. But some doctors are voicing concerns that in a small portion of patients, statins like Lipitor may be helping hearts but hurting minds.
"This drug makes women stupid," Orli Etingin, vice chairman of medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital, declared at a recent luncheon discussion sponsored by Project A.L.S. to raise awareness of gender issues and the brain. Dr. Etingin, who is also founder and director of the Iris Cantor Women's Health Center in New York, told of a typical patient in her 40s, unable to concentrate or recall words. Tests found nothing amiss, but when the woman stopped taking Lipitor, the symptoms vanished. When she resumed taking Lipitor, they returned.
"I've seen this in maybe two dozen patients," Dr. Etingin said later, adding that they did better on other statins. "This is just observational, of course. We really need more studies, particularly on cognitive effects and women."
Pfizer Inc.'s Lipitor is the world's best-selling medicine, with revenues of $12.6 billion in 2007. The company says that its safety and efficacy have been demonstrated in more than 400 clinical trials and 145 million patient years of experience, and that the extensive data "do not establish a causal link between Lipitor and memory loss." Pfizer also says it draws conclusions about adverse events from a variety of sources "as opposed to anecdotal inferences by individual providers with a limited data pool."
Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .
Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary’s “thick ankles.” Nixon-trickster Roger Stone’s new Hillary-hating 527 group, “Citizens United Not Timid” (check the capital letters). John McCain answering “How do we beat the bitch?" with “Excellent question!” Would he have dared reply similarly to “How do we beat the black bastard?” For shame.
Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged—and they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.
Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history, including one with the murderous slogan “If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!” Shame.
Goodbye to Comedy Central’s “Southpark” featuring a storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC’s vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.
Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not “Clinton hating,” not “Hillary hating.” This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?
RALEIGH -- Reynolds Coliseum became a pink paradise Sunday in celebration of the third annual Hoops for Hope women's basketball game.
More than 8,000 men and women, young and old, wore ribbons and their favorite shade of pink as N.C. State defeated Boston College 60-41.
The Wolfpack (15-9, 3-6 ACC) wore specially designed pink uniforms and Kay Yow's last name on the back of each jersey to support the team's coach, who was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987 and learned in November that she has stage-four cancer.
"We got Yow on the back of our jerseys because we knew that this day was for her, and all we wanted to do was go out, play for her and play our hardest," said junior guard Shayla Fields.
The latest count of states won by popular vote, plus the margin of victory:
Clinton (10)
Arkansas +43
Oklahoma +24
New York +17
Massachusetts +15
Tennessee +13
California +10
New Jersey +10
Arizona +9
Nevada +6
New Hampshire +3
Obama (19)
Idaho +62
Alaska +50
Kansas +48
Washington +37
Georgia +36
Nebraska +36
Colorado +35
Minnesota +35
Illinois+32
South Carolina +32
North Dakota +24
Louisiana +21
Maine +18
Utah +18
Alabama +14
Delaware +10
Iowa +9
Connecticut +4
Missouri +1
February 7, 2008 -- A CLAWING cat fight over mistaken identity has broken out between New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and a writer for the Times of London.
At the core of the mystery: Did Dowd mistake journalist Michelle Henery, who is black, for Michelle Obama? Or did Henery mistake some other redhead for Dowd?
In a column in the London paper this week, Henery wrote that Dowd, "one of my journalistic heroes," came up to her in the press room after the last Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama debate in LA. ". . . She was in my face, smiling warmly, greeting me like a long-lost friend. My mind went into overdrive trying to figure out why the world-renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times uber-columnist . . . was speaking to me. The shock . . . left me momentarily speechless, but in those few seconds Maureen's sweet smile turned into embarrassed confusion and she scampered off."
Henery continued, "The next day I e-mailed a group of American friends, asking whose doppelganger I was. They all agreed: 'She must have thought you were Michelle Obama.'"
Henery, a 1998 Georgetown University grad, added sarcastically: "Of course! I mean, despite her having almost 15 years on me and more than 3 inches in height, not to mention that she should be immediately recognizable having had her face plastered across every newspaper in America for the past three months, we're like twins . . . I wondered how white America was going to elect a black man for president if they could not even tell us apart." She joked: "Maureen, no hard feelings. When you came up to me, I mistook you for Arianna Huffington."
A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.
The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.
Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States."
Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and leading authority on flotsam, has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years and compares the trash vortex to a living entity: "It moves around like a big animal without a leash." When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," he added.
Missouri is considered a bellwether state because its voters have come down on the side of the winner in every presidential election except one in the past 100 years.
And if I am your nominee, my opponent will not be able to say that I voted for the war in Iraq, because I didn’t, or that I gave George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran, because I haven’t, or that I support the Bush-Cheney doctrine of not talking to leaders we don’t like, because I profoundly disagree with that approach.
Iowa
Dems 227,000
Reps 120,000
Missouri
820,000 Dems
585,000 Reps
Georgia
1,041,000 Dems
953,000 Reps
Minnesota
202,000 Dems
59,000 Reps
Alabama
533,000 Dems
551,000 Reps
South Carolina
530,000 Dems
441,000 Reps
New Hampshire
282,000 Dems
232,000 Reps
The more that Republican voters saw of him, the less they wanted to vote for him.
Army officials in upstate New York instructed representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs not to help disabled soldiers at Fort Drum Army base with their military disability paperwork last year. That paperwork can be crucial because it helps determine whether soldiers will get annual disability payments and health care after they're discharged.
Now soldiers at Fort Drum say they feel betrayed by the institutions that are supposed to support them. The soldiers want to know why the Army would want to stop them from getting help with their disability paperwork and why the VA— whose mission is to help veterans — would agree to the Army's request.
'A Worn Pair of Boots'
One disabled soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he fears retaliation from the military, says it feels like a slap in the face.
"To be tossed aside like a worn-out pair of boots is pretty disheartening," the soldier says. "I always believed the Army would take care of me if I did the best I could, and I've done that."
At a restaurant near Fort Drum, the soldier described his first briefing with the VA office on base. According to the soldier, the VA official told a classroom full of injured troops, "We cannot help you review the narrative summaries of your medical problems." The official said the VA used to help soldiers with the paperwork, but Army officials saw soldiers from Fort Drum getting higher disability ratings with the VA's help than soldiers from other bases. The Army told the VA to stop helping Fort Drum soldiers describe their army injuries, and the VA did as it was told.
The US government has announced plans to open more than 3m acres (about 5,000 square miles) of Alaskan wilderness to logging, mining and road building, angering environmental campaigners who say it will devastate the region. Supporters say the plan for the Tongass National Forest, a refuge for grizzly and black bears, wolves, eagles and wild salmon, will revive the state's timber industry.
The Bush administration plan for the forest, the largest in the US at nearly 17m acres, would open 3.4m acres to logging, road building and other development, including about 2.4m acres that are currently remote and without roads. About 663,000 acres are in areas considered most valuable for timber production.
The move, the latest in a long-running saga over the Tongass forest, effectively reverses the "Roadless Rule" protection given to the area by President Clinton.
Lets see. After 7 years:
* Record oil imports. Check.
* Record oil prices. Check.
* Record trade deficit in oil. Check.
* Endless war in the Persian Gulf. Check.
* Iraqi oil exports below pre-war levels. Check.
Now that’s what the White House calls “Increasing Energy Security.” I’d hate to imagine what it would take for the White House to say we were Decreasing Energy Security.
And don’t get me started on “Confronting Climate Change.” The thing to always bear in mind:
President George W. Bush doesn’t just fiddle while the planet burns, he actively fans the flames and thwarts the fire-fighters.
Thank goodness this is the last Bush SOTU we’ll have to endure.
PARIS (AFP) - The Caribbean's fragile coral reefs were devastated in 2005 by a doubly whammy of record-high temperatures and 13 full-on hurricanes, according to a UN-sponsored report released Monday.
During the last 50 years many Caribbean reefs have lost up to 80 percent of their coral cover, damaging or destroying the main source of livelihood for hundreds of thousands of people, said the report, prepared by a team of scientists and experts at the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network.
The study was jointly sponsored by UNESCO and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.
Coral-based ecosystems are extremely sensitive to temperature increases, which have led over the last 50 years to massive bleaching -- affecting up to 95 percent of the reefs around some islands, including the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Cuba, and the French West Indies.
2005 was the warmest year since records were first kept in 1880, and global warming is likely to increase in years to come, climate scientists have warned.
The League of Conservation Voters has been tracking the number of questions asked of the presidential candidates on the Sunday news shows and the debates televised by the major networks. Of the more than 2,900 questions asked, only four have mentioned the words "global warming."
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
Supports a cap-and-trade system on emissions and a new $50 billion fund for clean energy, which she predicts could help create 5 million new jobs. She says all new coal plants should have to capture their carbon.
BARACK OBAMA
Wants economy-wide limits on emissions and would require big carbon emitters to pay for the right to emit greenhouse gases. Like Clinton and Edwards, he supports increasing automobile fuel economy to at least 40 mpg within 10 years.
JOHN EDWARDS
Opposes expanding nuclear power and backs a moratorium on new coal plants that don't capture their carbon. Like Clinton and Obama, he would require utilities to get 25 percent of their power from renewables by 2020.
JOHN MCCAIN
Has been a chief sponsor of a bill since 2003 to cap greenhouse gas emissions, but his measure would not go as far as some proposals in Congress in cutting emissions. He believes new coal plants should be equipped to store carbon.
RUDY GIULIANI
Says global warming is real, but he prefers voluntary measures by industry to cut emissions, rather than government regulation. He's called for more investment to boost conservation and energy efficiency.
MITT ROMNEY [Of course he has changed his position!]
Backed a state climate action plan when he was governor of Massachusetts but now says Republicans should not "embrace the ideas of Al Gore." Before the Michigan primary, which he won, he criticized "Washington-dictated" increases in fuel economy.
MIKE HUCKABEE
Supports a cap-and-trade system but has not laid out a detailed plan. He favors drilling for oil offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge but only until the United States can wean itself off oil. He supported the recently passed fuel economy increase to 35 miles per gallon by 2020.
RON PAUL
Says the jury is still out on whether global warming is human-caused. He advocates markets as the best way to address all environmental problems and has proposed abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency.
Jan. 28, 2008 | At the Republican debate Thursday night in Boca Raton, Fla., moderator Tim Russert asked Rudy Giuliani about global warming. "Florida has 1,200 miles of beautiful coast, which can be threatened with climate change, global warming, in a major way, as the world's population goes from 6 billion to 9 billion and the level of greenhouse gases doubles over the next 20 to 30 years," Russert said. "Yet you are against a mandatory cap on greenhouse gases. Why?" Giuliani's jumbled answer included a bevy of buzzwords such as "hybrid vehicles," "biofuels," "carbon sequestration" and "clean coal," before he asserted that U.S. industry would be "crushed" if we curbed our greenhouse gases.
YOU AND everyone you love are riding on a large bus. The bus driver, unskilled and careless, drives too fast, ignores traffic signals, and barrels off the road occasionally. Because the bus is huge, other vehicles swerve to get out of its way, with cars crashing repeatedly. But your driver just keeps going, leaving carnage in his wake. Naturally, you are terrified - but your reactions are irrelevant.
Finally, the bus itself crashes, killing many. Miraculously, you and your loved ones climb out of the wreckage. A second bus is standing by, and you gratefully scramble aboard. The engine starts up, but then the bus lurches dangerously onto the road, going too fast. Only then do you see that this new bus has the same driver, and he has learned nothing. Welcome to the United States of America. And welcome to the annual State of the Union address.
Every year, the nation looks up from the wreckage, only to see that the same unskilled and careless driver is still at the wheel, bombing along. Each January, he explains himself. You already know what he will say. His one admirable quality is that, over the years, he has always said exactly what to expect. A review of the Bush speeches has an "I told you so" quality, going back to the start. That raises the question, Why have you repeatedly been surprised?
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