I think the clear cut winners are the Asian American kids, specifically the really smart ones.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme...orth-carolina/

Ready for the Student Debt ruling now.

:eek:

Oh yeah. Remember the exchanges we had previously.

Let me know if you want to discuss. If not, np

Fuck those black kids!

Glad about the ruling. There are better ways of dealing with racism than with more racism.

Then why wasn't the legacy free pass removed?

My view on this, which is greatly shaped by coaching at inner city schools is, we need to prepare kids better for gaining entrance and competing for those academic schollies than we do now.

I would like to see the focus shift away from affirmative action for the sake of numbers, to getting more programs in place to identify and prepare these kids, so they go into the process on equal footing.

Funnel money to grants that allow kids a better stipend, if they have high academic achievement, to make college a more viable option. We have kids at the last school I coached at that passed on junior college and small college offers, which would have at least helped on tuition, because they had to work to help the family. These are kids that are not going to get an FBS or FCS offer and NIL money, so they take the path to make money quicker.

Speaking of athletics, the fact is more players/families from inner city/impoverished areas but way too many eggs in the athletic basket, when there is so much more money available for academic excellence. That's a mindset that needs to change and some of that needs to come from the home.

We need programs that allow underserved kids to do internships, if they reach certain academic marks, with large companies that open up not only careers, but opportunities to get tuition assistance down the road. This may seem like affirmative action to some, but it's not, because you are rewarding high achievers and opening doors some kids/families might not know they have, so you still have to work and earn it. I am in my companies MOSIAC group and I suggested they so something like this, everyone loved it, all on board, then crickets......

Ultimately the solution, at least to me, YMMV, is to address equality of opportunity before it gets to checking race boxes on a college app. And yes I know kids still have to qualify at the colleges they pursue, but the playing field is going to completely leveled with earlier intervention and innovation, not just holding on to the status quo because it is comfortable.

My rant/2 cents

I will add that I have no degree, but have progressed to a high level in my career, because I was a kid from a bad neighborhood that got a chance to show what he could do. I don't know if I would have gotten that back then if I was not white. So yeah, there was a place for affirmative action so kids that looked like me were not the only success story from my hood. But let's do things to eliminate the need for it.

I'm all for it. Don't know if there's a lawsuit on it but love to be an attorney and sue. And not just the rich Ivy schools but also state universities.

And while I'm on that, I'd also sue universities to clawback some of the tuition payments for the students struggling with student debt. I don't understand why universities are not part of the debt relief solution. I get not all of it or even most of it, but certainly some of it.

What grounds are there to sue universities for tuition payments?

Beats me, but this sounds promising.

5 higher education lawsuits to watch in 2023 | Higher Ed Dive

Maybe this also

https://www.opb.org/article/2022/07/...-loans-erased/

People don't realize just how many high academic achievers apply to schools each year. My daughter's class is a good example, the valedictorian had a 1580 on the SAT and got waitlisted or rejected by every selective school he applied to except Georgia Tech. WHatever the bar is set to, there are just more applicants than their are spots for high academic achievers.

What became clear to me is that those schools want to see excellence in something besides just academics. Being involved is meaningless, but having something that is or could be national or global recognition is really important. You have to clear the academic bar, but that's the first, not the only hurdle.

I doubt this ruling changes the demo of selective school classes much at all.

I think most of us would have to look back and see where they've been given access to opportunities and see others that were given many more opportunities to their connections/nepotism. Meritocracy is a myth. The Supreme Court just protected their class.

BTW, perfect timing

As Supreme Court guts affirmative action, what's next for legacy admissions? - MarketWatch

I think a lot of us would like that, but it's pretty apparent that one side doesn't want that (getting rid of the Dept. of Ed, school vouchers and the move to private/privatized schools).

I know I give you a lot of shit but you have to admit that choosing a clear cut winner based on race in this case is problematic, no? I don't know if you are right or wrong. Just commenting on the wording given the context of the case and well if there is a winner in terms of race, then there must be a loser in terms of race.


I say this with nothing but sincerity and will try to ask this without it coming off as snarky.

Couldn't we have found those better ways of dealing with racism against those who have and might have benefited from AA before resorting back to a system we know did not benefit those people? I was argue that finding those better ways is less of a concern now than it was before today's ruling.

One thing I noted from the ruling is Roberts said something to the affect of that colleges can still take into account in applications.

"However, in an important caveat, Roberts left open the idea that schools could consider a candidate's discussion of how race affected their life, such as through discrimination."

Considering how opaque school admissions procedure is, I think that it's going to be very interesting to see how it turns into an unspoken factor, rather than a deciding factor.

The clear cut winner comment was based on below. The presumption of the lawsuit is that Asian kids were being discriminated against.


If winner-loser is defined as # of kids/race enrolled, you are right there are losers also. Although not a pure zero sum game, the "pie" is fixed (or won't/can't scale as much as demand). So more for one "race" (winner) means less for other "races" (losers).

I noticed that too. I think your bolded section is likely true in many cases.

I want to hear more specifics on these "potentially distinct interests" found in the service academies as opposed to the civilian schools. Are AAPI students not being denied admissions to the service academies? If not, how are the service academies accomplishing such a feat without getting rid of race based admissions? Seems like something that should be shared with the other schools to me.

Military Academies Exempt From SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ban

The service academics require a member of Congress, doesn't it? Probably doesn't want to piss off the congresscritters

I imagine there are many ways around this, some they already use. I have a feeling my son got into a highly competitive school because part of Williams admission consideration is based on how many students come from the area the applicant lives. Williams doesn't get very many students from this area which gave him a leg up. I imagine it would be pretty easy for Ivy league schools just start favoring students from underprivileged areas, which generally are minority areas as well.

Almost all of the selective schools have huge endowments. They should all be much larger institutions or face a crippling tax on their endowments. Harvard should be two or three times its current size.

The degree that it will dilute the quality will more than be made up for by expanding access.

You made me look, and the list of the largest endowments is interesting. Stanford actually has the highest, but Harvard is close behind. They both almost double Yale and Princeton. The most surprising one is Emory, that actually has an as large or larger endowment than several Ivy schools.

Emory got a gift of $100,000,000 in Coke stock (the largest ever at the time) right before Coke stock really took off.

It went from a good regional school to a national university pretty much overnight as a result.

Legacy admissions is not going anywhere. Tax-exempt status for private schools should absolutely be looked at.

People should read what Thomas wrote. Sort of implies he believes that black students should attend black schools and white kids should attend white schools.

Probably the most shocking for me is that so many people speak 2-3 languages over there. It's just something they're taught at a young age. Everyone I worked with from Finland could speak 3 (Finnish, English, Russian).

I would say the other big shock was infrastructure. Outside of Heathrow, there is not a single European airport I've been to that was worse than any airport in America. Their transportation system just embarrasses us (especially in parts of Asia). I did the Guangzhou to Beijing train, which covers like half of China, and it was incredible. Come home to ride the L, which is considered very good by American standards and it's like 3rd world in comparison.

I don't think the ruling will move the needle all that much, most of the preferential admits at Ivy League schools are tied to legacies and recruited athletes.

Honestly, when you have 20 applicants vying for one seat, with most having pretty similar credentials (both academic and extracurricular), I find it hard to believe you can make admission decisions on purely objective, let alone quantitative criteria.

To be fair, I would add that this would be more of a big deal at schools where admissions are a little less competitive, and/or where Donor/Legacy/Athletic admits don't comprise such a large proportion of the student body.

My wifes sister lives in England and we visit relatively often. I have never driven a car there yet can get around easily anywhere we want to go. The rail system is amazing. Plus the names of the stations are awesome.

Wow, the L is easily the best mass transit system I have been on in the US, from comfort, convenience and timeliness. We have some train trips scheduled when we go to Italy later this year, so looking forward to them more than I was hearing this.

White students make up about 40% of the enrollment in Havard. US population is about 75%.
Asians make up almost 30% of the enrollment at Harvard. They make up about 6% of the population in the US.

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Np. Will just agree to disagree, sir.

Appreciate the civil (and normal) pass.

This is exciting. Hopefully, we'll have another Jackson personal diss of Thomas.

Definitely not a fan of this ruling:

Supreme Court injustice: ‘legal innocence’ is not enough | The Hill

Not sure how a guy can be in a jail for something that was found not to be a crime.

SCOTUS is taking a case for next year regarding domestic violence restraining orders and guns. I don't think they care much about being consistent, but I'm not sure how they can uphold these when gun laws ow need to be based on 18th-century mindsets.

Supreme Court (as expected) strikes down student loan relief.

And (as expected) leftist twitter is attacking Biden for "broken promises."

Not sure what they want him to do other than take the Army and, like, attack the Supreme Court building or something.

Attacks on Biden from the left are tiring.

The expected result, so not a great surprise.

Biden has said no more extensions on the repayment pause. I read the pause was justified by the pandemic but now the pandemic is "over". If he wants, I'd think he can come up with some sort of reason for a new pause as repayments re-start in Sep.

Supreme Court blocks Biden's student loan forgiveness program | CNN Politics

If I am Biden and the Dems I absolutely blast the message for the next 14 months if you want student loan forgiveness the dems need to take back congress and hold the senate and the white house.

Usually when some kind of policy or legal effort fails, like in a jury trial or appellate argument, those people will say that the lawyers rigged it to lose on purpose (for some reason).

There is this sentiment on the far left that you're committed enough, you can just do whatever you want. Same as the far right I guess.

I wonder how many really are "leftists" or how many are people on the right trying to cause divisiveness.

Yeah. The ole' "Bernie Sanders would just lock the GOP Congresspeople in a room and not let them leave until he convinced them to enact Medicare for All."

Oh. I had no idea it was that easy.

I can see issues with some individual issues and topics with Biden, but overall, I don't see how anyone on the left could be disappointed. He's done a remarkable job as President considering the circumstances.

Student loan debt needs to be addressed, but this administration has done everything it can. If this is such an important issue then voters need to show up.

Nothing is going to get done on something like that unless they can somehow get 60 Senators, and even then none can be a Manchin or a Sinema.

You don't need to honor the weird filibuster rule. Republicans won't when they want something passed.

Do you guys know who one of the most prominent Senators was in 2005 who voted to gut bankruptcy protection on student loans which has led to this crisis? Like I get there isn't much he can do now but he's also largely responsible for the problem in the first place.

This.

... and here's his solution.

I'm thinking its more of a "here's 12 more transition/months before you really have to start paying off student debt". He probably should have come up with a 20-24 month transition period for after elections. But a pretty good kick-the-can down the road.

Also ...


If/when I have grandkids that need a student loans, I'm definitely going to tell them to go government route.

Huh?

Colorado web designer told Supreme Court a man sought her services for his same-sex wedding. He says he didn't -- and he's straight | CNN Politics

FOFC legal experts, please clarify.

Did the SCOTUS and all the courts below them just give an opinion on a case that was based on something akin to a What Would Happen If This Happened?

Yeah, they basically ruled on a hypothetical and the plaintiff committed perjury while the attorneys suborned perjury. Really weird case.

Some Christian should sue over interest payments as it is against their religion.

I'm curious why you say this (no argument forthcoming, just a question). Everything I've seen shows support for loan forgiveness to be either an even split or a small margin in favor. It's not one of those issues where there's 60-70% support and just being stonewalled.

Because the people effected are largely young people and recent grads and that would be a huge block to lock up. That demo historically doesn’t show up to vote. They are already fired up about Dobbs et Al. Do what you can to get them to the polls.

From 538:

I get being an advocate for student debt forgiveness for others. But let's not be personally complaining about it when you can clearly afford to pay off your own without the handout. Just be an advocate and use other real & relevant examples.

NY Democrat complains about her student debt after SCOTUS ruling, gets slammed for million dollar home
The clincher is


It's pretty clear if you and husband can afford a $1.14M home, you can afford to repay back the loan. As Dave Ramsey would say, eat beans & rice until you are debt free (other than for mortgage).

The student loan thing is really tough because I can see both sides of it. It is totally reasonable for someone who worked to pay off debts, or learned a trade and never went to school, to be pissed about it. Wife and I sacrifices and worked hard to pay ours off.

That being said, our tax dollars go to a bevy of things that would never benefit us, so how is this any different. Then you factor in the hypocrisy of billions of PPP loans forgiven.

I'm all for it because I think it would be an amazing stimulus for the economy. If people have an extra 3-4 hundred a month they are likely going to spend that on goods and services.

I wonder how much of the student loan forgiveness backlash is based less on the idea of everyone had to pay off their debts and more on who might be getting their student loan debts forgiven. I have seen a lot of teachers have their debt forgiven. I have yet to hear anyone else who has student loans complain about that sort of program like the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Almost all see those programs as good things and worthy of their tax dollars even though those non teachers might be still paying of their own student loans or had already paid theirs off. Teachers it seems have earned the right to have their debts forgiven.

Almost all of the people who are against these programs I have talked with instantly can come up with the name of a guy or gal from their college days who received the full complement of financial aid and used the extra money to party or go on vacations etc. People want the person who used their extra student loan money to get the ocean side view during Spring Break to pay back every dime and they don't want their tax dollars to forgive one penny.

From what I can tell, whether you believe in forgiving the loans or not comes down to whether you believe you are forgiving more of the loans of the first category or the second group.

I think you are missing another group in there - people that didn’t go to college or did and paid off their loans that might still be ok with this if it did anything for their kids currently in college or heading that way in the future. This does nothing for them.

Our entire economy is built on people being fucking idiots about their money. People buying homes they can't afford, running up credit card debt they can't pay, taking out loans to start up businesses that will fail.

You start expecting everyone to do the right thing and the economy will collapse. Home prices will plummet. Demand for consumer goods will drop off a cliff

But yeah, let's expect everyone to pay off their loans by just all of a sudden becoming financial wizards when the cost of tuition has outpaced wage increases by 8x.

There is a pressing public interest in keeping people educated. We should act like it and forgive student debt, then making college more affordable after that

I think you need to do step 2 first before step 1 to get people on board. No one trusts step 2 (make it more affordable will happen).

Plenty of other changes need to happen too. Perhaps state schools should actually let in kids from their state.

In progress, let's hope it's successful.

I'd like to see the statistics as to how legacy admissions compare with general admissions. If legacy admissions legitimately "score average or higher" (which is probably not true) than the average, then fine. If they "score lower" than average, let it all come out.

Harvard lawsuit alleges school gives preferential treatment to legacy admissions, who are 'overwhelmingly' White, and cites affirmative action ruling | CNN

Not sure what score you are looking for but I found this.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...letes-n1060361

Looks like Hunter left something behind in his latest trip to the White House.

Cocaine reportedly found in White House as Secret Service opens investigation

Already been ruled out as being his

Thanks, yup no surprise.

I do think its fair to ask if we rule out race in admissions, rule out legacy admissions, should we also rule out donor-based and athletic admissions (even not including the big 3 sports)?

I'm still on the side that we need to think about how to intelligently move away from traditional college/university as our education model. I'm absolutely 100% in favor of education being important as a life-long endeavor. I'm also convinced that we will eventually need to find better ways of doing that than college, and that most of the advantages that college once had have been eclipsed/made irrelevant by technological and societal change. The sooner we figure that out and adapt, the better future generations will be.

Would have happened during the Trump Administration too except Junior hoovered all of it up with his nose.

I agree 100%, but good luck with that. Every parent wants their kid to have a good white collar job, and any good white collar job requires a B.A. as a minimum.

And we're not going to improve K-12 education because the communities where 90% of it is paid for by property taxes are never going to vote for a system which uses solely state or federal money instead, even if you tell them their property taxes will go down as a result (because they like their better schools).

I hate to be unbelievably pessimistic, but I think it only changes when it fails completely, but I'm not 100% sure what that looks like because there's good evidence that it's already in failure.

How about we integrate a choice of basically 13 and 14th grades that include trade type training? Every county has a post secondary school that students can choose trades to train in, and couple also include a community college level for those who seek a associates type degree. I mean we do basically have that in most areas but people don't realize it. Tech schools and community colleges provide free to near free opportunities for further education and training in trades. I feel like if we integrate it more, give seniors a choice to seamlessly choose the training that desire, it might be utilized more.

I think another issue is that we all need to come together and decide whether or not college is education or job training. If its job training, we can probably eliminate requirements (that 18th century Irish lit class I had to take didn't do much for me as an engineer) and maybe majors too. Seems like schools believe they are one thing, and everyone else believes they are the other.

Definitely tweak our higher education model but I would not "move away" from it. Keep the 80, toss the 20 (or in this case, it may be 70-30).

Note that approx. 62% HS grads go to college.


So there are 38%+ that needs to be well prepared for vocational, trade, apprenticeships etc. I do think some effort/funds need to be allocated to boost that segment. I don't think everyone should be encouraged to go to a 4 year college. Something that people can make a living at like an electrician, plumber, oil rig roughneck etc.

What is it you think are .... "the advantages that college once had have been eclipsed/made irrelevant by technological and societal change"?

I think the White House should be seized under Civil Asset Forteiture. Its only fair. It's obviously a drug den. Kamala Harris was a big proponent of this tactic when she was a DA.

The idea that we are still funding K-12 public school education with mostly property taxes is beyond ridiculous.

On the lost of no real consequence that is definitely going to be treated like a major thing, I have feeling this is about to the top 5.

Unless its Joe that is snorting ...

If Joe is snorting cocaine at his age, more power to him. I think we should give a pass to anyone over 80. If you can snort an 8-ball and survive, go for it.

That would maker retirement homes a lot more interesting!

I believe after a certain age, you should do what you want. Joe has certainly hit that age.

Eat what you want. Drink what you want. Smoke what you want. Single and want to have a kid with a woman that is 30-40-50 years younger, sure. Want to be a sugar mommy to that pool boy, no problem.

But my limit is at cocaine when you have a finger on the button.

Meh, we had Donald Fucking Trump in charge of the nuclear arsenal and also Nixon who was reportedly routinely hammered during his last year in office, so I'm not particularly worried about a fictional Biden-on-coke scenario.

And a mentally declining Ronald Reagan as well.

The thing is, we don't. About 40% of all school funding is from property taxes, with almost 50% being from state taxes and the rest from federal or some random local sources.

But it varies widely from district to district. My district, which is wealthy, gets 90% of its funding from property taxes. Chicago Public Schools, on the other hand, gets 50% of its funding from local sources (mainly property tax) and the other 50% is roughly split between state & federal funding.

Now, a lot of that state & federal funding is directed for students who need extra help, of which my district has less (though we do have 25% on free & reduced lunch), but still, the advantages my district has (and other wealthy districts have) should be obvious. And that's not even talking about the districts in wealthy communities where residents will raise money for capital expenses like new athletic centers, libraries, etc....

Like much of the rest of everything in America, it is an unfair system that benefits the wealthy. Thus, the goal of every American is to make it past that dividing line into that "wealthy" cohort, so as to utilize all the benefits that confers. Otherwise life sucks for you.

True, but the difference with Reagan was that he was surrounded by a bunch of heavyweight, highly-experienced politicians who basically ran his administration from Day One anyway.

We pretty well do. If you are tossed in jail the county has to assume your medical costs. You would be floored at how often the cops come into nursing homes to get drugs out of rooms with no charges filed.

Hmmm, I never thought about that. Interesting about nursing homes

I have heard Viagra use is rampant, really didn't know about other drugs.

It sounds like the bag, which they haven't even confirmed if it's cocaine or not, was found in a common area where tours pass through. Like I don't doubt that plenty of people in DC are doing coke, I think the most likely explanation is that someone on a tour or a low level staffer panicked and just dumped the baggy.

Line-item vetoes are bad.

Line-item veto is incredibly dumb but that may be the best use of it I've ever seen. I can't believe Wisconsin still allows that. I think they had a Governor years ago that crossed out like 98% of the words of a bill so that it completely changed the meaning of the bill to something he wanted instead.

Worth noting that Wisconsin state legislature is the most gerrymandered in the country. It's practically impossible for Democrats to take control now. So if one party wants to play games with the letter of the law, turnabout is fair play.

I don’t care if Biden is shooting up black tar heroine and having hookers funnel four loko directly into his anal cavity he would still be better than trump.

Yep. THis is legislative woowooism from the governor.

Fascinating article.

Never heard of this before. It sounds valid but don't really know. Basically from a long time ago.

I'd love it if we can start the negotiations now & just do a 1:1. Not sure how the markets would react or any unintended consequences.

China is in default on a trillion dollars in debt to US bondholders. Will the US force repayment? | The Hill

You guys are all focused on the coke in the WH and are missing the big Biden story. He has sleep apnea and uses a CPAP machine.

How else do you think the Deep State mind controls him?

Article wasn't that important but this pic stuck out. Joe's looking old, a little too old (need a better makeup person).

re: prior series of post on the worth of public debate, I do want to see Joe vs (whoever) and see how he performs.

You have 4 years of policy making. Who gives a shit about some 60 minute debate?

If he fumbles and looks out of it, there is no way you can say that wouldn't damage him.

Where did I say it wouldn't?

My point is if you're basing your vote off of a 60 minute debate rather than 4 years of solid policy making you're an extremally ignorant voter.

I mean, it's pathetic that people are gonna be like, " yeah I know he has created record jobs, led us out of covid, passed the biggest infrastructure bill of all time, enacted legislation to make us less dependent on foreign chip makers, wasn't a worldwide embarrassment, etc...but in his debate he lost his train of thought twice and when he walked off stage he made a left instead of a right so I'm gonna have to vote for the anti vaxxer supported by Steve Bannon or the insurrection guy. "

It's lunacy

trump...


it's literally the answer for any question because he's fucked it up somewhere yet....


I get the point though. The people who vote for trump simply don't care, but that's not the case for those who vote for Biden. But ultimately, if it's a fair comparison, my previous point remains.

On the other hand, if you think some of that is inaccurate, some of it he shouldn't be given credit for, and some of it is outright negative ...

I'm 100% with you on the debate stuff, and I plan on voting Biden again due to a lack of other options, but at the same time I think his presidency has been a disappointment.

I would love a younger candidate but I think his presidency has been fine. Especially on the heels of Trump and taking office during a pandemic. He now also has to deal with a GOP controlled house that literally has no plan other than culture wars and impeachments.

Once again, you way overestimate the intelligence and the even how much the average voter even pays attention.