Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for August 09, 2012

You have to admire President King’s honesty.

no anorexic or bulimic models

Whenever anything is for profit, there will be an incentive to cut corners.

“…the profit motive is not always the best!”πBut when it is regulated by effective, honest government of the people, by the people, and for the people, it can be.πTwo athletes competing against each other (they may even be friends, even brothers who love each other) when the race is regulated by fair rules and regulated by honest officials, then the profit motive — to win the gold — can produce the best product: the fastest 200 meters ever. Or marathon. πAppropriate regulation of corporations (no campaign donations, no writing of legislation, no “insider trading” — just honest, fixed-rate mortgages to folks with good credit rating, and good jobs who can make the payments. πAmong Universities, say Stanford against Harvard: which who produces “the best, the brightest and the most honest” get the best jobs. As long as there are rules, regulations and controls (even to the point of drone camcorders on every student’s test paper, if that’s what it takes to eradicate cheating), then might produce high quality students.πYou’re probably too young to remember the idealistic scientists and engineers who back home in WWII, invented better and more lethal tanks, faster plains, bugger stronger carriers, such as the ENTERPRISE. The atomic works at Oak Ridge, TN; Los Alamos, NM; and Hanford, WA helped to defeat Japan and save a million U.S. servicemen’s lives.πHealthy competition drove these efforts to improve and make something better and better — enough to overcome our enemies.πI’m not saying we should start another war. I’m saying that when war is necessary, thrust on us, declared against us, then we should go all out to win.πLikewise with the space race to the moon. We have both cooperation and competition among scientists and engineers: scientist competing against scientist and engineer against engineer. But in order to do that we had to have the universities producing “the best and the brightest” to feed into the whole NASA system. πA third example: President Eisenhower and the Interstate system we enjoy today was built largely with both competition and cooperation working as long as it is properly regulated against corruption, inefficiency, etc. on the job. πThere’s plenty of work to do on, for instance, our infrastructure. We need a “Manhattan Project:” to redo pipes, bridges, electrical distribution, canals, etc. in an environmental friendly way.πWe need new sources of power such as SOLARES which launches thousands or tens of thousands of mylar mirrors that unfurl after launch and reflect ordinary sunlight to photovoltaic receptor clusters on earth in a circle as large as a city that could pump out much more energy than the US uses today from all “dirty” sources, such as coal-fired plants, oil-fired plants, and natural gas-fired plants. And there could be a limitless supply of SOLARES “cities” ringing the globe. This is the proposal of scientist Ken Billman when he worked for the NASA installation at Mountain View, California.πAnd not only electricity could be produced. When you have enough cheap power, such as SOLARES would provide, you and use it, for instance to "crack water molecules H2O apart into pure water and pure hydrogen. Then, an engine burning this cleanest of clean fuel: hydrogen and oxygen, slams back together again producing purest water, but with that water an enormous release of pure energy that can power any car as well as gasoline. What comes out the exhaust pipe? Pure water and only pure water.πSOLARES construction would require scientists, engineers, astronauts, and all the requisite support personnel.πHow I wish President Obama could catch the SOLARES vision. SOLARES would not contribute to global warming because it would emit no CO2 (carbon dioxide) or any other global warming gasses. πUnder these scenarios and many others, such as the Mars project, can make our future look brighter than ever before.πDylan Thomas Pi

What you don’t realize is, the same thing happens in state universities. There is a tacit agreement between students and faculty which is that “I’ll give you high grades and you can keep your scholarship, if you give me good evaluations so I can keep my lucrative teaching salary.”

Look up Sayre’s Law: “Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.”

@wcorvi:“lucrative teaching salary”…HAHAHAHA, that was almost funnier than the strip!

Exorbitant salaries, tenured professors who don’t teach, run away spending, no wonder the student loan rate and tuitions are so high. Most universities are run by liberals who have no clue about economics and only care about their bloated salaries. There’s where the protesters should be, not wall street.

stupid people, the right wing ,has effed this country so much we couldn’t compete with Guatemala/Honduras, much less Portugal. We’d be fortunate to be like Portugal, where people are valued just for being human. corrupt Business has ruined America beyond salvation. those clueless rightwingers are Satan’s helpers. and we deserve all the graft and corruption when profits are valued over people. Banana Republics are more fortunate than we are at present with such Rightwingers’PR bs running.

sad to see such non thinking propaganda by some. seems the Fascists have taken over the education system when you see such mindless chatter.

ah, but this is America, where the Dollar is king and the people are cluess, mindless idiots.

long live Rush, Reagan et al. idiocracy at its best!!

If profit is all that matters (see Mitt Romney), anything that generates one will be worked until it is exhausted (see also prison system). Once they’ve gotten every penny out of it, they will abandon it for something else until that’s exhausted.

Education and health care may not be enumerated functions in the Constitution but I believe they are covered. First is the preamble to the Constitution.We the People of the United States, in order to … promote the general welfare, … do ordain and establish this Constituion for the United States of America.Then you have Article 1, Section 8 which reads: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of United States; ….Now what could be more important to the general welfare of this great nation than educating its citizens and keeping them healthy? I cannot think of much else.

I wonder how much people think professors make. Even at large state institutions. It’s public record, go look it up. Private institutions would give some people a bigger shock. In some places, high school teachers make more.

This strip really puts every in perspective in terms of cost per student. Also, in terms of what for profit school CEOs are being compensated vs university presidents, even Harvard.

“Ad astra per aspera” = “to the stars via adversity" (Latin to English)

I think the local Strayer in my area closed. Good.

Sometimes he even gets it right. And that’s not capitalism, it’s CONTROLLED theft.

“I’m not in it.” The perennial complaint of the ever-hopeful “soon to be rich” addressed by Ryan, Romney, and Rush, the “three R’s” of disinformation, deception, and denial.

You’ll never progress in the Republican party.

The Federal Government was deliberately given broad powers by the “General Welfare” clause of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers strongly believed in providing free public education for the People. They understood that their experiment in democracy would not work without an educated electorate.

Aside from the “General Welfare” provision, most education is funded and operated by state and local governments, so your comment has no substance.

I believe that would come under the heading “to promote the general welfare” which IS part of the Constitution.

“I’ve detested them since ’81, and “reaganomics”.”I’ve tried to examine both parties for the best ideas, but I’ve decided Bob Dole was the last honorable Republican, and I heartily concur with you ever since W crawled out from under his rock and was worshipped by them.

“Too much intelligence for liberals who follow this comic strip.”πFirst: Labeling is decidedly unhelpful.πSecond: Intelligence, I believe, is NOT at issue. There is plenty of intelligence on both sides. The Nazis had plenty of highly educated, intelligent people — but the anti-Nazis did too. πIntelligent evil exists. It is a wonder that in the 1930s when young Adolf Hitler was rising to ultimate power (with plenty of supporters in the US, incidentally), Germany was probably the most highly advanced nation, per capita, in the world.πWhy, then, Hitler? Well, Germany had lost WWI and was horribly mistreated by the Treaty of Versailles. He took advantage of the feelings and sensitivities of the German people, armed Germany, scapegoated the Jewish people (to prevent guilt?), and began invading the nations round about.πIntelligence existed on both sides. Intelligence is not an issue. Intelligent evil, though is very much an issue. Intelligent evil on Wall Street exists, is currently in power “from the prairies to the mountains to the oceans white with foam” and MUST be confronted and destroyed (through legal means) in order for the people to prosper. Otherwise we’re headed for wage slavery “from sea to shining sea”.

Funny how you seem to think you know how others minds work! Hang the label “liberal” on them, and for you, all analysis of them is done, they MUST be idiots, right? Must be so comforting to live in such a small, fully defined, colorless world.

Excellent, thoughtful essays and responses on here today. Thank you DTpi, DragonRyder and others. If only these thoughts and ideas could be disseminated amongst, and accepted by, the people of this country.I still believe in the inherent rightness of the U.S. and hope that we can somehow come back from this hateful, partisan brinkmanship that is consuming too much of our time and energy. My biggest fear is that we are inexorably spiraling down into what Robert Heinlein labeled “The Crazy Years”

Who would ever believe that all these intelligent and informative comments could be found in a comic strip blog !!!Some times I feel guilty over the time I spend here, but there are days I wish I could print out these comments.

“. . . I am afraid [of] empire, torture, Crusades . . . as hard line as any Islamic theocrat.”πAgreed, NG49. I have exactly the same fear. Nor is it all due to misunderstanding or misreading of Christian scripture either. The problems are far more complex than any in the mathematical sciences. For instance, read Numbers 31.πHere the Israelites, on their way to the Promised Land, had defeated the Midianites (both militants AND civilians in an area south of the Dead Sea. I’m using the Jewish Bible, Tanakh translation, 1999). πMoses, the leader (somewhat like the U.S. commander in chief, the President), “became angry with the commanders of the [conquering Hebrew] army ….” Why?πBecause "you have spared every female! Yet they are the very ones who, at the bidding of [the fertility god] Balaam, induced the Israelites to trespass against the Lord [by having ritual sex with the Israelite men]. “Now, therefore [commands Moses], slay every male among the children, and say also every woman who has [had sex with a man]; but spare every young woman who has not [had sex with] a man.”πThe New International Version (NIV) translates: “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”πThere are many issues with this passage of Scripture. Here are some:π1. How would a young male Israelite soldier know which 12-18 year-old girl was a virgin? By ripping off her robe and undergarments and examining her vagina to see if her hymen was intact. Today this would be a war crime, but it was ordered by Commander-in-Chief Moses who was in turn under God’s command. π2. Killing all the boys would today be a war crime.π3. Killing a girl whose hymen had been broken would today be a war crime.π4. Taking a girl as a sex slave would today be a war crime. She could NOT be taken as a wife, since the Hebrews were not allowed to have Midianite (or ANY non-Hebrew) wives. Though they were allowed to have multiple wives as well as non-Hebrew slaves, who, like Abraham’s Hagar, could double as sex partners. πNow I am a Christian, and I don’t present this terrible text here for any prurient reason or to challenge Scripture as a whole. I present it, NG49, because it supports your fears. Fundamentalists of any religious group (Christian or ultra-Orthodox Jews) can take passages like this one (and there are a number of others from which to choose), and use them literally — just as the extremist Muslims or Islamists do to the Kur’an — and use it criminally as a reason to slaughter and abuse people today.πSo now you understand, NG49, why I share your fear.

Trust me, “ultra-Orthodox Jews” are not out hunting for Midianites to kill and/or marry (after conversion, of course).I have a problem ascribing modern values to ancient times, as if we could retroactively go back and prosecute them. But I am also afraid of a modern religious revival, given many people’s proclivity to redefine religion in their own image.

“Don’t wantonly kill. Don’t steal. …. These are the very simple, secular, foundation stones upon which society exists.”πOne problem is: No secular society existed in antiquity.

For Brinkman—I’ve been in academe at state and private schools for thirty years and it’s true that post-tenure review of professors is something that isn’t done well. But the escalating cost of higher education comes mainly from spending on administration and for services like health care. The amount of money spent on teaching has plunged since the 70s while more and more resources go to other expenses. Some professors at elite schools do make a lot but the vast majority of us are in the center of the middle class. Salaries for administrators - Deans and Presidents-have increased dramatically. Anyway—what Trudeau is drawing our attention to is a huge scam funded by taxes — on ethat puts tremendous financial burdens on people fighting to better their position in life. The for-profit ‘schools’ have very little to do with higher education and they should be shut down.

And he argued FOR John Demjanjuk until he was blue in the face. Never met a concentration camp guard he didn’t love.And some Palestinians blow up buses on the basis that they actually own the entire country.

DTPi, good to see you back. The level of discussion seems to rise when you post.

As for morality and religion, I fell we should be well beyond the point where we need religion to define our morality. As more and more of the world’s population has access to education and knowledge of the wider world, the influence of religion upon societies and their laws are diminished. Educated people should be able to see the same “truths” that were “self-evident” to our founders, and from them, form the majority of a nation’s laws. Even when a system of laws is based on a religious text, our sense of fairness and decency has influence. There are many nations with majority Christian populations, but I doubt that any of them would see the Bible as justification for committing any of the crimes in DTPi’s Old Testament quote. The Bible and the Koran both leave many issues open to interpretation, and contain passages that seem to contradict one another. Most any reasonable law, and some unreasonable ones, can be supported by quotes from either text.

Back to the topic at hand. The incentives in the various student aid programs are obviously wrong. Most likely, industry insiders helped to write the legislation, ala ALEC, with the goal of gouging the taxpayers for as much money as possible. We should pay them well for graduates who find good jobs. But, for each of last year’s students who remains unemployed, they take a current student at no cost to the government.

DTPi “While I believe that religion has instilled societies with evil throughout history, no moral society has ever existed without the undergirding of religion.” How long has it been since monarchy or tyranny or at least oligarchy was viewed as the only effective way to govern? How long has it been since only men were considered to embody the gravitas necessary to vote, or even participate in the world outside the home? How long will it be until atheism or agnosticism is regarded as acceptable in its reliance on reason and universal civility as the basis of morality?Can we hasten the progress of this shift in world view?

pi said:

“Not a revival of fundamentalism. Which I fear would result in allowing Zionism to violently create an Israeli state ranging from the Nile to the Euphrates. This I fear would result in the concomitant expulsion of Palestinians from the land they have occupied since Rome ruled that land. The bloodshed that would result might push Iran toward developing thermonuclear devices to explode in or on Israel.πI love the Jewish people, and I support the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the subsequent creation, in 1948, of the State of Israel. But I think Zionism is exactly what you are warning against — using “the Bible as justification for committing [war] crimes”.”

This is exactly what has created the “radical division” of wills; a small, no, tiny, percentage of the human population, supported by an ancient, and evil, “ethic”, from the book of hate. It is now interpreted by a much larger group of “evangelicals”, willing, and ready, to destroy the entire population of the Earth, or the planet itself, based on radical interpretation of THEIR idiotic prophecy.

Education, at all levels, and “politics” has a role, and responsibility, to defend the world from such idiocy. Any “ethic” or “faith” that denies others, whether plant or animal, a chance to avoid extinction, is not worthy of consideration.

That is why when it comes to such idiocy, or any group supporting it: I’m not in it.

That’s extreme. I’m just referring to this one event. I’m almost willing to crucify Bush over his “War on Terror”. As if you could ever win such a thing.

Only Trudeau could spend a week criticizing government subsidies and make it sound like an indictment of free-market capitalism.

@Bob Brinkman“Exorbitant salaries, tenured professors who don’t teach…”

Time for you to get real. Ohio State football coach Urban Myers $4.5 Million, OSU President Gee $ 1.6 Million, top notch professor, leader in his field of science $130-$160 Thousand. (Ya this is what Albert Einstein would get at OSU.)

If you don’t teach then you must have research grants that pay for your research which is what you are evaluated on.