Well, lookee here, the Obama administration has finally come out with a ratings system that allows you to figure out whether or not a college is worth the cost, and to comparison shop between colleges.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Did you mean comparison shop?
Sssshh. The proper recipients of that message will understand.
This (The Guardian link): Labour leadership: Jeremy Corbyn elected with huge mandate is kind of a big deal. The base of the Labour party has had it with the Thatcher-Blair consensus. Tolerable back when the Blair led Labour party could superficially be seen as a break with Thatchism and won elections. Intolerable now that it can be seen for what it is and thus loses elections.
The same thing is happening in the US. But money figures more prominently in our elections and may either slow down or retard the momentum of “enough!”
They certainly have more time to run campaign adds!
Interesting that with Clinton’s major ad buys to run in the next few weeks in IA and NH, Sanders considered but rejected doing the same. Will continue with the retail strategy because it is working not just well but better than expected.
(Some buzz that Sanders’ third quarter fundraising will be eye-popping. And hints that it’s more an expansion of the donor base than additional or increased donations from second quarter donors.
“Eye popping” to me would have to exceed where I projected he needed to be by 9/30. Specifically, With 6/30 cash on hand of $12 million, not less than $48 million must be raised during the next six months. Gonna need a lot more donors. Tall order, but doable. Over half a million people donated to Howard Dean. Sanders needs to do somewhat better than that. And more donors contributing smaller amounts would be more robust than fewer donors making larger contributions. Either way, his campaign will need to generate $8 million/month for him to be competitive.
$24 million this quarter would put the Sanders campaign in good financial shape. It would also be dismissed by team Clinton that had raised $47 million by 6/30 and had another $16 million in two super pac accounts. But it costs a lot more money to run her operation.
The highest cost of a neoliberal campaign is media bribery (er, ad buys). The highest cost of a neoliberal government is national security.
This is a test of whether the Sanders campaign can make the billionaires waste their money as fast or faster as the US squanders its budget on national security.
One should not subsidize one of the primary forces fighting against you.
How dare BooMan post on a subject which argues against the deadly cynical view that the Republicans and Democrats are the same?
Don’t let it interrupt attacks on Hillary, though. Her conventionally liberal record and current campaign emphases are SO on point with the original post!
That said, here’s my response to the discussion re. foreign policy: Hillary’s major statement on the subject this week was her support for the Iran nuclear deal, and her sharp criticism of the Republicans desperately trying to stop it. So, yes, keep pretending all candidates labeled “neoliberal” are the same.
It is the media environment that demands a neoliberal economic stance; the candidates who seek not to be totally savaged by that media play along regardless of their actual understanding of economics. Neoliberal is politely called the “center-right consensus”. It has little to do with national security policy but much to do with foreign trade policy.
What Hillary Clinton is not is a neo-conservative, despite her vote on the AUMF in Iraq. She is properly seen as a responsibility-to-protect (R2P) advocate, which is a position that I had some sympathy with going into Libya. It is a position whose practical effects have not seen any success. That is why I was critical of her recent speech. It had nothing to do with her being “liberal” or not.
My comment here is purely strategy relative to the media and it applies (or should apply) to the Clinton campaign to the extent that it departs from the “center-right consensus” of the Beltway that is failing us in both domestic and foreign policy. And it certainly applies to the way she has been treated personally; you don’t fund the people who are tearing you down. The task is not to spend your media money but to force the other guys to spend their media money.
That last point should be pretty straightforward, but it seems to escape Democrats these days.
A dozen years ago, the R2P folks that had easy access to mics were all over Sudan (and how “we” should have acted in Rwanda), but with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, they issued a silent “nevermind.” They came roaring back with the need to take out Ghaddafi and free the Libyans to enjoy all the fruits of western intervention as was bestowed on Iraqis. That didn’t hoodwink me for a second.
They are deeply irresponsible — let Italy deal with all the refugees fleeing from Libya. Let Greece and other Europeans deal with all the Syrian refugees. (Oh, well we can take a few thousand IF they can be cleared of any Muslim terrorist sympathies or links.) And let’s ignore the fact that Iraqis fled to Syria with the Iraq War and while not welcomed with open arms and generous welfare benefits, they weren’t herded into outdoor ghettos with razor wire topped fences.
In Libya as it turns out, the divisions of relevance were not tribal or ideological or even regional, they were personal ambitions of the various leaders of the militias that formed a coalition to remove Gadhafi. Which means they could have made the post-Gadhafi government work. Post-autocratic regimes can turn out that way or even merely post-colonial ones.
Worked out well then didn’t it?
There were tribal, ideological, regional, and personally ambitious sectors in Libya. One way that Ghaddafi held things together is that he distributed more of the national wealth to more sectors than most dictators and refrained from constructing a robust military that could oust him. He was weakest in the eastern areas — Benghazi — because it was a power seat for the prior monarchy and a hotbed of radical, fundamentalist Muslims and he distributed less money there.
Failing not to recognize all the different factions within a country leads to simplistic conclusions like “kill off the king” and all will be well. Alternatively, when a “king” is insane and/or robbing the country and people blind, the people can calculate if killing him off couldn’t possibly make things worse and have a chance to make things better. But it does tend to get much worse when outsiders jump in and try to tip the scales in favor of killing the king because outsiders don’t and can’t make fully informed calculations.
Yet when the people of Iran spoke, in an effort to get back what the west had stolen from them almost three decades earlier, we didn’t respect their voices. “How could they oust the Shah that was so well respected by westerner?”
And here we sit now still in search of the “good Syrians” that want Assad to go while we continue to be surprised that they keep ending up acting like AQ as the county is destroyed.
Gaddafi was threatening to hunt people down like dogs and referring to them as cockroaches – some of the same language used in the Rwanda genocide which Gaddafi played no small part in through funding.
There was a very real danger that had Gaddafi not been deposed he would have escalated the killings he had started into his very own Libyan genocide.
Frankly I think Libya was going to end up in chaos o matter what happened.
btw — US FP has little to nothing to do with the people of any country. It’s always about US interests and who will do bidness best with US companies and the USG.
Saddam was cool when he bought military crap from the US with which to attack our “arch enemy Iran.” And we didn’t give a fig what he did about the Kurds — until over a dozen years later when we wanted another reason to take him out.
All nations’ foreign policies are about their internal domestic interests.
US foreign policy ignores countries because of its sense that its action is always determinative and that others will have to pick up the pieces. Certainly has worked since 1812. Cheney’s doctrine is not much different from Calhoun’s or Jackson’s or Polk’s.
Haaretz – Aug 15, 2015 Despite Rise of ISIS, Libya Has Dropped Under the West’s Radar .
Good report on how horrendous it has become throughout the country and particularly in certain areas such as Sirte.
Some chatter today that ISIS has captured the Libyan Central Bank in Sirte and some other banks as well. Too soon to know if this is a false rumor or fact.
This website makes Tom Friedman sound reasonable:
labour-uncut.co.uk
Endless articles about how terrible Corbyn is or how he can’t win the leadership election.
And yet Corbyn not only won but won handily on the first ballot.
The rif raf are outing themselves:
Senior Labour figures line up to rule out serving on Jeremy Corbyn’s front bench
Your link didn’t work. Perhaps this one will work.
Wonder what make those Senior Labour figures think they are wanted to serve on Corbyn’s front bench?
Blast posting on a phone…
When needed to help one another. The reason for a glitch doesn’t matter.
Don’t let the….
Reuters is already running with the Karl Marx meme. Bet they had that one queued up and ready to go for weeks.
The large media operations always keep their obituary files up to date and ready to go.
Yes, $$$ is more prominent over here in our elections, but not always determinative. And I doubt if it can slow the momentum of an idea whose time has come.
So I’m wondering if Corbyn doesn’t give more Dems the confidence that Satch could become the nominee. 2015 in Britain prefiguring what happens here, as 1979 there announced the unfortunate 1980 election here.
Urp. No Historically Black College Left Behind
Underfunding rigs the ratings. Guess who gets underfunded?
Arne Duncan strikes again.
Of all policy areas, Obama’s educational policies have been the absolute worst and run counter to what most of his voting base expected. The only thing you can say in contrast is that John McCain and Mitt Romney would have been much much worse.
The eight years of the Obama administration have normalized charter schools and defunded public schools. Chicago is the poster child.
Similar to the info available on collegeboard.org. I would have found the site very useful this summer as we were looking at schools for my son.
This college ratings system is somewhat reminiscent of the consumer assistance that the ACA’s health insurance marketplace offers. Creating systems that provide something much closer to apples-to-apples comparisons for consumer choices helps us move away from the chaotic and incomplete information we have when making many of our choices.
Why is Barack Obama such a great president? MAYBE HE READS THE WASHINGTON MONTHLY!
Confirms my suspicion that pursuing a degree as a physician’s assist is your best cost/benefit ratio, if you’re inclined to see college in purely financial terms (as many would, and should).
The Obama administration has lied, prevaricated and generally tap-danced around the truth too many times. Now it cannot be believed on any subject whatsoever>
I would sooner draw straws out of a hat than choose anything on the basis of what “the federal government” recommends. Its bipartisan/PermaGov-sponsored history of lying all the way back to the JFK assassination renders it absolutely unfit to be trusted about anything.
WTFU.
AG