The American Spectator

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Miss Teen USA

5.12.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 5)

Like my 6-year-old grandson, Hunter. My age is never a factor when I play soccer with him, yet he told his mother he couldn't believe I workout in a gym. "You mean she lifts weights? Real weights? But, she's a grandma!"
-- Kitty Myers
Painted Post, New York

"The classic Jewish phrase goes: "When many share the same problem, that is half a consolation.""

Yes, Mr. Homnick, us middle-aged Gentiles have our own version of this universal truth: "Misery loves company."
-- Francis M. Hannon, Jr.
Melrose, Massachusetts

Jay: Trade the Mustang for a Shelby GT -- no more pity.
-- Deborah

VISIONS OF THE ANOINTED
Re: Lawrence Henry's Pols Scheme to Nick Big Ed:

I think it's safe to say that there will never be enough money to continue the programs that the socialist liberals who run politics in Massachusetts have devised. As Kipling said in his The Gods of the Copybook Headings: With their promises of "abundance for all," they will always have to be "robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul."

I'm surprised it took this long for them to go after these endowment funds. Look for other state and local governments to pick up on this and do the same thing. And look for the the amount of the funds exempted from these taxes to go much lower. And, it will naturally follow that the endowments of colleges and universities associated with religious institutions will also be targeted. There are at least 5 in my area and there has been considerable grumbling over the years about the parsimonious ways they have in giving back contributions in lieu of taxes to the municipalities they are located in.

But a pocket book issue like this can have a positive side too! The tenured dandies who work in these gated academic communities might finally come to understand how the rest of the country runs its business. As it is now, they are running the academy like the ruling class runs the country. How insolent! Who do they think they are? Even the lowly Public School teachers know enough to have their unions contribute to political campaigns. You would think that the people who run the Universities would be at least that smart!

Aren't deep pockets grand! I wonder how much the Tobacco Tort Lawyers could have gotten out of the Duke University endowment fund seeing how it was funded by evil tobacco profits?
-- Bob Keiser
Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania

I read this latest submission by Mr. Henry, and then I went to other things to let it sort of percolate in what I laughingly refer to as my brain. Well, I am back to it. I am having an extremely hard time finding an excuse for NOT taxing the world of academe. Yes, there is the philosophical point that argues against the taxes, but what else.

Particularly the colleges and universities in Massachusetts are famous for banning ROTC from campus, for banning or restricting military recruiters from campus, for demonstrating and sitting in against parts of the universities doing research and studies for the military and other parts of the federal government. We have read several articles about knock down, drag out battles by donors with the universities to try to force them to ACTUALLY spend the money as stipulated in the endowment donation contracts.

The academic world has become a world that does all in its power to promote socialism, if not outright Marxism. The radical left interest groups and professorial organizations spend uncountable hours not teaching real knowledge, but propagandizing the students to radicalize them. In short, colleges and universities are doing all in their power to inhibit, to the maximum extent possible, the organs of governance in America, and to deflate the high opinion of America in international organizations, and the world in general.

Then the academic community charges ungodly sums for tuition, room, board, student fees of various kinds, and books that are written by the very government subsidized professors that haven't got time to actually appear and teach their classes because they are out demonstrating against the government. Many of the text books that are so over priced are actually written by teams of student assistants that are assigned particular chapters, and then the professor puts them all together and puts his/her own name on it as the "writer." Oh, and please don't deny these assertions of mine. I have been there and seen it first hand, over many years. I saw it personally at the undergraduate level AND the graduate level.

The cost of a college education today is horribly inflated by the plethora of individual courses and majors that are no more real education than John Dean is an economist or Al Gore is a serious climate scientist. Of course if colleges went back to only offering real, truly educational courses, thousands of over paid professors would have to go out and earn a real pay check, in a real job, doing real productive work. Oh, the horror of that thought.

The more I think about it, the more I am of the opinion that the Massachusetts legislature is thinking entirely too small. The threshold should $500 million, instead of a billion, and the rate double what they are proposing. I am already on record advocating that the subsidies meted out to the colleges and universities by the government should be terminated to any institution that bans ROTC on campus or allows any interference with military recruiters on campus. I am no longer inclined to give the educational industry in this country, with their unions, their well paid lobbyists, their radical agitators, and anti-government, anti-American leftist ideologues any breaks at all. I would rather give tax breaks to private companies that produce the energy that our energy hungry nation needs, or private companies that invent and produce products that improve the lethality of our military while also increasing the safety of our warriors. The real changes needed involve cutting the numbers of law school entrants by 50% for the foreseeable future and completely cleaning out, shutting down, and starting over with the schools of education that train the K-12 propagandists that we call teachers.

Letter to the Editor

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