[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

Jonman wrote:
farley3k wrote:
trichy wrote:

Isn't the first step to the system changing punishing those who pull this kind of crap, and making that stuff public?

Is there any talk about changing the system or just lots of attacking celebrities? If meaningful reform comes from this great but I think it is just distraction from the bigger issues of the higher education system

Won't someone think of the endowments?

How will universities continue to pump millions of dollars into their semi-professional sports teams if they're not getting envelopes stuffed with cash in exchange for bad students??

Well, if Bernie Sanders has his way, college will be free and the government will do it. And since K-12 will continue to be complete and utter sh*t for marginalized groups, and since other life factors influencing the decision to go to college won't get any better, the universities can just keep admitting the same mediocre white people! Woo!

Jonman wrote:

Won't someone think of the endowments?

How will universities continue to pump millions of dollars into their semi-professional sports teams if they're not getting envelopes stuffed with cash in exchange for bad students??

Those football players are not going to give themselves concussions.

farley3k wrote:

Those football players are not going to give themselves concussions.

Keg stands suggest otherwise.

Remember That Time When Jared Kushner’s Dad Donated $2.5M to Harvard and Then His Son Got Into Harvard?

But I doubt anyone will face charges in that instance. So the problem for these folks is they didn't give big enough.

farley3k wrote:

Remember That Time When Jared Kushner’s Dad Donated $2.5M to Harvard and Then His Son Got Into Harvard?

But I doubt anyone will face charges in that instance. So the problem for these folks is they didn't give big enough.

Right. These arrests are of the merely "quite rich." There's no way they'll discuss how unfair it is to admit the kids of the "filthy rich," as they're philanthropists giving to a worthy cause, no?

Trump may have given the University of Pennsylvania $1.5 million right around the time Trump Jr. and Ivanka were accepted to Penn's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce

Trump made the President's Circle for a gift of between $1,000,000 and $4,999,999 for Wharton’s Campaign for Sustained Leadership. That donation happened sometime between 1996 and 2003.

His name shows up on university records from 1996 and 2001 as having donated or pledged to donate at least $25,000 each year.

Trump Jr. was a freshman at Wharton in 1996. Ivanka was a freshman at Wharton in 2000.

See, see?

I don't find the fact that wealthy individuals have purchased entitlements for themselves and others the least bit surprising. The big question is what, if anything, will happen once all of this pearl clutching is over with. Give it a few hours and I'm sure there will be some new scandal that appears on the horizon and everyone will forget about this.

And, according to Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer, Trump himself only got into Wharton because of a "friendly" admissions officer who knew Trump's brother, Freddy.

Trump transferred to Wharton after attending Bronx's Fordham University for two years.

Of course listening to Trump brag you'd never know that only went to Wharton for two years. In fact Trump loves to insinuate that he graduated from Wharton's much more prestigious MBA program instead of only getting an undergraduate degree.

With each passing day, I am convinced that Bane was the good guy.

Bane was intending to murder everyone with a giant fusion bomb.

The most confusing thing about this college admissions sting to me is: why now? Has this kind of prosecution ever happened before?

Quintin_Stone wrote:

He was intending to murder everyone with a giant fusion bomb.

Yeah, the good guy.

Reaper81 wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

He was intending to murder everyone with a giant fusion bomb.

Yeah, the good guy.

I mean, say what you like about the tenets of fusion bomb genocide, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

Am I going to end up on a watch list now for frequenting a message board full of fusion bomb enthusiasts?

Crap.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Bane was intending to murder everyone with a giant fusion bomb.

The most confusing thing about this college admissions sting to me is: why now? Has this kind of prosecution ever happened before?

I'm not sure if its a timing thing, it seems more like its just a question of the wrong people being payed. The recipients of the money were too low on the food-chain to let this one pass.

absurddoctor wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Bane was intending to murder everyone with a giant fusion bomb.

The most confusing thing about this college admissions sting to me is: why now? Has this kind of prosecution ever happened before?

I'm not sure if its a timing thing, it seems more like its just a question of the wrong people being payed. The recipients of the money were too low on the food-chain to let this one pass.

The issue here seems to be that coaches, admissions officers, and others were being bribed directly. Also the falsification of photos and documents and test scores. The normal, boring, everyday process of making huge donations to schools after which they happen to accept your kids' unremarkable applications remains completely legal.

tl;dr: Bribe the school, not individuals.

In a number of instances money for the bribes were funneled from one of the parent's charity funds and monies paid to the guy at the center of this were paid into a charity that he operated. I am assuming that this is actually the crime that got the Feds to take notice in the first place.

As far as bribing the schools directly goes, this was way cheaper. I don't know what things are like at USC or Georgetown but I can tell you that where I work, just putting your name on a building is going to cost you more than$250,000(which seemed to be about the average price paid in this case). Think more like seven figures, this was a bargain.

Yeah, where I work, the going rate for naming a building is allegedly $2 million, and we're not a big, prestigious school.

That said, $250,000 to a specific college or department will grease a lot of wheels. But it'll also be known to every faculty member and some of your classmates that that's what happened.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Yeah, where I work, the going rate for naming a building is allegedly $2 million, and we're not a big, prestigious school.

Holy smokes rich people are dumb.

It's waaaay cheaper to change your name to match an already-named building.

Yours
Jon Wembley

The entire school bribing story is so dumb, and while I certainly wish that those involved will see consequences for it, the theme of the last three years has been "awful people fail upwards", so I doubt it.

Meanwhile, via TMZ

As Lori Loughlin traveled from Vancouver to L.A. Tuesday night to surrender to federal authorities in the college bribery scandal -- which got her daughter, Olivia Jade, into USC -- Olivia spent the night on the yacht of the Chairman of USC's Board of Trustees ... but she's off the boat now, TMZ has learned.

We've learned 19-year-old Olivia was on Rick Caruso's yacht in the Bahamas. Caruso's daughter, Gianna, Olivia and several other friends were spending spring break in the area.

Gianna and Olivia have been friends for quite some time, occasionally posting photos of them together on social media.

Caruso, a billionaire who has major real estate holdings including The Grove in L.A., tells TMZ, "My daughter and a group of students left for spring break prior to the government's announcement yesterday. Once we became aware of the investigation, the young woman decided it would be in her best interests to return home." Olivia is off the yacht.

Caruso was elected Chairman of USC's Board of Trustees last year. We're told the Board will NOT decide the fate of Olivia and other students involved in the case. That decision is left squarely in the hands of the University's President.

..............................

I'll bet $20 right now that somehow, Olivia Jade will come out of this even more popular after some weepy faux-contrition interview. I'm not even convinced that USC's going to punt her out, even though that'd seem like the thing they absolutely have to do.

Jonman wrote:

Holy smokes rich people are dumb.

It's waaaay cheaper to change your name to match an already-named building.

Yours
Jon Wembley

Agreed.

Regards,
Jacob MetLife Stadium

Stephen The Lincoln Memorial

Helpful tips on carpentry for these American times.

You guys lack ambition.

— Ken Great Pyramid of Khufu

Quintin_Stone wrote:

The most confusing thing about this college admissions sting to me is: why now? Has this kind of prosecution ever happened before?

The reports are that the FBI basically stumbled onto the scheme by accident. They were working on an unrelated undercover investigation and someone they interviewed for that blabbed.

The FBI and the DOJ flipped the first person April of last year--a women's soccer coach at Yale--and it snowballed from there.

BadKen wrote:

You guys lack ambition.

— Ken Great Pyramid of Khufu

Great Wall of Brian

Admissions scandals? Think of the kids!

- Robear Vatican

I didn't even think this was a crime!

- Sally St. Basil's.

The Article wrote:

Alexander went on to suggest that his issue with Wohl isn’t that he lied, but that he did it in a clumsy way.

“It confirms that he’s not operating at a level where there’s useful misinformation, but kind of stupid, vanity-filled, ego-fueled disinformation,” Alexander said. “And that won’t look good for Jacob.”

Ah, principled conservatism these days: "It's OK to lie about things if it makes them cuck libs look bad."

I remember seeing one of Wohl's tweets right before he got banned talking about how he was in Minneapolis and was super concerned about his safety traveling through all the city's ISIS-controlled "no go zones" and wondering why he wasn't prowling hipster cafes in LA.

Then I found out he was there chasing a "lead" from a right-wing blog that Rep. Omar had married an Englishman who was really her brother so he could obtain US citizenship.