... so you don't have to.
Here's the text. Let me edit it down and supply a little commentary:
BASEBALL may be our national pastime... Ben Franklin... David Letterman... Milton Berle...
Man, that first paragraph telegraphs that the man has nothing to say!
Challenges of historic import... Congress ... dysfunction...
Many good people serve in Congress...
I don't want to attack any particular individual, but as a group, you people suck.
My father, Birch Bayh...
Everett Dirksen... asked what he could do to help...
A Republican displayed cooperativeness toward a Democrat, back in the old days.
When I was a boy, members of Congress from both parties, along with their families, would routinely visit our home for dinner or the holidays...
The parties partied. Back then. Chez Bayh.
... Sept. 11.... There were no Republicans or Democrats in the room that day...
That golden day...
Let’s start with a simple proposal: why not have a monthly lunch of all 100 senators?
Sounds good, but I'm not
that hungry.
... the current campaign finance system that has such a corrosive effect on Congress....
The recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, allowing corporations and unions to spend freely on ads explicitly supporting or opposing political candidates, will worsen matters. The threat of unlimited amounts of negative advertising from special interest groups will only make members more beholden to their natural constituencies and more afraid of violating party orthodoxies.
Help! All that vigorous free speech will make us even bigger pussies than we already are!
... the Senate should reform... the filibuster....
Admittedly, I have participated in filibusters. If not abused, the filibuster can foster consensus-building...
.... filibusters should require 35 senators to sign a public petition and make a commitment to continually debate... Those who obstruct the Senate should pay a price in public notoriety and physical exhaustion....
And, eventually, we will be hungry enough to eat 100 Senators for lunch.
What’s more, the number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster should be reduced to 55 from 60....
During my father’s era, filibusters were commonly used to block civil rights legislation and, in 1975, the requisite number of votes was reduced to 60 from 67. The challenges facing the country today are so substantial that further delay imperils the Republic and warrants another reduction in the supermajority requirement.
The challenge = Scott Brown got elected... and a couple very elderly Dems are not feeling so well. And the majority of Americans don't like what you're trying to do, so you need to get this thing through before the next election. That's like the Civil Rights Act, isn't it?!
Posts
77 comments:
What is it with Democrat pussy quitters leaving the Senate because of "strident partisanship."
Don't we have two parties for a reason?
Do we want Republicans and Democrats working together forcing shit down our throats? Because I'll vote against all Republicans who cross the aisle to work with Democrats to enact the Democrats' legislation.
I don't want my Republicans working with Democrats. I want them stopping Democrats.
And I suspect there are a lot of Democrats who don't want to reach across the aisle to work with Republicans to, for example, end abortion.
Strident partisanship is good for the Senate. It's supposed to be the World's Greatest Deliberative Body.
Go forth and deliberate, I say. If everyone agrees, there can be no deliberation.
The Senate is better off without this pussy in it.
Man up, Bayh.
Wow! Ann read your comments above it crystallized that your voice perfectly represents the tone of many elites of today. It is all blithely cynicism spouted all the time without much substance. Ann Althouse, what exactly are you for? Do you have any core principles that you operate from? Or is it just all snark hurled from your comforty university home? You are getting all too predictable and just plan boring.
Well, that was a weird display. Sort of like he was running for his life while masturbating at the same time. Never seen that one before
when i read this editorial, what struck me most was how whimpy it came off. he just seemed to talk about when my daddy was here ... blah blah .. but he offered few well supported ideas about how to make it better. (lunches, Evan, really ? will that do it ?) he seems to just be quitting because congress wasnt the way it was when his dad was a congressman. i really wonder how much he absorbed about his dad's time in congress when he was a kid, when he didnt have access to the negatives that he would have been shielded from since it wasnt his job.
small note: Isn't it funny that with Democrats - talking about daddy is all fine and dandy?
I read somewhere that Bayh owns a dumpy non-lived-in 60K apartment somewhere in Indiana. His years and life have been spent in a mega-million dollar home in DC.
Constituents are beginning to understand.
Here, let me cut and paste for you.
"What to do? While fundamental campaign finance reform may ultimately require a constitutional amendment, there are less drastic steps we can take to curb the distorting influence of money in politics. Congress should consider ways to lessen the impact of the Citizens United decision through legislation to enhance disclosure requirements, require corporate donors to appear in the political ads they finance and prohibit government contractors or bailout beneficiaries from spending money on political campaigns.
Congress and state legislators should also consider incentives, including public matching funds for smaller contributions, to expand democratic participation and increase the influence of small donors relative to corporations and other special interests."
While I am not a big fan of Evan Bayh, Ann and other commenters here selectively ignore the substance in his op-ed in favor of just trashing him. That is not very intellectually honest.
Bayh's complaint is "how come those Republicans won't just lie down and die?"
I mean, "I used the filibuster, but for good; those nasty Republicans are using it for evil."
Really.
Bayh Bayh Baby Bayh. What a whinny one he is.
I can see him moving on and doing new things. He is entitled to do that and is obviously trying to get a good paying gig in charity or education (imagine that)--but this whole government is broken nonsense is a lot of hooey. Let's face facts, he was facing a tough race (he was no shoe in this time) and must have felt that the benefits of staying did not outweight the effort needed to stay there.
I found there was a slight aftertaste. I think it was hint of an impression that Bayh believes these Congresscritters-- despite their party affiliation-- are really quite decent folks who only do what they do because we, the Electorate, make them do it with our hyper-partisanship.
It's our fault, you see, thath has to quit a Senate Seat that He so clearly deserves because he's made a career out of public service, and it kills his buzz. It takes all the fun out of being powerful and famous, and stuff.
It probably also brings closer scrutiny of his own activities, and he probably hates that even more, because that probably means hisown days of having a super-powerful job with excellent perks that doesn;t require any results is probably coming to an end.
The only people more useless than Harvard MBA's who can't figure out you don't give a half-mil mortgage ot a guy who makes 40k/year, are posturing, preening, whiny, self-absorbed Congressweenies who blame their own ideological foibles on the voting public.
If Bayh was upset about the tone and tenor, he could have done the right thing and taken the high road, even at the risk of his career. Now, he can bow out, and in a few years when thing cool down, try to run for President again without any democratic cahllenger being able to pin a charge of collaborator, or healthcare killer on him.
This isn't about the country or our politics, it's about Evan Bayh beating a tactical retreat while he can still salvage his career.
shoo-in. Opps.
Althouse is for conscientious mindful living. She is for clarity of thought, writing, and action.
Those values are hard to come by in our modern society. Bayh's piece demonstrates that they can even be lost on our established political leaders.
Plus, commenting on Althouse is cheaper than attending group psychotherapy; more convenient too, since you can join in from the comfort of your own home.
I saw Bayh this morning on a CNN panel with Jon Corzine, a fellow Senate quitter and a former Republican congress critter who is now a lobbyist. Of course, the topic was the dysfunction of the Congress. Boo frickety hoo.
But what I really observed was a panel of three elitists and two of them had served in the Senate.
One, Corzine, is a billionaire who bought and paid for the two offices has held.
The other, Bayh, is married to a big bucks lobbyist.
The third panelist, the former Repub congresswoman, is, I assume, making big bucks as a lobbyist.
And they are crying the system is broken? If so, I don't think I want them to offer suggestions on how to fix it.
A commenter on the following Boston Globe article nailed the reactionary, hysterical mindset we see on display from Bayh and others.
The Globe ran FIRST PAGE stories on just $450k of Brown's millions in contributions coming from "financial" firms, and a series of political cartoons (including one with an armored car being filled with cash from "Wall Street" being called "my new truck" by Brown), but the truth about small donors is in "political notes" buried under a picture of the lunatic who scuffled with Romney. What will we hear about SEIU money to Coakley or Frank? Pathetic.
Even tucking the truth away in this political "Reporters' Notebook" piece, you really have to see how the Globe presented the story at the following link to get the full effect.
Brown’s run fueled by small donors
By Globe Staff
February 21, 2010
Scott Brown’s astounding fund-raising - $14.2 million in 19 days - during the stretch run of last month’s special Senate campaign was fueled in large part by small donors.
A summary report of Brown’s fund-raising shows that nearly $7.9 million of the $13.9 million donated by individuals came from donors who gave him $200 or less. That’s 56.6 percent of the total from individuals (another $300,000 came from party or political action committees).
The full report, which runs more than 4,000 pages and will detail specific donors who gave more than $200, will not be available to the public on the Internet until next week, according to the Federal Election Commission. Brown’s campaign reported $6 million in itemized contributions from individuals who gave between $201 and the maximum $2,400. Candidates are not required to itemize donations of $200 or less in their reports.
In releasing the summary pages, Brown’s campaign said 154,431 donors gave an average of $86.08.
Contributions poured into the Brown campaign from all over the country, mostly via the Internet, as independent polls indicated Brown was closing in on Attorney General Martha Coakley, a Democrat. Brown’s fund-raising was reminiscent of the type that propelled Barack Obama to the White House in the 2008 presidential election.
As of Feb. 8, the end of the latest reporting period, the Brown campaign reported unspent cash on hand of a little more than $6 million. After paying $158,514 in debts or obligations, that would have left the campaign with nearly $5.9 million that can be used toward Brown’s reelection campaign in 2012.
wv-"makedd" = to make a doo doo
Whatever the democrats can do to control speech, regulate speech and manipulate speech to protect their power, they will do it. Damn those evil corporations!
We must use tax-payer dollars to promote one-way street proper thinking, proper vilification!
Incumbent protection(D) is democratic! Free speech is scary, and people are too stupid to understand unless it's been flushed clean through the machine!
or something...
There was always something about Evan Bayh that I did not like and did not trust; perhaps it was just that he did not believe in the party he was called on to represent, but something definitely was not right.
Doing something in Washington is easy if that something is like Medicare, Part-D.
Doing something like reigning in entitlements, however, is practically impossible. It's this kind of action for which congress is ill-suited.
A dysfunctional Congress is a good thing.
AJ Lynch said:
"I saw Bayh this morning on a CNN panel with Jon Corzine, a fellow Senate quitter and a former Republican congress critter who is now a lobbyist. Of course, the topic was the dysfunction of the Congress. Boo frickety hoo."
Jon Corzine, the former DEMOCRAT governor of New Jersey and former DEMOCRAT Senator? or another Jon Corzine?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Corzine
"Ann and other commenters here selectively ignore the substance in his op-ed in favor of just trashing him."
OK. Let's talk about the substance.
If you think campaign finance laws struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional infringement of free speech are going to destroy America - then there's only one solution:
And I'm pretty sure that solution is not: quitting the Senate.
Bayh doesn't even mean the crapola he oozes. If he cared about the future of the country he'd argue his case; instead, he's taken his ball and gone home.
What a fucking pussy. I bet his Dad is real proud of him quitting like this. If he was my kid, I'd be kicking his ass today and pushing him back into the well of the Senate to argue a cause.
Bayh is representative of the type of Democrat who, if they can't get their way, they just won't play. If the going gets tough, they get going.
We can't discuss his substance because he hasn't any. "Oooohhh, woe is me, terrible partisanship exists ... woe is me."
Pansie.
Exactly how is more speech in the country bad for us?
Truth is, it's not. It's bad for them. And that's why they're quitting.
Good riddance.
Filibusters were commonly used by my father's party to block civil rights legislation...
FIFY, Evan.
April:
My grammar was not too precise - I was trying to say "I saw 3 panelists- Bayh, Corzine and a former Republican congresswoman whose name I can not remember ...Susan something Italian from maybe Long Island?"
I do know Corzine is a dyed-in-the wool far left lib DEM.
Sorry for the confusion.
Jimmy, "campaign finance reform" (i.e., funding limits) is just the incumbent political class seeking regulatory rents for their own protection. Public Choice theory explains this quite well.
wv - payedo: buying votes from incumbents.
AJ - thanks for clarification. got it.
I just read Bayh's OPED. Twelve years in the Senate and he proposes a monthly happy hour to bond with the other senators. Jeez that is all he can come up with in 12 years!
Politics has been his family's business and Evan Bayh is a poster boy that should warn us of the evils of nepotism.
Susan something Italian...
Susan Molinari?
I didn't notice the word, "wife", and the phrase, "conflict of interest". Must have missed it.
As to the monthly lunch, that's what's wrong with the Senate. Listen to Robert Dole or Orrin Hatch and all they can talk about is my good friend So-and-so in the Democrat Party. They are so brainwashed by the collegiality of the place (this is how Teddy Kennedy got a lot of his stuff through), they'd rather die than take a stand and tell somebody on the other side that they're trying to destroy the country (the Demos, of course, have no problem with this) or, God forbid, say that no bill is better than a bad bill; for them, it's the exact opposite - anything so they can stand in the Rose Garden and get a pen from POTUS.
Florida is absolutely right when she says, "Don't we have two parties for a reason?".
The recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission..
Bayh pulls a hammi rather than face the new political reality.
Congress is dysfunctional so lets change the filibuster rules so it can be more dysfunctional. You could easily argue that it's been more dysfunctional since the change in 1975. With fewer checks to bad, partisan legislation, we can get more bad, partisan legislation.
There's really only one thing that will get a lot of corporate and union money out of national politics -- make government less powerful and less intrusive.
If government is less able and less willing to do things to you, there will be less need to buy legislators or lobby. American government these days, particularly Congress, is functioning like a classic protection racket.
Until that stops, big money will always find a way to help the self-appointed elite remain in power.
Repeal the 17th Amendment, then, seems like it'd be the simplest solution to what Bayh is balling about.
Better yet, rather than returning the duty of choosing Senators to the respective state legislatures, each state should hold a lottery to pick their Senator.
Each 'candidate' would be responsible for proving, should they win, that they are an eligible (age-wise, residency-wise) non-felon. Anyone eligible to serve as Senator would pony up one hundred dollars per entry into the Senatorial lottery.
It's half way to Buckley's phone book ("I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University."), and like Buckley, I'd trust a group of semi-randomly selected citizens than the current group of Ivy leaguers that infect the Capitol Building (I think buying into the lottery would keep out some of the riff raff, and allowing multiple entries would allow a consortium of citizens to support a candidate in hopes that giving one person an overwhelming number of chances in the lottery would make their choice more likely).
I find his position on filibusters humorous, if not hypocritical. When he was in the Senate minority, for much of his time in the Senate, he was perfectly happy to use the filibuster to show down Republican initiatives, and, in particular, to prevent votes on Republican judicial nominees.
I am sure that he would be perfectly happy if Republicans would need 67 votes when they are in the majority, but Democrats only, maybe 55 votes, when they are. But it doesn't work that way. If he is going to whine about filibusters, then he should write personal apologies to every Republican nominee for a government post or bench seat that he helped filibuster, or was complacent with a threat to filibuster.
If he has been in for two terms, that is the perfect time, in my view, to get out.
My view is that if someone goes into the Senate to help the country, etc., then they should limit themselves to one or two terms, at most. After that, it is not about the people they supposedly represent, but rather, about themselves. Their power. Their respect. Their wealth (ok, there are plenty of Senators that have never worried about money as Senators, but many have and do).
"I find his position on filibusters humorous ..."
You know, it is funny, because it's just so transparently hypocritical that anyone can see it for what it is. Democrats aren't even trying very hard to develop decent spin anymore.
His internal polling showed he was about to be fired. So, he quit rather than be a man and face his employer and take his medicine.
Which proves he's just another Democrat Party lady-boy.
Birch Bayh is turning over in his grave to see his own son besmirch the Bayn name so badly in that Op-Ed.
The fact is that The Bayh Seat needs to be returned to the people of the state of Indiana from whom it was stolen 40 years ago.
And now it will be. So, that's a good thing.
Jimmy said: "Here, let me cut and paste for you. 'What to do? While fundamental campaign finance reform may ultimately require a constitutional amendment, there are less drastic steps we can take to curb the distorting influence of money in politics. Congress should consider ways to lessen the impact of the Citizens United decision through legislation to enhance disclosure requirements, require corporate donors to appear in the political ads they finance and prohibit government contractors or bailout beneficiaries from spending money on political campaigns. Congress and state legislators should also consider incentives, including public matching funds for smaller contributions, to expand democratic participation and increase the influence of small donors relative to corporations and other special interests.' While I am not a big fan of Evan Bayh, Ann and other commenters here selectively ignore the substance in his op-ed in favor of just trashing him. That is not very intellectually honest."
Oh, bullshit. I left that issue in, I just struck the padding. You just copied the whole section that bleated on about how Little Evan doesn't like the Supreme Court case. Was it harsh of me to leave off the part where he advises Congress to "consider" doing something? You think I was over-trashing him by leaving that out? Think about what I would have said if I'd left it in.
1. "Consider" what? "Ways" to fix things. Feh.
2. It's a First Amendment constitutional law decision by the Supreme Court. Does he: a. understand it, b. respect the rule of law?
3. Man up, Evan, and deal with the fact that this is a free country and we get to criticize the government -- even if we organize ourselves into groups to do it.
Ann Althouse said...
Man, that first paragraph telegraphs that the man has nothing to say!
You've in essence described the Senate as a whole if not the entire congress. The carbon footprint these human douchebags produce from their open mouths makes cap n' trade seem worthwhile
Man up, Evan, and deal with the fact that this is a free country and we get to criticize the government -- even if we organize ourselves into groups to do it.
Evan and his friend Barack Obama want to neuter corporations. That way, it's easier to steal the bondholders' investments (ala GM).
The Supreme Court just turned the tables on these assholes and gave the bondholders some weaponry.
That's whats got the ladyboys of the Senate in a right pucker.
For Evan to man up, he'd have to be a man first.
I wouldn't hold my breath.
Bullshit back at you Annie.
In order to trash Bayh to delight your small contingent of right wing lowbrows you left out his prescriptions to deal with campaign finance short of a constitutional amendment. You did not want to address the substance. For you it is much easier playing to the bleachers and just trash the guy. Once again your voice is a good reflection of many elites in this country who are more interested in making a splash than engaging in an intellectually honest debate. Snark is just so much more easier than rational discourse.
Ann, do you deny that all members of congress, Democrat and Republican alike, now spend most of their time chasing corporate dollars? Do you deny that this has changed the nature of our government for the worst? Those are the questions that you always avoid. They don't sit well with your right wing fan club do they Ann?
Jimmy,
Bayh's "solutions" are pretty funny and weak-tea at the same time. I appreciated this one:
"prohibit government contractors or bailout beneficiaries from spending money on political campaigns"
I wonder how the SEIU and AFSCME would enjoy that prohibition?
Also I don't recall hearing Bayh gripe about disclosure when Obama was raking in huge amounts of cash from questionable sources...
Hey Jimmie don't pick on Ann. She is just the product of her environment.
She was raised in an upper income home-if I remember correctly her dad was a dentist-in a posh white shoe town in New Jersey.
She attended private colleges, like New York University, were if your parents have the money their kids can get in and then tell themselves and the world that they graduated from an "exclusive" institution. (Well "exclusive" in the sense that most people can't afford them. Not exclusive in the sense that they are academically competitive.)
I believe Ann has had almost no experience in the private sector and has pretty much been in academia for her whole adult life. Ironically, most of it spent professionally at the public tit. Her faux conservative sycophants somehow miss that irony!
Coffee Guy...Why do you feel the need to attack the Professor's qualifications? She is better educated than all of the not as yet resigned Democrats and Sarah Palin put together. Does your comment mean that good populists should hate Althouse for being an elite dentist's child? How very bizarre.
"... his prescriptions to deal with campaign finance short of a constitutional amendment."
Jimmy ... Bayh has no prescriptions. Or he'd introduce some legislation. That's what Senators do; they introduce laws. They debate them. Then they vote on them, and if they're Constitutional, they become the law of the land.
All Bayh did was quit, seeing as how the Supreme Court won't let the Senate pass un-Constitutional restrictions on our free speech.
Fuck him and the Dad he rode in on.
He quit instead of doing any heavy lifting or face voters with, you know, actual free speech rights protected by a Court.
Where is garage yelling quitter! Where are the rest of the lefties yelling quitter? Oh, he is not female, he is not from Alaska, and he never really worked a day in his life. He is a Democrat!
wv:abletric=one of Tiger Woods broads
"... Her faux conservative sycophants ...:
Dude,
We are not faux anything.
We're the real thing, baby.
Hey, 'Coffee Guy', that's neat how you and 'Jimmy' have exactly the same blogspot user id's. It's almost like you were, oh, I don't know, sockpuppets or something.
Florida said:
"Fuck him and the Dad he rode in on".
That's a good line!
Ditto.Great line, Florida.
Bayh sounds like the son of a plantation owner whining that it used to be so much better when the blacks knew their place, and 'we-all could have those great BBQs over at the Wilkes spread.'
''
Bayh is certainly unimpressive which seems to be the most common trait among our many public servants in D.C.
Bayh is so nice a person that I would elected him to see what he could do. But he did nothing for anyone, except make pretty talk about ideal conditions. He misses them, it seems. And therefore the nice person wont play anymore. What a hero.
@AJ Lynch
That was Susan Molinari of STATEN ISLAND. Staten Island is part of New York City, Long Island is not, and is where all the escapees from NYC go to buy over-priced vanity real estate, only to complain louder about the even higher taxes and bigger illegal-Spanish-speaking hordes.
The recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, allowing corporations and unions to spend freely on ads explicitly supporting or opposing political candidates, will worsen matters. The threat of unlimited amounts of negative advertising from special interest groups will only make members more beholden to their natural constituencies and more afraid of violating party orthodoxies.
Jeez. Weren't campaign finance laws in the Golden Age of His Father's Time pretty freewheeling?
The filibuster is certainly not easier to invoke than it was back then.
What's the point of talking about how dreamy things used to be if your solutions have nothing to do with the way things used to be?
Maybe we should just go back to the days of letting mobsters hand the Presidential candidates cash, letting politicians snort coke with hookers without it getting in the news, and having Presidents on life-saviing, mind altering drugs without telling us.
Everything was so bipartisan then!
What is all this talk (including his own!) of Bayh "leaving the Senate"? He's just not running for re-election. That that gets called "leaving" is a de facto confession that incumbent senators only very rarely lose; that it was Bayh's seat as long as he chose to occupy it.
wv: hydresse. If that isn't a female hair-care product, I'm sure it soon will be.
Bleh, I say.
coffee guy said...."She was raised in an upper income home-if I remember correctly her dad was a dentist-in a posh white shoe town in New Jersey."
False on every point.
"She attended private colleges, like New York University, were if your parents have the money their kids can get in and then tell themselves and the world that they graduated from an "exclusive" institution."
False. I went to the University of Michigan for college. I went to NYU for law school. NYU is ranked 5th or 6th among law schools. I got in mainly on my LSAT score.
"I believe Ann has had almost no experience in the private sector and has pretty much been in academia for her whole adult life."
I worked in a Wall Street law firm for 2 years (and I worked for 5 years between college and law school... in market research and advertising).
When the Democrats shit bullcrap - snark is on the menu.
deal.
MayBee quoted the quote I was going to quote.
I am just gobsmacked, buffaloed, slackjawed, at the attacks on Citizens United that summarize as: the current campaign finance system sucks... and undoing it will make things worse.
Jaysus, people, the failings of the current campaign finance system -- its Byzantine rules, its money-laundering modus operandi, its lack of transparency, and perversions to the process -- are the result of regulations.
If ExonMobil and ChevronTexaco get to gather to make an agreement about gas prices—in order to serve the market better—everyone recognizes that it is a conspiracy against the people—their customers. So, why should we feel any better about the Democrats and Republicans getting together and making an agreement about how to serve the people better? Bi-partisanship be damned. I am in favor of competition, especially in politics.
Hey Coffeeguy,
You are truly intelligence challenged. Ignorant too. You know nothing about Althouse, nothing about NYU, and, well, you know nothing.
You are not related to Jeremy are you?
I wonder how different I would be if my father was a dentist. I can't picture my father as a dentist.
Bayh sounds like the son of a plantation owner whining that it used to be so much better when the blacks knew their place, and 'we-all could have those great BBQs over at the Wilkes spread.'
Gone with the windbags.
Since Bayh's proposal to muzzle contractors and bailout recipients proves mainly that he's ignorant of the doctrine of unconstitutional conditions, not quoting that part could have been an act of charity.
Professor...Maybe he guessed it from your great teeth. His are probably coffee stained and buck toothed. Anyway, I never met an unpopular dentist. So what was his point. Maybe he was only a slanderer second class trying to earn his wings.
Thank you for reading that, so I didn't have to.
Does Bayh mention he's leaving the Senate so he is better positioned to run for President if Obama stumbles any worse?
When Democrats push a radical agenda believing they have the votes to Rham it through and fail, this means the system is broken people! Don't you get it?
I wrote about congress this morning on my blog (www.opusonemedia.blogspot.com) and put in a link to a 70s musical "1776"...with John Adams singing Piddle Twiddle (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM9KcAS5_K4)....it seems so appropos
Why is not running for re-election called Quitting?
Leaving in the middle of your term = Quitting. Can we agree on that?
When Bayh the Elder and Vance Hartke were the senators from Indiana the folks used to refer to the noble duo as "Bayh and Bought".
1. The problem with Althouse (man, it still makes me feel rude to use her last name) is she tends to vote for Democrats.
2. If Althouse really WAS an elitist upper class snob and therefore not worth our attention, what would that tell us about, for example, the Kennedy family?
3. Evan Bayh is a standard issue liberal but all of his public pronouncements are constructed so as to not offend anyone. This is just normal behavior for him.
University of Michigan is notorious for attracting rich scions of the elite East Coast wanna-bes. It is state-subsidized for residents, but out-of-state tuition is substantially higher. It's been that way since at least the nineties, and I'll venture that it was that way back when da Prof went there. The current breakdown shows a 300% differential in tuition fees for the largest undergraduate unit - including the one that teaches "Art and Design", and some similar differential holds across nearly every division.
Come on Althouse! Try being a little more honest for a change. If a miracle happened and you somehow got a break in the form of a scholarship for Delaware or New Jersey residents, let us in on that. Otherwise, I feel safe going with the assumption that the differential was still in place back when the dinosaurs roamed Sarah Palin's backyard, or whenever it was that you were in Ann Arbor.
http://ro.umich.edu/tuition/full.php#Lower_Gen
Marketing and advertising! Shheeshh!!!
Presenting University of Michigan as something other than a private college when you're there from out of state and have to pay (or get someone else to pay) extra for the privilege of attending a school that is not subsidized by non-Michigan residents, is pretty damn disingenuous.
Maybe it's a marketing tactic. Truth in advertising it is not.
Ann Althouse's Wikipedia biography states that she graduated from Michigan in 1973.
Apr 2, 1973 - At the University of Illinois' Champaign - Urbana campus, Illinoisans pay $496 in annual tuition. nonresidents, $1486. The price of being an out-of- state student is even higher at the University of Michigan, where annual tuition is $694 for residents, $2260 for non- residents. ...
What a surprise. I was right.
Care to explain?
I doubt it.
This blog is all about image and facts are nothing but an inconvenient part of the scenery - to be ignored at will.
Come on. Be honest for a change. It might even help the conservative cause.
Because of inflation and cost of living increases, it might be a good idea to get a sense of perspective vis a vis Michigan's historical tuition rates.
In 1973 an non-resident Michigan student was charged $2260 annually. This was more than three times greater than the resident's rate of $694.
In 1970, a Harvard student was charged $2600 annually. It's not clear if this is just for tuition or includes room and board.
Either way, in the early 70s, Althouse got an education that other East Coasters consider to be on a level comparable to what exists in the Ivy League, both academically, and , financially.
Isn't GOOGLE great? I should be paid for this. And what role will lawyers like Reynolds and Althouse play in the future if their mistruths and cover-ups can be immediately corrected, for the record, by any interested party with a brain, a computer, and an interest in accuracy?
Be honest, dammit!!!
@Ritmo I'm sure you're wrong about the tuition for the years I went there. You must be looking at law school tuition or something. I think it was something like $600. It was much cheaper than private colleges, which my parents would not let me apply to. I paid my tuition with a National Merit Scholarship, and I worked in the summer and some of the time during the school year to earn spending money.
Really, I looked at your link, and it was a jumble. Get me to a specific page that shows the numbers. I am sure you are wrong.
Michigan when I went there had lots of young people from New York and New Jersey who had the grades and scores to go to the best schools but couldn't afford to them. I was my high school's valedictorian. Do you seriously think I chose the University of Michigan without a serious financial constraint? That would be crazy.
Unfortunately the historical pages on GOOGLE only show a snapshot of the news clippings; full access to the Chicago Tribune's article would cost $3.95. The second one is archived through the New York Times' Select - which I don't have much interest in signing up for. If you have a subscription, though, feel free to look it up here. It gives a comparison to the Tribune's article on Michigan's costs at the time.
Obviously I don't have much interest in arguing against your personal recollections, much less reasonable circumstances (such as a scholarship) which could have offset the costs. If you say your family's financial situation was less than ideal I have no problem taking that assertion in good faith and at face value.
But as for the insinuation that Michigan is typically cheaper than expensive schools - at least for non-residents - that is demonstrably, and pretty much patently, false. You can see that it remains comparable to a certain expensive and very prominent Ivy League school to this day. And Michigan's reputation really didn't change all that much over the years to make that comparable feature a very recent development.
Until we can access historical documents from their registrars' offices, I see no reason to doubt the excerpts from the Times and Tribune, which back up this comparison going all the way back to the 1970s. Do you?
As I see it, the only other explanation would be if a fine arts curriculum was in a separate division from "Literature, Science and the Arts". From what I could gather, that doesn't seem to be the case presently.
And actually, since Michigan is displaying fees according to semester, whereas Harvard is displaying them by the year, out-of-state tuition at Michigan actually works out to be more expensive than at Harvard.
But, you might say, that would be crazy, wouldn't it?
Well, actually, no. That's just the way the economics works out. For some people, the perception of prestige versus a less privileged existence follows the economics. But that's a different argument. As far as the economics of an Ivy League education versus an out-of-state education at Michigan goes, though, that's pretty much a settled point, I'd say.
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