-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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@ Mark Glennon and debtsor
You have both made some excellent points. I will add an additional one. Since the Left controls academia, and it does, there is a lack of diversity on campuses. And that Diversity is one of Opinion and IDEAS. It is stifling freedom of thought. The Left wants it that way and they are in control.
If you are a graduate of Northwestern, do not contribute to them and tell the administration why.
I’m a bit old to sign up for higher education, but I’d be willing to take a course in “ The unsettling effect of paying into social services for 60+years with no discernible positive outcomes “. On second thought, nobody needs to go to university to learn about that.
They need a course in Unsettling Crusading Race Hustlers!
Universities need to fire woke professors who are brainwashing students.. They need to hire professors who support free speech. Universities brainwashing students is why Dems do better with the college educated.
Yes, and fixing higher education is an exceptionally sticky challenge. That’s because of tenure, and the overwhelming number of tenured people running the schools are leftists. It will be interesting to watch how today’s populist, centrist majority tries to take them down.
Academia has already begun its slow motion collapse. Academia is well aware of this problem and there is much hang-wringing over the situation in every quarter. NPR (despite being fake news, probably has a better grasp of this than anyone) had an article on this last week. I encourage everywhere to read the article. While the article addresses several issues, focusing on looming demographic problems because there are too many open desks for too few college students, the article fails to address that all college students are not created equal, because many of the incoming students in the coming years… Read more »
All that you say is true, but higher education is not going away and it will continue to shape the brains of our young people. I talk often to a number of profs in higher education. Most view the power of the radical left over their schools as overwhelming and they are pessimistic about any change. Even when the radicalism is hurting fundraising the lefties just don’t care. There are rays of hope, but we need measures to somehow expedite reform or a fix will take decades.
Higher education isn’t going away, that’s not what I said, but it is collapsing under its own weight. All of those factors are setting up the country for a very different academia for the next generation. Many states are banning and reducing DEI and diversity statements at state schools and those top schools are attracting the best and the brightest normal students, and professors, while the elite private schools and state universities in blue states are doubling down on racism, hatred, division and DEI, damaging their brands. We’ve already discussed how Illinois’s university system, outside of U of I, is… Read more »
Your posts are always worth reading, but these may be the best ones yet. Seriously good stuff.
Thanks. I’m in no way involved in academia, other than having a college degree, but I’ve always had a distrust and disdain for the people involved in academia, so I follow it moderately closely. It’s always easier to see things as an outsider than those on the inside because they earn a living from it. The university system has killed the goose that laid the golden egg. They jacked up tuition to unsustainable levels and went totally woke all during a period of precipitously declining births. They expanded their universities with new buildings, labs, departments, meanwhile taking out ungodly amounts… Read more »
My only point is that the radicals are more intransigent and harder to replace than most think, especially at private “elite” schools like NU, from all I hear firsthand. They may be changing their words and stated policies but conduct and curriculum are different matters. Here is a good piece describing how schools are pretending to back off on DEI but are just faking it. https://archive.ph/p7fl5. I think it’s a mistake to be satisfied watching the pace at which they are “collapsing” under their own weight. More must be done to quicken that pace.
For sure, we are 100% on the same page here on this topic. The radicals are difficult to remove at places like NU and they will lie about doing DEI and then double-down on it, I said that above (“…the elite private schools and state universities in blue states are doubling down on racism, hatred, division and DEI, damaging their brands…”). But at the end of the day, there’s just as many radicals at NIU and NEU too; and while the NU radical may keep his or her job, the NEU and NIU professors are going to find new careers… Read more »
RIdding academia of leftists is akin to getting rid of bedbugs – it is a long, arduous process, and even then there will be no 100% guarantee that the pests will ever be gone… bedbugs hide in cracks and can “hibernate” for a year. It will be the same for these leftist pukes…
Very good analogy!
Based on the calibre of incoming 2018 community college freshman (last year spent in academia), many graduating high school students could barely construct a cognizant sentence, let alone author a readable report. Comprehension and analytical skills were in short supply. The bright stars were the ESL European, Asian and some Hispanic students who outshined their native-born contemporaries. Many demonstrated good study habits, were on time and completed assignments – all important traits for a successful academic and working career. These days a high school diploma is close to meaningless as a predictor of a happy successful life. I weep for… Read more »
It seems to me your second sentence contradicts the first. Which has priority to you? Pick a side.
We have chosen a side- defending the right to free speech. The woke professors have also chosen a side- interfering with other people’s right to free speech on the grounds that it hurts their delicate sensibilities.
They should be fired, not for their speech to which they have a right, but for preventing others from exercising the same right.
“When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.”
The progressive creed.
This kind of tone deaf stupidity is why Democrats lost the popular vote in the most recent presidential election, to Donald Trump no less. Keep it up.
If you are a parent of a Northwestern student and your child spends your money on this trash, you were a bad parent and your child is an idiot.
Boycott Northwestern.
Northwestern is still a top school academically, with an increasingly competitive admissions process, with SAT scores of admitted students higher than ever, but the problem is that Northwestern specifically seeks out, and attracts, the wokest and crazies left wing nutjobs. They appear to be one of the go-to schools for the crazy folk, which majorly damages its credibility in the eyes of the greater public. In short, the normal kids don’t want to go there anymore. The normal kids are heading elsewhere. Many comments and tweets in recent months that there’s been a vibe shift happening, where the normal high… Read more »
It was a school highly regarded by other academics. In reality it was never a top school. When I was in high school I got paid to do the calculus homework and take some tests for Northwestern students.
Yes, but it is ranked #6 Nationally by US News and World Report, higher than University of Chicago which for time eternal has been ranked higher. I know US News methodology has its problems but these rankings do carry great weight. However, as I stated above, NW seems to be one of the go-to schools for most intelligent crazy leftists out there, with intense nationwide competition for admissions. Normies and regular students and people like us see #6 and laugh knowing its all a farce.
Of note, may eons ago, I toured Northwestern as a senior in high school in consideration of making an application, and I was totally turned off by the stupid campus tradition of painting that dumba** rock. I remember being 18 years old thinking to myself, wow, this is totally ridiculous, and at the time, I opted not to apply. I probably would have been accepted with my scores and grades, was definitely a stretch school, but I guess I’ll never know.
the saying was Hard to get into, easy to get out