UD just scored “Solid Liberal” on the Pew Political Typology quiz, and she’ll certainly vote for Hillary Clinton (unless Elizabeth Warren runs); but let her say again that Clinton should stop taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from American universities in exchange for giving speeches on their campuses.
It doesn’t matter that she takes their money and puts it in her charitable foundation; it doesn’t matter that the universities get the money they give her from ticket sales and booster organizations. It matters that
1. large sums of money that might have been used for education – and, at places like SUNY Buffalo, public education – are being syphoned off for the use of a politician; and that
2. the outrageously inflated amounts – in exchange for Clinton standing up for thirty minutes or so and reading a speech someone wrote for her – make Clinton look as money-grubbing as Eric Cantor.
July 16th, 2014 at 4:19PM
Amen (on all of it, including the political preferences/intentions).
July 16th, 2014 at 4:47PM
Thanks, Contingent Cassandra.
July 16th, 2014 at 4:54PM
I took the Pew Political Typology quiz, too. I scored as ” steadfast conservative”. That’s funny. I’m nowhere close. I once spent more than two years trying to get a sick lesbian health insurance (while I was myself uninsured), opposed by dip-squats who couldn’t distinguish a “family plan” (an insurers’ arbitrary selection protocol) from a family, a network of marital and filial relations.
The Pew family made its money from the Western Pennsylvania oil fields, about an hour from me, and later from Texas crude. They need to get a better quality intellectual to pull their plow.
July 16th, 2014 at 9:53PM
When Clinton spoke at UNLV a few weeks ago, media reports said that her fee came from “private donations” rather than from tuition or taxpayer funding. In some ways, isn’t that worse? If certain people are stepping up and saying “Here’s cash, university, put it toward the Hillary Clinton speech,” doesn’t it mean these schools may be laundering (I assume legally, but shadily) unofficial and premature campaign donations?
July 17th, 2014 at 9:37AM
“UD just scored “Solid Liberal” on the Pew Political Typology quiz, and she’ll certainly vote for Hillary Clinton”
So I guess this hopey changey thing must have worked out well for you.
“It matters that
1. large sums of money that might have been used for education – and, at places like SUNY Buffalo, public education – are being syphoned off for the use of a politician; and that
2. the outrageously inflated amounts – in exchange for Clinton standing up for thirty minutes or so and reading a speech someone wrote for her – make Clinton look as money-grubbing as Eric Cantor.”
Oh, what difference does it make?
July 17th, 2014 at 10:25AM
You are basically a straight shooter, UD–which makes your affection for the odious faux-Indian Tin Lizzy Warren puzzling. Living in her plush Cambridge mansion, taking hundreds of thousands from Harvard in exchange for precious little teaching and second-rate scholarship, all the while railing against “the rich”–she is the personification of hypocrisy.
July 17th, 2014 at 11:02AM
Why is suggesting that well-off people like yourself ought to pay more income tax evidence of hypocrisy?
July 17th, 2014 at 11:24AM
tp: I agree that Warren has some of the same problems Hillary does. Although I never thought her claim of Indian ancestry was a big deal (neither, obviously, did voters, despite a real effort on the part of her opponent to blow it up into something), I do think that her extremely high Harvard salary with a course load of one (per year! if what I’ve read is true) looks very bad.
But she doesn’t rail against “the rich,” tp. If you go back to her famous video when a candidate for the Senate, she goes on and on about if you’ve made it big, that’s great (“Take a big hunk of that.”). She rails against the irresponsible rich. (Of course, we can argue about what “irresponsible” means here.)
And as to plush Cambridge mansions: She bought her house (which is indeed very valuable, but doesn’t look all that plush to me), if I’m reading the records right, for four hundred thousand or so quite a few years ago. Because it’s steps from Harvard and lived in by a celebrity, it has sat there and appreciated like mad.
So has this house, which is a few blocks away from Warren’s. There’s no sales history available because it was bought way long ago by Mr UD’s father for not that much money.
I’m not saying one shouldn’t take pot shots against politicians like the unfortunate John Edwards (now there was a plush house… er, compound) who are truly hypocritical; I’m simply saying that in the case of Warren – and indeed in the case of Hillary Clinton herself – the matter is more complicated.
July 18th, 2014 at 12:55PM
UD, the phony claim to Indian ancestry is a big deal–as a law professor, she knows perfectly well that even a sincere belief in, uh, “family lore,” doesn’t cut it. Inasmuch as race/ethnically-based affirmative action is defensible, it has to be directed at actual minorities, not pale-faced, forked-tongue affluent Anglo blonds looking for a career edge.
The reality is that she listed herself as a minority, and once she had used that to haul herself into Harvard, she quietly tried to walk away from the claim, knowing that it wouldn’t withstand scrutiny. She has changed her story a gazillion times, but what it boils down to is a sharp-elbowed, brazen, whiter-than-white opportunist abusing affirmative action to get ahead. If she had a shred of decency, she would have apologized long ago.
Tin Lizzy is running a scam: a 0.5%-er waging war on the 0.1%-ers, all the while raking in the big bucks and filling even further bank accounts already stuffed with corporate consulting fees and money from her Harvard sinecure. She had an opportunity to walk some of her her big talk by paying the optional 5.85% Massachusetts tax instead of 5.35%–but did not do so.
July 18th, 2014 at 1:04PM
I realize that the super-rich feel (for some reason that has yet to be rationally explained) that they are the single most victimized group of people in the country, but I’m not sure why suggesting that an extremely modest increase in the amount of tax they pay is a good idea counts as ‘waging war’.
July 20th, 2014 at 10:47AM
Gee, Alan, Tin Lizzy had a perfect opportunity to walk the talk by paying the higher rate on her Massachusetts taxes–yet the only walking she did was straight to the lower rate. Perhaps Harvard Law’s illustrious “woman of color” (true, except the color is paleface vanilla blond) might get some traction outside the nutroots if she tried setting an example rather than dancing the progressive academic “do as I say, not as I do” shimmy.
July 20th, 2014 at 1:46PM
As usual, TP, lots of look-at-me! blarney that collapses into dust at the slightest inspection.
But what the heck, I’ll ask again: why does suggesting that an extremely modest increase in the amount of tax that the super-rich pay is a good idea count as ‘waging war’?
No clever wordplay this time, thanks: just an answer.