One of the common themes of this Blog, sometimes subtle and
sometimes not is “They Don’t Get It.”
From sports fans who continue to finance professional and
collegiate teams with over the top players and coaches, idiot, spoiled owners
and management. To public and private educators who fail to see the financial
aid bubble is coming as they continue to follow a flawed business plan. To
ego-driven managers who are overpaid, over hyped, and overdressed.
Now I would like to add another name to this distinguished
list: The Fifth Estate.
I read newspapers, watch the network news, CSPAN, I even now
and then watch Fox News (don’t tell anyone). Though sometimes it takes plenty
of courage I read columnists like David Allen (thought I would mention him to
give local news a plug), Patt Morrison, Bill Plaschke, Maureen Dowd, Thomas
Friedman, Ann Coulter, David Brooks and though he scares the hell out of me,
Charles Krauthammer.
Despite all these viewpoints both conservative and liberal I
believe the media is missing something big in the coverage of this U.S.
Presidential election. This isn't a race just about characters, or even
character. It's about white people outside urban centers who feel like
strangers in their own land; about Hispanics and African-Americans facing
attacks reminiscent of the '60s; about how all of us are wrestling with the
advantages and pitfalls of perpetual social media connection in our politics;
about the susceptibility of our short-attention-span minds to the outrageous;
and about the scary fusion of reality and fiction at a time when our world is
more interconnected and combustible than ever, and in need of new paradigms.
Instead, we get character sketches of two untrustworthy and unlikable
candidates.
The list is growing of those who “Don’t Get It.” Stay tuned.
WHAT ARE
YOU SMOKING? - One day after saying he thinks Vladimir Putin
is a stronger leader than Barack Obama, Donald Trump gave an interview to RT,
the state-run Russian television network, in which he told the interviewer --
none other than Larry King -- that it was "pretty unlikely" that
Russia was behind recent cyber intrusions aimed at disrupting U.S. election
systems. Trump said he didn't know who hacked the DNC's computers. Speaker Paul
Ryan -- who endorsed Trump's candidacy -- was, again, pretty unambiguous in his
blatant disagreement with his nominee. Ryan said Putin is "an aggressor
who does not share our interests," and added that Russia has been
"conducting state-sponsored cyber attacks" on the United States'
"political system" -- referring to the DNC hack. Many national
security experts in and out of government have said Russia is to blame.
THE
FUTURE??? - Hillary's First 100 Days": "Hillary Clinton took
the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States on Friday, Jan.
20, 2017, after defeating the thousandaire Donald J. Trump in the previous
November's election. Since F.D.R., the first 100 days have come to be seen as
the defining moment of each presidency and are used to measure each new
president's accomplishments. Below are the highlights of President Clinton's
first 100 days as recorded near the end of her second term, in 2024, by her
official biographer, and recovered from a deleted email in 2025.
"Day 1: Inauguration of President Hillary Clinton and
Vice President Tim Kaine. Five minutes later, the G.O.P.-led House of
Representatives begins impeachment proceedings. Bernie Sanders assures
supporters that there is still a way he can win. Day 2: Revealed that Hillary
charged the United States $500,000 for her Inaugural Address and refuses to
release the transcript. A nation wonders whether Huma Weiner is really single
now or if she and Anthony Weiner are just taking a break."
Days until the 2016 election: 56.
Days until the first presidential debate: 13.
APOLLO,
THIS IS HOUSTON, DO YOU COPY? - University of Phoenix change in
ownership: There's no firm deadline for the Education Department to weigh in on
whether a group of investors, which includes some with deep ties to the Obama
administration, are effectively allowed to buy the University of Phoenix's
parent company. But the company, Apollo Education Group, has previously said in
SEC filings that it expects to get the necessary regulatory approvals to
complete the sale by the end of this calendar year.
BACK TO
SCHOOL??? - A federal crackdown on for-profit colleges is
cutting off a lifeline to the once-high-flying industry as the second major
school operator in recent years closed last Tuesday, potentially leaving
taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in student loans. ITT
Technical Institute, among the nation’s largest for-profit college chains by
revenue, abruptly closed more than 130 campuses, forcing more than 40,000
students at campuses in 38 states to begin looking for another school after the
government banned it from enrolling new students receiving federal aid. ITT got
80% of its cash revenue in 2015 from Title IV federal aid, including Pell
Grants and student loans. Meanwhile, a lawsuit seeking class-action status was
filed Tuesday on behalf of the 8,000 employees laid off by the closure of ITT’s
campuses.
Note: The financial aid bubble is
coming…..
COLLEGE
CHRONICLES - The president of Franklin & Marshall College,
who has drawn attention by more than tripling the percentage of Pell
grant-eligible students at the small Pennsylvania liberal arts school, says
he's open to Hillary Clinton's free tuition proposal. "Private schools
will benefit a lot if public schools are better," said Daniel Porterfield.
As Clinton's plan stands now, families making up to $125,000 would be eligible
for free tuition at public colleges and universities. That has many private
college presidents worried about potentially losing students, and some have
strongly opposed the proposal.
The nation should be investing "much more" in Pell
grants, Porterfield said. But Porterfield said he would be "very
supportive" of any ideas to strengthen federal and state support for
higher education. He said it's "troubling" to him that a lot of
public universities, after being hit by state budget cuts, became too dependent
on "revenue-focused financial aid and out-of-state recruitment" to
bring in tuition dollars - leading, he said, to fewer in-state options for
low-income students. In Porterfield's five years at Franklin & Marshall,
the school has shifted to offering only need-based aid, meaning they're
targeting more students who otherwise couldn't afford to go to a private college.
His college also has a summer program for promising high school seniors, and
works with groups like the Posse Foundation to aggressively recruit
"talent" in cities like Miami and New York.
"Rigor helps first-generation kids," Porterfield
said. At Franklin & Marshall, the growing portion of the student body who
rely on Pell grants have been at least as successful as their peers who come
from wealthier, college-going families. The 2016 four-year graduation rate at
Franklin & Marshall was 83 percent for Pell students, compared to 79
percent overall, he said. "I think one of the greatest excuses that you
hear coming out of some quarters is that we would like to have first-generation
college goers or lower-income college goers, but their needs are too great, and
we don't want to harm them," Porterfield said. "And that is a myth, I
think.
BIRTHDAYS
THIS WEEK – Birthday wishes and thoughts this week to Bob Baun (80) Don Mills, Ontario; Heidi Bravo …famous
educator, Arnold Palmer (87) Latrobe,
PA.; Dan Pugliese …famous hockey Dad.
iPHONE 7 UNDERWHELMS - WSJ's Geoffrey A. Fowler: "In your palm, Apple's iPhone 7 looks like the long-lost twin of the two-year-old iPhone 6. At a demo after Wednesday's launch event, I put the 6 and 7 side by side and played Spot the New Guy. The most discernible difference was the location of the camera. Oh, that and Apple took away something many of us use every day: the headphone jack.
"Apple's latest flagship phone delivers
practical improvements ... These were long overdue. But Apple is only catching
up to the competition, not flying past it. ... The iPhone 7 shows Apple is
either struggling to keep up with its own pace - or trying to reset our
expectations. This doesn't necessarily spell doom for Apple. There are many
good reasons customers remain loyal to it"
Forget about the headphone jack for a second.
Sure, it's pretty ... But you'll get used to it. The absence of a jack is far
from the worst shortcoming in Apple's latest product launch. Instead, it's a
symptom of a deeper issue with the new iPhones, part of a problem that afflicts
much of the company's product lineup: Apple's aesthetics have grown stale.
"Apple has squandered its once-commanding
lead in hardware and software design. Though the new iPhones include several
new features, including water resistance and upgraded cameras, they look pretty
much the same as the old ones. The new Apple Watch does too. And as competitors
have borrowed and even begun to surpass Apple's best designs, what was iconic
about the company's phones, computers, tablets and other products has come to
seem generic"
Apple last Wednesday announced improvements to
the iPhone that stopped short of a major overhaul, hoping that the upgrades
will revive sagging sales of its flagship product. The new iPhone 7 and iPhone
7 Plus deliver practical improvements that were long overdue, writes our
Personal Technology columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler. But Apple is only catching up
to the competition, not flying past it. Yet this doesn’t necessarily spell doom
for company. The new phones offer longer battery life, more storage and
brighter screens than their predecessors, but eliminate the traditional
headphone jack. The lack of a must-have feature breaks an Apple tradition of
major design changes every other year and poses a crucial question: Will users
find enough value in the improved features to upgrade from older models?
BANKERS - WELLS HIT WITH $185M ON MASSIVE FRAUD - Wells Fargo & Co. was slapped with a $185 million fine
... for 'widespread illegal' sales practices that included opening as many as
two million deposit and credit-card accounts without customers' knowledge ...
Employees at the bank, which has 40 million retail customers, in some instances
issued debit cards without customers' knowledge and assigned personal
identification numbers without telling them ...
They also transferred funds from authorized
customer accounts to temporarily fund ones without customer permission ...
sometimes resulting in fees for insufficient funds. ... Wells Fargo neither
admitted nor denied the allegations but agreed to pay the fine and submit to a
consent order to settle civil claims ... In detailing the widespread nature of
the bank's alleged missteps, CFPB said Wells Fargo, has 'terminated roughly
5,300 employees for engaging in improper sales practices.
The executive who oversaw [Wells Fargo's] group
of rogue employees, Carrie Tolstedt, conveniently announced plans to retire
over the summer and, according to Fortune, is being paid $124.6 million on the
way out. (One analyst has called for a clawback of that exit package.) Clearly
there is a disconnect between whatever Wells Fargo was telling the public and
what was actually going on at Wells Fargo - and that's putting it politely.
LOW INTEREST - Federal Reserve
officials, lacking a strong consensus for action a week before their next
policy meeting, are leaning toward waiting until late in the year before
raising short-term interest rates. It’s a close call. But with inflation
holding below the Fed’s 2% target and the unemployment rate little changed in
recent months, senior officials feel little sense of urgency about moving and
an inclination toward delay. Despite its hesitance, the Fed faces some external
pressure to move: J.P. Morgan Chase Chairman and CEO James Dimon said yesterday
that he favors increasing interest rates and that the Fed should act “sooner
rather than later.” For others, who note that the jobless rate hasn’t moved
much this year, the watchword is patience. Meanwhile, the Fed’s decision has
become the subject of intense market speculation in recent days.
TOP THREE – Top three sport talk shows:
1).
Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, Sirius XM: 3:00 – 6:00 p.m. ET
2).
The Herd with Colin Cowherd, Fox Sports: 12:00 – 3:00 p.m. ET
3).
Hockey Central, Sportsnet590: 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. ET
FAREWELL TO VIN SCULLY – I have had the
pleasure of listening to some wonderful broadcasters: Ernie Harwell with the
Detroit Tigers, Phil Rizzuto and Bill White with the New York Yankees, Bob
Murphy and Lindsey Nelson with the New York Metropolitans, and of course Vin
Scully with the Dodgers.
Vin Scully, who now enters his final month on
the job, began broadcasting for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1950 as an apprentice
to Red Barber. Three years later, he was the team’s lead broadcaster. By 1958,
when the team moved to Los Angeles to play in the Coliseum, he was so vital to
fans – many of whom had difficulty following the game in a stadium far too
massive for it – that they packed transistor radios so they could listen to Vin
in the stands. By 1976, fans elected him the “most memorable personality” in
Dodgers history. That was 40 years ago.
Over the decades, the sports-media landscape
changed dramatically, and Scully’s once-beloved profession was whittled down to
those Johns and Daves and Toms and Joes we like yelling at so much—but he never
lost his touch.
The key to Scully’s success is his calm,
intimate vibe. While many broadcasters call games as if they’re trying to talk
anonymous hordes out of looking at their iPads, Scully is having a conversation
with you – and only you. “I've always felt that I was talking to one
person," he said in 2007. "But I've never envisioned who that one
person is."
To listen to Scully is to be drawn in by a
storyteller—and a fellow traveler. Scully has seen nearly 10,000 baseball games
but he never sounds like a jaundiced expert. He’s excited to find out what
happens just like you. It’s a baseball game. Let’s watch it together.
In 1950, you listened to Vin Scully because you
wanted to know if the Dodgers were winning and he was the only way for you to
find out. Now, in an age of push notifications and Twitter alerts, it’s
difficult not to find out the score. And we have an absurd number of ways to
follow along. We can watch the game on our TVs, our iPads, our phones, our
video game consoles or even our wristwatches. We can listen to national audio
feeds. We can turn off broadcasters altogether and just listen to the crowd.
But still we choose Vin.
Ask any baseball fan. When they’re flipping
around MLB.tv looking for a default game, just "which game should I turn
on right now?" the determining factor is always, always, “Are the Dodgers
at home?" Because if they are, Scully's calling the game, and that's the
one you choose. Sure, the score of that Diamondbacks-Rockies game might be a
little closer. But you’re going to turn down the chance to listen to Vin? In
his last season, no less? The Dodgers are in first place, but even if they were
on a 100-loss pace, they would be must-watch all season. That’s because of Vin.
Though he’s been around forever, he’s not some
nostalgia play. He doesn’t complain that They Just Don’t Play Like They Used To
or invoke the Good Ole Days, perhaps because he realizes they’re not behind us.
What unites the newer fans to the past is that
they adore Vin Scully. The man in the booth – doing the job we now love to
denigrate – is more beloved than the players he describes on the field.
His voice has served as the soundtrack of
baseball even as that game, and the way we interact with it, has evolved. We’ll
choose him right down to the very end. And then we’ll get back to booing the
other guys. Thank you Mr. Scully, enjoy your retirement, you will be missed.
NFL GAME
OF THE WEEK – Sunday 9/18, 1:00 PM ET, CBS; Cincinnati Bengals
(1-0) at Pittsburgh Steelers (1-0). Too much Big Ben, Steelers win 28 – 17. Season to date (0-1)
COLLEGE
FOOTBALL PICK OF THE WEEK – Saturday 9/17, 7:30 PM ET, NBC: #12
Michigan State University Spartans (2-0) at #18 University of Notre Dame
Fighting Irish (1-1). The Spartans are tough on the road, The Domers are in
trouble; State 40 – 30. Season to date (2-0)
SMALL
COLLEGE FOOTBALL PICK OF THE WEEK – Saturday 9/17, 7:00 PM ET, HGTV:
#3 Linfield Wildcats (1-0) visit #5 Mary Hardin-Baylor Crusaders (2-0):
Northwest meets the Southwest, how good are the Wildcats, pretty good, Linfield
wins 24 – 20. Season
to date (2-0)
THE
SWAMI’S WEEK TOP PICKS –
(NFL, Sept. 18) Kansas City Chiefs (1-0) at Houston Texans
(1-0); The Swami is off to a slow start this season, time to get back on track,
KC wins 28 – 14.
(NCAA-DIII, Sept. 17) #24 St. John Fisher Cardinals (2-0) vs.
#16 Cortland State Dragons (2-0); huge Empire 8 Conference match, we like
Cortland 24 – 21.
(NCAA BCS, Sept. 17) #2 Florida State Criminals (2-0) at #10
Louisville Cardinals (2-0), Lamar Jackson is for real, Cardinals win 42 – 32.
(World Cup of Hockey2016, Sept. 17) USA vs. Europe, the World
Cup begins, best hockey you will see this year: USA starts fast 4 – 2 over Europe.
(MLB, Sept. 17) New York Yankees (76-67) at Boston Red Sox
(81-62), both teams fighting for playoff seeds, Sox win 5 – 4.
Season to
date (57 -45)
MARKET
WEEK - Summer vacation is over for markets. Investors who had bet
heavily on calm seas ahead were jolted on Friday as prices of stocks, bonds,
oil and gold all slid amid mounting concerns over the willingness and ability
of central banks to prop up markets. The CBOE Volatility Index, which tracks
investors’ expectations for volatility in stocks and had bounced near multiyear
lows during July and August, jumped 40%. The turbulence has reignited fears
that the Federal Reserve is moving further into a rate-raising phase that could
leave stocks, emerging markets and commodities vulnerable to a deeper pullback.
Whether the retreat is a blip or something bigger could hinge on what the Fed
does over the next two weeks. Three Fed speakers are scheduled to speak Monday,
after which the central bank enters a self-imposed blackout period before its
Sept. 20-21 meeting.
DRIVING
THE WEEK - Senate Foreign Relations on Tuesday at 10:30 a.m.
holds a hearing on Brexit ... Senate Banking has a hearing Tuesday at 10:30
a.m. on the National Flood Insurance Program ... Retail sales Thursday at 8:30
a.m. expected to dip 0.1 percent headline and rise 0.2 percent ex-autos ...
Industrial production at 9:15 a.m. expected to drop 0.2 percent ... Consumer
Prices at 8:30 a.m. Friday expected to rise 0.1 percent headline and 0.2
percent core ... Univ. of Michigan Sentiment at 10:00 a.m. Friday expected to
rise to 91.0 from 89.8.
Next
week: The best cider and words of the month.
Until Next Time, Adios.
Claremont, CA
September 13, 2016
#VII-15-317
CARTOON
OF THE WEEK – Schwartz,
The New Yorker
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