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Tuesday’s Forum
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19 responses to “Tuesday’s Forum”
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38 sailors, Marines wounded this month in Middle East
Twenty-nine sailors and 9 Marines were wounded in action in September in Middle East military operations, according to a Pentagon database.
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In its updated accounting method, the Pentagon moved deaths that were previously listed under the “Operation Epic Fury” category into the “Overseas Operations” umbrella.The reclassification aligned with the Pentagon’s stance that Operation Epic Fury ended May 5.
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Since May 5, 443 service members have been wounded in action while military operations in the Middle East have continued. -
Gee, I wonder who created this “disaster”.
Abbott declares disaster in Texas over diesel prices, waives restrictions on commercial shipping
Gov. Greg Abbott declared a statewide disaster on Monday over soaring diesel prices and a worsening fuel shortage created by wars abroad.
The 30-day disaster declaration, which can be extended indefinitely, allowed Abbott to lift some restrictions on commercial transportation, which he said will alleviate some of the elevated costs. Diesel fuel is used in farming and commercial shipping, so elevated fuel prices are passed through to consumers in the form of higher costs for goods at the grocery store.
The declaration expands the use of dyed diesel on Texas roads, suspends Texas Low Emission Diesel rules to the limit the federal government authorizes and raises the allowable weight for fuel, agricultural and timber loads. The governor also requested the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to waive federal ultra-low sulfur diesel requirements to boost supply.
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Hell Week is not only approaching fast, but we’re stuck with doing some mini Hell Week proposals to close out the year (don’t ask), and market studies for 2027 are beginning to appear. So I thought I’d best do any complex cooking soon.
I think I’ll make the rotisserie chicken stock again, only not using as much of the meat, perhaps roasting the bones before making the stock. This lets me keep some stock in the freezer for latter use, for instance to make tomato soup in December, deep in Hell Week.
For the week, I think I’ll make enchiladas, Mexican rice (it has tomato mixed in the cooking broth), and refried beans with something else.
I also want to keep working on my novel, which I can do almost only on weekends.
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Missouri’s junior US Senator, Eric Schmitt, thought he’d boxed Jack Smith into a corner, and indeed accused him of perjury.
The claim arose from Schmitt’s assumption that Smith was in Atlanta for an NBA game the day prior to Fani Willis something something and resigned. (I still don’t understand what the (fake) conspiracy could even be.) Turns out that Smith was at a women’s college game, featuring the Iowa Hawkeyes, not the Atlanta Hawks.
These Republican Senators are in a contest to see who can appear to be the stupidest. That’s the only possible explanation.
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We all know that rising costs have made college unaffordable for the average young American, right? Paul Campos at LGM has some surprising data.
Indeed, a close analysis of the numbers reveals that college tuition – meaning the actual tuition paid by undergraduates at public institutions – is cheaper now than it has been at any time since at least the 1950s. Students at public universities today pay on average slightly more than two percent of median family income in tuition, compared to four and half percent in 1965. Most surprisingly, real tuition costs have fallen by more than 60% just since 2012 – a story that has gone almost completely unreported in the national discourse about college affordability.
A big part of it is apparently that, like health care, the list price has little or nothing to do with the actual price. It cost me several hundred dollars a year to graduate from Illinois in the late sixties. Covered with a scholarship, summer jobs, and loans I easily paid off. The piece doesn’t address student debt, which may be as bad as usually portrayed, or not.
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I’d noticed that tuition had gone up very little at our state university, where our family has been paying tuition for the last 8 years. I thought maybe it had something to do with the pandemic and expansion of remote learning, but perhaps there are other reasons to hold the line on tuition, such as the the fact that it had become expensive relative to its peer universities. Whatever the reasons, undergrad tuition, adjusted for inflation, is cheaper 8 years later.
The LGM piece doesn’t mention the 80’s, but other sources confirm my basic understanding — that public university tuition rose modestly in the 80’s, more sharply in the 90’s, and then skyrocketed in the 2000’s. But even after inflation-adjusted reductions in tuition over the last decade, sticker prices are still several times what they were in the early 80’s.
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The actual cost of college is far more than the tuition. Like a lot of prices in the US, the tuition cost is largely unbundled. You have a lot of mandatory fees to pay. Library fee, info tech fee, orientation fee, recreation fee, student union fee, health service fee. These fees quickly add up. Then the cost of room and board has also skyrocketed.
My references are what I paid for my kids vs what I paid in the early 70s. I was able to pay for my tuition ($400/semester with very little extras) and commuter costs to the state university with a part time near minimum wage job.
Full time state university with on (or near campus living) in Texas is about $30K/ year.
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You know the old custom of giving names to groups of beasts? Like a pride of lions, or a murder of crows?
How about a cornell of rapists.
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