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Post by td128 on Jun 15, 2021 12:43:55 GMT -5
Further evidence and example of Holy Cross Football winning on and off the field.
Outstanding.
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Post by td128 on Jun 9, 2021 7:33:33 GMT -5
Great questions. Without going into too much detail and venturing into topics that are certainly sensitive and often confidential, suffice it to say the following:
- these funds raised via this event go straight to supporting Football operations. - there are never ending needs for funds - money is fungible and those managing the funds clearly know this - the Crusader alums involved in this effort are obviously driven to support Crusader Football and GROW THE PIE not simply focus on how it is sliced - winning clearly helps in terms of driving attendance, enthusiasm and support - the deal with the golf course is always important. That too is a competitive business and we monitor that closely. We have had a good rapport with Hopkinton CC over the last 5 years or so and that is a good thing.
One final comment, having headed and now transitioned the leadership of the 90-Wide to fellow Crusader Artie Grutt '02, I want to highlight the manner in which Coach Chesney and staff have embraced, promoted, and utilized our 90-Wide in the recruiting process. Coach Chesney along with all of the 90W mentors of course have made the vision of the 90-Wide a reality. Truly remarkable accomplishments are occurring. As examples, two weeks ago a Crusader from Class of 2014 graduated from Harvard Business School. Another Crusader from Class of 2015 recently was accepted as a resident in brain surgery having recently graduated from Tulane Medical School. Other graduates are launching businesses and making significant professional strides. Time and again, these individuals write back and inform us as to the impact of their 90-Wide mentors from their days as undergrads and continuing on as they advance in the professional world on their overall professional growth and development. Coach Chesney is copied on all of these messages and subsequently has very specific details and examples that he can and does share with the parents of recruits and especially the top prospects whom they really want. Without going into confidential details regarding specific rates of success, let's just say that the commitment to excellence within the Crusader Football program and the 90-Wide is generating real success both on and off the field.
This model clearly works and it is testament to the fact that we focus not on talking about the 90W but rather on the execution of the 90-Wide plan and principles therein. This plan and the principles will be further accentuated and advanced under the leadership of Artie Grutt and the newly established 90W Executive Leadership (Brian Cullinan '03, John O' Neil '06, Casey Gough '07, Daryl Brown '09, Kevin Golden '09, and Gary Acquah '14) and the Senior Advisors (Mark Cannon '77, Craig Cerretani '79, Whitey Moynihan '83 and yours truly).
Major props to Coach Chesney for seeing the power of these plans and getting everybody from within the program and within the 90W on the same page so we totally focus on execution.
Look for more on this subject in the coming months in terms of marketing and promotion.
#transformative #commitment #excellence #bestinclass
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Post by td128 on Jun 9, 2021 6:25:23 GMT -5
I echo my great friend and fellow 90-Wide leader football44's comments in every regard with one minor or perhaps major exception given the topic at hand. I hope the pay is commensurate or perhaps even more than commensurate so that we do not all subsequently commiserate.
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Post by td128 on Jun 8, 2021 19:38:07 GMT -5
If it was not a full max of 144 golfers then it was only a few short of that.
Equally as impressive as the turnout are the spread of years (grads from 1955, the early ‘60s and to the present) and the many who came in from real distance (CA, Chicago, FL and many points in between).
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Post by td128 on Jun 8, 2021 17:47:44 GMT -5
A phenomenal event yesterday. The energy on display all day yesterday was only exceeded by the expectations for the upcoming season and the future of the program.
Spenser Huston ‘83 did a fabulous job running the festivities yesterday as head of the Friends of Crusader Football.
Strong presence by local Worcester officials: WooSox rep talking about Polar Park; City Councilman and fellow Crusader Matt Wally; and local DA Joe Early who hosts a large number of current Crusaders for summer internships.
Former AD Ron Perry’s walk down memory lane was a real treat.
The star of the day, though, was our Head Coach Bob Chesney. He commands a room like few people can and is so genuine. As good a coach as he is, he’s an even better guy.
The goal for HCFB going forward is NOT simply to win the Patriot League. He’s aiming much higher than that — how about that, somebody who REALLY wants to win — and is doing the things necessary to make it happen.
Let’s Win!!
#restructureandextendhiscontract
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Post by td128 on Jun 6, 2021 7:23:27 GMT -5
I’ve stated it previously and welcome doing so again and with all due respect, there are some comments here that truly provide exceptional comic entertainment.
Let’s get to the full and unbridled truth and then we might be able to pass judgment on a host of topics and individuals.
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Post by td128 on Jun 4, 2021 6:50:20 GMT -5
Thank you efg72. Always a voice of reason and with a time honored and balanced perspective. IMO, you define the best of what it means to be a true Crusader and loyal son of Holy Cross.
I would think most and hopefully all would never want to experience again anything like the last 18 months. I shudder to think that some in our country and around the world might feel otherwise but that's a waste of time to even begin going down that road.
Back to our fellow Crusader's pearls of wisdom. In that spirit and so that mistakes in error or judgment and of the magnitude of these past 18 months may never occur again, I hope we might see much of the following pursuits of truth prevail:
1. Source original information as much as possible. How often do we hear public servants and officials talk about the importance of transparency. Let's see it.
2. Connect the dots within the wide web of public and private industry interactions. Are there conflicts of interest and how might those have played out?
3. Follow the money. Always.
The public deserves the full and honest truth and nothing less. Very regrettably, this does not often happen. The various commissions to review a number of crises (Wall Street in 2008, Warren Commission, the Rogers Commission (Space shuttle Challenger), and the 9/11 Commission) have typically fallen far short of the truth and over time have left as many questions unanswered as not.
Our country and everybody in it deserves better. Far better.
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Post by td128 on Jun 3, 2021 9:28:00 GMT -5
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Post by td128 on Jun 3, 2021 8:30:18 GMT -5
This is a real bummer. Vince was a gentle giant literally and figuratively. Holy Cross meant so much to him. After he was inducted in the inaugural class of the Ring of Honor he insisted that my wife Valerie and I and our son Tim ‘21 join him for dinner soon thereafter at his family’s restaurant in Norwalk CT. What a night.
The stories he shared about Holy Cross and the impact that the Jesuits had on him are memories I’ll never forget.
He truly had a larger than life persona. He had an incredible career in the NFL and is in the Washington Redskins Ring of Honor. There is an incredible photo of Vince in I believe Life magazine of him towering over I believe Deacon Jones of the Los Angeles Rams. I’m going to look for it.
Edward Bennett Williams, the then president of the Redskins impressed upon Vince that he needed to prepare for life after football so while still playing and a perennial 1st Team All Pro player, he matriculated at American University Law School. He couldn’t believe that Georgetown wouldn’t accept him.
At his induction into the Holy Cross Ring of Honor, he recounted how as a young freshman coming to the Cross from Mt. St. Michael’s in The Bronx (our great fellow Crusaders Gary and Kenny Acquah’s Alma Mater) he sat in Kimball Dining Hall with his classmates listening to the welcoming remarks by then a young Jesuit named Fr. John Brooks. Vince remarked, “I didn’t understand a word he said.” He further recounted how he struggled initially on the academic front but that Holy Cross stood by him. He was certainly forever grateful.
When I told him prior to his induction on that beautiful September 2010 day of his and fellow Crusaders’ (Gordie, Ed Murphy, John Provost, Gill the Thrill, Bullet Bill Osmanski) RoH induction that there was a freshman Crusader on the team who had also graduated from Mt. St. Michael’s, Vince immediately said, “Please introduce me to him.” I welcomed doing so.
Vince Promuto is the stuff of legends and represented true greatness on and off the field. A true Crusader, his Christian charity was not displayed on the field but it certainly was enormous off the field.
The night before his HC RoH induction, we had a group dinner at The Sole Proprietor of all those being inducted the next day and shared great stories. Vince’s sharing of his playing under Coach Vince Lombardi are memories I’ll never forget. My Dad was in attendance and was in his glory engaging Vince that night.
I had the great good fortune over these last ten years of speaking with Vince numerous times.
What a guy. What a Crusader.
Rest In Peace, Vince.
LD
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Post by td128 on Jun 2, 2021 17:47:27 GMT -5
Rather prescient on behalf of our fellow alumnus:
Very interesting.
Would seem worthy of serious questioning in an attempt to pursue truth.
Could our children have been protected better given his rather compellingly accurate foresight?
Serious question.
Navigate accordingly.
P.S. i pose these questions in very serious fashion. I’m not looking to troll or bait anybody here in the least. This has obviously been a very challenging stretch of time for all concerned. I truly wish that our fellow alum would sit for an extensive no holds barred interview with a journalist of unquestioned integrity and credibility to probe all these pertinent topics.
Dare I say I think he owes the country that interview.
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Post by td128 on Jun 2, 2021 14:50:23 GMT -5
So much for our fellow Crusader's book. Being reported that it was pulled off Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Perhaps it was related to his email regarding that masks should only be required for those actually infected by Covid-19.
/photo/2
This is very interesting.
Maybe the science changed.
Not often that a trove of emails of this sort are released without an attempt to restrict or delay the release.
Best guess is that TF is being positioned as a fall guy of sorts for the subsequent release of other information.
Standard operating procedure by those in positions of power to protect even larger interests.
Transparency is the great and only disinfectant.
I personally would like TF to be interviewed by a fully credible journalist so that he can both be questioned and provided opportunity to respond accordingly.
Who’s looking out for the kids?
Serious question.
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Post by td128 on Jun 2, 2021 7:49:41 GMT -5
I understand that through the use of the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), a trove of Dr. Fauci's emails covering January to June 2020 have been released. The Washington Post is one of the outlets running with this story. This is good. Americans and people worldwide deserve to know the truth across a range of topics and as much as possible in regard to the issues that have dominated our nation's landscape over these past number of months and years.
The pursuit of that virtue is the cornerstone of Jesuit education.
I would much prefer to hear directly from our fellow Crusader, both via emails and his subsequent comments, than those within the media -- across the entire spectrum -- who have been shown to be inherently biased as they go about deciphering the who, what, why, where, and how of this public health debacle.
Here is a link to the emails: assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20793561/leopold-nih-foia-anthony-fauci-emails.pdf
Let us not forget that transparency is the great disinfectant. I would hope those who frequent these parts will care to utilize this resource as a means of pursuing truth. I applaud those at WaPo and other outlets involved in filing the FOIA requests and obtaining this information.
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Post by td128 on May 31, 2021 16:23:42 GMT -5
Ben Watson is a truly remarkable individual in so many regards.
On the field, he made one of the single most incredible plays in NFL history:
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Post by td128 on May 29, 2021 7:56:59 GMT -5
Thank you sir.
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Post by td128 on May 27, 2021 16:20:15 GMT -5
η ΤΑΝ Η ΕΠΙ ΤΑΣ
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Post by td128 on May 14, 2021 6:09:47 GMT -5
All great points being shared here which is why it is all the more important to get into the marketplace and pound your chest and be proud of who we are and what we represent. Display the commitment to excellence in winning on and off the field that attracts individuals who similarly want to be within a community that desires and appreciates and pursues excellence in ALL its pursuits.
This is why situations such as that professor a few years back who defiled our Lord and Savior are so devastating. Untold damage to Alma Mater from that. Shame on those who supported his hire knowing of those writings.
People are attracted to strong principled leadership especially in the midst of a whirlwind of excessively politicized and overpriced verbal diarrhea that emanates from so many college campuses these days.
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Post by td128 on May 13, 2021 12:19:35 GMT -5
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Post by td128 on May 5, 2021 13:39:26 GMT -5
Maybe it is just me but some of the implied comments within this thread in regard to race, education, class, and political leanings are . . . well, I will be polite and say that they are very forthcoming to the point of being enlightening.
Wow . . . just wow.
IMO, some new lows being made here.
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Post by td128 on May 4, 2021 17:08:40 GMT -5
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons – AAPS – is a non-partisan professional association of physicians in all types of practices and specialties across the country. Since 1943, AAPS has been dedicated to the highest ethical standards of the Oath of Hippocrates and to preserving the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and the practice of private medicine.
Our motto, “omnia pro aegroto” means “all for the patient.”
Mailing Address: AAPS | 1601 N. Tucson Blvd. #9 | Tucson, AZ 85716
Phone: 1-800-635-1196 Fax: 1-520-325-4230 or 1-520-326-3529
Email: aaps@aapsonline.org
Media Contact: Jane Orient, MD | (520) 323-3110 | jorient@mindspring.com
aapsonline.org/about-aaps/
To serve the state? Or to serve our patients? That is the question we will increasingly face as government forces its power into every nook and cranny of our professional lives. I once belonged to all the standard societies—my specialty society, my state and local medical society and—dare I admit this—even the AMA. But I discovered that none of these societies stood on the principles I hold dear—individual liberty, personal responsibility, limited government, and the ability to freely practice medicine according to time honored Hippocratic principles.
AAPS Fights to Preserve Medical Freedom! The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, AAPS, has been fighting the good fight to preserve the practice of private medicine since 1943. When the Clinton health plan was proposed, we fought for open meetings. And when the details came to light, the plan was halted. In the current battle over health care “reform,” the AAPS helped organize numerous physician rallys and has a pending lawsuit suit in the DC Federal District Court challenging the constitutionality of the ObamaCare insurance mandate.
AAPS Stands up for Physicians! The AAPS legal team defends doctors who have been mugged by Medicare, or railroaded by hospitals using sham peer review. We sued the Texas Medical Board in defense of physicians’ due process rights; this suit is now on appeal. We drafted legislation for reform of the Texas medical practice act and are fighting for its enactment.
AAPS Helps Physicians Reduce and Eliminate Third Party Interference! The AAPS seminar, “Thrive Don’t Just Survive,” has reached doctors all over the country who wish to leave the hassles of Medicare and the interference of managed care and start a cash practice. We have helped hundreds of doctors opt out of Medicare through information on our website and our limited legal consultation service. We challenged the HIPAA “Privacy Rule,” and got the government to acknowledge the “country doctor exemption” for physicians who do not file claims electronically. AAPS Keeps You Informed!
Our monthly newsletter, AAPS News is packed with political, legal, and practical information that physicians cannot afford to miss. Our Journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons publishes the controversial issues—often with both sides in a point counterpoint–that you won’t find in most mainstream medical publications. AAPS email alerts and our website (www.aapsonline.org) will get you the late breaking news as it happens and provide you with urgent political action items to help in the fight to restore medical freedom.
Individually, our members have appeared on Fox News, in the Wall Street Journal, in HumanEvents.com and other blog sites, contributing time, talent, and facts to counter the emotional arguments for socialized medicine.
AAPS speaks for Physicians NOT Corporate or Government Interests! AAPS is completely funded by membership dues and contributions, so we answer to and advocate for our physician members and not big corporate donors or government funding sources. The AMA’s deal with HCFA gave it a monopoly on the CPT codes, from which it derives at least $70 million in revenue annually. AAPS was one of the first to expose this conflict of interest.
All elected AAPS Board members and officers serve on a volunteer basis and even pay their own way to board meetings. We do not have a big building, or a bloated staff. Every dime in dues goes directly to the fight for freedom in medicine.
Join Your Colleagues to Keep Patient-Centered Medicine Alive! For almost 75 years, we have consistently stood for ethical patient-centered medicine—the kind only possible in a free market medical system.
So, if you are like me, and you are tired of contributing to organizations which claim to be your advocate, but do little more than lobby for short term payment increases, support politicians who cannot be trusted, and feed their own self preserving coffers by selling you CPT coding manuals, come join us at the AAPS.
AAPS Code of Medical Practice and Bylaws: www.aapsonline.org/AAPS_ByLaws.htm
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Post by td128 on May 4, 2021 16:34:44 GMT -5
ICYMI . . . and on the other hand. The point regarding liability has been previously raised. Glad my son is graduating in two weeks.
Physicians, Surgeons Call on Universities to Reverse COVID Vaccine Mandates In an open letter, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons asked universities to reverse mandates “before more students are harmed” and to make the vaccines “rightfully optional.”
By Children's Health Defense Team
childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/physicians-surgeons-universities-reverse-covid-vaccine-mandates/
In an open letter, AAPS listed 15 reasons universities should reconsider vaccine mandates.
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is calling on U.S. colleges and universities to allow students to attend in-person classes without requiring them to be vaccinated for COVID.
In an open letter, AAPS listed 15 reasons universities should reconsider vaccine mandates.
“Although, at first glance, the policy may seem prudent, it coerces students into bearing unneeded and unknown risk and is at heart contrary to the bedrock medical principle of informed consent,” the letter stated.
According to its website, AAPS is a non-partisan professional association of physicians in all types of practices and specialties across the country. The organization was founded in 1943 to preserve “the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and the practice of private medicine.”
As The Defender reported last week, more than 100 colleges across the country will require students to get the vaccine for in-person attendance, though most will allow medical and religious exemptions.
Children’s Health Defense provides this letter students can send to universities explaining that under federal law, Emergency Use Authorization vaccines cannot be mandated.
Read the AAPS open letter:
Dear Deans, Governing Boards and Trustees,
On behalf of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, I am writing to ask you to reconsider your new policy mandating COVID-19 vaccination of students prior to returning to campus.
Institutions of higher learning are divided on this issue. Although, at first glance, the policy may seem prudent, it coerces students into bearing unneeded and unknown risk and is at heart contrary to the bedrock medical principle of informed consent.
There are multiple reasons to reverse your policy. I ask you to consider the following:
1. Young adults are a healthy and immunologically competent and vibrant group that is at, “extraordinary low risk for COVID-19 morbidity and mortality.”
2. College and University students, however, are under significant mental health strain already from COVID-19 fears, circumstances, distance learning problems and the imposition of government health policy restrictions.
3. Even though the FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for three COVID-19 vaccines, they are not FDA approved to treat, cure or prevent any disease at this time. Clinical trials will continue for at least two years before the FDA can even consider approval of these vaccines as effective and safe.
4. The COVID-19 vaccines on the market in the U.S., mRNA (Moderna and Pfizer) and DNA (Johnson & Johnson — Janssen), have caused notable side effects, pathology and even death (>2300 deaths per VAERS as of April 20). These adverse reactions result in absence from school and work, hospital visits, and even loss of life.
5. College-age women may be at unique risk for adverse events following administration of the experimental COVID vaccinations currently available. According to the CDC, all cases of life-threatening blood clots, subsequent to receiving the J&J vaccine, reported so far in the United States, occurred in younger women. The vast majority of cases of anaphylaxis have also occurred in women. In addition, “women are reporting having irregular menstrual cycles after getting the coronavirus vaccine,” and 95 miscarriages have been reported to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID vaccination as of April 24, 2021.
6. Recent research data demonstrates that the spike protein, present on the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the induced primary mechanism of action of COVID-19 vaccines, are the primary cause of disease, infirmity, hospitalization and death.
7. Students who have had self-limited cases of COVID-19 already possess antibodies, activated B-cells, activated T-cells (detectable by lab testing). This durable, long-term immunity would not only prevent them from getting recurrent COVID-19, but would also represent herd immunity to protect others in the college or university community.
8. COVID-19 convalescent students may be harmed by college and university policy requiring COVID-19 vaccines. They already have extensive immunity and would be likely harmed from a forced confrontation with COVID-19 vaccine induced spike protein causing autoimmune reactions leading to illness and possible death.
9. Students and their families may justifiably believe these policies discriminate against individuals who aren’t candidates for this vaccine, have pre-existing conditions, previous COVID-19 disease, cite religious objections, or are otherwise exercising their freewill choosing not to participate in this optional vaccine experiment. Refer to the Nuremberg code from WWII, which requires individuals, “to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force …”
10. Institutional policies that permit faculty to choose or refuse vaccination, but do not allow students the same options, raise equal protection constitutional issues.
11. The ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, requires “reasonable accommodations,” be provided based on an individual’s own unique health situation. This includes rejection of an experimental vaccine intervention which may exacerbate known health problems and thereby cause harm.
12. Colleges and Universities should consider whether they might be liable for damages, poor health outcomes, and loss of life due to mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policies.
13. “Positive cases,” as defined by laboratory testing alone, may be false positive testing errors or asymptomatic infection that is not clinically proven to spread disease.
14. Ambulatory outpatient early treatment for SARS-CoV-2 infection / COVID-19 has been demonstrated effective in adults.
15. Informed consent is the standard for all medical interventions. The FDA factsheet for the healthcare provider reads, “The recipient or their caregiver has the option to accept or refuse (Pfizer-BioNTech) vaccine.”
Please reverse your decision to mandate experimental COVID-19 vaccines before more students are harmed and make the vaccines rightfully optional. Both unvaccinated and vaccinated students should be permitted on campus. Thank you for your time and attention. We would appreciate hearing back from you as soon as possible and welcome further discussion with you and other leaders at your institution.
Sincerely,
Paul M. Kempen, M.D., Ph.D. – AAPS President (2021)
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Post by td128 on Apr 29, 2021 13:10:55 GMT -5
Although our government currently throws around TRILLION dollar figures on a variety of programs as if it is not real money, a $500 Billion loss is still real money in most parts of our nation.
This recent commentary in the WSJ is a little lengthy but if it reminds you of the racket that overtook the sub-prime lending industry and the subsequent crash of our housing market back in 2008-2009, then you would not be the only one making those observations.
I wish there were an index that tracks the price of private college and university education because I would short it.
Is the U.S. Student Loan Program Facing a $500 Billion Hole? One Banker Thinks So.
Government sees it as a moneymaker. Former JPMorgan executive sees a giant loss looming due to rosy repayment hopes.
By Josh Mitchell April 29, 2021 10:38 am ET
In 2018, Betsy DeVos, then U.S. education secretary, called JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon for help.
Repayments on federal student loans had come in persistently below projections. Did Mr. Dimon know someone who could sort through the finances to determine just how much trouble borrowers were in?
Months later, Jeff Courtney, a former JPMorgan executive, arrived in Washington. And that’s when the trouble started.
According to a report he later produced, over three decades, Congress, various administrations and federal watchdogs had systematically made the student loan program look profitable when in fact defaults were becoming more likely.
The result, he found, was a growing gap between what the books said and what the loans were actually worth, requiring cash infusions from the Treasury to the Education Department long after budgets had been approved and fiscal years had ended, and potentially hundreds of billions in losses.
The federal budget assumes the government will recover 96 cents of every dollar borrowers default on. That sounded high to Mr. Courtney because in the private sector 20 cents would be more appropriate for defaulted consumer loans that aren’t backed by an asset.
He asked Education Department budget officials how they calculated that number. They told him that when borrowers default, the government often puts them into new loans. These pay off the old loans, and this is considered a recovery, even though in many cases the borrowers haven’t repaid anything and default on the new loans as well.
In reality, the government is likely to recover just 51% to 63% of defaulted amounts, according to Mr. Courtney’s forecast in a 144-page report of his findings, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
“If you accounted this way in the private sector, you wouldn’t be in business anymore,” Mrs. DeVos said in a December interview. “You’d probably be behind bars.” Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos commissioned an outside analysis of the student loan program’s finances.
Mr. Courtney’s calculation was one of several supporting the disclosure in a Journal article last fall that taxpayers could ultimately be on the hook for roughly a third of the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio. This could amount to more than $500 billion, exceeding what taxpayers lost on the saving-and-loan crisis 30 years ago.
If Mr. Courtney is right, there are big implications for taxpayers and families alike. While defaulted student loans can’t cause the federal government to go bankrupt the way bad mortgage lending upended banks during the financial crisis, they expose a similar problem: Billions of dollars lent based on flawed assumptions about whether the money can be repaid.
Were his model to be adopted, watchdogs such as the Congressional Budget Office could force the federal government to recognize the losses, deepening deficits and adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt. That would put pressure on the government to take action to narrow the losses. Some government officials and advocates of student loans fear it would create pressure to curtail the program.
The assumptions in Mr. Courtney’s model faced challenge by some career officials at the White House Office of Management and Budget during the Trump administration, according to Diane Auer Jones, who was deputy under-secretary of education. The Education Department under President Biden killed Mr. Courtney’s project in late February, meaning that his model won’t be used to value the student loan portfolio.
A memo announcing the decision, reviewed by the Journal, cited criticism by OMB asserting that the “analysis used incomplete, inaccurate data and suffered from significant methodological shortcomings, including a dubious method for predicting borrowers’ future income.”
Student Loans, Profit and Loss
In most years, the government projected it would make profits on the annual student loan program, but projections have often proved too rosy as borrowers failed to repay as expected.
Biden officials never saw Mr. Courtney’s report, and have dismissed his project on grounds that they believe it was motivated by a political agenda by Mrs. DeVos to kill the student loan program. A spokeswoman for the Education Department said his analysis was also based on incomplete data.
“One of the many reasons we have a model of record is to ensure valuation of the student loan portfolio is not subject to political interference,” the spokeswoman said. She said the agency has refined its model over time to improve accuracy, and Biden officials believe it is more accurate than the one spearheaded by Mr. Courtney.
President Biden is a proponent of student lending and supports the federal government’s remaining the principal source of the loans. He has asked Congress to write off $10,000 of each student borrower’s debt.
All sides agree budget modeling is as much an art as a science. Different assumptions, such as about how much borrowers will earn in coming decades, yield different results.
The program quirks Mr. Courtney analyzed resulted from a series of decisions by Congress and presidents of both parties dating back to 1990, many of them rooted in accounting.
Before then, the budget treated student loans as an expense. If the government lent $1 billion, the deficit rose by that amount, absent offsetting measures.
The law changed in 1990 to incorporate expected future repayments. Suddenly, loans became a potential source of profits, by assuming that most borrowers would repay with interest. This created an incentive for Congress to expand student lending. Doing so would increase access to higher education either at no cost to the government or with a gain in federal revenue, at least on paper.
Changes in 1992 made loans available for the first time to students from upper-income households, and provided that interest would start accumulating while borrowers were still in school, instead of after graduation. Congress also lifted a ceiling on how much parents could borrow for their children.
In 1993 the government introduced “Income-contingent” loans, under which monthly repayments were set as a share of borrowers’ income instead of fixed, and repayment could be spread over 25 years instead of 10.
This encouraged bigger loans. Congress and the Obama administration later expanded these kinds of loans. In all, the changes, by making nonpayment of student loans seem less likely, were justified as preventing losses from student lending.
One instance of how accounting drove policy came in 2005 with Grad Plus, a program that removed limits on how much graduate students could borrow. It was included in a sweeping law designed to reduce the federal budget deficit, which had become a concern in both parties as the nation spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as baby-boomer retirement was set to raise Social Security and healthcare outlays.
A key motive for letting graduate students borrow unlimited amounts was to use the projected profits from such lending to reduce federal deficits, said two congressional aides who helped draft the legislation.
Each change was publicly justified as a way to help families pay for college or to save the taxpayer money, said Robert Shireman, who helped draft some of the laws in the 1990s as an aide to Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.) and later was deputy under secretary of education in the Obama administration.
But how agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office “score” such changes—determine their deficit impact—“is a key factor in deciding whether a policy is adopted or not,” Mr. Shireman said. “The fact that it saved money helps enact it.”
Some expectations came true. Households did borrow more, and borrowers were less able to escape repayment. By 2014, five million Americans owed at least $50,000 in student debt, according to a Brookings Institution study. A majority of the big-balance borrowers earned graduate degrees.
Borrowing by parents for their children also surged. In 2016, for the first time, most new federal student loans went to parents and graduate students rather than to undergraduates.
Tuition at America’s public universities has nearly tripled since 1990. With President Biden looking to ease the burden for some students, experts explain how federal financial aid programs can actually contribute to rising costs.
The assumption that all this student lending would mean growing profits for the federal government and savings for taxpayers has been consistently off the mark. The federal government extended $1.3 trillion in student loans from 2002 through 2017. On paper, these would earn it a $112 billion in profit.
But student repayment plummeted. In response, the government revised the projected profit down 36%, to $71.5 billion. The revision would have been bigger except for the fall in interest rates that let the U.S. borrow inexpensively to fund loans.
The phenomenon is worsening in recent years. For the fiscal year ending September 2013, the government projected it would earn 20 cents on each dollar of new student loans. For fiscal 2019, it projected it would lose 4 cents on each dollar of new loans, federal records show.
Congress approves the student loan program each year, doing so based on a profit assumption. Then, in subsequent years, it revises those profit estimates based on the repayments that actually arrive.
If repayments come in lower than expectations—as has happened successively in recent years—the Treasury Department fills the gap with cash infusions to the Education Department.
This process takes place outside of the budget review and outside of congressional oversight. Ever-larger cash infusions from the Treasury have been needed.
In 2018, more than a year after Mrs. DeVos became Education Secretary, she looked for someone to sort through this, and JPMorgan’s Mr. Dimon recommended Mr. Courtney, who had just retired from the bank after heading its private student-loan branch. He joined the administration and started going through documents.
According to his report a year later, students who took out federal loans in the 1990s had repaid, on average, 105% of the original balance a decade later, including interest. Since 2006, they had repaid an average of just 73% of their original balance after a decade.
He looked into why government projections seemed so far off. One thing he found was that Education Department budget officials didn’t look at basics such as borrowers’ credit scores to estimate the likelihood they would repay. Not checking credit would be unthinkable in the private sector.
With the help of a contractor that does statistical modeling, FI Consulting of Arlington, Va., he ran some numbers. The credit scores of four in 10 borrowers would qualify them as “distressed”—double the rate on all types of private consumer loans, his analysis found.
He also saw that when borrowers defaulted, the government continued to charge interest, allowing balances to keep rising, which also differs from private lenders’ practice.
Then, the government typically put those defaulting borrowers into new loans, and the accrued interest was wrapped into a new balance. The borrowers’ loans were no longer “nonperforming.”
A substantial number of borrowers go on to default on these new loans, according to Mr. Courtney’s report, which was part of why he estimated so much lower a recovery of defaulted amounts.
Another source of what he considered faulty projections: Borrowers unable to make regular monthly payments sometimes lowered them by switching to income-based repayment. President Barack Obama made this move widely available, which his administration could do by itself on the understanding it wouldn’t widen the deficit.
The accrual of unpaid interest caused loan principals to rise instead of decline, making the loans appear more profitable to the government, even though the accrual stemmed from borrowers’ difficulty in repaying.
Mr. Courtney’s conclusions, outlined in a presentation to Mrs. DeVos in May 2019, also said Education Department budget officials overestimated how much borrowers would earn and thus be able to pay back. The department is blocked by law from reviewing individual borrowers’ tax records. Its estimates of how much borrowers’ incomes would rise were consistently wrong, he concluded.
All told, his analysis led to his estimate that taxpayers would be left with the bill for around a third of all outstanding loans when they reach the end of their repayment cycles.
Some OMB staffers voiced concern Mr. Courtney’s project would undermine the president’s budget proposals, potentially forcing the government to come up with hundreds of billions of dollars to balance the books, said Ms. Jones, the former deputy under secretary of education.
OMB takes data from the Education Department to project how much student loans will earn for taxpayers or cost them. The agency has final say on accounting procedures, and Ms. Jones said some staffers expressed concern that private-sector officials with no experience with the federal budget process were doing a task the law gives to OMB.
Mr. Courtney left shortly after giving Mrs. DeVos his report, which was based on an alternative student loan budget model developed with the help of FI Consulting and audited by the consulting firm Deloitte.
While the Biden administration has rejected his analysis, the status quo creates problems both for borrowers and for the government, according to Mr. Shireman, the former aide to Sen. Simon and President Obama. Mr. Shireman said the projected profits from student lending discourage making changes that would help borrowers, such as lowering interest rates.
Many pay 7% to 8% on graduate-student and parent loans. The government, which can borrow at less than 2%, could refinance loans at lower interest rates, making less onerous and perhaps more likely to be repaid, but that would reduce profits the government projects.
Federal law bars the Education Department from refinancing federal student loans at lower rates. Borrowers with strong credit and income can replace their federal loans with cheaper private loans from lenders such as Social Finance Inc.
Some have done so, costing the government foregone interest and leaving its portfolio more heavily weighted with borrowers who are less likely to repay, either because they didn’t graduate, they borrowed too heavily or have low-paying jobs.
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Post by td128 on Apr 29, 2021 6:10:21 GMT -5
ICYMI . . . on the thread relating to honoring our fellow Crusader alum, I left a link to a 2013 article from Fortune magazine. Given that the Fortune piece was behind a paywall, I also provided a link to a site that carried the extensive commentary entitled Dirty Medicine. Regrettably, nobody seemed to pick up on or did not want to comment on the passage within that post relating to a shocking display of racism on a massive level over a protracted period.
In the spirit of pursuing truth that lies at the core of our Jesuit education, I welcome relinking to that commentary and not make anybody actually have to dig for the details. Rather remarkably, the details very easily could be included in 3 separate threads within this category.
For a frame of reference, the individual referenced (Dinesh Thakur) was in charge of the data analysis at this pharmaceutical company Ranbaxy Labs and blew the whistle on the distribution of adulterated medicines produced by the company that went predominantly into African nations.
www.rauhpsychiatry.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Dirty-medicine-Fortune-Features-copy-4.pdf
"It's just blacks dying." Throughout the summer of 2005, Thakur tried to convince himself that the company's medicine was no longer his problem. He was jobless and piecing together haphazard consulting work. He feared for his family's safety. The company had a "reputation for threatening people, bullying people," he recalls. Thakur hired a security company, which posted a guard outside his home 24 hours a day.
On fitful nights, he lay awake with a map of the world in his head. It contained each of Ranbaxy's markets and the substandard drugs the company had made. He mentally reviewed the graphs he had prepared, each spelling out a hazard to patients that was almost certainly continuing. Not only had the FDA approved the company's PEPFAR drugs. In August, the WHO restored the company's ARVs to its prequalified list.
Thakur knew the drugs weren't good. They had high impurities, degraded easily, and would be useless at best in hot, humid conditions. They would be taken by the world's poorest patients in sub-Saharan Africa, who had almost no medical infrastructure and no recourse for complaints. The injustice made him livid.
Ranbaxy executives didn't care, says Kathy Spreen, and made little effort to conceal it. In a conference call with a dozen company executives, one brushed aside her fears about the quality of the AIDS medicine Ranbaxy was supplying for Africa. "Who cares?" he said, according to Spreen. "It's just blacks dying."
Some might think that this level of criminal activity would qualify as crimes against humanity. I certainly do.
I would assume that the more highly educated in the audience are familiar with the program known as PEPFAR and the organization known as WHO and the agency that goes by FDA. For the benefit of everybody else, PEPFAR is the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief launched in 2002 by GWB. WHO is the World Health Organization. FDA is Food and Drug Administration. Who more than any other single individual influences the WHO? The same individual who after the USA provides the greatest degree of funding for the organization. Yep, none other than Bill Gates.
Those practices distributing adulterated meds went on for years. What happens when people take an adulterated medicine for a virus such as HIV? One builds up a resistance to the drugs being used and the virus spreads doing long lasting damage to countless people and nations in the process. This is not some sort of fictitious script. This is real life in the developing world where the people are provided little to no protection from the big money predatory forces of major pharmaceutical companies in bed with ineffectual if not fully corrupt regulatory agencies including those based here in the United States.
What transpired is real racism. I might imagine that most here including those like myself who might be counted among the lesser educated, stupid, idiotic and ugly can connect the dots across the selected threads in this category.
The folks at FDA, NIH, NIAID, and DOJ should be called on the carpet for why and how this activity within Ranbaxy persisted for so long.
Navigate accordingly.
P.S. For the overachievers in the audience who might care to read about the long term health and economic impacts of drug resistance, I welcome sharing this link from a site known as Review on Antimicrobial Resistance: amr-review.org/home.html
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Post by td128 on Apr 28, 2021 7:23:06 GMT -5
From this morning's WSJ. Some may agree and others disagree with the writer's perspective but these facts included by Mr. Riley are funny things. The WSJ was free when I was on campus. I wonder if it still is and even more so whether it is read within selected offices on the hill. Hmm . .
Race Relations in America Are Better Than Ever Obsessed with theories of ‘systemic racism’ and ‘unconscious bias,’ the media ignores good news. By Jason L. Riley April 27, 2021 6:15 pm ET
You wouldn’t know it from recent headlines, but there’s good news about race in the U.S. today. The pessimism peddled on the left by pundits and elected officials is in the service of an ideological agenda, and it’s probably doing more real harm to race relations than any actual racism.
A big part of the problem is that the political press has never come to grips with Donald Trump’s election in 2016. The media didn’t anticipate it, refused to accept it, and have been willfully misinterpreting the reasons for it. Their preferred narrative is that racists, sexists and xenophobes put Mr. Trump in the White House, thus demonstrating that hatred and bigotry in the U.S. are ascendant. But is it true?
First, it’s worth clarifying (yet again) that former supporters of Barack Obama, not white nationalists, were the voters responsible for Mr. Trump’s election. Only occasionally did the establishment media acknowledge this in its reporting. “It’s clear that large numbers of white, working-class voters shifted from the Democrats to Mr. Trump,” reads a New York Times dispatch from 2017. “He flipped millions of white working-class Obama supporters to his side. The voter file data makes it impossible to avoid this conclusion.”
If journalists haven’t avoided this conclusion entirely, they’ve spent far more time pushing an alternative explanation that cites supposed racial retrenchment in the U.S. as the main driver of Mr. Trump’s political success. The fruits of this effort are laid bare by political scientist Eric Kaufmann in a compelling new report from the Manhattan Institute. Using survey data, Mr. Kaufmann notes that racial attitudes have been trending toward more tolerance for well over half a century, even as black politicians (Mr. Obama, Kamala Harris ), professional polemicists (Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi ) and major media organs (the New York Times’s “1619 Project”) continue to insist otherwise.
According to Mr. Kaufmann, “at a time when measures of racist attitudes and behavior have never been more positive, pessimism about racism and race relations has increased in America.” Terms like “systemic racism” and “unconscious bias” are increasingly common, but white racist views have been in steady decline, whether with regard to having black co-workers, classmates or neighbors.
Intermarriage trend lines also undermine the notion that racial bigotry in America is a growing problem. “Approval of black-white intermarriage rose among whites from around 4% in 1958 to 45% in 1995 and 84% in 2013,” Mr. Kaufmann writes. “In 2017, fewer than 10% of whites in a major Pew survey said that interracial marriage was a ‘bad thing,’ ” and the “actual share of intermarried newlyweds rose from 3% in 1967 to 17% in 2015.” In fact, intermarriages involving Asians, Hispanics and Jews have all risen sharply over the decades, yet progressive intellectuals want to lecture the rest of us on how to be “antiracist.”
What explains the wide perception of racial retrogression at a time when surveys show that racial attitudes and behaviors have never been better? Mr. Kaufmann cites ideology, partisanship and the media’s ability “to frame events and social trends.” The political left has a stake in overstating both the existence and effects of racism so that it can advocate for more and bigger programs to combat it. And the media has long been willing to do the left’s ideological bidding. Social media allows for wide publicity of statistically rare incidents that are in reality getting even rarer, giving the impression that isolated and infrequent events “happen all the time.”
This research goes a long way toward explaining last summer’s street protests and why the nation was on pins and needles last week while awaiting the George Floyd verdict. The media has fed the public a story line about race and policing that serves the interests of activists and liberal politicians but that cannot be supported by facts and data.
Fatal encounters between police officers and black suspects are always unfortunate and sometimes tragic, but they’re also exceedingly rare. Nor is it rational to conclude, without supporting evidence, that these encounters are driven by racial animus. As Mr. Kaufmann notes, “police killings of African-Americans declined by 60%-80% from the late 1960s to the early 2000s and have remained at this level ever since.” According to a Washington Post database, police shot and killed 999 people in 2019, including 424 whites and 252 blacks. Twelve of the black victims were unarmed, versus 26 of the white victims. In a country where annual arrests number more than 10 million, if those black death totals constitute an “epidemic” of police use of lethal force against blacks, then the word has lost all meaning.
It’s becoming clearer by the day that journalism’s cavalier disregard for providing the necessary context in its coverage of racial controversies, and the willingness of so many in the media to play down or ignore the truth about America’s racial progress, is not simply wrong but also dangerous.
Navigate accordingly.
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Post by td128 on Apr 27, 2021 18:58:53 GMT -5
Someone from the White House told me as of today we have the perfect alliance between politics and the virus After 48 years connected to that world I am ill to my stomach Not a surprise to me as I’ve learned more than I ever needed to know of this systemic corruption. Think long and hard on this my fellow Crusaders. Playing politics in an attempted balancing act with your personal health. Know who wins that game? Well, follow the money. Special place in hell for those involved in these corrupt games. They run across the entire political spectrum. With the assistance of MSM this corrupted cabal would like to make these issues as right v left so as to create sufficient distractions while the corruption unfolds. In point of fact these are the ultimate in right v wrong endeavors. Navigate accordingly. ✝️👊🏻👊🏾✝️
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Post by td128 on Apr 25, 2021 19:16:55 GMT -5
We were and are.
Some of the comments provide true comic entertainment although likely unintentionally so given the seriousness of the topic.
I hope somebody’s keeping notes.
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