I wish the stories would focus a bit less on the famous actresses and a bit more on the hedge fund people.
Both the OP and the #1 are good comments.
I do more or less take for granted that rich people will find ways to get their kids admitted to "good" colleges and don't spend much time worrying about it (because "whatchagonnado"), but it's worth acknowledging the problem.
I only just now realized you weren't all talking about the HuffPo person.
I admit that I experience a small bit of joy when anything bad happens to someone responsible for Full House (being careful not to blame children unless they also did Fuller House), but that's not a good basis for public policy.
3: Is there a white bear at HuffPo?
A White Bear used to be a frequent commenter here, but then the ice cap stared melting, and she had to leave for colder climes.
I think he was talking about Huffman.
6: Confusing Felicity Huffman and Ariana Huffington? I get it now.
I haven't seen anyone Bored To Death and World Weary about this. Everyone is laughing out loud at the stupidity of the parents who had all these advantages, can go to the most prestigious high school and buy all the test prep, and their idiot kid is STILL so uninterested in school that they can't get into a top tier college and would have to settle for a second tier college (like the hundreds of SLACs that have some amount of prestige but will also let in anyone who can pay full freight), and instead of sending the kid to one of those colleges they spend way MORE than the cost of tuition, AND COMMIT CRIMES, so their idiot kid can go to... UCLA? Texas?
You put together a paper trail of your criminal conspiracy to spend six figures to get your daughter into USC so she can skip classes and synergize with brands in her capacity as an influencer? Forgetting the educational function of a school, how does USC even help with networking in this scenario? How about Pepperdine, you absolute buffoon?
That, plus anger at using disability accommodations to chat, is my reaction.
This feels like Fox fodder. Am I overly paranoid in thinking this is a pseudo-populist prosecution? Probably.
1 expresses a sentiment I've seen on the other place and from Cassandane as well. Personally, the only name that has stuck in my memory about this whole scandal is William H. Macy. (Just skimmed two articles about it. Celebrities named are him, Felicity Huffman, and Lori Loughlin. Macy is the only one of those three I could have put a face to a week ago.) Is that feminist of me to focus on the person I recognized best regardless of gender, sexist of me to deny the agency of the women involved even if at least one of them is objectively more implicated - Macy hasn't been charged, whereas one of the women has been jailed - or neutral because it's not like what I forget has any moral valence at all and we're in Chidi Anagonye territory?
11: Well, Jr. has tweeted about how Hollywood has gone oddly silent about this story.
8: In fairness to the stupid filthy rich criminals, I gather that certain southern California public colleges have very good film schools specifically. Might make them particularly attractive to the Hollywood crowd. No idea about Texas.
11: have no doubt some of these folks are Dem donors and we will never hear the end of it but oh well.
13: Not paranoid enough. Now I'm betting this stems from someone ordering the feds to get those Hollywood liberal pedophiles.
8 matches the way I've heard people talking about it as well.
11: I don't think so. This is pretty aggressive bribery.
1: Some people are trying to give Bill McGlashan some of this attention.
Anand Ghiridaras (sp?) had a smart take on this on Chris Hayes' show last night: he basically said "look: this is just another aspect of the ongoing and thorough-going corruption of modern American life: it's everywhere, and we can't pretend that this is just an isolated aspect".
Maybe there are people who shrug. I'll speak as a South Asian American: it INSANELY pisses me off, that first white people make it *harder* for people like me to get into these elite schools, gaming the entrance criteria like they used to, to keep out Jewish people, and THEN they carve out special bribery-only lanes for their kids who can't *even* meet these special bullshit credentials. And for the cherry on top, they're destroying affirmative action: I mean, if every seat they stole from us, could be guaranteed to go to under-represented minorities, I would be OK with it. But instead it goes to some fucking hedgie's entitled spawn.
It makes me even more pissed-off than I was already at the *farce* of American egalitarianism.
Steeply progressive confiscatory taxation, dammit!
Jr. got into his elite college the old fashioned way, with a massive donation from his father.
The investigation is led by the District of Massachusetts. We know how the right, which values consistency above all else, feels about "blue-state liberal prosecutors."
and THEN they carve out special bribery-only lanes for their kids who can't *even* meet these special bullshit credentials
I've seen lots of this dumping on white people and I just don't get it. I haven't seen anything to suggest that non-white people were prevented from participating in these bribery schemes.
Unfortunately if you haven't gotten used to seeing "white" and "rich" used as precise synonyms, you might as well abandon the internet.
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In October 1970, though, it concluded an agreement with the German firm NUKEM to establish " a Nuclear Exchange to be operated in Europe and Africa. "|>
Based on the last name, one was probably of Iranian ancestry or similar.
Weird thought: I wonder if this isn't going to help Wake Forest. It's being mentioned with what is basically a new and more elevated set of peer schools.
Yeah, there are a few Persians and Arabs involved based on last name. We have to wait and see if they seem to pass for white.
But I get where Chetan is coming from because there is tons of evidence that they keep rejigging the rules at big private schools to keep high levels of Asians out, and not for the benefit of Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. Nothing prevents rich Asians from playing these games per se. My guess is they just aren't plugged in enough. This is a Hollywood centered scam and Asians have way less status there.
I bet some of the progeny DGAF but others are terribly embarrassed that their secret was revealed. I wonder if any of them didn't know.
I wonder if any of them didn't know.
In an article in The Atlantic there are quotes from a phone conversation where one of the parents worries that her younger daughter will start to suspect something is up if they send her to a fake testing center. So apparently some didn't know.
The bit that stuck in my mind was "She's not like my older daughter. She's not stupid." I'm sure the older daughter must have enjoyed seeing that quoted in a national magazine.
If her parents are right, she probably hasn't read it yet.
She's not like my older daughter. She's not stupid.
It's nice when parents are attuned to differences between their kids, instead of just robotically projecting themselves on their offspring.
I don't have anything clever to say, but this is a weird scandal to be reading about in the month when my white, upper middle class, incredibly privileged, not worthy of any special consideration kid is going to hear from selective colleges.
If you can't buy them a building, he's only a little privileged.
33: Your status as a front page poster at a famous blog like unfogged ought to carry some weight.
This all made much more sense, in a terrible kind of way, when I read someone explaining that the crime here is essentially stealing *from the colleges*. The colleges have the right to sell off admissions if they want to, but they didn't (institutionally) agree to this, and are being defrauded by their various coaches and the like.
Exactly. Like Al Capone going down for tax evasion.
The old principle-agent problem. Or maybe it's principal-agent.
More like Fyre Festival getting in trouble from stealing from investors. It's fine to steal from customers, but the investors did NOT sign up for an investment in a company that steals from customers and is also a pyramid scheme.
I understand that if you can't buy the university a building, you can sometimes make an endowed chair. However, that doesn't mean what I first thought it meant.
The Shaker Chair of Obscure Philosophical and Theological Positions.
The US elite admissions system is so corrupt in legal ways, I find it almost impossible to feel outrage at anyone defrauding it (as opposed to mild amazement that anybody rich would ever need to do so). That said, it would be wonderful if people got disgusted enough that it spilled over into disgust at the status quo. When the Edna K Party takes over, the US will have a nationalized admissions system: free tuition, academic criteria only, with a floor-plus-lottery for elite schools, and one of those criteria will be a ruthless national testing scheme based on what I hazily imagine to be Chinese mandarinate principles, so that even rich kids will need to spend their high school years indoors learning facts about stuff (if they want to go to a serious school, that is, though with any luck this would break them of that habit and get rid of the whole fake meritocracy nonsense pretty quickly).
If you've got a half a million, to spend on establishing your kid, I recommend investing the money until they reach about forty and then buying them an ambassadorship plus some nice ambassador clothing.
If you don't have half a million to spend establishing your kid, I recommend you make a sequel to "Fargo" called "Fargone" so you can get the money.
The script is almost done, except for the part where I explain how Steve Buscemi wasn't actually dead and chipped.
I must be naive (clueless? living under a rock?), but I am genuinely shocked by this college admissions scandal. Not by the discovery of bribery, fraud, influence-peddling, and the like, but by the (to my mind) enormous sums of money involved. Lori Loughlin's $500K is apparently small change, when some are alleged by have paid up to $6.5 million in bribes.
I am also shocked by the photoshopping of rich kids' heads onto athletes' bodies (I mean, I'm shocked that this could actually work).
That part was fucking hilarious. As funny the rich guy who died trying for a bigger penis, but without feeling bad about laughing at a dead guy.
The saddest part was the associate professor taking out a home equity loan to pay the bribe of $100k, and his wife putting $5k on their credit card because they're worried if they miss a bribe payment they'll lose the chance to complete the deal. Of course he's the one minority name I saw mentioned.
Although- He's a USC professor and was bribing a USC coach to get his daughter into USC. So I have to wonder if she gets to go free if she gets in due to his employment there, in which case the bribe is a smart investment but maybe not so sad.
The latest news I saw is that Laughlin's daughter found out about the indictment while on a yacht that belongs to one of the trustees of USC because she was on spring break with the trustee's daughter.
You hear the news on the yacht you have, not on the yacht on which it would be least ridiculous to hear the news.
The part that bugs me is the number of coconspirators -- "three may keep a secret, if two are dead" and all that. Plus, I wouldn't trust that kind of rich kid not to inform on you in a fit of pique, or as part of some inheritance scheme.
I wonder if anyone has made mellow yellow Jell-O with Mango flavored Jarritos.
I love that they weren't even on a west coast yacht. They were on an east coast yacht.
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Navajos who helped to locate uranium deposits on their land were typically cheated out of royalties by avaricious speculators. Those who worked in uranium mines elsewhere on the plateau were paid less than white workers. Their families often camped by mine entrances and drank mine water. Their children played in mine galleries. As with Anglo, Hispano, and Mormon mineworkers, who died in significant numbers, no one told the Navajo about the dangers. Many succumbed to lung cancer before they could figure out why. Navajo activists refer to this as " radioactive colonialism. "|>
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The link between radon exposure and cancer remained deeply contested for decades as scientists, industry officials, and regulators remained unpersuaded by the evidence that Nazi bureaucrats and Dr. Wilhelm Hueper of the National Cancer Institute had found so convincing.|>
I'm pretty sure USC faculty and staff get free tuition for their kids, unless things have changed since my one USC grad relative went there, in part because schools without that kind of deal would have been financially difficult for their family. They couldn't bribe their way to free college.
Proposal that combines meritocracy with affirmative action, while decreasing gaming potential: Set a threshold for admission that will create an "acceptable" pool of some multiple of the class size, then use random selection to form the class and meet racial/ethnic quotas from that pool.
Free universal college would be more help overall, but that's my ideal solution for the selective places.
||
In what must be one of the best typos of the nuclear age, two members of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission commented that the " new units are, and probably will continue to be, a source of irradiation to many and will complicate communications for years. "|>
Mossy, have you heard any of Peter Maxwell Davies' anti-uranium-mining music? Look up "Farewell to Stromness" and "Yesnaby Ground".
Saw the list of indicted parents in the WSJ, and there's at least one Chen.
52: apparently most of the kids didn't know (those are some of the funniest/saddest parts of the indictment) and that's an interesting idea for why.
It's probably pretty nice to have official word from your parents that you aren't the stupid kid in the family. There's just may be a hidden downside.
Anand Ghiridaras (sp?) had a smart take on this on Chris Hayes' show last night: he basically said "look: this is just another aspect of the ongoing and thorough-going corruption of modern American life: it's everywhere, and we can't pretend that this is just an isolated aspect".
Superficially it seems like we aren't a corrupt country because we don't have the ability for the average person to bribe bureaucrats to get work done fast or avoid punishment. But that form of corruption isn't always bad, unlike corruption between various branches of the elite, both humans and corporate entities, which is endemic here. BeijingPalmer on twitter pointed this out yesterday.
21. they carve out special bribery-only lanes
"They" being corrupt coaches, etc. at the schools, and "special" meaning illegal, and which only worked until they got caught. That's a difference in kind, not degree, from getting admissions counseling or even donating giant bags of money to a school (at least that is something you have to do openly).
43. The Edna K. platform left out "worshipping our Dear Leader."
All that being said, the real issue is that people think it's worth all this money and effort to get into an elite (sometimes not-so-elite) school. That's the evil that has been foisted upon everyone.
Reminds me of Runaways. The TV series; I'm only familiar with the comic by reputation. Rich kids are horrified to find out that their parents have murdered dozens as part of a nearly literal deal with the devil and turn on them. When that happens in comic books and TV shows based on them, at least there's moral clarity to the villainy and the kids get superpowers in the bargain. In real life we're arguing over how much outrage is justified and all the kids get is a good state school education. This is why I like escapism in my fiction.
Obvious neoliberal take: universities should simply announce openly that 10% of all undergraduate places are available unconditionally to the highest bidder, and enter them into some sort of nationwide bribe-based clearing system. The present system seems opaque and rife with inefficiencies; it's almost certain that the universities are leaving money on the table.
But that form of corruption isn't always bad
I suspect that form of corruption correlates very strongly with corruption among elites. But yeah, a lot of things that aren't really thought of as corruption (legacy admissions, for instance) are a huge problem.
66: For real, why not? It's the 0.1%, sky's the limit. They could make enough to cover free tuition for everyone else.
Superficially it seems like we aren't a corrupt country because we don't have the ability for the average person to bribe bureaucrats to get work done fast or avoid punishment.
That is really interesting, and I don't think I've ever read anything about it -- the distinction between everyday corruption available to the middle and working class and elite corruption. Because you're right, I think there's very little low-level corruption in the US, and a whole lot of highlevel corruption, but I don't have any understanding of what the relationship between those two things generally is.
we don't have the ability for the average person to bribe bureaucrats to get work done fast or avoid punishment
Hmm. On the other hand, people buying their way out of minor criminal charges with carefully placed "contributions to the Police Benevolent Fund" is a recurring trope in US fiction, and (if accurate) that is exactly what we're talking about here.
OTOH, the drug corruption in Mexico utterly fails to cross the border.
The general corruption subthread reminds me that earlier this week I rewatched a movie from 1980 called Used Cars. Kurt Russell plays a used car salesman whose Big Dream is to get elected as a state senator and then kick back and live off graft and bribes for the rest of his life.
I last saw it when I was about 11 years old, which was probably the ideal age for a movie like that.
70: I may be wrong about this, but my understanding is that contributions to the Police Benevolent Fund or whatever actually go to the Fund -- that the mechanism isn't that the individual is bribing the cop they're talking to, but that they're purchasing a sign (bumper sticker or wallet card) that they're a police ally, and that discretion should therefore be used to treat them gently. That's unhealthy and kind of gross, but it's not exactly bribery. (For example, my grandmother got the same exemption from speeding tickets by keeping a mass card in her wallet -- being a nice Catholic lady got you the same kind of discretionary leniency as having a PBA sticker.)
I could be wrong, maybe there's a fair amount of literal bribing cops. But I don't think so.
72: With a terrific cameo from the guys who played Lenny and Squiggy on Laverne and Shirley.
71: No corruption here!
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/us/baltimore-police-corruption.html
That's unhealthy and kind of gross, but it's not exactly bribery.
Counterpoint: no, I would say it is exactly bribery, as per, among other things, the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention and the UK Bribery Act.
"After only a short drive we were pulled over at a checkpoint of the Gendarmerie Nationale. We had been speeding, the corporal in charge informed us, but a small contribution to the Fund for the Assistance of Veterans of the Revolution would allow the charge to be forgotten. I was on the point of reaching for my wallet when my driver instead passed over his identity card, and the corporal's face broke into a broad smile; the card proved his membership of the dominant religious sect, to which most of the gendarmes also belonged. He stepped back and waved us through."
That makes it sound bad, and it is bad. But it's not a profit to the officer standing in front of you -- you've done something corrupt, but you haven't given a bribe to that particular police officer (and again, I'm generalizing, and maybe I'm wrong, but even where the PBA bumper sticker thing is a thing, you would never give a contribution to a police officer who had just pulled you over. You have a sticker on your car or you don't, and changing that at the time of the ticket isn't practical.)
my driver instead passed over his identity card, and the corporal's face broke into a broad smile; the card proved his membership of the dominant religious sect, to which most of the gendarmes also belonged.
That, what my grandmother did, is terrible policing, but it really absolutely isn't bribery. No money is changing hands at all.
I may be making an overly nice distinction in your eyes, but I think it's a real one.
78.first: So basically, it's vulgar to hand money over in person. It's the done thing to write a check with "protection money" in the memo beforehand and keep a receipt.
being a nice Catholic lady got you the same kind of discretionary leniency as having a PBA sticker.
Corb Lund -- "Bible On The Dash"
A two night stand in Tulsa, pullin' out and headed west
Brady grabbed the Gideon's from the hotel in the desk
We said 'What's the matter, brother, are you worried about your soul?'
He said 'Better safe than sorry, boys, that's just how I roll'
We hit the road feelin' cool as Crosby, Stills and Nash
Overflowin' with the spirit and the bible on the dash
We pulled the whole rig over for the flashin' reds and blues
Police come to the window and we said 'Have you heard the news?'
He said 'Don't get smart with me, boy, why you doin' ninety-five?'
My foot is heavy with redemption, I'm just blessed to be alive
He said 'I oughta pull you out of there and beat you black and blue'
I placed my hand upon the good book and said 'What would Jesus do?'
It's better than insurance, registration or lyin'
It's better than these fake IDs I keep on buyin'
It's even better than an envelope stuffed with cash
They always said it'd save me, that old bible on the dash
He said, 'Round these parts that hair alone will make probable cause
When you're movin' through my county you'll obey my earthly laws'
We did our best to quote some holy writ, chapter and verse
'What kind of music y'alls make? And we said 'Christian music, sir'
He contemplated, thought about it, twitched his cop moustache
'Alright you boys be careful now, just don't drive quite so fast'
...
And, obviously, there are also songs about touring musicians getting pulled over for "not being from these parts."
Tom T Hall -- "A Week in a County Jail"
One time I spent a week inside a little country jail
And I don't guess I'll ever live it down
I was sittin' at a red light when these two men came and got me
And said that I was speeding through their town
Well, they said,"tomorrow morning you can see the judge then go."
They let me call one person on the phone
I thought I'd be there overnight so I just called my boss
To tell him I'd be off but not for long
...
79: Again... my sense of how that works is that it's not really a significant profit center for the cops, it's much more a statement of affiliation. I could be wrong, but I don't think there are police officers planning to install a patio out back when their cut of the PBA money comes in. But this is all impressionistic -- does anyone know things more concretely than I do?
Like, here's an article about PBA cards: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2018/01/22/parking-placards-get-out-of-jail-free-cards-and-nypds-culture-of-lawlessness/
It sounds corrupt, but corrupt in the sense that being treated leniently by cops generally is a perk that individual cops can give away to their friends and family. That's corrupt, but it's not the same thing as bribery.
LB is on the right track here. You can establish yourself IN ADVANCE as someone the laws don't apply to. Just like being on the track to getting your daughter into college no matter how unqualified she is.
You don't get pulled over and say "Uhhhh let me make a contribution to the Police Benevolent Fund, wink wink".
Also these PBA cards seem to be a peculiarly bad NYPD thing. In other cities there are a few VIPs but you don't have something like 30 placards per cop handed out to family and friends (or sold), each of which entitles you to park in a bus lane every day of the year if you want to.
But it's not a profit to the officer standing in front of you -- you've done something corrupt, but you haven't given a bribe to that particular police officer
I'm pretty sure that this wouldn't make any difference in law.
It's a bribe if I give money to a police officer so he'll ignore my crime, but it's not a bribe if I give money to an organisation which exists solely to give money to police officers?
It's not a bribe because it's not enough to install a patio?
Agreed that what your granny did isn't bribery. If you just had a car sticker that said "The Police Are Great" which you bought from a non-police source, that wouldn't be bribery either. But the PBA thing definitely is.
Bear in mind that the US Disgusting Un-American Practices Act (FCPA) covers donations to a charity made with the intent of influencing the director of that charity. Schering-Plough, the Chudow Castle Foundation case. They gave a load of money to a charity so the director, who was also a local health administrator, would buy their drugs. Nu Skin China and the AIC; they donated money so that the local regulators would stop investigating them.
I get called by paid fundraisers using the name of police organizations. I never give on several principles, but I can see how people might feel either pressured or greedy. I have no idea if the actual police get money in that case, since it's probably just fraud.
Ah, OK, if you make the donation well in advance of committing the crime, that does weaken the case that it's bribery, I admit. I was imagining something more on-the-spot.
you don't have something like 30 placards per cop handed out to family and friends (or sold), each of which entitles you to park in a bus lane every day of the year if you want to.
Seriously? Surely this doesn't literally happen.
Each cop gets a bunch of wallet cards which are supposed to have no function at all but plausibly do get you lenient treatment for minor offenses. Parking placards are different -- you get those for being a city employee (not automatically, they're supposed to have some relation to the needs of your actual job), and they're horribly abused but not purchasable or transferrable to friends and family.
You don't want to know what they do to the placards. Even their own family won't touch the placard because they know.
The child in Those Who Walk Away From Omelas? Was a parking placard.
Thanks 89. I thought they were all placards to put in the car window.
So the placards are the things that say "Parks Department - Official Business" and nobody ever checks that your car is on official business, you just keep it in there wherever you are and whatever you do.
I do believe it's especially bad in NYC. Not just foreigners like ajay but people elsewhere in the US are perennially surprised by finding out about this stuff, and New Yorkers aren't.
One big difference is that bribery on-the-spot corruption very easily turns into extortion, while getting your family off the hook for traffic violations doesn't have obvious worse place to lead (at least so long as people aren't getting out of serious crimes with these cards).
The fundamental problem here is that too much of US traffic enforcement is done by police instead of automatically. This is bad because it leads to corruption, but more importantly bad because it leads to people getting shot. Use a camera and send a bill in the mail like civilized countries do!
Well, foreigners like Ajay were kind of confused about how bad things are -- he seems to have believed that handing a cop a couple of twenties was a way out of a speeding ticket if you said "This is for the PBA".
And you were confused about how bad things are in New York; that is, a PBA wallet card is sort of a status symbol, but it's not free parking.
It's a bribe if I give money to a police officer so he'll ignore my crime, but it's not a bribe if I give money to an organisation which exists solely to give money to police officers?
Also, I think it's an open question as to whether PBA bumper stickers and the like (what you can get by making a donation) have any actual effect on enforcement. The wallet cards that you get by being a cop's friends or family probably do, but just a sticker, while there's certainly a belief that it protects you from the cops, I don't know that it's well established that it works.
Honestly, it's probably less effective at influencing police behavior in your favor than being someone like me, socio-demographically speaking.
I see your middle-class white-guyness and raise you being a harmless maternal-looking middle-class white woman.
I see your harmlessness and raise you patriarchy.
I wonder if this isn't going to help Wake Forest.
That is absolutely the most baffling part of this story to me. I've lived in NC essentially all of my life and know exactly one person who went to Wake Forest (or even applied, for that matter), and that was pretty much only because his father was an alum.
97: Women don't crime as much as men.
99: Is it mostly Yankees, like Duke?
The wallet cards that you get by being a cop's friends or family probably do
The Fraternal Order of Police badges absolutely do. I can't find it now, but there used to be a "cops writing cops" forum where officers could rat out who wrote them tickets; if such behavior is seen as abnormal, cops must be let off routinely. This was the closest example I could find:
Just wondering if any LEO's in here ever received a citation from another copper? Got one in Wisconsin last week for speeding 15 miles over the limit on the freeway. Was courteous and all, but received the worst excuse ever for why I was issued the citation.
Imagine thinking that the person writing the ticket is the one who needs the excuse.
101: No idea! Practically everything I know about Wake Forest has to do with their basketball team.
Me too. I didn't even realize it was hard to get admitted to.
So apparently Loughlin is a Republican!
Like most white collar criminals.
Isn't it a little weird for the police to be the main entity issuing parking tickets in the first place? I'm not sure, maybe it is the norm in US cities and I've just grown used to Oakland/SF where it's a different city department, but even if it is the norm, it seems makeworky / not exactly a job that calls for police training in particular.
28: the one piece of test-cheating I know of specifically involved Asians - more specifically, a young east Asian man who took advantage of the fact that the SAT proctors couldn't tell Asian guys apart by selling his test-taking skills to his peers.
Yep. That was something that happened in Pittsburgh too.
107: I don't think they are, at least not in NYC. They hand out moving violations, not parking violations.
Isn't it a little weird for the police to be the main entity issuing parking tickets in the first place?
Sounds normal to me, without having done any actual research about it. There are different branches of the police department, of course. It's not like the same person is writing parking tickets Monday, responding to 911 calls Tuesday, and investigating murders Wednesday. But if I see someone taking a license plate number and writing a ticket, I assume the chief of police is above them in their org chart somewhere. I know of small towns that have police, have parking regulations, and don't have dedicated non-police staff working on the parking stuff.
it seems makeworky / not exactly a job that calls for police training in particular.
As police get militarized, meter maids get police-ized, or something?
something something John Noonan's book Bribes something
If this were about colleges that were historically for women, "Seven Bribes for Seven Sisters" would be a good headline.
111.last: I expect to see meter maids with full body armor and automatic weapons within a few years.
"Seven Bribes for Seven Sisters"
It feels like this deserves to used for something more than an unfogged comment, but I can't think of what.
As police get militarized, meter maids get police-ized, or something?
Parking control people in these parts drive around in small hatchbacks; they have an orange light on top, but I've never seen one flashing. I can't actually imagine circumstances in which a parking control person would need a flashing light on their vehicle.
Oops - I thought from initial searches our parking enforcement technicians were under the purview of Public Works, but it may be the PD after all.
I can. Given how shitty people drive, not wanting to get hot while stopped or driving slowly would justify a light.
I expect to see meter maids with full body armor and automatic weapons within a few years.
I would watch this Mad Max-inspired dystopian future. They have the power to prevent parking on double yellow lines, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.
"He's a violator! CUBE HIM!" orders an eyepatched Queen Meter Ruler, and her leather-clad minions hasten to feed the illegally parked war wagon, complete with screaming driver, into the maw of their giant mobile Crushmobile.
Which reminds me, fantastic quote from an interview with Steven Soderbergh:
The ability to stage well is a skill and a talent that I value above almost everything else. And I say that because there are people who do it better than I'll ever be able to do it after 40 years of active study. I just watched Mad Max: Fury Road again last week, and I tell you I couldn't direct 30 seconds of that. I'd put a gun in my mouth. I don't understand how [George Miller] does that, I really don't, and it's my job to understand it. I don't understand two things: I don't understand how they're not still shooting that film and I don't understand how hundreds of people aren't dead.
105 Of course she is, I mean she grew up on Long Island (I mentioned in the other thread that she went to my high school though a few years ahead of me).
My first ex's father was a Nassau County police captain and I had one of his wallet cards. I actually used it once though I felt weird doing it.
119 Mad Max: Fury Road without CGI. Straight up insane.
121: How did it work exactly? You got pulled over for speeding and you handed the cop your card along with your license?
I got pulled over for a broken taillight while driving my ex's beat to shit '69 Chevy Nova and was mildly ticked off about it since it wasn't my car so I pulled it out and said "would his happen to make any difference?" And it did.
124 I was in my early 20s and looked like some kind hippie punk (in the rock sense) so I was probably going to get a ticket. The cop was a woman and looked very young, possibly a rookie.
Shouldn't having a YouTube channel with 1.9 million subscribers be enough to get you into USC anyway?
Pfff. Those are Chico State numbers.
Seriously, how come there aren't any scholarships out there for influencers? Don't these schools have social media teams that should be recruiting?
Actual conversation with young white conservative woman from West Virginia:
(prefaced by general conversation among group of 4-5 people about college bribery scandal)
Me: I can't believe this. It is so insulting and so hurtful. I have been reading nonstop from my friends of color about how many times their intelligence or right to be in college was questioned because people assumed they were there because of affirmative action. They worked so hard, and then to find out that the system was even MORE rigged against them because of people like this cheating and bribing--!
YWCW: I don't understand why people are surprised. I'm not surprised.
Me: I'm not surprised they tried to take advantage of the disability accommodations, although it's going to really hurt a lot of people with ACTUAL disabilities. I am very surprised about things like having someone else take the test, flying a fake test to your child--
Other person: --faking water polo pictures!
Me: Faking sports pictures!
YWCW (condescendingly): I just never thought of myself as losing out on anything.
Me: But if the system is rigged, then more vulnerable people are by definition not getting something.
YWCW (dismissively): I just never thought it had anything to do with ME.
********
At first I thought this was just a textbook display of ignorance, but now I think it's worse than that. She sees the cheats as having taken seats that they were probably entitled to or going to get anyway, and if some students lost out because cheaters were admitted...well, those loser students would have been POC, never HER.
I'm so annoyed about this that it was a minor miracle I didn't say something really nasty.
108: My classmates did that as well. An Asian-Am kid took the SATs for other kids, using their ID's. Never got caught by white proctors. They wouldn't run it on our own campus, because the administration there could indeed tell Asian-Am kids apart. The kid I knew who sold the tests charged by the score; he could precisely deliver the promised score.
A year or two after my year, there was a test-taking scandal that a bunch of kids were involved in.
I mean, at my high school, where kids were taking tests for other kids. They got too big and got caught.
Use a camera and send a bill in the mail like civilized countries do!
Oh, yes, please. Even if just in fixed locations like bus lanes and lethal intersections. Seattle/Washington cannot, cannot keep photo enforcement going, with both lefties and righties against it, and so none of our non-grade-separated transit is reliable.
I even got a camera speeding ticket once -- or possibly my sweetie did in my car -- and am not against them. I mean, less stressful than being pulled over *and* paying for it.
130: People from places like West Virginia have a big advantage in getting into fancy colleges because of geographical diversity criteria, so she may well be right that this sort of thing wouldn't have a major impact on her personally.
She might have also had the SAT scores of a fence post.
I just looked her up. She went to Colorado State. I know nothing about that university one way or another so I have no opinion on her general scholastic aptitude.
Also, she has a terminal degree. I don't generally believe that degrees correlate with intelligence, but I am shocked. I thought she was about 25 and wet behind the ears. Now I'm even more disgusted. She's plenty old enough to know better.
Is it possible she just always knew she wanted to go to Colorado State and figured the cheating to get into Yale didn't matter for that?
130: Since the news stories have been emphasizing the elite schools, a non-monstrous interpretation of your acquaintance's attitude is that she just views the whole thing as happening in a different world from the one she lives in.
Like hearing that someone cheated to get the to spot at Goldman Sachs: "What's that got to do with me?" wouldn't be a surprising attitude in that case.
You guys are kinder than me. I hope I was wrong.
People always tell me how kind I am. Though my aunt and uncle rolled their eyes at me when I told them I didn't believe them when they said it wasn't possible for someone born in America to get into a U.S. medical school. That I was actually working for a medical school didn't convince them.
There's an interesting new legal review article arguing that the huge leeway granted to drivers over everyone else in the legal system - almost-automatic forgiveness of injury to pedestrians when alcohol isn't involved, half-hearted speeding laws, etc. - is effectively a huge subsidy to driving.
Imagine a world where you got a ticket in the mail for breaking rules just as reliably as for dodging a bridge toll!
Not to mention the huge public subsidy that is free on-street parking. There aren't any other cases where I'm allowed to leave my possessions taking up room on the public highway just because I don't have room for them in my house. If I do it with, say, garden furniture - even if I put the garden furniture in the special Leave Your Stuff Here For Free space on the street - I will get told to take it away because the Leave Your Stuff Here For Free space is only for stuff that is cars.
Surely you're familiar with the bizarre Boston tradition of space savers in the winter?
Oh yeah, I'm sure that's in there. It's a long article. Also the US guidance that traffic engineers should continually reset the speed limit based on the somethingth percentile from traffic surveys, meaning ever, ever upwards.
They have the space saving in Philly too, if by that you mean setting out markers like lawnchairs to show where you shoveled. At least there it's based on effort put in.
This year someone bought a boot on Amazon and when another person parked in "their" spot they booted it. The logic isn't the clearest- "You want to park in my spot? Fine, you're going to park in my spot FOREVER!" but it makes as much sense as the overall concept of reserving a public space.
For a while there was an app that let people looking for street parking bid on getting you to leave your spot and give it to them but the city banned it pretty quickly.
Parking chair is a thing on my street.
Trying to remember which TV character used that as a way of parking wherever she wanted. Parked somewhere, fitted the clamp on to her own car, any passing authorities would assume that it had already been clamped and leave it alone, then she'd come back, unlock it and drive off.
I was in my early 20s and looked like some kind hippie punk (in the rock sense) so I was probably going to get a ticket. The cop was a woman and looked very young, possibly a rookie.
Worst Missed Connection ever.
There aren't any other cases where I'm allowed to leave my possessions taking up room on the public highway just because I don't have room for them in my house.
Well, unless you're an electric scooter firm.
If I do it with, say, garden furniture - even if I put the garden furniture in the special Leave Your Stuff Here For Free space on the street - I will get told to take it away because the Leave Your Stuff Here For Free space is only for stuff that is cars.
I invite you to visit some of Boston's fine neighborhoods in the winter. (But even there it's in aid of car storage.)
Placard abuse in NYC is such a scam. (I think legit placards are often bad too.) My favorite is the police surgeon placard. Not issued by a government agency, but still honored. The NY Post had a story on this in 2017. https://nypost.com/2017/04/09/police-groups-perpetuate-permit-scheme-letting-doctors-park-in-illegal-spots/
Streetsblog's NYC site has had some good coverage of this over the years. I recall one where there wasn't even a placard, just a balled up safety vest on the dashboard.
Given the impunity police enjoy in general, and the large number of placards handed out, it's hard to imagine a major percentage doesn't simply get sold.
LB I'm sure is aware of this recent beauty:
The NYPD towed 30 civilian cars on an Inwood street which was then packed with police vehicles as the department held its flag football championship game at the nearby Columbia University's athletic complex, residents complained....
One car parked on the stretch of West 218th Street on Sunday had a handwritten note in the windshield reading "on police commissioner's flag football team," NY1 reported.
On topic: I had no idea Lynn Swann was the USC athletic director.
To be clear, he's not accused of any criming.
155 is extraordinary. Presumably police officers are going to get suspended over this abuse of authority.
They didn't choke a guy to death for selling loose cigarettes. They'll probably get promoted.
From now on I'm just going to assume Gangs of New York is a documentary.
Anand Ghiridaras (sp?) had a smart take on this on Chris Hayes' show
He's full of smart takes and absurd details, including fucking Bono's role:
https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1105543849181618176
I love this:
"America is already rigged for rich people. Some rich people are not satisfied with the generalized rigging that they have to share with everybody else. They want special, private, bespoke, bottle service rigging."
The mechanisms used make the rigging look semi-legitimate leave the least capable rich kids with nothing to rely on but inherited money and family connections. Won't somebody think of the children.
Of course, the parents are the real victim. The other rich people know the system is rigged so if you're rich and your kid can't get in to Wake Forest, either you don't love your kid or you are going broke or your genes double-plus suck.
But if you got into Yale and your kid gets into Yale, it's proof that it's only a coincidence that your kid looks like the pool boy.
Kind of on topic: I think maybe somebody from Ohio has been playing with the University of Michigan alumni page on Wikipedia. At least there's not a similar category for Ohio State.
Via me forgetting I promised myself I'd stop looking at Twitter.
Lori Loughlin's kids dropped out of USC.
It's probably too late in the semester to get their money back.
But people should really look at the link in 165 before it disappears. It's understated genius.
so, how bad exactly am I meant to be feeling about girl x's 40 hours of SAT tutoring? (in my defense, IB maths is taught differently than US math, and also, I didn't really have to pay for it.) it's too late for me to make her a top-notch squash player. ...or is it? she has no hand-eye coördination, is the thing. I am really good at photoshop, but that may be trickier now.
how bad exactly am I meant to be feeling about girl x's 40 hours of SAT tutoring?
If you want to be a truly ethical person you'll compensate for the unfair advantage you've provided by grinding up a quaalude and spiking her breakfast on the morning of the test.
I'm not saying you have to march down the high street beating yourself with a rattan cane. I'm saying you should think about it.
She should figure out by how to game the test by herself like the rest of us did.
I think tutoring is fine. Not that I did any, but it didn't exist in my town.
172 I don't think you should feel bad, al.
I am really good at photoshop
Oh shit alameida is @darth
No photoshop needed. Just buy the kids an Xbox. Take some photos. El Bingo! They're on the college video game team.
It looks like Georgetown figured out the coach was taking bribes. They fired him, but didn't do anything to stop him from getting another job. Which is on-brand, I guess. But maybe they figured there's not much of a market for bribes to get into University of Rhode Island.
172: eh wouldn't spend any time worrying about it. the kid pulled the plug on the ap latin exam bc it was focused on the us curriculum and he's only had the fr version which is apparently quite diff, and his math sat scores were just wonky for the same reason - still fine but just ... odd.
we're adjusting to the reality of the kid's bacc (blanc) results, the last round of bacc blanc were great but also slightly less great than they'd be if he wasn't balancing school with a LOT of political activities plus still dance and accordeon. and it actually seems - fine! first, might as well feel fine about it bc he's so stubborn and independent that fat chance getting him to focus on school the exclusion of lots of other things (particularly the politics bit( (actually that's been the most boggling thing to me, how much control these parents are able to assert over their 17 yr old kids, ha ha ha try that on the kid ha ha ha, nope not going to happen). he seems to be comfortably on track to hit the bacc scores he needs for his cbridge admission condition, so why freak out about making him do anything excessive? won't hear from berkeley until the end of the month, i just hope they don't waitlist him bc that would be a small amount of torture, prolonging the agony of cbridge vs ucb.
Is dairy queen lacking keys on her keyboard, or a shift key or punctuation keys? Or operating under some character limit?
The language is evolving, more rapidly on the west coast.
Easier simply not to read her comments, I find.
You're missing stuff. They're pretty good.
Unlikely. Consistently vacuous and solipsistic before I started skipping.
Apparently Nebraska is underwater? Best wishes to you and yours.
I miss when there were 200 sequential comments with stupid wordplay.
184: I don't think that's west coast linguistic change.
Meanwhile, totally off-topic, I've got to figure out why the arrow keys on my keyboard (plugged into my laptop) are suddenly not working. The arrow keys over on there on the number pad, which I normally really rely on. Argh.
Because they don't like you picking on other commenters.
You're right about the picking on, Moby. That said, freakin' arrow keys started blanking out intermittently a couple of days ago. It's not an unknown phenomenon, apparently. Oh well.
Slings and arrows, all the way down.
The snakes and ladders of outrageous fortune is a much more apposite phrase especially to modern ears.
In my high school, kids were self-motivated to do stupid things so as to get into prestigious universities. The most extreme case was the son of the famous communitarian - he ran for student government, he was on the wrestling team, and ... other stuff I don't remember. He was on the chess team too, but I think he liked playing chess. Anyway, he got into Harvard! Hooray! He hated it there, but he's been very successful in life.
If you have to sit in class with Jared Kushner, it's going to suck.
196: This was before Jared was even admitted to the most prestigious nursery school.
In conclusion, liberal white people is divided and easily annoyed.
I'm not nice now that I'm drinking.
"political activities plus still dance and accordeon"
It would be great if these were all a single activity.
190: Toggle your numlock. This is not a euphemism or a metaphor.
I think the most lasting impact unfogged had on my life is that one of you sons of bitches (Stanley?) posted "Sharif don't like it... Lock the taskbar! Lock the taskbar!" and now I can't hear it any other way.
I was away for a bit, and everyone's still on the college admissions thread?
I paid for my last year at Stanford in part by working as an SAT tutor for a Kaplan-affiliated outfit that would send me to enormous houses around Palo Alto and environs. The main thing I learned during this job was that my efforts were inconsequential. Certain of the rich kids were dim or lazy enough that I was never going to convey anything to them; that's presumably the demographic where you bribe the sailing coach. But there were as many or more who got the whole thing, applied themselves doggedly to practice test after practice test, and aside from the occasional suggestion my presence in the room was superfluous. Their lives in those enormous houses had somehow inculcated a directed achievement ethic that perfectly set them up for not only standardized tests but every other criterion for college admissions, including those criteria that were supposed to be "intangible" or "allow for the individual" or whatever. All those kids must be in their mid-thirties now, and given their social stratum must all be doing fine in a broad sense. Of course I liked most of them personally.
Having not made things worse is probably an accomplishment.
re: 209
I taught A level philosophy for cramming colleges for a while. To help kids improve their A level results to get into University. It wasn't quite like that, but yeah, I had a few where nothing I did would help them. But, most of the rest, I think I substantially improved their grade. Or at least, I hope I did.
The main thing was, most of them, even the ones from fairly elite private schools, hadn't been taught how to:
* read the question and work out what the examiner want
* structure an essay properly, specifically with a view to leading the examiner through (like a bull by the nose) the fact that you've explicitly answered their question and hit all of the explicit and implicit points they want you to hit, and
* how to get a passing essay out of a question where you don't actually know enough about the topic to write a good essay (to handle those random situations where you might have to write three essays, and you know enough to write two decent ones, and then all of the other questions are in areas you don't know or are fuzzy on)
These are basic things, but in my experience, never, or very rarely, taught, anywhere. Either at high school level, or at undergraduate level. In the Oxbridge system, if you have an OK tutor, you'll probably acquire it either by explicit instruction, or by osmosis. But mostly, you have to work it out for yourself, and the average 16 or 17 year old, often hasn't.
I was a total rockstar* at writing exam essays under pressure, and I knew so many people who were equally as able, but who didn't get the same kinds of exam results, where it was basic technique they lacked, not raw ability.
* no false modesty, I was just worked out how to do it early, and refined it, it wasn't until doctoral thesis time that the wheels came off. Anything under 6,000 words, on almost any topic, I could just spew onto paper and be sure of getting a 1st/A/whatever.
I don't consider myself worthy to judge any of you, but I enjoy dq's contributions. The lack of capitalization and punctuation does sometimes make her comments hard to parse, but it conveys a chatty, informal quality and a certain joie de vivre -- I've never met her, but I imagine that this is what she would be like in conversation. Also I enjoy that people have distinctive commenting styles.
Of course, I also value our more misanthropic commenters.
Pwned by Moby. Stomping off to be misanthropic about it.
I have people faster than you. Haha.
that was an odd read-upwards! bisous to all who read this, and i proceed confident that those who find me irritating their last nerve will just skip my drivel, a cheering thought.
186: Toggle your numlock.
Yeah {sigh}, but that's not it. Apparently it has something to do with using a PS/2 to USB adapter to hook up my older keyboard (and mouse) to my laptop; not an unknown problem, it seems. It's really fucking annoying not to have these arrow keys working all of a sudden! I guess I may have to buy a new keyboard with USB connection.
To dairyqueen: I do apologize. Write in whichsomeever way you like, of course.
Oh, sorry -- dairy queen is two words.