Drunk Students and Rich Drunk Alumni: Good. Drunk Students: Bad.

Is it that time of year already, when Princeton Review releases its party school rankings and The Old Main Propaganda Shop  goes full metal hypocrite  while trying to downplay Penn State's high ranking? Why yes....yes by golly, it is.

Before we take a look at how The Propaganda Shop tied itself in ethical knots this year, let's review last years performance when Penn State came in third on the list.  Penn State Bullshit Artist Geoff Rushton  told the Collegain that

...the rankings are unscientific and frivolous because they are done through an online
survey.

Students who are looking to attend Penn State should think about more serious aspects of the university, rather than a "silly marketing ploy, which is what the Princeton Review party rankings are," Rushton
said.

But as Geoff was uttering those words, Old Main was pimping on its Web site two Princeton Review rankings of Penn State that it liked. After Geoff read my blog post on this, those rankings were purged from the Web site.

Geoff showed world class hypocrisy last year. Could The Propaganda Shop top itself this year? With Penn State topping the party school list for the first time this year, The  Old Main Propaganda would be under pressure to outdo itself too. And they didn't disappoint.

This year it was Penn State Bullshit Artist Annemarie Mountz's turn.

[She] said the survey results are not representative. "There are about 10 sites I found on Facebook urging students to vote and make Penn State the No. 1 party school, which shows that these rankings are nothing more than a popularity contest. It's become a badge of honor among students to get their school as No. 1 in these categories. The results are not connected to reality."

According to Mounz using the internet to rustle  up votes for a party ranking is bad and the resulting rankings are meaningless.

Let's go to the film....

It was the fall of 2005 and Sportsillustrated.com was running a tournament to rank football  tailgating parties and The Old Main Propaganda Shop turned to its Propaganda Portal, i.e. they used the internet, to encourage the Nittany Nation to vote for Dear Old State.

Nittany Lion football fans know all the great traditions of tailgating at Beaver Stadium for Penn State football games. Now is their chance to make sure that tailgating scene is recognized as the best in the nation. SportsIllustrated.com and self-described "commissioner of tailgating" Joe Cahn have seeded Penn State among the eight best tailgates in college football, giving fans the chance to vote in weekly head-to-head match-ups online to determine what stadium has the best tailgate. In a first-round match-up with the University of Texas, Penn State trailed by more than 3,000 votes Wednesday morning -- so it's up to Nittany Lion fans and tailgaters to make up that difference.
To cast your vote for Penn State, go to http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/magazine/specials/tailgate/2005/footballgrid/ and scroll down to the pairings for "College Football Venues."

Each week that fall as Penn State advanced from round to round, The Propaganda Shop turned to the Propaganda Portal to urge on the faithful to vote.

And it worked. Penn State was ranked the number one party tailgating venue in the nation by Sportsillustrated.com and the folks in The Propaganda Shop rejoiced at this long overdue acknowledgment.

Penn State fans have known it for decades and now the nation knows again that Beaver Stadium and Happy Valley is the premier tailgating venue of any college or professional football team in the nation.

So let's review once more. Old Main successfully uses the internet to get Penn State ranked the number one tailgate party school:good. Students sucessfully use the internet to get Penn State ranked the number one party school:bad.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Party School, hypocrisy, Princeton Review

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That's Not a Very Good Likeness of Toomey

I'm not sure what's going on here. The Club for Growth's Greed's blog seems to be proud that they follow a dictum of Valdimir Lenin. I mean that's  the only reason that I could come up with for them posting this without comment.

Either that or they have absolutely no sense of irony.

Technorati Tags: humor, politics, Club for Growth, irony

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Good News and Bad News From McClatchy

There was good news today for anyone holding McClatchy stock

Sacramento-based McClatchy said its second-quarter profits soared to $42.2 million from $19.7 million a year earlier. Per-share earnings rose to 50 cents from 24 cents.

The news wasn't so good for people that rely on the chain's papers for news.

The improvement came in spite of a 25.4 percent decline in revenue, including a a 30.2 percent drop in advertising sales.

[...]

[A] 29.3 percent drop in expenses returned [McClatchy] to profitability.

The chain survives, but it does so not by increasing revenue, which continues to slide, rather it does it by doing less of what it supposed to do, report the news. Don't look for any improvements in the reporting at the CDT until the revenue end picks up.

Technorati Tags: Centre Daily Times, McClatchy

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Huh?

What's with the headline on this article?
Technorati Tags: Collegian, Humor

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Walter Conkrite 1916-2009

Walter Cronkite has passed away at the age of 92. Listen to the audio of the CBS News coverage of election night 1968 which Conkrite anchored. How times have changed for the worse when it comes to TV news.

Technorati Tags: Walter Conkrite, Election 1968,

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Taking a Swing at the King

The Centre Daily Time, an already  weak paper, has been weakened further by the financial crunch facing most newspapers today. Consequently it is unlikely that the paper will report on this story with a local connection. Therefore I bring it to you.

Ten Westmoreland County landowners claim in eight civil lawsuits that they are owed millions of dollars by a State College-based energy company that agreed to lease their properties to tap into the natural gas-rich Marcellus Shale seam, only to back out of the contracts when energy prices plummeted.
[...]
The most recent filing was a class-action lawsuit on July 10 against Rex Energy Corp. in Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court....

The chairman of the board and founder of Rex Energy is Lance Shaner.

Technorati Tags: Rex Energy, Lance Shaner, lawsuit, Center Daily Times

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Happy Talk

How's Penn State's fund raising going? If you relied on the Penn State Propaganda Portal , you'd likely answer great.

Penn State received a record number of donations in fiscal 2008-09, and more alumni than ever made gifts to the University during the year, the Board of Trustees learned today (July 10).

This broad-based philanthropy totaled $182 million in gifts for the year, the second-highest total in Penn State's history, noted Peter Tombros, volunteer chair of the University's capital campaign, in a report to the board.

Wow, people must really love the University.... $182 million... second-highest total in Penn State history...I mean...wow.

Ok, let's take a closer look at the number. You can find the data on giving to Penn State over the past ten years here. I've converted the nominal dollar amounts to 2009 dollars. The graph below contains both the nominal and 2009 dollar amounts.



I'd say things haven't been too good recently. Fund raising is flat over the past two years and the nominal maximum in 2007 is only the sixth largest amount in constant dollars. This hardly justifies the headline on the Propaganda Portal

Philanthropy to Penn State sets records, despite recession

It's just more happy talk and yet one more reason to be skeptical of every utterance coming out of Old Main.Technorati

Tags: Penn State, philanthropy, spin, Spanier

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FYI

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports on the latest political maneuvering to get stimulus funds restored to the state-related universities.

Fourteen members of Congress from Pennsylvania today urged the Obama administration to reject Gov. Ed Rendell's attempt to exclude the four state-related universities from receiving federal economic stimulus money.

[...]

Of the 19 U.S. representatives from Pennsylvania, the 14 who signed the letter are Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair; Jason Altmire, D-McCandless; Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills; Kathy Dahlkemper, D-Erie; Bill Shuster, R-Blair; Glen Thompson, R-Centre County; Charles W. Dent, R-Allentown; Jim Gerlach, R-Chester Springs; Tim Holden, D-Schuylkill County; Todd Russell Platts, R-York; Joe Sestak, D-Delaware County; Christopher Carney, D-Susquehanna; Patrick J. Murphy, D-Bristol; and Robert A. Brady, D-Philadelphia.

Technorati Tags: stimulus funds, Penn State, politics,

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Leadership 101, Lesson One: Take Head Out of Sand

The  Penn State Propaganda Portal has just posted  Graham's opening remarks to the Board of Trustees this morning. Much happy talk. No mention of the impending budget crisis.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Board of Trustees, Spanier, stimulus funds, budget crisis

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An Educational Video

Technorati Tags: politics, humor

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Travlin' in Style With the Putz

You would have had to have been asleep for the past several years not to know that Graham plays a washboard, which has suffered as much mission creep as the University has under him, in a local dixieland jazz band, The Deacons of Dixieland.


You may not know that the Deacons have preformed quite a bit in the South. For example, in 2002 they traveled to the W.C. Handy Festival in Florence Alabama. Here's a picture of their transportation to the festival that year.


Graham wasn't with them on that excursion, but in 2004 he made the trip to Florence for the festival. This time here's how some of the boys got home.

Notice a difference?

Gee, I hope Arne doesn't see this picture before he decides on whether Penn State deserves the stimulus money Rendell wants to deny the state-related schools. Remember the bad reaction to the mode of transportation that the GM executives used? Aaaaah... these sorts of appearances aren't good when you have your hand out Graham.


Technorati Tags: Penn State, Deacons of Dixieland, W.C. Handy Awards, Spanier, private jet, Rendell, stimulus money, state-related universities

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Devastating, Catastrophic, Nauseating

The effect of the proposed budget cuts on Penn State have been described as devastating and catastrophic. Today the Penn State Propaganda Portal finally responds to those cuts and I find the response nauseating.

As I noted in an earlier post, Governor Rendell does not consider Penn State, or the other state-related universities, to be fully public schools. Where might he get such an idea? Perhaps this is where he got it.

But we are very concerned about Right to Know legislation that would force the University to make information public that could undermine the operations of the university. There are dozens of examples of information that if made public could interfere with and undermine the quality of Penn State or erode privacy

Penn State and three other universities-University of Pittsburgh, Temple University, and Lincoln University--have been singled out for such intrusion. No other state-aided universities or private universities that receive appropriated funds are included in the legislation as drafted. These other universities receive tens of millions of dollars in state appropriation every year.

This proposal goes far beyond making Penn State accountable for how it spends public funds. Should such legislation pass, we would be treated as if we were part of state government, as if we were a state agency. We are not. We are a university that operates in a highly competitive environment. We are put at a competitive disadvantage when certain information must be revealed that is proprietary, or where such revelation would put us at a disadvantage.

That would be Graham arguing against being held accountable. In second paragraph, he argues that receiving funds from the Commonwealth does not distinguish Penn State as a public university, because many other unambiguously private schools also receive state funds. In the third paragraph he comes right out and says it: Penn State is not a state agency. Bottom line... Graham thinks Penn State is like Penn rather than like Lock Haven or the other state-owned universities. So he wants to be treated like Penn not Lock Haven. Fair enough.

Here is Old Main's response to the Rendell agreement with Graham's argument that Penn State is private.

In removing the state-related universities from eligibility for stabilization funds, Rendell has declared that they are not public universities, contrary to their missions and history of state support. Penn State is Pennsylvania's sole land-grant institution and carries out multiple missions in service to the state and its citizens. Its character as a public institution has been supported by 154 years of history, legislative action and legal documents. The law providing the federal stimulus funds notes that the intent of the money is to shield students at colleges and universities supported by state tax dollars from unusually large tuition hikes due to fiscal pressures the economy is placing on state budgets.

Whoa...come again. Penn State is public? Let's get this straight. When Old Main wants to dodge accountability, Penn State is private. When Old Main wants some government money, Penn State is public. What a bunch of crap.

If Old Main wants the stimulus money, it should be willing to accept it with some heavy accountability strings attached.

This rank hypocrisy isn't the only nauseating thing about Old Main's response. Consider this paragraph.

"While news of these proposed cuts is troubling, the discussion at this time is between the governor and the state Legislature, which must come to some agreement on a number of budget issues," said Penn State President Graham Spanier. "We realize the state is facing some serious fiscal challenges, but to cut funding for institutions like Penn State is really a step in the wrong direction."

Now read this one.

In a letter to the U.S. Department of Education, Spanier asks officials there to look closely at Pennsylvania's stimulus funding application and to examine its exclusion of Penn State from the funding formula.

To paraphrase, look we understand things are tough in Harrisburg and we'll let you work things out between yourselves...and by the way, we telling Daddy....

Nauseating.



Technorati Tags: Penn State, stimulus funds, Rendell, Spanier, propaganda

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