Schwanksta :: Fuzzy Journalism

I know that it might seem I’m merely offended as a journalist on this one, but I’d say it’s offensive in the most universal sense. It seems sophomore State Sen. Jeremy Ring has decided that literacy, liberal arts and even business are no longer quite as important in Florida, and has proposed a tiered system for distributing the state’s lottery-funded scholarships.

In this brave new world of scholarship dividends, any student eligible for 100 percent tuition under the current law, yet not majoring in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, education or a health profession, is worth approximately 30 percent less to the state than his or her brethren.

Yeesh, now there’s a number to make you feel good about yourself. I guess you really can put a price on an education like mine, and that price is 80 percent of my tuition, plus $237.50 per semester for books and other materials. Those in the ostensibly “more important” fields, however, would get 110 percent of their tuition covered, and $330 per semester.

Here’s the kicker, though: those eligible for 75 percent tuition coverage currently (”Florida Medallion Scholars”) would now get an 85 percent scholarship if they go into these technical fields. Meanwhile, those poor bastards following their hearts and minds in other directions will get shafted, only receiving 55 percent coverage. For those of you playing along at home, that’s less than half of what a top-tier engineering student would get.

What blows me away is that despite the effort that goes into achieving a full Bright Futures ride, Ring is willing to give those with lower test scores and GPAs a larger slice of the scholarship pie — based solely on what you want to study. It’s just antithetical to the very idea of its scholarship; the state should be fostering education in all forms, not just those they choose. From its own website:

This Florida Lottery-funded scholarship rewards students for their academic achievements during high school by providing funding for them to pursue postsecondary educational and career goals in Florida.

I don’t see anything about abusing the system to promote specific careers anywhere in there, but maybe I missed it.

So this is what Sen. Ring really wants to say to Florida students not interested in his pre-approved paths: “I don’t care how intelligent you are, study this or cough up.” Awesome. If the state wants to pay some of its brightest students less, out-of-state scholarships might suddenly seem a whole lot more tempting. The last thing Florida needs is a brain drain and a geek influx.

Don’t think I’ve forgotten about business majors, either. Apparently, they don’t make the cut for top-tier degree seekers. Now tell me: how many people who want to get into business will settle for a sharp cut in scholarship funding? Probably not the brightest of the bunch.

Thankfully, the bill has no current House sponsors yet, and I hope it stays that way. What a whackjob.

Read the St. Pete Times’ The Buzz article here. Read the Alligator’s coverage here

Legislation introduced Friday in Maryland that would redefine marriage as “…between two people, not otherwise prohibited from marrying,” has sparked state senators to draft a constitutional amendment in the name of “protecting marriage.”

Maryland’s Marriage Protection Act, designed to amend the state’s constitution to explicitly define marriage as between a man and a woman, will be voted on in the November general election by the state’s citizens. The bill, sponsored by 8 Republican state senators, would effectively neuter the all-Democrat-sponsored Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act.

The latter act would alter existing family law so that the state’s gays could marry as soon as October, and provides a clause that allows religious institutions that would otherwise feel pressured into performing gay marriage ceremonies to refuse based on First Amendment grounds.

SB169, Maryland’s Marriage Protection Act
Article XV – Miscellaneous
8.(A) ONLY A MARRIAGE BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN IS VALID IN THIS
STATE.
(B) A CIVIL UNION OR RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS OF THE
SAME SEX, BY WHATEVER NAME OR TITLE, THAT CONFERS THE BENEFIT OF
MARRIAGE IS NOT VALID IN THIS STATE.

Read Maryland’s Marriage Protection Act here.

Article - Family Law
§2–201.
(A) Only a marriage between [a man and a woman] TWO PEOPLE, NOT
OTHERWISE PROHIBITED FROM MARRYING, is valid in this State.

(B) THIS SECTION MAY NOT BE CONSTRUED TO INVALIDATE OTHER
SECTIONS IN THIS TITLE

Read the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act here.

Well, I guess either way marriage is getting protected. You can thank the inbuilt, twisted sense of humor that politicians all seem to share for that.

Read more: Baltimore Sun article, Washington Post article, 365Gay article.

This phrase appears in a piece by the Asia times regarding US involvement in Muslim insurgencies in southern Thailand. The relevant part?

US and Thai officials will no doubt continue to try to disassociate the CIA’s torture prisons with the Thai military’s controversial tactics in southern Thailand, including the implementation of what some rights advocates refer to as “US-style” torture techniques. It is telling, they say, that the US has in the main remained silent about their Thai allies’ sustained and by now well-documented use of torture while interrogating Muslim militant suspects.

Read the article here

It’s a pretty good article, though I confess I haven’t read much on the US using Thailand as a stop off on the whirlwind US torture tour. Note: I first found mention of this article on Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog, who got it from The Crossed Pond. Both sites mistakenly used the term “American-style torture.”