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U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

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Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#241

Post by jcranmer »

dragonwriter wrote: post #223
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this not a bug? A straightforward patch would be the introduction of FPTP and moving the executive role from the office of the head-of-state to a body controlled by congress.

> A straightforward patch would be the introduction of FPTP The US uses FPTP for most elections, that's actually central to the problem. If you mean “a system approximating proportional repreaentation”, that's a valid fix, but problematic, both in terms of choosing the right one and the fact that doing so itself has ideological as well as functional impacts on outcomes, which means that the status quo faction which w…

> It's outright Constitutionally prohibited, even by Constitutional amendment, for the Senate.

Not quite true. It can be changed with consent of the state, so it would require 100% of the states to ratify it.

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#242

Post by jessaustin »

tomp wrote: post #88
School-Cotton wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the senate refuses to do its job It's not really the Senate's fault. Opposition parties almost never vote with government parties in any democratic legislature, so you shouldn't expect them to in the US. The real problem is the outdated system that is set up to (1) only allow two major parties to exist, so a European-style coalition government isn't possible, and (2) require both major parties to agree in order to…

Why outdated? Coronavirus stimulus pckage became law on 27th March in both the US and Germany (Europe’s model democracy). So it’s arguably a good thing, consensual things happen quickly, controversial things take a long time.

The laws may have passed on the same date, but they were not the same laws. In functioning democracies, laws passed in response to health and economic emergencies have something to do with health and economics. In USA, Congress just unanimously (well, except for Thomas Massie) gave rich people trillions of dollars.

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#243

Post by a1369209993 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #224
thephyber wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue the end-users (voters) mostly consider this a bug while the developers (majority party legislators at the state level) consider it a feature. Also, the founding fathers famously made it difficult for Congress to change anything, so dysfunction was definitely a feature.

> I would argue the end-users (voters) mostly consider this a bug while the developers (majority party legislators at the state level) consider it a feature. Voters consider the paralysis a feature when it is presenting a hostile legislative majority or executive from realizing their agenda, and a bug when it is preventing a friendly one.

> Voters consider the paralysis a feature when it is presenting a hostile legislative majority or executive from realizing their agenda, and a bug when it is preventing a friendly one.

Yes, that's what they said: paralysis is always a feature, because the legislative majority is always hostile to the people.

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#244

Post by Mikeb85 »

p1necone wrote: post #220
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this not a bug? A straightforward patch would be the introduction of FPTP and moving the executive role from the office of the head-of-state to a body controlled by congress.

FPTP tends to lead to the same heavily divided two major party politics you already have, it just avoids the possibility of winning with Something like MMP is probably a better system ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr... ). Baby steps though.

Lol, Canada has FPTP and regularly features majority governments that win with 35% of the vote.

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#245

Post by selimthegrim »

iskander wrote: post #193
quadrifoliate wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, in some ways this was the perfect outcome for that kind of posturing. Anecdotally, it seems to me that an actual drop in international student numbers would likely have hurt colleges in Republican-controlled states worse than Democrat-controlled ones. American students armed with student loans would still flock to top universities to make up for the international student shortfall, and I can't think of a top 10…

Setting aside blue states with moderate Republican governors, I see: 1/10 (Duke) 5/20 (Duke, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Rice, Wash U) 15/45 (Duke, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Rice, Wash U, Emory, Ann Arbor, Wake Forest, UVa, Georgia Tech, UNC-CH, UF, Case Western, College of William and Mary, Tulane) I doubt the split would be at the top 10 because they're simply too small to absorb all the domestic demand. I'm not sure how…

As far as Tulane goes, JBE (Louisiana) is a Democrat. Gretchen Whitmer is in MI too.

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#246

Post by karmelapple »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #216
RobRivera wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A part of me believes this is more feature and less bug of the government. "Blame the disfunction, not the leadership thats elected every 2 years".

How is this not a bug? A straightforward patch would be the introduction of FPTP and moving the executive role from the office of the head-of-state to a body controlled by congress.

Ranked Choice Voting, which is now the law for all elections in the state of Maine except the Presidency, is a way to help ensure that the winning candidate has been chosen by at least 50% of voters, even if the winning candidate wasn’t the first choice for all voters.

Adopting RCV seems to me like one of the best ways we can improve the health of the US’s democracy going forward.

Any voters Massachusetts can vote this November to have RCV statewide, just like Maine, from local elections up to the US House and Senate elections. I’ve volunteered with the group [1] helping Massachusetts join Maine in leading the way.

[1] https://voterchoice2020.org/

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#247

Post by poopchute »

wahern wrote: post #153
generationP wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, most universities don't take attendance. It's a waste of time, it punishes pro-social behavior (there is no good reason for people feeling sick to go to class), and it's infantilizing. "Attendance required" often means "we will notice if you never attend, and then will feel less bad failing you if you don't do your homework either".

My law school classes took attendance. Rigorously. Because time management is a critical skill for attorneys, judges don't tolerate any amount of unannounced absenteeism, and missing filing deadlines can be and often is extremely costly, not just for you but for your client. (Also, taking attendance weeds out the liars. The ABA has strict attendance requirements and you're not supposed to get a degree if you miss the…

Is that for all lectures? In the engineering program at my university, attendance as only taken during labs as those have strict attendance requirements.

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#248

Post by p1necone »

dragonwriter wrote: post #225
p1necone wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FPTP tends to lead to the same heavily divided two major party politics you already have, it just avoids the possibility of winning with Something like MMP is probably a better system ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr... ). Baby steps though.

> FPTP tends to lead to the same heavily divided two major party politics you already have, it just avoids the possibility of winning with No, it doesn't. FPTP is a synonym for single-member plurality, which enables wins with less than 50% of the popular vote when there are more than two candidates. You may mean majority-runoff (which the US already uses for a fair number of elections) or instant runoff, instead of F…

Oops yes I am mistaken about the non majority thing. It still leads to bi party politics though.

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#249

Post by qserasera »

I'm honestly displeased with this ending. Universities that want to commit 100% learning online should not charge full price.

Universities that are 100% online before Covid should not be able to grant visas as they have no campus.

There is a LOT unregulated, unlegislated here and a lot that needs to be organized now. Many organizations will continue to set unacceptable standards for education and in my opinion need to be reigned in. MIT, Harvard's global relationship, albeit special by influence and money, should have to follow what the government sets. Government should have edified that universities without campuses cannot grant visas as well as a variety of other things.

In short this is a missed opportunity and a waste of time, much like many/all plans of this administration.

Re: U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas

#250

Post by vinay427 »

briandear wrote: post #85
ben7799 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#2 - This was just a big distraction to get the ADD media to forget about Russian bounties on US troops.

How about we start requiring proof before we just endlessly allow unnamed sources to dictate our outrage? The Russian Bounty story has all sorts of problems. https://fair.org/home/in-russian-bounty-story-evidence-free-... This is a theme of the media: use unnamed sources with no ability for stories to be independently verified and then create an anti-Trump scandal over it. Over and over we go through this.

Do you not see a problem with media outlets requiring sources name themselves when speaking out against someone in a position of power? I'd much prefer the current situation of corroborating a scandal through what is often multiple sources in multiple publications if the alternative is not hearing about scandals that do exist.
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