Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

harvard.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

881–890 of 1001 posts

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#881

Post by chneu »

rogermungo wrote: post #824

Whats the problem.. just get your pal Soros to give you the money instead.. With $36T debt, Federal Government cannot continue splashing out money like there is no tomorrow

Trump is increasing the debt tho and did in his first term.

Republicans only care about debt when it can be used to either bash Democrats or used as a talking point to eliminate something they don't like. Lookup "Starve The Beast".

Republicans do not care about the debt. They care that it can be used as a tool. That's it.

They run up the debt when they want and then turn around to blame Democrats for the debt they ran up.

Nobody is really concerned with the US debt outside of silly wanna-be patriots and the politicians who use it to scare them. Now, one way to make the US debt a much bigger deal is to cause a recession...hmm...wonder if anyone is trying to do that...

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#882

Post by chneu »

DecoySalamander wrote: post #812
jacobs123 wrote: post #590

> "Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension." Wow. Imagine being sick with something serious like pneumonia and having to decide whether to get everyone around you sick, or risk being suspended from school.

If you're seriously ill, you should get treatment, not walk around hoping that a piece of cloth will save others from exposure to whatever it is you're coughing up.

Except that masks do statistically work in preventing the spread of contagion.

Even if it's just 10% it's still worth doing.

There are also tons of legit reasons to wear a mask besides being contagious.

Anyone defending a mask ban is doing it to support ideology, not practicality. Just say that instead of using really dumb click bait fox news quips.

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#883

Post by lukas099 »

silexia wrote: post #707
rurp wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow I doubt you would apply these same principles to someone who doesn't believe in police and objects to their taxes being used to fund them.

Republicans won the presidency and both branches of the legislature. The people voted for their money to no longer be spent foolishly.

So you support impinging on free speech as long as the majority of voters is against something? That's exactly the kind of thing the Constitution is meant to prevent.

Or do you agree that it is not a violation of free speech to fund police when there are citizens who disagree with it? You can't have it both ways.

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#884

Post by chneu »

sam_goody wrote: post #851

Off topic, but _why_ is it good that the gov gives hundreds of billions of dollars [if you include grants] to higher ed. I work in a startup where none of the programmers have been to college, and they seem to get along just fine. I volunteer in a youth group that teaches "soft" sciences, and I am sure that groups like ours do a better job at that with a lot less funding. Trade schools cater to the lower income, are…

Nearly everything you use on a daily basis came from university research. Heck, most of what we know about the universe comes from university research.

Every piece of technology is because of collaboration between taxpayer funding and universities. It is relatively rare nowadays for a private business to create anything truly new without some form of university support. Or it's built on top of university research.

If you like new knowledge you like these types of programs. They make modern life possible.

Universities provide staff, equipment and expertise while the government(and often private enterprise) provide the funding.

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#885

Post by teddyh »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #406
squigz wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the more they will accelerate down a path where there is no coming back from. Why do you say this? At practically every point in history where a government or dictator goes too far, we've come back from it.

There are many points in history where a dictator made their country permanently worse. Argentina was once among the wealthiest democracies in the world, until a dictator seized power in 1930 - it took 53 years to restore democratic governance and their economy still isn't back on track.

According to Wikipedia, “in 1929, Argentina was wealthy by world standards, but the prosperity ended after 1929 with the worldwide Great Depression.” It was presumably the collapsing economy which caused the military coup, not the other way around.

Do you have a better example? Or is that it?

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#886

Post by lukas099 »

silexia wrote: post #710
jakeydus wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just how government works, buddy. I disagree with my tax dollars being spent to shoot wild horses and fund Lockheed-Martin, but here we are. It's not forced speech, because you have representatives who (in a working system) you could ask to fight against tax dollars being spent on something you dislike. You have a voice, you just don't get to have the only voice .

The majority of Americans elected Republicans specifically based on their platform of eliminating waste and corruption like these funds that go to Harvard and directly fund anti Asian discrimination. The President is simply following through on his mandate. Why do you oppose democracy?

Democracy doesn't mean that a plurality of voters in a single presidential election gets to overturn the Constitution and established law.

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#887

Post by chneu »

mullingitover wrote: post #69
the_snooze wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, people really need to learn their history. The modern federally-funded research university system came about as a direct result of the US getting caught with their pants down after Sputnik. The government decided it's in its best strategic interests to maintain long-term investments in basic and applied research. Those aren't things you can just spin up on short notice, though it's easy to kill it. https://en.wi…

Also, isn't a ton of the IP from federally funded research just handed over to US corporations for free or pennies on the dollar? Something tells me this is more of the current administration threatening to completely wreck US prosperity if they don't get wins on their bigoted social war agenda.

Absolutely. Everything in tech is hugely funded by tax payer money.

Modern semiconductor manufacturing is nearly all researched in partnership with federal funding. It's viewed as a national security issue.

The best theory I've heard so far is that Trump has this wild idea that if he can tank the US economy into a recession/depression then he can renegotiate our debt. He thinks this will save the US trillions of dollars. Except it'll cost the US trillions of dollars as well. I don't know if he's smart enough to think this up but it does kinda seem like what he's doing.

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#888

Post by Snowfield9571 »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #836
forty wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what "agree with the Palestinians" would mean. Like they are not happy with being genocided? I think that would be most people's feeling in that situation, though that doesn't show any proximity in belief, value or principle.

Genocided is certainly the wrong term. It is not on all Palestinians but the government of Gaza did attack Israel. It fired an insane amount of rockets before their latest attack too, but that has already been seen as normalized. Which is ridiculous as well. If oppression justifies these rocket attacks, a lot more than some rhetoric can be justified as well.

No it’s absolutely the correct term. What are you a BBC anchor?

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#889

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

alexb_ wrote: post #849
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about going from 2.3% to maybe 13%. And this isn't a reflection of attitudes among people who are potentially employed there, it's a reflection of overt, rigid filtering on the basis of political beliefs.

Typically, in order to be employed at a college, you have to be smart and aware of the world. This qualification disqualifies basically all conservatives.

That's not true. Painting the "other" as some sort of one-dimensional malevolent retard isn't doing you or anyone else any favors. I promise.

There are real people, even smart people, on the other team. They have thoughts, kids, impressive degrees, goals unrelated to politics. They enjoy sunshine and hiking. They think they're doing what they're doing for good reasons. They believe themselves to be good people. They might even believe you to be a good person.

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#890

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

chneu wrote: post #874
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #835

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "comprehensive mask ban" would presumably include exceptions for people who are immunocompromised, actively sick with an upper-respiratory infection, etc. Steelman, don't straw man.

That's open to interpretation. That's the problem. We've seen how Republicans treat anything that deals with nuance.

I mean...the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is really clear, and the Democrats have weaponized it to help the constituencies they're pursuing. Whether that's morally correct or not is beside the point, because that's not why the party machine is doing it. They've institutionalized racism and sexism at a scale we haven't seen since the civil rights movement brought merit ("...by the content of their character.") to the fore.
Post reply on HN