From Where I Sit

Commentary on Politics, Public Policy, Ethics and Leadership

[rdmyers]

Enough

Enough.

I read in the New York Times this week about the CEO of Nike giving Stanford University $400 million to support graduate education at that University.  Apparently it follows on the heels of Harvard announcing a similar $400 million contribution to improve its engineering school.  And this comes on the heels of the release of a report last month by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation calling for increased financial aid for disadvantaged students so they could attend prestigious private universities—the argument being that only those institutions had the capacity to serve these students.

Don’t get me wrong.  I have great respect for Harvard, Stanford and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.  And based on my own story, I certainly support the idea of disadvantaged students attending prestigious colleges.  When I went to Cornell, my father was unemployed and my mother was a secretary at the local high school.  I was able to go to Cornell through a combination of state, federal and institutional aid.  But mostly it was the encouragement of my parents, who insisted that I go to the best college that would take me.

Later, I had the opportunity to work at Bucknell University, another great institution.  In its effort to increase diversity, Bucknell had partnered with three different organizations to offer scholarship opportunities for disadvantaged students, student who would not normally have appeared on the Bucknell campus.  One of those groups was the Jack Kent Cooke community college scholars program, which brought successful, high need community colleges to Lewisburg, PA.  These students, who were generally older, more diverse and less well off than the typical student, helped make Bucknell a more diverse institution.

So, I have sympathy for getting more disadvantaged students into prestigious institutions.  But enough is enough.

The True Merit report by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation makes an interesting read.  My summation of its argument is that prestigious private colleges need financial incentives in order to do a better job of recruiting high achieving disadvantaged students. 

What about those less prestigious colleges that have been helping college capable students realize the same dream of a college degree?  The True Merit report suggests that “only at the most selective schools do high achieving, lower-income students graduate at rates equal to students from higher income backgrounds.  Our review. . . suggests that students also receive a higher quality education at selective colleges, at least as measured by per pupil spending.”  (emphasis added)

Really.

That brings me to my main topic.  While I understand and certainly appreciate the interest in high achieving, disadvantaged students and their attendance at prestigious private colleges and universities, what about the larger group of college capable students.  At Alvernia we have launched a program for those students, borrowing on the models used at institutions like those highlighted in the True Merit report.  But Alvernia isn’t Bucknell or Cornell, or Harvard or Stanford.  And the students we’re talking about don’t have 1300 on their SATs.  But they are capable of succeeding in college and Alvernia is serving them well.

Two years ago, we launched our Reading Collegiate Scholars program, targeting college capable students in the city of Reading.  Reading is the poorest city in Pennsylvania.  It is also the only city in Pennsylvania with a majority Hispanic population.  Almost forty percent of the working age adults in the city don’t have a high school diploma.  And those statistics are reflected in the school district, which is also the poorest school district in the Commonwealth, with the largest percentage of English Language Learners.  The district has a dropout rate well above the state average and a college attendance rate well below that average.

We have enrolled two cohorts of scholars, providing them with full tuition grants and an extensive support system to help them succeed in school.  These are small numbers and still somewhat early, but so far we have been successful.  After three semesters on campus, the first group of eight students has a combined 3.26 GPA.  The second group of ten has a collective GPA of 3.09.  And they are active on campus and within the community.

Understand who these students are.  All but one is a first generation college student.  All but one is Hispanic.  Several come from broken homes.  Two are DACA or “Dreamer” students, but they all have a dream of getting a college degree.

We believe that part of their success is due to the support system we have put in place.  Each scholar has a volunteer community mentor.  Each cohort has a faculty mentor to help them navigate their college career.  As a cohort they support each other academically and personally.  They go through a pre-college summer program that helps them adjust to college life.  And they are well aware that there is a net below them to help them when they need it.

We have learned lessons that may not apply to those high achieving, disadvantaged students who attend prestigious private colleges.  Our students may share some of the issues and concerns that those students confront, such affordability and weak counseling.  But they often have to figure out ways to balance school, work and family. Some of our scholars work to help support their families. For example, recently, one had to adjust her academic schedule to meet the need to increase the hours she was working because her mother lost her job.  Some are responsible for taking care of siblings so the parents can work.  And we help them deal with these challenges.

We understand that the likelihood of success for these students is making sure that they have strong connections to the university.  We would love to offer them work-study jobs on campus.  We’d like them to live on campus, but because their scholarships only cover tuition, that isn’t possible for most of the Reading scholars. 

As challenging as that has been for our students, it is also a challenge for us.  Alvernia tuition isn’t nearly has high as Harvard or Cornell or Bucknell of Stanford.  But our endowment is even further from they enjoy.  Stanford enjoys an endowment of $33 billion.  That endowment spins off almost $1.5 billion a year.  Bucknell has an endowment north of $700 million, relatively low for prestigious university.  That endowment generates almost $35 million a year.  Alvernia, by contrast has an endowment of less than $10 million.  Offering full tuition scholarships for the forty students who will be enrolled in our program when fully implemented will cost over $1 million a year, twice what our current endowment generates.

While I don’t want to criticize the efforts to increase the numbers of disadvantaged students attending prestigious schools, I am a little concerned about what appears to the underlying premise, that what we need in America is to change the face of privilege, rather than lifting more people into productive, middle class lives.

Another foundation, the Lumina Foundation, has written about the need to grow the number of American workers with some post-secondary education.  They estimate that by 2025 nearly 60% of all of the jobs in America will require some post-secondary education.  That’s the need we’re trying to serve with the Reading Collegiate Scholars program.  And so far, we’re doing ok.

So while people are focusing on helping those prestigious schools enroll more disadvantaged students by growing their endowments, I’d ask that there be some attention given to the more modest efforts of Alvernia and Reading, which seem to be working albeit on a shoestring.

[rdmyers]

The Supreme Court and Same Sex Marriage: Is the PAst Prelude to the Future?

Earlier this week, the US Supreme Court issued two opinions, both related to gay and lesbian rights, which rightfully have been described as monumental.  In one case they refused to overturn a federal appeals court decision invalidating California’s so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as an act occurring between a man and a woman.  The other case allowed same sex couples who have been legally married to enjoy the benefits and protections available under federal law for married couples.  While these decisions, which divided the court, are truly landmark in the sense that for the first time the courts and the federal government are offering protections under the law to same sex couples, I’m also reminded of two other significant civil rights events in American history.

This year is the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln’s landmark declaration about slavery in the midst of the Civil War.  But as the movie “Lincoln” so poignantly reminded us, the Emancipation Proclamation did not abolish slavery in the United States.  Lincoln freed the slaves in the southern states so long as those states remained in rebellion against the union.  It wasn’t until nearly two years later, in the final months of Abraham Lincoln’s life, that the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery across the nation, was enacted into law.  This amendment was followed in June 1866, by the 14th Amendment which provided for equal protection under the law and the 15th Amendment in 1869 which extended the right to vote to all eligible males. 

Similarly, the two recent court cases, while making significant changes in the civil rights of gay and lesbian couples, do not make marriage legal for same sex couples across the country.  Nor does it require states that have not legalized same sex marriage to recognize marriages that occur in those states that do.  Pennsylvania does not recognize the marriage of a same sex couple that was married in Massachusetts.  So in some ways, these cases, although important are more significant for their symbolic statement about same sex marriage than they are for the consequences that they will have; just as the Emancipation Proclamation effectively symbolized a change in the purpose of the Civil War, from preserving the union to abolishing slavery.

I’m reminded by these decisions of another movie that we showed here on campus, “Iron Jawed Angels” about the Woman’s Suffrage Movement.  Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton first proposed a constitutional amendment to extend the right to vote to women in 1878.  As early as 1869, the Wyoming Territory allowed women to vote in elections.  But as the movie suggests, for the remainder of the 19th Century and well into the 20th Century, the Woman’s Suffrage Movement embarked on a campaign to get each individual state to change its voter laws to extend the franchise to women.  And the movement made some progress, but by the time World War I started women were allowed the right to vote in only a handful of states.  A change in strategy, fostered as the movie suggests by new leadership and a national hunger strike, forced Congress to adopt the 19th Amendment in June 1919. 

The recent court decisions seem to push the question of same sex marriage back to the states.  Will the effort now be to seek recognition in each state for same sex marriage?  Is there any lesson to be learned here from the history of the Emancipation Proclamation or Women’s Suffrage?    

[rdmyers]

Nelson, Bobby and Barry

These days, I’m reminded of the song sung first by the old rocker Dion DiMucci in 1969, long after he left Dion and the Belmonts.  The song was entitled “Abraham, Martin and John” and is a tribute to four famous assassinated Americans, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers, John and Bobby.  And what has brought that song rushing back has been the recent Supreme Court decision about the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the imminent death of Nelson Mandela.

The 1960’s were a pretty turbulent time.  In 1963 alone, not only was John Kennedy assassinated, but civil rights marches and demonstrations in the South brought images of fire hoses being turned on marchers; police dogs being unleashed on demonstrators; national guard troops and defiant Governor’s standing on the steps of schools and universities; churches being bombed and dead voting rights activists into the homes of millions of Americans.  1963 was also the year that Nelson Mandela was sentenced to prison on Robben Island, South Africa for his opposition to Apartheid, the harsh segregation laws of that country.

In 1966, a young South African student activist named Ian Robertson extended invitations to two Americans who had played, or more exactly, were playing roles in the Civil Rights movement in the United States—Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.  The Apartheid regime in South Africa denied King a Visa to entry the country; but they couldn’t deny one for Bobby Kennedy.  In June 1966, Kennedy visited South Africa and in the course of his visit he delivered a speech, known as the Affirmation Day or “Ripple of Hope” speech, a talk that inspired a generation of both American and South African students.  In that speech, Kennedy noted that “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. . . Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against an injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Those had an indelible impact on a generation of activists in South Africa, including Nelson Mandela.  When Kennedy’s plane left South Africa, it flew over Robben Island where Mandela and others were imprisoned.  Kennedy had the plane’s pilot tip the wing of the plane in tribute to those imprisoned there.  In 1990, shortly after he was finally released from prison and shortly before he became President of South Africa, Mandela visited Bobby Kennedy’s grave in Arlington Cemetery, where, inscribed on the tombstone are the words from the Ripple of Hope Speech.

 This week, the Supreme Court effectively declared that the generation Bobby Kennedy inspired with that speech had successfully eradicated discrimination in voting in the United States.  The election of an African American as President was taken as evidence that the federal government no longer had to a defined role in ensuring that rights established under the 15th Amendment (and perhaps the 19th as well?) were protected. 

Is it ironic that this week President Obama will visit South Africa as the first native black African President of that country is on his death bed?  Does that visit close the circle of Bobby Kennedy’s visit nearly 50 years ago, just as the Supreme Court seems to have suggested that the line started by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is now also a closed circle?  Have the ripples of hope that Bobby Kennedy spoke of truly swept down the walls of oppression and resistance?

Bobby Kennedy started his Affirmation Day speech with these words:

“I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.”

Has the United States wiped out the last traces of slavery and discrimination as the Supreme Court seems to be suggesting?  Time will tell.  And we may not have to wait long to see.

[rdmyers]

Big Data or Big Brother?

The recent controversy over the National Security Agency collecting the telephone records of millions of Americans has brought renewed attention to the idea of Big Data, particularly about the right of the government to collect this information—the looming presence of a Big Brother Big Government.

And while most of the attention has been on the question “Should the federal government be allowed to collect this information” the fact of the matter is that every day, in multiple ways data is collected and analyzed by government and businesses of all levels and types.  Amazon collects information about every book, cd or video that is bought through them and pushes suggestions for additional purchases based on that information.  Google collects information about the websites that you visit and mines your emails to push advertising that may interest you.  Grocers, hardware chains, pet suppliers and sporting good stores collect information about your purchases. You get coupons automatically printed for you based on your purchases.  And one grocery store chain even offers varying discounts on the same products based on your spending patterns.

Every wonder why they ask for you zip code?  It’s not to help identify your account.  Its to help develop a more detailed profile of the spending habits of the people who live near you.  And its not just consumer affairs that Big Data is affecting.  IBM markets a product to police forces that allows them to map and analyze crime statistics, predicting where and when (and perhaps even) the police should focus their efforts to combat crime.  Politicians are increasingly using business analytics to identify potential donors and supporters, using micro targeting to focus their messages.  And as Moneyball clearly showed, analytics has also clearly invaded the sports world. 

While the controversy around the NSA disclosure has focused primarily on whether government has the right to collect this data and secondarily about how that data is used, there are other and perhaps deeper issues that are in question here.

In many ways, the debate over Big Data increasingly resembles the debate over Genetics and the Human Genome.  In that debate, there have been questions about how owns DNA.  Can tests results be shared with other parties?  How can genetic information be used in making medical decisions, or insurance decisions, or hiring decisions? 

In the Mega-Data debate many of the questions are the same.

Who owns my data?  When I buy something, do I surrender my right to have not only the information about what I bought, but how I paid for it, where I live, my phone number and email shared with the seller and perhaps anyone else that  that seller chooses to share that information with.

When large amounts of data are readily available on the Internet, who decides what is private and what is not? 

I remember controversies over “redlining” the practice of some companies—be they mortgage lenders, cable companies or so-called public utilities to define, limit or even deny service based on the neighborhood one lived in.  Now, with even more sophisticated data available to them, is this demographic or geographic profiling better or worse?

How should this date be used?  Who gets to decide how the data gets used?  The NSA says that it is collecting the data which will only be used to prevent or investigate terrorist attacks.  And in theory at least there is oversight by both a “top secret” court and Congress.  But who decides how a local police force will use the date that criminal justice data collection systems allow it to collect.  Or how Amazon, or the local pet store uses the data it collects?  Some states allow their motor license programs to sell the data it collects?  What about other governmental licensing agencies?  Who decides what they collect, what they sell and how that data is used?

These are not necessarily new issues.  But the amount of data, the ability to assemble and analyze data, the ability to share data and the ability to steal data have all been radically changed by the advent of MegaData.  This isn’t to say that all this data collection is bad.  That some of it doesn’t serve good purposes.  Being able to target criminal justice resources to where they can prevent the most crime isn’t necessarily bad.  But because there are both private and public interests at stake here, there should be a much broader discussion about these issues.

The controversy over the NSA collection of certain cell phone data certainly raises the question of what is being collected and for what purpose.  But ultimately, it is these larger issues that are more important.  It is time for a broader discussion about MegData and privacy?

[rdmyers]

Taxing Employer Health Insurance Payments

In a recent Newsweek Article, David Frum made the case for eliminating “tax expenditures” rather than increasing the marginal rates on for the top two tax brackets.  One of the changes he proposed was to tax employer contributions for employee health insurance, arguing that  “(t)he biggest tax preference in the individual tax code is the treatment of employer-purchased health-care benefits. An employee who earns $60,000 and receives a health-insurance policy worth $8,000 pays income tax on the $60,000 but not on the $8,000. This exclusion has thrust employers into the role of main buyers of health insurance. It hides the costs of health coverage from employees and thereby makes it easier for health providers to raise fees.  .  .  . And because low-wage workers often receive no health coverage at all while high-wage workers receive ample benefits, elimination of the exclusion for people earning more than $250,000 would recoup a very big part of that $130 billion (that this exemption “costs”.).

There are a number of things wrong with this argument.   Start with the fact that that employer sponsored health insurance coverage is not a new trend, but something that has been around for well over 75 years.  And in fact over the last twenty years, there has been an erosion in the percentage of families receiving coverage through an employer.  Nor did he suggest as a part of this strategy eliminating the tax deductions and/or tax credits that employers and the self-employed have under current law.

Frum suggested that taxing the health insurance premiums paid by an employer is a better alternative than raising the marginal tax rates for the upper two tax brackets, largely because “low income workers don’t have health insurance coverage” and need to “own” increases in health insurance costs. But the facts show a different reality.  Three-quarters of the families with incomes between $46,000 and $69,000 receive their health insurance coverage through their employer.  So, you can’t really argue that it wouldn’t affect low income workers. 

To suggest that currently most workers have no stake in the cost of health care because they don't bear the cost of insurance is also wrong. Over the past two decades, while insurance premiums have gone up dramatically, a significant portion of those costs have been shifted from employers to employees--through higher co-insurance requirements, deductibles and co-payments.   According to the Kaiser Foundation, the average premium for a family insurance plan in the US is about $15,750 with the individual paying about $4,300. Workers are contributing 180% more toward their health insurance in 2012 than they did in 1999; but their wages have only risen 47% over that same period.  So it’s not really clear how this “hides the costs of health coverage from employees and thereby makes it easier for health providers to raise fees.”

But more than the errors of fact, the mathematics don’t work and underscore the basic inequities in this proposal.  For a family with an adjusted taxable income of $50,000, adding the employer payment to that family's tax base would increase their tax burden by $1,650. That means they would pay $9,150 instead of $7,500 or 22% more in taxes without really gaining any additional income. And you can assume that they are already paying $4,000 in pre-tax income as co-insurance and somewhere on the order of $1000 in deductibles and co-payments, which is typical again according to Kaiser. It is also likely that they use standard deduction, so none of these payments would be taken as deductions. In the end they would be paying 22% more in federal taxes and have their net income reduced by 3.3% if this proposal were adopted. 

On the other end of the economic spectrum, Frum apparently assumes that high income workers wouldn’t be able to shield themselves from increased taxes should the employer contribution be subject to tax.  But, it is likely that a significant number of the high income families also benefit from the tax credits for the self-insured, and those that aren’t have other tools to lessen the impact of this tax.  Assume for comparison sake that a family with an adjusted income of $300,000 has the same health insurance plan and the same employer contribution as our $50,000 family had. They could potentially be liable for $3,630 more in taxes, paid at the current marginal rate.  But they are also more likely to itemize deductions and to have a tax sheltered medical savings account, so they could reduce or eliminate this increased tax burden, under current tax law, left untouched by this proposal.  

So assume that they only cut impact of the tax increase in half to $1,815. That effectively would mean that their employer contribution was taxed at 16.5%, or only slightly more than the effective rate for the $50,000 worker paying only $265 more than the lower income family in additional federal taxes. The overall tax burden for the high wage employee would increase less than 2.5% and their adjusted income would be reduced less than 1%.   

Employees already are bearing a significant portion of health care cost--through higher co-insurance, reduced or eliminated premium coverage for dependents, higher deductibles and higher co-payments.   And workers are bearing an increasing portion of health insurance premiums, with their increased contributions far out stripping the increase in their wages.  The burden of subjecting employer health insurance premium contributions clearly falls more significantly on lower income workers, unless as Frum suggests, that they have been going without health insurance coverage.   Ironically, that could be one of the more likely, but hopefully unintended, outcomes if this suggestion were enacted.  At the very least, low income workers would be more likely to limit their use of preventative services and increasingly defer treatment.  

[rdmyers]

Lance and Lincoln

Lance and Lincoln

After years of denial, after being stripped of his titles and his endorsement contracts and now his Olympic medal, Lance Armstrong announced that he had in fact used performance enhancing drugs.  To many, Lance Armstrong was an icon.  Having successfully battled cancer, he was still able to perform at the highest levels of athletic endeavor, in a sport that in recent years has been racked by controversy.  And his success in cycling and his success in conquering cancer led Armstrong to establish the Livestrong Foundation, to improve the lives of cancer patients and to promote evidence based solutions to cancer care.

Interestingly, after the news of his admission of doping, but before the interview was publicly aired, Armstrong visited the Livestrong Foundation to deliver what must have been a very painful confession.  We will never know if Armstrong would have been successful if he hadn’t resorted to cheating.  More damning even than the doping charges are the allegations from his former teammates of intimidation and coercion—Armstrong is accused of encouraging other teammates to use the same drugs and browbeat them into covering up the abuse.   

Rather than a hero and a role model, Armstrong has turned out to be an archetypical villain.  And yet, we can’t deny the good that the Livestrong Foundation has done for countless victims of cancer.  Without Armstrong’s drug aided success, the Livestrong Foundation would not exist.  Yet its existence doesn’t justify or sanctify Armstrong’s behavior.

I was reminded of that same conundrum this week when it was announced that Steven Spielberg’s epic film Lincoln was nominated for twelve Academy Awards.  The film dramatically presents the story of how Lincoln secured enactment of the Thirteen Amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery.  This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which, as authors such as William Safire and Gary Wills have suggested, transformed the Civil War from a battle over state’s rights to a struggle over slavery.  

But the Emancipation Proclamation only freed the slaves in the Confederacy.  It didn’t abolish slavery.  Lincoln clearly saw that part of his legacy should be the abolition of slavery. 

The movie portrays a Lincoln about whom most Americans are unaware; a Lincoln who manipulated events, hid a peace entreaty by the Confederacy, and offered jobs, projects and funds in order to secure enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment.  

Were Lincoln’s actions justified?   Were Armstrong’s?  Did the results in either case justify their behavior?  There are obvious differences between Lance Armstrong and Abraham Lincoln.  And history will judge them very differently.  But the impact of their behavior, so visible in the same week, raises important questions about moral leadership.

[rdmyers]

There has been a lot of talk about how polluted out political discourse has become. By their nature political campaigns often bring into sharp focus differences in opinions, attitudes and philosophies. But this most recent campaign also had more than its share of distortion, innuendo and outright lying. For example, during the recent election season, the National Federation of Independent Businesses and the coal mining industry issued repeated warnings to their members and the public at large about the coming Obama “avalanche of regulations.” This drumbeat has continued since the election. The NFIB website noted on Friday November 9th that the Obama administration had issued some 165 new regulations and notifications on its official regulatory tracking website. Terrifying right? But note the use of the hedge “notifications”, because not all, in fact not many, of the items listed on the website are actually new regulations. Nor are they particularly worrisome developments. One notice was an amendment to the Disaster Declaration for New Jersey about Superstorm Sandy. Perhaps some would prefer a FEMA that waited for weeks to respond to a natural disaster, but I’m reasonably confident that the people of New Jersey would prefer an agency that is responsive to their needs in the wake of that natural disaster. Several of the items are notices about meetings of federal agencies, including the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Sinister activities? Hardly. One was an application by Chevron for a license to export liquefied natural gas. Another was an announcement of the investigation of Chinese unfair trade practices related to manufacture of metal coat hangers. Both are items that the business community would generally support. One can argue about the role and function of government and about the need for regulations in many areas. But to use the publication of open government records as an argument about a looming “avalanche of regulations” designed to cripple business is more than a little disingenuous. Yet this hype is all too common in what passes for political discourse and should win an award for untruth in advertising. A second example of a hyperbolic attack was the viral campaign that Barack Obama had signed an Executive Order that would allow him to declare martial law and void the results of the election. Whew, I’m glad that one was ultimately foiled by the voters, who decided to re-elect the President. It turns out, this rumor, launched by several members of Congress, was a pretty serious misreading of an amendment to an order that has been in place for decades, updating a policy established by Dwight Eisenhower (remember he did warn us about the military industrial complex), which was also altered by the Clinton and Bush administrations. This attack should also qualify for an ignominy award. And my third award would go to the authors of a stealth rumor, based on the confrontation that occurred between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, about Obama’s investments in China and the Cayman Islands. In the manifestation that I heard from several sources, Barack Obama had an annual pension of over $150,000 for his service in the Illinois Senate and he had substantial amounts invested in the Caymans and China, as did Romney. In addition, he somehow finagled a massive federal pension for his time as President. As with the other conspiracy theories, there are some small elements of truth in these allegations. Obama did in fact qualify for a pension for his seven years in the Illinois Senate. But while there is some evidence that Illinois’ legislative pensions are generous, Obama will draw down about $10,000 a year for that service when he begins to take it. Moreover, under Illinois law, state legislators do not qualify for Social Security payments based on their legislative salaries, unlike state legislators in many other states. And he didn’t serve in the US Senate long enough to qualify for a pension there. Obama does qualify for the same generous Presidential pension that other former Presidents are currently receiving. Perhaps to his credit, Romney did not participate in the Massachusetts public pension system when he was Governor and he may not ultimately have accepted the federal Presidential pension had he been elected. We don’t know because that question was never raised in the campaign and certainly won’t be now. Finally, the Illinois public pension system does have investments in both China and the Cayman Islands. And Obama also has an investment in an index fund managed by Pennsylvania based Vanguard Investments which also invests in companies who manufacture their products in China, such as Apple. Obama, of course had less ability to direct these investments than Romney did, even in his blind trust. And in both instances, these investments amount to less than $300. We don’t know how much was actually invested in Romney’s off shore accounts, but it is probably safe to assume that it was more than $300. Does Obama’s miniscule investments in these enterprises, undermine his credibility in attacking Romney? Perhaps, but understanding the facts here does change the nature of the argument. There has been a lot of talk about the poisonous nature of our civil discourse over politics. And there are egregious examples, similar to these, of charges being levied by all sides in that debate. But don’t we deserve better? And shouldn’t the facts matter?

[alvernia-faculty]

Aside from the very stark difference in President Obama’s performance between the two debates, there were several substantive differences in the two debates. Most obviously, the general consensus is that the President outperformed Governor Romney in the second debate, but clearly his listless...