RUTHFULLY YOURS

Obama and Netanyahu Pledge to Strengthen Ties Prime minister says he is committed to a two-state peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians Carol E. Lee and Rory Jones :

President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to publicly minimize their longtime discord as they met Monday for the first time in more than a year.

Mr. Netanyahu, in a notably conciliatory remark, told Mr. Obama he is committed to a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians that includes a two-state solution. The Israeli leader’s statement was a sharp reversal from his rejection of a two-state solution earlier this year, which had angered the White House.

“I want to make clear we have not given up our hope for peace,” Mr. Netanyahu said, seated alongside Mr. Obama in the Oval Office.
The White House has given up on reaching a peace agreement before Mr. Obama leaves office in 14 months, a point the president’s top aides publicly underscored in advance of Mr. Netanyahu’s visit.

Headlines blaring that processed and red meat causes cancer have made this steak-and-bacon-loving nation collectively reach for the Rolaids. Vegans are in full party mode, and the media is in a feeding frenzy. But there is more to this story than meets the (rib)eye.

With United Nations climate talks beginning in a few weeks in Paris, the cancer warning seems particularly well timed. Environmental activists have long sought to tie food to the fight against global warming. Now the doomsayers who want to take on modern agriculture, a considerable source of greenhouse-gas emissions, can employ an additional scare tactic: Meat production sickens the planet; meat consumption sickens people.

Someone at Yale University should have dressed up as Robespierre for Halloween, as its students seem to have lost their minds over what constitutes a culturally appropriate costume. Identity and grievance politics keeps hitting new lows on campus, and now even liberal professors are being consumed by the revolution.

On Oct. 28 Yale Dean Burgwell Howard and Yale’s Intercultural Affairs Committee blasted out an email advising students against “culturally unaware” Halloween costumes, with self-help questions such as: “If this costume is meant to be historical, does it further misinformation or historical and cultural inaccuracies?” Watch out for insensitivity toward “religious beliefs, Native American/Indigenous people, Socio-economic strata, Asians, Hispanic/Latino, Women, Muslims, etc.” In short, everyone.

Who knew Yale still employed anyone willing to doubt the costume wardens? But in response to the dean’s email, lecturer in early childhood education Erika Christakis mused to the student residential community she oversees with her husband, Nicholas, a Yale sociologist and physician: “I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns,” but she wondered if colleges had morphed into “places of censure and prohibition.”

How much of the money is spent on drivel….check out: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/2/golden-hammer-college-hid-95m-in-administrator-boo/?page=all Open the Books.org exposed:

“How a college hid $95 million in expense like booze, shooting clubs”

And: Is There Really a Lack of Funding in Education? The Books are Open.

http://forthegoodofillinois.org/blog/2011/10/is-there-really-a-lack-of-funding-in-education-open-the-books-and-find-out/

Earlier this fall, I published a story questioning the wisdom of Millennials’ above average desire to foot the cost of college for their kids. A reader named Morgan Ownbey commented to accuse me of using “shady stat tactics” by working from the median income and the projected cost of attending an elite private school to calculate the necessary savings rate. Ownbey’s point: “You do not have to save half a million dollar to send your kid to a good state school.”

I stand by my initial response — that my intentions were good and where to go to college is a personal and complicated decision between parent and child — I also stand by my concerns that young Americans’ will be able to save enough to cover the costs of both college and retirement. However, two recent reports suggest Ownbey and I both had a point.

According to a report out this week from the Urban Institute, across the country 81% of college-bound high school graduates enroll at home state schools or private institutions in state. (The latter arrangement can be a money saver if students live with their parents and commute to school.) Authors Sandy Baum, a senior fellow in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute, and research assistant Martha Johnson, however, make the larger argument that a true sense of the status of public higher education in America requires a state-by-state look.

Baum and Johnson write: “Because most students remain in-state to take advantage of lower tuition, a clear view of cross-state variation is vital for understanding the nature and extent of barriers to college affordability and for developing policies to address those barriers.”

Mississippi has the highest percentage of students remaining in state at 93%. According to new College Board data, Mississippi in state tuition and fees come to $7,147 this school year, while the 19% of Mississippi’s first-time college students coming from another state paid $19,480, making Mississippi among the ten least expensive states to attend public college in state and the 12 least expensive for out-of-state.