The University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors heard Tuesday that state budget cuts caused a wide range of dismal conditions in the state’s higher education system, from low morale and program cutbacks to tuition hikes and faculty layoffs.
Board members for the system that oversees nine public universities received testimony that state budget cuts may be the cause of an increase in employee thefts on campuses, particularly the institutions that haven’t been able to keep a full-time internal auditor on staff.
Board members learned about the increased thefts moments before adopting a $762 million operating budget, which leaves the system’s nine universities with about $38 million less than last year.
“There is a lot of cash on campus and we’re starting to see where the cash is not getting into the bank,” said Robbie Robinson, UL System vice president for business and finance.
Yes, the strong gets more
Without going into specifics, Robinson mentioned an ongoing investigation on one UL System campus, where administrators believe an employee diverted about $40,000 into a credit card account.
Robinson said something that auditors call the “fraud triangle” comes into play when times are tough.
The fraud triangle is a term coined by sociologist Donald Cressey. The points of the triangle are made up of the three most common factors that occur in cases of fraud. They are incentive, or financial stress; rationalization, where the person believes the money won’t be missed; and opportunity, where a person may see a weakness within the organization.
Money, you've got lots of friends
UL System President Randy Moffett said some employees have spouses who have lost jobs, making them more prone to stress.“Their financial situation has changed,” Moffett said. “Most of them haven’t had an increase in pay for four years.”
Moffett, however, said the system’s campuses have “done a great job” reporting when money isn’t accounted for.
On the budget, the UL board sat through a presentation that showed largely the same trend Louisiana’s other three college systems have been going through.
The reduction in state dollars is a continuation of a familiar trend in Louisiana’s higher education system that has seen state funding cut by $426 million since 2008.
Cuts to the UL System have totaled $207 million during the same period.
Mama may have, Papa may have
Song: "God Bless the Child" -- Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr., 1939
News story: "UL budget cuts cited as thefts rise" -- The Advocate, 8/22/2012
A hundred years ago today, America cranked out Juila Child. A half-century ago, a public television station in Boston realized who -- and what -- had walked into its studios.
I WOULD IMAGINE the extent of one's outrage over the events reported by The Associated Press today is largely determined by which side of the culture war you're fighting for. We're Americans, and that's what Americans do these days.An armed man walked into the Washington headquarters of a conservative Christian lobbying group Wednesday morning and was confronted by a security guard, whom he shot in the arm before the guard and others wrestled him to the ground, authorities said.DID I MENTION that FRC head Tony Perkins had been strongly supportive of Chick Fil-A and the stance of its president, Dan Cathy, against same-sex marriage?
The man was taken into custody by the FBI and was being interviewed. Authorities did not identify the man or disclose where he was being interviewed. The guard was taken to a hospital in stable condition.
FBI spokeswoman Jacqueline Maguire said the man got into an altercation with the guard. However, police and FBI officials said it's too early to know the circumstances of the shooting, which occurred around 10:45 a.m. at the headquarters of the Family Research Council, or whether it was connected to the group's activities.
"We don't know enough yet about him ... or mentally what he's thinking," said James McJunkin, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office.
The Family Research Council confirmed in a statement that the security guard was employed by the group.
"Our first concern is with our colleague who was shot today," the group's president, Tony Perkins, said in a statement.
The Family Research Council advocates conservative positions on social issues and strongly opposes gay marriage and abortion.
As a rising star in Hungary's far-right Jobbik Party, Csanad Szegedi was notorious for his incendiary comments on Jews: He accused them of "buying up" the country, railed about the "Jewishness" of the political elite and claimed Jews were desecrating national symbols.
Then came a revelation that knocked him off his perch as ultra-nationalist standard-bearer: Szegedi himself is a Jew.
Following weeks of Internet rumors, Szegedi acknowledged in June that his grandparents on his mother's side were Jews — making him one too under Jewish law, even though he doesn't practice the faith. His grandmother was an Auschwitz survivor and his grandfather a veteran of forced labor camps.
Since then, the 30-year-old has become a pariah in Jobbik and his political career is on the brink of collapse. He declined to be interviewed for this story.
At the root of the drama is an audio tape of a 2010 meeting between Szegedi and a convicted felon. Szegedi acknowledges that the meeting took place but contends the tape was altered in unspecified ways; Jobbik considers it real.
In the recording, the felon is heard confronting Szegedi with evidence of his Jewish roots. Szegedi sounds surprised, then offers money and favors in exchange for keeping quiet.
Under pressure, Szegedi resigned last month from all party positions and gave up his Jobbik membership. That wasn't good enough for the party: Last week it asked him to give up his seat in the European Parliament as well. Jobbik says its issue is the suspected bribery, not his Jewish roots.
Szegedi came to prominence in 2007 as a founding member of the Hungarian Guard, a group whose black uniforms and striped flags recalled the Arrow Cross, a pro-Nazi party which briefly governed Hungary at the end of World War II and killed thousands of Jews. In all, 550,000 Hungarian Jews were killed during the Holocaust, most of them after being sent in trains to death camps like Auschwitz. The Hungarian Guard was banned by the courts in 2009.
By then, Szegedi had already joined the Jobbik Party, which was launched in 2003 to become the country's biggest far-right political force. He soon became one of its most vocal and visible members, and a pillar of the party leadership. Since 2009, he has served in the European Parliament in Brussels as one of the party's three EU lawmakers, a position he says he wants to keep.
SURE, giving a whole segment of the show over to "over" may be overdoing it, but I don't think we're exactly going overboard over the thing on this week's edition of the Big Show. It sounds good to me over here, and I figure it will overwhelm you with excellence over there, too.
ASK Ryan Perriloux . . . him and legions of LSU fans who spent several years apoplectic about the quarterback chaos that principled hammer drop set in motion.The Honey Badger's days at LSU are done. The Tiger's All American cornerback and Heisman finalist Tyrann Mathieu has been dismissed from the team because of a failed drug test, a source close to Mathieu said Friday.DOING the right thing is its own reward. The Tigers' infamously insane fan base might have to keep repeating that one this season.
LSU Coach Les Miles made the announcement of the dismissal at a hastily called noon press conference, but he would not elaborate on the nature of the infraction.
"This is a very difficult day for our team," Miles said. "We lose a quality person, teammate and contributor to the program. However, with that being said, we have a standard that our players are held to and when that standard is not met, there are consequences.
"It's hard because we all love Tyrann. We will do what we can as coaches, teammates, and friends to get him on a path where he can have success. We are going to miss him."
(snip)
Miles declined to elaborate what the violation was other than team and school policies. He said he felt Mathieu still had a chance to rectify the matter personally.
"We have a simple policy here of behavior," Miles said. "Consequences are pretty (well) spelled out and defined. We did what we could do but Tyrann is no longer on our team. He violated team policies.
"For Ty, it's an opportunity for him to redirect. He's still got a bright future. I think he can reeally accomplish all the goals he set for himself. It's not going to be easy, but it's going to be doable."
This . . .
THEN enough alumni saw enough of what had become of the grand old school at 2825 Government St. And they got mad. And the engineers told the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board that the piddly repairs that had been scheduled for the campus were wholly insufficient -- indeed, impossible, given how far gone the facilities were.Before the vote, Gray made a statement highlighting her goals and accomplishments and urging her fellow board members to “continue on this journey with unity and purpose regardless of tonight's outcome.”
Gray said she wished to be judged on her entire work, not just the Sebring situation.
“There are privacy and withholding of information rationales that can be debated,” she said. “But it comes down to my fellow board members looking at my president's tenure totally and coming to the conclusion that we are, or are not, moving in the right direction.”
She said she believed that she still could be an effective board spokesman and leader. With a crowd of nearly 250 people packing the board room, Gray's supporters on the board praised her leadership and said she shouldn't be removed for a well-intentioned mistake.
“She made a mistake,” [board member Shirley] Tyree said. “She's going to have to live with that mistake.”
Tyree said she didn't want to disrupt the board as a second superintendent search gets under way and kids head back to school on Aug. 20.
[Member Justin] Wayne said the board “can't preach about accountability if we don't hold ourselves accountable.”
He said he wanted Gray to acknowledge that she made a mistake. If she did, he said, he would be willing to support the board publicly censuring Gray but allowing her to stay on as president.
“I heard a lot of people today talking about mistake. I've never heard Mrs. Gray use that word,” Wayne said.
Kersten Borer made the motion to remove Gray, calling her a “bold and passionate leader” but saying that removal was necessary “in order to move forward, improve communication and regain trust from the community.”
Wayne seconded the motion, but the votes weren't there.
[Member Nancy] Huston said Gray was at the center of “a scandal she did not create.”
“She has been a good president,” Huston said. “She is leading us.”
TOUCHDOWN! In every sense of the word.Dutifully executing its complex flight control software, the Mars Science Laboratory silently raced toward its target Sunday, picking up speed as it closed in for a 13,200-mph plunge into the Red Planet's atmosphere and an action-packed seven-minute descent required a rocket-powered "sky crane" to lower the one-ton nuclear-powered rover to the surface. It seems to have gone off without a hitch.
"We are wheels down on Mars," came the news from JPL as engineers saw the first grainy image beamed directly back from the rover - showing one of its wheels on the Martian surface.
CBS News space consultant William Harwood reports from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California that the rover's target was Gale Crater and the goal was a pinpoint landing near the base of a three-mile-high mound of layered rock that represents hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of years of Martian history, a frozen record of the planet's changing environment and evolution.
Exploring the crater floor and climbing Mount Sharp over the next two years, the Curiosity rover will look for signs of past or present habitability and search for carbon compounds, the building blocks of life as it is known on Earth.
But first, the rover had to get there and its entry, descent, and landing represented the most challenging robotic descent to the surface of another world ever attempted, a tightly choreographed sequence of autonomously executed events with little margin for error.
"We're about to land a rover that is 10 times heavier than (earlier rovers) with 15 times the payload," Doug McCuistion, director of Mars exploration at NASA Headquarters, told reporters. "Tonight's the Super Bowl of planetary exploration, one yard line, one play left. We score and win, or we don't score and we don't win.
I say hey now -- hey now -- iko iko I day. Jockomo feeno ah nah nay . . . jockomo fee nah nay. Mairsey doats and dosey doats and littlelambsydivy, a kiddlely divey too, wouldn't you?
Working in a stout former bank building with windows closed and air conditioners humming, Orleans County, Vt., sheriff's deputies didn't know what was happening in their parking lot until a neighbor called 911. A man on a big farm tractor, angry about his recent arrest for resisting arrest and marijuana possession, was rolling across their vehicles -- five marked cruisers, one unmarked car and a transport van. By the time they ran outside, the tractor was down the driveway and out onto the road.
With their vehicles crushed, "We had nothing to pursue him with," said Chief Deputy Philip Brooks.
Thursday afternoon's incident ended when city police in Newport, the county seat of the northern Vermont county, caught up with Roger Pion, 34, a short distance away.
No one was injured. At least two deputies had gone inside a few moments before after washing their vehicles, officials said.
"Nobody was hurt. That's the thing everybody's got to cherish," said Sheriff Kirk Martin.
Vermont State Police said in a statement that Pion would face seven counts of felony unlawful mischief, one count of misdemeanor unlawful mischief, one count aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, one count of gross negligent operation, and one count of leaving the scene of an accident.
American swimmer Ryan Lochte has become a heartthrob over the past few months, but according to his mother anyone trying to lock him into a relationship will probably be left disappointed.YOU'D HOPE she's thinking "What an ass!" Or . . . "A social disease is still a social disease, no matter from whom you contract it." But that's probably too much to hope for in this day and age.
Lochte's mother Ike told Today that her son focuses so much on his career that he doesn't have time for a girlfriend. She said the following:
"He goes out on one-night stands. He's not able to give fully to a relationship because he's always on the go."
This report comes after an interview in Women's Health when Lochte revealed that the most attractive thing about a woman is keeping a "fit body," and that his celebrity crush is Carmen Electra.
Lochte also claims he mostly sleeps naked, prefers sex with the lights on, and when he sees a woman he wants to meet he makes eye contact and will, "give a wink and come back later because it keeps her thinking."
Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner? Emigrated to Canada in '04.The U.S. Postal Service braced Wednesday for a first-ever default on billions in payments due to the Treasury, adding to widening uncertainty about the mail agency's solvency as first-class letters plummet and Congress deadlocks on ways to stem the red ink.
With cash running perilously low, two legally required payments for future postal retirees' health benefits -- $5.5 billion due Wednesday, and another $5.6 billion due in September -- will be left unpaid, the mail agency said Monday. Postal officials said they also are studying whether they may need to delay other obligations. In the coming months, a $1.5 billion payment is due to the Labor Department for workers compensation, which for now it expects to make, as well as millions in interest payments to the Treasury.
Some members of Congress are seeing Wednesday's default as a cry for help, CBS Radio News correspondent Dan Raviv reports from Washington. The Senate passed a bill in April to spread retiree health payments over a longer period and to allow the Postal Service to save money by canceling Saturday deliveries, but the House of Representatives has not taken any action.
Congress let the Postal Service delay Wednesday's payment for more than half a year.
Financial analysts feel Wednesday's default could be a step toward filing for bankruptcy, Raviv reports.
The defaults won't stir any kind of catastrophe in day-to-day mail service. Post offices will stay open, mail trucks will run, employees will get paid, current retirees will get health benefits.
But a growing chorus of analysts, labor unions and business customers are troubled by continuing losses that point to deeper, longer-term financial damage, as the mail agency finds it increasingly preoccupied with staving off immediate bankruptcy while Congress delays on a postal overhaul bill.
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has described a "crisis of confidence" amid the mounting red ink that could lead even once-loyal customers to abandon use of the mail.
Then again, climate change rarely does you any favors. As we hear from KETV television in Omaha:For many farmers, this means giving up on the corn crop.SUCKS, this does. Coastal Americans might be about to get a harsh economic lesson in the importance of "flyover country."
"The corn has basically stopped," farmer John McNamara said.
McNamara said he's been regularly watering his farm in Plattsmouth, but that it doesn't compare to a good rainfall; McNamara has lost 30 to 40 percent of his annual average production.
"You go to one plant, you have nothing. You go to another, you have nothing, this is happening a lot," McNamara said.
IRST, you gotta have girls. Without girls to sing about, there probably would be very little music in the world. We'd all be using out iPods to listen to Koran verses or something. No, of all the musical genres out there, rock arguably gets the most mileage out of the fairer sex.
* * *Suck my d*** chick filet- nazi chicken f***ing pricks
-- Roseanne Barr,
flunked sex ed, biology
(via Twitter)
anyone who eats S*** Fil-A deserves to get the cancer that is sure to come from eating antibiotic filled tortured chickens 4Christ-- Roseanne Barr,
humanitarian
off to grab a s*** fil-A sandwich on my way to worshipping Christ, supporting Aipac and war in Iran.-- Roseanne Barr,
??????????????????
christian liars: i never wished cancer on you at all-jesus will punish u 4 ur deceit-I said processed foods cause cancer.-- Roseanne Barr,
angry theologian
I lost two brothers to cancer, Roseanne. What a truly heinous thing to say.-- Jim Henson,
OBVIOUSLY a hater
Retreading my tweet I realize that I used the wrong word-I shouldn't have used the word deserves
I shouldn't have used the word deserves in my tweet and I apologize-- Roseanne Barr,
got a call from agent
