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I can remember listening to a radio news account of an assassination attempt against President Truman while I was home from school for lunch one day. (Yes, once upon a long time ago, kids didn't eat lunch at school.)
Never in my life of being interested in what's happening in my country have I seen such a nauseating mess as the sewage flowing from the GOP these days. (I know the other guys aren't much better, but at least they haven't quite degenerated completely into outright looniness.)
But not to worry. As long as you're prepared to weather a storm of national insanity.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/4117462-155/house-passes-bill-to-limit-new
But at least we have a state attorney general who has a little sense: http://www.sltrib.com/news/4117951-155/utah-ags-office-will-not-conduct
http://www.sltrib.com/news/4117462-155/house-passes-bill-to-limit-new
And in other news, Utah Rep. Jason Chafetz has prepared a bill that would disarm Federal law enforcement officers. This from Paul Rolly's column in this morning's Tribune:
Speaking of cops: Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz has done it again.
Chaffetz introduced a bill in March that basically would disarm federal officers responsible for enforcing laws on federal lands.
Now he has doubled down. Last week, Chaffetz placed anamendment to the Department of Interior appropriations bill that would take away the BLM and Forest Service's policing abilities.
"None of the funds made available by this act may be used to pay the salary or the expenses of employees of the Forest Service or the Department of the Interior to carry out law enforcement functions on federal land."
So while once again showing disdain toward federal officers, Chaffetz also was chastised by the Ballots Not Bullets Coalitionfor "ominous" comments he has made that could be taken to justify violence by anti-government groups against federal agents.
So disarm the agents and agitate the armed dissidents. That makes sense.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/4117193-155/rolly-utah-legislature-makes-it-h...
So Lee - where is the back-up for your baseless accusations? Oh, that's right, there are none because they are baseless accusations. Accuse on one thread and then run away to another to make another baseless accusation. Talk about a nauseating mess of sewage. Is it at all possible for you to engage in a rational discussion of a subject without name calling, making generalized slurs and fabricating claims of misdeeds?
I'll let other readers who don't wear blinders decide.
In other words, your answer to my question is "No".
Has anyone else noticed the phenomenon where, if you pick out a word at random, any word, and say it over and over in your head it ceases to even sound like a word, let alone have any meaning?
That happens in discussions as well, witness the mindnumbing overuse of the catch-phrase "baseless accusations".
Well, Lee, so you don't believe there is such a thing as Fake News when it might support your bias? Welcome to the realization, at some point, to BS politics.
But when somebody says what somebody else says isn't true souldnt they give something to prove its wrong? If they can't do that than isn't that a baseless accusations to?
Bishop is #1 on the list of the Anti Parks Causus.
Sure anon - if they actually say somtheing isn't true. But, if they merely ask for someone to provide evidence to support a claim, as I have, that is not stating whether something is true or not. Its asking for substantiation. Lacking substantiation, the claim is baseless.
Has anyone else noticed the phenomenon where Rick B is more than happy to jump into a conversation and attack but when he is asked a direct question he claims its beneath him to respond and runs for the hills?
Come on folks, enough with the brick tossing at each other. Let's stick to the issue at hand.
That said, it would seem logical and a reasonable request that if one is to raise an accusation that they be able to back it up.
In the case of Terry Tempest Williams, is it really surprising there's no hard paper trail that would show political pressures on the University of Utah to force her into retirement?
When you consider the move to force her out came not long after she and her husband made a successful bid at a BLM oil and gas auction, how hard is it to connect the dots when U administrators told her they wouldn't allow her to go into southern Utah's deserts with her students?
This from a story from the Salt Lake Tribune back in May:
Attempts to silence TTW have not been secret nor subtle for years. Perhaps the difference now is that some of her enemies have gained membership on legislative committees that control university purse strings. Then there are those shady secretive backroom deals where too much of our government decisions are made.
Only a fool would believe they don't exist.
Re Bishbop --- https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2016/04/11/135044/t...
Unfortunately, it works both ways. So-called liberal universities are just as adept at firing people who disagree. So that no one considers this a "baseless accusation," I share with Terry Tempest Williams the stigma of having "disappointed" my university. The courts ruled in the university's favor that I "should have known" they were committing fraud. Statute of limitations to the university. By the way. Most of the judges were somehow "affiliated" with the university, including the venerable President's Club. So yes, Lee, you are right about those backroom shennigans, but wrong to suggest they exist in conservative universities only.
As bureaucracies grow, they look to grow even larger. The World War II generation resisted bureaucracy; the baby-boomers grew to love it. On campus, they fought all their battles in the administration building, from civil rights to protesting the war in Vietnam. Then they got tenure, and as a colleague of mine puts it, sent the rest of the World War II generation packing.
The University of Utah should be ashamed of itself for bending to backroom pressures. But add to that Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton, and all the rest. Today, all of them are running a scam. The scam is to take from parents $50,000 a year and assure those parents that their children are getting "educated," when instead most of that money is going to a bureaucracy that never stoops to teach a class.
It will end. Scams always do. But it will not be pleasant for everything and everyone hurt by it, up to and including our national parks.
No it is not a surprise. By her own account it was the quantity of her work not the quality or subject matter for which she was let go. If she wasn't let go due to political pressures, there wouldn't be any "paper trail". Until I see some evidence otherwise, I can only consider the claims baseless accusations.
PS - Kurt, why would her winning a BLM lease auction make her the target of political pressure to be removed?
Alfred, I don't believe I ever singled out "conservative" or "liberal" universities. I'm an equal opportunity disgustee at the current state of politics in our country.
EC, in her resignation letter, Ms. Williams said point blank that she was "being forced into phased and early retirement."
Further, she wrote:
Then she was told she was violating her contract by teaching her class off-campus. Further:
It seems the U was determined to fire/dismiss/retire Ms. Williams and couldn't come up with a sound rationale, so the flurry of different rationales and pressures.
As for the BLM matter: In a state that wants to take over federal lands so it can open them to development and energy exploration, to have the flagship university employ a nationally known writer who speaks out against such development? Shudder at the thought! Would you really expect letters to be written to university administrators to remove her?
As for the "quantity" of her work, her reputation alone likely helped attract students, and at least one foundation invested in the university because of her classes. I would think a university would want more professors/fellows/visiting writers with such reputation.
Yes, because she wasn't doing enough to earn her salary. That seems pretty clear. It looks to me like you guys are grasping at straws to excuse her underperformance.
Obviously a foundation whose mission is to "...ignite change. We support transformative leadership and courageous storytelling, inspiring action toward a peaceful, just, sustainable future" thought Ms. Williams brought plenty to the university and they invested $50,000 in it. Now that money will go somewhere else.
So be it.
If she was underperforming relative to her peers it makes not difference what the foundation thought. If they overpay her for underperformance (no matter where the money comes from) the other professors would say " why should I work hard when she gets paid for doing nothing". It looks to me like a very logical decision by the administration and there isn't a shred of evidence that there was any outside political pressure.
Oh, come on, EC. Terry Tempest Wiliams is a prolific writer and scholar by any university standard--and then some. My university told me the same thing. "Lack of scholarly growth," they said. And the people saying it--and making it stick--had to remove 1300 pages, yes, thirteen hundred pages--from my personnel file, including 65 positive, academic reviews I had received from all over the world for NATIONAL PARKS: THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. The one review they kept? Of course, the negative review from a jealous nobody who had never written a book of his own.
Those insisting that Terry Tempest Williams "was underperforming relative to her peers" probably couldn't find the library with a searchlight. They became administrators because they feared the classroom and the library--the few exceptions being those people who can't wait to get back to teaching after serving in the administrative ranks.
For a committed conservative, you sure have a funny understanding of universities. I happen to know them all too well. The people now making the rules are the people who intiially needed to break the rules by fleeing scholarship and the classroom both. And don't get too comfortable about your medical schools, either. It has started there, as well. When doctors themselves cannot read and write, how do you expect them to listen to their patients?
Ah, but all of them are diverse. Tell that to their patients when they die of infections running rampant through the halls. One of our finest hospitals here in Seattle just failed winning accreditation because of that very problem.
But I digress. This was about Terry Tempest Williams. I can't say I agree with everything she says, but I sure love how she writes. If that is now called underperformance, then Shakespeare indeed is dead.
But not a professor. If she wants to be paid to teach, she needs to teach, not write books or whatever. By her own admission she was being released because she wasn't teaching enough. If she wants to be a "prolific wirter and scholor" she needs to find someone that is willing to pay her for those skills. If she wants to be a professor at a university, she needs to teach.
I suspect you are not familiar with college educational system. Most of the primary course books or additional course books required by my professors, were written by them. There is a saying in university academia, "publish or perish". She should not be condemned for publishing a that is a requirement.
Take a few moments to read all the comments posted by our Esteemed Comrade. Note all the dodging, twisting, turning and contradictions.
Alfred and Kurt, y'can't win. Kinda like the greased pig game at the county fair.
And before you say it, Comrade, we'll let other readers read and decide for themselves. No point trying to discuss it further.
Name one.There isn't a dodge, twist or contradiction in any of my posts. More baseless accusations.
Secretary Jewell has been visiting southeastern Utah for the past three days. She has been touring the proposed Bears Ears monument and has been meeting with people both pro and con monument. Here is the latest from Deseret News:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865658180/Jewell-shocked-at-lack-of-p...
Here is an op-ed from the Salt Lake Tribune by Terry Tempest Williams:
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/4113256-155/op-ed-with-monument-proposal-t...
Here is a paragraph from her essay that I found particularly touching: It is time for us to go outside our own places of comfort and dare to embrace a new way of seeing. The tribes are opening the door, inviting us to cross a threshold where a more expansive conversation about land protection awaits us. They are taking us beyond the rhetoric of wilderness designation to a wider view of how we can live in place with reverence and restraint. Leaders like Jim Enote from the Zuni Pueblo remind us how these desert lands are "source, not resource."
And this: Our national parks and monuments are not simply "America's best idea" but an evolving idea. In their quiet and dignified manner, the tribes are leading the way forward with a vision of land protection in Utah that is at its core, spiritual. We are the sum of all our relations, both human and wild.
Why do you folks continue to feed this worthless troll? Pretty much for many many years now, all forum threads are hijacked and completely thrown off course by this lowlife. Just move one, and ignore. He's not worth the effort.
EC, the term is "Publsh or Perish," not "Teach or Perish." I taught six classes with over 300 upper division students every year. Lisa Birnbach's College Book named me my university's most popular professor. I guest lectured in many other programs on campus, including Landscape Architecture, Forestry, Native American Studies, and Geography. I was adjunct assistant professor in Environmental Studies. More undergraduate teaching there. I was on 15 Master's and doctoral committees. Teach? I loved to teach--and write. But our chief administrator, the university president, was a bureaucrat through and through. In fact, they named the administration building after him when he retired. Everyone on the faculty considered it a perfect tribute.
Terry Tempest Williams was not let go because she didn't teach enough. None of the higher-ups--even on the faculty--spend much time in the classroom these days. 69 percent of all college teaching NATIONWIDE is done by part-timers on limited contracts. No benefits, thank you. You have Obamacare! Now, teach the kids so we can drink coffee all day and write another "report."
Say it ain't so! It just can't be that bad. Oh, no? Even Kurt just sent me this link:
Her own words. "I was being classified alongside other fellows, my value seen solely on the basis of how many hours I was teaching, not what I have written or published or contributed to the wider world"
I think I'll go by her words rather than the speculation of those that want to believe otherwise. When someone comes up with the name(s) of someone that applied political pressure and the name(s) of those to whom it was applied and evidence that it happened, I will be happy to accept it.
Boy oh boy. Watching folks self-appoint themselves as experts in various fields and then argue against established __actual__ experts in a fieled. Climate change, academia... the list goes on. To paraphrase a phrase, now THAT is 'baseless ego'.
Rick - Exactly what field did I appoint myself an expert in? Reading english? Noticing the absense of facts? Tell us, who provided the political pressure, who was pressured and how was the pressure was applied. You don't have to be an expert in any field to answer those questions if the answers in fact exist. But I suppose you will do your usual attack and run - just as you have when you have been asked to explain why the client science predictions have been so wrong.
I hope you guys never get on a jury. You'll likely convict with absolutely no evidence because you would like to think the defendent is guilty.
EC, you do make a valid point about "proving" what is said. I believe the point being made here is that the "proof" is in the action. Hillary Clinton wants us to believe that she never "intended" to risk classified information. The point is: She was being careless long after she was told not to be careless. Is that not "intent?" In a court of law, it is the action we charge, after which we leave it to the jury to determine one's "intent." Was it first degree murder or third degree manslaughter? What was the killer's frame of mind?
There is no way to "prove" frame of mind. It is rather the feeling the jury gets, right? How do the facts stack up, yes, but what was the perpetrator's frame of mind?
There is nothing baseless in observing that this country's frame of mind has gone to hell. The actions of the country prove it. Just look at the candidates we get to choose from. And yes, I will give you that forcing science to become a belief is right up there with determining that a Secretary of State has no responsibility for protecting the public's records.
Now what? How do I, as a historian, tell the history of the Department of State? I don't. I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. The records by now have been entirely corrupted and aren't worth a dime to history. But neither do I disbelieve in what is obvious for all to see. The rich are indeed getting richer, and the poor getting poorer, and the middle class struggling to hang on, too. That worries many people, even if doesn't worry everyone, and no, it is not a baseless accusation to say that there is something sinister behind it.
Terry's dismissal for lack of production wasn't proof of any political pressure. And in Hillary's case, Intent wasn't necessary. The mere act of putting them on a private server was illegal whether there was intent to risk them or not. If there was intent there could have been additional charges.
I'm sitting here beside our creek reading Terry's book, The Hour of Land watching one of our families of resident mallards as I turn between pages while the water's music mutes sounds of the city outside our tree shaded condo community. As I do, it hits me. I feel a little tightness inside my throat as I read some passages. This is not a book one reads with the brain. Instead it's one to read with the heart -- and those are the best books of all.
Maybe Terry Tempest Williams is even more valuable to us now. Certainly her writing must be able to reach more eyes and hearts now than she could have touched as a college teacher. Maybe the University of Utah's callow caving to a crowd of people who have probably never felt the wonderment of wild is really a blessing for those of us who have. Because maybe now -- hopefully now -- she'll have more time to put her words and phrases on paper to reach a wider audience of people whose hearts have not been jaded by dollars. And won't it be wonderful if now and then her words somehow wake the hearts of some of those whose only interest in wildness has been trying to wrest the greatest profit from places that are really sacred?
I can hope,can't I?
Which is exactly why it makes no sense she would be fired for political reason. And, despite your repeated accusations you have absolutely no evidence of "University of Utah's callow caving to a crowd". Just more of your baseless accusations.
Esteemed Comrade, I genuinely pity you. In your deaf blindness, you have no idea what you are missing.
I love it, EC, when you prove that ideology trumps history all the time. Perish the thought that people of influence and power would ever stoop to use it! I believe that history book begins: "Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, there lived a good and loving king who never liked wearing clothes. All he asked of his subjects was to allow him to sit naked on the throne. However, if anyone should pass the throne they were to compliment him on his fine new suit of clothes. If they didn't, it was off to the dungeon, or worse, off with their heads! He was kind and loving otherwise, but he had this problem with the truth. . ."
As a historian, I have pieced together a good many paper trails suggesting untold pressures on our national parks. For example, when the park superintendent is asked to meet with the concessionaire, what do you think they're talking about? The weather? The follow-up letters used to be gems, until everyone started to realize that the Freedom of Information Act just might apply.
But fine. Keep telling the Emperor you love his latest suit. I do, too, quite frankly, especially the toupee. But why is he wearing it THERE?
Oh, now I get it! He intended to wear it where it belonged, but no one told him where it belonged. So he just concluded he could wear it wherever he wanted, since after all he was the Emperor.
Emperor Hillary? I don't think so. There will never be a paper trail again.
And no doubt they exist. But the fact they exist doesn't mean they are present in every case. I prefer waiting until I have evidence before making accusations. Again, I hope you stay away from the jury box.
Lucky for you, EC, every time I have been called in for jury duty, I have been dismissed the moment I divulged my Ph.D. The coffee and doughnuts were good, however.
It's the ideologic rationalization and blind denial by people like our Esteemed Comrade that enables the dishonesty and crooked dealings of our political hacks. I keep hoping that some day enough people will wake up and realize what's actually happening and then begin to take action -- on election day -- to put an end to it.
I guess this is as good a place as any to post this. Some credit may be due to Rob Bishop for at least one thing -- here's an editorial from today's Deseret News regarding his support for The Recreation Without Red Tape bill sponsored in the Senate by Ron Wyden of Oregon.
There is a link contained in the article that will allow you to read the entire bill if you wish. To my unlawyerly eyes, it looks like it has some merits.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865685898/In-our-opinion-Differences-...
I suspect the result of this legislation will be to open up hiking trails in wilderness and potential wilderness areas to mountain biking, and rafting on all of the rivers in Yellowstone and other parks. Both groups have been waiting for the right political environment to accomplish this and with Trump and Interior Secretary Zinke in charge now is the time. I also suspect the recreation industry including National Park concessioners will gain much more control over management policys. If you are in favor of bikes including e bikes on your favorite hiking trails, boats in areas such as the Lamar River valley and the Yellowstone River through Yellowstone, and increased lodging development in parks then you should be very pleased with this new legislation.
Of course there is 'fake news', as long as Alex Jones and FauxNews are on the air. The phrase, however, gained popuylarity when Trump started to use it to describe anything that he doesn't like, like when he is quoted accurately.
You prove my point, repeatedly. Tell me you don't believe the NPS revisionist Fake News about the Statue of Liberty that's being pushed. That would be getting close to ignorance if the facts.
"...NPS revisionist Fake News about the Statue of Liberty...". You'll have to point out which screed you're referring to, TA. If it is something you've heard on Faux News or Alex Jones I haven't seen it. And I'm trying to remember if I've ever commented here on the Statue of Liberty.
Only in Right Wing Land is "fake news" capitalized.
The "Caps" are more about rejection of my Ex's English Major fastidiousness but do note your "Cosmapolitan" inclination of denigrating those of us that don't have letters (Caps) following our names :). Have a good day.
I think he's referring to this story, Rick:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/02/politics/emma-lazarus-poem-statue-of-liber...
We'd all be as Trump drunk as the Esteemed Comrade if this were a drinking game wherein shots were taken whenever the excuse "baseless allegations" was employed.
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