INFLATIONARY SPENDING

Came up with a fun idea over on the Facebook page today. If you're not inclined to use that omniscient data mining platform feel free to sound off in the comment section here.

If you went to college, post the years you attended what one year of tuition (independent of scholarships, grants, room & board, etc) cost during your tenure. Then look up what one year of tuition costs today and report the difference. I'll go first.

1997-1999 University of Wisconsin: $12,000 (one year out of state rate)
2015 University of Wisconsin: $26,660

That's a solid 125% increase in 16 years. It's ok though. I think wages and inflation went up about that much in the same timeframe.

PERTINENT INFORMATION

The first time I heard of Samuel DuBose, recently shot in the head by a University of Cincinnati police officer, was in a CNN story.

None of the details in the case – the release of the video or the indictment of the officer – were yet known. And the second paragraph, which in CNN Style is also the second sentence, pretty well summarizes how these stories are reported until the evidence of wrongdoing by law enforcement is so overwhelming that a standard victim-blame paradigm falls apart:

cnn

It's cute how they try to portray themselves as real journalists bringing much needed news to the outraged community when at the earliest opportunity to report the story they fulfilled their role as establishment bag men with a flourish. Reporting on the dead unarmed black guy's arrest record is par for the course; pointing out how many children he fathered shows real commitment to the Good Riddance narrative.