Willie Sutton Goes to Harvard
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on October 24th, 2008 6:31 am by HL
Willie Sutton Goes to Harvard
“Because that’s where the money is.” — Willie Sutton, when asked in 1934 why he robbed banks WASHINGTON — Washington is having a Willie Sutton Moment. Such moments occur when government, finding its revenue insufficient for its agenda, glimpses some money it does not control but would like to. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., recently convened a discussion of how colleges and universities should be spending their endowments. Grassley, who says more than 135 institutions each have endowments of more than $500 million, says perhaps they should be required to spend 5 percent of their endowments each year. Welch has introduced legislation to require that percentage be spent to reduce tuition and other student expenses.
Long National Nightmare
Last night, I woke up in a sweat. I’d had a very bizarre dream . . . NOVEMBER 5 — There was Wilson over Hughes. And, of course, Truman over Dewey. But there’s never been a surprise in presidential politics like the one that awaited Americans this morning, who woke up to discover that, somehow, John McCain had been elected president over Barack Obama. Not a single poll, tracking or otherwise, had McCain ahead. The articles had all been written: Michael Scherer of Time, “McCain’s Struggles: Four Ways He Went Wrong”; Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, “We’re Heading Left Once Again”; and Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe, “That’s It for McCain.” To be fair to them, it was hard to find a single major pundit anywhere who predicted McCain would win — though the astute Michael Barone, author of The Almanac of American Politics, did pen a column 17 days before the vote warning that a surprise was possible. Given Barone’s credentials, someone should have listened.
