Why else would the bible still be a part of the cutesy courtroom ritual?
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I don’t have a problem with that, actual. What I have a problem with is the kind of religious people who denounce critical thinking in favor of deference to authority. Plenty of secular people are authoritarians and plenty of religious people favor freedom.
It’s authoritarians that are the problem.
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Honestly… I don’t know. Scams work by leading you down a primrose path where the scammer tells you one little lie that you want to believe up front, then keeps expanding on that lie until you are completely convinced that you are doing the right thing even though you are doing the wrong thing. And apparently, it works on a lot of people, at least 30% of registered voters have fallen for a known flim flam con man and are still supporting him even after he’s been exposed as a flim flam con man.
Looking at her Wikipedia page, I don’t know if she went to college or not; but they have her high school and elementary school listed; so I doubt it. She was a working actress and print model during her teenage years. I suspect that she didn’t do the college entry thing herself as a kid.
So she hires an expert, and we know at least with other ignorant parents, he used the tutoring / disability access / fake sports route, and a lot of them seemed confused (like she at least pretended to be) as to what they had done wrong.
Fine her, make her pay for the services she stole.
But when you can buy your way into a university legally and you hire someone to make that happen and he does it illegally with the help of the college admissions officers, coaches, and administration officials… there were so many links on the chain more problematic than someone who could have just been an ignorant big fish to fleece.
Who knows, her kids may have gotten in anyway. Or could have, if the university officials didn’t want her to bribe them.
I guess in my world, when the official accepts the bribe after demanding the bribe the person who had to pay the bribe is a victim, secondary to the person who didn’t get what they needed because they didn’t pay the bribe.
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when i taught 6th grade, the social studies teacher i taught with the longest–for 11 years–once told me she thought that “critical thinking skills” were overtaught because, “after all, how many people ever actually use them in the jobs they end up working?”
edited to add i never could pin her down as whether that was a good thing or not.
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Well, not her obviously!?
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Oh, FFS… 
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A friend of mine who is anti-common core and was a staunch believer in home schooling… right up until her kids were accepted into the state’s top private catholic school that is…stated for her defense against the idea of national education standards was…and I quote:
“kids in Nebraska need to go to school for farming, because that’s all they will do. Kids from Michigan need only education for being manufacturing laborers, that’s what they do there.”
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Who is the greater authoritarian when you have the image of this statuesque white geezer watching your every move from on high.
The further up the holy ladder you go the paler, blonder and curlier these little angels get.
So it might be a stretch but without a true separation of church and state, you’ll get this gilded, white preferential treatment.
I’m no expert but the deep seated psychological effects of a grandpa who isn’t mad just disappointed isn’t the kind of critical thinking these authoritarians should fall back on. Leave it for the 12 step programs.
Not everyone sees religion or god in that way. It’s reductive and not very helpful to assume so. It just summarily dismisses billions of human beings who aren’t inclined to authoritarianism or blindly following along. Which, BTW, many people who are not religious are inclined to do with the current capitalist system.
The problem isn’t religion or not religion, the problem is power and authoritarian mindset. Whether that is fed through religion or not is immaterial.
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Holy ignorance! My college friend from Omaha would be pissed that some dingus out there believes he had to be a farmer - you know, having grown up in a City and the son of an auto mechanic, and all. Wonder what I was supposed to be limited to doing having grown up in Minnesota? Ice Fishing?
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my wife and I just stared at her blankly and given that we live in RI I asked “So, are our kids only to learn about being fishermen? Because I’m not a fisherman, I’m a developer and she’s a psychologist…so how does this work now?” to which she replied, “Now, coastal people can do anything.”
My facepalm changed after that to something else…
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Yeah that was just me trying to acknowledge the weird reversal of expectations here, without getting too far down the angry-typing rabbit hole. If we must have a prison system at all, I would prefer one that sentences fairly and equally and provides rehabilitation opportunities over punishment.
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Right? In this case, Laughlin’s sentence is an example of the inequity that exists IN the system AS it stands now in the US. Let’s not forget that we have the largest prison population in the world, and MOST of that is not low or medium security prisons like this.
[ETA] Apparently I’m misspelling her name, it should be Loughlin, not Laughlin?
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Listen to the podcast I linked to above. You’ll know. Loughlin and her husband (and the other parents who were indicted) were completely complicit with Rick Singer. Singer was very clear about all the shady tasks the parents would have to complete, how much everything would cost, and how some of the fees would be laundered through his foundation. Lots of nervous laughter and dancing around things in the recorded calls, but they all knew what he was asking them to do. Loughlin, for example, went as far as to have her little darling photographed on a rowing machine as “proof” that she was a rower.
tl;dr – they weren’t victims of confidence artist, but co-conspirators with him.
Nope, they’re two dimwits who aspire to be “social media influencers” and didn’t want to go to college (Loughlin and her husband insisted, mainly for bragging rights). Neither of them had anywhere near the GPA to attend USC. The older kid recorded a video for her fans talking about how uninterested she was in USC academics (partying and homecoming, on the other hand…)
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i’ve seen a considerable number of (white) elites expressing a certain amount of horror about loughlin’s sentence. my wife is fond of the today show and that need for a fainting couch and smelling salts never seems far from the foreground in the discussions of this case there. i really don’t get it.
it reminds me of several centrist media types describing the “mistreatment” of kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings. as if to be rejected by the committee and sent back to (checks) his lifetime appointment to the federal bench was some kind of lovecraftian horror too cyclopeanly awful to contemplate.
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My guess is some of those newsreaders have used similar services (probably for preferential pre-school placements in NYC, most of the Today staff is pretty young), and are now terrified of being found out.
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that would not surprise me even a little.
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I don’t care that they caught these people and are punishing them beyond a background level irritation that it seems ridiculous when there are better places that deserve the attention that this stupid shit is getting.
Why not just make it legal to bribe your kids way into college. The cost? Providing a certain amount of scholarships for other students? Extra-Extra expensive tuition?
It is. The amateurs got caught. They had no idea their lawyer was compromised.
It already is. It’s called buying a library or having a legacy admission.
The elites already have all the advantages that most people don’t have.
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