Build An Income With Online Shops - Covert Store Builder

View the original article here

Why The Bipartisan Push For An Online Sales Tax Is The Right Move

The online retail giant Amazon benefits from a large loophole in the federal tax code. Because companies only have to collect sales tax in states where they have a physical presence, Amazon is able to avoid collecting the tax in many states, giving it a way to undermine traditional retailers. But a bipartisan group of 57 members of Congress is trying to change the law to close Amazon’s loophole:

Twenty senators and 37 members of the House from both parties signed on to the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013 (MFA)—legislation that would allow states to collect taxes on what consumers buy over the Internet.

The measure would finally resolve a decades-old dispute over whether states can collect sales taxes on mail-order and online purchases. Currently, states are barred from requiring out-of-state sellers to collect sales taxes, unless the retailers have a physical presence (or nexus) in their jurisdiction. The MFA would allow states to require sellers to collect these levies no matter where the firms are located.

This loophole gives Amazon (and other online shops) a leg up on its competitors for no real reason. As Michael Mazerov wrote for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, there is “no excuse for exempting large companies like Amazon and Overstock that are perfectly capable of collecting tax everywhere — just as their brick and mortar competitors do.”

Applying an online sales tax fairly would also make the tax code slightly more progressive, as “many low-income families would love to shop online to avoid sales tax but can’t because they don’t own a computer or can’t afford high-speed Internet access.” Sales taxes are inherently regressive, and exempting online purchases makes them even more so, as those with the right technology get to skip the tax entirely.

States governed by both Democrats and Republicans have moved to address this issue, but it won’t be truly fixed until Congress takes action.

View the original article here

Clicking Online Ads More Likely To Deliver Malware Than Surfing Porn Sites, Report Finds

Your online habits may be less dangerous than you think if they involve the less savory aspects of the web: According to Cisco’s annual 2013 Security Report internet users are 182 times more likely to get malware from clicking on online ads than visiting a porn site. It turns out, the site on the gray or black market edges of the web most of us traditionally think of as dangerous aren’t the biggest threats to your online security, instead:

“The dangers […] are often hidden in plain sight through exploit-laden online ads that are distributed to legitimate websites, or hackers targeting the user community on the common sites they use most.”

Those common sites include online shopping and search engines, which were 21 and 27 times more likely respectively to deliver malicious content than counterfeit software sites according to Cisco. Unsurprisingly, the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports of the 81% of American adults who use the internet some 91 percent report using search engines to find information and 71 percent buy products online.

Of course, many online users (around 10 percent according to one 2012 study) are already using ad-blocking software to avoid being served possibly malicious ads. And the proportion of online resources and time devoted to racy material is up for debate, with just 4 percent of the 1 million most popular of sites in 2010 revolving around sex and 13 percent of searches being for erotic content.

Beyond the eye-catching numbers about the relative safety of surfing for porn, the Cisco report identifies a number of other emerging threats — key among them the rise of Android malware exploits and the possible info-security minefield represented by the internet of things.

Android malware grew much faster than any other form of web delivered malware, with a staggering 2,577 percent increase in malware encounters over 2012. Although only .5 percent of web malware encounters in 2012 were on mobile devices, 95 percent of them were on Android devices — not great news considering Android now controls a majority of the smartphone market.

When it comes to the ever expanding internet of things, much of Cisco’s commentary was speculative – but the core argument rings true: With great connection, comes great responsibility. And there will be great connection:

“Considering that less than 1 percent of things in the physical world are connected today, there remains vast potential to “connect the unconnected.” It is projected that with an Internet that already has an estimated 50 billion “things” connected to it, the number of connections will increase to 13,311,666,640,184,600 by the year 2020.”

Here’s hoping they all don’t serve malware-laced ads, or it could mean trouble.

View the original article here

Obama gathering online support for gun violence plan

By Alicia M. Cohn - 01/17/13 12:33 PM ET

President Obama on Thursday is promoting a new page for Americans to express their support of the president’s plan to reduce gun violence.

Stand with the President to reduce gun violence: OFA.BO/STKzAr, twitter.com/BarackObama/st…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) Jan. 17, 2013

The page, which asks signers to give their email address and name if they agree with the plan that Obama announced on Wednesday, is hosted on Obama’s campaign website and is part of a full-court press by the administration to publicize the plan and drum up public support. According to a tweet from Jim Messina, the campaign manager for Obama's reelection campaign, “thousands” have already signed.

Messina also sent out an email to Obama’s still-robust campaign list on Thursday directing them to the petition, according to CNN.

Obama is looking to the public for support in his aggressive plan to tackle gun violence this year, building on momentum of the public outcry following the particularly brutal mass shooting in a Newtown, Conn., elementary school that left 20 children dead. Petitions have become a popular way for the public to express opinions on the issue.

A petition asking Obama to "immediately address the issue of gun control through the introduction of legislation in Congress" was the fastest petition ever to reach the required signature threshold for an official White House response on the White House’s petition site "We the People" last month. According to the White House, gun violence quickly became one of the most popular petition issues since the launch of the site, where anyone can start a petition in hopes of reaching the ears of the president.

Obama, in his response to the petitions, urged the public to stay motivated and keep pushing for action against gun violence. He made similar comments in his presentation of a comprehensive plan on Wednesday, looking for the public to help amp up the pressure on Congress to act on a series of legislative requests.

"This will not happen unless the American people demand it," Obama said Wednesday.

"I will put everything I've got into this, and so will Joe," Obama said, referring to Vice President Biden, whom Obama appointed to lead a task force on gun control. 

"But I tell you, the only way we can change is if the American people demand it. And by the way, that doesn’t just mean from certain parts of the country. We're going to need voices in those areas, in those congressional districts, where the tradition of gun ownership is strong to speak up and to say this is important.”

The page asking for email addresses and zip codes will likely serve a two-fold purpose to bolster Obama’s argument that a majority of Americans representing a wide swath of the country agree with his plan -- which includes legislation and 23 “executive actions” addressing guns, mental healthcare and violence in media -- and replenish his mailing list with known supporters. 

View Comments

View the original article here

Senate Waters Down Privacy Protections For Online Video Streaming

Last week, the Senate quietly agreed to allow video streaming companies such as Netflix to share data on of their customers’ streaming histories for up to two years — after only asking their permission once. The Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), had previously mandated that consent be obtained from an individual each time their video-watching history was shared. It also requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant, court order, or grand jury subpoena to acquire that history, and prevents companies from sharing it for marketing purposes — provisions which all appear to remain in place.

The new bill has already been adopted by the House, and is now on its way to President Obama’s desk. Adam Serwer at Mother Jones has the latest:

Last Tuesday, the Senate quietly altered a key privacy law, making it much easier for video streaming services like Netflix to share your viewing habits. How quietly? The Senate didn’t even hold a recorded vote: The bill was approved by unanimous consent. (Joe Mullin of Ars Technica was among the first to note the vote.) [...] Video streaming companies that want to share your data now only need to ask for your permission once. After that, they can broadcast your video-watching habits far and wide for up to two years before having to ask again.

VPPA was originally passed in 1988 following outrage at the publication of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s video rental history by a Washington newspaper. (An irony, as Serwer notes, given Bork’s own hostility to privacy rights.) The law caused headaches for Netflix’s attempt to integrate their services with Facebook, an arrangement the company has brought to over 40 countries but has yet to debut in the United States. Netflix recently challenged the application of the law to online streaming video, but was rebuffed by a federal district court.

Both Facebook and Netflix lobbied enthusiastically in the second half of 2012 for the changes to the VPPA, spending $1.6 million dollars and $400,000, respectively. Those efforts paid off with last week’s alteration.

The change was originally intended as a trade-off: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) inserted language that would’ve strengthened privacy protections for email and other personal online documents under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (EPCA), even as it declawed the VPPA. But then the House passed a version of the VPPA update without the balancing update to the EPCA. That forced a negotiation, and the Senate eventually gave in to the House’s version.

Leahy has called for the Congress to take up the issue of strengthening EPCA’s online protections again next year. But as Serwer dryly points out, “not even the CIA director losing his job in the wake of an FBI investigation that led to no actual charges could provoke Congress into updating the country’s digital privacy laws. So Leahy’s calls for reform appear likely to go unanswered.”

Wording in the first paragraph has been altered for clarity. As far as ThinkProgress is aware, the provision concerning consent to share data is the only aspect of VPPA that has been altered of those listed.

View the original article here

Murdered Woman’s Family Sues For Greater Online Gun Control

Jitka Vesel

On December 12, 2012, the family of shooting victim Jitka Vesel sued the online gun market Armslist.com for the wrongful death of their loved one, who had been shot about 12 times in a parking lot in Illinois, by a gunman who had illegally obtained his weapon on the website.

Vesel’s brother hopes that lawmakers — like those named to the President’s gun violence prevention task force, created in the wake of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary — will address illegal online gun sales as they talk about measures to curb gun killings. Armslist does not require its buyers or sellers to give identification, and is not legally required to administer background checks:

“Armslist matches buyers and sellers solely based on Armslist’s mandatory drop-down menus that steer illegal buyers to illegal sellers,” Vesely said. “Armslist’s development of content thus materially contributes to the illegality of the gun sales it promotes.”

Jitka Vesel, 36, was shot 11 to 12 times by Smirnov in the parking lot of the Czechoslovak Heritage Museum in Oak Brook, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. Smirnov, a Canadian resident, had stalked her after she rebuffed his romantic overtures, according to Vesely. Smirnov, now serving a life prison sentence without parole, paid an extra $200 for the gun that had been listed for $400 because he couldn’t buy it legally, according to the complaint.

Background checks have indeed been part of the post-Newtown conversation about needed gun control measures; the President’s spokesperson floated the idea of closing the so-called ‘gun show loophole,’ which allows private sellers to distribute firearms without any checks on the purchaser. The Brady Campaign has found that, in some studies, “63 percent of private sellers sold guns to purchasers who stated they probably could not pass a background check.” Few lawmakers have addressed the idea of online black markets for gun sales, or websites like Armslist.com that do not have proper protections to ensure guns are not being sold to criminals.

Flawed federal laws also limit the ability of Vesel’s relatives to acquire evidence against Armslist in their civil suit. Several federal laws, known collectively as the Tiahrt Amendments, prevent trace data linking guns used in crime to previous owners and sellers from being used in civil proceedings.

View the original article here

How to Astroturf an Online Cause: the Story of “I Stand with Bill Powers”

From the diaries.

Texas is ground zero in the national higher education reform movement. While the Washington crowd tends to fixate on President Obama’s piddling slap fight with Congressional Republicans over government-secured student loan rates, the real action on fixing higher ed is happening in Austin, Texas. The battle between Rick Perry and the higher ed reformers on one hand versus UT-Austin President Bill Powers and the Ivory Tower status quo on the other hand has been marked by years of grueling and often dull trench warfare that was punctuated last week by a flurry of bombs, beginning with a tuition freeze, followed by rumors of the UT President’s termination, and culminating in a textbook social media public relations campaign that deserves serious examination. And the consequences of this fight? Well, what happens in Texas won’t stay in Texas.

This is the story of “I Stand with Bill Powers,” a remarkably well-executed example of online astro-turfing.

Bill Powers is the President of the University of Texas at Austin. He individually receives an annual income roughly twelve times the median household income of Texas, not counting six figures of deferred compensation or benefits. He commands a robust team of sharp folks internally at UT and has secured the big guns as outside public relations counsel. There is now an ongoing effort– a well-orchestrated social media campaign which appears highly inorganic– to “save” him. Save from what and for what is the difficult part to figure out.

This post aims to 1. provide some context for the UT kerfuffle itself, 2. cast some light on how people and organizations successfully astro-turf social media campaigns, 3. provide reasons why members of the media ought to be a bit more careful in how they report on the online/digital/new media horse race, and 4. offer some thoughts on what comes next.

1. Kerfuffle Context
First, some background on what the heck this “Save Bill Powers” stuff is all about.

There’s the very, very macro context, which is basically that the higher education establishment has become sclerotic and out of touch, tuition has skyrocketed well beyond inflation, and the next major economic shock in America could easily be the higher ed bubble bursting. It’s an iceberg straight ahead and we’re the Titanic, but there’s still time to steer the ship into safer waters. If we don’t, though, yikes.

This is the startling context for this kerfuffle:

Zooming in a bit further, to Texas, we see that tuition at UT went up 39.88% from Fall 2004 to Fall 2011. We also see a Governor, who happens to be a Texas A&M alumnus (that’s UT’s primary in-state rival, so there’s a built-in suspicion among Longhorns), and who has appointed the entire Board of Regents at The University of Texas system, who has committed to making public higher education in Texas more affordable, accountable, and accessible. Specifically, Governor Perry embraced various specific higher ed reforms over the years, including what are known as the “Seven Breakthrough Solutions” as a starting point for reform. Not surprisingly, the higher ed establishment opposed these reforms. Despite UT-Austin receiving more dollars– and more dollars per student– in state funding from the State of Texas than UC-Berkeley gets from California, it seems like the only acceptable higher ed reform to the higher ed establishment is more money.

In the summer of 2011, battle lines were drawn, with the “Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education” (a.k.a. “The Coalition”) emerging out of the Burson-Marsteller P.R. shop to support Bill Powers and the higher ed status quo. In October of 2011, Natalie Butler and Keshav Rajagopolan (current and former Student Body Presidents, respectively) launched a “spin-off” group group called Young Texans for Excellence in Higher Education. Various groups formed on the other side (including “Rock the Ivory Tower“) devoted to affordability and reform.

The Governor also called for a 4-year tuition freeze for incoming college students (in January of 2009) and a $10,000 college degree in 2011. The $10K degree idea was met with scorn and incredulity from the higher ed establishment, but it’s now been adopted in public universities across the state. And the tuition freeze? Well, just this month, the UT Regents approved it for two years (not the four that Perry initially called for). Bill Powers lashed out at the tuition freeze idea online and in an email:

If all of this context (and the above context is certainly just the Cliff’s Notes version this story) was the collective geopolitical navigation of the Great Powers in the 1930s, then Paul Burka’s apocalyptic, all-caps Texas Monthly blog post was the bombing of Pearl Harbor: 2. How to Astroturf a Social Media Campaign
This is where it gets interesting. While most of the press coverage has focused on the numbers of people who “joined” a Facebook group called “I STAND WITH BILL POWERS,” at least one member of the press has hinted that something else might be afoot here. The Texas Tribune‘s Reeve Hamilton tweeted a note of caution: While I already suspected that the anonymously sourced, (and still uncorroborated) BurkaBlog post and the apparent organic response to it was all a little too convenient, Reeve Hamilton’s tweet further piqued my interest, so I explored it further. Along with some others in the higher ed movement, it quickly became apparent that a handful of really sharp young folks, working with some powerful organizations with ample resources, synthetically engineered what appeared to be a natural groundswell.

Let’s take the url registration, just 100 minutes or so after the nuclear BurkaBlog post went live, the savebillpowers.com domain name had been secured:

Okay, that’s been known to happen organically, I guess. People just happen to read an unsubstantiated, rumor-mongering blog post at 7:30 pm on a Wednesday night and just happen to buy a domain name that just happens to become the focal point of a public relations campaign, within an hour and a half. And they just happen to buy the domain name anonymously. It just happens all the time.

Meanwhile, the issue positioning, keywords, and instructions went out via Facebook, from Natalie Butler of the “Young Texans”:

And at nearly this precise moment, #saveBillPowers began trending in Austin, Texas: Accompanying the Save Bill Powers Twitter presence was an identically-branded Facebook page, formed at 8:10 pm (just 40 minutes after the BurkaBlog post hit the web): Even with such robust branding, a matching website, matching twitter, implied institutional backing from President Powers himself, and a catchy slogan, the Burson-Marsteller team has only managed to gather mere hundreds of actual fans: It can be frustrating to oversee such a meager social media presence, but luckily there is a solution. Ditch the Facebook page. Go with a Facebook group!

A bit later, two-time Teaching Assistant to Bill Powers Rachel Meyerson founded the “I STAND WITH BILL POWERS” Facebook group:

Immediately after the group was created, Meyerson added two admins to the group: And they all started adding members to the group.

In order to boost its “groups,” Facebook allows individuals to not only invite someone to a group but actually add him or her to it, whether he or she is even interested. Many Facebookers, even young digital natives, aren’t engaged enough to even notice they’ve been added without their permission. And many Facebookers aren’t savvy enough to know how to leave a group after they’ve been “Facejacked.” Some people tend to fear leaving the group and insulting their friends who added them. Needless to say, spam-adding folks en masse to Facebook groups they may or may not agree with is not cool, and it’s definitely not true digital virality in any organic sense. Indeed, this guy showed how easy it is to add all of your Facebook friends to a group in only about 20 seconds.

That’s not a movement. That’s a line of code. And even if you don’t use a javascript code (some browsers have blocked scripts like that since the video was made) and have to manually click on each of your friends to invite them, you can still spend just minutes to add hundreds or even thousands of people. To quickly get 10,000 people in a group, you really only need a half dozen young people (who tend to have a lot of Facebook “friends”) spam-adding their contacts.

Pranksters angry about the loss of personal control even began adding Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association) groups in protest. It’s a problem, and it’s bad etiquette at the very least.

Bad etiquette or not, “Facejacking” is how the “I STAND WITH BILL POWERS” group grew and continues to grow. If you go in to the group, click “about,” then click to view members by date added, you can find the screenshots below yourself. Scroll down to the beginning (it’s kind of an annoying process), and you’ll see that nearly everyone was spam-added by just a couple of individuals (these first 120 or so members are in reverse chronological order):

See all of those “added” folks? The overwhelming majority: added, not invited. And all by two individuals.

But surely they just seeded it a bit, and it became an organic, sustaining organism of its own shortly thereafter, right? Not really. Yes, others got in on the spam-adding action, but look at a sample from Friday:

Lots of spam-added folks. Not really much evidence of a true newsworthy movement.

Or the 21 most recent additions:

Again, out of 21 new members, Callie Williams added 1, Shelah Flowers invited 1, Andrew Grant invited 2, Keshav Rajagopolan added 3, and Rachel Meyerson added 14. Rajagopolan and Meyerson alone spam-added 81% of the newest 21 members. In total, 86% of the newest 21 members were spam-added, while 14% were invited.

We’ve established that the response to this kerfuffle was astro-turfed. So what? People astroturf all the time.

Well, it’s one thing to astro-turf, but it’s another thing to actively lie to the press about it.

3. Why More Skepticism is Needed in Reporting on Social Media

Let’s look at Keshav Rajagopolan’s statements to the Houston Chronicle.

Did social media explode with support for Bill Powers? According to the Houston Chronicle, yes:

Explosions!

Some relevant points:

Keshav Rajagopalan, who was UT’s student body president in 2008-2009, said he started the Facebook group last night after Burka’s post was published. He said thousands have asked to be part of the group. He worked with Powers closely during his time as student body president, but thinks that many UT students who did not know him personally recognize him as a leader that cares about them.

Wait. We just saw that Rachel Meyerson started the group, and that nearly all the early members were spam-added by other people. Indeed, Rajagopolan was personally responsible for a great deal of the spam adding. “Thousands have asked to be part of the group” is just plain deceitful.

While the spam-adding continued at a fast and furious pace on the “I STAND WITH BILL POWERS” group, there was no activity overnight and into mid-morning on the “Save Bill Powers” page:

Again, a page (rather than a group) doesn’t allow you to spam-add. People can be invited, but they can’t be added without their permission.

So, the Save Bill Powers page was essentially a ghost town, and essentially the entirety of the social media operation to that point was astro-turfed by a P.R. firm. Jennifer Sarver of said P.R. firm tweeted:

Julie Shussler of the same P.R. firm posted to the group a bit later: Matt Portillo said it was a piece of cake, and, sure enough, he (and Shussler) spam-added members as well: Portillo is also an organizer for the Young Texans, which he calls “a subsidiary of kind of a larger group“: That subsidiary stuff sounds so organic, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, the media drumbeat about how amazing this spontaneous social media movement has kept pounding.

Many uncritical headlines and stories were all over the web this past week. To give credit where credit is due, though, an Austin American-Statesman story did join the Tribune‘s Reeve Hamilton in noting that something wasn’t quite right with the numbers:

By 5 p.m. Thursday, a Facebook group called “I Stand With Bill Powers” had more than 9,800 members, although some whose names were listed said in subsequent posts that they had been included by friends without their knowledge and against their wishes.

Bottom line: the widely reported “I stand with Bill Powers” Facebook effort was not an organic display of support. It was, however, publicly held out by the organizers as organic.

It’s one thing to astro-turf, as that happens sometimes in the public relations field– it now ought to be clear how easy it is to do that. But it’s another thing to astro-turf and lie and say it was organic, then not only passively allow the media to inaccurately portray it as organic but actively feed that inaccuracy with untrue statements.

As for members of the media, more of them should turn a far more critical eye to claims of social media prowess based on what could very well be pure astro-turf.

4. What’s Next?

Moving forward, the higher ed reform movement will continue, and the status quo guardians will continue as well. The UT faculty this week voted to support their boss, although one professor abstained:

English professor Snehal Shingavi was the only member who abstained from voting at the meeting. Shingavi said it was dangerous for the faculty’s support of Powers to be coupled with tuition increases.“There is an unfortunate narrative in Texas that presents faculty as living off the fat of tuition,” Shingavi said. “It’s important not to connect these two. I abstained from voting because I understood the importance of having a unified vote.”

Meanwhile, the target of most of the negative social media content on the “Save Bill Powers” page(s) and “I STAND WITH BILL POWERS” group, Governor Perry, is not going away quietly on this issue:

“I don’t think it’s any big secret that I’m for keeping the cost of education down, so my suspicion is that no one in Texas thinks that I’m for tuition growth,” Perry said. “It’s a good message to send to the citizens of the state that we’re not going to just have tuition increasing with no regard for what’s happening economically for the citizens of the state.”

And, ultimately, that’s why this “movement” smelled so fishy from the get-go. You’re telling me that students are rallying around the guy who wants to raise their tuition? Yeah, no. It was always a fabricated social media cause via public relations firm. It was well done, no doubt– a great example of why my alma mater pays them so much to do what they do. But it was never a truly viral or organic cause.

As for Bill Powers, can someone please explain to me what exactly are his accomplishments, or, alternatively, what exactly are his goals, ideas, values, or policies that are worthy of support?

UT Professor Rob Koons bravely asks this very question:

Under President Powers, tuition has climbed over 23% in just 4 years (15% over inflation, as measured by the consumer price index). Average net cost per student (taking into account financial aid) has gone up 33% from 2005 to 2009, from $4534 to $6052 (the System stopped reporting this figure in 2010). In the same period, spending on administrative salary has gone up 86% at the university level, 55% in the College of Liberal Art and 45% in the College of Business, to take two typical examples of the Colleges. Spending on faculty salaries have gone up 21% in the same period (13% over inflation), with no increase in student learning, as measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment (in which UT ranks in the 23rd percentile of its peer group).President Powers’ hand-picked student ‘advisory’ panels (whose discussions and votes have not been released to the public, despite the Open Meeting act) have simply rubber-stamped the views of Powers and his allies. For example, two years ago, after key lawmakers (including Senator Ellis) announced that any increase in tuition above 4% would lead to a reconsideration of tuition deregulation, Powers’ panel miraculously determined that UT “needed” an increase of exactly 3.95%. Amazing coincidence!

Change in rankings:
US News #44 in 2008, #45 in 2012. A drop of one position, paid for by at least a 33% increase in costs to students!

Four-year graduation rate
2005: 46.4%
2008: 47.7

Six-year graduation rate
2005: 74.8
2008: 77.5

Nursing exam pass rate (UT graduates):
04-05: 97.0
2008: 92 (A drop of 5%)

Engineering exam pass rate:
04-05: 90.2
2008: 89

Exactly what are his accomplishments?

More on that dismal learning percentile figure:

On March 14, Washington Post reporter Daniel de Vise, in his piece “Trying to assess learning gives colleges their own test anxiety,” reported that the University of Texas at Austin ranks very low in achievement of student learning. “For learning gains from freshman to senior year,” writes de Vise, “UT ranked in the 23rd percentile among like institutions. In other words, 77 percent of universities with similar students performed better.” The Post obtained this data through a public records request. The standardized test was conducted by the Collegiate Learning Assessment.Prof. Richard Arum, a New York University sociologist, “reviewed UT’s results at the request of the Post.” He found that “seniors have spent four years there, and the scores [on student learning] have not gone up that much.”

Ouch.

Again, what are Bill Powers’ accomplishments? Somehow vastly higher tuition with academic ranking and performance stagnation doesn’t seem like an accomplishment.

That all being said, the faster we can bring this back to a discussion about ideas rather than a quarrel between players, the better. For students. For parents. For alumni. For employers. For taxpayers. For everyone. Right now, the easy fixation is on Rick Perry vs. Bill Powers, but the ideas they are talking about are important. Tuition. Affordability. Accountability. Opportunity. The American Dream. Texas as America’s shining state on a hill.

Do we accept the broken status quo, or do we reform our higher education system in Texas? At stake: far more than parochial Ivory Tower politics.

Will Franklin is a proud graduate of UT-Austin. He also formerly worked for Governor Rick Perry. This post was adapted from an original WILLisms.com post.

View the original article here