Harvard versus Yale - The Ivy League versus the World - The Presidency of the United States to the Winner - Where did Penn come from?

Will the Yale and Harvard Streak End?

In 2016 the American voters had to decide whether to continue the Harvard-Yale presidential monopoly, or just continue the Ivy League monopoly of the presidency.  After 28 straight years of Yale and Harvard controlling the most powerful position in world politics, another Ivy League school broke the streak.

When Trump won, his Ivy League School, Penn University Wharton School of Business, snatched the crown jewel, the US presidency, from their fellow Ivy League universities.  Now we face 32 straight years of elitist, Ivy League rule with a chance, if he gets reelected, of 36 straight years by graduates of just three schools. 

Now average Americans are going to have a hard time accepting this because average Americans consider the Ivy League to be something found on Wall Street, Madison Avenue, in the history books, movies, or maybe in prose or fiction books.  The Great Gatsby comes to mind.

When it comes to power, the Ivy League is IT but normally in terms of the dominant Ivy influence over Wall Street, the international banking community, the State Department, and various other engines of commerce.

Of course, the Ivy League is firmly placed in the middle of many great conspiracy theories involving the mysterious Illuminati, the Council on Foreign Relations, Freemasons, the Bilderberg Group, the Bohemia Club, the Skull and Bones Society and the Trilateral Commission.

Where did the following Latin phrases come from?

In Deo Speramus - (In God We Hope)

In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen - (In Thy light shall we see the light)

Quisquam qui ars  - (Any person -Any study)

Vox clamantis in deserto - (The voice of one crying in the wilderness)

Veritas -(Truth)

Dei sub numine viget - (Under God's power she flourishes)

Leges sine moribus vanae - (Laws without morals are useless)

Lux et veritas - (Light and truth)

Those are the mottos of the eight venerated Ivy League schools.

Brown

Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Harvard
Princeton
Pennsylvania
Yale

It seems we understand the power and influence of the Ivy League in terms of commerce but we really do not when it comes to national politics.  In fact, the attitude of the general public, in terms of the Ivy League in politics, is rather bleak.

According to recent Rasmussen polls, only five percent (5%) of American Adults think it is better for America to have presidents only from Ivy League schools.  A recent Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 85% believe it is better for the country to have presidents who come from a variety of schools.

Try this!

There have been 44 men who served as US President including President Obama and Trump.  It is often said that President Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States of America. However, President Obama is only the 43rd different person to serve as President of the United States. This is due to the fact, that President Grover Cleveland served non-consecutive terms and so is often counted as both the 22nd and the 24th President.

• Sixteen out of forty-four presidents have attended one or more Ivy League schools.

• Twenty-five out of one hundred U.S. Senators have attended one or more Ivy League schools.

• Fifty-seven out of one hundred and nine Supreme Court justices have attended one or more Ivy League schools.

All considered, more than a third of all U.S. presidents, Supreme Court justices, and currently serving U.S. senators have attended an Ivy League school for undergraduate or graduate study.

It gets better.

When Obama completed his 2nd term we had 28 straight years of presidents from Yale and Harvard alone, consisting of Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2 and Obama.  In fact, in the 227 years we have elected presidents, remember George Washington first took office in 1789, the Ivy League has held the presidency 85 of those years, or 37% of our history.

No matter who won in 2016, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, it was assured the 15th president from the Ivy League would serve and that may be a bit much for a nation in which the Ivy League represents just 8 out of 4,140 institutions of higher education.

For those of you into decimals the Ivy League makes up under two tenths of one percent (.001932) of our institutions yet controlled the presidency 37% of the time.

Public 4-year institutions           629
Private 4-year institutions       1,845
Total 4 year                             2,474

Public 2-year institutions        1,070
Private 2-year institutions         596
Total 2 year                            1,666

Total 4 and 2 year                  4,140

Money talks and legacy institutions prosper but you may be surprised when it comes to the costliest universities in America, long thought to be dominated by the Ivy League.

A recently compiled list of the 20 Most Expensive Colleges in the country shows prices, which include Tuition, Fees, Room and Board, range from $63,750 to just under $67,225 per year.

   #1  Harvey Mudd College $67,255
   #2  Columbia University $66,383
   #3  New York University $65,860 
   #4  Sarah Lawrence College $65,630
   #5  University of Chicago $64,965
   #6  Bard College at Simon's Rock  $64,519
   #7  University of Southern California $64,482
   #8  Claremont McKenna College  $64,325
   #9  Oberlin College $64,266
 #10  Scripps College $64,260   
 #11  Bard College $64,254
 #12  Haverford College $64,216    
 #13  Duke University  $64,188      
 #15  Northwestern University $63,983
 #16  Trinity College $63,970  
 #17  Pitzer College $63,880
 #18  Southern Methodist University  $63,840  
 #19  Amherst College  $63,772
#20  John Hopkins University $63,750

Source: Business Insider and U.S. Department of Education

To my amazement only two Ivy League schools, Columbia and Dartmouth, made the list.

Compare that to a list of the best colleges and universities in the world for 2020.

The Times Higher Education World University Ranking 2020

  1.  University of Oxford

       United Kingdom

  2.  Cambridge University

       United Kingdom

  3.  Stanford University

       United States

  4.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

       United States

  5.  California Institute of Technology

       United States

  6.  Harvard University

       United States

  7.  Princeton University

       United States

  8.  Yale University

       United States

  9.  Imperial College London

       United Kingdom

10.  University of Chicago

        United States

11.  ETH Zurich

        Switzerland

12.  John Hopkins University

        United States

12.  University of Pennsylvania

        United States

14.  UCL

        United Kingdom

15.  University of California Berkeley

        United states

16.  Columbia University

        United States

17.  University of California Los Angeles

       United States

18.  Duke University

       United States

19.  Cornell University

       United States

20.  University of Michigan Ann Arbor

        United States

21.  University of Toronto

       Canada

22.  Tsinghua University

       China

23.  National University of Singapore

        Singapore

24.  Carnegie Mellon University

        United States

25.  Northwestern University

        United States

(Ivy League Schools in Green)

Source: The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020

Sorry rest of the world, but seventeen of the top twenty-five are from the United States, including seven of the top ten.  Harvard is the top ranked Ivy League school but six of the eight Ivy League schools are in the top twenty in the world.  

What does this all mean?  Here in the colonies it seems the more other schools catch up with the Ivy League in terms of the number of schools and the cost of education, the stronger those dastardly Ivy League schools get control of our presidency and political processes.

Harvard was the first university in America founded in 1636.  By 1800, six of the first 16 universities in America were Ivy League, 37%.  Now the Ivy League represents less than one percent of institutions of higher education.  In spite of that we are completing 32 straight years of presidents from just three Ivy League schools, Harvard, Yale and Penn, and now Donald Trump assures an extension of that Ivy stranglehold on the presidency up to 36 straight years.

                                     

Isn't it about time we give someone else a chance like The California Institute of Technology, Stanford, MIT, Slippery Rock, or even The Pennsylvania State University New Kensington Campus of the Commonwealth College, (the longest college name in the USA)?

My goal was to attend Yale for undergraduate and Harvard Law for graduate school and I went through the multi-year application process, but fate had other plans for me and I wound up at the University of Arizona in Tucson.  Though I retain my Ivy League loyalty, even I think enough is enough, give someone else a chance.  What do you think?

Observations from the Swamp #1 – Politics, Parties, Puppets and Peers

(An outsider’s view from inside)

In about twenty months America will again determine a course for the future and not a moment too soon.  Maybe we should all agree that this time we will support the president we elect and give him or her a chance to do some good for “we the people.”

What a novel idea indeed.  However, it sure looks like a painful path lies ahead to get there.

Think about the monumental task ahead for our president, whoever it may be.  First, they have to traverse the minefield called the primary election, and win.  Only two will be left standing of the nearly thirty candidates of the Democrats and Republicans.  Then they must get elected president a couple of months later.

On the one side we have the Republican incumbent Donald Trump, who thinks he should have been immortalized as the newest American Action Hero and given a Marvel comic Book Series.

The other side are two dozen or more Democrats of all stripes, sizes, genders and bias, who are promoting everything to everyone regardless of the cost, the consequence, or even the possibility for approval.  In truth,  they are all chasing Joe Biden.

Of course, reporting on the election circus is done by the highly suspect news media and I use that description with much trepidation.  Once upon a time there was a definable, properly sourced, and credible news media.  It was objective, gave both sides to every story, and very seldom were they rewarded with a byline – which means getting credit for a story for those too young to remember.

Today objective and unbiased stories are nearly impossible to find.  Today reporters want to be the story, the stars of the Virtual Internet News era, which means they tell you what to think.

Fortunately, the vast majority of people place little credibility in the news media.  That is a fact that can easily be sourced.  Look at the latest Nielsen TV ratings and note viewership has fallen off the cliff.  Gallop polls show the News Media credibility is fighting Congress for the least trusted of American institutions.

In the fifty-four years I have been eligible to vote there have been eleven presidents, Kennedy – Johnson – Nixon – Ford – Carter – Reagan – Bush Sr – Clinton – Bush Jr – Obama – Trump.  Six Republicans and five Democrats.

Only four served a full two terms.  Three smoked pot as if that is a big deal.  Six graduated from the Ivy League which has now controlled the American Presidency for thirty straight years, and that might be a big deal.

As for me, I am the embodiment of diversity.  For eight years I was a Democrat, a Republican for eighteen years, and a Registered Independent going on thirty years.  From my perspective, it was hard to tell the difference between the two parties, other than their meaningless political platforms.

Now I want to apologize to my native home state of Iowa, safely located in the Midwest, the American heartland.  You are under invasion from the ever-growing herd of Democratic candidates and will be for the next nineteen months.

The avalanche of presidential candidates comes on the heels of the last presidential election where nearly twenty candidates competed.  Oh, and they bring with them those dastardly fake news crews, political pundits and professional politicians.

You see poor Iowa is host to the first major vote in the presidential primary election, the legendary Iowa caucuses.  For the past two years since the last presidential election Iowa has been inundated with five hundred-year floods, quite an anomaly for a natural disaster.  It was also inundated by people running for president in 2016 and now they are off and running for the 2020 campaign.

Just the two major parties have now offered nearly fifty candidates, with over thirty for the 2020 slugfest, to win the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of those good people and unsuspecting Iowa Hayseeds.  That means there have been nearly as many candidates in just two elections as the total number of presidents in our nation’s history.

It really was a swamp!

People I met from around the world always marveled at all the choices available to American consumers, but fifty presidential candidates defy logic.  Bear in mind that does not include the third-party radical fringe candidates also on the ballot.

American voters have to find their way through a lot of smoke and fog to pick the right person.  Iowans will be the first to make their mark in our election Olympics and fear not, they will be up to the task.

When caucus day comes Monday, February 3^rd, 2020 it will be the first indication of who actual voters are backing, not who the overly ambitious and biased reporters and anchors are telling them to back.

I am betting on those Hayseeds to set the record straight for our national debate.  Will it be the anti-establishment Action Hero Trump or the consummate establishment Bobblehead Biden?  Stay tuned…

Donald Trump Presidential Campaign leaves networks Rich with Ratings

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Cable TV Rankings 2016: Presidential Politics Fuels Ratings Gains

by Lisa de Moraes

December 20, 2016

2016 will be remembered as the year Donald Trump won the White House by taking control of the television news cycle. One year after the reality TV star’s antics and debate performances nearly catapulted Fox News Channel to the top spot among basic cable networks, finishing within 300,000 viewers of ESPN, this year Fox News leapfrogged the sports network by more than half a million primetime viewers, averaging nearly 2.5 million to ESPN’s 1.9 million.

With presidential politics taking over as viewers’ contact sport of choice, FNC enjoyed a 36% year-to-year total-viewer spike, while ESPN tumbled 11%, after 2015’s 7% decline.

But FNC wasn’t the only cable news network benefiting. CNN enjoyed a Trump-fueled 77% total-viewers spike, pushing AMC out of the yearly primetime Top 10; last year, CNN only notched a 24th-place finish. 

This year, AMC will settle for 11th place, after dropping 9% year to year.

And MSNBC, last year’s No. 29-ranked basic cable net in overall primetime crowd, jumped 87% to land at No. 12 with 1.1M viewers compared with previous year’s 596K.

The rest of 2016’s Top 10 list is the Land of Double-Digit Declines, save USA Network, which dropped a more modest 8%, and HGTV, the only non-news network to experience audience again in primetime crowd, to the tune of 5%.

USA Network

USA did, however, hang on to its status as the most watched basic cable entertainment network for an 11th consecutive year, finishing behind FNC and ESPN with 1.7M viewers.

ESPN hung on to the top spot in the coveted 18-49 demographic group, with 816K viewers in that age bracket. But here too the network tumbled, 12%, on the heels of last year’s 9% slip.

In the demo, as in overall audience, the biggest year-to-year gains were enjoyed by the news networks. CNN spiked a massive 90% in the 18-49 age group, logging 373K primetime viewers to outstrip FNC (354K, up 51%) for the year. In the percentage racket, CNN was beaten by MSNBC, which climbed 99% from last year’s negligible 104K to 207K this year.

But TBS was No. 2 in the demo to ESPN with 729K viewers, despite sloughing off 13% of its audience; USA followed (692K), with a 4% year-to-year slip.

Here are the 2016 rankings in total viewers and demo through December 18:

BASIC CABLE RANKINGS 2016 (Total Viewers in millions)

Rank network p2+ 2016 p2+ 2015 % change 1 Fox News Channel 2.48M 1.83M +36% 2 ESPN 1.91M 2.15M -11% 3 USA Network 1.68M 1.82M -8% 4 TBS 1.59M 1.80M -12% 5 HGTV 1.58M 1.50M +5% 6 TNT 1.55M 1.72M -10% 7 Discovery Channel 1.40M 1.55M -10% 8 History 1.33M 1.49M -11% 9 Disney Channel 1.32M 1.72M -23% 10 CNN 1.30M 0.732M +77% 11 AMC 1.26M 1.38M -9% 12 MSNBC 1.113M 0.596M +87% 13 FX 1.109M 1.22M -9% 14 Food Network 1.06M 1.11M -5% 15 Hallmark Channel 1.06M 0.959M +10% 16 Investigation Discovery 0.994M 0.909M +9% 17 Adult Swim 0.991M 1.05M -6% 18 Lifetime 0.955M 1.04M -8% 19 Bravo 0.908M 0.849M +7% 20 TLC 0.877M 0.926M -5% 21 A&E Network 0.847M 0.937M -10% 22 Freeform 0.812M 1.05M -22% 23 Nick At Nite 0.808M 0.814M -1% 24 Spike TV 0.704M 0.779M -10% 25 Syfy 0.692M 0.990M -30% 26 VH1 0.639M 0.639M 0% 27 TV Land 0.620M 0.606M 2% 28 Disney Junior 0.595M 0.617M -4% 29 Nick Jr 0.594M 0.416M +43% 30 Animal Planet 0.593M 0.636M -7% 31 OWN 0.537M 0.584M +9% 32 MTV 0.580M 0.569M -2% 33 Hallmark Movies & Mysteries 0.549M 0.428M +28% 34 Comedy Central 0.529M 0.583M -9% 35 E! 0.521M 0.535M -3%

Source: Nielsen; Live+SD numbers from 12/28/2015-12/18/2016

BASIC CABLE RANKINGS 2016(Adults 18-49 in Thousands)

rank network p18-49 2016 p18-49 2015 % change 1 ESPN 816K 923K -12% 2 TBS 729K 836K -13% 3 USA Network 692K 723K -4% 4 TNT 625K 639K -2% 5 AMC 610K 698K -13% 6 Discovery Channel 575K 669K -14% 7 FX 560K 609K -8% 8 Adult Swim 530K 543K -2% 9 HGTV 476K 466K +2% 10 Bravo 469K 474K -1% 11 Food Network 431K 469K -8% 12 History 417K 476K -12% 13 Lifetime 411K 434K -5% 14 Freeform 408K 527K -23% 15 VH1 396K 400K -1% 16 A&E Network 390K 399K -2% 17 CNN 373K 196K +90% 17 MTV 373K 371K +1% 19 Fox News Channel 354K 234K +51% 20 Spike TV 344K 388K -11% 21 Comedy Central 337K 379K -11% 22 TLC 334K 365K -8% 23 Investigation Discovery 327K 310K +5% 24 Disney Channel 319K 385K -17% 25 Nick At nite 298K 276K +8% 26 E! 290K 305K -5% 27 Syfy 280K 399K -30% 28 Hallmark Channel 251K 199K +26% 29 TruTV 223K 232K -4% 30 FXX 219K 228K -4% 31 BET 209K 289K -28% 32 MSNBC 207K 104K +99% 33 OWN 202K 185K +9% 34 Fox Sports 1 201K 170K +18% 35 Animal Planet 193K 224K -14%

Source: Nielsen; Live+SD numbers from 12/28/2015-12/18/2016

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