Paper targets and paper tigers

College graduates look for entry level positions while taking lower salaries

Let’s face it, if you’re graduating from college this May or even in December, the tight job market is less than appealing.

With the lack of experience and skills, many graduates are giving up the job search to return to school, join the military, take on jobs not in their fields or chill at home until the economy heats up again.

Journalism

If you turned straight to the editorial page for my column…thank you! But you did miss the large investigative report I wrote on the front page. I won’t be writing my column about that because I want to assure my readers—and The Inkwell’s in general—that I will never seek to bias my reporting here or anywhere else. It would be inappropriate of me to advance an agenda, and I will not do so in the news section. I am first and foremost a journalist; reporting how things really happened and why has always been my first goal, even in my columns. I will attempt to prove that further this week.

I will return next week for my final column as a member of The Inkwell editorial board.

A case of Supreme importance

Associate Justice John Paul Stevens announced last Friday that he would retire this summer from the U.S. Supreme Court. Stevens, considered to be the leader of the “liberal” wing of the Court, has been a bulwark against the executive overreach and unconstitutional acts of the previous administration in cases such as Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.

It’s never too late

I’m not going to tell you that the proposed and planned cuts to the University System of Georgia will do great, possibly irreparable harm to the state. I won’t mention that the cuts will hurt your quality of education, cost you thousands more dollars in tuition and probably make you graduate later—if your degree program still exists at AASU.

I take it back

In January I wrote my column on the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act. Since that time, the bill was packaged with the healthcare “fixes” bill and was signed into law Tuesday by the president. In that column I argued against the bill, and now I’m saying, “I was wrong.”

Inching toward progress

On Sunday the House of Representatives passed the Senate’s version of the health care bill, after some final, last-minute deals between President Obama and a half-dozen anti-abortion Democrats. They promptly passed a package of “fixes” to deal with minor issues more progressive members of the House had with the bill.

You’re getting screwed!

The Georgia legislature and the USG are going full-speed ahead on the plan to slash $300-400 million from the higher education budget for fiscal year 2011. As I wrote last week and as anyone not living under a rock knows, that is a gargantuan soul-crushing budget cut. It’s not so much a budget cut as it is a budget evisceration.

Russian roulette (with six bullets)

There’s an old joke about the Georgia state legislature: if the whole thing picked up and moved to Florida, it’d raise the collective IQs of both states. It’d probably also save the state from cutting the throats of the next two generations of residents.

Legislating your vulnerability

At the state capitol there are House and Senate bills on the floor that will allow Georgia residents with the proper conceal-and-carry permits to take their weapons to virtually any public place in the state, including onto university campuses.

At first blush this can seem like a terrible, horrifying overreach from a few way-out-there gun nuts, but the more you consider the option, the more it makes sense.

The definition of insanity

We’re being set up for another Great Recession, and this one may just be a Georgia-only affair. On Feb. 15, Governor Sonny Perdue signed the first law of this Assembly session. It further deregulates banks in Georgia, allowing state-chartered institutions to exceed the old limit of lending no more than 15 percent of their capital to any single borrower.

Uncle Sam hereby decrees…

The recent hue-and-cry over how the Christmas “Underwear Bomber,” Umar Abdulmutallab, was treated by the FBI—i.e., not tortured—we have seen the disingenuous and nearly insane stance that some Democrats and virtually all Republicans have adopted when it comes to preventing terrorism and catching terrorists.

Lessons in implacability

President Obama was in New Hampshire on Tuesday; he was giving a speech about the new jobs bill he advocated in his State of the Union address. When he stopped to take questions, nearly every single one was about healthcare.

If you build it…

There can still be great deal of debate as to whether or not a $16 million-plus construction project was the wisest idea in the midst of a recession and the near crippling cuts to the budget handed down by the Board of Regents, but what’s nearly done is done. I hope the student union will live up to everything the administration hopes it will be, and with some of the steps they are taking, it seems it just may.

Another credit crunch

The House of Representatives recently passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act. If the Senate votes it up and the president signs it, it could conceivably become much harder for students to get the funds they need to go to college.

It’s Time

Paul Fabian Mullen was an AASU professor. He was an accomplished lawyer and a former assistant attorney general for the state of West Virginia. He was incredibly smart and incisive and what’s more, he was my friend. He lived across the street from me.

Advance to withdraw

At West Point on Tuesday evening, President Obama officially announced his plan to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. This will raise the number of American soldiers to just under 100,000 by mid-2011.

Fee-nomenal

Earlier this week the SGA discussed the 100 percent increase in the $75 fee every student must pay, pushing it up to $150. On Tuesday the Board of Regents approved the fee increase, as well as the extra two percent they are cutting from all university budgets.

Making history*

On Nov. 2, the university organized a promotional photo to celebrate AASU’s 75th Anniversary, arranging students, faculty and staff in a big “75” in a field. This was a good idea, and if you read The Inkwell with some regularity (if not, please start) then you saw that we did a large story and photo spread on it in the middle of the front page.

Coming in third

As we have seen in the last three presidential elections, getting your people organized is an exceedingly powerful political tool. Creating large groups of like-minded people, such as political parties, who will hold rallies, knock on doors and spread your message, is all but essential to win political office.

Paper targets and paper tigers

 After a few sessions of Editorial Board discussion, this column is back on and it couldn’t have happened at a better time.