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Republicans The Almighty Buck

Harvard Business School Critical of Bush Economics 149

Posted by michael from the gentleman's-C dept.
gregorantic writes "From BusinessWeek Online: 'George Bush, America's first President with an MBA, has been slapped on the knuckles by 169 concerned business-school professors.'"
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Harvard Business School Critical of Bush Economics More

Harvard Business School Critical of Bush Economics

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  • Poll of economists (Score:5, Informative)

    by ratsnapple tea ( 686697 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @07:16PM (#10475517)
    Also see The Economist's poll of academic economists [economist.com], which puts Bush against Kerry and finds Kerry's policies by and large coming out on top. The article notes that while academia may rightly be considered leftist (heh), the poll isn't obviously biased against Bush in its assessment of the economy's recovery and of the president's role in it.

    Highly recommended.

    • Re:Poll of economists (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by ADRA ( 37398 )
      You bunch of tree huggin ECOnomists. Go back to russia Comrads!
    • The article notes that while academia may rightly be considered leftist (heh)

      The educated and knowledgeable tend toward the left?

      I agree that this is a significant point, but I read it a bit differently than the article author does.
      • "The educated and knowledgeable tend toward the left?"

        The parent post said ACADEMIA, but while academics are certainly intellegent and knowledgeable, where is it written that they can't be biased? During the cold war, some of our brightest minds failed us miserably by either willfully overlooking the horrors of communism, or even outright embracing it.

        An advanced degree doesn't neccessarily equal wisdom. In fact, it seldom does.
        • An advanced degree doesn't neccessarily equal wisdom. In fact, it seldom does.

          "Wisdom" would be seperating the political label from the ethic. The evils of the USSR were many--intolerant atheism, tyranny, despotism, facism, war-mongering, etc., etc.--but "communism" was by far the least of them.

          Remember: the USSR beat the snot out of the Germans in the latter part of WWII, and then went boondoggle for boondoggle with the USA for close to fifty years. There has to be SOMETHING to their economic policy.
          • "Wisdom" would be seperating the political label from the ethic. The evils of the USSR were many--intolerant atheism, tyranny, despotism, facism, war-mongering, etc., etc.--but "communism" was by far the least of them.

            Mikhail Gorbachev had this to say about the fall of the USSR:

            "It was a shame, and I continue to say that it was a shame, that during the final years under Brezhnev, we were planning to create a commission headed by the secretary of the Central Committee, [Ivan V.] Kapitonov to solve the pro
            • An economic policy that can't provide such things is horribly flawed.

              Yes, it is. A proper method for the USSR would have been to focus on building their country, not going boondogle for boondogle.

              But if communism was as horribly flawed as some capitalists make it out to be, the USSR would have starved to death long before Mir was launched.
          • The USSR's economic policy was built on a house of cards - which is what eventually caused their demise. At the height of the cold war, the Soviet Union spent more than 70% of their GNP on war materiel (not a misspelling) and military operations. The United States never spent more than 10% of its GNP on the same. And when U.S. weapons finally went head-to-head with Soviet weapons during the liberation of Kuwait, Moscow knew that our M1s could kick the snot out of the Russian T72s, for example. Everythin
        • During the cold war, some of our brightest minds failed us miserably by either willfully overlooking the horrors of communism, or even outright embracing it.

          I know, those smart bastards just didn't hate the commies enough. Perhaps if they had, we wouldn't have had to open the school of the americas.

  • This is no surprise. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Murdock037 ( 469526 ) <tristranthorn@ho ... .com minus berry> on Friday October 08, 2004 @07:16PM (#10475524)
    It's often satisfying in its own childish way to trash on Bush for all the personal reasons-- the fake cowboy stuff, manipulation of 9/11, etc.-- but most often, the strongest argument against him is purely economic. His numbers simply do not add up.

    See Paul Krugman [nytimes.com] of the New York Times for the most compelling case. His book, The Great Unraveling, [amazon.com] is invaluable.
    • Exactly. Bush is full of shit. I have a degree in Finance and MIS and I'm going for a Masters in Economics. The situation is simple to see for what it is, bad policy regardless of your political beliefs (I'm very liberal).

      Normal GDP Tax rate is 20%
      Normal Spending compared to GDP is 21% (Govt spending)

      Bush Spending = 20% (this is good since it is lower than normal)
      Bush Income (Tax Income) = 16% (this is very depressing and is the reason we have record deficits)
      • Maybe Bush is cut out to be president after all.

        He ran an oil business and he spent more money than he took in and, well, he's not running an oil business anymore.
        He bought a baseball team and he spent more money than he took in and, well, he's no longer running a baseball team.
        He got elected president and he spent more money than he took in and, well, he may get elected president again.

        Maybe he has finally found his calling...

    • numbers that don't add (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phyruxus ( 72649 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {knildnapmuj}> on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:34PM (#10476676) Homepage Journal
      Bush's federal budget was full of numbers that didn't add up... He counted some money twice, slating the same money for Iraq and Social Security. There was lots of stuff anyone could see was the worst kind of deceitful trickery. We're not talking about little mistakes either, we're talking systematic abuse.

    • You're relying on Krugman??? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:06PM (#10476825) Journal
      Krugman is a democrat first, and economist second. He's abandoned any pretense of fairness or objectivity in his columns. You might as well go to James Carville for economic advice.

      Oh, and thanks for at least being honest about the pettiness of the Bush-hating (" It's often satisfying in its own childish way to trash on Bush for all the personal reasons").
      • A lack of fairness or objectivity does not necessarily invalidate Krugman's points. You just have a pretty good idea before reading him which direction his column is going.

        Bias and predisposition aside, Krugman is often quite right about the economic fallacies of this administration.

    • I don't support Bush. But I'm no Democrat - I'm not even a US citizen. I don't support Bush because not only does he lie (or if you're charitable- make mistakes), but he doesn't apologize for his lies ("mistakes") when confronted with them.

      To me it is scary that the World's Most Powerful Nation is led by a unrepentant liar/incompetent (either he is lying or incompetent) AND worst most of the citizens don't appear to be that bothered about it - in fact so many support him.

      Whereas look at Spain. They didn't

  • Record deficits, and we still want tax cuts? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mind21_98 ( 18647 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @07:22PM (#10475573) Homepage Journal
    Something doesn't add up when one slashes taxes in the middle of a war, especially when we need the money to fight. Not that tax cuts are necessarily a bad thing, but having a deficit prevents the government from working effectively. Just my two cents.

    • Re:Record deficits, and we still want tax cuts? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Yokaze ( 70883 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @07:41PM (#10475719)
      > but having a deficit prevents the government from working effectively.

      It only prevents the following government from working effectively.

      • Re:Record deficits, and we still want tax cuts? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @08:59PM (#10476271)
        No it doesn't, it prevents YOU from working effectively. The government can loan money from itself forever. It's your children and economy that have to pay the piper. That's why the talk of "tax cuts" is so aggravating. They aren't "tax cuts", they are "tax debts and burdens" on our future generations.

        • It's your children and economy that have to pay the piper. That's why the talk of "tax cuts" is so aggravating. They aren't "tax cuts", they are "tax debts and burdens" on our future generations.

          Notably, future generations aren't voters in the here and now when trade-offs are being decided about future taxes supporting current benefits.

          From 7 years ago, this testimony from a young person [66.102.7.104] about the consequences of using an overly generous CPI to boost, for example, social security entitlement payments, s

          • I know social security is a problem and from what I hear the sheer mathematics will eventually make the system untenable as people simply live longer. It will have to be changed one way or another. Note however, that as people live longer, their health costs still GO UP. So there is some chance that we can reduce the COST of being older through science, but also through simple things we've known all along: if you have good health habits your entire life, you will be healthier in old age. This in turn wo

            • You're actually right, Medicare is a much more vexing problem than Social Security from a financial perspective.

              IIRC, an interesting feature of our health-care cost profile is that something like 90% of the medical expenditures on people will occur during the last 6 months of their lives. For what?

              Even if the threshhold age is increased where the elderly qualify for Medicare, this won't make as big an impact financially as it would for the financial integrity of the Social Security system.

              These are hard

        • Actually, I am considering buying euros. This deficit is higher than many 3'rd world countries (relative to GDP).

          Funny thing, is that when reagan got into office, the debt servicing was less than .1% of the budget. When Poppa Bush left it was at about 13% of the budget. When Clinton left, it was less than 10%. Now, it is something like 17%. Off hand, I would say that the democrats are the fiscally conservatives (and I am a libertarian).

          • Funny thing, is that when reagan got into office, the debt servicing was less than .1% of the budget. When Poppa Bush left it was at about 13% of the budget. When Clinton left, it was less than 10%. Now, it is something like 17%.

            Hehe, and don't forget that the Fed is being nice to Mr. Bush by keeping interest rates low.. This means that the "burden" is far less than it would normally be. All this new deficit spending is going into the newer low-interest bonds, as well as payment for the maturing bonds.
            • Pretty soon, the rates will be higher, so "rolling over" the debt is going to get MUCH more expensive.

              I have been thinking about the raising of the interest. From where I sit, other than Oil, nothing is really rising. The only reason why the Feds might wish to raise it, is to attract funds for servicing of our debt. Up until recently, only the yen or the pound was considered stable. But they were from much smaller economies. Now, there is the Euro. It is from an economy similiar in size to America. In addi

              • From where I sit, other than Oil, nothing is really rising.

                Well, the CPI shows steady manageable inflation, but I've seen lots of inflation in my personal life. Only problem is that I haven't been scientific about which years which consumer items trippled in price. Most items I've noticed have gone up by 50% to 100%. Blockbuster rentals, on average were about $3, now there's up to $4.75. Movie going use to cost $7, and now costs $9, AND the matinee (formerly $5, now $7) has been moved from 5pm down t

    • Re:Record deficits, and we still want tax cuts? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OYAHHH ( 322809 ) * on Friday October 08, 2004 @08:05PM (#10475918)
      Having a deficit does not make government run ineffectively.

      Actually one could make a strong argument that it makes government much more effective by providing a second way to manipulate the economy. A push versus pull sort of thing.

      Without deficit spending the government could only spend what it had received from taxes in a particular year.

      And due to a lack of perfect knowledge as to how much the tax coffers were going to bring in in a particular year the government would be pushed into spending very conservatively, lest it run a deficit.

      Planning for long-term projects would be made far more difficult and emergency situations would tend to shutdown the government.

      Deficit spending on the other hand allows lawmakers the leisure of knowing that they can start a long-term project and not have to pay cash for it today.

      Emergency situations can be dealt with by using Uncle Sam's Visa card and accidental budget overruns (is there such an animal?) can be nullified.

      Even more importantly the Federal Reserve can use it's enormous influence in borrowing power terms to micromanage interest rates. You wouldn't want to put Alan Greenspan out of business now would you?

      • Having a deficit does not make government run ineffectively.

        Correct. However, having a gi-normous, constantly-growing deficit is not.

        Legally the Government is still obligated to pay back those bonds they float. However, if they don't start running surpluses, they keep floating bonds to pay for the old bonds, on top of increased gov't spending. This leads to too much inflation, which is bad.

        • "Correct. However, having a gi-normous, constantly-growing deficit is not." (I agree with that.)

          Is that word gi-normous similar in meaning to huge-gantic?

          U.S. Government: Borrowing [brillig.com] money to kill Iraqis [iraqbodycount.net]. 140 billion borrowed [costofwar.com]. With interest, you pay 200 billion.
      • Without deficit spending the government could only spend what it had received from taxes in a particular year.

        The problem isn't whether we should allow deficit spending. Certainly there is no way of knowing what the next years' income will be. The problem is that we are budgeting expendetures which exceed all projected income. It's fine to be optimistic and budget for the best case revenue, but to knowingly spend more than you'll make in the foreseeable future is something that requires serious scruti

    • Look, it doesn't matter how much money the Feds take in, there will never be enough, and they'll always spend every cent they have. If they don't, that's only by accident -- don't worry, they'll make up for it the following year.

      There's plenty of people in the US with their hand out ready to jump on the dole. Ride the Federal gravy train. There's plenty of Career Politicians up on Capitol Hill buying votes for their next term.

      Therefore, I'm all for squeezing the Congressmen to try to cut costs from t

      • The whole problem is that there is a group of people who are paid with other people's money, who get to decide how to spend other people's money (even voting for raises for themselves), with no real penalties for making a wrong decision. I say set a flat tax at around 15%, set standard percentages of budget for certain areas (defense, research, education, etc.) and pay congress and the president out of the surplus. If they can't balance the budget, they shouldn't get paid. We don't need to hold elections
    • After all it doesn't really matter how much taxes you pay. [pause to hear all the idiot republicans cry out] What matters what you get in return for those taxes.

      Simple example, in holland we used to have a license fee for radio and tv. Payable for each receiver although it was usually just a standard tax, not like anyone really paid more for having two tv's. For this fee the tv was funded in a very complex way (basically we have broadcasters who get an amount of money and an amount of air time on the avail

    • I take issue with your use of the word "middle."

      Tax Cut [cnn.com]

      June still comes before September.

      -Peter

  • Ivory Tower Partisanship? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nagatzhul ( 158676 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @07:23PM (#10475583)
    Odd how they don't acknowledge that the economic deterioration began before he took office. Without that major acknowledgement, that makes their statements looks suspiciously partisan.
    • Odd how they don't acknowledge that the economic deterioration began before he took office

      Bush has been in office for nearly 4 years, don't you think it's time he took responsibility for his own policies now instead of blaming the previous administration?

      If the economy was doing GOOD, Bush would try to take credit. So why not take responsibility for his actions?

      (For the record, I didn't vote for Clinton).
      • Economics is a long range crap shoot and is certainly not an exact science. It takes four to five years for policies to trickle through. There is a lot of inertia, for want of a better word.

        That means that if Bush does everything right, then we would just start to be seeing the effects of that now. Just like we were starting to see the affects of Clinton's policies (or rather lack of action) as he left office.
        • Just like we were starting to see the affects of Clinton's policies (or rather lack of action) as he left office.

          Bush didn't cause the recession. But Clinton didn't cause it either, he (and the Republican Congress) *delayed* the normal cyclical recession by 2 years or so. I'd call that a plus for Clinton.

          • I don't personally think so. I don't see him as holding it off. I see him as pumping things up like a bodybuilding using steroids. Sure, he got short term growth that looked great for a little while, but when it crashed, it crashed hard. And the signs were there long before he got out of office (Remember what the stock market did April 14, 2000?).

            Instead of slow, long term growth, he went for flash and it cost us all in the long run.
          • No, Greenspan caused the recession when he raised rates too much or too short a time to combat 'nonexistant' inflation.
          • I think that the real Y2K catostrophe was the recession. All businesses threw out their normal upgrade cycle in the late 90's and upgraded a lot of hardware and software that would have normally been done later rather than sooner.

            As soon as 1/1/2000 passed, businesses took stock and saw that everything was working - and running on shiny new hardware and software. At that point, they didn't need to spend their normal upgrade budgets because they were good to go for a couple of years. So they reduced spe

        • I'd like to see more objective evidence about the lag time. It's not that I disbelieve the numbers, and I've heard your numbers before. But it really seems like these numbers are stacked to provide a convenient excuse to deflect any blame off the current administration.

          "It takes $years_current_administration_in_office + 1 year for policies to trickle through"

          Certainly different economic policies have different lag times-- some are immediate, like tax cuts increasing the national debt.

          Clinton was in offic
          • Newt is why the debt went down (well, it didn't but we will ignore that for now). Clinton, just a year or so before, had submited a budget plan that had deficits for the next 5 years.

            It ain't that hard to look this shit up so why do people just make shit up?
            • Newt and the fact that the pie that the government was pulling taxes from was growing (fast!).

              I'll get mod'd into oblivian for saying this - but the 90's showed what Ronald Reagan said was true - hold the line on spending, cut taxes a bit, and the economy will balance the budget.

              I'll grant that they didn't balance the budget - they used social security to show it as balanced - but it was as close to being balanced as it was for 30 years prior.

        • Just like we were starting to see the affects of Clinton's policies (or rather lack of action) as he left office.

          You're posting on an Internet that owes a lot of its rapid growth to Clinton-Gore work. Maybe the Internet funding and policies weren't worthwhile on the whole (I think they were, but I don't know what else could have been done with the funds), but I think that Clinton-Gore helped the US public become Internet-connected ahead of other nations and thus gave the country an edge up on establishin
          • but I think that Clinton-Gore helped the US public become Internet-connected ahead of other nations and thus gave the country an edge up on establishing itself.

            Bah.

            The public got interested in the internet when was added to HTML, and modem makers figured out how to make cheap 14.4K modems so images would download at a reasonable rate.

            The average Joe thinks text is boring and isn't going to pay for it, no matter what Clinton-Gore might have said.

        • Look, these people come up with the models that everyone uses. If it weren't for them there would be no crap shoot. They know damn well that a single president is not responsible for the entire economy. The extremely anti-bush (though not extreme) economist brad delong at berkely goes on at length over the media's focusing on a president as the sole actor in an economy's performance.

          All this being being said, it is entirely possible for a president to issue economic policies that are nothing but terrible;
        • Just like we were starting to see the affects of Clinton's policies as he left office

          Umm, right, except for the small detail that Clinton served 8 years and other than a down-turn in the stock market in the last few months of his term it was an unprecedented period of economic expansion. So even with your 4-5 years of "inertia" thats still 3-4 years of Clinton's reaping the benefits of his own policies. Even as a distractor, you have to admit that he kept his promise of balancing the budget.

          You can ha

    • Re:Ivory Tower Partisanship? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by moof1138 ( 215921 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:17PM (#10476872)
      So I guess you'd agree that Nixon's horrible econoic policies were what we were seeing under Carter, and Carter's thoughtful economic policies were what caused the growth in the Reagan Administration, while Reagan's disastrous policies brought us the awful Bush I economy.
    • Odd how they don't acknowledge that the economic deterioration began before he took office

      Because it it wasn't [factcheck.org]!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Curious (Score:1, Troll)

    by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) *
    Hmmm...I wonder how he would do in poll of business owners and managers? That is, people who actually DO things, as opposed to those who merely talk about them?

  • Bias? (Score:2, Informative)

    by kajoob ( 62237 )
    Just for full disclosure's sake, one of Harvard Business School's former Professors is Yoshi Tsurumi. Yeah, the guy that came out and tried to say that Bush, while a student there, came up to him and said something to the effect of, "My daddy got me into the guard despite the waiting list".

    Think he's telling the truth? Well he went on Air America to further smear the President and got caught in other lies....

    In the beginning of the interview they ask:

    Seder: Alright, let's start with something simpl


    • this needs modding up
    • So? I fail to see a discrepancy.

      In the beginning, he tries to emphasise that he didn't missed as many classes as either Mr. Seder or others might suspect or as other students might have missed.

      Later, he was asked how his alcoholism affected his attendency. In that context, he notes that "he missed quite a few [classes]" due to hangovers.

      This is not contradictory.

      > So just because it's Harvard Business School doesn't mean they don't have an ax to grind.

      How convenient. Blame criticism on partisanship.

    • Re:Bias? (Score:5, Informative)

      by demachina ( 71715 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @08:30PM (#10476105)
      Uh, where in this did you prove anything Tsurumi said was untrue?

      "My daddy got me into the guard despite the waiting list"

      George's dad did get him in the guard ahead of a waiting list with 500 or so candidates, there was only a handful of openings. Even worse George outright flunked the aptitude test, and should have been disqualified immediately. Instead he was pushed to the head of the list over people who actually passed the aptitude test.

      The only question here is if George had the bad judgement to brag about it. Privileged kids, and I went to college with a bunch of them, often do brag about their privilege.

      "Tsurumi: Well attendance was not that bad. But his attention span was very short."

      Uh, I imagine most professor can assess the attention span of their students. This doesn't qualify as a smear campaign/agenda.

      "How many times did George Bush come drunk to your class, as a student?"

      Its no secret George was a massive partier during this period to put it politely. To be impolite about it he was probably an alcoholic, cocaine abuser and a skirt chaser. Its a near certainty he did go to class hungover, most college students do, and its certainly plausible he may have gone to class under the influence. Again you haven't got made a case that Tsurumi was being untruthful. What he is saying is plausible and you can't prove its not, unless maybe you can find someone with sterling credentials in all the same classes who disputes him.

      Either Tsurumi doesn't like Bush and has an agenda or Bush had deep character flaws especially around this time. He and his whole family admit he was a very troubled young man, at least until he quit being a drunk, quit doing Cocaine, found Jesus and decided he was going to be President though he clearly isn't qualified for the job.

      My favorite Bush quote of the week, when is in White tie and tux giving a speech to the "the haves and the have-mores." Bush smirks: "Some people call you the elite. I call you my base."

      Its bad enough that most politicians serve the elite and not the people, but George had the poor judgement to admit it in front of a camera, smirk and make a joke out of it. This is not a person who should be President of the United States.
      • This looks like a job for Obvious Man(tm).

        Tsurumi: Well attendance was not that bad.

        ...and then...

        Tsurumi: Well certainly he missed quite a few.

        If it still hasn't sunken in, I have a sledgehammer here that can help drive the point home.
        • Those two statements aren't contradictory, "not that bad" is a polite way to say his attendance wasn't the greatest, so is "he missed quite a few".

          You are reading a lot more in to those two lines than I think most reasonable people would. To put it another way I think you may be the one with the agenda here. Apparently its to try and discredit Harvard Business School profs, by making one of them, Tsurumi out to be a liar. Unfortunately nothing you've shown so far makes your case.

          Are you upset a bunch of
          • Where the fsck do you get off calling me a Bush fanatic! All I did was point out to you the obvious point of the prior post. That's all I did, point it out. Then you go on some tirade about me having some agenda or something.

            If you can't see the difference between "not that bad" and "missed quite a few", then you're the one with cognitive dissonance. It's not about being for or against Bush, it's about the freaking English language!
            • OK I'll say it again, there isn't any real contradiction between those two statements, I'm baffled why you think there is unless you are REALLY reaching for something that isn't there. It sure as hell isn't "obvious".

              The original poster was clearly out to trash a Harvard Professor for having an "agenda" and all his fellow professor though a guilt by association and his case simply isn't there. He's pretty obviously out to defend his man Bush. You come along and support him, and again your arguement just
              • OK I'll say it again, there isn't any real contradiction between those two statements

                Consider the task of awarding a plaque to the student with the best attendence. One student's attendance was not that bad. The other student missed quite a few days. Which one do you give your award to?

                The literal wordings of Tsurumi's statements aren't the problem, it's what's he is implying by them. "Not that bad" quite literally means "good". It implies that Bush had good attendance. "Quite a few" is synonymous with "
                • Uh:
                  While "Not bad" can mean good, "Not that bad" means something different - it could mean average, or just below average. Whatever it is it's quite subjective.

                  And perhaps the average student at that time "missed quite a few days".

                  In the absence of more facts, saying someone is biased and contradictory because of those two statements is a bit of a stretch.

                • ""Not that bad" quite literally means "good""

                  No it doesn't, "Not bad" means "good", you insert "that" in it and you are saying it wasn't "good" but it wasn't "bad" either.

                  You are the one that is completely missing something here, as the other two replies to your post point out. Unless you have an "agenda", give it up.

                  If you want an example of "contradiction" so you understand the concept in the future:

                  Cheney on Meet the Press: "It's been pretty well confirmed, that he(Atta) did go to Prague and he did
            • I just went through this so maybe I can get it right this time.

              >> Where the fsck do you get off calling me a Bush fanatic!

              You backed up someone who is clearly trying to defend Bush any way possible. It makes it appear that you sympathize with him. The fact that what you call obvious is in fact very tenuous adds to the appearance that you are on a Bush-backing mission. There are so many Bush fanatics, and the rest of us are really getting tired of "Now before all the bush bashing starts" and "it's

              • You backed up someone who is clearly trying to defend Bush any way possible. It makes it appear that you sympathize with him.

                I love the fact that the left who pissed and moaned about the 'with us or against us' attitude of Bush do it themselves... Maybe its tru you most hate in other people what you see of yourself. Beware those who sympathize with Bush sympathizers...

                Phyruxus you have to stop jumping on people because you either 1) disagree with them, or 2) hate the fact that they defended somebdoy the

      • I think these two quotes are the ones under scrutiny:

        First: "Well attendance was not that bad."

        Later: "Well certainly he missed quite a few (classes)."

        IMHO those two statements are contradictory. Now he is speaking in vagueries so it's not exactly quantitative... but the implication is that he BOTH had decent attendance AND missed quite a few classes.. which was it OR is this the norm in Harvard Business School and if it is then there is no comparison to be made regarding Bush and other Students.

        • Re:Bias? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by demachina ( 71715 )
          Christ there is no contradiction there. "Well attendance was not that bad." is an extremely relative term and its depends on your idea of what "bad" is. It in no way, shape or form suggests he had a stellar/perfect attendance record in fact is suggests his attendance was not great, it just wasn't THAT BAD. "He missed quite a few" says exactly the same thing. He did miss some classes but he did show up most of the time, if his attendance was bad he would have said "he missed a lot of classes" and "his a
          • I suspect you may be a Kerry supporter... ;-p

            This is off-topic and I won't argue your statements, only say this:

            The best way to fight terrorism is to establish popular accountability in the governments of any nation in the world where terrorist groups have found sanctuary at any time past or future and particularly the present time.

            Any other strategy is a stop-gap solution at best as it requires constant policing of the entire world by a single nation or at best a small cadre of peace seeking nations wit

            • Re:Bias? (Score:3, Interesting)

              by demachina ( 71715 )
              "I suspect you may be a Kerry supporter... ;-p"

              Well you guessed wrong. Gotta love America, you are either Repubulican or Democrat and there is no third option. The only thing I'll say in Kerry's favor is he is the lesser of two evils compared to the crony capitalists and liars currently occupying the White House, though just barely. Kerry is a prep school elitist, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Yale Grad, Skull and Bones exactly like little George, sure to serve the elite first and the people se
              • Have to pick a couple of nits. The first is that bit about the US 'haroboring' the 9/11 terrorists. There is a major difference between state harboring and people who happen to live in a state while preparing for terrorist activities.

                The FBI had suspicions but our protections of their FREEDOM (which you so snidely disparage America as no longer championing) prevented the FBI from taking any action. In my mind should still be the case to this day unless enough proper evidence can be gathered. Hopefully in t
              • While your at it our biggest trading partner China is a dictatorship and Russia is pretty much back to one.

                Oops, you're looking as ignorant as GW. China is not your largest trading partner, nor is Mexico (as Bush thought). Your largest trading partner is the democracy just north of you.
    • >>Yeah, the guy that came out and tried to say that Bush, while a student there, came up to him and said something to the effect of, "My daddy got me into the guard despite the waiting list".
      Think he's telling the truth?

      Who's got an axe to grind now? Cause so far it looks like you.

      >>Well he went on Air America to further smear the President and got caught in other lies....

      I'm sorry for you that you think telling the truth about the past is equivalent to "smearing". I also think it's really sad

  • Ok, I read the article, and I have an MBA (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mycroft_514 ( 701676 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @07:53PM (#10475818) Journal
    These guys are blaming Bush for things he has no control over. They want to cut waste out of the budget, but fail to admit that he has no facility to do so.

    They fail the partisan test.

    • Veto. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DAldredge ( 2353 )
      Yes, he does. If he was true to what the GOP says they believe in he would veto every spending bill till he got what he wants.

      But he hasn't vetoed anything yet.

      • Re:Veto. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by foniksonik ( 573572 )
        It has been stated that Pres. Bush has specifically requested that the republican controlled Senate and House should not send him legislation regarding spending that he will need to veto. Because both houses are republican controlled they have been able to withhold bills of spending until they were at the point where no veto would be needed.

        If you are a coder you might understand this analogy...

        Imagine coding a application with no bugs in it.

        Then imagine being judged, performance reviewed based on the nu

    • Re:Ok, I read the article, and I have an MBA (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      He's a Republican president with a Republican Majority in both the House and Senate and you're saying that he doesn't have control over the budget?

      Unfortunately it is you, not these profs that fail the partisan test.


    • So you tell me that their leader has no control over this country's fiscal policy?

      Great case for kicking the whole bunch out. Thanks!
  • Harvard and the Ivy League are bastions of the Democratic Party. If you had asked business professors from a conservative college (like, perhaps Hillsdale College in Michigan), I'm pretty sure they'd say Bush's policies are just fine, thanks.

    Like it or not, we're in a partisan age, and everything is looked at through a political prism now.
    • Harvard? Isn't that where republicans go before they climb the republican ladder to world domination? Real liberal. But you're right about one thing... conservative professors would have said bush's policies are fine. Of course, they'd have said he was 6'10 and had walked on Venus too, if bush asked them to.

      As for the partisan age, all that's happened is liberals are finally catching up to conservatives in terms of being "energized". All those times republicans said liberals should "get over" the 2000 f

      • Re:spin elsewhere, bush apologist! (Score:4)

        by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @10:52PM (#10476748) Journal
        I hate to ape O'Reilly, but sorry, no spin here. Look up any survey of academics in this country. See where they overwhelmingly vote.

        As for Bush going down, care to make a friendly wager on that? I say he wins the popular vote 51-47 percent, more for the electoral college vote.

        • Yeah, academics and scientists do lean left. But I highly doubt Harvard is making things up just to hurt Bush. You're right about everything being viewed through a political prism now. It seems to me that republicans always have and that liberals are just now catching up. The national discourse is going to boil over if the mainstream media keep acting as mouthpieces for the administration. Maybe even before the election.

          As for a bet, I'm not rich but I'll put my money where my mouth is. How about five

    • an Harvard MBA or Hillsdale MBA ?

      Do you really think that all of Corporate America are bastion of Democrats? Or MAY BE the Harvard MBAs know better which end is up on a toilet plunger?

      If you read the article, you'll see that Business Week (hardly a leftist rag) opined that Hardard B-School is known for its apolitcal business-centric views.

  • Open letter? Where? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by j1m+5n0w ( 749199 )

    Does anyone have a link to the text of this "open letter"? I didn't see a link to it in the article text (maybe I missed it somehow), nor was I able to find it with a few quick google searches.

    -jim

  • go read this. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by maxume ( 22995 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @11:25PM (#10476904)

    http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/004940.htm l

    clicky link [janegalt.net]

    200 economists ain't barely nobody...

  • that you could probably also find just as many economists willing to sign something in favor of Bush's policies, and that several of them would be high profile influential people in the field.

    Nothing to see here, move along.

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