Medea Benjamin's affiliation with Venezuela goes beyond making tours. She was one of the activists squatting at the Venezuelan embassy in 2019 to support the installation of Maduro as President.
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Global Exchange also visited Venezuela - back then, Venezuela was promoting luxury people-to-people exchanges with the tourists meeting Chavez himself.
The Sandinistas are a left-wing political party which was once at the center of a CIA coup. It is the party which Daniel Ortega belongs to.
So, yes, Medea Benjamin's Global Exchange took others on a trip to Nicaragua to meet the left-wing activists there.
So, yes, Medea Benjamin's Global Exchange took others on a trip to Nicaragua to meet the left-wing activists there.
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Another "Reality Tour" country which Global Exchange has visited is Nicaragua. I had to go back to the web archives to find the itinerary ... and it talks about meeting with representatives of Sandinistas.
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Global Exchange engages in "people-to-people" diplomacy by taking it on various tours of countries. But these type of trips are often done so with government backing. For instance, the Cuban trips are done with "Cuban Institute of Friendship with Peoples" as the hosting institution.
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The CHIPS act (which was sadly bipartisan) and also the Inflation Reduction Act showered all universities with billions and billions of dollars for research.
The CHIPS act was supposed to bolster the US semiconductor market share. But I think that was the wrong way to do it. We should've done another Operation Paperclip at much cheaper.
The CHIPS act was supposed to bolster the US semiconductor market share. But I think that was the wrong way to do it. We should've done another Operation Paperclip at much cheaper.
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In short, research isn't "free."
It requires new buildings, new equipment, technicians, overhead.
So you have universities raking in the money and yet unable to keep up with operating expenses. And students get hurt most of all.
This is one in a series of articles.
It requires new buildings, new equipment, technicians, overhead.
So you have universities raking in the money and yet unable to keep up with operating expenses. And students get hurt most of all.
This is one in a series of articles.
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This is the first in a series of articles I've been working on with the wonderful journalists at @thecentersquare about the ballooning costs of universities even amidst unprecedented federal funding windfalls.
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Colleges got windfalls in research funding, but research remained a similar share of their budgets. That money inflated other costs across the board.
You have to look at the overall operating expenses per student, see it's out of control, and say "enough."
You have to look at the overall operating expenses per student, see it's out of control, and say "enough."
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Defenders of administrator hiring will point out that administrator costs are only a small percent of the total.
But they fail to consider that administrators also cause the other expenses to balloon: new offices, new regulations, new assistants, and so on.
These categories on a budget sheet do not happen in isolation. Pumping one category up by 95% will inevitably cause other categories to pump up, particularly when the sole purpose of an administrator is to impose crippling bureaucracy on everyone else.
But they fail to consider that administrators also cause the other expenses to balloon: new offices, new regulations, new assistants, and so on.
These categories on a budget sheet do not happen in isolation. Pumping one category up by 95% will inevitably cause other categories to pump up, particularly when the sole purpose of an administrator is to impose crippling bureaucracy on everyone else.
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