CONNECTIONS MAGAZINE summer 14

                                           

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Smash the System? The dangerous plan to make college cheaper by busting “the college cartel.”

The government has smothered low-cost competition by turning higher education into a “cartel,” Utah Sen. Mike Lee wrote recently. Above, Lee speaking on May 30, 2014, in New Orleans.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Ask liberals why college is getting so expensive, and they’ll probably tell you it’s a case of government neglect. States have cut education funding. Federal Pell Grants for low-income students haven’t kept up with the cost of tuition. Regulators have failed to crack down on predatory for-profit schools that charge high prices for sometimes worthless degrees.

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Common Core education standards: why they’re contested left and right

Ask conservatives the same question, and they’ll tell you the opposite. The real problem, they’ll say, is a pernicious case of government coddling. The unlimited supply of federal student loans has allowed schools to hike their prices to stratospheric heights without driving away undergrads. Feds have smothered low-cost competition by turning higher education into one big highly protected “cartel,” as Utah Sen. Mike Lee put it in an essay for The Federalist.

How so? In order for their students to receive federal aid, colleges and vocational programs need to be accredited. The accrediting agencies, which are independent of the government, mostly give their blessing to schools that look an awful lot like traditional institutions of higher education, with brick-and-mortar buildings, well-credentialed faculty, and a nice mission statement. (No sarcasm intended: They really do care about mission statements.) Sure, these schools might offer online courses. But for the most part, the argument goes, the accreditation process helps perpetuate a fairly expensive model for students and prevents any radical and inexpensive experiments from lifting off. That’s both because almost nothing in higher ed can survive without some access to federal aid dollars—even if students are enrolled in free programs, they need to cover living expenses—and because other colleges won’t accept transfer credits from nonaccredited institutions.

What do Republicans want to do about it? Smash the cartel, of course. “As was the case for airlines, trucking, and telecommunications, higher education needs a deregulatory agenda that breaks down these barriers to entry,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Andrew Kelly wrote in the reform conservative manifesto “Room to Grow.” In January, Lee introduced legislation that would give states a major role in the accreditation process. The bill has nods of approval from potential presidential contenders Marco Rubio, who has his own proposal on the issue, and Paul Ryan, who dedicated a little-discussed section of his anti-poverty plan to “shaking up the accreditation status quo.”

Where the college accreditors truly drop the ball right now is in quality control.

The hope is that once Washington breaks the hold of today’s accrediting agencies, new, high-tech approaches to education can flourish. Take Lee’s plan. Right now, the Department of Education relies on a network of nine regional accreditors, as well as a bevy of national ones that generally rate vocational and religious institutions, as well as specific programs. Lee would leave that system in place, but would allow every single state to approve its own accreditors as well. Some could be nongovernmental associations, as now; some might be businesses. In addition to approving entire colleges or degree programs, they would be able to rate individual courses, like the free massive open online courses offered by sites such as Coursera and EdX. That way, students could piece together their educations à la carte, as if they were ordering off a pedagogical tapas menu.

“Under state accreditation, higher education could become as diverse and nimble as the job-creating industries looking to hire,” Lee (or his ghostwriter) explains. “Authorized businesses could accredit courses and programs to teach precisely the skills they need for their employees. Apple or Google could accredit computer courses. Dow could accredit a chemistry program, and Boeing could craft its own aerospace engineering ‘major.’ ” In other words, relax regulations, and let a thousand flowers bloom.

Even if conservatives have been the most eager about rethinking accreditation, there are plenty of moderates and liberals who are keen on the idea as well. President Obama himself has embraced the concept: In 2013, he called on Congress either to tweak the current accreditation setup or establish “a new, alternative system of accreditation that would provide pathways for higher education models and colleges to receive federal aid based on performance and results.” Theoretically, that would give online programs a path to federal recognition. In left-wing think-tank land, meanwhile, David Bergeron of the Center for American Progress has advocated for creating an accreditor that could award students course credit for those free MOOCs.

All this talk of innovation and market-based solutions sounds great in theory, but in practice, it could make a troubled situation worse.

First off, we should give accreditors a fair shake. They might not be terribly friendly to educational innovation, but they do occasionally let it slip through. Western Governors University, for instance, doesn’t fit anybody’s idea of a traditional college—it’s a competency-based program where students enroll, study on their own with the occasional help of an adviser, and then are tested on their knowledge whenever they feel they’re ready. But it is accredited.

Where the accreditors truly drop the ball right now is in quality control. The entire point of requiring schools to be accredited before they can become eligible for federal aid is to make sure students don’t take out loans for a worthless education while burning taxpayer money in the bargain. As the rise of unscrupulous for-profit colleges demonstrates, the accreditors have basically abdicated that responsibility. Adding yet more accreditors into the mix, and making more programs eligible to profit off of loan dollars—without making it easier to kick schools out—would only worsen our problems with predatory colleges.

Top Comment

The explosion in federal financial aid has defintely exploded the cost of tutition. The government needs to use its bargaining power with its financial aid to bring down tutition. There should be a national accrediation agency.  More…

-John Macon

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“If you just lowered the barriers to entry and in no way lowered what it takes to kick people out, you’d have a disaster,” said New America Foundation senior policy analyst Ben Miller, who recently wrote a four–part series on how to make accreditation more innovation-friendly. One idea would be to provide different tiers of accreditation—students at some programs would only be eligible for limited amount of federal loans or grants, while students at higher-rated schools might be eligible for more. Agencies might be more willing to punish a bad actor if they could downgrade its accreditation status rather than revoke it entirely—which is the only option available to them right now. Today, accreditors are hesitant to take any kind of action against failing colleges, in part because administering the death penalty to a college has a way of ticking off politicians.

Any conversation about fixing our broken accreditation system needs to think about both sides of the equation: making room for new ideas and pushing out bad ones. Right now, the majority of politicians are focused mostly on the first half, which should worry us all. You can talk about smashing the cartel all you want. But I’m not sure anybody would be happy with what might take its place.

Source: Slate.com

Buffett, Gates, and Adelson: Billionaires prod Congress on immigration reform

Billionaires Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Sheldon Adelson have taken Congress to task for failure to enact immigration reform. If we can set aside our political differences and compromise, they say, so can you.

Together, they’re worth a combined $184.3 billion – enough to cover the VA’s budget for more than a year.

So when Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Sheldon Adelson speak out on one of the most pressing social and political issues of the day – immigration – people tend to listen.

Whether or not that includes members of Congress is another matter, even though Messrs. Buffett, Gates, and Adelson all have been campaign donors. Lawmakers are far from any agreement on immigration reform, and they’re now fighting over what to do about thousands of migrant children streaming illegally into the US.

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Writing in The New York Times this week, the three men used themselves as an example of the kind of bipartisan compromise needed to address immigration.

“The three of us vary in our politics and would differ also in our preferences about the details of an immigration reform bill,” they wrote. “But we could without a doubt come together to draft a bill acceptable to each of us.”

“You don’t have to agree on everything in order to cooperate on matters about which you are reasonably close to agreement,” they wrote, casting an obvious eye toward a Congress that seems more intent on scoring political points than on accomplishing anything of lasting value. “It’s time that this brand of thinking finds its way to Washington.”

Last year, the Senate passed comprehensive immigration reform with strong bipartisan support (68-32), but the bill has languished in the Republican-led House.

“Whatever the precise provisions of a law, it’s time for the House to draft and pass a bill that reflects both our country’s humanity and its self-interest,” Buffett, Gates, and Adelson instructed. “Differences with the Senate should be hammered out by members of a conference committee, committed to a deal.”

Recently, another powerful wealthy businessman weighed in along similar lines.

“I don’t believe that people come to America to sit on their hands,” Rupert Murdoch wrote in The Wall Street Journal (which he owns). “The vast majority of America’s immigrants are hardworking, family-minded individuals with strong values.”

As for this week’s three news-making billionaires, Bloomberg News points out their political differences:

Adelson, 80, and his wife, Miriam, have been major donors to Republican candidates for years. They pumped $15 million into a super-political action committee backing former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign in 2012, according to data compiled by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. They later gave $20 million to the super-PAC supporting the eventual Republican nominee, Mitt Romney.

Buffett, 83, has given money largely to Democrats over the years, including more than $200,000 to Obama and the Democratic National Committee since Obama first ran for president, according to Federal Election Commission records. He has also cultivated relationships with Republicans as he encouraged compromise on political issues.

Gates, 58, has donated money to members of both parties and a variety of causes, including efforts to support gay marriage.

But when it comes to the need for immigration reform, Buffett, Gates, and Adelson set such differences aside.

“A Congress that does nothing about these problems is extending an irrational policy by default; that is, if lawmakers don’t act to change it, it stays the way it is, irrational,” they wrote. “The current stalemate – in which greater pride is attached to thwarting the opposition than to advancing the nation’s interests – is depressing to most Americans and virtually all of its business managers. The impasse certainly depresses the three of us.”

They concluded their New York Times op-ed with a reminder that lawmakers in Washington are the political hired help:

“It’s time for 535 of America’s citizens [members of the US House and Senate] to remember what they owe to the 318 million who employ them.”

Civilian Deaths in Gaza. Is Israel killing indiscriminately? A closer look at the evidence and context.

An Israeli air strike on Gaza City, July 11, 2014.

Israel’s air war in Gaza has now killed more than 100 people. Around the world, there’s concern and anger. These concerns are appropriate—war is horrible, and any number of deaths should trouble us. But given that this war is happening, let’s focus on the narrower question of how to minimize civilian deaths, now and in future conflicts. How bad is this war compared to others? Are Israel’s attacks indiscriminate?

First, it’s important not to get consumed by whether you love or hate Israel. There will be other wars in other places. We need to build rules that apply everywhere. Second, we don’t need to debate the conduct of Hamas. Hamas rejects the whole idea that it’s wrong to target civilians. So behaving better than Hamas isn’t a standard worth talking about. Let’s focus instead on what Israel is doing.

1. The casualty rate. Total deaths in Gaza now exceed 100. Every account except Israel’s says most are civilians. That’s a bad ratio, but it’s skewed by the low number of Hamas military deaths, which can be traced to two factors: Most Hamas officers are lying low (literally—many are underground), and Israel has mostly targeted assets such as rocket launchers, not people. The better measure of Israel’s moral performance, then, is the number of civilian deaths. The latest tallies range from 58 to 75, though the numbers will be higher by the time you read this.

How does that compare to other conflicts? Wars differ in nature (ground vs. air, for example), pace, and duration. So let’s look at air wars and compare the civilian death rates per strike. So far in Gaza, Israel has hit approximately 1,100 sites. Using the high-end casualty count, that’s an average of one civilian death for every 14 to 15 sites struck. In the 1999 Kosovo air war, Human Rights Watch found that NATO had killed approximately 500 civilians in attacks on more than 900 targets. That’s more than one death for every two targets hit. In the invasion of Iraq, HRW cited a low-end estimate of about 3,500 civilian deaths but attributed most of these to ground combat. There seems to be no separate count for the bombing campaign. In Libya, according to the U.N. Human Rights Council, NATO killed only 72 civilians in 3,327 strike sorties. That’s three times better than Israel’s performance. Because of population density, you’re less likely to hit civilians in Libya than in Gaza. But in a review of the Libya campaign, HRW also credited “the care NATO took in minimizing civilian harm.”

2. Israel’s practices. On the whole, the worst incidents in Gaza have resulted from strikes on houses. In traditional rules of war, houses are off limits. Israel’s stated rationale for hitting houses in Gaza is that “Hamas was running the operations of their units out of these homes. Some had weapons storage caches in them.” But residents have already asserted that in some cases there was no such basis. Israel hasn’t clarified whether it thinks these houses were valid targets or whether it hit them by accident.

The “terrorists work from home” rationale raises ugly problems for the rules of war. Israel’s warning procedures, however, could become a model. In the Kosovo war, HRW says NATO failed to issue warnings that might have spared civilians. In Iraq, HRW’s report doesn’t mention any warnings during the air campaign. In Libya, the U.N. report says NATO touted its “leaflets and radio broadcasts,” which told civilians how “to avoid areas likely to be struck.” But leafleting is unreliable, and radio announcements about “areas” are, by nature, vague.

Israel claims to be doing something much better. Here’s how the IDF’s spokesman describes it:

We phone up our enemies and tell them that we are going to blow up the building, we throw non-explosive munitions, and that is a sign they are supposed to vacate the building. Only once we have seen them vacate the building—and we are talking about [hitting] command and control places and not the terrorists themselves—then we hit.

In other accounts, Israeli briefers have said that they also send text messages and that the final warning shot, known as a “knock on the roof,” can be a mortar strike that hits just hard enough to scare everyone out. “According to the procedure,” says Ynet, an Israeli news site, “it is only after the IDF makes sure residents have evacuated the premises that the missile that could destroy the house is launched.”

In the history of warfare, this kind of systematic warning—direct, specific, double-layered—is unprecedented. It lets the enemy military officer escape in order to avoid killing his family. But how strictly is the IDF adhering to this policy?

In some cases, there’s video evidence of targets being warned or knocked. In other cases, Gazans have confirmed that they received calls or warning flares.

But the IDF’s performance seems inconsistent. In one incident, residents say that there was no phone call and that the strike, which killed six people, came only four minutes after the knock. In another case, a video shows just one minute between the knock and the strike. In two of the worst mass-death incidents, one in Khan Yunis and the other in Rafah, residents say there were no warnings.

Israel has also killed civilians at sites where no Hamas link has been established. The worst was a nine-fatality strike on a café where people were watching the World Cup. Another was a four-fatality strike on a house in al-Meghazi. Another strike killed the driver of a news agency vehicle which, according to the Palestinian news site Ma’an, was clearly marked “TV.” The IDF says it’s investigating these cases.

3. Human shields. Israel says Hamas has inflated the civilian death count by telling Gazans to ignore strike warnings and stand in harm’s way. It’s true that some Gazans have done this. There’s photographic evidence of people going on to the roof of a targeted building after a warning. And in the worst mass-fatality incident of the campaign’s first 48 hours, witnesses say that after residents had been warned and had left the house—thereby making the IDF think it was empty—neighbors and some family members went back in to “form a human shield.” By then, the IDF couldn’t stop the missile.

It’s not clear how often this has happened or what role Hamas has played. Israel cites a TV interview in which a Hamas spokesman praised the courage of human shields. It also points to a statement from Gaza’s interior ministry, which urged Gazans not to “pay attention” to Israel’s “communications on the phones of citizens.” But praise isn’t an order, and the ministry statement may have been referring to a mass robo-calling campaign in which Israel told Gazans to leave their homes in preparation for a ground assault.

If Gazans choose to defy the warnings and go on to their roofs, what right does Israel have to strike them? The IDF claims it will strike anyway, but it has already blinked. In the case that was video-recorded, “the IDF decided not to bomb the home,” says the Israeli news site Arutz Sheva. “In most cases … Israel will simply refrain from taking action if Israeli forces are aware of the presence of civilians in the vicinity.”

Do these factors—the fatality rate, the warnings, the shields—make Israel’s conduct acceptable? I’ll leave that to you. Either way, we need to cut through the propaganda on both sides, analyze the best information on the ground, and put it in context. In some ways, Israel is raising the standards of what can be expected in warfare. Our job is to clarify those standards and hold everybody to them, including Israel.

Finally, a Perfect Term for When White People “Discover” Things

Here’s Miley Cyrus, Columbusing.

Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for MTV

At some point in their adolescence, most people will come to learn that the

At some point in their adolescence, most people will come to learn that the oft-taught grade school tidbit that Christopher Columbus “discovered” the Americas is, at best, a significant stretching of the truth. They’ll also soon realize that Columbus’ claim to fame is only one example in a long historical pattern of white people taking credit for uncovering “new” things that actually existed long before they were aware of them.

And so it’s only logical that someone would put two and two together and finally coin the perfect term for this infuriating habit: “Columbusing.” The folks at College Humor have created a great video to help you understand the exact way to employ it—so the next time someone credits Miley Cyrus for twerking, you’ll be ready.

 

Aisha Harris is a Slate staff writer.

 

History in the Making: Seattle Is Raising Its Minimum Wage to $15

Kshama Sawant, Seattle’s socialist city council member, drove the city’s movement for a $15 minimum wage.

t’s official. Seattle lawmakers have voted to gradually raise the local minimum wage to $15 per hour, thus fulfilling the dreams of labor activists, hard-pressed McDonald’s workers, and curious economists everywhere who love it when cities turn themselves into living laboratories. The city is now on a course for history—and quite possibly a nasty collision with unintended consequences.

As I’ve argued here before, a $15 pay floor is largely unprecedented. The federal minimum has never come nearly so high, even taking inflation into account. Nor has any state minimum. In the U.S., only the tiny city of SeaTac, which largely consists of an airport servicing the Seattle metro area, has dared cross the $15 mark, and the jury is still out on its impact there. Internationally, no country has an official minimum above the $11 mark once you adjust for purchasing power, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.** It’s often reported that fast food workers in Denmark can earn $20 per hour thanks to their strong labor unions. But take into account the nation’s eye-popping cost of living, and their wages are closer to $13.*

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It’s true, as Salon has noted, that some U.S. cities have passed living-wage ordinances for local government employees and municipal contractors that hover around $15. But that’s somewhat immaterial to what’s going on in Seattle, since those laws tend to exclude the very low-pay service workers in retail and fast food whose jobs might be at risk when the minimum rises. They are also, often, very poorly enforced.

There is one important sense in which Seattle’s hike does have some precedent. Thanks to the city’s prosperous, high-tech economy, metro-area pay tends to be high. As University of Massachusetts Amherst economist Arindrajit Dube—one of the country’s leading minimum wage researchers—pointed out to me, Seattle’s proposal would bring its minimum up to about 59 percent of the local median wage. That’s a high ratio, but not unheard of internationally. And in low-wage states like Louisiana and Arkansas, he said, the federal minimum has hit 60 percent of the regional median.

Nonetheless, because no city or state has attempted anything exactly like the hike Seattle is now set to enact (the law is further complicated by a carve-out that lets businesses pay teens less than the minimum), the existing research on minimum wage increases can’t tell us much about what its effects will be. “We are not going to be able to predict very well the likely impacts of this policy on employment using our existing set of estimates,” Dube told me last month.

Which is why this test run, which could directly affect a quarter of Seattle’s workforce by the time it phases in over the next seven years, is both fascinating and frightening. The economics literature suggests that moderate increases in the minimum help workers more than they hurt them, because the raises outweigh the cost of lob losses. At $15, the effects might well be different. Some businesses may cut jobs. Others simply might not choose to open or expand in Seattle. Others could try to find ways to automate jobs.

But, as Reihan Salam has written, the effects may also be more subtly damaging. As wages rise, businesses could simply seek to hire better educated and skilled employees, some of whom may well live outside the city limits but suddenly find themselves happy to commute for a fatter paycheck. Seattle’s low-wage workers, meaning those who earn less than $15 an hour, are already more likely to have attended college than their counterparts in cities like Denver and San Francisco. As the pay floor rises, it seems reasonable to suspect that college-educated workers from around the region will take a growing share of jobs that might have once gone to high-school grads.

University of Washington

If that’s the outcome, Seattle could become a more hostile place for young and poor workers to live than it is today, pushing them out to the suburbs, where the region’s poverty is already concentrated. If that’s the case, the policy could inflict pain without ever touching the unemployment rate.

The upshot: The $15 minimum doesn’t have to turn Seattle’s labor market into a flaming wreck for it to cause harm. In the end, we really can’t say for sure what it will do. Doubters might be proven wrong—after all, there were people just like me in the Gilded Age who raised the same arguments against creating any minimum wage in the first place. But in making a bit of history, the city may end up hurting the people it’s trying most to help. And the scars won’t necessarily be obvious.

*Footnote: For the sake of it, I tried adjusting Seattle’s proposed minimum using price levels in Seattle, as calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, to see if that would bring it down in real terms. Even accounting for a regional purchasing power, $15 in Seattle is still worth about $13.95, on average, across the rest of the country.

** Correction, June 3, 2014: This post originally misstated the name of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The Most Underrated College in Each State

Don’t call it a “safety school.”

Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

This post originally appeared in Business Insider, BEFORE POSTED ON SLATE.COM

Earlier this week, Business Insider published a list of 50 underrated colleges around the country—one from each state.

By Peter Jacobs

Don’t call it a “safety school.”

Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

This post originally appeared in Business Insider.

Earlier this week, Business Insider published a list of 50 underrated colleges around the country—one from each state.

Top Comment

Maybe my definition of underated is different from the author’s, but how are elite flagship schools like Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Illinois “underrated”? These are recognized as some of the best universities in the country, or more accurately the world.  More…

-m

109 CommentsJoin In

We partnered with Niche to bring you the top schools in the country with great academics and high acceptance rates. To compile this list, Niche used its data for highest academics rankings, acceptance rates, and in-state population.

While some people may think these schools are “safety schools” because of their high admissions rate, their strong academics prove they’re much more. You can click here for a statistical breakdown of the schools.

Here’s a great infographic map of the schools, created by BI’s Mike Nudelman:

This post originally appeared in Business Insider, BEFORE POSTED ON SLATE.COM THE WEB SLATE MAGAZINE

Earlier this week, Business Insider published a list of 50 underrated colleges around the country—one from each state.

 

Forget Disney, and Art.

Disney and Art dominate the Southern California themes. It is a fact. Forget Disney and look for other things to do outside of the park. Art passes can be used for outside the park, in a day long one can go around Orange County and San Diego or LA for better choice.

If you were to choose from your original destination what will you favor: your own search, or the recommendation of others.

Study recently published by the Southern California Tourist Guide show that most people made their choices influenced by family and friends recommendations. Either from those who already had the experience and like others to see and experience the same, or with most is the hope of others of what they missed and wish to see on their next visit. well i liked the small shops at the Village of Orange, but we wish we had enough time for the Garden Walk. Returning visitors counted for most answers  to family and friends recommendations. It is not a matter of trust between a computer search or from printed information, but more or less is that we too enjoy the word of mouth.

Many visitors like to be there first, or faster, time is precious more than money. You can’t budget or plan enough time, there is always few elements of surprise.  Forget Art, and after you get your Art passes, make sure they are validated by either using the Art at least once, or simply have them validated without the use by only making sure they are punched by the Art Computerized digital scanner, this sis will enable you to use other means than Art to go anywhere in OC and for a change you can upgrade in other counties.

I have seen many confusions per say, on both sides of how to handle a question or how to make an inquiry about what is or should be available and accessible to go around the park. Finally, of  course a search about anything is needed to always have a back  up plan in case of spring showers or summer flowers.

VISITOR’S GUIDE

Explore California with your FREE Official State Visitor’s Guide!

Comedian John Pinette found dead in Pittsburgh hotel room at age 50

Comedian John Pinette addresses the crowd during the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Awards Ceremony in New York in this December 5, 2008 file photo.

CREDIT: REUTERS/LUCAS JACKSON/FILES

(Reuters) – John Pinette, a stand-up comedian who guest-starred as the victim of a carjacking in the final episode of the comedy show Seinfeld, has died at age 50, an official said on Sunday.

Pinette was found dead inside a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, hotel room on Saturday, an official with the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office said.

Pinette died from natural causes and was discovered by family members, the official said.

A native of Boston, Pinette was known for making jokes about his weight during his stand-up performances whose titles included “I’m Starvin’!” and “Show Me the Buffet.” In 2011, his “Still Hungry” special premiered on Comedy Central.

Pinette also appeared in movies like “Junior,” “The Punisher” and “Dear God.”

In the final episode of Seinfeld, Pinette portrayed an overweight man who gets carjacked at gunpoint. The show’s stars stand by and watch the incident and make fun of the man’s weight before they are arrested by a police officer for violating the “Good Samaritan Law.”

The medical examiner’s official said Pinette was in Pittsburgh to attend a wedding.

(Reporting by Kevin Gray; Editing by Eric Walsh)

IMF tells world to do more on growth ‘marathon’

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde gestures as she speaks about the global economy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington April 2, 2014.

(Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund on Thursday urged nations around the world to move ahead more quickly on policies needed to secure a stronger recovery and avoid a prolonged global slump.

In a “Global Policy Agenda” for the world’s economies, the IMF outlined a long list of tasks that remain incomplete, from reining in shadow banking risks in China to speeding up financial reforms.

The Washington-based Fund also said it was “utterly disappointed” the United States again failed to pass historic reforms to the IMF meant to give more power to emerging markets.

“The key challenge remains transforming a modest and fragile recovery into more rapid, balanced, and sustainable growth,” the IMF said ahead of its twice-yearly meetings with the World Bank that kick off on Friday. “This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

Taking stock since the last meetings in October, the IMF saw similar risks on the table, including the chance for huge market and exchange rate volatility if the U.S. Federal Reserve botches its exit from a massive monetary stimulus program, withdrawing too quickly or not communicating well enough.

“Such a scenario could be especially disruptive if financial stability risks from very accommodative monetary policies, including excessive risk-taking and leverage, are left unchecked by supervisory authorities,” the IMF said.

The Fund said more coordination between central bank and financial regulators could limit exchange rate swings, and noted the concerns of major emerging market countries who have called for more cooperation on monetary policy. Some emerging markets suffered abrupt capital outflows over the past year as the Fed prepared to slow its money printing.

The IMF cautioned advanced economies to avoid withdrawing easy money too quickly, given a still-fragile recovery, low inflation and the struggle some countries faced crawling out from piles of debt in the wake of the financial crisis.

In a news conference ahead of semiannual meetings of the IMF and World Bank this weekend, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde welcomed the European Central Bank’s stated commitment to ease monetary policy if needed to lift euro zone inflation.

“We are concerned about this potential risk of advanced economies in general, in the euro area in particular, that prolonged low inflation will hurt both growth and jobs,” she said. “It is encouraging that the ECB reiterated its commitment to use unconventional measures as needed.”

The Fund warned on the risk of a “hard landing” in China, the world’s second-largesteconomy, which it said could have negative repercussions on other emerging markets.

“However, the likelihood of such an event remains small,” the IMF said. It urged China to rein in risks in its shadow banking system and liberalize the financial sector to improve the allocation of credit.

Beijing is in the process of reforming its economy to allow market forces to play a larger role and recently loosened restrictions on movements in its yuan currency.

The yuan, or renminbi, has recently declined in value against the dollar, prompting worries in Washington that China’s resolve to let market forces guide its currency was weakening.

Lagarde offered a different view. “I took the recent increase of the band of the renminbi as the move in the direction of internationalization. I won’t characterize it as an intended depreciation of the currency,” she said.

COSTS OF SLOW GROWTH

Overall, the IMF urged countries to do more to boost growth, including through structural reforms if countries have no space to further boost spending or cut interest rates.

Growth is also a top priority for the Group of 20 leading advanced and emerging market economies, whose finance ministers were set to open a two-day meeting later on Thursday.

“The costs of continued sluggish growth are clear – there will only be modest income gains and gradual reductions in unemployment,” the IMF said.

But the Fund saved its sharpest words for the lack of progress in passing 2010 reforms to its voting shares, or quotas, to give greater voice to emerging markets like China. The reforms have been held up by the U.S. Congress.

“The delay in making effective the 2010 reform package is utterly disappointing,” the IMF said. “These reforms are essential to ensure the continued legitimacy, relevance, financial strength and effectiveness of the Fund.”

(Additional reporting by Leika Kihara and Louise Egan; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

Conservative California website quickly stirs controversy

SACRAMENTO — The launch of a new political website in California, intended to highlight conservative success stories in the Golden State, quickly ran into trouble on Monday when controversial promotional images cost the organization one of its highest-profile contributors.

The images, including a Photoshopped depiction of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) on all fours in a bikini with her tongue hanging out, prompted House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) to ask that his column be taken off the website.

“We didn’t condone them,” said Matt Sparks, a spokesman for McCarthy, referring to the website’s pictures. “We thought it was the right thing to do to ask for the column to be removed.”

Another image on the website, called Breitbart California, superimposed Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg‘s face on a topless female body. The picture’s tag line says the website will be “covering Cali-sized IQs & cup sizes.” Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown was shown with a body builder’s muscle-bound physique.

Breitbart California is a spinoff from the larger constellation of websites named for the late Andrew Breitbart, the popular conservative writer and provocateur who was born in Los Angeles.

“For years, California has been written off by conservatives as too far past the point of return, but the truth is every single day there are stories worth telling about the successes of the conservative movement in California and the failures of the left-wing establishment,” said Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon in a statement.

Breitbart California generated its own controversy with the image of Pelosi (D-San Francisco), which the Democratic National Committee criticized as “demeaning and sexist.”

Jon Fleischman, a conservative blogger well-known in Sacramento circles who is the new website’s politics editor, said critics “need to get over it.”

“The folks at Breitbart have always been known as edgy,” he said. “They made sure there was an element of that in the launch.”

Fleischman declined to answer questions about the removal of McCarthy’s column, and a spokesman for Breitbart, Kurt Bardella, referred inquiries to the congressman’s office.

Republican candidates for governor are using the website to publicize their platforms.

Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-Twin Peaks) wrote a column criticizing Democrats’ education policies, including a recent attempt in the Legislature to restore affirmative action to university admissions in California.

[Updated 9:58 p.m. Donnelly said Monday he had not seen the Pelosi image, but he was happy to have his column gain a wide audience.

“That was my goal,” he said. “It isn’t my job to censor a news organization.”]

Former U.S. Treasury official Neel Kashkari contributed a piece saying voters are seeking economic prosperity that can be delivered with Republican policies.

“Breitbart California’s launch can only help amplify the message and help us hold Jerry Brown and his fellow Democrats accountable for their record of failed leadership,” he wrote.

A spokeswoman for Kashkari had no comment.

Ron Nehring, former chairman of the state Republican Party and a candidate for lieutenant governor, wrote his own column about how conservatives need to go on the offensive in California.

Asked about the picture of Pelosi, Nehring said, “I have not seen the image in question. If it is in poor taste, it should of course be taken down.”

Other columns came from Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Granite Bay) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), a potential 2016 presidential contender.

Fleischman said he hopes the website can “change the narrative and change the debate” in California.

“There is more to America than ultra-liberal policies,” he said. “But here in California, that’s what is dominating. Our goal is to show there are other ideas.”

Modern Mummification for You and Your Pet

Photo © Summum. Used by permission. All Rights Reserved.

Atlas Obscura on Slate is a blog about the world’s hidden wonders. Like us onFacebook, Tumblr, or follow us on Twitter @atlasobscura.

Does a stroll through a museum’s Egyptian wing put a spring in your step? Are you seeking a more creative post-mortem procedure than cremation or boring old burial? Perhaps modern mummification is for you.

Inside an orange pyramid in Salt Lake City, right beside the Lincoln Highway, is a religious group willing to mummify your corpse. The religion, Summum, was founded in 1975 by Claude Nowell, who claimed to have been visited by advanced beings who revealed to him the nature of creation.

Transfixed by the encounter, Nowell, who came to be known as Corky Ra, felt the need to share his new knowledge in a new venue. In 1977, he and a group of volunteers built the pyramid. It has since served as a teaching space and production center for Summum’s nectars — concoctions designed to induce spiritual awakening, inner peace, and sexual ecstasy.

But back to the mummies. According to Summum philosophy, death does not snuff out a person’s awareness or ability to feel. Though bereft of a body, our consciousness, or essence, sticks around — and gets thoroughly confused by the change in circumstances.

“Most people are buried or cremated,” the Summum website states, “and this places their essence in less than favorable circumstances leaving it to fend for itself.”

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The solution: mummification. By preserving your body, Summum provides a “home base” for your essence post-death. Secure in this wrapped-up, chemically preserved corpse, your essence can safely communicate and make plans to move on to its next destination.

Summum’s mummification process begins with a bathing and cleansing of the body. The internal organs are removed via a neat incision, cleansed, and put back. Then the whole body is immersed in a baptismal font filled with a preservative liquid, the exact composition of which is a secret. After a nice long soak, the body is wrapped in cotton gauze, encased in a polyurethane membrane, and covered in layers of fiberglass and resin.

The final step is to be hermetically sealed in a sarcophagus, or “mummiform.” Summum offers lots of customization options for your mummiform. You can go with a traditional golden Egyptian look featuring ankhs and scarabs, or you can choose a simple, streamlined capsule. Regardless of what design you choose, Summum is happy to incorporate symbols from your personal philosophies and religion, whether that be Christianity, Buddhism, or Islam.

The entire mummification process takes four to eight months. As you might expect, it does not come cheap: Summum’s quoted price for mummifying a human — excluding the cost of the mummiform, funeral, and transport of the body — is $67,000. For a cheaper option, you could always preserve the family pet. Cats and dogs under 15 pounds can be mummified for $4,000.

Corky Ra himself became the first Summum mummy following his death in 2008. His mummiform, and that of his cat, Oscar, is on display at the pyramid. If you’d like to see it you can attend one of Summum’s publicly accessible Wednesday evening philosophy sessions.

Visit Atlas Obscura for more on Summum.

Photo: Summum/Creative Commons

Summum founder Corky Ra, who was the first person to undergo the group’s mummification process. Beside him is the mummy of his cat Oscar.

Photo © Summum. Used by permission. All Rights Reserved.

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