On my visit to their model home in Heights in Oct 2014 I was proposed by Squarestone Homes to build a home.Based on their initial proposal of $200000 investment 20% of the project of one million they assigned me a sale contract of the house which they already had under contract with $5000 earnest money and hooked me up with Proffered Bank for financing.On application for financing, bank warned about the time constraint for closing property on time and advised us extension of the contract which Squarestone Homes failed to get it approved and I end up Paying $460,000 out of my pocket to close the property.
After acquiring the land the first step was to get the Architectural done, they advised me to go with his Architect as they offer better price and they can get the complete job done for me for $7000 fee ,I decided to do so,now after I got through the demolition of the old house and other necessary things done with additional $20000 of expense they ask me to sign a construction contract with them and pay them $54000 in advance in order for them to start construction which was never discussed or disclosed by them plus the contract is completely unbalanced and builder friendly with no owners rights which is unacceptable and on the other end on their advice I requested bank to extend the initial approved loan of $540000 to $600000 so I can pay them $54000 to begin construction but bank declined the request and denied the loan due to the fact that its against their policy to pay any one before the work is completed. Because of Squarestone Homes deceptive trade practice that they knew to begin with about Bank"s payment schedule for construction loans and they failed to disclose that they require 10% advance payment to begin work I decided not to construct with them therefore I asked them to release the Architectural plans or refund the amount they have collected from me against the plans but they refused to release the plans or refund me the amount, which is totally unfair and deceptive trade practice.
0 Comments
The longer and deeper you hold a beach ball underneath the water, the more quickly and energetically it pops up to the surface.
That's how Rick Hess, a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, describes the Common Core State Standards' rapid rise into the forefront of political controversy. [READ: The History of Common Core] While he says the standards themselves emerged from an "absolutely privately and state-led" effort, proponents of the academic benchmarks shot themselves in the foot and didn't do enough to drive a public conversation about what the standards were and why people should get on board. "No one debated it, nobody was really aware of what it meant," Hess says. "This was unusual in that it wasn't at all debated, even though it was big and national in scope, because people were just excited about the chance of being eligible for a chunk of $4 billion." [DEBATE CLUB: Are the Common Core Standards a Good Idea?] Hess is referring to an effort supported by the Obama administration in which states could receive Race to the Top funding if they agreed to adopt college- and career-ready standards. While the government did not explicitly name Common Core – or any other set of standards, for that matter – those who agreed to implement Common Core automatically qualified for Race to the Top cash. Some states, such as Virginia and Texas, however, opted to write their own standards rather than adopt Common Core. In doing so, both states were still eligible to apply for Race to the Top funds, although Texas did not submit an application, and Virginia was not awarded any money. In a statement, Gov. Rick Perry explained that Texas chose not to apply for Race to the Top funds because the state's application would be penalized "for refusing to commit to adopt national curriculum standards and tests and to incur ongoing costs." “Texas is on the right path toward improved education, and we would be foolish and irresponsible to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington, virtually eliminating parents’ participation in their children’s education,” Perry said in the statement. State leaders in Kentucky, on the other hand, were so convinced of the merits of Common Core that they adopted them even before the standards were finalized in June 2010. Still, Republicans in that state in January introduced a bill to repeal the standards. Now, legislators in many states – both blue and red – have begun pushing a flurry of bills to amend, delay or even ditch the standards altogether. Indiana, which adopted the standards in 2010, could likely become the first state to completely do away with Common Core. A bill that would prohibit the use of the standards past July 1, and require the State Board of Education to adopt new standards by the same date, passed the House on Feb. 27. The bill now heads back to the Senate for final approval before arriving on Republican Gov. Mike Pence's desk. State legislators in April 2013 approved to push the pause button on Common Core implementation, and Pence in his State of the State address gave a strong indication that the state intends to drop the standards completely. "Hoosiers have high expectations when it comes to Indiana schools," Pence said. "That's why Indiana decided to take a time-out on national education standards. When it comes to setting standards for schools, I can assure you, Indiana's will be uncommonly high. They will be written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers, and will be among the best in the nation." But there has been widespread criticism of the draft of Indiana's newly proposed math and English standards, with many people claiming they're too similar to Common Core. Kathleen Porter-Magee, senior policy advisor for policy and instruction at the College Board and a policy fellow for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, says Indiana's proposed standards are less rigorous when compared to both Common Core and Indiana's previous state standards. She adds that in a side-by-side comparison of the draft standards and Common Core, many of the English standards are copied verbatim, and others are tweaked in a way that makes them less clear. "Looking at it from afar, it seems like a case where politics was prioritized over getting the content right," Porter-Magee says. "Once you start making compromises for political reasons and not for educational reasons, you can go astray pretty quickly." Other states, like Connecticut and New York, are seeking to delay the implementation of the standards or stakes linked to the Common Core-aligned tests. New York's Democratic-led Assembly on Monday introduced legislation to delay Common Core testing, following a similar move by the New York Board of Regents. Other states, such as Florida and Arizona, have simply renamed the standards as the "Next Generation Sunshine State Standards" and the "Arizona College and Career Ready Standards," respectively. Even voters are rallying behind the growing opposition to the standards. In Florida, incumbent Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, faces an uphill battle with Common Core opponents who recently claimed they would sit out the Nov. 2014 election unless Scott reverses his stance on the standards. While they said they would not vote for Scott's Democratic opponent, former governor Charlie Crist, conservative critics of Common Core want Scott to do more of an about-face and reject the standards completely rather than make changes like adding standards for calculus and cursive writing and pulling out of one of the two testing consortia that have created assessments aligned to the standards. Opposing the standards could also be a winning strategy in the primary race for state superintendent in South Carolina, where legislators have also pushed bills to repeal Common Core and at least six candidates are vying for the GOP nomination. And in New Hampshire, gubernatorial candidate Andrew Hemingway is also embracing an anti-Common Core platform. In fact, the controversial standards will be "maybe the biggest question of all" in upcoming elections, according to Sandra Stotsky a professor emerita at the University of Arkansas, a noted expert in academic standards development and a staunch opponent of Common Core. "[It's] not what's going on in Ukraine, and not the Affordable Care Act," Stotsky says. "It's going to be the education of the next generation of Americans in this country and what is going to happen to them as a result of Common Core." While 45 states, the District of Columbia, and four territories have already adopted Common Core, to opponents of the standards the initiative seems like a stealthy attack on states' rights, pushed by the federal government. "People felt like they hadn't been told about it," says the American Enterprise Institute's Hess. "To people who were skeptical, they thought, 'How did you sneak this past everybody?'" Dane Linn, a vice president of the Business Roundtable who oversees its Education & Workforce Committee and was largely involved in the development of the standards in his previous role with the National Governors Association, says state leaders were involved throughout the process and were strongly encouraged to go back to their communities to spread information about the standards. But Hess says they still fell short, and Stotsky says the development process did not give teachers, parents and state legislators enough input or chance for open comment. "You have several groups suddenly becoming aware of Common Core – people that had mainly been bypassed in the original adoption of Common Core," Stotsky says. "The grassroots waves that have started across this country are accelerating." To Hess, a perfect storm of problems transformed the Common Core standards into a political football: a lack of communication, a fear of federal overreach and an oversight of practical problems that would stem from the standards – like schools not being able to upgrade their technology for the computerized tests, and the rollout coinciding with massive reforms to teacher evaluations that now rely heavily on student performance on state tests. "Frankly, I think the fact that Common Core became so controversial is pretty much a direct result of how ineptly the advocates went ahead pushing this thing," Hess says. "If they had been open and public and transparent and just frank about it with people, I think the Tea Partiers would have figured they had much more important fish to fry." Strong opposition to the standards, particularly from conservative Tea Party members, could be a reaction to failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, points out Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a supporter of Common Core. "For many Tea Party folks, they are incredibly frustrated that they can't repeal Obamacare or get their states to pull out of it," Petrilli says. "So this is a target where maybe they can blow off some steam. They actually could succeed in getting a state to pull out of the Common Core because it isn't a federal mandate." While opposition to the standards was smoldering, increased federal support for the educational standards seemed to light the fuse, Petrilli says. "In one word, it's Obamacore," Petrilli says. "That is their argument, that this is to education what Obamacare is to health care." As the issue of Common Core began gaining traction among conservatives, the Republican National Committee succeeded in passing an anti-Common Core resolution in April 2013, saying it "recognizes the CCSS for what it is – an inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children so they will conform to a preconceived 'normal.'" Since then, even staunch supporters of the standards have said that there's a need for adjustment – at least in the implementation. "When I said that the roll out of these standards were worse than the roll out of Obamacare, that's a real problem, particularly since I'm a big believer in the critical thinking skills that this strategy is supposed to do," says Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. Weingarten points to the $350 million in federal stimulus funds the Department of Education set aside to support the development of Common Core-aligned assessments through two testing consortia: the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. Common Core became controversial for the left, she says, when there appeared to be more of a focus on testing and gathering student data, and less of a focus on teaching. Likewise, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a supporter of the standards, has made it clear the rollout has been less than ideal, and that the implementation of testing, as well as the consequences associated with the tests, should be delayed. "While the state's new Common Core curriculum is heading in the right direction, testing on it is premature," Cuomo says in a new television ad campaign, according to Newsday. "It creates anxiety and it's just unfair. And their [children's] scores should not be counted against them." While President Obama continues to make education a priority for his second term, as he demonstrated in both his 2014 State of the Union address and his 2015 budget proposal, advocates of Common Core say the administration's strong support of the initiative could do more harm than good. "It's imperative at this point for the feds to stay out of it," Petrilli says. "It's now back in the states' hands to implement these things and that's where it belongs, and the feds need to just stay as far away from this as possible." LEONARDO MICHAEL a.k.a SEAN INNIS from Sunshine Beach & Byron Bay, Australia moved to Bali in May 2013.
I used to live and work with Sean in Byron (and witnessed his change of name from SEAN INNIS to LEONARDO MICHAEL). I had heard many stories about Sean but he assured me they were all untrue. just nasty people who used gossip and lies to hurt him. It wasnt until I saw first hand how he ripped people off and how he would bully and physically threaten to get his own way (including his own family and collegues). He was charged in March 2013 for assualt and vandalism. He bashed a Noosa policeman after being questioned over vadalising his ex-girlfriends car. He did not front up to court the following month, so he has a current arrest warrant in the State of Qld. He also has two DVO's (domestic violence orders) on record for physically assaluting family members - his own father and ex-fiance. I lived with Sean in early 2013 and was his editor for a documentary that he filmed with Fraser Bailey. I was later told that Bailey also had an altercation with INNIS and quit the project after he was pysically threatened aswell. In June 2013 when I asked to be paid for months of work I had carried out on the film project Leonardo a.k.a Sean went completely ballistic and took my $4k apple lap top from my arms and threw it in the nearby river, he also slapped me around and continued to physically abuse me saying "if i told anyone I was dead".......He broke my nose and I was black and blue for days. Sean a.k.a Leo has a large back tattoo of a PHOENIX - and a TIGER tattoo on his left thigh and a PANTHER on his right shoulder/arm. He also has the names of his 3 children MIA, YAS and JACK on his inside wrist. After speaking to his ex wifer Margaret Innis she told me he owed her $30k in child support payments and consequently will be arrested by AUSTRALIAN CUSTOMS if he returns to Australia (as he signed a document with Child support saying he would pay the amount owing over monthly instalments to pay back this debt- instead he skipped the country). He has now set himself up in Bali under his new name and is pretending to be a DR. performing intravenous vitamins in his various Villa's. He is currently in business with a lady named Isobel (owner of Villa Karisa in Seminyak). He is medically treating people and giving health advice with no qualifications. He also tells people he invented the Atlas bone therapy (Atlas Reconnection) and Candida Release. He did not. Atlas Profilax is the company he stole the method off after being trained by one of their practitioners and the Candida Release comes from the original creator Gail in Thailand. He was recently bashed in Bali after a drug deal gone wrong because he is a drug addict himself. LEONARDO MICHAEL IS A CON MAN ....................Word of advice. If you are thinking of going into a business deal or any kind of relationship with Leonardo. Make sure you do your research first. Ask around, as his past has caught up with him, dont be a fool like me and listen to him alone! Otherwise eventually you will be worse off. HE IS NOT A DOCTOR - HE IS NOT A SCIENTIST - HE IS NOT A MOVIE PRODUCER - HE IS NOT AN INVENTOR - HE IS A COMMON THEIF/THUG THAT BULLIES PEOPLE AND STEALS TO GET AHEAD IN LIFE. The host of intangibles that makes up the college experience can't be measured by a series of data points. But for families concerned with finding the best academic value for their money, the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings provide an excellent starting point for the search.
They allow you to compare at a glance the relative quality of institutions based on such widely accepted indicators of excellence as first-year student retention and graduation rates and the strength of the faculty. And as you check out the data for colleges already on your short list, you may discover unfamiliar schools with similar metrics, and thus broaden your options. Many factors other than those spotlighted here will figure in your decision, including location and the feel of campus life; the range of academic offerings, activities and sports; and cost and the availability of financial aid. But if you combine the information on usnews.com with college visits, interviews and your own intuition, the U.S. News rankings can be a powerful tool in your quest for the right college. How the Methodology Works The U.S. News ranking system rests on two pillars. The formula uses quantitative measures that education experts have proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality, and it's based on U.S. News' researched view of what matters in education. First, regionally accredited schools are categorized by their mission, which is derived from the breakdown of types of higher education institutions. National Universities offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master's and doctoral programs, and emphasize faculty research. National Liberal Arts Colleges focus almost exclusively on undergraduate education. They award at least 50 percent of their degrees in the arts and sciences. Regional Universities offer a broad scope of undergraduate degrees and some master's degree programs but few, if any, doctoral programs. Regional Colleges focus on undergraduate education but grant fewer than 50 percent of their degrees in liberal arts disciplines; this category also includes schools that have small bachelor's degree programs but primarily grant two-year associate degrees. Regional Universities and Regional Colleges are further divided and ranked in four geographical groups: North, South, Midwest and West. Once schools have been divided by category, U.S. News gathers data from each college on up to 15 indicators of academic excellence. Each factor is assigned a weight that reflects U.S. News' judgment about how much that measure matters. Finally, the colleges and universities in each category are ranked against their peers, based on their composite weighted score. For more details on the variables used, see the "Ranking Model Indicators" section below. U.S. News made a few changes for the 2017 edition of Best Colleges. First, U.S. News recategorized colleges based on the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. In February 2016, Carnegie, which is the most widely accepted classification system in U.S. higher education, released official updates – called the "2015 Update" – including to the Basic Classification used in the U.S. News rankings. The Carnegie classification, which higher education researchers use extensively, has been the basis of the Best Colleges ranking category system since our first rankings were published in 1983. The U.S. Department of Education and many higher education associations use the system to organize their data and determine colleges' eligibility for grant money. As a result of implementing the Carnegie system updates, around 12 percent of ranked schools for the 2017 edition of Best Colleges have moved into different categories; for example, a university categorized previously as a Regional University may now be a National University. Besides the ranking category updates, U.S. News also made a change in the methodology, specifically with how the class size ranking indicator was compiled for the 2017 edition of the Best Colleges rankings. Previously class size had two components: the proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students (30 percent of the faculty resources score) and the proportion with 50 or more students (10 percent of the faculty resources score). For the new rankings, U.S. News has created one class size index measure (40 percent of the faculty resources score) that takes fuller advantage of all the data schools report on class size. Small classes still count more than large classes in every case. As a result, this indicator is a more nuanced factor than in the past. Unranked Schools Schools are unranked and listed separately by category if they have indicated that they don't use SAT or ACT scores in admissions decisions for first-time, first-year, degree-seeking applicants. Schools that have test-optional admissions policies for submitting ACT and SAT scores are included in the rankings because ACT and SAT scores are still used in the admissions process for the students who submit them. In a few cases, schools are not ranked if too few respondents to the 2015 and 2016 peer assessment surveys gave them ratings. Other reasons institutions are not ranked include: a total enrollment of fewer than 200 students, a large proportion of nontraditional students and no first-year students – as is the situation at so-called upper-division schools. As a result of these eligibility standards, many for-profit institutions have been grouped with the unranked schools, because their bachelor's degree candidates are largely nontraditional students in degree-completion programs, for example, or they don't use SAT or ACT scores in admissions decisions. In total, 162 colleges in the National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities and Regional Colleges categories are listed as unranked. U.S. News also did not rank 84 highly specialized schools in arts, business and engineering. Data Sources Most of the data come from the colleges. This year, 93 percent of the 1,374 ranked colleges and universities surveyed returned their statistical information during the spring and summer 2016 data collection window. A ranked college is defined as a college in the National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities and Regional Colleges categories that is numerically ranked or listed as Rank Not Published. In total, U.S. News has collected data on more than 1,800 colleges. While all the data appear on usnews.com, only 1,374 schools are included in the rankings described in this methodology and given a numerical rank or Rank Not Published designation. We obtained missing data from a number of sources, including the National Collegiate Athletic Association (graduation rates), the Council for Aid to Education (alumni giving rates) and the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (information on financial resources, faculty, SAT and ACT admissions test scores, acceptance rates and graduation and retention rates). Estimates, which U.S. News does not display, may be used in the ranking calculation when schools fail to report particular data points that are not available from other sources. Missing data are reported as N/A in the ranking tables on usnews.com. For colleges that were eligible to be ranked but refused to fill out the U.S. News statistical survey in spring and summer 2016, we have made extensive use of the statistical data those institutions were required to report to the National Center for Education Statistics, including such factors as SAT and ACT scores, acceptance rates, number of faculty, student-faculty ratios, and graduation and retention rates. These schools are footnoted as nonresponders. Ranking Model Indicators The indicators used to capture academic quality fall into a number of categories: graduation and first-year student retention rates, assessment by administrators at peer institutions, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving, graduation rate performance and, for National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges only, high school counselor ratings of colleges. The indicators include input measures that reflect a school's student body, its faculty and its financial resources, along with outcome measures that signal how well the institution educates students. The measures, their weights in the ranking formula and an explanation of each follow. Graduation and retention rates (22.5 percent): The higher the proportion of first-year students who return to campus for sophomore year and eventually graduate, the better a school is apt to be at offering the classes and services that students need to succeed. This measure has two components: six-year graduation rate (80 percent of the score) and first-year retention rate (20 percent). The graduation rate indicates the average proportion of a graduating class earning a degree in six years or less; we consider first-year student classes that started from fall 2006 through fall 2009. First-year retention indicates the average proportion of first-year students who entered the school in the fall 2011 through fall 2014 and returned the following fall. Undergraduate academic reputation (22.5 percent): The U.S. News ranking formula gives weight to the opinions of those in a position to judge a school's undergraduate academic excellence. The academic peer assessment survey allows top academics – presidents, provosts and deans of admissions – to account for intangibles at peer institutions, such as faculty dedication to teaching. To get another set of important opinions on National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges, U.S. News also surveyed 2,200 counselors at public high schools, each of which was a gold, silver or bronze medal winner in a recent edition of the U.S. News Best High Schools rankings. The counselors surveyed represent every state and the District of Columbia. Each academic and counselor surveyed was asked to rate schools' academic programs on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). Those who didn't know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly were asked to mark "don't know." The score used in the rankings is the average score of those who rated the school on the 5-point scale; "don't knows" are not counted as part of the average. To reduce the impact of strategic voting by respondents, U.S. News eliminated the two highest and two lowest scores each school received before calculating the average score. The academic peer assessment score in this year's rankings is based on the results from surveys in spring 2015 and spring 2016. Both the Regional Universities and Regional Colleges rankings rely on one assessment score, by the academic peer group, for this measure in the rankings formula. In the case of National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges, the academic peer assessment accounts for 15 percentage points of the weighting in the ranking methodology, and 7.5 percentage points go to the high school counselors' ratings. The results from the three most recent years of counselor surveys, from spring 2014, spring 2015 and spring 2016, were averaged to compute the high school counselor reputation score. This was done to increase the number of ratings each college received from the high school counselors and to reduce the year-to-year volatility in the average counselor score. Ipsos Public Affairs collected the data in spring 2016. Of the 4,635 academics who were sent questionnaires, 39 percent responded. This response rate is down very slightly from the 40 percent response rate in spring 2015 and the 42 percent response rate to the surveys conducted in spring 2014 and spring 2013. The counselors' one-year response rate was 9 percent for the spring 2016 surveys, up slightly from 7 percent in spring 2015. Faculty resources (20 percent): Research shows that the more satisfied students are about their contact with professors, the more they will learn and the more likely they are to graduate. U.S. News uses five factors from the 2015-2016 academic year to assess a school's commitment to instruction. Class size is 40 percent of this measure. Schools receive the most credit in this index for their proportion of undergraduate classes with fewer than 20 students. Classes with 20-29 students score second highest; those with 30-39 students, third highest; and those with 40-49 students, fourth highest. Classes that have 50 or more students receive no credit. Faculty salary (35 percent) is the average faculty pay, plus benefits, during the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 academic years, adjusted for regional differences in the cost of living using indexes from the consulting firm Runzheimer International. U.S. News also weighs the proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields (15 percent), the student-faculty ratio (5 percent) and the proportion of faculty who are full time (5 percent). Student selectivity (12.5 percent): A school's academic atmosphere is determined in part by students' abilities and ambitions. This measure has three components. U.S. News factors in the admissions test scores for all enrollees who took the critical reading and math portions of the SAT and the composite ACT score (65 percent of the selectivity score). U.S. News also considers the proportion of enrolled first-year students at National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes or the proportion of enrolled first-year students at Regional Universities and Regional Colleges who graduated in the top quarter of their classes (25 percent). The third component is the acceptance rate, or the ratio of students admitted to applicants (10 percent). The data are all for the fall 2015 entering class. While the ranking calculation takes account of both the SAT and ACT scores of all entering students, the ranking tables on usnews.com display the score range for whichever test most students took. U.S. News use footnotes online to indicate schools that did not report to U.S. News the fall 2015 SAT and ACT scores for all first-time, first-year, degree-seeking students for whom the schools had data. Schools sometimes fail to report SAT and ACT scores for students in these specific categories: athletes, international students, minority students, legacies, those admitted by special arrangement and those who started in summer 2015. U.S. News also uses footnotes to indicate schools that declined to tell U.S. News whether all students with SAT and ACT test scores were represented. For schools that did not report all scores or that declined to say whether all scores were reported, U.S. News reduced the value of their SAT and ACT scores in the Best Colleges ranking model by 15 percent. This practice is not new; since the 1997 rankings, U.S. News has discounted the value of such schools' reported scores in the ranking model, because the effect of leaving students out could be that lower scores are omitted. If a school told U.S. News that it included all students with scores in its reported SAT and ACT scores, then those scores were counted fully in the rankings and were not footnoted. If less than 75 percent of the fall 2015 entering class submitted SAT and ACT scores, their test scores were discounted by 15 percent in the ranking calculations. U.S. News also used this policy in the 2016 edition of the rankings. Financial resources (10 percent): Generous per-student spending indicates that a college can offer a wide variety of programs and services. U.S. News measures financial resources by using the average spending per student on instruction, research, student services and related educational expenditures in the 2014 and 2015 fiscal years. Spending on sports, dorms and hospitals doesn't count. Graduation rate performance (7.5 percent): This indicator of added value shows the effect of the college's programs and policies on the graduation rate of students after controlling for spending and student characteristics, such as test scores and the proportion receiving Pell Grants. U.S. News measures the difference between a school's six-year graduation rate for the class that entered in 2009 and the rate U.S. News had predicted for the class. If the school's actual graduation rate for the 2009 entering class is higher than the rate U.S. News predicted for that same class, then the college is enhancing achievement, or overperforming. If a school's actual graduation rate is lower than the U.S. News prediction, then it is underperforming. Alumni giving rate (5 percent): This reflects the average percentage of living alumni with bachelor's degrees who gave to their school during 2013-2014 and 2014-2015, which is an indirect measure of student satisfaction. To arrive at a school's rank, U.S. News first calculated the weighted sum of its standardized scores. The final scores were rescaled so that the top school in each category received a value of 100, and the other schools' weighted scores were calculated as a proportion of that top score. Final scores were rounded to the nearest whole number and ranked in descending order. Schools that are tied appear in alphabetical order and are marked as tied on all ranking tables. Check out usnews.com over the coming year, since we may add content to the Best Colleges pages as we obtain additional information. And as you mine these tables for insights – where your SAT or ACT scores might win you some merit aid, for example, or where you will be apt to get the most attention from professors – keep in mind that they provide a launching pad, not an easy answer. Putin and his surrogates later clarified that he blamed the West, led by the United States.
The war in Georgia in August 2008 took anti-Americanism to a new level as the possibility of direct conflict between the United States and Russia seemed imminent--at least if one was reading the Russian newspapers. There were even allegations that the United States, in particular Vice President Richard Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, had encouraged Georgia to attack Russia--a claim that is the opposite of reality. Information Manipulation: From Rhetoric to Policy On the Russian domestic front, the United States as "the enemy" is used as a scapegoat for unsuccessful policies and to lend legitimacy to Putin's leadership. For example, the Kremlin has blamed the current economic crisis, which has hit Russia harder than many other countries, on perfidious American policies. Likewise, in foreign policy, anti-Americanism is used to unite countries against the common enemy and to promote a multipolar world vision in which Russia, China, India, and authoritarian states, such as Iran and Venezuela, would check U.S. influence. This concept of a multipolar world was formulated almost two decades ago by Yevgeny M. Primakov, leader of the Eurasianist school of foreign policy and Boris Yeltsin's spy chief, foreign minister, and prime minister Both Russian domestic and foreign media policies incorporate anti-American rhetoric. This became readily apparent after Putin's February 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference. He stated, "We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law.... One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way."This speech set the tone for what would become the constant refrain of many approved commentators and Kremlin mouthpieces in the media. After the eruption of the global financial crisis, the Russian national leadership began to blame the calamity on the United States. For example, President Dmitry Medvedev said the crisis was caused by the financial "egotism" of some parties and that the crisis is a harbinger of the end of America's global economic leadership. The Russian media soon echoed this view. As prominent media analyst Daniel Kimmage has noted, if one watches Russian television regularly, a viewer could easily believe that the United States is the root cause of the financial crisis. This message is easy to disseminate because Russian television is under tight government control, similar to the media controls imposed in many Arab countries. According to Kimmage, the Internet in Russia is subject to the greatest manipulation. On the Internet, conspiracy theories about the United States proliferate, especially about the U.S. role in causing the financial crisis to hurt a rising and more economically prosperous Russia. After eight years of Putin's presidency and a year of his premiership, little independent media remains in Russia. Russia's three main television networks--state-owned Channel One, Rossiya, and Gazprom-owned NTV--have a "black list" of Kremlin opponents who are barred from appearing on television. Moreover, the heads of the television channels hold weekly meetings with Kremlin ideological managers to determine what will make the news and how it will be reported, and what will not. Recently, it was reported that the news programming of REN TV and St. Petersburg's Fifth Channel, the two remaining independent channels, will fall under state control. Public Opinion Public opinion polls show that unfavorable views of the United States promulgated by the Russian leadership and the difficulties of the 1990s transition period have taken their toll. According to a Pew Foundation 2009 public opinion poll, 62 percent of Russians regard the influence of the United States as bad, compared to 15 percent who regard it as good. Likewise, a BBC poll found that 65 percent of Russians have a negative opinion of the United States, 7 percent have a positive opinion, and 28 percent remain undecided. Ideology and Its Tools In addition to the state-run and state-controlled media, Russian top-down anti-Americanism is disseminated through a number of tools, including Kremlin-supported youth organizations, think tanks with international reach, documentaries and movies, and the Internet. Particularly effective are Washington-bashing, state-promoted "talking heads," who are in ample supply. Many are nationalists and Eurasianists (a political movement that incorporates an imperial agenda with nostalgia for the Soviet Union). The Russian leadership uses these propagandists to create an anti-American media environment at home and abroad. Occasionally, it draws in marginal figures, such as Lyndon LaRouche and Noam Chomsky, to do their bidding on national television. Russian notables who are regularly engaged in anti-American propaganda include ultranationalist Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's ambassador to NATO, and Alexandr Dugin, an imperialist advocate and a formerly obscure philosopher, who is closely associated with the Russian military and nationalist politicians. Since becoming an influential geopolitical guru, he has received a professorship at Moscow State University and has his own talk show on state-run television. Dugin seems to receive ample funding from state coffers. He professes a deep distaste for democracy and considers the manipulation of information by the secret services as an acceptable tool in rebuilding the Russian empire. Other Kremlin-connected propagandists include Igor Panarin, an ex-KGB analyst and the current dean of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Panarin is the author of the infamous anti-American theory that the United States is on an inexorable course to civil war in 2010 and will fracture into separate, feuding states.Other propogandists include "political technologist" Gleb Pavlovsky, writer Aleksandr Prokhanov, and journalist and former "democrat" Mikhail Leontiev. Their job is to discredit the political opposition and to promote negative images of the United States and the West. Anti-Americanism as Entertainment Anti-Americanism sanctioned by the government also infests other Russian social institutions. For instance, an elaborate anti-American movie genre has emerged in Russia, in which Americans make handy villains and American society has become a mere caricature. It is a powerful narrative, which reinforces the image of an immoral, foreign threat to Russian society. For example, Brother 2, an action adventure blockbuster of 1990s, demonstrated the superiority of Russian moral values over American, while depicting the United States as degraded. The movie Aliens contrasts a group of highly immoral American doctors--including homosexuals, pedophiles, and an unfaithful wife-- with courageous Russian sappers working in a Middle Eastern country. According to Russian experts, the movie was commissioned by the government. Russian cinematography also features slanted historical documentaries. For example, Lev Trotsky: The Mystery of the World Revolution seeks to establish that the White House and Wall Street, as opposed to the Imperial German General Staff, were involved in fomenting and funding the Bolshevik Revolution. Even the Russian Orthodox Church is a participant, releasing the documentary The Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium in January 2008. The movie artfully compares the declining Byzantium to Russia during the 1990s. It warns against "Western" political reforms, which decentralized power, led to the rise of "oligarchs" in Byzantium, and caused its undoing. Youth Movements Borrowing a page from the Communist political manual, the Kremlin launched a number of political youth organizations and movements, including Nashi (Ours), Marching Together, and Young Guard youth movement of United Russia, the ruling political party headed by Putin. These youth organizations are loudly and violently pro-regime and often cultivate strong anti-American sentiments. One Nashi member declared, "Our idea is to stop Russia from becoming a subsidiary of the USA and supplier of raw materials." Regrettably, the Russian leadership is using technological advancements, which are often thought to facilitate greater openness and communication, to advance top-down authoritarianism and nationalism. Information manipulation on the Internet and through other media acts as a force multiplier for anti-Americanism. This is especially true with the tech savvy youth, a group that is often mistakenly seen as inherently liberal and sympathetic toward the West. This is patently not the case with youth organized by the Kremlin or ultranationalists around a xenophobic agenda. Advancing the Russian Agenda in the West The Russian leadership's public diplomacy campaigns against the West are highly sophisticated and proactive. Russia Today (RT), a television channel in English, Spanish, and Arabic, has become a highly effective public diplomacy tool. It regularly features Kremlin-supported commentators, who attack the political opposition in Russia and depict American policy in a negative light. Another significant instrument of the state is Russia Beyond the Headlines, which produces a number of advertising supplements in American, European, and British newspapers and is affiliated with state-controlled media organizations RIA-Novosti and Rossiiskaya Gazeta. Notably, its product appears in The Washington Post every other week as an advertising supplement. The Moscow-based Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, another institution targeted at the West, recently opened. This Kremlin-financed think tank has several foreign branches and claims to "study the Western socio-political system and offer recommendations for its improvement." Orange Webs, its first publication, reveals the character of this institution. The book accuses the West of planning and financing revolutions in post-Soviet countries. The think tank's position is on the fringe of the debate, but it is an anti-American resource for the Russian media. The Role of U.S. Public Diplomacy Public diplomacy functions most effectively when it has a receptive audience, a clear message, and a thought-out strategy. The U.S. government's public diplomacy toward Russia cannot be characterized in these terms. A comprehensive U.S. public diplomacy strategy should not only take stock of U.S. assets, but also evaluate what can realistically be achieved by cooperating with the private and nonprofit sectors. The Obama Administration's policy of pursuing a closer relationship with the Russian government will complicate any effort by the White House or State Department to formulate an aggressive public diplomacy strategy. The Russian leadership today views the United States as the greatest threat to their national security, and there is strong support among ordinary Russians for their country's aggressive foreign policy, especially around the country's periphery. Yet pockets of opposition to Russia's authoritarian direction under the Putin/Medvedev leadership do exist and need to be supported. Such an investment in American public diplomacy must be long-term, as it was during the Cold War. Of immediate importance is the need to cement relations with America's allies in Central and Eastern Europe, in contrast to the Obama Administration's policy of relegating their security concerns to the second tier as the Administration prioritizes the U.S. relationship with Russia. These European allies and key European powers, such as Germany and Italy, are currently under significant pressure from Moscow, which is using European energy dependence on Russia and carefully calibrated access to Russian markets to achieve its desired policy outcomes. Furthermore, faith in democracy and free market institutions has plummeted across Central and Eastern Europe, except in Poland and the Czech Republic, in part due to the current economic downturn. Clearly, the United States needs to demonstrate its commitment to its NATO allies in Central and Eastern Europe. This would signal to their leaders and to Russia's leaders that the United States is not in a global retreat. U.S. International Broadcasting, from Success to Hard Times U.S. international broadcasting remains one of the most important public diplomacy tools. U.S. public diplomacy played a vital role in ending the Cold War. The leadership and direction given by President Ronald Reagan and United States Information Agency (USIA) Director Charles Wick were critical in achieving this success. During the Reagan Administration, the USIA reached its maximum influence behind the Iron Curtain, particularly through Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Voice of America (VOA), BBC World Service, and other Western broadcasters. Their support for the Solidarity trade union movement and cooperation with the Catholic Church under Pope John Paul II were critical. During the Cold War, the contrast of ideas and ideologies between Western democracy and totalitarian Communism was clear and poignant. Broadcasts were penetrating Soviet airwaves even before President Mikhail Gorbachev decided to end Soviet jamming in 1988 as part of his glasnost campaign. Radio broadcasts played a critical role during the attempted Soviet coup in August 1991, during which Radio Liberty's Russian service was widely regarded as the only reliable public source of information. President Yeltsin later told Radio Liberty, "It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of your contribution to the Russian people. However, U.S. broadcasting into Russia has fallen on hard times. The strategic direction that made it so effective during the Cold War has disappeared, and deep budget cuts have proven detrimental to U.S. national interests. VOA broadcasts to Russia were greatly curtailed in 2008. The timing was inauspicious, coinciding with the Russian invasion of Georgia. The Georgian and Ukrainian services of Voice of America were also cut. As the Kremlin has tightened the screws on independent media within Russia, most affiliates that were rebroadcasting VOA and RFE/RL programming were forced to drop Western programming. In July 2008, VOA's FM service was curtailed. The VOA maintains a presence in Russia today via Internet, through podcasts and video on the VOA Web page, and on one FM station in Moscow. RFE/RL broadcasts into Russia have survived, but just barely. RFE/RL remains the leading international broadcaster into Russia, broadcasting 24 hours a day. Today, RFE/RL has only seven local affiliates, compared with 27 three years ago. The drop is largely due to the Russian government's pressure on local media. In this unfriendly environment, U.S. broadcasters' continued dedication to ideas and the free flow of information is critical, even if it is sometimes poorly appreciated in Washington. U.S. public diplomacy efforts and international broadcasting need to address those segments of the Russian population that remain faithful to the ideals of liberal democracy and individual freedom. Therefore, international broadcasting to Russia and Eurasia remains an important investment, and Congress should support it. While President Obama's budget would increase the international broadcasting budget for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) from $715 million in 2009 to $745 million in 2010, this is still a woefully small amount compared to the 1989 budget, and the declining dollar has forced deep budget and personnel cuts in entities housed overseas, including RFE/RL in Prague. At VOA, budgetary constraints and an increased focus on broadcasting to the Middle East have forced the BBG to cut critically important language services and to reduce the hours of VOA English broadcasting. Russia and Public Diplomacy 2.0 While Voice of America broadcasts to Russia have been largely silenced, VOA maintains a presence in Russia via the Internet, including a thriving blogging operation. The VOA Web site is one of the most popular news Web sites in the world, ranking as the 53th most popular news site--ahead of the Guardian, the International Herald Tribune, Sky News, and the Associated Press. The BBC ranked 46th. VOA is also far ahead of America.gov, the State Department's primary public diplomacy Web site, which ranked 5,439th in worldwide popularity. The Web site for Voice of Russia, VOA's Russian counterpart, ranked 100,460th, suggesting serious credibility problems with users. The high rates of Internet penetration growth in Russia and the high literacy level of the Russian population suggest that public diplomacy 2.0 is an important strategy to pursue vis-à-vis Russia. Russian Students and Exchanges in the United States One of the most persistently successful tools of public diplomacy continues to be the student and business exchange programs, which directly expose individuals to the American way of life. However, there is a great deal of room for improvement. For the 2008-2009 academic year, Russia ranked 24th in the number of students in the United States with a total of 4,908 students, far behind other major countries, such as China and France In 1999, Jim Billington, the Librarian of Congress and a prominent scholar of Russia, initiated Open World, a program of exchanges with the former Soviet republics. Initially, the program focused on Russian officials and business leaders, but it was expanded in 2003 to include other countries in the post-Soviet space and to include cultural and juridical exchanges. However, as with other exchange programs, these are long-term investments in advancing the understanding of American society and political culture. They are in no way a remedy for official Russian top-down anti-Americanism. Sister City Programs and Government-to-Government Cooperation A number of traditional U.S. public diplomacy programs remain on the books, but they are having minimal impact in Russia's political climate. These include the Municipal Partnership Exchange Program, the Community Connections Exchange program, the Civil Society Development in Southern Russia, and the U.S.-Russian sister city partnerships, which were launched by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 with the rather ambitious purpose of fostering "world peace."[30] The U.S. Peace Corps began working in Russia in 1992 in what was initially hailed as a new beginning for U.S.-Russian relations. However, in 2002, the Russian government shut down the Peace Corps program in Russia, charging that it was a "spying organization."[31] What the U.S. Should Do To oppose Russia's strategic information campaigns, the Obama Administration and Congress should:
U.S. public diplomacy faces major challenges in dealing with the growing and systemic anti-Americanism within and from Russia. While there is still a need for outreach to democratically minded Russian citizens through civil society programs, this may be more relevant to long-term objectives than to the present. Realistically, the U.S. should focus its most intense public diplomacy efforts on the former Soviet satellites in Eastern and Central Europe. Their freedom, thriving civil society, and integration in the Euro-Atlantic sphere continues to send a powerful message to the Russian leadership and people alike. Finally, the U.S. government should pressure the Russian government to cease its strategic uses of official anti-Americanism and to allow Russian rebroadcasters to access VOA and RFE/RL. Basic human rights dictate that Russian citizens, not their government, should decide the kinds of information that they listen to. Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Policy and Helle C. Dale is Senior Fellow for Public Diplomacy in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. The authors thank Daniel Kimmage for his comments and suggestions and research assistants Owen Graham, Aaron Church, and Khrystyna Kushnir for their assistance in preparing this paper. |
Smith JohnsonBorn in Caledonia Minnesota is a land acquisition manager in Pro Garden. He is working in the company from the last 12 years. He is a dedicated manager and keeps his client’s projects on priority. His skills in land acquisition has made him a famous personality in his city. Archives
February 2015
Categories |