Federal Regulation

If the Feds regulate so-called religious degree mills, what's next? Will they then decide what is (United Methodist Church) and what isn't (Serpent-Handling Believer Pentecostals) a real, legitimate church. The potential is there. Anyone who knows anything about Federal regulation and intrusion into society by having studied socialist societies knows of its failures. This is America. People are free to express themselves and choose religious and educational pursuits of THEIR choosing. Sometimes I wonder what the REAL issues are on this forum made up of many self-righteous, self-indignant, vain self-appointing police of American education. People are free to choose; Americans aren't so dumb as many of you think and can make up their own minds. They don't need Big Brother telling them where to go to school. God has given us free will and He has not chosen any of you to the profession of puppeteering. WE can make up our own minds, thank you very much!

 

Because this donation was conditional on special favoritism being shown to them. No favor, no "donation".

BTW, I probably have more experience with and exposure to inner-city schools than anyone else on this board and I'm well aware of their needs. However, a bribe is a bribe (even if it is tied to something good).

Now, if they had offered the donation without any strings attached, then I would be more than willing to sing their praises.


Tom Nixon

 

Tom Nixon wrote:

"Now, if they had offered the donation without any strings attached, then I would be more than willing to sing their praises"

Tom, I think you should start singing. Read the letter again. The only "string" attached was that an outside consultant would review the application. The board was free to do whatever they wanted.

 

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. They operate on a positive cash flow based on their administrative fees charged to patent and trademark filers. Their surplus is continuously raided by Congress for other functions, leaving them severely understaffed. They're criticized for the long patenting process, but if their self-generated funds weren't raided, they could hire more staff to deal with the enormous workload and ever-changing technical and landscape, such as biotech and software patents. Of course the case law changes all the time, too.

They occasionally make mistakes--issuing a patent that shouldn't have been issued, but the patent examiners are frequently trying to evaluate the work of BS, MS, and PhD scientists and engineers (obfuscated by the lawyers representing them) against the publications and patents from all over the world. I give them two thumbs up.

(Sounds like I work for the USPTO, but I don't.)

 

Hi,

Thank you for your response. Am I wrong that several years' ago there was some scandal in this office concerning the selling of patents to the hightest bidder?

 

Have there been any scandals at the U.S. Department of Education? I realize some programs may not be well run but I have never heard of any problems approaching the situation in Illinois.

 

The USPTO doesn't own patents and can't sell them. Only patent holders sell (license) patent rights. The USPTO assigns patent rights based on the evidence of inventorship presented in the application and the lack of evidence of prior inventorship by someone else (based on searches of patents and literature). "Bidding" for the award of a patent would be foolish because the case law is clear: the patent goes to the first inventor, not necessarily the first filer; the bidding process itself would be obvious evidence of fraud in court.

The government sometimes has right-of-use of certain patents by virtue of having funded the research or having done the research themselves, but that has nothing to do with the USPTO; that has to do with the department that funded the research.

If you look hard enough, you will find some scandal. I've already mentioned one, the occasional silly patent. You will be able to find some scandal in ANY type of organization, whether govt., religious, civic, business or other. The point is that the USPTO is not a sink hole for taxpayers' money; they make money. They operate pretty efficiently considering their staffing and the enormity of the task. And, they've had relatively little scandal.

 

There is a pretty good scandal brewing right now. According to AIM (Accuracy in Media, http://www.aim.org/publications/aim_report/2001/12.html)in June the Senate Committee on Government Affairs issued a report called "Government at the Brink". It says, among other things, that the D.O.E. claimed to have $7.5 billion in the bank, when the money was actually owed to the U.S. Treasury. The department's books were found to be off approximately $15 billion. If the $15 billion cannot be accounted for, the problems you report with Illinois might look mild in comparison.