HILL HIKING
Mayor Angel Taveras and Brown University are locked in a nasty fight over upping the school's payments to the city. And the university's governing board has announced it will hike tuition and fees by 3.5 percent next year.
Coincidence? Phillipe and Jorge smell reconciliation here between the Angel of Prov and Bruno Uno, with the school scaring up some extra dollars to appease Hizzoner.
Now tuition, fees, and room and board for Brown students will be just over $55,000 per year. Hang on, let us check our purses, we may just have the change handy.
Turns out, $55K for a year of enlightenment on College Hill is just the average per-student cost. P&J have come across the actual formula used in the bursar's office:
SPAWN OF OIL-RICH SON OF THE DESERT
$200K or 750,000 Saudi riyals
EUROTRASH
$175K or 231,000 Euros (Act quickly, Papadakis family!)
SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF CELEBRITIES
$160K + two media-saturated visits per year by celeb parent(s)
ACTUAL CELEBRITIES
$150K + five magazine mentions with Brown affiliation required (Hi, Emma!)
WASP "LEGACY" SONS AND DAUGHTERS
$75K + $100K annual "gift" to Brown fund by parents for duration
JEWISH "LEGACY"
$75K + $200K annual gift and no yarmulkes, thank you very much
BLACK "LEGACY"
$50K + parents' promise kid won't protest or go on strike
HISPANIC "LEGACY"
N/A
ACTUALLY REALLY SMART
$30K
ACTUALLY REALLY SMART BUT NO MORALS OR ETHICS
$30K + 10 percent of all future career Wall Street investment bank earnings
ELITE JOCKS
$10K ("Loss leader" discount)
ASIAN GENIUSES
Free, but Brown gets 20 percent of all future IPOs and patents
NEEDY MINORITY STUDENTS
Free, we need you for the Benetton-esque photos in the brochures
NEEDY WHITE STUDENTS
Pardon? Oh, you mean from PUBLIC high schools! Good one! Make it $55K.
RHODE ISLAND ITALIAN SON OR DAUGHTER
Hey, whattsa matta, didn't we tell you about Columbus already?
BLOOMIN' ONION . . . ER, IDIOT
When those of us in Little Rhody are feeling down in the dumps about our social and economic predicaments, we know we can look to the Mississippi Delta region for some relief, certain that the states down there will outdo us in poverty, poor education levels, and political corruption.
And P&J are aware of the recent survey that reveals that those with right-wing views are most likely less intelligent than those who hold more liberal outlooks, but we would of course never bring that up. No, we don't have to remind anyone of that because of the likes of Louisiana's gift to the US House of Representatives, Republican John Fleming.
It seems amid the recent frothing by conservatives over the abortion issue, Fleming posted on his Facebook page an article on a purported "Abortionplex," thundering, "More on Planned Parenthood, abortion by the wholesale." The only problem is, the Abortionplex story appeared in The Onion, a well-known satirical newspaper, and was patently and utterly false.
The spoof read, in part:
"Planned Parenthood announced Tuesday the grand opening of its long-planned $8 billion Abortionplex, a sprawling abortion facility that will allow the organization to terminate unborn lives with an efficiency never before thought possible . . .
