Pork King Rides Again
by Holden Watch
Hmmm. What Would an Honorary Degree from Harvard Cost?
A January 8, 2010 article in the Harrisburg Patriot News amused us and recalled some information we shared with a major taxpayer watchdog group more than a year ago.
The Patriot article announced a $400,000 federal earmark secured by Tim Holden for the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. "The funding, which was recently approved by Congress as part of the Fiscal Year 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act, will be used for curriculum development."
Here's where it begins to get amusing.
According to his legislative web site, Tim Holden's request for this earmark to House appropriators was for $2,752,000. They thought enough of Tim to approve less than 15% of his request.
More amusing is Holden's odd symbiotic relationship with the University.
The Harrisburg University of Science and Technology was founded in 2001. Offering undergraduate and masters degrees in a variety of engineering and scientific disciplines, the University awarded its first nine degrees, including two masters, only a year and a half or so ago.
We wish the University success and long life. It is very new, though, and it has been doing actual instruction for a relatively short period of time. We're unsure whether it has yet undergone and completed the lengthy process necessary to receive accreditation.
One thing is very clear, though "" its willingness to sell honorary degrees. Since its inception, Tim Holden, has either taken credit for grants from the federal government or earmarked something on the order of a million, perhaps two million or a bit more, for Harrisburg U.
In addition to the nine academic degrees awarded in that first ceremony at Harrisburg University, two honorary degrees were awarded, one to Edward Rendell, Governor of Pennsylvania and commencement speaker, and one to Congressman T. Timothy Holden, both "benefactors" of the University using public money.
Lacking a real legislative record, Holden bases his entire rationale for re-election on his ability to "bring home the bacon." Grant or earmark, it makes no difference. Holden will invariably appear with a cameraman and often a reporter in tow, to present an oversized phony check bearing his name on the signature line to the beneficiary of "his" largess. This is but his latest trip to Harrisburg University.
There's an amusing irony in Tim Holden purchasing an honorary degree and a new honorific with our tax money. If you check his bio, you'll learn that "Doctor" Holden had such an indifferent academic record in high school that he had to attend prep school to be admitted to the University of Richmond to play football, though he characterizes it as "winning a scholarship to Fork Union Military Academy." Holden didn't stay at Richmond, though. He completed his undergraduate education with a degree in sociology from a college in the Pennsylvania State System.
Sociology is a science the same way astrology is, which makes Tim Holden's Harrisburg University of Science and Technology honorary degree a supreme irony.
Want to be honored by Harrisburg U? Show them the (taxpayer) money. Tim Holden leveraged ours into an honorary degree, but it didn't improve his academic credentials.
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