Profiteering

[conarb]

Apparently there is a huge profit involved in transporting disabled people.

Shiv D. Kumar, of Dublin, was the sole shareholder and president of a transportation company catering to disabled people called A-Paratransit, Inc. when he underreported the company’s gross receipts by more than $4.6 million, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a news release Friday.

Kumar pleaded guilty before a federal judge in Oakland on Friday to one felony count of “making and subscribing false U.S. corporation income tax returns,” prosecutors said. He faces up to three years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 at his sentencing hearing scheduled for July 7.

Authorities said Kumar filed false corporate tax returns that underreported the company’s gross receipts by $2,229,216 and $2,412,435, causing a tax loss of $1,584,055.¹

Wonder how many short buses he has to make that kind of money?

In other news the University of Calfiornia has put up 20,000 classes for free online, but the DOJ has made them take them down:

BERKELEY — UC Berkeley will restrict public access to much of its online course content for a variety of practical reasons, Vice Chancellor Cathy Koshland announced this week.

The action by the campus is supposed to partially address a recent investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice that found the university in violation of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Department of Justice investigation was sparked by complaints from the National Association of the Deaf on behalf of two of its members: one is a professor at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., teaching communications; the other is in charge of web, print and video communications at the Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center at Gallaudet.

In a 10-page letter to UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks and campus counsels on Aug. 30, the DOJ identified several barriers to participation by individuals with hearing, vision or manual disabilities in the UCBerkeleyX platform’s Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. Those barriers included certain videos that did not have captions, did not have sufficient color contrasts, or had formatting, keyboard accessibility, or other problems.

The DOJ also found shortcomings in the university’s YouTube and iTunesU platforms, including inaccurate and incomplete captions, lack of alternative formats for certain visual information, low color contrast, and absence of closed captions in videos.²

So nobody can benefit from a free educational service if everybody can't benefit.



¹ http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/03...atransit-company-owner-hid-millions-from-irs/

² http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/03/22/uc-berkeleys-yanked-videos-archived-on-alternative-site/

 

[ADAguy]

Fair is fair, once educated they can work, no?

 

[steveray]

I'll do 3 years for $1.5million a year.....

 

[conarb]

I'll do 3 years for $1.5million a year.....

Go buy a few short buses and haul retarded kids around, looks like you can make a few million a year, don't get greedy though, just remember to pay your taxes. Why be a building inspector or CASp when the government pays so handsomely to drive buses around?

For years there has been all kinds of talk about putting famous professors' courses online for free so all could be educated, there are several university based systems now up where even 'lesser' colleges could incorporated into their courses, now this is being stopped by disability activists, "I can't see to watch the monitor so you can't get to see it either" kind of thinking. A Stanford computer science professor put on up for free and his course was watched by 700,000 people worldwide, mostly in China.

Stanford Engineering professors are offering three of the school’s most popular computer science courses for free online this fall, and at the same time launching an experiment that could transform the way online education is delivered.

The professors are taking technologies designed to enhance learning for Stanford students and extending them to a broad online audience. They are delivering lectures as short, interactive video clips that allow students to progress at their own pace through course materials. They are offering live quizzes with instant feedback. And they are testing new technologies that allow students to rank questions that should be posed to the instructors.

The professors also hope to extend the benefits of Stanford-style education to those who lack access.

“Both in the United States and elsewhere, many people simply do not have access to a high-quality education. By putting out this initial set of courses, we hope to teach some of the latest computing technologies to anyone who wants to learn it – for free,” said Andrew Ng, an associate professor of computer science who is teaching a new online machine learning course.

Formal registration for the classes is expected to begin next month; classes start on Oct. 10 and extend through December. All three are being offered in partnership with the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD), which brings more than 40 years of distance-learning expertise to the table. Both SCPD students and regular Stanford students, as well as the general public, will have access to the new online learning tools.

Students in the free courses are expected to read course materials, complete assignments and take quizzes and an exam. Thrun said online students should expect to devote at least 12 hours a week to the artificial intelligence course, just as Stanford students do. What online students won’t receive, however, is one-on-one interaction with professors, the full content of lectures – or a Stanford degree.¹

There has even been talk about all universality education being free online so everybody could get a free Stanford degree, then only a few would be invited to the campus to interact with professors, but I guess the ADA is going to kill all of this, they say problems with vision, hearing, and keyboard dexterity.



¹ http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/august/online-computer-science-081611.html