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January 31, 2012 04:38 PM UTC

Tuesday Open Thread

  • 65 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Scratch a pessimist and you find often a defender of privilege.”

–William Beveridge

Comments

65 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread

        1. Chris Matthews used to do it all the time and I’ve done it myself. I cured it by using only Bin Laden instead. We’re not good at keeping foreign sounding names straight.

      1. the Romney Republicans here to just surrender and stop defending the American system of free-enterprise capitalism?  No way, Jose, these guys are shaped from much stiffer hair gel!

        Damn Gingrich supporters . . .  

  1. Yep. (via TPM)

    $1.88 million of the $2.68 million that went to the super PAC that backed Jon Huntsman from its inception in November until the end of December came from his father Jon Huntsman Sr., according to a Federal Election Commission report disclosed this morning.

    Just to be clear, this asshole is 51 years old.  

    1. contemporary GOP choice for the nomination…openly admitting to believe in, you know, science and stuff…if I were his dad, I’d be really pissed off. I mean why didn’t he just flush daddie’s money directly down the toilet?

  2. My husband and I have sacrificed all of our 26 year marriage to send our kids to college. Still, we can only afford about half of what it is costing/will cost, at best. Why? CU Regents keep giving raises to overpaid administration (setting an example for all the schools). This last double-digit increase gave one administrator a nearly $400,000 salary.

    This is an OUTRAGE. It is UNACCEPTABLE for only the rich to be able to afford to send their children to college! http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-

    1. A chancellor’s salary at a campus comparable to Boulder, for example, is $457,000, which is $68,000 more than what CU pays DiStefano.

      Sooo…the admin is “overpaid” according to you, but underpaid based on their peers at comparable institutions.  Hmmm…I wonder which measure the Regents care more about…

      1. and it is not that any chancellor is worth $ 457 K, but it is rather what they can get away with.  I just don’t think it is right for Universities to jack up tuition year after year and then pay these exhorbitant salaries.

        1. is people wanting services (like in-state tuition being subsidized) but not wanting to pay for those services. That, combined with the Colorado constitution being the Frankenstein’s monster of legal documents, creates a wholly unsustainable system for funding higher education.

          All Nancy is doing by raging at the Board of Regents is pissing on a forest fire.

      2. $400K is roughly the four year tuition of 20 students.

        It’s ok to admit that the bitching is over something symbolic, but let’s not pretend that the money that would have been saved by not having a market value salary for an administrator is some huge cost saving measure.

        Blaming the CU Regents for tuition being too high is completely ignoring the real problem, which is that the costs have shifted from the State of Colorado to middle class families. It’s truly tragic, but higher ed funding is one of the few things not constitutionally required by the budget. State legislators are required to balance the budget, and our constitutional mess practically requires that education become the major victim of budget cuts in a down economy.

        It’s not right, but neither is some contrived populist outrage over administration salaries, which is a petty distraction from the real problem of properly funding higher ed in our state budget.

        1. and true it is not just administrative salaries, but other things as well.  CU’s campaign to re-create their logo IIRC cost a ton of money.  I also remember when Hank Brown restructured the office of the President and eliminated a bunch of superflous jobs there – it was a good way to lead by example.

          Maybe the legislature would be more responsive to higher ed funding if these abuses were curtailed ?  Who knows.

        2. From Nancy’s article:

          Last year’s tuition increase netted the CU system roughly $36 million in extra revenue, with the regents agreeing last spring to set aside $11.8 million of that money for a compensation pool to reward top faculty, staff and administrators.

          So tuition was increased 3% JUST for salary increases (out of the 9.3% total annual increase). At a time when there’s essentially no new hiring and most other people’s pay is frozen? That’s pretty crazy to me. And the regents quoted in the article all seem to say the CU administration deceived them about how the money would be spent.

          Things may be fucked up elsewhere too, and the low state funding for CU doesn’t help, but this just seems wrong. And yes, when things are bad, the people at the top should not be taking the biggest raises (including 14% for the chancellor, which Nancy is right to emphasize because it’s the most egregious).

          1. 1/3 of the tuition hike being spent on raises is too much. But, are you saying that University staff should receive zero raises? Austerity is all the rage, but we still have to compete with other university systems who are always trying to harvest top talent from across the country.

                1. But I’ll wade in and offer my thoughts.

                  It’s a complicated issue. Of course pay increases in that range would be more palatable, but CU is supposed to be one of the so-called “public ivy” schools. I hope most of the staff and instructors are highly competent as befitting a reputable school. As such, their compensation, and their raises, ought to be reflect both their expertise and the school’s willingness to retain them. I have no idea (nor do I want to research and learn at this time – I’m just interjecting) how well that stacks up to comparable higher learning institutions, which makes it hard to gauge how fair or raw of a deal this is for those paying tuition and other support to the school.

          1. The burden has been shifting from the state to average families for way too long. School is becoming nearly unaffordable, and when students can’t afford the tuition they end up burdening themselves with crazy amounts of debt.

            Public universities aren’t being adequately funded in Colorado, and that, unlike overarching national problems that you’re pointing to, is something we can actually do something about.

            1. to pay out of state tuition in Wyoming than to pay in state tuition here.  Like Ari, I don’t feel like looking it up right now but wonder if anyone knows whether or not that’s still the case.

        3. I read through the article carefully, and they make a good argument in defense of the salary increases. The chancellor has outperformed expectations in fundraising for the school, and was hired at below market rates initially. The school’s total administrative costs are still 44% below those at comparable schools.

          Tuition has been rising faster than the rate of inflation for a long time, as David mentioned. Losing administrative talent won’t stop it from rising further. Neither will a completely free market or further cuts to state subsidies, however. A comprehensive solution is badly needed. In my opinion, that should include more trade schools and adult/continuing education, not just four-year universities. Taxation to fund education might be more widely supported if everyone could see a real, measurable benefit from it, like the availability in their communities of adult education courses that can help them earn more at work.

          1. The only thing Benson loses by not keeping up with payflation is a whole lot of other greedy Republicans working for him.

            Benson is the same guy who told me years ago public school teachers are happy to work for almost nothing. “Ask them”, he said, “They always say they’re not in it for the money”. He went on to tell me (over the phone, when he was Chair of the Higher Ed Commission) that public school teachers were overpaid. “All they really need” (paraphrasing)”is to feel valued and appreciated”. If he thinks teachers will work for nothing and still do a decent job, why can’t he find some like them to be Chancellor? Perhaps he needs to stop looking for people to hire in corporate America, and start looking where the real experts in education are — in Academia.

            Second, if these people are so good at their jobs, why not task them with their increases being a fraction of the extra money they bring to the university? Let them earn their own pay increases. Working and middle class families struggling to give their kids a better life through education should not have to pay their exhorbitant salaries.

  3. “Romney cut off kosher food to elderly Jews on Medicare,” Gingrich said, stretching the truth.

    snip

    Having called Romney “pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-tax increase” on Sunday, Gingrich added the title “pro-gay rights” on Monday, in an acidic interview with Fox News.  

    snip

    “The conservative movement is not going to sit back and say, ‘Oh yes, let’s let Wall Street and Mitt Romney buy the election,'” Gingrich said. “So you’re going to see a real grassroots fight. It will be people power vs. Goldman Sachs and Mitt Romney.”

    Newt’s timer is ticking down but there’s no MaGyver to defuse this FAIL.  The blundering boisterous bombast is pushing into the red and soon Sta-Puft is gonna blow.  Damn this is fun!  

  4. Janet Howell brings up the rear, introducing an unsuccessful amendment to require invasive and unnecessary medical procedures for men, just like the Virginia Senate wants to require for women seeking to terminate pregnancies.

    Brings to mind the Eggmendment. If women are accountable for the well-being of fertilized eggs in the pro-life utopia, why aren’t men accountable for the quality of their sperm? Sperm damage is passed on to children, so I say put an amendment on the ballot to arrest men for child endangerment if they smoke and drink excessively. Betcha it’d get more votes than the original eggmendment…

  5. I ordinarily wouldn’t waste the keystrokes on a low-traffic blog like Peak (at least not here at Pols), but this is a bit too egregious.

    This is a diary headline over there right now:

    NUMBER BUMBLING: Obama Falsely Claims He Created 22 Million New Jobs

    It then features this video… where such a claim is NOT being made by Obama.

    He makes a slip of the tongue which he immediately corrects. Because he caught himself, it’s not even a gaffe. But the Peak headline, which gets tweeted without even the body of the diary for context (never mind the video), falsely reports that Obama claimed 7 times the true number of new jobs.

    This didn’t originate with Peak – apparently Drudge began reporting it, albeit as a gaffe (again, it’s not even that) – but this illustrates both their desperation and lack of scruples.

  6. Cancer charity halts grants to Planned Parenthood

    The Komen decision was perplexing to Dottie Lamm, a Denver newspaper columnist and breast cancer survivor. She has done fundraising for Planned Parenthood, participated in several Races for the Cure, and serves on an honorary advisory council for the local Komen affiliate.

    “It really makes me sad,” said Lamm, wife of former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm. “I kind of suspect there’s a political agenda that got to Komen … I hope it can be worked out.”

    They’re hiding behind the bullshit investigation teabaggers in the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations launched last fall as cover.

    1. Don’t donate to the Race – donate directly to Planned Parenthood as a substitute.  And tell them about it in an e-mail or something.

      If it hits them in the pocketbook – or perhaps even if they only think it will – then they might reverse course.

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