Presumably the students attend a bourgeois institution because they have bourgeois values, in this case, a desire to get an advantageous situation reasonably well up in the hierarchy of the community in which they live and work.  That is, they’re playing the capitalist game and they want to play the capitalist game.  My suggestion below is a suggestion of how they might play the game without being taken to the cleaners to quite the degree currently proposed.  If they don’t want to play the game they’re playing then they should quit playing it.

dear harrison, CA has been ruled by democratic house and senate for 40 years and its their socialist philosophy and over regulation of industry that has caused jobs and business to flee. Will jobs come back to CA not until the dems and their regulations are gone

A: ‘My political hopes are, indeed, a long shot.  But yours are impossible, and therefore truly utopian, because they’re self-contradictory.  Government is antithetical to honesty because it involves some having power over others.  Possession of truth, knowledge of true facts, is advantageous: it gives power to the possessor.  Therefore, those who take power over others must deny them knowledge if they can.  And this is exactly what we observe.’

Ardee: ‘Amazingly short sighted , perhaps even desperate. The power of good govt is the power of the people, thus not abusive. The power of our current form of government is the power of money, a very powerful yet rectifiable situation. Excepting to Anarcissie who consistently refuses to grant wisdom to the people.’

“The people” being a collection of human beings, I see no reason why they might not be abusive, or would be necessarily wise.  The present power of money grows directly from the choices made by the people, as they are, in daily life, as it is.  Democratic forms do not appear to contain any magic guaranteed to make people good or wise.

A: ‘You cannot honestly take power over another person because you know, or ought to know, that the other is your equal.’

ardee: ‘Who, but an anarchist would posit that government is the taking of power, when it is the granting thereof. My every rebuttal has noted that we are in need of reformation of our system of government precisely because we have ceded our own power to the select few.’

You can’t give something without first making it or taking it.  In the case of political power, making and taking are the same thing: subordinating the desires and interests of others to one’s own desires and interests, generally through force or fraud or, in the most common case, both.

ardee:
‘My worthy opponent in this debate refuses to consider such reforms and has never, to my knowledge, spoken to what comes after the destruction of the government he so despises.’

On the contrary, I have given a lot of thought to such questions as how to effect a transition from coercive to non-coercive societies, although the general lack of interest in such questions does not encourage one to go into detail.  See http://www.1freeworld.org/anaprax1.htm for one example, anyway.

I don’t see much point in contemplating the general reform of bourgeois institutions, since I think they’re hopelessly tainted by coercion—he who touches pitch and all that.  However, I have often suggested short-term, particular reforms which accord with my prejudices.  For instance, in this conversation I suggested that instead of marching around with signs and being ignored by the UC administration, or occupying buildings and getting busted, the students take a walk for awhile, that is, engage in a buyers’ strike or boycott.  If any substantial number of students joined it, I think it would be quite effective.  The students could use the time and money thus freed to put together alternative, temporary institutions of learning, or engage in other forms of constructive or at least amusing behavior.  That’s a reform, not a revolution, and far less coercive and confrontational than seizing buildings and getting beaten and hauled off by the cops.  Of course the proper strategy is something for the students to work out, but that would be my initial suggestion—one to which, as I recall, you responded rather negatively.

Beating a dead horse…at least the meat will be tenderized.

My political hopes are, indeed, a long shot.  But yours are impossible, and therefore truly utopian, because they’re self-contradictory.  Government is antithetical to honesty because it involves some having power over others.  Possession of truth, knowledge of true facts, is advantageous: it gives power to the possessor.  Therefore, those who take power over others must deny them knowledge if they can.  And this is exactly what we observe.

Amazingly short sighted , perhaps even desperate. The power of good govt is the power of the people, thus not abusive. The power of our current form of government is the power of money, a very powerful yet rectifiable situation. Excepting to Anarcissie who consistently refuses to grant wisdom to the people.

You cannot honestly take power over another person because you know, or ought to know, that the other is your equal.

Who, but an anarchist would posit that government is the taking of power, when it is the granting thereof. My every rebuttal has noted that we are in need of reformation of our system of government precisely because we have ceded our own power to the select few. My worthy opponent in this debate refuses to consider such reforms and has never, to my knowledge, spoken to what comes after the destruction of the government he so despises.

as usual boyardee, is unable to refute facts just spout his normal communist left philosophy. hardee har har, the folks in CA have voted again and again about increasing taxes. What don’t you and the legislature get that they prefer to keep the fruits of their labor and until spending is brought under control nothing is going to happen. Time to start charging illegals out of country tuition let mexico make up the difference. Sam e fro healthcare, food stamps and of course sanctuary cities that aggravate the situation. The legislature should just shut San Fran off from any state aid

truedigger3, November 28 at 8:17 pm:
‘That mandinka is nothing but a another heritage foundation/Wall St. TROLL.

Looks too low-rent for Wall Street to me.  Archie Bunker stuff—maybe it’s supposed to be funny?

That mandinka is nothing but a another heritage foundation/Wall St.TROLL.
He is repeating the same bullshit that have been answered over and over before in this thread.
As usual and expected from him and his ilk, not a word about the effect of the obscene tax cuts for the corporations and the super-wealthy and the effect of Wall St. fraud and Shenanigans on California and UC budget and their investment funds which were decimated.

A: ‘You are the utopian, not I.  But onward….’

ardee, November 28 at 3:42 pm:
‘Onward or downward? I posit that civilization depends upon governments being responsive to the people while you posit that govt is really unnecessary and unrestrained, inevitably bad. So who again is the Utopian?

I think it far more pie in the sky thinking to believe govt unnecessary than to think we are capable of creating honest governance.’

My political hopes are, indeed, a long shot.  But yours are impossible, and therefore truly utopian, because they’re self-contradictory.  Government is antithetical to honesty because it involves some having power over others.  Possession of truth, knowledge of true facts, is advantageous: it gives power to the possessor.  Therefore, those who take power over others must deny them knowledge if they can.  And this is exactly what we observe.

You cannot honestly take power over another person because you know, or ought to know, that the other is your equal.

mandinka, November 28 at 6:53 pm

If anyone can find a shred of truth , or even sanity in this post I would appreciate it being pointed out.

Why the protests?? CA have the socialist governmental structure brought on by years of Democratic rule. The retirement system for any/all state employees is better than any golden parachute in the private sector. Coupled that with a job for life mentality and annual raises gov’t in CA isn’t cool its utopia.
The only suckers out there are the taxpayers, even illegal aliens get to eat from the trough. So if your a student and plan on working in the private sector get use to the yearly communist life style. The government there will give you an allowance based on what they think you need and they will take the majority of your incomes.
Besides if you got to keep your money you would just waste it

You are the utopian, not I.  But onward….

Onward or downward? I posit that civilization depends upon governments being responsive to the people while you posit that govt is really unnecessary and unrestrained, inevitably bad. So who again is the Utopian?

I think it far more pie in the sky thinking to believe govt unnecessary than to think we are capable of creating honest governance.

I believe in a guaranteed, livable retirement for all people over 60, and that college education should be free for all citizens through phd.  There is something of a generation war at work—since the rich UC regents are all older non-students who don’t give a damn about the young people being priced out of a college degree.  It is those free market ideologues chanting for privatization and poverty-creation measures, in California and elsewhere that are the problem, majorly.

“California’s old are stealing from the young ...”
It’s that kind of generalizing that I objected to early on in this chain.
  Most of California’s “old” are living on modest social security and have done or are doing what they can to help younger people, in school or out.
  Far too many older people are living in substandard quarters somewhere, eking out a minimum or depending on charities, many in poor heath without adequate insurance.  A relatively few, perhaps retired retired from military or corporate administration, have more than enough—if they didn’t lose it on Wall Street.
  If generations are pitted against each other, it creates just one more split in an already dysfunctional society.  People need to be brought together to cooperate.  They are easy victims when they are separated.
Generalizing is the most dangerous and most over-used tactic in propaganda.

ardee, November 26 at 2:41 pm:
‘Anarcissie, November 26 at 12:37 pm

Anti-government and anti-education too…chaos and ignorance isn’t much of a Utopian vision I think.’

You are the utopian, not I.  But onward….

Just a government is not synonymous with social order—governments often cause a great deal of social conflict—so it is an error to suppose that education is equivalent to knowledge, intelligence, understanding or competence.  The education industry quite often tries to limit or reduce these things.

However, I didn’t suggest that UC students abandon education.  After all, most of them need jobs and the education industry stands as the grim gatekeeper to middle-class jobs.  Overthrowing it will require more than my one-liners, or even a revolutionary moment among the UC student body.  No, I merely suggested a buyers’ strike.  As I said, the students can take a few months or a year off from the rat-race ramp and stop paying tuition.  Even a poor downtrodden minority can sometimes break the institutions of the rich, as the Montgomery bus boycott showed.  I believe even the credible threat of such a boycott would considerably modify the behavior of the UC administration.  There!  I’ve said it all twice.  I hope some UC students are reading this.

Incidentally, talking of buyers’ strikes, remember that Black Friday is also Buy Nothing Day.  Celebrate by staying home!

truedigger3

I agree that the American (and other western) middle class was systematically destroyed.  (In Eastern Europe, the alliance of the ex-communist political elites with Western interference is doing the maximum so that no middle class has the chance of forming.)  I think political elites today see the middle class as a danger, perhaps because they are an obstacle to profit centralization, or perhaps because they have leisure time to think free and are not sufficiently under control. 

I think the immigration is an example of how the middle class was destroyed, I would also mention modern feminism, which came about to suppress wages and decrease worker bargaining power (perhaps functioning families were also a place where discussions could take place, which were out of centralised control).

On the other hand the manufacturing issue has one other side to it: industry the way it was then, and the way it is now, was and is unsustainable due to its adverse effects on the environment.  This was not obvious during the 50s.  If our world was somehow more rational much of what is manufactured would not be, as the goods do not serve real needs. This is sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden: for example nowadays it is hard to get a simple bicycle in stores (with maybe one or three gears).  One has to buy the twenty-something gear mountain bike with other extra features added.  And many of our products are full of unnecessary extras.

The University of California system, surrounding the 32% student fee increases, has generated numerous protests on a number of campuses.  The story is being debated by the mainstream press as well as laymen commentary in the typical left-right paradigm fashion and Yasha Levine has written one of very few articles that starts people on a path of discovery as to what is at the root of the problems.

If the statement “As California Goes, So Goes the Country” is true, then this is more than likely the same scenario that faces many other State University systems nationwide in the near future.

1.Many billions in assets have been lost by the UC Regents through risky “alternative investment” vehicles as well as a heavy investment in real estate deals.  Approx. 20B in asset contraction from 2007 to the present according to their annual report.  It would be interesting to find out how much the of the current amount held and shown as assets are derivative based.
2.The State of California only supplies the UC system with 15% of their total funding.  The state cut 20% of this 15% which is being explained by the UC President as the cause for the fee increase.  This simply cannot be true once the whole financial picture is studied.

3.The UC system has received or is pegged to receive in excess of 700M in federal stimulus money.

4.There are over 3000 people in the UC system making in excess of $200k/yr with many making well over $1M.
5.The current chair of the UC Regents is Russell Gould, former Senior Vice President of Wachovia Bank and has been previously employed by various securities trading firms.

It is becoming clearer that there are many intriguing facets as to what is really going on with higher education throughout the country tied directly to the real estate and finance markets.  It would present some serious discussion as to the future of these institutions and how far they have strayed from their core function of higher learning and research. 

Have they become merely plutocracies meant to profit a small group at the expense of providing affordable education as chartered? 

One would have to wonder when as an example; at the same time they drastically reduce classes and services to students they are able to make a 200 million dollar loan to the State of California at a very high interest rate and sell $1.3 billion in construction bonds immediately after declaring an “extreme financial emergency”.

Re:T-Neck, November 26 at 2:49 pm

The problem of high tuition fees stems not from high pensions for professors, although the figures mentioned in the article might be exaggeration or special cases.
Maybe those two professors brought tens of millions of dollars to the university from grants and endowments or had important patents that is bringing the university anual hefty royalties.
The real adversary to the students is the obscene tax cuts for the super wealthy and corporations that resulted in less funding for education.
Also another source for the students’ problem is Wall St. Shenanigans and fraud that wrecked the economy and the state and the university investment funds.
Why don’t you protest the obscene bonuses to to Wall St. banksters and fraudsters.
Some hedge fund managers carted home in a single year about one billion dollars each just for shuffling paper destroying people lives.
Why don’t you protest the corporations who took their tax cuts and instead of investing here at home they are building plants in foreign countries and exporting those students jobs.
If the pension and overhead is REALLY excessive, then it should be reformed but that is not the real problem facing the students right now and will make a very little difference in the tuition fees.
I am not a professor and I don’t have friends or relatives who are professors.

Anarcissie, November 26 at 12:37 pm

Anti-government and anti-education too…chaos and ignorance isn’t much of a Utopian vision I think.

If prices (tuition payments) are too high, what the buyers (students) need to do is stop buying.  Carrying signs around won’t do anything, but a buyers’ strike will.  Unthinkable, because school is critical to your brilliant career?  Come on, step off the rat race ramp for a year.  You can always get back on, and while you’ve got some free time off from your future as a wage slave and debtor, you can do something worthwhile.

Alphysicist wrote:

“Another issue is the problem of unemployment.  The reality is: there are not enough jobs for everyone.”
_____________________________________________________

I think the unemployment problemstem largely from two factors: outsourcing jobs and illegal immigration.
In addition to the good manufacturing jobs with living wages and benefits that have been outsourced, now many professional and semi-professional jobs are being outsourced like engineering, programming, accounting, .
scribing medical reports and even reading X-ray etc etc.
The oft repeated claim that illegal immigrants just only take the jobs nobody want is a big lie.
First, if you pay people enough they will take anyjob.
Second, illegal immigrants are taking all kind of jobs, especiall the good jobs in construction and what is left of manufacturing jobs and the trade jobs from electricians, plumbers, mechanics etc etc because they work for much less pay and that put a down ward pressure on wages and benefits and is decimating the unions and their bargaining power.
The above two mentioned problems are very serious problems and has to be addressed seriously or the result will be the gradual disappearance of the middle class in this country.

I agree with those commentators who say that this article tries to pit the young generation against the old one.  It is rather demagogic.  But it’s not uncommon to hear this mantra: I recently read “Stiffed” by Susan Faludi, and every chapter in there ends with this conclusion.

On the university issue: yes there are problems with the tenure system, and tenured professors are usually mere managers who don’t do the work, and often don’t like teaching.  I think the dislike of teaching can sometimes be understandable: in many universities students expect teachers to bend over backwards for them. 

One thing that should also enter the discussion is that the University system itself has become a BUBBLE.  Roughly the 60s brought a change in the university system.  The former system, which had its roots in the Middle Ages, was geared towards studying, describing, and investigating the nature of reality through the intellectual means available (naturally this was imperfect, and biased in various ways depending on the time and place).  The modern university is a tool to implement pre-designed social transformation (using tax money taken from those whose children are to be transformed).  Aside from the ethically suspicious implications of such a setup, one also has to note, that ideology takes precedence, and the institutions become self-serving.

Another issue is the problem of unemployment.  The reality is: there are not enough jobs for everyone.  Moreover, in our corporate dominated world, few jobs really serve the benefit of the or at least a community.  It is thus better for our elites to keep the youth in universities where this problem is hidden from them for some years.  From 20 up to 30 students do a BA/MA, then maybe 5-10 more years some do a Ph. D. (most universities tell entering students that they do not have to decide on a major early, they can wait: of course then it takes more years, and they make more money), and when they come out they, unless they are priviliged to enter the tenure system, they face unemployment.  More importantly they used their most important/energetic years to study something that is usually of limited use, and they are too old to organize civil wars, which would be the means for positive social transformation.  So part of the role of the universities is to prevent uprisings, civil wars, etc., which the youth would probably undertake, if they saw through the system early enough.

A real problem with this is also, that their most creative years are often wasted.  Many people who could stay in their immediate environment, perhaps become good craftsman, go to study (often something of limited use, or with ideological bias), and their talents are not realized as beneficially as they could be.

To all you good but absolutely crazy people

        HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

NABNYC: Right on.

Cyrena: Great! UC used to be great too, and still is very good, but the Regents are more concerned with their investment portfolios and patents than with teaching students. Please don’t use “homeland” - too loaded!

By G.Anderson, November 25 at 3:36 pm
“…When jobs left the state, real estate became the only way for anyone to make money, so the state cashed in just like everyone else. But now that real estate will no longer be an endless source of income for everyone, the state is desperate - bankrupcy is looming on the horizon….”

Wow G. Anderson…as usual, your posts hit it all right at the heart of the reality. You took the words out of my mouth.  Good to know you’re still on top of it.

In respect to the real estate crash, that’s what really did it for California and Californians who believed they could live forever on profits from their real estate. In fact, for many who were never ‘born into’ any kind of wealth, it has become the substitute for ‘trust funds’. At my UC campus, we have a lot of ‘trust fund’ babies, but now that the real estate market has crashed, we can clearly see the difference between those who were ‘born into’ the wealth (ie the real trust fund babies) and those who created a façade of wealth based on the artificially inflated real estate market. When that crash came, (long before it had been officially declared as a so-called ‘recession’) a whole lot of folks have been doing the equivalent of jumping out of high-rises just like those folks were after the stock market crash that brought on the Great Depression.

Meantime, the faux rich aren’t sending their kids to the Ivy Leagues anymore, when they can do it a whole lot cheaper at a UC campus. That leaves us public education people (who could never afford the Ivy Leagues) out in the cold, and unable to even provide a PUBLIC University education to our current and next generations.  From where I’m sitting, it’s pretty stupid to out-price something that is so critical to the public welfare in terms of an educated population.

But yep, bankruptcy is clearly on the horizon. Didn’t New York go bankrupt several years back? What did they do to dig out of it. (Just curious, not even sure it was New York state or the City of New York)

I don’t doubt that students who DO have an opportunity or the means - will choose to attend schools elsewhere. But of course that breaks my heart as well, because I’m very proud of the UC system here in my homeland.

Still, with everybody else bailing out, I would most likely advise students to do the same.

This is in a nutshell, the epitome of what’s wrong with California. Where the state finds it expediant to screw people over in the process of making a buck. To say this is penny wise but pound foolish would not go far enough.

When jobs left the state, real estate became the only way for anyone to make money, so the state cashed in just like everyone else. But now that real estate will no longer be an endless source of income for everyone, the state is desperate - bankrupcy is looming on the horizon.

Students have been added to a long list of victims of the state’s lack of sound finanical policies, along with teachers, home owners, non custodial parents, the disabled, state workers, truck drivers, etc.

Of course, students aren’t happy about this state of affairs, and at least they have the guts to get up and do something about it. The bulk of the states victims seem too dazed and confused to organize.

Since Califonia, is down there at the bottom of education list anyway, where numbers cease to mean anything but bad, it’s quite likely that the flight from the state by those that have the means will accelerate. Now this will include students, some of whom may have options to attend schools in other states.

This dustup goes all the way back to Proposition 13.  With wages stagnant, California voters have rebelled against what they regard as being asked to finance public services for immigrants (legal and illegal).

This is a very misleading devious article, that a person expects to read in WSJournal, but not in “progressive” truthdig.
The real reason for the students plight, is not the claimed high professors’ pensions, but the obscene tax cuts for the super wealthy and corporations that has been going on for almost two decades that resulted in less and less money for public education from both the State and the Federal government and couple that with Wall Street banksters and fraudsters shenanigans and fraud that in addition to devastating the national economy and budget, it also devastated the pension and endowment funds at the time when they were badly needed.
Since 1993 California State budget lost about $180 billion due to tax cuts and just since Feb. 2009 the budget lost additional $2 billions due to more tax cuts for corporations.

There is money to give to Wall St. and its bonuses and to the super rich but nothing for the common folks and their kids’ education
After Social Security fund has been looted, now they are talking about “reforming” it by cutting benefits and delaying retirement age and saying senior citizens are getting too much!!!
It is the classic “divide and conquer” pitting students against the professors, young against the old, citizens against unions etc etc while the super-rich escape with the loot.

It warms my heart to see this crap exposed by so many here at Truthdig….This piece of malicious propaganda is nothing less than an attempt to pit one generation against another, and does it clumsily and rather stupidly as well.
I wonder who this author is to merit such a waste of space.

I was always struck by the disparity between tenured professors at Stanford (who often made $100K/year 30 years ago) and the remaining staff who struggled to make enough money to pay living expenses.  I saw an employees union start and grow during my years as a student for this very reason.  The university also had a very nice program to provide faculty housing at a much reduced cost.  The only pressure on faculty was to bring in research grants (which paid some of their salary).  And, of course, they had a very lucrative retirement program.

I understand the need to provide some security for a professor so he/she can do research without pressure from the university.  But I saw, all too often, professors who had essentially retired from their teaching obligations.  Very few taught undergrad courses (mostly teaching assistants did that) and they had, at most, a few graduate classes to teach each semester (with the help of RAs who acted as class mentors and graders ... my specialty for one year).  The students paid for this largess with their highest in the country tuition.

There needs to be a system that holds teachers to some standard.  A contract system might work and it would also be very good for the university.  At Stanford we had trouble getting new faculty because positions were all filled with tenured professors who weren’t doing much.  It was a real problem to get fresh blood and ideas.

The other problem with the UC system has to do with the range of the “faculty”.  I worked at the Los Alamos National Lab and was part of the retirement system because the university ran that lab along with a host of others (Livermore for instance).  Those people also benefit from the retirement system which is now broke.  Unfortunately for me, I didn’t stay long enough to be fulled vested and do not benefit from their generous payments.  It is a huge system that was probably never fully funded and is now facing the huge shortfalls that the stupid investment disaster has exposed.  I feel sorry for the students but also for the system which is basically broke.  Just another example of the disaster of creating these creaking monsters which come back to haunt everyone later.

So price the kids out of an education and their parents out of healthcare, but save the Bankers and the Warriors.  That’s where the true action is anyway. Don’t be stupid, actions speak louder than words and what do you want to do.  My advice, take the blue pill and go back to sleep, you won’t remember a thing.

What a despicable article that is truly a reflection of how complicit our media has become as a tool of our corporate totalitarian system.  Most of the key policies of the day in this country are being decided counter to public opinion even though the media is doing its best to promote the corporate point of view.  We don’t need to further degrade our educational system by going after teacher pensions.  The real outrage is that taxpayer money is going to the corporate war machine and corporate banksters at greater than $1,000,000,000,000 per year, and not that we are compensating teachers too much.  Only in Amerika.

Who is Yasha Levine and why is (s)he allowed to spout this divisive rhetoric?  Pensions are a very civilized way for society to honor and encourage hard work.  This pension-baiting only works to take the heat off the true roots of the problem here.  Try reading Consortium News for a better appraisal of what’s going on here in CA.  http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/112309a.html

Quote:  “Here’s a fun pension fund fact: Two of the top five highest California pensions are being paid out to former UCLA professors. One of them, Joaquin Fuster, makes $24,712.99 a month, or $296,555.88 a year. The other, John Schlag, gets $21,300.04 every month, or $255,600.48 per year.” 
  “The biggest reason for UC’s 32 percent tuition increase is staring right at you. Without it, the university can’t possibly keep paying out pensions to smug university retirees, who are guaranteed to receive them year in, year out despite the fact that their retirement fund is sliding into insolvency.”

Comment:  It’s very destructive to pit one generation against another and make like the old folks are virtually stealing from the kids (and especially use names of individual peope!

  Therefore, question 1:  Why the inflammatory tone?
  Question 2:  If the figures are honest, have the pensioners been asked to forego a certain amount of their pensions to help out?  if not, why not?     
  Question 3:  Have the rich university authorities, alumni, Board, faculty and donors been asked to set up a generous low interest fund for student loans?  If not, why not. 
  And 4: Have wealthy California corporations been asked to donate a small percent of their profits to a generous scholarship fund?  Etc. Etc.
  It would seem there are many possibilities that have not been explored—Am I wrong? Or is this just insufficient reorting?