Actually, George Mason University is part of the Virginia state university system. Even if the who Mercatus Center is funded by the Koch’s, it is perceived to be part of the University. In fact, it’s economists are always identified as with the University and I don’t remember hearing any of them described as employees of the Mercatus Center.

Dave, I saw this on Twitter last night and was profoundly depressed for a bit.
We’ve had this right v left struggle forever, but the deeply sinister evil of groups like the Kochs (and increasingly, it seems, they turn out to be behind an amazing number of front groups) is the way they are insinuating themselves and their point of view in previously unexpected ways.

It’s like burrowing into the DOJ by Bush era holdovers; they’re infiltrating where we least expect them, where we aren’t on guard against them, and eventually, they hope, their paid-for evil precepts will be the norm.

That scares me more than almost anything, because ordinary electoral politics can’t directly combat this kinnd of thing.

Thanks for bringing it up.

I’ve occasionally heard the Mercator id along with Geo. Mason. But even so, unless the name itself makes you suspicious (and for that you probably have to know Latin and have a suspicious mind), wouldn’t give it away for most people.

So when they had an opportunity to get $1.5 million, they signed away the right to vet their own instructors.

I think in the quoted article, there’s a quote from the university pres. or chancellor that “it would have been irresponsible not to take it.”

I see that attitude as in part a result of the decades-long shift to fund-raising ability as the primary criteria for choosing a college president. These guys don’t have the reverence or even respect for academic freedom that one used to expect from people in their position.
Now, like everything else in society, it’s all about the bottom line, and the money overrides everything else.
It’s a sad commentary on higher education, and our society.

My apologies if my comment sounded like a nit pick. I just wasn’t sure if David was making a distinction between GMU and the Mercatus Center as public institutions and mainly wanted to point out that GMU is public in case he didn’t know.

Regardless, this is a terrible development. Depressingly predictable. It is one thing to reduce government to get it off your back. It’s another to do it so that said broke govt. then comes hat in hand for your money so that you have even more control. Don’t know if that’s a bug, or a feature.

FSU Department of Prostitution.

I’m assuming the current governor of the state in which I reside is all for this and sees it as a positive of course.

If economics wasn’t the Dismal Science before…

You know, I’ve heard that Roy Rogers had his dead horse Trigger stuffed for eternity. I wonder if the Koch Bros have secretly taken Ayn Rand’s body for a taxi-dermy ride.

If they had her body, they would stuff it themselves. DP-wise.

This isn’t really all that scandalous. Outside groups have funded endowed chairs for faculty positions at lots of universities. And yes the outside groups do have influence over who gets the position for the endowed chair (after all, the group’s good name goes along with the position). If your complaint is that outside groups shouldn’t have such undue influence over public universities – then that’s fine, but don’t focus on just the Koch brothers.

While it’s a lot to readers here, $1.5 million to a college or state university would be welcome, but it wouldn’t pay for a single endowed chair, let alone allow the donor to remake an entire department. An economics one, no less, that will churn out donor favorable propaganda and call it “analysis”, all under the label not of the donor but of a state university.

A university worthy of the name, public or private, would not grant a donor – even one donating orders of magnitude more than $1.5 million – a veto power on faculty and other appointments, even for theoretically so narrow a program. (Veto power, like mold, tends to spread, leveraging a small donation even further.)

I knew there was a logic behind the GOP legislatures’ programmatic defunding of state universities. It’s preparatory to acquiring them.

FSU Department of Prostitution.

Every single large research university has endowed chairs funded by outside groups. Every single one. So don’t just pick on FSU here.

That’s sick, and therefore probably true.

FSU Department of Prostitution

Correct, but the moneyed classes prefer euphemisms like “Economics” and “Business.”

Serious Econ students can now cross FSU off their lists.

Serious Econ students…

That sounds a lot like an oxymoron

I’ve got a suggestion for the Penis Brothers David and Charles and those who support the myth of the “free” market–an inanimate object that adjusts itself: Take a trip to Russia. It’s time you boys paid a visit there–after all that is where your Daddy made his fortune, building the oil infrastructure for Joseph Stalin. Go back to Russia and you can see your Ayn Rand “free” market ideology in full swing. That’s correct. Russia has the freest market on the planet to day. If we allow people like you and the, DeVos, Mellon-Scaife, Olin, etc. families to mold our nation into the shape that can be best exploited by your plutocratic greed, Russia is EXACTLY what the USA will look like. In fact, we are already well on our way there. Detroit and El Paso being two of the most outstanding current examples.

In Russia today under its free market rule, the nation is run by “businessmen”. Russia is run like a thuggery, with a hierarchy that mirrors closely that of the Mafia with a few strong men in control directing the business. Vladimir Putin is the head of the family. The Russian people don’t even elect the governors of their states any more. They are appointed by Putin (“to avoid corruption” he says).

David Koch may figure that this is the only way he can become President–buy it by undermining all our democratic institutions. He ran for the office in 1980 and captured a whooping 1.6% of the vote. I guess most of “his people” from the upper 1% voted for him.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was hand-selected by Vladimir Putin. Medvedev after his “election” did likewise by appointing Vladimir Prime as Minister. Putin and Medvedev are two peas in the same pod. They have said that they will decide together who should run for president in an election in March of 2012. How cozy is that? [Their arrangement is made a lot like the “two-party” system deals in the USA that the corporation for the Commission on Presidential Debates arrange.]

Now a serious econ student at FSU is a simple moron.

Isn’t it a tremendous leap to charge that assigning the right to screen & hire for one specific program equates to handing over the entire Econ. Dept.?

I think that you are overstating quite a bit. There are ways in which groups who donate endowed chairs may have some right to have their position listened to in appointments but I doubt that you would find many, if any, in which an outside donor was granted the right to veto specific scholars. Universities–even private ones–have gotten into trouble on this issue in the past and have been forced to back down.

But on another point you are right–there is a growing danger of the ways that corporate funding may in fact be limiting the academic freedom and open sharing of ideas that are supposed to be going on in universities. Corporations often want propriety rights on research they fund and that is a huge problem.

We are especially going to pick on FSU as FSU is under the watchful eye of Governor Scottdemort as Pouting Baby well knows and has discussed in Cribside chats at FDL.

OT– Recall that “Obama Administration Begins Process for Passing Three Free Trade Deals” (by David Dayen, May 4, 2011). From CharlieRose.Com:

From Washington D.C. a conversation with US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner & Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan about the U.S./China Strategic and Economic dialogue that is taking place this week.

“US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner & Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan” (May 9, 2011)

I bet you’d have some interesting things to say about the film Power Trip.

Isn’t it a tremendous leap to charge that assigning the right to screen & hire for one specific program equates to handing over the entire Econ. Dept.?

No Universities have been handed over to donors for centuries. I can’t imagine FSU has that liberal an economics department anyway, considering its location. It just is jarring when something this obvious and raw happens. But we are becoming a primitive raw culture so I guess it is not that surprising.

Accepting the money is fine; colleges and universities do it every day. Accepting it with the kinds of strings the Koch brothers have woven into it makes it prostitution. It’s not a hard distinction to make or discover.

Not satisfied with funding private think [sic] tanks that disseminate claims favorable to them, the Kochs want to leverage their influence by putting out similar claims under the letterhead of an ostensibly disinterested public university. The strings on their money, however, make emanations from this program anything but public or objective.

I am stealing that! Perfect description.

Also my thought -

The selling of our tax dollars and the common to the rich continues under the name of freedom and lower taxes for the rich so they will grant us a few jobs.

Are the Kochs really Libertarians or just appropriating what of it suits their advantages? I’ve done some reading about Libertarianism and Ron Paul, tho he’s modified the philosophy to suit his biases, or maybe ignorances, is the only politician who’s considered even remotely genuinely Libertarian.

there is a growing danger of the ways that corporate funding may in fact be limiting the academic freedom and open sharing of ideas that are supposed to be going on in universities.

The majority of endowed chairs are not endowed by corporations. They are endowed by foundations or charitable trusts or the like. Actually the Koch endowment is from a foundation, not from a corporation. But they still have money and they use their money to attempt to set an agenda at a public university. The real issue isn’t what the Koch Brothers are or aren’t doing with their money, the real issue is about independence of universities.

Ned Racine was a FSU alum.

Not quite right. GOP-controlled legislatures have been playing hard-ball funding games with state higher education for over a decade.

Miami University in Oxford, OH, for example, is widely regarded as a “public” Ivy League school, one of the best publicly funded universities in the country, among the likes (though smaller) of UNC Chapel Hill, UVA, UM Ann Arbor.

The Ohio legislature, in effect, is in the process of privatizing it. That doesn’t just promote the interests of the wealthy; it has racist overtones, owing to the disproportionate number of minorities who are poor. Miami has a national reputation. Inside Ohio, however, it is the legislature’s pet school for the largely southern, white, rural, non-union parts of Ohio.

Claims that discretionary scholarships will make up the difference substitute a form of charity for across-the-board funding of opportunities for those able to make use of them. What became the norm for the two generations after WWII is now ancient history.

But FSU is the whore that said OK to no condom and any type of sex BEFORE there was any hope in the AIDS crisis.

Endowed chairs do not a whore make – nor do naming of buildings for donors – but this FSU agreement is the type made on the street corner with some of the most desperate people in the world.

The cutting of state support for the state university was indeed a great plan to turn over control to the right wing money boys.

It is interesting that the best selection of stories, and the most in depth coverage without bias, seems to be coming these days from Russia (RT.com is on the hotel TV in most major cities) and AJE ( english.aljazeera.net/ ).

Seems the US is being closed down as to media and intellectual discussion as we are remade into a third world nation.

So the Pentagon State Dept-run economic policy blog is called “DIPNote”? “Live Webcast: U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue” (May 10, 2011)

OH COME THE F ON!?!?!?
are you Fing kidding me.
they decide who gets to teach there and who doesn’t?
and some posters are saying this is normal? happens everywhere.
we are so FUBARed.
this isn’t the beginning of the end. this is one of the many many ways HOW it ends. ie. game, set, and match a LONG TIME AGO. now this is the the coup de grace. they’re finally getting their endgame.
F this.

The Koch brothers will get a ton of support for this based on the pernicious lie/meme that most US colleges and universities are totally, utterly & completely “hot beds of out of control liberalism run amok” (I quote because I’ve seen this particular rightwing rant so often – like in letters to the editor & on blogs – that I can quote it verbatim)… so it’s only “fair” that the Koch’s get to “redress the balance” in this teeny tiny very *insignificant* way, yadda yadda garbage in/garbage out.

Yes, yes, tertiary ed has had endowments forever, but this particular step by the Kochs is pushing the envelop in terms of *blocking* academic freedom.

Sure there *may* be some Univ Profs who pushed some kind of perceived “liberal” viewpoint. However, it’s long been my contention that the meme that Universities are forcibly ramming “liberalism/communism/socialism” down gullible students’ throats (and those same students simply have no means of figuring out their own feelings, etc) is a load of bullcrap. I know quite a few Univ Profs, and I sure don’t see it.

It’s all part of the dumbing down & brainwashing of US citizens by the fascists. Period.

Who, pray tell, controls the funding from “charitable” trusts and foundations? In many cases, it is their donors and those loyal to them who do.

“Charitable” status is not a consequence of function, but of the US tax code. One can influence distinctly uncharitable acts, or simply employ family and friends, by pouring them through “charitable” trusts. It is tax avoidance planning 101.

George Bush the Elder was touted as a grand man for donating a large proportion of his nearly two million a year in income to charity. Reading the fine print, the “charity” was often his wife’s “charitable” trust. The programmatic purpose is to increase the reach of family patronage – including the ability to withdraw it for those programs which don’t toe the line.

Few wealthy donors follow Andrew Carnegie’s example of making largely disinterested gifts to millions. He was hated at the time by his family and peers for doing so; they wanted the money and did not want the precedent.

Slightly OT (but not totally) I read a letter to the editor late last week in my local “nooz” paper, and the correspondent commented that *all* public schools (K-12, not tertiary) solely were into “indoctrinating” students to be “Liberals.” Correspondent also claimed that all the public school system did was to “brainwash” students to be “liberals.”

Not quoting exactly but that’s very close to what this citizen wrote. I find it chilling that citizens can be that bamboozled to actually *believe* something as ridiculous and, frankly, idiotically stupid as this.

But there you have it. No doubt, that citizen would willing bend over and take it where the sun don’t shine if the Kochs were putting out.

School systems are involved in indoctrination, but making students “liberal” is not part of the program. They more often want compliant joiners who know their pledge of allegiance (including the under God part). Whether students can stand on their own, read or balance a checkbook, rebuild a car or computer or deconstruct a good book or media commentary are not necessarily skills one learns in secondary school. Private schools are more heavily into indoctrination, be it religious, political or economic, whatever most interests those who fund them.

Those institutional criticisms aside, there are a plethora of teachers who work bloody hard to help their students be and learn as much as they can.

I agree with your take on that, per usual. Teachers are mostly all very hard working and now very unsung heros.

Any indoctrination being done, esp at the K-12 level, is to mold young citizens into being compliant. In the past, it also had a little more to do with some kind of training to go into the workforce. These days, that’s flown out of the window, sadly.

“You aren’t too smart, are you. I like that in a man.”

The cutting of state support for the state university was indeed a great plan to turn over control to the right wing money boys.

I’m sorry, but this is just far too paranoid. State support for public universities has been declining across the board, in red states and in blue states, for a long time now. It isn’t some plot by Republicans to hand over the keys for the Chancellor’s Office to the Koch Brothers. State support has been declining for a number of reasons, many of which are justified, none of which include some right-wing plot.

The recent kerfluffle over a NYC school’s granting an honorary doctorate to a critic of Israel is evidence that large donors routinely influence public and private universities alike. Sometimes that donor includes the USG (or its armed forces). But it’s usually a fight involving the donor, the public, alumni, academic heads and administration CEO’s.

Publicity often derails explicit overreaching donor control, but only because many inside a university join with alums and the public in pointing out how bad that would be for the university to accept such overt power being wielded by those interested in their own influence, not the university’s mission.

The Koch brothers are unusual in using more muscle, less restraint, and putting it in writing.

The Kochs are interested in abusing the rule against perpetuities, they want to rule in perpetuity.

“A university worthy of the name, public or private, would not grant a donor – even one donating orders of magnitude more than $1.5 million – a veto power on faculty and other appointments, even for theoretically so narrow a program. (Veto power, like mold, tends to spread, leveraging a small donation even further.)”

You’re assuming that FSU is a university worthy of the name. If it accepts this donation, that’s put into question.

This is absolutely infuriating. I mean, it’s Florida, so it should be expected, but still.

Even so, I’m not shedding any tears over the destruction of liberal institutions. Results like this are inevitable when you compromise with the thieving, filthy, sociopathic bourgeois class.

Fucking liberals. Liberal = the one chicken that promises all the other chickens everything is going to be just fine after we ink this here compromise with the fox and let him into the henhouse.

It is obvious to the point of being axiomatic that defunding public universities is an explicit GOP program. As is defunding unions, public libraries, and other public programs that combine to form the weak thing called the American social safety net. So, too, is making any tax increase, no matter how worthy, necessary or beneficial, political suicide.

The programs now being pursued by Republican governors in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin are only the most recent and most overt actions in a decades’ long goal to drown not government, but government programs for the commoner, in the tax avoidance bathtub.

Presidential and congressional campaigns, a stream of pundits and think tanks, are built around such goals. It would be propaganda to argue otherwise.

No paranoia, that is the plan. Red or Blue state the goal is the destruction of PUBLIC education. Dems have become suckers for the ‘government is the problem’ propaganda over the past 50 years.

Just what florida needs, more ignorance.

Florida is already in last place among the 50 states in funding public education. The wealthy on their private islands and in their gated communities, or who only visit during bouts of pleasant weather, don’t much care for local schools, police, fire, rail, roads, emergency services, the lot. They care about their banks, their homes, their food, drink, sand, golf and the airport.

Those who live and work in Florida care about a few more things, but not Governor Scott. He just wants to be preznit some day, and thinks mismanaging Florida while en route to the White House is easier than stealing Medicare payments.

I did oversimplify. But one could classify the legislatures in states as donors to the publicly funded universities.

But your point is worth emphasizing. Yes. Even the vestiges of academic freedom in the universities, as with the secondary schools, have been disappearing under right wing assaults for the past 30-40 years.

NMRon you can’t be serious, can you? I doubt you could find 1 Republican in 10 who wanted to eliminate public education. Heck, only 35% of Republicans favored cutting federal money to public education.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/145790/Americans-Oppose-Cuts-Education-Social-Security-Defense.aspx
===Edited In Moderation===

===ModNote: Comments designed to provoke or inflame are prohibited, and are subject to moderation.===

Just like the ‘rich’ can never have too much money, red-neck Floridians can never have too much ignorance. Their election of (p)rick Scott shows they’ve got a fair amount already . . . but certainly not ‘too much.’ But I’m sure they’ll keep working, and this 1.5 million will surely help.

Is it time to dust off the pitchforks and torches and give ‘em the Marie Antoinette treatment?

===Mod Note: Careful not to cross the line into the advocacy of violence.===

I didn’t say endowed chairs. I said corporate funding of research. That is a separate issue. It is important to keep them apart because the latter is far more prevalent than the former problem.

The Ayan Randians are winning with a long term strategy that began about 60 years ago. They’ve wormed their way into control of our politicians and this has led to a corporate state that has starved the public of needed funding for education, health care, and infrastructure development. Thus we have roads, bridges, and toll ways sold off to private interests. Educational institutions are at the mercy of these vultures because the public funding is not there so they have to turn to their executioners of public funding to fund needed positions. This is all because of the Democrats buying into this garbage called “free market ideology” with groups like the New Democrat Network and the Democratic Leadership Council. Before we had a party that was willing to stand up for the worker and the little guy, now they feed at the same troughs as the right. These conservadems disdain progressives and liberals. They’ve taken our party and led it off a damned cliff. The Clintons and Obamas see nothing wrong with this intrusion into academic freedom, either from rich billionaires or from religious zealouts. So who’s left to fight for our acedemic and religious freedom, the answer is us. The question is when will we wake up and realize our party is not the protector of the little guy and freedom it used to be, and when do we take our party back from the money guys of the ilk of the DLC and the like. Clinton’s apologies about signing so much deregulation are hollow to me, after so many lives have been destroyed. Any student of history, of which Clinton claimed to be, understood why these corporate bastards were put out to pasture, and he opened the barn door along with Newt, Phil Graham, Bob Rubin, Larry Summers, et al. and let them back to break the damned barn. When will we take our party back is the only question left for Progressives and Liberals.

The issue is which “1 in 10″ GOP’ers have control of state education budgets. And since when have public opinion polls influenced GOP lawmakers? They haven’t had much influence on the recent actions of governors in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin.

Cutting funding to public employee retirements, eradicating public employee union rights, are also cuts to state funding in higher education, though indirect ones, since employees of state universities make up a big chunk of those employees.

A 90% tax rate ends this shit real quick and this is the exact reason to return to the good ole days of reasonable 90% tax rate to mitigate insatiable greed that otherwise would consume our country .

Gee maybe we’re all born liberal except a few ?

earlofhuntingdon: the point is, the idea that Republicans want to “eliminate public education” is not supported by the evidence and, quite frankly, I believe stems from the same paranoid mindset that begets such falsehoods as the “Obama is a secret Kenyan Muslim” nonsense. The poll I cited is of Republicans. Not even Republicans want to “eliminate public education”. Instead of trying to invent some evil motivation for Republicans, might I suggest instead attempting to walk a mile in their shoes? That is, try to understand how Republicans view the world, instead of trying to interpret their actions through your frame of reference.

Claiming that the issue is to “eliminate public education” is a classic strawman, taking an extreme example not being argued in order to debunk a valid argument.

Pairing it with an extreme counter example, Obama’s secret religion, reinforces the misdirection initiated by the strawman. The counter example is a threefer: it repeats an allegation that is untrue; the allegation is paranoid; the allegation is ethnocentric and racist, because it assumes that being a black African Muslim is reprehensible or treasonous. Nicely done.

The issue at hand here – apart from academic integrity and freedom from undue influence – is that Republicans very much want to defund public higher education, to restrict access to it by those less financially well off, which is a growing percentage of Americans. We’ve already cited several recent examples.

As with the Wisconsin’s governor’s claim that his draconian cuts are an attempt at better stewardship – when in fact they are unrelated to managing his self-created budget crisis – the claim that cuts in higher education funding are “forced” on reluctant legislatures owing to a lack of funds is untrue in some cases, only partly true in others.

A typical argument from the right – reasonable sounding in a David Brooksian sense, but not in light of the players in contemporary politics – is that it is the left that must compromise, that must walk a mile in its opposition’s shoes. Another lovely, indeed, a biblical construct. It is hackneyed, but rhetorically useful, in that retains residual emotional appeal to the values progressives hold dear. It is predatory in that it lacks mutuality. Mr. Boehner, the Randites, the Tea Party regard “compromise” – the mutual giving up of cherished wishes in order to achieve some jointly desired common wish – the way Imperial Japanese troops regarded surrender. The right no longer values or rewards compromise; it just ups the ante. See, raising the government debt ceiling.

Liberals needn’t invent examples of predatory Republican behavior; Republicans and some Democrats provide fresh examples every day.

Claiming that the issue is to “eliminate public education” is a classic strawman, taking an extreme example not being argued in order to debunk a valid argument.

Umm, no – that was NMRon’s exact claim. Take it up with him if you think it’s a strawman.

Republicans very much want to defund public higher education, to restrict access to it by those less financially well off, which is a growing percentage of Americans. We’ve already cited several recent examples.

No, earl, that’s just not true. Many Republicans have ideological objections to some of the content that is taught in higher ed – that is true. Many Republicans also believe that a college degree is overrated – which a lot of Democrats might also agree with as well. But to say that Republicans, en bloc, want to “defund public higher education”? I honestly don’t know where you get such claims. Not even the reddest of red states has attempted this. Every single state has publicly funded universities. Objecting to generous pensions of public employees (not just professors!) is quite separate from “going after” higher education specifically. Objecting to the corrupt cycle of influence between public sector unions and their donations to legislators who then appoint the representatives who sit opposite the unions in a supposedly “adversarial” bargaining position is, again, quite separate from “going after” higher education, especially when you consider that college professors have a unionization rate much lower than most other public sector employees.

the claim that cuts in higher education funding are “forced” on reluctant legislatures owing to a lack of funds is untrue in some cases, only partly true in others.

That is not the claim I made. The claim I made is that state support for public universities has fallen across the board, everywhere, regardless of who’s in charge of the legislature. It’s not ideological, it is fiscal and it is political and it is practical. College is viewed more as a luxury than other budget priorities, such as, say, K-12 education or public safety. So, in bad times, public support for higher ed is quicker to be cut than these other priorities. And in good times, politicians tend to expand the infrastructure, instead of investing to improve the already existing infrastructure. This is partly because legislators want to “bring home the bacon” in the form of a university in the legislator’s district. This is why, in many states, you see a whole bunch of small, struggling public colleges. And once the college is opened, it is near impossible to close it even if the state and the taxpayers would be better off if it did, because the college itself becomes its own special interest advocating for a piece of the pie, and it has its own built-in legislative support in the form of the legislators whose home districts are affected by the college.

These are all reasonable, common-sense arguments, but they don’t cast Republicans in the role of villains. So these arguments tend to be discounted in your mind. Instead you over-emphasized the ideological arguments, because that is what appeals to your pre-existing worldview generally. I think you suffer from confirmation bias. It is completely natural to do so, and it takes real effort to overcome it. I haven’t overcome it, but I at least try to recognize when it exists. To really work at overcoming it, you have to be really willing to see the world through the eyes of your opponent. Yeah it sounds a little hackneyed but it is effective. Your bias is so strong that you aren’t even willing to consider my request to “walk a mile in a Republican’s shoes” – because you believe Republicans don’t do this either? See there you go – you discount my suggestion because you are determined to cast Republicans in the role of villains even when they don’t deserve to be there. It is not a sneaky trick to co-opt progressive values.

Of course it’s ideological, but then denying it is part of the ideology. Scott Walker admitted it when he said that his campaign against public sector unions was not about cutting the deficits his tax cuts greatly enlarged. He and several of his Republican peers are attempting the same slash and burn economics that were tried and failed in Ireland, and which are in the process of failing in the UK. I’ll leave it to you to explain what’s not anti-union or anti-education to the teachers and librarians throughout the Midwest.

Public pensions, like public employment, appear “generous” today because of the way that private corporations have slashed pensions, benefits and pay for all but the top wage earners since 1980. That came about owing to concerted policy, not by chance.

The current legislative funding cycle is to keep a lid on demands in good times, not reinvest, and to make draconian cuts in bad. The cuts involve not just higher education, but public services generally, and the ill-thought out and ultimately expensive sale of public assets into private hands. The upside you predict in good times will come about as soon as the positive effects of tax cuts for the wealthy actually begin to trickle down to those who aren’t, which the past thirty years of trying it suggest will happen about as soon as Godot arrives at the bus stop.

Your insistence that Republican politicians really, truly want what’s best for America ignores the clear and obvious impact of their policies on Main Street Americans. It ignores the ideological homage they pay to the goddess of selfishness. Rand, Boehner, Paul, McConnell would no more walk a mile in a Wobbly’s shoes than marry one.

A casual acquaintance with Republican behavior the last ten years, the last two, or the last six months, make clear that it is not possible to compromise with opponents who don’t believe in compromise. It is a good way to give them the spotlight, to derail your own efforts, and to increase their demands for more. In any event, compromise is sometimes an outcome of political negotiations; it is not a successful opening bid.

Nice how conservatives admonish liberals that we just don’t understand the conservative mindset bc we haven’t walked a mile in a conservative’s shoes or we libs just haven’t tried hard enough to figure out how or why conservatives think or feel. Are you kidding me?? We’re surrounded & inundated by unending rightwing propaganda 24/7/365 in our media as well as in Wash DC. I see the conserv reality very clearly thanks. How ’bout conservatives walk a mile in my shoes & for real try to understand how & why I think?? Doubt that’ll ever happen. Duly noted that when consev
come here to lecture us libs there’s very little listening to the lib side & a whole lot of lecturing & strawman arguments. Providing concrete examples of conserv ideology in action & practice results in denials of factual reality & typical whining. Meh too bad

When you look at the size of tuition payments today, even at “public” universities, and then look at the student loan racket, you realize how thoroughly “higher” education has become just another big business scam/bubble in this country. Items such as this news story are to be expected, I’m afraid …

So you’re saying that academia is just as liberal as the news media, then?

Pretty much. As for the meme that Republicans are not attempting to defund public education overall, I think their persistent demands for funding private and parochial schools through publicly funded voucher programs debunks that claim. Vouchers are the equivalent of privatizing Social Security. They also hide a sometimes racist agenda.

The racist overtones have been there since the school busing days of the 1960′s and ’70′s. They haven’t gone away. The least well off and most troubled public schools are in minority districts in inner cities. Publicly funded voucher programs would hit them hardest, creaming off their best students and a portion of their funding. Those schools also happen to be in older, often pro-union and frequently pro-Democratic voting cities.

The claim is that the state should offer parents a choice. That pleasing sounding claim ignores the narrowness of who would benefit from that choice. It ignores that rather than rejuvenating existing schools, tax dollars should be redirected to private, often for profit schools that cater to narrow, non-public interests, often religious.

In effect, the “choice brigade” is claiming that public schools are so bolloxed up they should be left to die on the vine, but that socially conscious middle class and the overtly religious should redirect their students and tax dollars into private, parochial and/or charter schools (whose success rates are currently be questioned and re-evaluated). The implication is that a few bright students might be saved by subsidizing their private education, but that the majority will have to be left in the Randian dust.

Yes, and the for profit “higher education” schools are better described as student loan factories. An analysis of their budgets reveals that they devote the bulk of their income to compensation and marketing, a small amount to education and a pittance to career networking and counseling. Graduate hiring rates are sometimes abysmal and almost always overstated. Graduates often leave with little but a mountain of debt, collecting which is the government’s problem. What’s not to like?

Then there are actions like this one in GOP-controlled Winter Park. The cash-strapped Florida town is spending $2500/day on fees for Kulture, LLC, a union busting and anti-union “consultant” (how fitting that it uses a variation on the German spelling), to stop 150 city workers from forming a union. That sounds ideological to me.

It’s no surprise that this is happening at FSU because that’s where James Gwartney who wrote the most garbage economics textbook ever teaches.

This is America where fascism as an economic system is taught to students in public universities.

Back to FSU, Think Progress has more. The laundry list of conditions on that paltry $1.5 million Koch gift requires the program’s three staff to receive university tenure – a major giveaway of a jealously guarded prerogative. Koch funded advisers would be authorized to review all prior publications of candidates for those three slots, and to have prior approval rights on anything they publish after being hired.

More importantly, for those fond of Trojan horses, is that the Koch-funded advisers wanted to have a right to review other work done elsewhere in the FSU/Koch economics department.

Folks worried that the legislature’s cutting of funding is not also intended to open the door to selective private funding of public universities can rest easy:

Florida State also entered into an agreement with BB&T, which provided funding for a course on ethics and economics and required that Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, be a part of the course curriculum.

Ignoring the oxymoron of using Rand’s work in a course on the ethics of economics, requiring that students read her work sounds less like expanding their horizons and more like indoctrination, not to mention being a form of inhumane treatment. A more ideological approach would be hard to find. A less ideological one that included sets of authors like Rand, and sets of those who differ markedly from her views, would more likely expand students horizons and encourage independent thinking. That doesn’t seem to be the goal.

Did I forget to mention the T for the trouble that we’re in, right here in River City, owes an enormous debt to ideology?

Mr. Bush’s $2 trillion tax cut for the rich. His and now Mr. Obama’s $1 trillion wars, unpaid for. A Republican-led, Democratically followed deregulatory bonanza the gave us the bubble and bust known as financial deregulation. There’s also the continuing tax craziness, like offshoring; tax subsidies for big oil, which has never been more profitable; and taxing billionaire hedge fund managers at 15%. Paul Krugman has more.

The share of take-home pay for the median income earner has been essentially flat since 1983, while the top wage earners, contributing about as much relative to their workers as they did earlier, are taking home a much bigger piece of the same size pie. That’s an outcome of explicit policies, not happenstance.

The lost tax revenues are supposedly what state and federal governments are lamenting and fighting over. Except that they’re not trying to recoup lost tax revenue, but shifting downwards the burden of who pays them. The lost prosperity lowers those tax revenues; recovery would improve them. Except “recovery” does not seem to be on Republican or Democratic lips. They prefer a, “Get used to it” approach, which absolves them of fixing anything and of admitting the outcomes they actually desire.

We also suffer from the loss of a future shared with one’s employer, the loss of tax fairness owing to starve the beast advocates, the selective abandonment of the rule of law, allowing bank and securities frauds to go unpunished, the giving to corporations of speech rights due citizens.

All those and more contribute to the economic plight we’re in. Republicans’ willingness to compromise would not be high on the list of things helping us dig ourselves out of that plight. I already know how to walk a mile in tasseled loafers and wingtips, in trainers, in Birkenstocks and Red Wings. Now, I’m learning to do it in bare feet.

Economics professor’s earn their livelihood from corporations. They are bought and paid for. They know they teach BS! I know they teach BS. Look at the damn economy!

What recovery? This is a bail out the corporations pass through that eliminates the middle class. This is communism by corporations!

Nothing wrong with the Kochs.

- Anti-war
- Protective of minority rights
- Intelligent
- Philanthropic

The fact that you guys are upset at these upstanding individuals instead of the warmonger in the white house is telling.