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Carly Fiorina brings her message to the people: “she leaned the company.”
Archive for the ‘California Politics’ Category
March 15th, 2010
March 4th, 2010
George Lakoff has a simple “Majority Rule” initiative in the works to remove the supermajority requirements for taxes and a budget from the California constitution. This would remove one of the most important millstones from the neck of the California governing process. It needs a lot of signatures to get on the ballot, but it’s [...]
March 1st, 2010
Mickey Kaus is challenging Barbara Boxer for the US senate Democratic nomination.
Really.
No, really.
Do you think that this is a hoax? Nothing up at Kausfiles yet.
UPDATE: Via the invaluable LA Observed, Mickey hasn’t actually filed yet; he’s only taken out papers. But as Kevin Roderick notes, “he sounds close.”
January 27th, 2010
The whole university is dismantling itself, and parts of the machinery are not working. For example, an MPH applicant to the Public Health School received this letter (passed on by a reader):
Thank you for your application to our MPH program in Public Health Nutrition. Due to budget cuts, we are not able to offer [...]
January 7th, 2010
Category: California Politics, Education policy
The governor proposes swapping prison uniforms for mortarboards. I’m all for it. But he’s proposing to do it the wrong way.
November 25th, 2009
Category: California Politics, Education policy, Policy Analysis, Policy briefs, Political Science, Politics and Leadership
Debate in California about the funding cuts for higher education has become quite perplexing, partly because some of the parties are not thinking very clearly about it, partly because the question is fairly complicated, partly because the politics of California budgeting have become so pathological. In response to relentless nagging from David Schutz (well, he [...]
September 25th, 2009
Category: California Politics, Climate change, Energy and Environment, Schwarzenegger, Watching Conservatives
Does Arnold Schwarzenegger care more about Tea Partiers or the planet?
September 24th, 2009
Tonight was the big Cal teach-in before tomorrow’s day of walkout/protest/demonstration scheduled for all University of California campuses….Back in the day, a teach-in was teaching: faculty who knew something about an issue tried to explain it, sometimes just propagandizing but preferably illuminating complications and subtleties of the state of affairs (Vietnam War, racial injustice, etc.) triggering the state of protest. Tonight, not so much; the six speakers were earnest and lively, but the critical thinking of which we’re supposed to be a veritable factory had mostly left the building.
September 21st, 2009
On Wednesday evening I attended a “teach-in” sponsored by the local chapter of student “government” at Berkeley, the Senate of Associated Students of the University of California. A half-dozen faculty (not me) offered ten-minute perspectives on current events, which are heading to a university-wide walkout on Sept. 24; Friday the Senate voted unanimously to support [...]
August 27th, 2009
Category: California Politics, Teaching
Pay cuts are better than layoffs.
In the situation faced by UC faculty, calling them “furloughs” is better than calling them pay cuts.
So I don’t see any moral imperative to act out the idea of a furlough by teaching less.