California's Choice

You didn't interpolate, you extrapolated.

The graph would have looked perfectly good with the last blue point missing. Now you have exposed yourselves to all sorts of allegations about cooking the data.

I don't know how much is due to the prison guards union. They used to be a hate target of the conservatives, who thought they had extracted way too many benefits. Are they capably of pushing the state towards Gulaghood? I suspect it has more to do with the system of government by proposition, many of which read as:

Behavior XXX is unacceptable. Proposition YYY says anyone suspected of engaging in XXX should be throw in the slammer for life. Clean up our streets, vote yes! Anyone voting no, approves of XXX!

And so we keep finding more and more things to crack down on, and the Hotel California fills up.

Other than this very minimal lip service, Yudoff seems not at all bothered by the rise in student fees, and not at all committed to trying to meet the state Master Plan, or interested in educating himself about California. Since he has no background in CA or in a state that has a commitment to public service, that probably makes sense. See his recent NYT Mag interview: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/27fob-q4-t.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq...

What's sad is that the state refuses to take a strategic look into improving productivity.

Private sector employers have found ways to streamline operations so that they can continue to provide good value to consumers. The public sector remains decades behind private employers in optimal use of resources.

While private sector employees are coming up with innovative ways to save money and increase value, public employees stay on the sidelines, forcing the state to either cut services or increase the financial burden on it's citizens.

When are we going to uncap commercially held properties?

They've been escaping under a loophole in the law that since the property isn't directly being transfered, only the owner changed hands, they're paying the same taxes their grandcorpies did back in the day, no matter how many times they've been bought or sold.

Paul Gann and Howard Jarvis are laughing right about now, wherever they are. Personally, I think the state that loosed Ronald Reagan on the world is reaping what it sowed, if not getting what it deserves. Pity.

I'd like to see a similar graph of total spending and spending per student in the UC system, in real dollars over the same time period. I bet it goes up too. I could be wrong, though. Seriously, anyone know the answer?

This is what happens when people don't address real cost controls. How much spending in enough? When do we say, "No more"? It's a question we had better answer.

It is interesting that Kevin is attacking public sector unions, though. Is it OK in lefty circles to grouse about the prison guard union? Are there any other public sector unions that lefties are getting impatient with?

That's what you get for your war on drugs and prosecuting victimless crimes and your police state and you thug cops who don't respect the Constitution and your unjust courts and your citizens who live to turn each other in to the authorities with their cel phones. Release the criminals that you have turned into vicious rabid hateful animals in your torture chamber prisons. You people are scum. May weasels eat your flesh.

It might be interesting to update this post with Yudof's history of raising tuition rates when he ran the UT System. Under his leadership, the university system aggressively lobbied state government (during the 2003 session which faced a large deficit) for tuition de-regulation so they would be able to raise tuition rates. With Republicans firmly in control of both chambers and the governorship, they did, and tuition increased 30% the first year after it was passed. It increased every year after by some pretty large percentages.

The situation was similar in Texas. The system was underfunded by the legislature, etc. And perhaps the arguments that Yudof used at the time were partially valid - tuition is too cheap, if the state won't fund us, then we need to fund ourselves, etc. I'm not saying Yudof was bad for the UT System (he wasn't), but he's done this before, and the consequences are more student debt, and less accessibilty to the higher ed system. Just sayin ...

I visited Cali once, I found the brown hills and deceitful people distressing and I left after only a day, pausing only to visit the sequoyahs.
Cali is in a situation that magnifies a reflection of the nations problems as a whole, our class structures are fracturing as elements of a powerful would be oligarchy destabilize society by manipulations of markets, media and politics. So called "conservatives" are bent on creating a society with a very privileged and entrenched corporate class lording it over a vast SEA of peons with few rights and no assets to sell but their labor. Burning the bridges to higher education bars the path to social advancement as does creating a vast gulag populated by only by Zeks and Screws. The "war on drugs" is such a culturally disempowering fabrication, as is the recent epidemic of forcloseures on private homeowners through usury. (6 for 5 is usury! but today 6 for 5 is considered a good credit card rate it's only 20%!) The same goons who laid off the workers and shipped factories to Mexico and Malaysia to avoid having to pay employment benifits or obey environmental regs are the ones to blame for the crumbling of our society as a whole. As far as Cali goes, usually it is like the rest of the nation except more extreme. Superficial and unsustainable, Cali culture is crushing us. People are short sighted, doesn't anyone see that people can only take so much before snapping? The gap betwixt the richest and the poorest hasn't been so wide since the Bastille was stormed and their is no man more dangerous than a desperate man, angry, dispossessed and with nothing to loose. The wealthy corporate class would be rulers of us all forget this, as they forget how vulnerable our modern technological society is to malfunctions and sabotage. Crude efforts to disarm the populace disguised as "gun control" cannot protect the corporate elite when things like remotely guided vehicles and night vision equipment are available as toys for the self indulgent. Then there is the simple fact that people still get killed with ordinary rocks (and rocks cannot be "controlled")
Frankly unless we turn the trends around we are all in big trouble as economic forces, class warfare and ecological collapse converge. If you don't have a firearm already, I suggest you acquire one, whoever you are, liberal or "conservative". While rocks still work, guns have more range. Note this, I am a veteran AND IN NO WAY SUPPORT, SUGGEST OR CONDONE INSURRECTION. But I see what I see, and I know I am not alone. Cali may fall into the sea yet, and the rest of us will still have to face tough times yet.