Interesting Times

I don't know if it's urban legend or a true curse, but I do believe we are living in some quite interesting times, no?
Here's an excerpt from an AP news story on the current political response to the consequences of excessive and irresponsible deregulation:

A bad day for the GOP on politics, bailout plan
By Charles Babington, Associated Press Writer
Friday, September 26, 2008
...
A White House summit meeting on Thursday meant to shore up John McCain's shaky campaign "devolved into a contentious shouting match." And that's how McCain's own campaign described it.

The meeting revealed that President Bush's $700 billion bid to combat the worst financial crisis in decades had been suddenly sidetracked by fellow Republicans in the House, who refused to embrace a plan that appeared close to acceptance by the Senate and most House Democrats.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson begged Democratic participants not to disclose how badly the meeting had gone, dropping to one knee in a teasing way to make his point according to witnesses.

And when Paulson hastily tried to revive talks in a nighttime meeting near the Senate chamber, the House's top Republican refused to send a negotiator.

"This is the president's own party," said Rep. Barney Frank, a top Democratic negotiator who attended both meetings. "I don't think a president has been repudiated so strongly by the congressional wing of his own party in a long time."
...
Ordinarily a Republican president's problems are with Democrats, especially if they control the House and Senate. In this case, Bush seemed almost over that hurdle.

To be sure, Democrats demanded a number of changes in his $700 billion bailout plan, but administration insiders signaled they probably were acceptable. They included greater oversight, more protections for taxpayers, efforts to head off home foreclosures and piecemeal allocations of the federal money to buy toxic mortgage securities.

What caught some by surprise, either at the White House meeting or shortly before it, was the sudden momentum behind a dramatically different plan drafted by House conservatives with Minority Leader John Boehner's blessing.

Instead of the government buying the distressed securities, the new plan would have banks, financial firms and other investors that hold such loans pay the Treasury to insure them. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., a chief sponsor, said it was clear that Bush's plan "was not going to pass the House."

But Democrats said the same was true of the conservatives' plan. It calls for tax cuts and insurance provisions the majority party will not accept, they said.

At one point in the White House meeting, according to two officials, McCain voiced support for Ryan's criticisms of the administration's proposal. Frank, a gruff Massachusetts liberal, angrily demanded to know what plan McCain favored.

Out of the tower

I've spent the last few months doing a good deal of repackaging as I try to make a less than rocky transition out of an academic, teaching/research career path. There are several challenges in this, some unique to me and my situations and some I believe shared. Given my health status, any direct consideration of career involves evoking that anxiety producing question "what CAN I do?" I'm not talking what kinds of jobs will I be happy with or what kinds of work do I have the skills to do. I'm talking at a basic level - what do I reliably have the energy, physical fortitude, and emotional and cognitive resources to do? But that's me and my health, which is an issue I do try to save the in depth discussion of for a different blog these days.

Shared among myself and anyone who is at or considering approaching such a boundary are the more general questions like "how does all this experience I've racked up in the traditional academic track translate into a less traditional or completely non-academic career?" "Do I need to start at entry level in a new job (say, in human resources) or can I reasonably expect to be attractive to employers seeking experienced, mid to upper level workers?"

Probably this is a topic I will return to as I am in the throws of another job search. My current job ends in about two weeks and so far I've sent out resumes but haven't heard back from any prospects. My brother assures me this is in no small part due to both the crappy economy plus the post-graduation resume flood - and he says that as summer wears on and hiring managers work their way through the stacks of replies to job postings, I will probably hear something. Of course, that doesn't address the economic problems and the tight job market. Still, I have no choice but to try to be an optimist, to keep going and to keep looking as much as the process sucks. While I wait, and keep searching, and keep sending resumes and cover letters, I intend to post here about some of it. Well, what I can stand to anyway. For now, I present a nice article on translating your CV into a resume, again from The Chronicle of Higher Education.

advise

So the job search continues. Yes, I am currently employed but this job ends in mid July, which means unless I want to go on unemployment I need to get my ass in gear and get me some job prospects. Bad market for someone looking to change career paths, right? Yeah, well that's me. A master of timing. There are two recent postings which look decent. One is an academic advising position and the other is an office coordinator position. Pros and cons? Of course, for both. My pros and cons even have pros and cons. I am Libra, hear me deliberate!

Advising is what I'm doing now and I like it, a lot. This is what I've always done. Whether or not it was warranted or desired, I give advice quite freely. On the up side, I've learned to avoid speculation when giving advice. Short of gagging myself in the presence of someone discussing a problem or challenge, this seems to be the best strategy to accommodate my need to let loose with a stream of "helpful" suggestions while (hopefully) avoiding the pitfall of spewing a load of crap. Speculating is what I call it when someone doesn't have any hard empirical evidence or explicit knowledge of a thing but continues speaking as if he or she does. To me, this is a cardinal sin, and really damned annoying. The speaker who finds him or herself in such a context should at least have the good grace to say "Well I don't know for sure but based on A (b, and c), I think X", where A (b, and c) are spelling out at least minimally. This allows the listener to know how to rank the particular advice being given. I've given this much thought. How much? Most of my late twenties in fact. I went through this big communication crisis in my late twenties, which I chalk up rather superstitiously to being part of my Saturn return, and which made me a very difficult person to talk to during the time. But I'm clear of it now and I do believe I've learned some useful lessons so in the final accounting, including how to temper my need to advise with some acknowledgment of the limits of my experience, so this is a good thing I suppose.

But back to the jobs and deliberating about which one I should pin my hopes and wishes to, at least until the next round of searching comes along. The one job is advising. It's full time and if it is not flexible time then I'm screwed. Moreover, it is at an institution with a religious affiliation. Not great. However, it's my sense that religiously affiliated institutions may have more respect for needs like caring for family (i.e. my brother) and an institutional understanding that, well, shit happens in life. I am hopeful that I'll be less likely to encounter that wretched secular Calvinism which marks so many professional cultures in the U.S. if I work for a catholic institution, but my distrust of organized religion is so strong that even typing that last phrase gives me a small internal shudder.

The other job is office coordinating. This one is a part time, 35 hour a week position. Pros? Less committed time for work, less responsibility (hopefully). Cons? Less money, less responsibility (yes, it's a pro and a con), and more of that low man on the totem pole shit. There's a tendency in academic culture to treat administrative support staff like crap, which can manifest as explicitly shitty behavior or as seemingly benevolent but ultimately condescending attitude, and god knows I don't deal gracefully with either.

The list of pro and con goes on, but I don't feel the need to put all two of my blog readers through the full, winding process - especially since with this job market it could end up I don't even get an interview for either position. I'll be sending resumes for both today, so wish me luck.

May

What happened to my May? What the hell?

School ended, work started, we found a new apartment (have to move from the lovely place we're in now because the landlord is becoming a slum lord), and life life life.

Work's good. It's necessitated a change in schedule though - I've gone from being an evening person in all ways to needing to be at work (over 15 mostly country miles from my place) at 8:30 AM. Ugh! But I'm proud to say I managed to do it, mostly. I overslept a bit today but made it in on time with some rushing about. I had been expecting this to be just a short term summer job but I guess they like me because my boss mentioned that she was looking into hiring me "during the semester". I need to follow up on that. At the time, I was on my way off to do something (work related) and so all I had time for was a quick "Oh that'd be great....especially since I am in need of employment".

I like and am good at what I do, which is also a relief.

The down side - there's always a down side. The temporary negative right now is that we're moving, like NOW. My fella's been awesome, as usual, and so he's taken care of much of the move stuff. His diligence, as wonderful as it is, happens to be taxing my "gimp-guilt" as I call it, which relates to potentially more enduring down side of my post-graduate school, employed life my new smaller life on account of having less than stellar health. I swear to god my warranty ran out at 31. Since then I've had more health shit than you can shake a stethoscope at, none of it fully resolvable (by which I mean "curable"), and some of it only marginally treatable. I hate giving the full list of ailments but the highlights includee the endometriosis/adenomyosis and the shitty immune system which is better at attacking me than it is at doing its job on viruses, bacteria, or even (as I've recently learned) fungi. Now that I've put this miserable body to work for normal work hours and something approaching a full work week (so far it's been more like a 30 hour than 40 hour work week), I am confronting the question which was hinted at by my soon to be former advisor when she asked so casually "are you healthy enough to have even a regular job?" I found this question to be rather insulting for a number of reasons but I knew even then that while the context was fucked up, the content is in many ways legitimate. And the answer is...it's hard to know. Perhaps this is just denial, but for now I'm going to say the jury's still out. What I tell myself is that I need to give it more time to know for certain whether the massive fatigue I feel throughout the day even after plenty of sleep and no strenuous activity is just a by product of changing my schedule or if this is a permanent and fixed aspect of my life post 31. If it turns out to be the latter, then yeah, I'm kind of fucked.

For now, there won't be lots of posts here because I'm either at work, asleep, moving, unpacking, or sick and exhausted. The moving and unpacking should be done by mid June and hopefully, the daily sick and exhausted will let up as I adjust. If not, well, there could be lots more posts later while I chronicle the apparently wretched process of filing for disability.

rumblings

I woke up to hammering. It took a while to identify the location of the origin of the sound as probably my upstairs neighbors' apartment. I don't think is is a peculiarity of my apartment, although the high ceilings may do something to scatter the noise. Rather, I think it's just a 9 AM on a Sunday after several aborted post midnight attempts at sleep.

The boys had some company over last night. I found a little intoxicated girl in the hallway around 1 AM. I had come out to ask them to kill or at least stop revving the engine on the monster truck idling in the parking lot. We're ground floor facing the parking lot so any gunnings of engines, squealings of tires, and slammings of doors are done in a space about 4 yards from my not highly insulated bedroom wall.

9 AM is certainly a reasonable hour. The sounds of well shod feet hustling across the floor every Sunday morning tells me the younger woman directly above us probably goes to church when she's not hammering a bed apart. She was testy when I went up to ask if the noise was coming from her apartment. I'm not sure she realizes that she's been quite noisy in fact. She's one of those people who leaves their shoes on inside, and she is a "hard sole woman" too. Then there's the dogs, who after an initial quiet period started the occasional fits of barking for little reason.

But then it could have been worse. Although my current but soon to be former upstairs neighbors were not quiet, I could have someone like The Boys up there, and man that would suck.

The landlord is still trying to sell the place. Meanwhile, he tells A_____ he's got a job as a manager in training at a chain restaurant. I guess the finances didn't work out as he'd hoped. I still don't really know what happened with all that. I'm not sure I want to know, just so long as my rent doesn't go up and he's contactable for things like the driveway being an ice rink.

The upstairs neighbors' moving a reminder that it's the season for moving. Regardless of whether my landlord rents the upstairs apartment to more of The Boys type, A_____ and I will probably be moving within the next few months. Partly because when the landlord DOES sell, it seems at least plausible that whoever buys will want to raise our rent, and we can just barely afford this place as it is. It's too bad. I've liked this place. I think of all the rentals where I've lived here in this wretched state, the current one has been the nicest.

a libran decision making paradigm

Here is the question. Do I finish my PhD or do I leave by Spring 08 with a master's?

Here is a brief and highly simplified overview of my decision factors.
Pros:
Finishing what I've started.
Get to have people call me "Doctor".
Get a chance to hold a professorship.

Cons:
Coordinating good faith and timely reading and review of various drafts of both my proposal and dissertation by a group of faculty who have demonstrated serious failings in time management and coordination abilities.
With loans + a half time GAship, I will run out of money to live on by March 2008.
I am borrowing money that I will be paying off at a rate of:
- nearly $600 a month if I can pay off the debt within ten years
- nearly $400 a month if I can pay off the debt within twenty years
- just under $330 a month if I can pay off the debt within thirty years
(And that's assuming a maximum fixed interest rate of 6.8%, which not all of these loans have)
Permanent, stable faculty positions are far less easily come by now than they had been for the past generation of scholars.
Permanent, stable faculty positions entail average teaching loads of 4/3.
Many of the lower teaching load tenure track positions give preference to candidates with post-doctoral training and who come with their own active grant (or strong "extramural funding" history).
Trying for such a position would require at the least a willingness and ability to uproot every one or two years for anywhere from 3 to 10 years post PhD.

Realities:
I cannot get a more than half time GAship because I have been taking too long in this program since my second year in it.
I have good reason to doubt I will be healthy enough to hold a job after I leave my program (with or without PhD) which will pay enough for me to afford both my education debt payments and my other monthly costs of living.
I am certain I am not healthy enough to go through what is becoming the standard post PhD employment scramble and make ends meet, do a yearly tenure track job search, and bounce around following the promise of a tenure track job as if it were the damned holy grail.
I do not like the academic work culture/climate. The hypocrisies wear on my nerves, stress me out, and make me loathe nearly all aspects of the interpersonal interactions and even sometimes the impersonal experiences I have as a researcher and instructor.
I quite strongly feel the trends in higher education employment are socially irresponsible.
I quite strongly feel the trends in undergraduate education are socially irresponsible and socio-economically unjust.
I find it hard to reconcile both my principles and my physical abilities with how I would need to behave and act in order to be a functional part of this socially irresponsible, socio-economically unjust, hypocrisy laden, pretense riddled system.
Having some license to insist that people call you "Doctor" is, as I see it, not a sufficient reason to do anything.

This is not my beautiful life

While my fella and I were waiting for the car salesman to bring around what I was assured would soon be my frosty green 2004 Civic, the Talking Heads was playing at a volume just under loud over the speaker. They pipe the music throughout the dealership, even out into the lot near the door to the salesroom. Through the many hours I was there last night going over variously unaffordable car replacement options, I realized that the dealership playlist was meant to target my age group, possibly a few years older. I smiled, because I found myself perversely thinking of the soundtrack of the aged come the year 2045. I was imagining how strange it will be to hear Frankie Goes to Hollywood playing softly in the background while my roommate is being suctioned for a sputum sample or having her bedpan changed. Most likely, the many intervening years of car dealership soundtracks and other audio indignities will ameliorate the jarring scene that would otherwise be.

On a happier note, I think I'm getting a car. I say "think" because there could still be a hold up with the financing. But if that clears, I pick up my pretty green Civic on Friday. I have my Ford for two more days. I can't get rid of it soon enough. On the way home from this afternoon's meeting with the Honda financing fellow, I sat at the red light with my hand stuck out the driver's side window to compensate for the Ford's intermittently fucked left rear blinker. The smell of cooking coolant wafted in from the engine while the fan whirred away in a mostly futile attempt to bring the engine temperature down from just a hair under well done and I was reminded of exactly why I am willingly about to go very deep into debt and to bleed my combined savings and semester's living expenses of a hefty $6000 this week.

I am so damned happy I have good credit and about a thousand left over from my divorce settlement. But the savings will be gone after Friday, and the debt load will be at a frightening all time high.

This unavoidable situation has helped to underscore that I've been feeling much closer to quitting my PhD program since at least May. I'll leave the precious pauper act for those who have the health, some level of unshaken belief that life always turns out ok, and the family financial backing to support such silliness. Lacking these luxuries, it's nothing short of terrifying to know that I am literally pouring time, energy, and a huge amount of money into completing this degree.

The faculty attitude which sees any slow downs for my health problems as a smoke screen for lollygagging my way through the PhD program are quite wrong and clearly deserving of a battle. It's the kind of fight I don't easily walk away from. But it is looking less like a battle I can win with anything better than a pyrrhic victory. And the degree itself is seeming less and less likely to support me in what are the most probable and desirable careers for me given my physical constraints, my shaken belief that life will always turn out ok, my apparent allergy to academic culture, and what I know about the academic labor market.

An unbelievably petulant and exceptionally passive aggressive email in my inbox from the new grad in my lab this morning helped push that growing sense of "This is not my beautiful life" a little further into the range where bailing seems the best way to cut my losses. So far, I've lost many things including my self respect on more than one occasion. I've found myself needing to sacrifice personal principles I hold extremely dear in order to even try to play nicely with the other children. I spent the last few years of good health I think I will ever have in my life first attending one crappy PhD program and now another, which, after a change in leadership is rapidly transitioning into high grade crap itself. My debt load is increasing each semester I waste here with little chance of a sure way to pay it off at the end (i.e. few tenure track jobs available and those that are involve hideous teaching loads). I know I have more I can lose before I am left with nothing but I doubt my ability to pull up out of nothing. If I were healthier, I might not be so sure of that, but as it is I don't think I can afford to take the hit to my sanity, any chance of current or future peace of mind, and all of my patience that another year of this program seems to require.

CT, we're expensive

I was up early today to see my fella A_____ off. He's got a talk today, one I should go to but during which I managed to schedule an appointment. I couldn't have timed it worse if I tried. It's not like the talk is new info. As of last night, I'll have heard his talk 4, maybe 5 times. But I still would have gone if I could because as I've said, it's bad not to be seen in grad school and the occasion of this talk is one of those places to be seen. Plus, if I have to attend a talk that is not entirely my cup of tea, I'd rather go to one where I have some good reason for being there other than what more often than not boils down to faculty mollification (i.e. at least pretending to drink the cool-aid).

So I'm up, under-caffeinated, a little cranky about my day's schedule, and reading the news while I wake up. And what do I find? More reason to dislike the state I live in.

Despite a slowdown in the housing market, the median sales price of a single-family house in Connecticut has climbed above $300,000 for the first time.

The Warren Group report shows that sales of single-family houses were down by 9.5 percent in June compared with the same month last year.

The overall point is clear: The median price of a house in the state has outpaced the price of consumer goods and services. In June 1997, for example, the median price of a single-family house was $149,900. If it had risen in step with the consumer price index, that figure would be $195,000 in 2007, not $307,250.

Why? The article goes on to offer some shallow commentary from unbiased sources like a Century 21 agent and unsubstantiated speculation. (Thank you Fox news for lowering the standard everywhere.) Personally, I'd put my money on this:
The reason [for the local spike in home prices] even as sales decline, could come, in part, from a higher portion of sales occurring in Fairfield County, where houses cost more, said Steven P. Lanza, executive editor of The Connecticut Economy [published by a local university].

Fairfield county? The article has a table which lists the median price of a single family home in Fairfield county as $629,500. The county where I once owned a home has a median price of $243,750. Fairfield county is also the richest county in CT, and a nice example of how screwy the distribution of wealth is in this surrogate state o'mine.


The part of today's article which hits the point for me comes from this quote.
"It's still a very expensive housing market in the state, even in the midst of the housing recession we are going through," said Todd Martin, economic adviser for Bridgeport-based People's United Bank. "The state is still not very affordable."

academic integrity

Oh this is interesting. I have to go grocery shopping now before I lose all motivation to get out today, but when I get back, I'm planning on looking for more references on these stories. For now, enjoy the blurb.

(from)
In higher ed, the year of dishonesty
An investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo called into question whether students really get honest advice from college officials who are supposed to help them navigate the maze of financial aid. Cuomo's investigation and The New America Foundation, a think-tank, have exposed conflicts of interest among a handful of financial aid officers and loan companies.

Several officials at prominent schools have been suspended while their stock ownership in loan companies is investigated. On Monday, the University of Texas fired its financial aid director, Lawrence Burt.

Interview and other

My interview went well. I have no idea if I will get the job but I am sincerely glad I put myself out there and took a real step in the process of considering any kind of income outside academia.

Other good news is that I got my loan check today. That's sort of a mixed blessing since it means more debt, but it's good because without it I would be very very broke this summer. Even if I get this job, without loan money I would be living on something like $2200 this summer. After rent, this would leave me with a whopping $450 for groceries, utilities, and gas money from June to August. Hence the loan is a good thing right now.

On the not so good side, I have a fever and I am exhausted. I've got a week and a half to shake this or I go to surgery ill. Well, ill-er. My PhD program doesn't allow for rescheduling the surgery, and I mean that only slightly tongue in cheek. If this is something contagious, I'm planning on dragging my biohazardous, cranky self in at least one day to share the love with my faculty. Does it count as germ warfare if someone actually asks for it?

Today was a good day!

Today was much better than Monday. First off, I got my period. Ok, I know, usually not something to cheer about but it's good for me because that means the first day will not be Saturday, when my brother and I are driving up to my sister's place to get ready for her graduation on Sunday. And it will not be Sunday, when I'm cooking food for The Aunties (insert suspenseful music there). Yes, it sucked to do my laundry with cramps today, but there is the considerable bright side of not needing to have them bad while dealing with holiday traffic and/or relatives I haven't seen since the unfortunate family portrait incident back in 2000.

Second, I found a set of papers on interpersonal coordination that will help me write something other than "All work and no play makes PFG want to throw knives" in the perpetual paper.

And lastly, and best, there was the good news that Enron bandits Lay and Skilling were not let off the hook. They are Guilty!
Let's count 'em up.
(from the Boston Globe)
Lay was convicted on all six counts of conspiracy, securities and wire fraud against him in the corporate trial and all four in the personal banking trial.
Former Chief Executive Skilling was convicted on 19 of the 28 counts in the corporate trial, including one count of insider trading...

Soup and other goodness

I made the stock for the soup earlier this week and A___ finished the soup today, just in time for the damp, chilly end of January. I used to make the broth with a whole chicken but realized that this results in far more meat and hassle than I need (cjblue will attest to having called me once while I was "boning a chicken"). I recently switched to using chicken breast, 2 split breasts, bone in. This makes enough stock for a large pot of soup, and a little extra meat that can be used for chicken salad. Making soup is great because you get to clean out your old veggies and create something that is exceptionally yummy and good for you with enough left over to freeze. This is all very exciting for a low income grad student with some nutrition problems.

Some of the other grads and I have been joking for a while now about how we should make a grad cookbook. "How to Cook and Eat Healthy on an Apprentice Model Budget" or something like that. Chapters would include things like "Avoiding scurvy", "101 things to do with peanut butter", and "Pasta is a TA's best friend" We could sell it (at a large mark up) and put the proceeds into a graduate conference travel fund, a fund which has consistently been cut by my university over the past few years.

While the soup simmers, I am reading two papers on auditory cues for induced self motion and writing up an outline for an experiment I am about to record stimuli for over the weekend. Yes, I am kind of blowing off my dissertation research, although that is somewhat justified by soundbooth noise related delays. And I am most certainly and unjustifiably neglecting the evil manuscript from hell I've been working on for (gulp) way too long and should just finish no matter how much thinking about the horribly designed experiments makes me want to puke. But who can do that when there's a brand spankin' new research project with an extremely efficient faculty member whose enthusiasm for it is infectious. And there is kick ass soup and a movie with my loving neighbor A___ to look forward to when I'm done reading and writing tonight. Who could ask for anything more? Ok, maybe a loaf of fresh baked bread from Kate.

Turkey Season

Aaah-nold...definintely the turkey of the day. Dig my highlighter turkey. Grad student art.

Voters Reject Schwarzenegger Initiatives
By Michael R. Blood, AP
November 9, 2005

LOS ANGELES - In a stinging rebuke from voters who elected him two years ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's efforts to reshape state government were rejected during a special election that darkened his prospects for a second term.

The Republican governor and former Hollywood actor...on Tuesday saw all four of his signature ballot proposals rejected.

Poll after poll showed it was an election that Californians didn't want, with a total lineup of eight initiatives that didn't connect with every day issues such as gas prices, housing costs and the war in Iraq.

Schwarzenegger's proposals to curb spending and weaken unions inflamed passions on both sides, partly because of the election's roughly $50 million cost in a state that repeatedly faces budget shortfalls.

Appearing before supporters at a Beverly Hills hotel after learning that at least two of his initiatives had failed, a smiling governor did not concede defeat.

What do you suppose would have to happen for him to in fact concede defeat? I guess as the Governator, an "overwhelming" majority of voters turning down all of your propositions and saying they resented allocation of the expense for the election in the first place means very little. And well it should. He is the Governator after all. You can't expect him to admit defeat unless there have been several explosions, tank mounted lasers, hand held rocket launchers, and a veritable monsoon of uranium coated armor piercing friggin huge bullets. The Governator doesn't give in just because a large majority of the moron...er...people who elected him issue a ballot box spanking.

Stuck at home

I'm staying home sick today so I'm reading the news. Lots of it.

- National 1
I read about the federal budget provisions proposed in the House - Big cuts to the federal student aid program (aka "only rich kids should go to college"), cuts to child support enforcement programs ("we care about life from the moment of conception to the moment of birth"),reductions in spending on food stamps programs ("fuck the poor, and really fuck the working poor").

I read about the federal budget provisions proposed in the Senate - $10 billion cuts to Medicare and Medicaid that may result in, among other things, limited access to generic prescriptions for Medicaid patients.

I read about how these cuts are necessary in order to pay for hurricane relief. And here I thought the cuts were necessary to help to pay for that huge corporate tax cut package that was passed in October of 2004.

Last Fall, the Washington Post reported that when Bush took office in January 2001, the government was forecasting a $5.6 trillion budget surplus by 2011. A surplus! So why is the economic outlook so bad that congress is considering these horrible cuts now? The republicans are correct to some degree. It is in no small part because we've been overspending. We overspent fighting a war that was predicated on lies. Meanwhile, we went and cut off our access to tax revenues. Where was the outrage when republican and democrat lawmakers joined together last year to squander our country's long term economic outlook on rewards to corporations who don't even have to promise to invest in creating domestic jobs? I'm also quite disappointed that the issue of the loss of tax revenue has not entered into discussion of the current federal deficit/budget. It seems like it at least warrants mentioning.


- National 2
One ambiguously nice item in the national news today: Bush is pulling his support for Supreme Court nominee and Bush Co. croney Harriet Miers. I'm not super psyched about this one because I think Bush will just look for someone who is as bad or worse.


- Local
I switched from the national to the more local. Very local in fact, college again. The news ripped from the campus paper headlines today is similar in type and scale to any of the state or national querulous neo-con based fiascos reported in the big press. Yes, I know "fiasco" is an overused term but it seems appropriate here. Any event involving Ann Coulter, prominent harbinger of hackneyed controversy, automatically deserves the title "fiasco". If it involves college students at a public university paying Ann Coulter over $16 thousand to grace the campus with her divisive, petulant, hate mongering, simple minded punditry* I think the event is elevated to Goat Screw.
* (thanks A! good word)

The announcement that our undergrad student government approved funding for the goat screw was given as a sort of after thought in the campus paper. Here's how it reads (late on page two): "In other business, the senate approved funding of $16,035 to the College Republicans... The funding approved will help to bring Republican Ann Coulter to U___."

$16,000 is 60% more than is given to any other group on campus for a speaker. If I were an undergrad and funds from my mandatory fee were being spent on this shit, I'd be fucking pissed, especially when we consider this expenditure in the proper context. That is, when we consider that the college republicans are making a habit of asking for student funding of outrageous punditainment which they justify as attempts to engender thought provoking discussions and debates. An excellent example of such a thought provoking event was ex-professional wrestler turned conservative speaker Warrior who the student republican club brought in last April.

It was billed as an "interactive discussion" but when it became interactive, Warrior was unhappy. His statements like "Queerin don't make the world go 'round" were not received as the insightful commentary they apparently had sounded like in the ex-pro wrestler's head. In the aftermath of the Warrior clusterfuck, students were angry their money had gone to fund this. The justifcation for using student fees to fund the Warrior event was that the college republicans had "...Wanted to host a thought-provoking discussion from an individual who, given his celebrity status, would appeal to a broad range of students." In the days just following the event, members of the college republicans said they were disappointed with Warrior's behavior because they had hoped his presence would "bring another view to add to respectful debates".

Having students pay to be insulted en masse by an inflammatory peckerhead is "thought provoking" the way throwing a drink in someone's face is "engaging". Inviting a vitriol spewing loser, paying him with money that is meant to provide non-exclusionary enrichment and social activities for the undergrad body as a diverse whole, and expecting the event to result in "respectful debate" is either simple minded or obnoxiously underhanded. I think it is the latter but you never know...

Today's report regarding the approval to pay Miss Coulter $16 thousand to have an argument went on: "According to Funding Board Chair Sen. Mike McKiernan, security has been accounted for, to prevent physical attacks. College Republicans hired a private security force for the event..."

I feel a bit uneasy about "a private security force". It could be the college republicans have some reason to believe they may not get the service they'd like from the university police. After having to defend the Warrior against the inevitable rabble his ignorant insults had succeeded in rousing, one of the campus police officers was quoted saying "How do you think I feel I have to protect him," April 5, 2005

And Ann Coulter promises to be about as intellectually engaging, thought provoking, and given to "respectful debate" as the Warrior.
Here's how the Editorial review at Amazon.com describes Coulter: "Ever combative, Coulter is unafraid to court controversy..." Publisher's Weekly says: "Never mind this book’s title (How to Talk to a Liberal - If you must); from the writings collected here, it sounds like Coulter has never talked calmly with anyone, much less "liberals." In her view, "liberals" aren’t even "sentient creatures.""

I can see how hard the college republicans are trying to add to respectful debates with this line up of speakers.

So does Ann Coulter need security to speak at our university?
One student senator cautioned that "In the last university event Coulter attended, students ran to the stage and threw pies at her..."
Oh dear.

I think we should have a bake sale outside and donate the money to organizations like Planned Parenthood, the AFL-CIO's Hurricane Katrina relief fund, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The Coulter event is planned for the first week in December, which is the holiday season. So many nice things to bake. Pumpkin pie, mincemeat pie, pecan pie (ouch!), coconut cream pie, and of course some cookies.