Snookered

I rarely use the old "I'm a taxpayer and I'm appalled that you're spending my money on ______" argument. I'm basically resigned to the fact that my money's going to fund bullshit for the most part. Foolish wars, frat boys and other losers molesting Iraqi inmates to get their rocks off, corn subsidies, state dinners for medieval relic European royals - all of it funded by you and me in some way, shape or form.

But sometimes you just have to draw the line, and I'm drawing it right now in my wonderful state of New Jersey, after it's come to light that Rutgers University - THE State University of New Jersey - paid the Jersey Shore's "Snooki" $32,000 to "speak" to "students" recently. 

In the most prosperous of times, there would be no place for this talentless, pathetic devolved fluorescent penguin to be collecting speaking fees from an institution of higher learning. In 2011 when education is under a direct, targeted assault by the governor, every single penny is being squeezed out of the middle class, and it's been harder than ever for them since the end of WWII to send their children to college, the fact that this is how Rutgers University would chose to spend $32,000 falls somewhere between insulting and criminally negligent.

Nobel and Pulitzer Prize Winner Toni Morrison is scheduled to earn $30,000 for her upcoming commencement address. Who's coming up with this scale of compensation? The board at JP Morgan Chase? 

Higher Education in New Jersey has been taking a beating from Trenton for two decades now. A global recession just makes it easier for the Republicans to sell the cuts. But this is the world we live in, where teachers and firefighters caused a worldwide financial meltdown and the Wall Street execs are partying so hard Gordon Gecko's blushing. To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld - You get the budget you have, not the budget you want. Fact of the matter is, Rutger's state aid was slashed roughly 15% for fiscal year 2010-11 and it's proposed to remain at that level this year. Tuition up 5%. Housing more than that. Meal plans more than that.

Within these fiscal confines, there is absolutely no possible justification for that trampy Oompa-Loompa to be commanding that much money from a State University. The actual money itself came from some "event fund" that draws some loot off of every tuition bill paid by every student. Discretionary or not, it's still a check being signed by the State University of New Jersey.

The school fought back against the criticism by saying something to the effect of "It's who the students want to see". Well frankly, that's the students' problem and it's your job as a university to possibly enlighten them to aspects of culture beyond such filth.

I'm sure a similar plurality of students "want to see" nickel beer night at the cafeteria and maybe a medical marijuana dispensary at the infirmary. And frankly, a night of both would easily cost less than $32,000.

The 2nd and 3rd highest paid adjunct professors at RU combined don't make $32,000 per year. If say, an adjunct professor is teaching 2 classes per semester, and there's 2 semesters in a year, that's 8 college courses that could have been taught instead of paying Snooki to teach students that "When you're tan, you feel better about yourself".

On a larger scale, sure, we're all to blame here for making celebrities out of these douchebags, dingleberries and dickheads. I get that. I take no responsibility for myself but do for my state. It's eerily reminiscent when I traveled abroad in 2003 and felt compelled to apologize for George Bush, even though I never once entertained the idea of voting for him, nor did I support any of his endeavors beyond the "No Call List". So yeah, by extension, it's got to be pretty hard for a lot of people to tune in every Whateverday Night to MTV and watch the trainwreck, then get upset that young people want to see society's afterbirth speak live at their school. 

But that doesn't make it right or acceptable. Even if I'd love to hear her insight on what it means to leave Rutgers Cum Laude.

Timberland List Thursday: 2/17/10

We're officially one month until St. Patrick's Day, the northeast is looking at some 50-degree days and Pitchers and Catchers have reported - so there's plenty of reason to celebrate. However, a true cynic never rests, and in this day and age, there's no shortage of people, places and priests to be skeptical of, so the List must go on...

#10. Drama Queen Athletes. Yes, Albert Pujols and Carmelo Anthony, I'm looking directly at you. In the Post-Decision world of sport, nobody has any tolerance for your "Where Are You Going?" Charades. I don't care if either of you stay or go, I just don't want hear about it every day.

#9. Colin Powell. Never liked this guy. Not one bit. Always thought he was safe face for conservatives to point to so they could prove they weren't racists. And for some reason unbeknown to me, liberals gave this guy pass after pass. But the Iraq Disaster Whitewash continues, as now Powell suddenly is concerned about the lies that got us into war. Spare me, general. You're the one who took a couple of oaths about defending us from all enemies foreign AND DOMESTIC. Fail.

#8. Michele Bachmann. She's becoming quite the regular on The List. Bachmann hates taxes. Until the First Lady suggests deducting equipment that mothers use to breastfeed their children. Then all of a sudden it's Big Bad Socialist Government telling you how to feed your children. Once again, Twitty's missing the point. I'm convinced that if Sasha Obama said she likes My Little Pony, you'd have 50,000 crusty old white people on the National Mall demanding The Government stops telling their grand-kids what toys to play with.

#7. Donald Trump. Attention Whore. Now he's considering a run for President? There's only about 500 easy punchlines for this but I'll pass. Just go away.

#6. Haley Barbour. Last week's #1 slot on the T-List was Mississippi for their consideration of a license plate honoring the founder of the KKK. This week, Governor Barbour, the ultimate Good Ol' Boy refuses to condemn the action. This should do wonders for Boss Hog's Presidential Nomination aspirations though.

#5. Barbara Streisand. I always get in trouble when I speak candidly about my opinions on Babs' career and perceived relevance, so I'm going to tread carefully here. Let's just say I was surprised that I was watching the Grammys way past my bed time until she performed. I was down for the count within 2 minutes.

#4. Watson The Jeopardy! Computer. Maybe I just missed an Apollo Moment in the history of technology, but I have no desire to watch an X-Box linked to Wikipedia compete on a game show.

#3. Texas. Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Read. Like many places (more on that in a bit), Texas faces a perceived budget gap and will exact it's revenge on the backs of educators. Proponents of laying off teachers point to Texas' population growth being the fastest in the state, thanks in no small part to the fact that they're on top of the standings in REPEAT Teen Pregnancies. In the ultimate irony, they also lead the nation in tax payers dollars spent teaching Abstinence-Only education. So if you want to put these nuggets together, you get: Texas tells teens not to fuck, Teens fuck, Teens have kids, kids go to school, school drowns in red ink. Must be the English Teacher's fault.

#2. Justin Beiber. 15 minutes. Up. I normally love Canadians but this dweeb's on the verge of ruining it for everyone.

#1. The Anti-Education Brigade. In Wisconsin, the Governor's attempting to take away the right for teachers to collectively bargain. The latest in a string of states to punish their children in an effort to not pass any debt onto their children. Yup. I don't get the logic either. It all started with New Jersey's very own Jabba The Cut, Chris Christie, and it's snowballed across the nation. Nobody has said education spending in principle has always been perfect or efficient. But the solutions doled out by Republican after Republican has been to go after the teacher making $40,000 per year and ignore inflated administration salaries and redundancy, inefficient facilities, and useless unfunded mandates.

To a conservative, there is no industry or institution that can't be top-heavy enough for their liking. Not the schools. Not the Pentagon. Certainly not the banks. It's only a matter of time before the darling "Privatization" rhetoric heats up. Ronald Reagan would be proud. (And that's never a good thing)

The Christie Educashun Massacre: Is Our Voters Learning?

Over the past two weeks, there's been quite the brouhaha here in Jersey over Obese Governor Chris Christie's budgetary assault on education. The outrage seems especially heightened on facebook, most likely because those of us against the Governor's cuts know how to use things like computers. Already, school districts across the state are in the process of layoffs, targeting the arts, special needs programs, and just about everything but the disgustingly  disproportionate salaries of the school administrators. Despite the fact that the budget still needs to be passed by the State Legislature, most districts are proactively bracing for the pending Armageddon.


I can - most people can - go on and on about why New Jersey's finances are a joke or the countless reasons why property taxes are so high, but that's a subject for a doctoral dissertation (Or, it can be summed up with three words: Shared Bleeping Services). What's being lost in the commotion of the proposed funding slash is that this has absolutely nothing, nada, zilch to do with "the tough economic climate". Aside from the bailed out bankers, nobody's really turned the corner yet and cuts are anticipated and expected in every sector, be it public or private. The story here is the magnitude to which the governor is going to dismantle the state's public education institution and it's employees.


Do teachers and other state employees enjoy better benefits than those of us in the private sector? Without a doubt. But you need to keep in mind: 25 years ago, that wasn't the case. States had to enhance these benefits to entice workers because benefits like this were the status quo for most working Americans. Somewhere along the lines, a certain Alzheimer's suffering President made it his mission to dismantle the American Worker's Unions and trickle up every last penny to the super-rich. The end result was predictable: the average American would now work more for less, in terms of salary and benefits, while the lucky few would prosper beyond their wildest dreams.


State employees did not have their unions broken and maintained what were once "standard" but are now considered "elaborate" benefits. Instead of the American worker demanding benefits as strong as the public sector, the teachers have been boogey-manned into pigs at the trough, living high on of your tax paying hog. And this attempt to bust the union is only part of Christie's agenda.


The other part, more subliminal but intensely dogmatic, is continuing the trend of the Republican Party's "learnicide". Statistics do not lie: The enemy of the Republican Party is an educated voter. Take your own personal life experiences. Who would you consider to be the five smartest people you know? Do you think they voted for George Bush? John McCain? Or if you're life depended on it, would you guess they voted for President Obama, or John Kerry, or Al Gore?


The reliably Republican voters I've come across in my life, more often then not fit one of three molds:
1. Religious Crazies/Jesus Freaks
2. People in a tax bracket I can only dream of reaching
3. Angry, white, working class people, most likely men.


The first two I understand - the Democratic Party is not the place to be if you want to put the Ten Commendments in every school or outlaw the term "Happy Holidays". Nor should it be a home to millionaires looking to become billionaires at any expense.


But it's the last part that always baffled me - for they're the largest part of the Republican Base. You can't get to 271 Electoral Votes or 225 Seats in the House by building a coalition of Born Again Oil Tycoons. No, the GOP has for a generation now, convinced millions of people to continually vote against their best interests. Some of the same people who have lost their jobs, their insurance, seen their savings and benefits become a shell of what they once were, and struggled to put their kids through college show up like clockwork every November and go straight down the Republican line, even though 30 years of Conservative rule has only led to two wars and the worst economic crisis in nearly a century. Even though 30 years of Republicanism has led us from The Lone Superpower to China's prison bitch.


To make a long story short: They don't want you to realize this. There's a reason a Harvard Graduate War Hero like John Kerry can lose to a C-Student Diserter like George Bush: The GOP's made education a stigma.


And now Chris Christie wants to bring that New Jersey. If you were to look at the most educated states in America, you'd notice two remarkable trends (aside from NJ's top 5 ranking that Christie wants to sink):
1. None of the top 15 states, ranked by highest percentage of adults with at least a bachelor's degree, voted Bush-Bush-McCain over the last 3 election cycles.
2. None of the worst 15 states voted Gore-Kerry-Obama.

There's no way to sugarcoat it: The Republican Base is dumb as dogshitt. And they need your children to be stupid if they're ever going to survive another generation. So don't buy the baloney that Christie's selling you about across the board painful cuts. This is geared at the mortal enemies of the GOP: literacy and comprehension.