family budget the California way!

Since 90% of folks in the US live on a median income of $31,000, we all try to economize and live on a budget, but especially in these difficult economic times, it's critical. Perhaps, then, you'd like to follow these handy tips to family budgeting, based on the best practices in California.

1. Reduce household income

If two people in the household both work full-time, your wages may be so high as to create certain pressures to spend them. A simple solution we've used for years in California is to reduce revenues. One of the two of you should go part-time, or, better yet, quit, and don't look for work. If there is only one wage-earner in your household, an alternative would be to ask for a reduction in salary. Many bosses are happy to accommodate such requests.

2. Have lots of loud arguments in public about your finances

A lot of families already do this, and it's good that they do, because, like in the California legislature, those shouting matches demonstrate your commitment to principle. Nah, I'm kidding. They're really just spectacles of public humiliation used as part of a strategy to undermine your opponents. But the appalling display of illegitimacy and unfitness for decision-making create terrible uncertainty and anxiety, and that's sure to make people frightened about what decisions you will, eventually, make. In other words, it can be useful to make your kids shut up.

3. Max out your credit cards

Buying on credit is a great state tradition. In fact, California routinely takes out emergency loans when our annual budget squabble threatens to shut down the entire state government and a large portion of the state's economy in general. Using every bit of your line of credit is a great way to show your credit card company that you're serious about consuming, and need and want even more debt.

4. Base your budget on as much financial information as you can find

Budgetary decisions that are pragmatic and realistic depend on the quality of the information used in making them. California bases its state agencies' budgets on assumptions about what state revenues will be, and what the agencies need to perform their services. Then we tear that up and write random numbers down on sticky notes, then sticking them on an organizational chart of state agencies.

You could do the same! Here are some numbers you can use: $13, $490, $3.98, $12,872, $i. Now, here are some budget categories you can use: turkey feed, boxes of rocks, cable tv, alimony, booze.

To demonstrate how this works, I've just gone through the California budgeting process using the above information - the best available to us as of this writing. For next year, my plan is as follows:

Expense category	Amount
turkey feed	$12,872
boxes of rocks	$3.98
cable tv	$i
alimony	$13
booze	$490

Now that my spending plan is in place, all I have to do is go have a screaming match with my mate, use my Visa to buy $6000 worth of plastic forks, and quit my job, and I'll be ready for the next fiscal year.

next year

Only 7 class sessions left in my academic year. I'll get there.

This has been one of the worst years of my career. From the start it looked terminal. By October I was told to look for employment elsewhere for 2010-11. I did, and found almost no teaching positions I could reasonably qualify for, and none I particularly wanted. But I applied, and received my rejection letters, and worried, and tried to keep doing my work.

Sometime in January I learned that a new possibility was arising that I would return next academic year. This is not because of the Governor's January budget request dissociative hallucination drug-crazed fit waste-of-time adding $305 million to the CSU budget. I don't believe the Governor has any intention of keeping his promises. I don't believe the Governor, no matter what he says. I can barely believe in the Governor, let alone the crapola he present to the public.

No, what I heard was that faculty in the department were finalists for other positions. They got them. So the department is shrinking by about 1/4 of its full-time faculty, and thus my job became 25% cut-proof. That's not to say I'm sure I'll have a job next year, again, despite the May release of the Governor's revised budget gambling addiction masquerade obscenity continuing to call for the $305 million additional for the CSU. Given the state of the state, the university's budget, the university's administration, and all the politics involved, I won't be entirely at rest until I not only have an appointment letter in hand, but have actually gone and taught my first classes in the Fall.

I can't wait to get the hell outta this place this Spring. This has been a terrible year. And now, weirdly, I can't wait to get back in the Fall to start the whole thing over again.

Oh yeah, and the collective bargaining agreement between CSU and CFA expires June 30th. We'll be in bargaining this Fall. So the fighting will simply continue, on more and other fronts. Can't wait for that, either.

why public higher education is a good ideaor not, depending

The CSU has been taken over by an administration that does not understand or care about the unique mission of public higher education. They see education as a privilege, and therefore see it as properly allocated according to who can pay more for it. Public higher education, on this view, is only worth whatever dregs the public deigns to spend on it. And if the public - like here in California - denies funding, this must mean that university funding isn't worth the public's money. Instead, public institutions should do more with less. The only educational value these administrators understand is the maximization of cost-efficiency.

First of all, maximum cost efficiency is not an educational value. The best education is neither the cheapest nor the one that generates the most graduates for the least cost. This is as useless a standard of education as overall grade-point average, because in either case, the outcome you're measuring has nothing to do with the quality of education.

But as a recent comment has it, quality of education is best determined not by standards of rigor established by faculty with field expertise. Quality of education is best determined by cost-efficiency. Let's recap that argument one more time: The appropriate way to judge the quality of university education is not to judge the quality of university education but to ask whether the university graduates people cheaply.

I won't belabor this point further, nor spend any more time unpacking the rest of this. It's making quite a stir among faculty across the CSU, because it basically explains the playbook for dismantling the CSU. This is why I wanted to have someone at the rally holding a sign that depicted one of our buildings burnt to the ground, with a Phoenix rising from its ashes. (I know - too conceptual. That's always been my fatal flaw as a creative artist.)

Maybe the question is more fundamental. On some level, what is being challenged is not just the way public education is done, but whether there should be any such thing as public university education.

The main reason I think public higher education is a right of citizens is because I believe in the social justice of equal opportunities for people to make good lives for themselves. The CSU was built to serve the educational needs of people who would never be able to afford private university education. The rationale for opening education to a larger populace made sense in 1960 and continues to do so now, I think: a well-educated public serves the public's interest.

One - indeed primary - way public university education serves the public's interest is economic. A well-educated worker generally earns more, and therefore contributes more to the economy through taxes, but in particular through spending. All told, we know, every dollar spent on the CSU is repaid to the state more than 4 times. It makes no economic sense at all not to fund public higher education. And yet, there is a large group of citizens in California and across the US who see public funding as government waste. I should hope more government programs would be as wasteful as one that generates a 400% return on investment.

On this basis, this narrow, mercenary, blinkeredly-fiscal basis, public funding for higher education is a benefit to the entire public. Current executive administration of the CSU basically denies this, for reasons they can't articulate, because they haven't got any. They don't make the case. They say, instead, that there's no money. When they are urged to pursue more public money, and use this argument to make the case, they say, instead, that there's no money. Funding to the CSU has been cut repeatedly this decade - in years of economic growth as well as decline - and every single time, CSU execs have shrugged and said there's just no money there.

The question that puzzles so many of us is, why? Why would you not fund a program that repays so handsomely? Why would our administrators fail to make this case?

I think the answer is implied in the comment linked above, in particular, the notion that higher education is a privilege, not a right. This basic denial of the social justice of public funding for higher education is the key to this. It's not a matter of serving the public good at all, but expressly of denying the public this good. Why do that, other than to redirect these economic goods into the hands of fewer and fewer people?

It may boil down to such a pecuniary interest. But the public's interest in education is not only economic. Public education serves a social and political good as well. It's true that educated people generate more economic activity, because of the economic value of their knowledge and skill. Educated people are more economically efficient, when considered solely as labor.

The "problem," from one group's standpoint at least, is that education has this side-effect, of helping people develop their own ideas and ways of thinking - critical skills and attitudes for active citizenship. Educated people ask uncomfortable questions about justice in their societies. Yes, so do less well educated people. The difference is that better educated people are also better at analyzing the problems, articulating what is wrong, reasoning out solutions, making the case for these solutions to the public at large. An educated public is socially and political dynamic. More to the point, education has the reputation of leading people to be more progressive politically.

The attack on the CSU is a two-pronged attack on the class of people who increasingly resemble peasants in our society: it undermines their opportunities for economic advancement (denying access, saddling them with school debt), and it undermines their opportunities for political and social understanding, activism, or resistance. De-funding public higher education is a terrific way to consolidate economic and political power for those who already have it.

And this gutting of the peasant class' last best hope for making their lives better is sold to them on the basis of the notion that they can't afford to fund it. It seems pretty obvious to me that we can't afford not to fund it.

facebook spring

I've just returned tonight from the California Faculty Association's 70th Assembly.

The California State University is in peril. My own campus, Stanislaus, is at the precipice of catastrophe. Terrible economic times are only the beginning of the story, and anyone who has paid attention to the trends in public higher education in the US over the past 20 years or more would be able to tell you that this is no sudden crisis. Public higher education has been systematically de-funded all this time. Our current depress/recession has only brought the whole thing to its horrific climax.

For longer than I've taught at the CSU, the state budget has underfunded its mission. Considering that the CSU's mission is to educate the citizens of California so they become productive, tax-paying members of society, this clearly makes no sense... unless you believe public institutions are ipso facto essentially and irretrievably corrupt... and you believe that increasing state revenues only creates more of the same corruption.

Corruption: you know, like teachers, nurses, doctors, engineers, public servants.

This is not just a matter of the budget crisis that California, like every other state, is facing. This is what happens when a budget crisis hits an institution that has been fighting for its life for years.

Within the next 2 years, California will spend more on prisons than on all forms of public higher education.

The state's bizarre budget priorities are the major cause of the CSU's catastrophic condition. The CSU's astounding level of mismanagement is another.

So here's an interesting catch-22: The CSU desperately needs additional funding from the state. My colleagues' livelihoods, our students' educations, and the state's future economic health basically depend on better funding for this primary engine of California's economy. But CSU's management has demonstrated time and again that it is uninterested in either securing the CSU's future, or spending the ever-reduced funding the CSU receives wisely.

Nevertheless, the CFA works tirelessly to improve the standing of the CSU in the state, to make the case that the CSU contributes to, rather than costs, the state economy. We constantly seek new ways to send our message, to make our case, and to push the point.

This weekend, facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression (or maybe worse), facing the worst possible budget outlook for the CSU, and locally, facing a quintuple crisis from the state and campus budget crises, the CFA launched a new campaign.

Facebook. We've launched a campaign to fight the catastrophe of the CSU, on Facebook.

I'm not being critical. I think this is a smart move. I believe using Facebook will create an ongoing sense of virtual CFA community, and may extend our connections to students and staff, and the public we ultimately serve. As they told us at the Assembly, Barack Obama's campaign used Facebook. It seems to have helped.

Tonight, I friended a number of CFA colleagues on Facebook, and I now have many more friends. I'll diligently check in on Facebook to read their status updates, their notes on my wall or theirs, read what's on their minds (TM), and swap stories, links, and tactics. It will be a good tool, they told us, for organizing.

My question is: how many of them will disappear from CFA in the next year?

And many of these are not the Facebook kind of friend, but actual friends (no insult meant to Facebook friends), actual flesh, blood, brains, and heart friends that I've strategized with and talked late into the night with, and laughed with and eaten and drunk with, and argued with, and fought with, and fought alongside. And I am sore afraid, they will Facebook their fight, Youtube their dissent, email their legislators, flashmob their campuses, and then they will disappear.

I love my union siblings. I wish them better fates.

the budget to end all budgetsuh-oh

Early Thursday morning, the state legislature finally voted for a budget deal through 2010. It raises income tax 0.25% and raises sales tax 1% - both regressive taxes - and cuts about $15 billion in spending, including cuts to education funding.

In the 1970s, when California was the future, the state spent more on education than any other in the US. California schools were also the envy of every other state, renowned worldwide, and understood by politicians, government officials, and the public at large as the best investment we could make in the state's economy. Now, California's per-student expenditure on education is 49th among 50 states. Sometime soon, spending on prisons will exceed education.

The budget deal also calls for a special election on propositions allowing the state to eliminate the requirement that lottery funds all go toward education, and to impose a spending cap on the state. If the spending cap passes, and since there is no political will to cut spending on prisons, and the prison population continues to increase, one of the few discretionary parts of the budget - education - will have to be cut more as prison spending goes up.

I'm not an economist, so the logic of this escapes me. Spending on the CSU, we've learned, ultimately repays the state more than four-fold, because people with college educations earn more, thus they spend more, and also pay more personal income tax, property tax, etc. So, I'd think, funding education, including higher ed, is a way to increase the state's revenue. But apparently, for reasons I can't fathom, putting money into prisons, where inmates don't earn incomes, where they don't contribute to the productivity of the state's workforce, is somehow a higher budget priority.

That's not to say I'm necessarily anti-prison. I don't think I'm an abolitionist. I imagine that there are people who are deliberately criminal, rather than out of desperation or insanity.

But really, is this the best we can do for our society?

Anyway, it's Friday, and I'm off to cellblock H campus.

if you like the global economic depression, you'll love...

... the global drought. Of particular interest to me:

And talking about drought gripping breadbasket regions, don't forget northern California which "produces 50 percent of the nation's fruits, nuts and vegetables, and a majority of [U.S.] salad, strawberries and premium wine grapes." Its agriculturally vital Central Valley, in particular, is in the third year of an already monumental drought in which the state has been forced to cut water deliveries to farms by up to 85%.

Observers are predicting that it may prove to be the worst drought in the history of a region "already reeling from housing foreclosures, the credit crisis, and a plunge in construction and manufacturing jobs." January, normally California's wettest month, has been wretchedly dry and the snowpack in the northern Sierra Mountains, crucial to the state's water supplies and its agricultural health, is at less than half normal levels.

It has rained a lot this week, and it looks to continue to rain later this week and the weekend, but seasonally, we're down about half of our normal precipitation, following two years of similar conditions.

The quotation above misstates, or, better, hyperbolizes, regarding the reduction in water deliveries. The state has taken some fairly draconian measures - like 85% cuts in deliveries - but most ag areas get most of their water from local irrigation districts. Mass-scale fallowing of land is restricted to only a few areas, mainly in the Southern Central Valley, particularly in the Western portion of Kern County. From what I understand, that's not terribly good or vital ag land anyway. Up here is where we should be concerned, especially those of us who like almonds, peaches, apricots, grapes and grape products (if ya know what I mean). Water deliveries by irrigiation districts have been cut here too, but not nearly as much.

There's another side of this, too. When you wander around the San Joaquin Valley in the morning, between, say, April and October, you see field after field and orchard after orchard covered in several inches of water. Because, you see, they still use flood irrigation here. I don't know what it would mean here, but a study comparing drip irrigation to furrow irrigation in Uzbek cotton fields concluded the increased water use efficiency of drip irrigation was (depending on local conditions) between 34 and 104%.

Maybe we'd consider doing something like that in the most important agricultural region in the nation, and perhaps the world? You know, to avoid turning it into a dust bowl? Anyway, it's a refreshing change of pace from the usual news of fiscal disaster and political obstructionism.

Meanwhile, California agribusiness thanks you for your patronage. Please enjoy our nuts.

California's budget

HAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLPPP!!!!!!!!!

what's in a name?

Walking around town, I see a lot of signs urging people to vote no on Proposition 2 this November. Prop 2 would require farms to have enclosures large enough to permit hens, veal calves, and pregnant sows to stand up and turn around. Enclosures that tight make it easy to spread disease, and particularly salmonella in eggs is a concern.

The group opposing Prop 2 calls itself "Californians for Safe Food."

This got me wondering about other California advocacy groups, who they are, and what they stand for. Here's a short list:

Californians for Safe Streets. This group proposes to amend the constitution to eliminate and prohibit any law restricting, regulating, or licensing any form of firearm.

Californians for Yummy Ice Cream. As supporters of an assembly bill titled "California Ice Cream Quality And Distribution Act," they make the case that immigration should be completely restricted, and that ethnic or religious groups with a cultural proclivity to eat more ice cream should be ejected from the state, in order "to preserve the supply of this precious and delicious commodity for true Californians."

Californians for Public School Success. They support broad reforms of public schools. Primarily, they propose to eliminate the Department of Education, as well as funding from tax or other government-gathered sources. Instead, students or their families would directly pay costs of education, which will assure that they have more of a stake in education. In addition, all students would take a standardized test at the end of high school. Any student who does not pass the test would not be granted a diploma and would have no further opportunity to re-take the test. Also, schools where less than 75% of students pass the test would forfeit their funding to pay for a job-growth program of tax breaks on investments in corporations.

Californians for Family Values. They propose a constitutional amendment defining families as "children and their mother, under the unquestionable rule of the father as head of household." The amendment would further ban any legal restriction on the father's right to establish rules, and to punish violations, and prohibit any legal prosecution of any father whose actions in enforcement of his own rules lead to any injuries or deaths of mother or children.

vacationtime

Purpose of trip: (1) To attend the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. (2) To catch up with my friend Nancy from North Carolina, whom I hadn't seen in around 6 years, and who hadn't met Lauren. (3) To see the Redwoods and the California and Oregon coasts.

Duration of trip: 4 days, as follows:
Day 1: Drive 360 miles from Turlock to Ashland, through the Central Valley and the Mt. Shasta region.
Day 2: Morning in Blue Moon Bed and Breakfast; wandering cute-cum-touristy downtown Ashland; A Midsummer Night's Dream at 1:30; move to Super 8 near freeway; return to downtown Ashland; Othello at 8; return to Super 8 for much needed cooling-off period.
Day 3: Drive 180 miles to Bullard Beach State Park, near Bandon, Oregon; meet up with Nancy; walk on beach; lunch in Bandon; wander cute-cum-fishy downtown Bandon; drive 130 miles down Oregon coast, with stops for gawking and road construction, to Crescent City, CA Travelodge.
Day 4: Drive 460 miles, down US 101 through Redwoods, dodging road construction until reaching Calpella, then on CA 20 past Clear Lake and over the pass into the Central Valley at Williams (pausing for road construction), then on I 5, suddenly realizing that Sacramento traffic would be in high dudgeon upon arrival and choosing a side-trip to Sacramento's Ikea store (stopping, then crawling, then stopping, then crawling, from 4:49 until 5:45, over a distance of 6 miles, due to an accident that occurred shortly after 4 pm, before reaching the appropriate exit), then on down I 5 to Stockton, then CA 99 (the Crankster Freeway), pausing for road construction, to Turlock, arriving home at 9 pm.

Assessment and evaluation:
(1) Drive to Ashland.

Pretty.
(2a) Ashland.

Pretty. Cute. Food. Blue Moon B&B was pin-neat, which worked. We suffered the Great August Kitten Access Scare. The next morning, after breakfast, the Great August Kitten Access Scare was resolved, just before we entered a cd shop.
(2b) A Midsummer Night's Dream. Pretty. Hilarious. They did the faeries as 80s "club kids," you know, fairies - which was completely goofy but somehow managed to be sexy. Actually, the entire production was archly ridiculous but also tremendously oversexed, which some of us like, a lot. They had musical numbers, there was a guitar solo by Bottom in the closing, just nutsy stuff left and right - the players were done as hippies, and they came out in a VW microbus.
(2c) Moving, dinner. Eh. We went to a pub that looked like just the thing (Guinness on tap, pub fare), but the food was unimpressive or odd. After running back and forth to the parked car twice in mishaps, Othello. It wasn't pretty. They played in totally straight, with costumes that could have been 19th century or 16th, weirdly. Iago was sometimes hard to hear, in the very back row of the bottom bowl of the theater. They played Iago as driven by irrational but uncontrollable envy and pride - a real seven-deadlies approach, which was good. I don't like the idea of a psychotic Iago or a jealous Iago very much, and although there is plenty of racism in the play, I don't like the idea of racist Iago either. We left at 11:15, got back to the fabulous Super 8 by 11:30, and by then, what with the Great August Kitten Access Scare, all that Shakespeare, and having finished our day with Othello, coming home with few wits intact, we needed serious downtime.
(3a) Driving to Bullard. Pretty. Oregon road signs are sometimes hard to read, very small, or misdirecting. Plus the directions I'd obtained from Google didn't direct us to the right place. But we managed. I was tired and a bit snippy.
(3b) Meeting Nancy, walking on the beach, eating lunch in Bandon. Nancy is the kind of person that is immediately comfortable to be around. She'd had a lot of trouble getting out of Charlotte for her vacation, but made it at last. It was wonderful to see her again. The beach was nice too. We probably walked a couple miles, and Lauren got to dip her toes in the ocean, which is vital to her well-being. We had lunch at a bait-and-tackle shop that sold fresh fried fish in various formats, and the ubiquitous clam chowder.
(3c) Oregon coast.

Pretty. Rocks, water, fantastic views. We hit Crescent City by 6, got into the motel room, walked to the Safeway to buy non-fried, non-meat, non-restaurant, non-pub foodstuffs, which was perfect for dinner. Long period of decompression.
(4) Redwoods.

Pretty. I made the mistake of not taking an immediate side-trip to get into the woods, but as it turned out, that's for the best, since unbeknownst to us at 9 am when we left, we'd be in for a 12-hour day of driving. So instead of pretty hiking, we had pretty driving. And it was, very very. By the time we got to Laytonville (a tiny rural burg we suspect of being owned by Willie Nelson, since we saw half a dozen guys there who looked like Willie Nelson, and they had a biodiesel fueling station and what was probably a head shop), it was 98 degrees. The rest of the drive was very hot, over 100 all the way around Clear Lake

and down into the Central Valley.

Conclusions:
(1) We're going to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival again.
(2) We're going to tour the Redwoods in more depth some time.
(3) We need to get to the coast oftener.