Category: Sarah Palin

Tax Oil Companies, Not Students

March 4, 2010 by Calitics

As protests unfold across the state and the nation today against cuts to education and fee increases, more attention is finally being drawn to the massive crisis facing our students, our schools, and our future.

20 years ago a year at UC Berkeley cost just over $1,000 in fees. Even that was much higher than the $0 cost that the 1960 Master Plan pledged. The early 1990s saw a big rise in fees, and by the time I started at UCB in 1997 the cost had risen to over $4,000 a year. Now the cost is slated to rise to a whopping $10,000 per year, something many students and their families cannot afford to pay. And even as those costs rise, including at CSU and community colleges, classes are being cut as educational quality declines.

It's no way to run a state. California's current prosperity is owed largely to the investments Pat Brown made in the 1960s, building a public higher education system that was the world's envy - and that fueled our innovation and economic creativity. But instead of renewing those investments for a new century, Arnold Schwarzenegger is destroying them. The fee increases are a massive tax increase on the young and on the working- and middle-classes.

On Assigning Blame, Or, "So, You Think I'm Retarded?"

March 1, 2010 by Uppity Wisconsin

LANGUAGE WARNING: Today’s story is uncharacteristically blunt, and from this moment forward we will be using lots of inappropriate language in making our points.

Gentle Reader, you have been officially...warned.

With that in mind, if you take offense when confronted with language strong enough to knock a fuckin’ buzzard off a shitwagon, please stop reading now.

It is by now fairly well known that Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, had a bit of a blow-up with liberals who were ready to start running ads against “blue dog” Democrats who were working very hard to shut down the health care reform effort.

Now we’re not gonna get in the middle of that argument today; instead, since we’re finally getting a chance to talk, I figured me and Rahm could get a few other things out of the way that have been on everyone’s mind for the past year or so.

Politico doesn't understand polling either

February 20, 2010 by New Mexico FBIHOP

CPAC, the conservatives event of the year which was headlined by Glenn Beck this year, happened this weekend. Every year at CPAC, they have a "straw poll" to see who they think should be President.

If you don't know what a straw poll is... it's just another unscientific poll. But for some reason the political media decides to put special importance on them.

For example, Politico wrote this:

[Ron] Paul's victory renders a straw poll that was already lightly contested among the likely 2012 GOP hopefuls all but irrelevant as the 74-year-old Texan is unlikely to be a serious contender for his party's nomination.

There are a couple of things about this; one, Paul's supporters are great at stuffing the ballot box for things with no real objective value (straw polls, internet polls, etc.).