SACRAMENTO — UC students dressed as inmates in a “debtor’s prison” interrupted Wednesday’s UC Board of Regents meeting as the board began to discuss a report critiquing UC campus responses to student protests.
The board moved into closed session as about 20 protesters stood up and circled the public seating area while chanting. “That’s the sound of the students working on the chain gang,” protesters chanted.
Regents moved to another room to discuss closed session items that would otherwise have been saved for after the lunch break, said UC spokesperson Lynn Tierney.
The regents were entering discussion of the report on the response to protest on UC campuses drafted by UC Vice President and General Counsel Charles Robinson and UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Christopher Edley.
UC spokesperson Peter King said the regents will resume their discussion of the protest report after lunch.
Mandy Cohen, a UC Berkeley graduate student in comparative literature and one of the protesters who interrupted the meeting, called the public comment portion meetings “a joke,” and said that protesters want the regents to address their concerns directly.
Several protesters spoke during public comment and raised concerns over the UC’s accountability. Protesters acted out being arrested by various UC regents as they finished their comments.
The regents are meeting in Sacramento for the first time since 1993 in the hopes of drumming up support for the financially strapped university system, which was just dealt further funding cuts in Gov. Jerry Brown revised budget proposal.
The UC is asking Brown and state lawmakers to increase funding to the UC by $125 million for the next fiscal year in order to avoid a 6 percent fee hike later in the summer. Students and regents are also meeting personally with over 50 members of the legislature over the course of the week, according to UC officials.
Sherry Lansing, chair of the board, said earlier in the meeting that she is encouraged by the UC’s overall treatment in Brown’s latest budget, which proposes deep cuts to the state’s safety net to bridge a nearly $16 billion budget gap.
“As we all know, UC is an engine of opportunity and innovation that benefits every resident of this state,” Lansing said. “What is at stake here affects all of us, not just UC students and their families, but every Californian.”
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> You are DUMB as well as eliterate
Thanks for the input, troll. Why don’t you quit while you are only slightly behind?
Let’s hope the asshats in Sacramento stop forecasting tax revenue at such lofty levels. Hasn’t anyone ever heard of building in a buffer when budgeting?
They don’t teach much about budgeting in law school, and for some reason we still mostly elect lawyers to the legislature.
no one is forcing you to attend a UC. if you can’t afford it, go somewhere cheaper.
im thinking about joining occupy because i think that this corporate greed needs to be stopped!!!11
and tony m and his cronies better not make further nasty comments.
I see you’re a real deep thinker. Have you ever considered that learning how to use proper spelling, grammar and punctuation when expressing your views in print might be a more constructive use of your time than running around with a bunch of violent, uneducated half-wits, thinking somehow you’re going to change the world?
Look snoop dog, what was wrong wit his spelling and grammer? All of those UC Regents are overpaid, arrogant out of touch clowns that need to be replaced. All professors are grossly overpaid and totally uninspiring.
> Look snoop dog, what was wrong wit his spelling and grammer?
Thanks for making his point, Einstein.
You are DUMB as well as eliterate
What??? You are a flaming idiot!!!!!!!
I think you’re missing the point of “public” in “public institution” then… Why does the UC system, an institution designed to provide AFFORDABLE education to the average Californian resident, seem more interested in carrying out new construction projects rather than protecting existing programs? Why does it seem more interested in leveraging tuition hikes to increase its bond rating rather than slowing expansion plans in line with the slowing economic conditions of the moment? The problem is that the UC system, a system established and funded by tax payers, has effectively been privatized by a self-serving program of growth that has largely been on the backs of the students it’s supposedly meant to serve. It’s not a matter of “choosing to go somewhere cheaper,” as you put it, it’s a matter of demanding the restoration of public institutions to the public.
The faculty at UC don’t care about the students, they are arrogant and grossly overpaid. You can get better resources at a community college, where down to earth people from the community can impart their wisdom. UC Berkely has a great thing going, an undeserved reputation that students blindly flock to be part of and they get very little in return for their investment.
In one of the pictures, there is a sign that says “Your Fee Hikes Go Toward Wallstreet.” Can someone explain the thinking behind this sign?
Yes. It’s detailed in this piece by Robert Meister, chair of the Council of UC Faculty Associations: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/meister211109.html
That was a very interesting but depressing read, Dora. Thanks.
It isn’t “privatization” creating the problem, but gross fiscal mismanagement. To point at private corporations as the root of UCs financial problems is to miss the point completely.
Lowered state and federal revenue from tax cuts (mainly for the rich) and increased spending into private sectors (bailouts, wars, etc.) by the federal government has reduced the amount of available state and federal money for the university. This gap is being made up for by charging the students more; in effect, the students are subsidizing the tax cuts and wonton spending in the government, much of which is centered around “Wall Street” institutions (bank and insurance bailouts, military contracting in the private sector, private sector subsidies, etc.). Basically the guy is saying that the government is choosing to charge the rich less, and charge him more to make up for it.
Lower revenues from the rich aren’t really about tax cuts. In California, we have a very progressive tax. That means the 1% pay half the state tax in good times. When bad times come around, the rich have much more volatile incomes than the rest of us, so the state revenue drops big time as their income falls. It is the fact that we depend so much on the 1% for our state revenue that really hurts us when bad times come along. A flatter tax would have reduced the drop in revenue during the recession, because the middle class’ income was not reduced as much as the income for the rich. However, we are about to vote to raise taxes for the rich. So the next recession will again hit us extra hard, because we will lose another bunch of revenue when the incomes of the rich fall more than everyone else in the state. Of course, it also doesn’t help that spending has increased by about 37% over the last decade as our legislature spent all the money the rich paid in taxes during the good times.
Income tax is nice, but it’s time to shift the discussion to wealth and property tax. That’s where the rich get their income anyway.
Definitely a flaw in the branding of the “1%”–income really has very little to do with it. As a graduate student earning $18k a year, I still have much more in common with the doctor making $500k than those with their hands on the string of corporate power.
You have the same problem with property tax. Expensive homes dropped in price much more than more moderately priced homes, and the property tax on those homes dropped too. Also the rich in California don’t tend to get their income from property. They just buy nice property with their income. My real concern is that when we start talking about property tax, we start talking about prop. 13, and that is not going away, and if it did, we would end up kicking a bunch of retired people out of their homes as their property taxes jump.
there is plenty of hard and clear analysis about property taxes: we are not losing property tax income for education in CA because of a recession as much as we have been losing it since Prop 13 was passed, allowing large corporations to evade property taxes. it is way less about the price of homes and way more about taxes on corporate properties. period. this has been proven in analysis after analysis. that said, the value of homes does matter, just in the fact that schools with more expensive homes in the area have more funding, but this problem pales in comparison to the overall dearth of funds for education that has come from property tax breaks that benefit corporations more than anyone. Prop 13 needs reform very very badly– before it, CA schools were the best funded in the nation. we quickly dropped to 48th because of prop 13, and it has stayed there. also, reforming Prop 13 does not mean we can’t protect homeowners from an unmanageable jump in tax– it is not an all or nothing thing. i get really sick of conservatives always pulling out the spectre of small business and individual middle class homeowners as a reason we can’t hold big money accountable– as if it isn’t possible to pass laws that differentiate between trhe little guys and the big fish. finally, your logic is also faulty in terms of income tax: the 1% are not suffering in the recession- they have gained enormously. since the crisis in 2008, i read recently that the economy has gained 12% overall. but for everyone other than the 1% it has NOT GROWN ONE WHIT. every bit of gain that has occurred has benefitted the 1% only. and, while it is true that the basic income tax structure in CA is fairly progressive, you are not taking into account all the loopholes that benefit no one but the 1%, like the yacht tax break and BS like that. analyses i have seen show that when these loopholes are taken into account, the wealthy in CA pay some of the lowest income taxes in the end. i do agree that we have to look at more than income tax– at the federal level, capital gains tax reform is probably more important than income tax, since the MOST wealthy and the banks and such get most of their money from investments not wages. but to say that depending on taxes from the wealthy to fund public services is faulty in its basic principle is just not supported by the data, as i understand them.
Prop 13 isn’t the current cause of school funding problems. We have instituted enough other taxes to more than compensate for the lost property tax revenue in the state. We were about 13th in the nation in taxes before Prop. 13, and recently we were at 10th in the nation. We found other ways to tax Californians. So something else is going on in the state when we are in the top 10 in tax revenues per person, but our schools are in the bottom 10. Prop 13 doesn’t need the reform as much as our poor spending habits and poor school system. If we eliminated Prop 13 and allowed the legislature free rein to collect all the taxes they want, we would be up around the level of Hawaii in taxes, but we would still be in the bottom in education just like Hawaii. Tax revenue is not the problem with our education. Our education system and the lack of support from the legislature for education are the problems with education. How we teach in California has changed since the 70′s, and that is the real cause of our education problems. Even in strong economic times, we have not improved in our education rankings, because money isn’t the issue.
My logic isn’t faulty in terms of the 1% suffering from the recession. A 12% gain in the economy doesn’t bring them close to being where they were before the recession. We see this fact from state tax revenues. Remember the 1% were paying about 50% of state taxes. If they had really recovered, then state revenues would be much higher than they are, because the 1% would be back to paying the same levels they were before the recession. When I say that the 1% pay 50% of the tax revenues in the state, that does take into consideration all the loopholes.
How do you not see that depending on taxes from the wealthy is faulty? What data are you looking at that doesn’t point out that the rich lose more income in a recession than the rest of us? The state loses a lot more income than it should because it depends so much on the volatile income of the 1%.
First off, California does NOT have a “very progressive” tax
bracket…someone making $1 million a year pays only 6% more than
someone making $47k a year (19% vs. 13% effective). http://www.tax-brackets.org/californiataxtable
I’d like to see the source for the “1% pays 50% of state taxes”, I’m
not saying it’s right or wrong, I’d just like to see what the numbers
are. But as for the rich having “volatile incomes”, yes they do if you
see how they can make or loose your annual salary in a day or so, but
percentage-wise, the rich nationally have just been getting richer over
the past few decades, it’s not as though they’re riding some crazy
rollercoaster of financial risk (check out figure 2 in the article):
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph
This source also cites information that refutes the claim that “the
middle class’ income was not reduced as much as the income for the
rich”: in fact, the top 400 richest people in America have seen their
incomes INCREASE by 392% and their taxes DECREASE by 37% between
1992-2007. So unless your income has increased by more than almost 4
times and your taxes decreased by practically 40% (which would make most
people’s tax rates close to zero or negative), the middle class is
definitely not making gains.
> someone making $1 million a year pays only
> 6% more than someone making $47k a year
> (19% vs. 13% effective).
Apparently you’re not bright enough to realize that 19% of $1,ooo,ooo is a hell of a lot more than 13% of $47K. Why don’t you try dividing $190K by $6K and tell us again who’s not paying their fair share?
You know what you get when you go to Cal? You simply buy a piece of paper with UC Berkeley stamped on it. Very little practical, and much less inspirational, teaching goes on at Cal. I don’t think I had one effective teacher. Mr. Stan de San Diego you sure like to criticize at every chance you get and try and display your imagined superiority,
are you on the faculty at Cal?
Let me first point out that we are talking about California. Talking about the national situation of the wealthy is different than talking about the situation of the rich in California who pay taxes that go to Cal. Specifically, the 1% in California have a different economic situation than the top 400 earners in the nation.
The progressive part comes in when you multiply the income by the tax rate. Using the link you gave, a person making $1 million pays $194K in tax. That is quite a bit more than the person making $47K who would pay $6K in taxes. That is why you can understand how the 1% pay around 50% of the tax. Each millionaire pays the same tax as around 30 people making $50K. Again you can see the progression. 30 people making $50K earn $1.5 million and pay the same tax as the one person making $1 million.The source for the 1% paying 50% of the taxes is this article that includes comments from Brad Williams who was the top economic forecaster for the California budget department
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704604704576220491592684626.html
If single with no allowances earns 47k per year, then California income tax per month is $158.61
However if single with no allowances earns1 million per year, then California income tax per month is $8,277.22
http://www.businessbookkeeper.net/california-payroll-calculator-2012.php#calculate
So here is very big difference
> Basically the guy is saying that the government
> is choosing to charge the rich less, and charge
> him more to make up for it.
So basically this protester is demonstrating a rather simplistic and erroneous perception on how the real world works. Maybe it’s best that people like him don’t attend college, since they lack the judgement to find out what’s really going on before making asses of themselves in a public forum.