Please understand, this is not a column about divestment and the many reasons it is an ineffective, rash and brazenly ignorant way to address the staggering conflict in Palestine. There have been human rights violations that require legitimate objection and scrutiny on the world stage, but few students at UC Berkeley truly understand the tense realities of living in a nation surrounded by enemies who desire nothing more than your nation’s complete annihilation. “From the river to the sea,” is the oft-repeated slogan. But this column is not about divestment. The only solution of any lasting quality to our public woes is a campuswide shift in political culture that transcends the issues.

Nor is this a column about judicial charges and constitutional violations. Former Daily Cal columnist and SQUELCH! senator Noah Ickowitz and former Student Action external affairs vice president Joey Freeman filed charges with the ASUC Judicial Council on Friday, alleging rampant constitutional violations in the passage of SB 160. Like America’s cultural obsession with litigation and the inevitable flurry of court cases that follows any major legislation in Sacramento and Washington, the charges of both Ickowitz and Freeman demonstrate a foolhardy determination not to lose this battle, no matter what the broader costs are of prolonging the conflict. In an interview with The Daily Californian, Ickowitz acknowledged that personal ideology was part of his motivation for dragging on this looming legal fiasco. But this is also not a column about ASUC legal affairs.

And this is not a column about ASUC Senator Jorge Pacheco’s recent public foul-up with ASUC President Connor Landgraf. Pacheco reportedly offered last Tuesday to remove his Judicial Council injunction on Landgraf’s health and wellness referendum in exchange for Landgraf opting not to veto the divestment bill Pacheco supported — classic you-scratch-my-back I’ll-scratch-yours political positioning. It’s embarrassing for Pacheco to place himself on such morally questionable grounds, embarrassing for the ASUC to become embroiled in the debacle and embarrassing for UC Berkeley students regardless of ideology. But this column is not about the latest of ASUC scandals, either.

Finally, this is not a column about “campus climate” or a plea for any recently mistreated Berkeley “communities.” Attend any ASUC Senate meeting or elections event, and one will quickly discover the true power those two simple phrases have over student political discourse at UC Berkeley. As George Orwell would have said, those phrases have “lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.” But, alas, this is not a column about tired political rhetoric.

This is a column about simple maturity.

More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Isocrates criticized the Athenian democracy of his day by accusing it of training citizens to “(look upon) insolence as democracy, lawlessness as liberty, impudence of speech as equality, and license to do what they pleased as happiness.” Isocrates’ ancient words were later written by others to reflect modern realities in the Aegean and elsewhere: “Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress.”

Isocrates on Berkeley politics: “Oh, please.” UC Berkeley and the ASUC are a perfect case studies for Isocrates’ theory, and as evidenced by the April 1 assault on a pro-Palestinian student at Sproul Plaza by a goon who disagreed with the victim’s political stance, we as a university are struggling to stop the bloodletting of overemotional worn-out rhetoric, repugnant political maneuvering and excessively theatrical squabbling that have characterized our campus for nearly a month — with no foreseeable end in sight.

More than anything else, campus politics is centered almost entirely on winning a disturbing and very public game — winning over votes, winning popular opinion and winning elections. It comes at the cost of a collaborative, academic atmosphere and civilized public dialogue.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We’d be wise to put the events of this month in perspective, to acknowledge that the ASUC is only a student government and that our politics do not, in fact, define us as individuals. What this campus needs most — and what Isocrates was hinting at — is a shift in the tone of public discourse.

Anything to stop the bleeding.

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter: @connorgrubaugh.

The post Isocrates on divestment appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Nevertheless, California State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, introduced a bill in late February that would require the 50 most impacted lower division courses in the California higher education system to be offered online. The bill follows Gov. Jerry Brown’s public advocacy for online education to the UC Board of Regents and also at San Jose State University in January.

But rest assured: This is no educational apocalypse.

Although Steinberg’s bill was criticized by the UC Academic Senate for its foolish outsourcing of education to for-profit third parties, it’s heartening that at least one California legislator is finally beginning to catch on to the most important question in higher education today. As New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote earlier this month, “The best part of the rise of online education is that it forces us to ask: What is a university for?”

If online education is just as capable of communicating at least technical and procedural information (former Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun’s online STEM courses at Udacity can attest to this) — then what, exactly, is the purpose of a university?

Brooks, a notable champion of online education over the years, answered that question for his readers two weeks ago — online education can teach technical knowledge; while “practical” knowledge, the richer and more elusive lessons we learn in college, should be left for traditional universities. That’s a start, but I suspect the actual answer is more far-reaching — and it might leave UC students uneasy.

Ever since the 1944 GI Bill enabled thousands of young Americans to attend college, higher education has proliferated throughout American society and evolved from privilege to workforce prerequisite. Embracing the shift in their clientele and inspired to create a more educated American workforce, colleges and universities across the country drifted from their roots in classical education in favor of the pragmatic knowledge that was and continues to be in high demand. Largely abandoning their position as lofty country clubs for the upper crust of American society, universities nationwide embraced a new role as the engines of the American economy.

Offering vocation-centered, concrete education to a mass audience is admirable — both dreamers and pragmatists are vital to American society. Universities tried to find a middle ground, attempting to instill a sense of purpose and meaning in the lives of students and provide them with the pragmatic knowledge necessary for success in the American economy. Today, when online universities offer technical training at a fraction of the price of a traditional college, it’s clear the dual-purpose model needs rethinking.

I’ve argued for classical education in the past, but I know “Walden” and “Julius Caesar,” as much as I love them, aren’t for everyone. My father was an adjunct professor at a California community college in the Sacramento area a few years ago. He met a student one day who’d been attending a two-year institution for 10 semesters. That’s three years longer than the expected time to earn an associate degree — and he was still a freshman.

Beyond the technical learning, job training and lower-level workforce experience — the vocational schooling — necessary for 21st-century competitiveness, most Americans don’t need or desire the watered-down classical education most universities force down the throats of disgruntled students. Not everyone is meant to go to college, and not everyone should have to. College is about pushing the limits of our feeble understanding to reach unforeseen conclusions and immersion in a culture of constant intellectual challenge to reach into the depths of the elusive truth. College is a sort of education that can’t be forced.

Online education, on the other hand, has the potential fill the gap in American vocational schooling that traditional universities have failed to address.  Like the “pragmatization” of American universities in the 1950s, the Internet is the next medium that will expand education to a wider audience worldwide. The Internet can be a forum for the democratization of technical education — a place where all Americans, for the first time in history, can learn the skills necessary to compete in the 21st-century global economy rather than hanging on in community college for five years or more.

For students like the young man my father taught, for American industrial workers left without jobs after production-line outsourcing, for anyone left behind in the relentless race of the modern economy — online education just might hold the promise of the future.

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter: @connorgrubaugh.

The post The promise of online education appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The Sacramento Bee reported Saturday that California State Assembly Bill 475, currently being considered in committee, would require UC Berkeley and UCLA to pay student athletes an annual stipend of $3,600 and guarantee their scholarships for five years. Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown (D-San Bernadino), carrying the bill through the legislature with the NCPA’s sponsorship, told the Bee: “They should say here is your five-year scholarship. Here are the tutors you need. The $3,600 stipend, that’s toothbrushes and other things.”

Those are some pricey toiletries.

Beyond the costs of tuition, room and board, books, and tutoring that are already covered by UC Berkeley full-ride athletic scholarships, it’s hard to imagine any UC Berkeley student spending more than $1,000 a semester on incidentals like snacks, clothing and gold-plated toothbrushes — and that’s more than a little generous. Absurdly, in the bill’s current language, the stipend only applies to students already receiving full rides from the university.

If any UC Berkeley student athletes struggle to meet living costs outside of their full-ride scholarship, it has nothing do with their participation in athletics and everything to do with extreme economic circumstances. So why give the stipend only to athletes?

If legislators were honest with themselves, the citizens of California and the students of this university, they’d acknowledge that AB 475 is just another attempt to address the current reality of college sports: student athletes are money makers, and they’re paid extraordinarily meager “salaries” in light of the revenue they generate. Lofty NCAA rhetoric about amateur athletes has grown rote as the commercialization trend continues, so educational institutions are looking for alternatives. The bill would professionalize college sports at UC Berkeley — and some are welcoming it.

But public education in California has arrived at a critical crossroads — as the tide of public opinion swings in favor of financial compensation for student athletes, institutions of higher education must decide whether running heavily commercialized, expensive and burdensome athletic departments is a violation of their traditional academic commitment and credibility.

The NCAA’s widespread “Going Pro in Something Other Than Sports” television ad wowed viewers with statistics about the supposedly stellar academic performance of student athletes, ending with a feisty question-and-answer: “Still think we’re just a bunch of dumb jocks? You need to do your homework.”

At UC Berkeley, however, our homework is done. In October, the NCAA released data revealing that only 48 percent of Cal football players who enrolled here between 2002 and 2005 graduated within six years — the lowest football graduation rate in the Pacific-12 athletic conference. Of male varsity basketball players who received athletic aid to attend UC Berkeley in the same period, only 36 percent graduated in a six year time span.

This unfortunate reality may have something to do with the UC Berkeley athletic department’s role in ensuring high-value recruits are admitted through the admissions office’s “Admission by Exception” allowance. Sixty-three student athletes were admitted for the 2011-2012 school year without satisfying UC Berkeley’s admission requirements — or perhaps more accurately, the 2011-2012 “season.”

Clearly, even at this prestigious academic institution, either college athletics has become time consuming to the point of absurdity, or the “student” athletes in revenue-generating sports like football and basketball are simply not up to snuff in the classroom.

A common argument for maintaining the current collegiate athletic system is that it promotes education for those who might not otherwise be able to earn a college degree — especially minority groups. It’s as if athletic scholarships have become a less-objectionable form of affirmative action. But rather than inspire students to achieve where their prospects are best — in the classroom — the structure of American athletics pushes students to the high-stakes gamble of big-time football and basketball.

It’s high time someone takes on the NCAA. Under the guise of a nonprofit organization, the arbiter of all things college sports has deceived young people across the country into believing that competition in NCAA Division I big-money sports and meaningful, lasting higher education are not mutually exclusive. But sadly, the evidence increasingly suggests otherwise. And with annual revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars, we’ve paid a high price.

The University of California should lobby intensely to kill AB 475 — because California universities should be moving in precisely the opposite direction. Exceptions in the admissions process, disturbing levels of athletic department spending on comprehensive support for full-ride athletes and twisted incentives embedded in this nation’s sports machine are all signs that we have travelled too far down the road to commercialized college athletics — and the only way to move forward now is to turn back.

$3,600 toothbrushes be damned.

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter: @connorgrubaugh.

The post College sports at a crossroads appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, with help from a small group of primarily Republican senators, staged a nearly 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination to direct the Central Intelligence Agency last week. Paul’s anti-Obama rant added up to little more than a symbol of opposition to supposed White House overreach, as the president’s policy on the use of drones was quickly clarified the following day, and Brennan was easily confirmed by the Senate that afternoon.

Strangely enough, it wasn’t Brennan’s nomination that Paul specifically opposed — it was a statement from Attorney General Eric Holder. Writing in response to a query from Paul about whether the president could authorize lethal force like a drone strike on U.S. soil, Holder explained that the administration had “no intention” of ever using drone strikes in the country. But he didn’t explicitly rule out using lethal military force in case of an “extraordinary circumstance” like a terrorist attack. The response wasn’t to Paul’s satisfaction, so he proceeded with his headline-grabbing diatribe.

And Washington is abuzz. Twitter exploded with the hashtag “StandWithRand” as Paul’s speech dipped into prime time. Just hours after his tirade ended, Paul told Politico he was seriously considering running for president in 2016.

Granted, it is true that Paul’s filibuster stands out in recent political memory. It’s the first talking filibuster to exceed five hours since 2010 and before that since 1992. Modern-day senators, in a twist on centuries-old Senate rules, typically just tell their leader they intend to filibuster a bill or resolution, and the matter is dropped. Bills with so-called “holds” on them are simply never scheduled for a vote. It takes no effort and requires no public interaction.

So it’s noteworthy that Paul chose to actually talk in this last filibuster — to own his cause and fight for it in the public eye with real skin in the game. But at the same time, massive support for Paul and calls to resurrect the “old rules” of the filibuster reveal a certain desperation in the Senate and American politics in general. After all, no landmark legislation was passed, and no dangerous bill was killed — even the target of Paul’s filibuster, Brennan’s nomination and subsequent confirmation, easily slipped away.

It was all just talk, and everyone’s celebrating. In Berkeley, we suffer from a similar malady. Whether it’s prolonged discussion about Telegraph revitalization that should’ve happened years ago or the city’s consistent but hollow commitment to solving the problem of widespread homelessness on Shattuck, on Telegraph, at People’s Park and elsewhere — Berkeley has an acute case of U.S. Senate syndrome.

We often hear about the value of “discourse” and “meaningful conversation” while attending Cal and living in Berkeley. Conversation is powerful, but real discourse is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Without effective action as a result, though, discourse is just a waste of everyone’s time.

As for the Senate, it’s simply time to change the rules. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, appeared to go along with numerous Democratic proposals to do away the filibuster in 2011, only to strike an agreement with GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, that cut through a little red tape but left the Senate’s institutionalized system of interruption and delay largely intact. Almost every action in the Senate requires 60 votes now — the voter-approved Democratic majority in the upper house is essentially meaningless.

But it doesn’t have to be. The American public, the media, the White House and many in the Senate are ready to do away with the filibuster or at least the anonymous pseudo-filibuster “hold” that’s so often used today. What reason could there possibly be to not trash the rule that allowed Strom Thurmond to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for a record-setting 24 hours and 18 minutes?

In the Senate, as in Berkeley and in many other state and local governments across the country, achieving forward motion has to entail cutting back. The Senate’s rules combine with the personal motivations of American elected officials to prevent Congress from being an effective governing body. When arcane rules and bureaucratic inertia change the nature of American representative democracy without approval of the people, the reality of that democracy is fundamentally threatened.

It’s time for the Senate to relinquish its grip and acknowledge that today it is just as much the people’s house as the House of Representatives. The American people have suffered far too long to be refused this time — since John C. Calhoun popularized the ploy in 1841, since Huey Long perfected its use for personal gain 1935 and since Thurmond attempted to block civil rights in the 1950s.

Paul’s filibuster may be less ideologically repugnant to Americans than the escapades of Long or Thurmond, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less reprehensible.

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter: @connorgrubaugh.

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Even as President Barack Obama stood before Congress in his 2013 State of the Union — practically begging the House and Senate for bipartisan reform on Medicare, the tax code, climate change, immigration and much more — Washington, D.C., insiders already knew the likelihood of a compromise was virtually nil. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank uttered the most painful words of the year on Tuesday, when he reacted to the failure of compromise on fiscal policy: “The grand bargain may not be dead, but it has been given its last rites.”

Much of the discussion about appropriations and budget reform revolves around the “bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission,” which Obama cited in his speech. It’s a reference to the president’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, created in February 2010 to brainstorm fiscal policies that would put the country on solid financial footing for the long term. Headed by Alan Simpson, a former senator from Wyoming, and Erskine Bowles, chief of staff for former President Bill Clinton and a current member of Morgan Stanley’s board of directors, the commission has been widely honored as an example of bipartisan success. But that’s not precisely true.

The commission’s report, issued in 2010, can’t actually be called an official report of the commission because it failed to garner the necessary 14 votes (of 18 members) to be formally endorsed. The vote was 11-7 in favor of the report, and although it’s still a considerably bipartisan accomplishment in the current political climate, the commission’s failure to make an official recommendation is reflective of the general state of American compromise. How bad is it really, when even a bipartisan commission is so divided on partisan lines that it can’t approve its own report? The results of the Simpson-Bowles Commission prove  that compromise in America was never very much alive.

Our revels aren’t now ended — they never really began.

Behind the buzz of “compromise,” “reaching across the aisle” and “bipartisanship” that Obama echoed in his State of the Union is a fundamentally false ideology promoting the idea that this nation was built on — and historically excels at — compromise. But closer examination of history quickly refutes that deceptive dogma.

Some of the most notable compromises of American history — the Three-Fifths Compromise, the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850 — weren’t actually compromises at all. They were temporary agreements to continue government-sponsored disenfranchisement of blacks for the sake of pushing an inevitable and bloody civil war down the road.

Emory University president James Wagner showed his belief in the myth of great American compromise recently when he lauded the merits of the Three-Fifths Compromise, fundamentally failing to understand that true compromises bring all interested parties to the bargaining table. What did the Three-Fifths Compromise really achieve? The prolonged systematic persecution of African Americans and the suppression of democratic ideals.

Recent Congresses continue to cling to America’s pattern of pseudo-compromise, punting on the fiscal cliff once and the debt ceiling twice just since 2011 — with temporary fixes that solved nothing at all and created even bigger problems down the road.

More often than not, compromise in American politics results only in the postponement of disaster rather than the creation of real solutions to partisan disputes.  It’s not that compromise isn’t desirable or effective; it’s just that true compromise is an astoundingly difficult achievement — far more difficult than any old-timer political observers like Milbank seem to recall. True compromise effects real, lasting change in a way that leaves all parties at least minimally satisfied. It’s a long-term solution, and it brings to mind very few examples in American history.

At present, Washington, D.C., looks to be further from a true compromise than it’s ever been. If Obama and Congress can strike a genuine compromise, then they’ll have accomplished a feat rivaling — or surpassing — any other in the long American history of standoffs between the executive and legislative branches. A true compromise — a grand bargain, if you will — is precisely what the country needs. But in all likelihood, Congress and the president will continue their useless dilly-dallying and false compromise until the weight of popular opinion proves insurmountable.

The painful but necessary truth is that Americans never really were much for a compromise. Even when we need compromise most, it’s drama of Shakespearean proportions, rather than shrewd political discourse, that determines whether the country will sink or float. As Cassius tells Brutus in “Julius Caesar”: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

We certainly look like underlings now.

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter: @connorgrubaugh.

The post The elusive American compromise appeared first on The Daily Californian.

After news emerged last July that the California Department of Parks and Recreation had hidden an approximately $20 million surplus from state officials, apparently in order to protect the funds from prying budget analysts, many were left to wonder just how much money other state agencies were hiding from the budget-slashing glare of the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown.

The answer came in late January, when it was revealed that the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection hid more than $3.5 million in secret funds accumulated since 2005 that should have gone to the state general fund. In addition, a state auditor report released last Thursday uncovered news that the the parks scandal took place over the course of not just a few fiscal cycles as suspected, but for as long as 20 years.

After the report’s release, what was once thought to be only an isolated scandal within the parks department suddenly exploded into a corrupt culture that dates back to 1993 on top of a second scandal at Cal Fire. For aghast citizen observers, the events draw into question California’s entire bureaucratic structure.

Since then, there’s been rampant speculation about the issue — how widespread is the problem of budget secrecy in California’s bureaucracy? How should the perpetrators of the parks and Cal Fire deceptions be held accountable? But there’s been little talk about addressing the actual root of the problem. The real question to ask is simply this: Why?

The Department of Finance announced it will conduct an audit of the Cal Fire incident similar to the audit of the parks department it conducted after that scandal was first revealed last July. And legislation was introduced in the State Senate in late January that would submit state employees who knowingly participated in the misrepresentation of financial figures to potential criminal and civil action.

But just reacting to these scandals as isolated incidents isn’t enough. Neither of these courses of action look too likely to put much of a kibosh on future budget frauds, because both audits and criminalization view what happened at Parks and Rec and Cal Fire as a result of corruption, not structural fault. As long as bureaucrats think they can get away with shamelessly audacious shatterings of the public trust, and bureaucratic structure allows it, damage control will do little to solve the problem.

Perhaps California politicians and voters are just unsure how to react. After all, a situation in which the government hides money from itself sounds 1) unlikely, and 2) inconsequential. But the reality is that the scandals in the parks department and Cal Fire show a brazen disrespect for the people of California and their popularly elected officials, as well as a shockingly disjointed view of how democratic governments operate.

Bureaucrats at both departments treated the money allocated to them by the office of the governor as if it was theirs to do with as they pleased — theirs to defend at the bargaining table, hide away from the public view or risk losing to budget-slimming financial analysts — rather than a temporary gift from taxpayers with a specific purpose in mind.

The independent nature of the California bureaucracy — its culture of interagency and interdepartmental competition for funding — threaten the ability of the government to act as a popularly elected body. It’s impossible for the Legislature and governor’s office to direct and control policy if run-away bureaucrats, knowing that accountability from the legislative branch is usually a pipe dream, proceed to set their own agendas.

It’s time to rein in the bureaucracy. Sure, it’s a concept that’s been discussed on the state and national levels for years, mostly by merciless whack-a-mole conservatives like Texas Gov. Rick Perry (Uh, Departments of Commerce, Education and … uh … oops). But equating an agenda of increasing legislative oversight and constitutional control over the bureaucracy with decreasing the size of government puts the idea in a bad light. Reining in bureaucracy doesn’t need to mean less government, although it could — it only needs to mean more accountable government.

It’s time for California to wake up and realize that our bureaucracy is spinning out of control. Failing to act on the crimes committed in the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection sends a signal to bureaucratic administrators that it’s permissible to fudge the books and interpret policy mandates in their own way. It’s time for Brown and the Legislature to work together and create a simpler bureaucratic system that favors transparency over secrecy, cooperation over competition and effective popular governance over mindless and deceptive political jockeying.

As soon as California’s government gets just a little more responsive as a result, we’ll be thanking them for it.

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter: @connorgrubaugh.

The post People deserve a bureaucratic rethink appeared first on The Daily Californian.

“Building a business is tough, but I hear building a business in California is next to impossible,” was Perry’s opening salvo in a radio ad that recently premiered on airwaves across the state. Perry urged business owners in the Golden State to relocate to Texas for its “low taxes, sensible regulations and fair legal system.”

California Gov. Jerry Brown dismissed Perry’s allegations as “barely a fart,” but there’s more to Perry’s accusation than first meets the eye — or the nose.

Texas legislators have enthusiastically attempted to remake Texas’ image as the business Mecca of America. The state has no personal income tax, no corporate income tax (although the state does charge a low percentage of companies’ gross receipts) and a relatively low sales tax. With California leaders increasingly focused on simply staying afloat, the Lone Star State’s makeover may just be working.

While Texas dreams big, California appears mired in economic and political deadlock. After the passage of Brown’s pet project Proposition 30 in November, California boasts the nation’s highest sales and personal income tax rates, along with a corporate income tax rate that remains one of the steepest in the country. The Tax Foundation, a research and analysis group that issues annual reports on American states’ “business tax climate,” ranked California the 48th best state in the country to do business in the 2013 fiscal year — and that was before Prop. 30 passed.

Not exactly “Eureka.”

But like his failed presidential campaign last year, Perry remains hopelessly misguided. Low taxes and hands-off government aren’t the only factors that make a state pro-business. In fact, the three states that came out on top of the Tax Foundation’s 2013 “State Business Tax Climate Index” were Wyoming, South Dakota and Nevada — three states that, despite their light tax burden, usually attract more flies and cow pies than entrepreneurs.

Since 1849, Americans have flocked to California for its sun, seashore and abundant natural resources. While Texas may attempt to make up for its shortcomings in the area of livability with tax incentives and economic scheming, California’s long-term business plan is to stay California.

What Perry and his ilk don’t realize is that “pro-business” is more than just numbers on a spreadsheet. Entrepreneurship requires creativity, abundant local capital and a community that’s willing to embrace untested new products and experiences. Entrepreneurship demands the ability to temporarily ignore looming financial concerns while maintaining the determination to survive on the market. Entrepreneurship, by its very nature, transcends simple monetary calculation.

It’s the entrepreneurial spirit and drive that Texas lacks and California has in abundance — and the need to fill that innovative void is what prompted Perry to beg for business. That spirit is why Silicon Valley remains the nation’s premiere location for technology start-ups, the birthplace of such tech giants as Google, Apple, Intel and Hewlett-Packard. It’s why California’s 3.4 million small businesses dwarfed Texas’ 2.2 million as of 2009. It’s why California’s G.D.P. remains higher than that of entire countries like India, Australia and Russia.

The fundamental assumption of Perry’s entire anti-California campaign lies in his belief that American businesses — California businesses — pay no attention to anything outside their bottom line. Perry dismisses the idea that some corporations may be dedicated to creation and innovation above glamorously greedy profit margins.

But in California, we live that golden ideal. Businesses largely respect environmental regulations as essential to a healthy state, and they accept California’s high minimum wage and taxes in order to ensure that society profits in the long run, not just individuals. From recent increases in spending on California’s prestigious public university system to the planned construction of a state-long high-speed rail line, California is investing in its economic future unlike any other state — including Texas. Cutting taxes and lifting regulation will never be the economic boost that a culture of progress is in California.

So has Texas usurped California’s title as America’s commercial giant? In the eyes of Gov. Perry, Texas may be well on its way to bigger business, bigger profits and a bigger ego. In San Francisco on Monday, he boasted that “12 years ago, California wasn’t looking over its shoulder. They’re not looking over their shoulder now — they’re looking at our backside.”

But even despite the truth that all is not well in California’s  economy and political climate, it doesn’t appear Texas will be making a move on the Golden State anytime soon. Because California has something Texas will never have — California.

Trust me, Texas: Don’t mess with California.

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter: @ConnorGrubaugh.

The post Don’t mess with California appeared first on The Daily Californian.

I was more than a little disappointed academically in my first semester at Cal — not that my grades were poor, but I didn’t think they reflected any real intellectual triumph on my part. I spent hours writing papers and entire days cramming for finals, but it was mostly just an endurance test. I guess you might say I didn’t feel really challenged — and it left me dissatisfied. I think many UC Berkeley students can relate.

I thought, as a freshman at Cal last fall, that if there was anything I could do well, I could write; I decided that was my greatest strength. But once I got here, I lost all my sense of enjoyment as a writer as I began typing to the tune of “academic analysis” rather than coherent and engaging prose. Here’s a quote from a poli sci reading I endured last fall:

“Social capital, defined as a combination of generalized trust and access to social networks, has become a key concept in the social sciences in recent decades because it correlates with normatively desirable qualitative features of liberal democracy, such as functioning democratic institutions, increased levels of civicness and citizens’ participation in social and/or public life, and, most importantly, with increased levels of performance in several public policy areas, such as education, health, development, and public policy at large.”

So, you still there? Hello? That was a single sentence, in case you hadn’t noticed — one sentence that said nothing, changed nothing and otherwise failed to stir the imagination or intellectually challenge the reader. Yuck.

One of the reasons I like Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. is that, unlike the academic analyses UC Berkeley students so commonly read, Pitts embraces big ideas. He once criticized American society, in an essay published after the death of astronaut Neil Armstrong, this way: “Big ideas (in this country) are unwelcome. We call it pragmatism. It feels like surrender.” In the context of both American culture and the state of modern American academia, I couldn’t agree more.

Somewhat disillusioned, I set off to read some “classics” this Christmas break. I flew through Mark Twain’s “Roughing It” and Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” Thoreau’s “Walden” and Edward Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” and a few assorted short stories. I’m not writing this to try to impress, I promise. It’s just that, compared to Latin American history books titled “Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages” and comparative politics articles such as “Contesting Privilege with Right: The Transformation of Differentiated Citizenship in Brazil,” the classics are positively gripping, deeply challenging and astonishingly … interesting. As my friends and family know by now, I’ve unequivocally established that I learn more outside of school than inside.

I understand all the talk of late about “focusing on math and science” as a solution to our education problems — society needs talented engineers and shrewd scientific researchers. I understand the new focus on “pragmatic” higher learning — after all, some things learned in college have to be directly applicable to the workplace. I understand the proliferating “standards-based” approach to education at the K-12 level and even at the college level — it’s important that every resident of this country receives a basic level of education that can be used in a variety of occupations.

But what about learning for the sake of learning? What about the classics? What about writing, speaking and living in a way that brings value, purpose and meaning to our all-too-short lives? Does higher education teach us any of that? It should at least point us in the right direction.

At some point, I think, the nature of modern academics begins to interfere with true intellectual and ethical education. Teaching students to write “scholarly” political, historical and literary analyses in the language of academia doesn’t prepare them to write with brave passion, moving honesty, nimble clarity or moral integrity. Teaching students to follow merely the method of science doesn’t equip them to think critically enough to challenge shaky scientific theories or imagine creatively enough to conjure up new ones. Teaching by the book leads to living by the book, and there’s neither joy nor challenge in that.

I’m hoping the University of California and other American educational institutions reach a similar conclusion. I’m hoping we, as Americans, strive to reach into the depths of our minds, dare to defy social norms and begin to establish a new culture rooted in seeking deeper meaning instead of settling for a purely pragmatic education.

Henry David Thoreau, for one, would be pleased.

Editor’s Note: Sex on Tuesday will return Feb. 12.

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org.

The post Off the beat: In search of Walden Pond appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Last Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., appeared on George Stephanopoulos’ “This Week” and announced his willingness to violate conservative tycoon Grover Norquist’s infamous no-tax pledge. Alleging that he would “violate the pledge for the good of the country,” Graham took a step in a radical new direction for the GOP.

For years, the Republican Party has thrived on parliamentary-style discipline — ensuring its prolonged success by holding votes to the party line and refusing to budge on any issue. Essentially, the GOP excelled at playing chicken, and all too often, Democrats were willing to shy away and cave to conservative demands.

Maybe President Barack Obama’s re-election was a wake-up call, or maybe the notoriously ideological vacillator Graham is an exception to the rule in a still staunchly determined Republican caucus — either way, Graham’s willingness to place tax reform on the table is a sign of change to come in Washington if conservatives wish to remain relevant in the years ahead.

Obama’s Thanksgiving address perhaps said best precisely what the current GOP is lacking: “As Americans, we are a bold, generous, big-hearted people. When our brothers and sisters are in need, we roll up our sleeves and get to work — not for the recognition or the reward but because it’s the right thing to do. Because there but for the grace of God go I. And because here in America, we rise or fall together, as one nation and one people.”

Until recently, it appeared all hope was lost for Republicans regaining their senses and appreciating the “oneness” of the American people. As it beat the drums of Romney’s “inevitable” victory and dared Obama once again to avoid the fiscal cliff without its help, the GOP forgot that Americans are fundamentally a united people — despite the polls and pundits who might say otherwise. I hope Graham’s newfound willingness to sit at the same table as Democrats for fiscal talks is an acknowledgement of the American people’s united mandate and united expectations for America’s future.

There are Americans, including myself, who wish for a rejuvenated Republican Party — a party that believes in free markets but also wise regulation, hands-off government but also a disposition toward lending a hand to the down-and-out, social moderation but also an acknowledgement of the diversity present in this country.

Unfortunately, the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower has been dead for generations. Maybe Graham and his ilk are finally beginning to figure that out.

Image Source: DonkeyHotey via Creative Commons

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org.

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From the disappearance of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford in 2009 to the collapse of Eliot Spitzer’s political future in 2008 and the obliteration of John Edwards’ genteel Southern morality that same year, Americans have seen it all. From those who politically got away with it (Barney Frank, Newt Gingrich) to those who didn’t (John Ensign, Anthony Weiner) to the mother of them all — Bill Clinton — the political sex scandal is almost quintessentially American.

We’ve seen the best and the worst, the great and the forgettable — the strong and the weak all fall victim to personal disgrace over the years. But for some reason, we didn’t see this one coming.

This week, CIA director and potential political superstar David Petraeus resigned after an FBI investigation revealed he had engaged in an extramarital affair with his biographer.

Petraeus was a war hero — if the Iraq War can have heroes — in a time when America found disappointment after disappointment in its generals. He had a reputation for efficiency, insight and getting to the essence of the problems facing American troops abroad and citizens at home. He was in more ways than one the mastermind behind the successful Iraq troop surge of 2007. Based on his success, he was appointed head of the CIA in September 2011.

And now we’re here. We’ve arrived at the inevitable chaotic end to the story, where Petraeus finally stoops to the level of every other political farce.

Like Sanford — who mysteriously ran off to Argentina for nearly a week while South Carolinians wondered where he went — Petraeus was incredibly thoughtless, almost utterly incompetent in his senselessness. He was the head of “central intelligence,” and yet he fell to the level of the very terrorists and criminals he sought to defeat when he used a Gmail drafts folder to communicate the gritty details of his grotesque obsession with his paramour.

Like Spitzer, he lost control of the fatal flaw he’d managed to keep hidden behind his ambition for so long. He could lead the fight against an insurgency in Afghanistan, but he couldn’t keep his pants zipped shut. He was able to resist the clamoring of his rivals and subordinates for power and attention, but he couldn’t resist the allure of an affair and a shot at a shamelessly flattering biography. And eventually, Petraeus’ double life caught up with him.

This scandal hurt because we tricked ourselves into believing Petraeus was something more than he was. He was Congress’ darling and President Obama’s hand-picked anti-terror expert. He was the leader who corrected the tomfoolery of the generals responsible for getting America into the Iraq quagmire and the face of a more intelligent military future. But when we cut through the hubris and the hollow praise, we realized he was just another flawed leader.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur quoted an old barracks song in in his farewell address when he said “old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”

This soldier sure faded fast.

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org

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