UC Corruption

The highest-paid officials of the University of California have decided that they're not being paid enough.

Specifically, 36 of the top 200 earners in the UC administration have recently threatened to file suit if their retirement packages are not recalculated to avoid a $245,000 federal limit. Because these workers earn more than that, they feel they should be entitled to have their retirements recalculated based on their current incomes rather than this federal cap. They are demanding this despite the financial chaos of the last few years, which have seen a 32% increase in UC feeds in 2009, and an 8% increase in 2010. And they want the money retroactive to 2007.

The average wage in 2009 was $49,777; a retirement benefit above $245,00 would be, therefore, almost five times what the average worker makes.

Such superstar compensation might make sense if these leading UC administrators were actually doing a good job. If they had, for example, used their political contacts and influence to prevent the state of California from cutting its education budget, then they would have earned their salaries. Police union representatives certainly earned their salaries, as they were so successful in preventing cuts to bloated law enforcement budgets. But it seems no one is there to help defend education. Not only did these administrators fail to force Sacramento from making its draconian cuts, it seems as if they hardly even tried.

A more just and equitable system would be this: Let the salaries and retirements of the top 200 UC administrators from this point forward come entirely as bonuses paid from the funds they prevent from being cut. If Sacramento cuts the UC budget, they receive nothing. Perhaps this would motivate them to take the battle to Sacramento with the same enthusiasm Sacramento has displayed for destroying public education in California.

Those executives would argue that such a salary structure change would, as they put it in a recent San Francisco Chronicle article, "jeopardize the system's ability to recruit top employees." The unasked question is--are these really the "top" employees, when they so miserably fail to protect their system? And what is it they do, anyway, that justify such salaries?

Let Obama Be Obama

In the West Wing episode (Season 1, episode 19) 'Let Barlet Be Barlet,' the fictional president Jed Barlet is failing.

On every front, when facing challenges from opposing Republicans and the military brass, Barlet choses to make meaningless gestures, "dipping his toes in" rather than fighting for his values. He lets one of his aides have a meeting with military officials about gay members of the military, but makes clear that this will not lead to repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Barlet half-heartedly considers appointing reformers to the Federal Election Commission, but realizes that Congress has already staked claim to the openings.

After a confrontation with his devoted chief of staff, President Barlet realizes that he needs to start fighting now if he ever hopes to achieve his agenda. The episode concludes with all staff members pledging to follow their president's wishes.

President Obama should Netflix this episode and watch it twice.

The tragedy of the first two years of the Obama administration is not that this highly-talented, fiercely-smart president was unable to achieve his legislative agenda; the tragedy is that he did achieve it, and that the bar he set himself was so low.

A half-hearted health care reform was passed, but without the critical components that would have made it a truly monumental reform. Don't get me wrong--it's great that more kids will be eligible to be insured, but the individual mandate means that by law their parents now must buy unaffordable insurance. Obama took the bold--and obvious--solution of expanding Medicare to everyone off the table very early, before it was ever seriously considered.

Obama also acted prudently to keep the US economy from plunging further into financial chaos. But while the "stimulus bill" helped banks, it did nothing to create jobs. We now creating a small fraction of the jobs we need each month just to keep pace with population growth; projections are that twelve million jobs would need to be created just to reach the point we were last at when the economy collapsed in October 2008. Instead of taking the bold--and obvious--step of revamping the Works Progress Administration and directly hiring unemployed people, Obama's talk of tax credits for businesses sounds limp.

Obama could have done much more. And now, with his enemies poised to usurp the House, he will have the chance to do far less.

In many ways, Obama is Barlet brought to life. Both are Nobel laureates. Both brim with intelligent and verbal clarity. Both are fundamentally good people. Here is what Obama wrote in his book Dreams of My Father:

"I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children in Chicago's South Side, how narrow the path for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder--alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware--is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism, dooms us all."

Obama is of the mettle of Lincoln, for no other modern president has been so eloquent and empathetic, and of all qualities in a person, empathy is the most important, while eloquence shows the quality of thought. After the nightmare years of the inchoate Bush reign, Obama's mind is a like waking up and taking a breath.

Let us hope that, like Lincoln, his victories will be more plainly seen in retrospect. During Lincoln's terms, one could have mistaken his tactics for chaos--an unruly cabinet, disobedient generals, a war stalled in its early years. The martyred, brilliant Lincoln is hardly the pre-Appomattox Lincoln, who was widely mocked and criticized almost until the moment when he achieved total victory.

But if Obama is not to enjoy Lincoln's post-assassination apotheosis, then he needs to start fighting for his values now. It is great to win a game, and unfortunate to lose, but it seems as if Obama has not even suited up. He has punted the ball on third down. It's time to get in the game.