First Blog

“It’s what they want,”  is the message we receive from both Dems and Reps,  and from the left of the Dems and from the right of the Reps.  The Freedom Caucus (Rep), for example, demands the people want fiscal austerity, balancing the budget, and therefore a reduction of all spending, no matter what. Period.  The Dems, mostly in locked-step, believe in ultimate humanitarian goals by providing everyone with all they need.  Just increase spending, they tell us.  The Reps want to rein in spending, develop more free enterprise, and “hopefully” grow an economy that will support a benefit-thirsty population.  The anarchists simply don’t know what they want beyond their love of disruption.  Throwing crap into the fan and hoping it will land in the right place, is the extent of their thinking.  And this assessment is far too kind. All claim that what they propose is what the public wants!  Not so.  All these groups somehow have equated what they want to what everyone wants.  My gosh, s

In a recent report of compensation of university presidents, it is reported that the average annual compensation (in all forms) is just over $428,000 in 2014, up 7% from a year earlier, according to an analysis of 238 chief executives at 220 public universities from the Chronicle of Higher Education, nearly four times what the average full professor makes.   See http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/07/pf/college/highest-paid-public-university-presidents/ That’s a lot of money.   But what is the true compensation?   They suffer universal contempt from the faculty* who think the job is mostly routine, something any (very careful) idiot can do.   They are also living at the whim of their boards that seem to reflect the general public opinion which is about the same as faculty.   Most of them have given up successful research careers, which is what brought them into the business in the first place.   They live in the money world, where all kinds of observation is made about great educatio