More than 3,000 Cal State Long Beach students, faculty and staff are expected to rally today in coordination with budget protests held at each of the 23 Cal State University campuses.
The rallies, which are aimed at protesting recently proposed budgets cuts to the CSU, will call for more to be taken from executives and administrators rather than faculty and staff salaries. The rally will also protest student fee increases.
The 23 campuses, in total, may face anywhere between a $500 million to $1 billion decrease in state funding.
April 13, 2011
March 29, 2011
March 15, 2011
Budget Crisis Leaving Federal Agencies in Limbo - NYTimes.com
Uncertain of how much money Congress will provide them, many agencies are operating in uncertainty.
Officials at various agencies have frozen hiring, canceled projects, delayed contracts, reduced grants and curtailed training, travel and upgrades in information technology.
In northern New Hampshire, a new federal prison, with space for 1,280 inmates, sits vacant because the federal government has not been able to hire correctional officers and other employees.
via www.nytimes.com
[ are we sinking beneath the weight of our prison industrial complex? ... or is this but a market correction? ]
March 04, 2011
States' Brilliant Budget Solution: Sacrifice Public Education to Spend More on Ineffective Prisons » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union
California's governor wants to eliminate the entire $30 million the state spends on public libraries, while spending more than $50 million to imprison two dozen bedridden inmates who pose no threat to public safety.
Unfortunately, these types of absurd budget "solutions" are more common than you might think. There's no shortage of debate about how to deal with fiscal crises around the nation; the protests in Wisconsin and other states over budget cuts reflect the passion surrounding this hot topic.
But there's one thing everyone who cares about the budget, our safety, and basic fairness should be able to agree on: reducing our already bloated and inefficient prison system is a good start.
via www.aclu.org
February 03, 2011
San Quentin Construction: Putting death row on hold - Vallejo Times Herald
Gov. Jerry Brown has 25 billion reasons for delaying construction of a $356 million death row complex at San Quentin State Prison.
There is little debate over whether death-row inmates -- and guards -- need a safer and more modern facility. The current death row is antiquated and overcrowded, requiring the state to pay a premium for staffing.
We don't think it should be built at San Quentin, where engineering for the site has driven up the estimated cost of construction. We also question whether all the state's condemned inmates need to be housed in one complex. Given the time they spend on death row before they are executed or die of old age, they could be housed at other maximum-security prisons as across the state and returned to San Quentin for their execution.
LAPD jail: LAPD finally opens its new downtown jail - latimes.com
Prisoners were transferred Wednesday from the LAPD's old Parker Center jail to the new $84-million Metropolitan Detention Center. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times / February 2, 2011)
ShareRelated Map: New LAPD central jail
By Joel Rubin, Los Angeles TimesFebruary 3, 2011E-mailPrint Text Size
via www.latimes.com
Changing Universities: A Growth Model for the UC
While a recent Los Angeles Times editorial argued that the solution to the University of California’s budget problems is to reduce enrollments, this suggestion would not only limit access when it is most needed, but it would also hurt the funding of the entire system. Currently, undergraduate tuition is the only stable source of funding for the UC system, and the revenue generated by in-state and nonresident students subsidizes research, administration, and most other UC activities. In fact, the university receives on average $23,000 from each undergraduate student (this includes state and student revenue) but only spends $8,000 on direct instructional costs. In other words, the university will generate more income if it enrolls more students.
By increasing the number of international students and maintaining the level of resident enrollees, the UC could bring in hundreds of millions of dollars, while it supports the goals of access, affordability, and excellence. This growth model would require hiring more assistant professors and lecturers, and for people who worry about undermining the research mission, it should be stressed that the more income generated by tuition, the more we can support research.
Some have argued that the system does not have enough classrooms or facilities, but this is a false excuse. If the universities expand their hours of operations and have more evening courses, more students can be accommodated. Also, housing and dining are self-supporting and often produce profits so they can handle an influx of students, and let’s not forget that there are plenty of empty houses and buildings around our campuses.
January 31, 2011
Brown's Countdown, Day 21: Governor wants all juvenile offenders in county custody - Sacramento Politics - California Politics | Sacramento Bee
Government reformers and youth advocates have long called for the state to get out of the business of juvenile corrections.
Now they're backing Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to eliminate the state Division of Juvenile Justice and give counties responsibility for the state's most serious young offenders.
Brown wants to eliminate the division in three years. High costs, poor treatment and other shortcomings have made the agency a target of critics.
via www.sacbee.com
January 11, 2011
December 08, 2010
Can Ending Capital Punishment Help States Cut Costs? - ABC News
In 2003, Seattle resident Robert Kerr was abducted from his apartment and found dead 30 miles from his home, with his bank account emptied and without clothes or identification. At the end of 2010, the state of Washington has yet to arrest or convict anyone for his death.
While Kerr's killers have never been found, the state will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in the coming year on the death penalty for people already behind bars -- a situation that has reformers, and Kerr's family, clamoring for change.
Kerr's case is one of thousands of unsolved murders, and it's the reason his sister, Judy Kerr, supports her state, California, in abolishing the death penalty and reallocating the millions of dollars it spends on death row inmates each year to solving cold cases.
via abcnews.go.com
