University Of California: Kind Of A Racket

Today, alledged abuses of overtime pay in the University of California's School System was carried in the San Francisco Chronicle. The article failed to point out the root cause of UC employee's cost problem. I.E. the UC system employs app. 250,000. Students attending the UC system only number app. 220,000. The students and employees must be bumping in to each other on the campus if they can ever find a parking place first.

Coincidently tonight , Turner Classic Movies is showing the classic film "On The Waterfront". The film is based on corrupt longshoreman union bosses that shakedown ship owners to hire more longshoremen than necessary to off load the docking ships.

The UC Board of Regents and their operatives are kind o' like those union bosses. The Regents shakedown the California tax payers and students to fund their quasi-racket of overpriced educational services.

U.C.Regents Chairman Richard Blum:Wrong Man For Job

Today the San Francisco Chronicle carried a front page article written by Tanya Schevitz about University of California Regents Chairman Richard Blum. He's been on the board since 2002 but was moved up to the Chairmans slot last year. The article was supposed to be favorable but the facts that were used seemed to indicate otherwise. Baiting-terms like " alpha dog", "gangbusters style" and " [Blum's] streamlining the university bloated headquarters structure" fell short . For example, Blum's so-called "accomplishments"include making it easier to have private donors pay for U.C. projects! Oh yea he also got the banks to increase U.C. credit line to $10 billion from $1 billion.

So where's the beef? Or I should say "Where's the cut in the fat?" The article points out that there are 179,000 U.C. employees for the 209,000 students. They must be bumping into each other. I guess one way to tell the difference between them is the student has a hurried, concerned look whereas the employee has a relaxed look because the U.C. job over pays and it's damn near impossible to lose your job.

Blum is Senator Diane Feinstein's husband. He's parlayed her connections into lucrative military contracts and has profited from base closing a.k.a. real estate swindles where the U.S. taxpayer comes up short. So Dickie Blum is the last person who is going to make waves about over paid bureauacracies . And so the U.C. system will get fixed when problems like Blum get fixed.