Opinion: In today’s pages: Health, education and welfare. And the chopping block.
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Some reaction in today’s Los Angeles Times editorial pages to the coming deeper cuts to the state’s higher education system, and to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s assertions about welfare cheats.
Start with the University of California. UC Berkeley professors Robert Cooter and Aaron Edlin say it makes more sense to fire people (presumably their colleagues, not them) than to impose across-the-board salary cuts. Why?
Growth has led to bloat at UC. The bloat and bureaucracy stifle creativity and productivity. The bloat is in unproductive workers and unproductive jobs.Many jobs have little to do with our core missions of teaching and research.
Next, the Cal State system. CSU Long Beach geography professor and department chairman Vincent J. Del Casino Jr. says cuts to his schools are necessary, too, but beware the consequences:
So what is the cost of gutting the Cal State system? Fewer nurses. Fewer teachers. Fewer engineers. Fewer poets and artists. Fewer film and electronic arts experts. Fewer MBAs. Fewer people to drive the future of California, including fewer geographers trained in my department. These reductions in educated human capital will hit California at a time when the state needs 2 million additional college graduates by the year 2020.
Also on op-ed, Douglas MacKinnon shows why he’s one of those conservatives that liberals love, when it’s convenient, and that conservatives love to hate. He takes on the GOP for hypocrisy and calls on the party to shed the “morally bankrupt leaders who have violated the trust of their families and constituents” (think Appalachians and Argentina) and to embrace a wider base. Read more about MacKinnon here and here, and more from him here.
You’ve noticed those billboards about your right to have a pet? So has columnist Meghan Daum.
On the virtual pages, like this one, check out a response from Los Angeles County welfare chief Philip L. Browning to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attack, a couple weeks ago in the Times, on the CalWorks welfare-to-work program.
On the editorial page, the Times continues its Rehabilitating Healthcare series with a thumbs-down on the portion of the House bill that would fund reform with tax increases on the rich. Better, the page says, to roll back the tax exemption on health benefits.
The exemption is worth $3.5 trillion over 10 years, so even a modest reduction could raise a significant amount. Trimming the exemption would also discourage gold-plated insurance plans that promote excessive consumption of healthcare services. Such a move would face stiff resistance from unions and President Obama, who promised not to raise taxes on the middle class. But it would send the valuable message that everyone pays for this reform because everyone benefits.
The editorial page also remembers the Apollo 11 moonshot and offers that clean and efficient energy is just as far away, and ultimately just as achievable. And we observe President Obama’s brave willingness to acknowledge that he is a White Sox fan.