Nothing Like the Smell of Rank Hypocrisy in the Morning –
As we all know, the state budget that was passed at the end of June has forced the UC Board of Regents to enact more student fee hikes. Those who believe that the legislature passed the budget with no taxes need to rethink the definition of taxation, because what happened and has happened is a huge education tax placed squarely on the backs of middle-class parents of college students, along with the college students themselves.
President Yudof then engages in platitudes. He writes, “I want to emphasize that the regents and I made this painful decision only after the campuses and the Office of the President had absorbed as many cuts as possible without irreparably damaging the quality of the system.”
He continues, “We realize there is never a good time for a tuition increase, especially as many families and students are facing economic hardships and uncertainty.”
He then goes into a variety of financial aid options.
President Yudof feels their pain, does he not? Well, not exactly. Here he is, sitting there receiving over $800,000 in salary, surrounded by people who only make half a million in salary, talking to parents who are worried about their children’s education as though he feels their pain.
We are not supposed to talk about these things, though. Of course, Mr. Yudof would prefer to not have to raise tuition. No one doubts that. Of course his salary, as large as it is, is but a mere drop in the bucket. But the letter that Mr. Yudof writes might as well be a modern day “let them eat cake” letter.
Not because he did the wrong thing in raising the tuition, he likely had to do it. Not because he does not care about the parents. But because he is so far removed from the everyday experience, every bit as much as Marie Antonette who was said to have uttered this phrase during one of the famines that befell France during her husband Louis XVI’s reign.
We may have become more sophisticated in how we deal with these uncomfortable realities, but the fact is that President Yudof is just as detached from the reality facing millions of California parents as the Queen was from the plight of her subjects.
The total compensation for Mr. Yudof, is said to be $828,000. He told the New York Times in 2009, “It [his salary] actually was $600,000 until I cut my pay by $60,000. So my salary is $540,000, but it gets amplified because people say, ‘You have a pension plan.’ “
That does not include the $10,000 a month in rent that the University of California pays for.
He was asked by the New York Times, “What do you think of the idea that no administrator at a state university needs to earn more than the president of the United States, $400,000?” He responded, “Will you throw in Air Force One and the White House?”
This is the guy writing a letter to parents, who probably do not make his salary in ten years, telling them how much he regrets raising their taxes, err, I mean, their children’s college tuition. Let them eat cake.
Sadly, Mr. Yudof is the rule, not the exception. We have talked a lot about it this week, as the Sacramento City Council has given their new city manager a contract with $258,000 in salary with a total compensation of $305,940 – a pay raise of $35,000 over the interim city manager and $49,000 over the previous city manager.
The news comes just a few weeks after the city announced they would be laying off 42 police officers.
“John deserves our full support as he prepares to become city manager, but today’s news is a tough pill to swallow for our community,” Mayor Johnson said. “It’s hard to justify salary raises and contract guarantees when we’re cutting cops, closing fire stations, and watching our economy enter a free fall. I’ll respect the will of the Council, but understand why this hiring process continues to frustrate the public.”
That is how I feel about Steve Pinkerton and his $188,000 salary which will begin less than a month before the city has to dispense with $2.5 million.
There have been few people as adamant as I have been about cutting costs for total compensation in this city. I have been attacked as anti-employee. I have had city employees tell me off in emails.
I will say this right now, and I hope the city council is not too busy on their vacations to hear this. If the first move that the city makes is not to accept a 10-percent cut from managers and department heads, if the first cut does not come from those making over $100,000 and one cent comes from the rank and file either in salary concessions or layoffs, I will join the employees on the picket line.
How can a city councilmember talk about the need for joint sacrifice, how can the city manager talk about the need for joint sacrifice, if the ones expected to sacrifice are those making $50,000 rather than those making $150,000?
Mr. Shirey himself said that “people should know that I’m going to earn every dollar and more.”
Because, obviously, those 42 police officers that were laid off did not earn every dollar. Let them eat cake.
“I’m always expecting something to be said any time a public official’s salary and compensation is there in the public venue for review,” he said. “My salary is very fair compared to my peers up and down the state. If anything, it’s under market.”
That thinking is what got this state into this mess. The idea of a nuclear arms race in salaries, where you justify your largesse based on the largesse of others.
Let them eat cake.
The bottom line is that none of these salaries, on its own, means the difference in balancing a budget versus not. Even President Yudof’s gross salary is hardly a ripple in the billion dollars in cuts UC is having to make. On the other hand, if every person making over $200,000 in UC took a 50-percent pay cut until the crisis passed, how much would that add up to?
After all, they have made the students pay even more than that.
As I argued earlier this week, the justification of fair pay equivalent and the insignificance of a single salary in the overall budget makes it easy to justify. A city like Sacramento or even Davis will justify the higher rate, arguing that they need to hire a quality individual to lead the city, and they can rationalize that the general fund hit caused by $35,000 is minimal compared to the size of the budget.
Neither Davis nor Sacramento will break their budget based on the salary of one city manager. However, it is an illusory justification. The salaries at the top inevitably will pull upwards the rest of the salaries with them. Moreover, they send the message to employees not to cooperate.
This is the real danger. We are telling employees that we face economic crisis if we do not make cutbacks and then we go out and raise the manager’s salary by $34,000. How much sense does that make?
The problem is that we are in real danger. We face economic collapse in this city if we cannot reform our system, but the nuclear arms raise race to economic destruction is continuing unabated. Across the state, apparently, city councils have proved that they cannot resist raising the salaries of the city manager and other management contracts.
As a Sacramento Bee editorial reported earlier this week, “The firefighters union voted Saturday to become the city’s first public safety local to contribute to pension costs, but a leader told council members that the ratification vote would have been far different if firefighters had known about Shirey’s pay package, which wasn’t made public until Monday.”
Indeed. That is what Davis faces as we will either lay off 20 employees on September 30 or they will have to agree to contractual changes. How are we going to convince them that they need to share in sacrifices when their boss did not perform his own sacrifice?
Mr. Pinkerton was well aware of the implications of his contract, he had to recognize the problems it could create, he knows he must lead this city by example and yet he still chose to put himself and the Davis City Council in an impossible position.
That is on him. By all indications he seems like a fine choice, but at the end of the day, employees are going to look at his salary, and when he asks them to make a shared sacrifice, it is going to sound to them a lot like – “let them eat cake.”
—David M. Greenwald reporting
From wikipedia:
[quote]President of the University of California
In March 2008, Yudof was selected as the next president of UC, to succeed Robert C. Dynes. He began his term on 16 June 2008. In November 2009, TIME Magazine recognized Mark Yudof as one of the “10 Best College Presidents”, citing his efforts to provide opportunity and access to a quality education for California residents with financial need whose family income is less than $60,000…
Also in 2009, Yudof came under criticism for an interview that he gave to Deborah Solomon of the New York Times, Big Man on Campus , in which he joked about taking a pay cut from his salary of over $800,000 to $400,000 in exchange for the White House and Air Force One. Despite his opposition to increasing pension benefits to other UC executives, Yudof himself is likely to get the highest-ever pension in UC history, with $350,000 per year for the rest of his life if he stays at UC until 2015.[/quote]
I would ask the simple question: What extraordinary things has Yudoff done that justifies his exorbitant salary increase over that of his predecessor? How has he shown that he has “earned” that extra salary increase, that proves he is worth every penny over what his predecessor made? The rationale has been, “oh we have to pay more to get the best qualified people”. Has Yudoff proven himself to be the best qualified person?
From the huffingtonpost.com:
[quote]From Minnesota, Yudof returned to UT as its chancellor. He achieved national prominence among college administrators as a staunch supporter of tuition deregulation, which changed the way universities set fees, giving them a sense of sovereignty from the often-restrictive state government.
Within a little more than a year of his inauguration, the man [Yudoff] known for rejuvenating universities was charged with the task of closing the UC system’s massive budget deficit. Dramatic directives followed, including thousands of layoffs, mandatory unpaid faculty furloughs, a 32-percent tuition increase and cutbacks in everything from classes to library hours. The UC system as it had been known emerged as an extremely pared-down version of itself, to much chagrin.
In addition to the challenges of remaking the system, personal controversies have marred Yudof’s short California tenure. A Bay Citizen investigation last summer revealed that incidents related to Yudof’s housing — including damages to a $13,365-a-month mansion in the Oakland hills — cost the university more than $600,000. A year earlier, in a widely publicized New York Times Magazine interview, Yudof infamously compared his job to managing a cemetery — “There are many people under you, but no one is listening,” he said — and defended his $540,000 annual salary.[/quote]
1) I would argue that paying more for a new manager does not necessarily make a more a qualified manager. This fallacious logic, of more pay = more quality, has proven wrong time and time again.
2) Secondly, gov’t needs to stick to what it can afford. In other words, the gov’t needs to live within its means, or more accurately the taxpayers’ means.
3) Thirdly, in a time of economic crisis, gov’t should not increase salaries of management, while asking for “shared sacrifice” from lesser paid employees. It is unreasonable, hypocritical, and counter-productive.
Elaine: You are pulling from Wikipedia, what I directly quoted from the NY Times, I would note that their rendition is not quite what transpired. Wikipedia implies that he wanted a trade, whereas the NYT article shows that it was more of a joke that he was attempting to make – albeit a lousy one. It’s an example of why I almost never use Wikipedia, I just don’t trust their accuracy.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake
“I would argue that paying more for a new manager does not necessarily make a more a qualified manager. This fallacious logic, of more pay = more quality, has proven wrong time and time again. “
In fairness, I don’t believe anyone is arguing that paying more for a manager makes one more qualified. Instead, what they did was find one they wanted and then negotiate a price.
From the standpoint of the overall city budget, it makes not much difference whether you pay him $140, $188, or even $250. From the standpoint of labor relations it makes a huge difference.
Agree with 2 and 3 completely. Although I find it interesting that you are constantly fighting me on this point when it comes to crime.
CD: That’s why wrote, “Marie Antonette [b]who was said to have uttered[/b] this phrase during one of the famines that befell France during her husband Louis XVI’s reign.” For our purposes here the sentiment and phrase were more important than the strict historical accuracy of the claims.
[quote]Elaine: You are pulling from Wikipedia, what I directly quoted from the NY Times, I would note that their rendition is not quite what transpired. Wikipedia implies that he wanted a trade, whereas the NYT article shows that it was more of a joke that he was attempting to make – albeit a lousy one. It’s an example of why I almost never use Wikipedia, I just don’t trust their accuracy.[/quote]
Wikipedia also talks about it being part of a joke, I just chose for brevity to delete that part.
[quote]In fairness, I don’t believe anyone is arguing that paying more for a manager makes one more qualified.[/quote]
I disagree w this comment, and was speaking in generalities. The “keeping up w the Jones” mentality of paying what other cities/school districts/universities/whatever are paying so that a city/school district/university/whatever can get the supposedly “best qualified” people. This strategy has not worked at all, from what I can tell, not even in the business world. Some of the highest paid CEO’s have eventually been booted bc their performance was so bad. Rupert Murdoch comes to mind as a recent stark example.
[quote]Agree with 2 and 3 completely. Although I find it interesting that you are constantly fighting me on this point when it comes to crime.[/quote]
If you mean the prosecution should always accept whatever plea bargain the defense offers, to save money on trials, sorry, I cannot agree w you on that one. The gov’t still has to maintain integrity in the criminal justice system.
That about sums up the point: sentiment is more important than fact. Marie Antoinette not only never said “let them eat cake”, it would have been out of character. She was completely incompetent as a head of state — which wasn’t her fault; she was roped into it by an arranged marriage. Nonetheless, she had far more humanity and dignity than the radicals who murdered her. Moreover, if “let them eat cake” is a 20th century invention, Antoinette was in her day framed in the court of public opinion over the diamond necklace affair — another victory of sentiment over fact.
The same radicals also murdered the Lavoisier and slated Lafayette for death. These two may have been rich, but they were sensible, competent men who could have done France a lot of good. In fact, before they were deposed, they both did do great things for France and for the world.
From about.com:
SAY WHAT you will about her, Marie Antoinette never actually uttered the words “Let them eat cake.” We have it on the authority of biographer Lady Antonia Fraser, who spoke on the subject at the 2002 Edinburgh Book Fair.
Though historians have known better all along, it is still popularly believed that Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI and queen of France on the eve of the French Revolution, uttered the insensitive remark upon hearing peasants’ complaints that there wasn’t enough bread to go around: “Let them eat cake,” she supposedly said. It’s simply not true.
“It was said 100 years before her by Marie-Therese, the wife of Louis XIV,” Fraser explains. “It was a callous and ignorant statement and she [Marie Antoinette] was neither.”
Truth be known, the attribution is doubly erroneous in English, because the word “cake” is a mistranslation. In the original French the alleged quote reads, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” which means, literally, “Let them eat rich, expensive, funny-shaped, yellow, eggy buns.”
You can see why it caught on.
[i]”The same radicals also murdered the Lavoisier and slated Lafayette for death. These two may have been rich, but they were sensible, competent men who could have done France a lot of good. In fact, before they were deposed, they both did do great things for France and for the world.”[/i]
One of the many reasons to doubt Thomas Jefferson is that Jefferson was oh so wrong on the French Revolution. The two leading Americans of that day who were outspoken and had it right on the French radicals were John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. As time played out and Jefferson was proved to be wrong about France, his hatred of Adams, and especially his hatred of Hamilton grew, so much so that Jefferson paid scurilous men to publish defamatory articles about his American enemies.
It is occassionally said that in recent years our partisan divide has an expression in foreign policy and for that is a malady of modern times. But in reality, for most of our history, we have had partisan divides over foreign affairs. The first of those was the division over the French Revolution, which pushed the anti-Federalist Jefferson-Madison party toward France and the Federalist Washington-Adams party toward England.
Dr. Wu – Antonia Fraser is an expert on Marie Antoinette, and she is correct about Antoinette’s character. (Well, she may not have been ignorant or callous, but she wasn’t all that smart. But that’s a different story.) However, Wikipedia says that the quote comes from nowhere in a book by Rousseau, while Fraser attributes it to Marie-Therese, the wife of Louis XIV and the great-great-great-grandmother of Marie Antoinette’s husband, Louis XVI. On this point I don’t know who is right, but I see that French Wikipedia also cites Rousseau.
Today, “brioche” in France basically just means “bun” or “roll” — it’s very ordinary for buns and rolls in the US to be made with eggs and sugar and have a funny shape. Maybe a good translation would be “When told that the peasants have no bread, she said, ‘Then they should eat butter rolls.'”
[i] “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” [/i]
[b]—-Everett McKinley Dirksen (1896-1969).[/b]
I’m writing my column for The Davis Entperprise this week about all of the new spending projects of the Davis Redevelopment Agency. I wanted to start the piece with that most famous Dirkson quote above.
Unfortunately, in Googling the quote, I found out that the famously frugal senator probably never said it ([url]http://www.dirksencenter.org/print_emd_billionhere.htm
[/url]).
Two things Sen. Dirksen did say were close to his famous quote. He said:
[i]”The favorite sum of money is $1 billion – a billion a year for a fatter federal payroll, a billion here, a billion there.”[/i]
As well, he said:
[i]”Look at education – two-and-one-half billion – a billion for this, a billion for that, a billion for something else. Three to five billion for public works. You haven’t got any budget balance left. You’ll be deeply in the red.” [/i]
An interesting question is how Dirksen would be viewed today in the Republican Party. He was considered a fiscal hawk in his time. Maybe he would still hold that title. He started out as an isolationist, a supporter of Bob Taft. But over time he bacame an internationalist, eventually supporting Johnson in Vietnam. He was also strong on civil rights, though not exactly a leader on the issue. Dirksen also was something of a religious conservative. He fought for prayers in the public schools.
My assessment of Everett Dirksen was that he was a mainstream, Midwestern Republican, not really different from a Gerry Ford or a Bob Dole.
My VERY limited understanding of Marie Antonette actually subverts the efficacy of using her even as a symbol in this context. Namely because being a foreigner married to form a peace alliance, being independent from French custom and how proper queens acted, all became exaggerated propaganda saying she was a spy, a harlot, and the like. Sort of like the things Fox news makes up.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say she was a feminist, but most view her as at least being very independent (and yes, lavish) from the norms of the time regarding how women behaved. Glossing over this and repeating the same propaganda used to symbolize royal excess in 1770’s is a bit dated, is all. Maybe we need a new analogy to describe being out of touch with the peasants. Say, like a “tea party” analogy. Or how Paul Revere warned the British that we have guns. Joking.
civil discourage – I totally agree that Marie Antoinette was smeared. In fact it is related to the origin of the word “libel”. “Libel” comes from the French “libelle”, which originally simply meant “booklet”. (As in “library”.) In Marie Antoinette’s day a “libelle” was an independent booklet that attacks a public figure, but one which could be either true or false. Marie Antoinette, like other people in this historical period, was libeled (in the current sense) by libelles (booklets). Eventually, in both French and English, libel/libelle came to mean defamation specifically.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libelle_(literary_genre)
But I disagree with you about one thing. I would say that this aspect of Marie Antoinette’s story is fairly apt for the current discussion.
civil discourse – Sorry, I didn’t mean to mistype your pseudonym. Maybe that can be fixed.
Thats a great new picture of Sue Greenwald !
“You are pulling from Wikipedia, what I directly quoted from the NY Times…. It’s an example of why I almost never use Wikipedia, I just don’t trust their accuracy….For our purposes here the sentiment and phrase were more important than the…accuracy….”
In a nutshell, David, this idea of what’s important in your journalism is repeatedly reflected in Vanguard articles. It might not mean much in some stories, but it’s an unhealthy aspect in way too many Judicial Watch articles, where facts and accuracy are incredibly more important than “sentiment and phrase.” It’s ironic that Wikipedia, which you “almost never use” takes accuracy and completeness so seriously that they’ve build in all kinds of processes to assure standards of quality within their massive information.
Better that you would have been ignorant of M.A.’s nonexistent role in the saying–you would have been in good company and easily forgiven–than to have know the falsity of the legend and claim style more important to you than truth.
Just for fun, let’s see how Rich handles the same moral dilemma. Will his column feature the Dirkson “quote” because it’s cool and effective and would support his take on the topic? (And, nobody except us Vanguarders would know of his intentional deception.) Or will he relinquish it in favor maintaining his reputation for accuracy in reporting? Put your money down!
JustSaying – Yeah, that’s a really good point, and not just with regard to Judicial Watch articles.