University of California Administration is incompetent and out of control

LA Times Report: by George Skelton

Professors should teach more and do less research, he has said. Administrators shouldn't be paid so generously — into the $300,000 and $400,000 range, plus big perks.

UC contends it has to compete against Ivy League schools for talent.

Nonsense, the governor implied. "Money doesn't buy everything in this world," he told Regent Richard Blum, a wealthy investor and husband of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. "If it did, I wouldn't have anybody working for me."

UC "doesn't have to follow the Ivy League" to recruit, Brown argued. "People will get very excited about an institution that has a moral depth that transcends the vagaries of the marketplace.... This is not Wall Street. This is the University of California, and we want to be different."

There is no need for tuition hikes. The UC Administrators are incompetent. Look at how they work with CA K-12 Public Schools, and the results. 

All UC Regents are over paid. Napalitano's base pay is $570,000/year (not including pension, health, housing, and transportation benefits). At Each UC Campus there are 9 Chancellors who get >$450,000/yr.+benefits. Governor Brown earns only $173,000/year. 

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/16/local/la-me-ln-uc-rental-20130916

California Democratic Party Made Easy

Lessons Learned

In this turbulent midterm election year, two academics -- Lawrence
Lessig and Zephyr Teachout -- left the classroom and confronted the
reality of down-and-dirty politics, attempting to replace moneyed
interests with the public interest. Neither was successful – this year,
at least – but on this week’s show, Bill speaks with them about the
hard-fought lessons learned on the state of American democracy.



The Bare Knuckle Fight Against Money in Politics from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.


FYI - The odds are against us

Hope is the knowledge that change is possible and our cause is just and worthy.

Fuck the odds. It's time to get medieval. 

All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law; directors should not be permitted to use stockholders' money for such purposes; and, moreover, a prohibition of this kind would be, as far as it went, an effective method of stopping the evils aimed at in corrupt practices acts. Not only should both the National and the several State Legislatures forbid any officer of a corporation from using the money of the corporation in or about any election, but they should also forbid such use of money in connection with any legislation save by the employment of counsel in public manner for distinctly legal services.

The Tillman Act

President Obama's Statement on Keeping the Internet Open and Free

Activism requires a media plan

Ruckus Society Media Guide.pdf

Checklist for Effective Direct Action Media

One month to one week before the action 

1. Decide what person or persons will be in charge of media strategy. The benefits of consensus aside, it is nearly impossible to write a press release, focus on a key sound bite, contact key reporters, or accomplish any other media tasks by committee. So empower a media team to make these decisions, and let them do their jobs without second-guessing and micro-managing.
   
   The most logical makeup of the media team is a media coordinator, an action coordinator and the lead campaigner. During the action itself, each of these people will likely be stationed at a point where they can serve as media spokespersons. If the media coordinator is to be stationed at the action site, you need one more member of the team: Someone to stay in an office and work the fax machine (unless you have on-site fax capability).
   
2. Settle on one simple message. Accept it: You're not going to be able to communicate all the points, sub-points and shades of gray about the issue you'd like to. An action is like a freeway billboard, designed to hammer home one - and almost always only one - message. If you can't focus on one issue that's the main reason you're doing the action, you shouldn't be doing the action at all.
   
3. Choose a strong image that clearly communicates the message. Remember the freeway billboard: With one glance it is (or should be) unmistakable what product or idea is being sold. Ideally, your action should communicate the message without any words of explanation - and always in as few as possible.
   
   If you find yourself saying, "They'll understand it when they read the banner," your image isn't clear enough. But the banner, which will probably contain language very similar to the sound bite, must also be capable of communicating the message on its own. You may not pull off the image; or you may not get the banner up; each, therefore, has to be able to stand alone.
   
4. Craft sound bites that communicate the message and enhance the image. Assemble the media team. Take out a legal pad. Lock the door. Throw out short, simple, declarative sentences that express your message. (Remember: The average soundbite on U.S. TV is less than 10 seconds.) Write them down. Stay in the room until you have five that might work. From five, choose three. From three, choose one. Shape and refine it until it's as close to perfect as hard work and creativity can make it.
   
5. Choose a date and hour for the action that will maximize your chances for coverage.
   
   Sometimes you have to do an action when it is possible to do it, or when it's safe to do it. But if circumstances permit you to choose the date and time, make your choices with the media's convenience in mind. Again, there's no formula, but there are some general rules of thumb:
   
   Morning is better than afternoon. Almost no event short of a major catastrophe gets covered on the evening news, or in the next morning's paper, if it occurs after 3 p.m.
   
   Monday through Thursday are the best days, and Monday's best of all, because the later you go in the week, the greater the chance that some other big story will come along and blow you off the news map. Avoid Friday (lowest TV viewership Friday night; lowest newspaper readership Saturday morning; lots of competing news.). Saturday and Sunday are also not the best, because news outlets operate with skeleton crews on weekends.
   
   Combining the above guidelines, we arrive at the theoretical best time for a hypothetical action: 10:30 a.m. on Monday, after news crews have reported to work for the day, but before they've got other stories going.
   
   But that's assuming your action occurs in a news vacuum, which it won't. Try to time the action so that it either anticipates or responds to an event the media will recognize as a story - "the news peg." If the President plans to sign the bill you're protesting on Thursday, do your action on Wednesday.