Just now, the faculty and staff at Wayne State got a message from our president (A. Gilmour) which said (a) that the budget has been reduced by 22 million dollars, the largest loss in the university's history, (b) tuition would go up almost 7 percent for undergrads and more than 7 percent for graduate students; and (c) that after cutting out all kinds of inessential services, the only recourse is now to "reduce the force" of support staff and, presumably, untenured part-time people. So here we go. We now bear the fruits of recent shifts in the nation's political preferences. "Liberty" now means freedom from public employees, good roads, first-class education at public universities, police, fire fighters, and social safety. Public employees means people like me -- with our huge salaries,our swollen pensions, etc. What a dark, bleak joke. Our pensions and other benefits pale when compared to those provided by major corporations to their middle-management people, much less to those at the helm. I truly despair. And I wonder why people aren't rebelling in the streets. We protest, but it's as if we are protesting in a black hole. Time to knit.
svb
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