I haven’t closely followed the controversy over the attempt by the University of Virginia’s board to oust its president in favor of a more corporate-friendly administrator.
All I know for sure is that the man they attempted to make the new UVA president, Dean Zeithami, is not qualified for that job. In fact, Zeithami may not be qualified for any job.
This is demonstrated by the language — and I use the word generously — of this description, relayed by dew at Lawyers, Guns and Money:
Dean Zeithaml specializes in the field of strategic management, with an emphasis on global and competitive strategy. He conducts research on international expansion strategies, knowledge-based sources of competitive advantage, corporate political activity, strategic decision making, the strategic role of the board of directors, the implementation of acquisition and diversification strategies, and organizational transformation.
Some of those words are English words, but that paragraph is not English.
That paragraph is almost completely meaningless. Or, rather, to the extent that it means anything, it could mean any thing. That Zeithami wrote such gobbledygook as a description of himself, or that he allowed it to be written about him, suggests that he should not be accepted as an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia, let alone be put in charge of the school.
For the most-thorough Jeffersonian take-downs of the current shenanigans at UVA, see:
Kieran Healy: “The Declaration of Independence, Charlottesville, June 19, 2012“
Paul Bibeau: “‘I was never much of a UVA guy,’ by Thomas Jefferson“
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NTodd highlights some words from Adam Smith. Yes, that Adam Smith:
[T]he government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that the one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich. There are many expenses necessary in a civilized country for which there is no occasion in one that is barbarous.
… The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. … It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
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Gryphen links to this older post at Addicting Info on “20 Reasons to Thank Labor Unions.”
It’s an excellent list, including things like child labor laws, paid vacation, health benefits, pensions, workplace safety rules, weekends, sick leave, overtime, the 8-hour day, the 40-hour week, holiday pay and collecting bargaining.
All of those were fought for — hard — by labor unions. None of those would exist had they not been fought for — hard — by labor unions.
Unfortunately, the dominant thinking among non-union workers in America today seems to be that now that we have such nice things, we don’t need labor unions anymore.
The mistake here — and it’s a huge mistake — is the idea that all of these hard-won rights will somehow endure without labor unions continuing to fight to protect them. That same list of “20 Reasons to Thank Labor Unions” is the To-Do List for corporate America’s lobbyists, SuperPacs and puppet-candidates.
And by “To-Do List” I mean “To-Do-Away-With List.” They’re going after these one by one. Repeals of collective bargaining are happening right now, along with multi-pronged attacks intended to weaken unions to the point where they won’t be able to defend anything else on that list.
You think your weekends, or your 40-hour week, or your sick leave, overtime or holidays are safe? They’re really, really not.
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The Republican record on “fiscal responsibility,” in two sentences:
In January 2001, the [Congressional Budget Office] projected that the federal government would run a total budget surplus of $3.5 trillion through 2008 if policy was unchanged and the economy continued according to forecast. In fact, there was a deficit of $5.5 trillion.
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This is pretty cool: Kid in Rhode Island works out a solo piano arrangement of Howard Shore’s “Waltz in A.” Then a guy in St. Louis overlays the go-for-broke wailing tenor sax that identifies the song as one you’ve stayed up late to hear Lenny Picket play for more than 30 years.
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