Public College Corruption

California law flatly prohibits the use of your tax dollars to promote political candidates or ballot measures. That is as it should be. Public funds should not be funneled into election campaigns. To do so would open the door to government corruption on a massive scale.

That is why U.S. Attorney Carol Lam is to be commended for ferreting out the alleged diversion of state education funds to help pay for a television ad supporting an $89 million bond measure for Southwestern College. A federal grand jury has indicted former Southwestern College President Serafin Zasueta and political consultant Larry Remer on four counts of wire fraud, conspiracy and theft involving a federally funded program.

After the ballot measure was approved by voters in November 2000, Remer received a $5,890 invoice from the firm that produced the television commercial. Remer, who orchestrated the campaign on behalf of the school bond, is accused of devising a scheme under which Southwestern College picked up the tab, after the privately financed committee supporting the measure ran out of funds. Money may have been siphoned from the theater arts department budget for this purpose. The federal indictment charges that Remer submitted a fraudulent bill to Southwestern College and then attempted to cover up the crime with a fraudulent memo.

This week Remer and Zasueta pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court. Unless they reach a plea bargain with the U.S Attorney's Office, a jury will decide their guilt or innocence. In the meantime, however, they and their lawyers have offered a grotesque collection of excuses for the alleged misconduct.

"This is clearly a political persecution," declared Remer. "There's an election in 10 weeks. I think this is why this is going on." Come again? Does the defendant actually expect anyone, Republican or Democrat, to buy the notion that the federal grand jury indicted him for some partisan purpose in order to influence the Nov. 2 balloting?

Straining credibility even further, Remer accuses U.S. Attorney Lam of being part of a Justice Department witch hunt against Democratic politicians around the country. Last year a separate federal grand jury indicted three Democratic San Diego city councilmen – Ralph Inzunza, Michael Zucchet and the late Charles Lewis – on public corruption charges involving alleged bribes from a strip club operator.

Yet the plain truth is that, throughout his political consulting career, Remer has worked for both Republican and Democratic candidates. So, what Democratic officeholders are being targeted by the Justice Department in an indictment against Remer, who after all has never held public office?

Remer's lawyer, Michael Pancer, derided the notion that the U.S. government would pursue a case involving the alleged misappropriation of only $5,890 in the context of an $89 million bond issue – as though the theft was so trivial it should have been overlooked. On the contrary, the citizens of San Diego should extend their thanks to Lam for being vigilant against such insidious corruption, whether it involves millions of dollars or merely thousands.

Our federal tax dollars at work. It's a pity that public floggings are out of fashion. I hate "multiculturalism" but I admit that we can learn alot from our brothers in Singapore. Some small time grifters getting their nose into the public trough doesn't surprise me, it's just that this is so typical of the system from top to bottom. Privatize the university system. Better yet, abolish it.

Privatize the university system. Better yet, abolish it.

Bad idea. It's no accident that California is high technology A to Z, and that the emerging industry of biotechnology is largely in that state. California made an enormous investment in its public university system decades ago that has paid off magnificently.

Public higher education is also a good way of expanding the middle class. A lot of people have pulled themselves out of poverty by working their way through community colleges and the four-year schools, schooling they can afford because their tuition is partially subsidized by the state.

Of course, I'm biased here -- I teach math at a public university in the midwest, a school with a high percentage of working students and "non-traditional" students (that is, older students). Commencement ceremonies at my school are a big deal because a lot of the students are the first in their family to go to college. Even here in the midwest, we get a certain amount of multicultural marxist nonsense, but most of our students are majoring in things like nursing, education, business or the natural sciences. Most of our graduates will more than pay for their education through the higher taxes they will pay in their careers.

All of your reasons for the continued existence of these taxpayer funded "glory holes" might have been true about 50 years ago but they don't hold much water any more. Once upon a time a college degree was a guaranteed ticket to the middle class; not any more. A BA in "business" is a joke; the way to learn business is to go forth and do business. "Education" is concerned mostly with concealing the fact that its "matter" contains nothing of worth. (I could go on at great length.) Jefferson's ideal of the University is adequately encompassed by the Internet. Today's four year party of college life all too often ends in a ruinous debt for the "soft subject" graduate at what should be the beginning of a working career.

Of course, the gravy train of faculty life never stops running. I liked it while I was doing it but mostly it represents a hugely wasteful fraud perpetrated upon the taxpayers and their children.

I respect your field but for every "hard" scientist, mathematician, engineer, how many socialist political "scientists", art historians, professors of modern dance, or hotel/motel management am I, as a taxpayer, obliged to support?

There's also grade inflation, athletics, and yes, overweening faculty egos and leftists of a particularly stupid and doctrinaire stripe. Yet, I think public universities are still an excellent public investment -- reform might be needed but not abolishment.

Actually, the trend nowadays is for public universities to become more and more private: a smaller and smaller fraction of their budgets is coming from the state. Tuitions are higher as are contributions from individuals and business (if you are an alumnus of a university, you hear from their fundraisers regularly!). For example, the share of the budget of the University of Oregon that comes from the state has dropped from 69% to 31% from 1980 to 2004. (U of O is where I got my doctoral degree.)

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