When Taxpayers Abandon their Principles

The recent state budget cuts to higher education and the 32% increase in tuition due next fall are indicative not of an economic downturn, but of the wholesale abandonment of taxpayer and the legislative committment to civic and economic growth in California.

The state’s higher education budget has been slashed by $2.8 billion this year, including $813 million from the university system — about the equivalent of New Mexico’s entire higher education budget.

“Dismantling this institution, which is a huge economic driver for the state, is a stupendously stupid thing to do, but that’s the path the Legislature has embarked on,” said Richard A. Mathies, dean of the College of Chemistry here at Berkeley, long the system’s premier campus. “When you pull resources from an institution like this, faculty leave, the best grad students don’t come, and the discoveries go down.”

A Crown Jewel of Education Struggles With Cuts - New York Times

California, and the nation, must confront the implications of knee-jerk anti-tax policy that have been hurting us for the last 30 years. But how?