coldhearted scientist وداد

Reading for today is Jeremy Scahill’s work in The Nation on Blackwater USA, the mercenaries we hire, Nezua on the plight of immigrant children stranded after a March 6 raid, and Ellen Simon’s review of Robert I. Sutton’s book on workplace bullies. This was recommended by a friend, and it sounds to me good but limited in that my experience of workplace bullies is not that they curry favor with people at higher ranks and bully those below them, as the book appears to suggest, but that they bully indiscriminately.

In good news, an anonymous source has boiled down for us the Governor’s proposed budget for higher education in Louisiana next year:

1. Cover all mandated costs increases ($33.2 M)
2. Provide for an across the board faculty raise of 5% average ($30 M)
3. Fully fund the formula ($98.1 M)
4. Provide a 3% increase to units already at the 100% formula level or which are a non-formula units ($16.9 M)
5. Provide a special fund for faculty recruitment, retention, and recovery at hurricane impacted units ($10 M)
6. Fund a community college accreditation and program development project ($2 M)
7. Provide a $1,500 increase for all non-faculty ($21.8 M)
8. Expand library and scientific acquisitions budgets ($7.5 M)
9. Fund a special workforce development program for construction and health care ($7.5 M)
10. Continue current funding of the construction initiative ($5.5 M)
11. Fund a dual enrollment expansion ($1 M)
12. Support the ULM Pharmacy Accreditation Plan ($1 M)
13. Support Pennington Biomedical Research Center Initiatives ($3 M)
14. Support the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise ($3.2 M)
15. Fund the LSU Fireman Training Institute ($.5 M)
16. Establish a need-based scholarship program ($15 M)

This totals to a $235 million increase in higher education funding, the largest one year increase in state history. Apparently, all administrators say they are supporting this budget request and promise to present a united front to sustain the recommendation through the legislative process. Privately, there appears to be some disagreement about formula distribution. But we have heard that everyone smiled and was friendly at the Governor’s press conference.

Axé.