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Big meeting at UMass Boston today
Apr. 11th, 2011 09:48 pmI learned that in 1985, 75% of a UMass Boston undergraduate student's tuition was paid by the state, while today the state pays only about 25%. Increasingly, UMB students come from households earning at least $85,000 to $100,000 a year. About 1,200 of them live in luxury waterfront apartments immediately adjacent to the campus. They probably pay $2,000 to $3,000 a month in rent.
Are we moving back toward the pre-World War II era when college was accessible only to a moneyed elite? If so, this is surely another consequence of the tearing up of the Roosevelt-era social contract since 1980 by the special interests and their (mostly, but not exclusively) Republican hired guns.
It amazes me to see immense cuts looming in government social programs that help poor and middle class people while the super-rich are rewarded with tax cuts, and there is not a whimper of protest coming from anyone but a few isolated liberals. I see a vast chasm looming in front of our country and the tea partiers are urging us right over the edge of the cliff.
The "tea party" movement may be the most dangerous political phenomenon America has ever seen. The moneyed class is out to suck the rest of us dry and toss us all on history's slag heap. Historians will compare what is happening here with the fall of the Soviet Union, I predict.
Are we moving back toward the pre-World War II era when college was accessible only to a moneyed elite? If so, this is surely another consequence of the tearing up of the Roosevelt-era social contract since 1980 by the special interests and their (mostly, but not exclusively) Republican hired guns.
It amazes me to see immense cuts looming in government social programs that help poor and middle class people while the super-rich are rewarded with tax cuts, and there is not a whimper of protest coming from anyone but a few isolated liberals. I see a vast chasm looming in front of our country and the tea partiers are urging us right over the edge of the cliff.
The "tea party" movement may be the most dangerous political phenomenon America has ever seen. The moneyed class is out to suck the rest of us dry and toss us all on history's slag heap. Historians will compare what is happening here with the fall of the Soviet Union, I predict.
