Ken has a great post on what has been so good about the Open Mike! tour:
1. Mike! is open to a $28 million golden parachute/ campaign contribution from his former employer Safeco (which is now getting him sued).
2. Mike! is open to selling out to Ted Stevens and Big Oil to drill in ANWR.That’s the same Ted Stevens who wants to send supertankers into Puget Sound to affect my quality of life.
3. Mike! is open to giving people like Paris Hilton a financial break, while sticking it to working men and women, and to making Bush’s tax cuts for the richest 1% permanent.
4. Mike! is open to teaching intelligent design in our schools. (Shouldn’t he be running for Senator in Kansas?)
5. Mike! is open to staying the course in Iraq (which is working so well), with no timetable for bringing our troops home.
6. Mike! is open to gutting the Endangered Species Act.
7. Mike! is open to privatizing higher education (specifically UW & WSU). Note to Mike!: In Washington, we already have SPU, UPS, Gonzaga, Walla Walla, Whitman and PLU, so there is a choice for students among private colleges and universities.
8. Mike! does his best to portray a nice-guy, moderate image (much like that wolf in sheep’s clothing Dino Rossi) but Mike! is open to the right-wing agenda, particularly when the righties get people to open their wallets for him.
And let’s not forget Seattle University, where the Cross has effectively been replaced by a dollar sign.
Thanks for reminding me about Seattle U. I wasn’t initially trying to list all of the private colleges and universities in the state, but I figured someone might mention the one or two or few I missed. My point was that we already have private colleges and universities and we don’t need to privatize our public institutions of higher learning.
Your point is well-taken. It appears that the UW is trying its best to become a private University. Eliminating the historic automatic admission of community college graduates was a step in that direction.
Another of the UW’s dirty little secrets is its policy of admitting foreign students over Washington citizens because such non-citizens pay the full cost of their education. The UW values this revenue stream over educating the children of the taxpayers that established it.